Blogging Without Television (And So It Begins)

Thanks to SmoothRon’s afternoon article most of you now know that I’m embarking on a journey for a little while.  Call it soul searching.  Call it a social experiment.  Call it me being a jack ass.  Yeah, that’s about right.  Whatever you want to call it, the simple truth is that I’ve decided to live without TV for the next few months (maybe longer) just for the Hell of it.

It all started about 3 weeks ago when I was sitting on the back porch watching the A’s play at around 11 o’clock.  I thought to myself, “Self”, because that’s what I call myself when I talk to myself, “when’s the last time you actually watched TV?”  The answer was about three days before that night.  I’d had various things going on that week like work, softball and basketball, a round of golf, and of course I’d been blogging and watching a lot of baseball through MLB.TV.  The simple fact was that it was Wednesday and I’d yet to turn the old tube on that week.

Things started steam rolling from there and I wondered what it would be like to try to live, and to blog, without the aid of a television.  In this day and age it probably isn’t that hard.  These days I get most of my information from the internet, watch most of my sports on the internet, and generally don’t use my TV for a whole lot.  So I figure why the Hell not?

So it starts today and I forsesee watching a lot more baseball on the compy.  Unfortunately for you all I also see quite a few more blog posts as I’ll be looking for something to fill the time when I used to lie on my ass eating cereal and watchin’ Bear Grylls*.  I also anticipate quite an uptick in MLB: The Show and College Football ’09 playing (when I get around to buying it). 

And just so you don’t think I’ve gone off the deep end, I do anticipate watching some TV.  As SmoothRon said, TGC’s place is a close trip away and when we’re hangin’ out shootin’ pool I’m sure I’ll catch some live sports action over at his place.  I also have a friend at work who is going to let me borrow his USB HD tuner tomorrow night so I can see how that works out.  If it goes well I’ll likely buy one of those so I can watch The Office, Earl, Heroes, and one or two other network shows I like.  If you haven’t seen the USB tuners, they’re just little USB keys that plug into a 4-5″ HD antennae.  Slap that puppy into your laptop and you’ve got HD TV wherever you go.  But you pretty much only get NBC, CBS, and ABC.

So yeah, I’m not going completely cold turkey here, but the main, underlying fact is that I will have no ESPN to keep me updated about the sporting world (call me the anti Leitch).  How will I ever live?  TGC’s revenge post last year showed that I will definitely miss not having the Food Network.  Not having HBO will suck as well, but I only watched 1-2 shows on there anymore so that’s not a big loss.

As with most things the first night will be the hardest.  The A’s have the night off so I’m probably just gonna throw the Tigers up on MLB.TV, sit back, enjoy a microwave meal and the weather, and try to start some decent articles for a change.  Do me a favor though.  If anything exciting happens in the Olympics give me a shout.  That’ll give me a reason to drink and it’ll be a lot easier to make it through this experience.

 

* So in case you’re wondering WTF the knife is for, that image comes up on the second page of a google image search for Bear Grylls.  When an image of a SOG is one of the first things that comes up during a search for you then you are one bad mother fucker.