TV!

I don't know when or why TV was invented. All I know is it was around when I was born. Granted I'VE seen the advent of COLOR TV, but as a kid I can remember when TV was only black and white. Boy or girl, when color TVs came out, it was fantastic. Now, everyone owns one. I don't think they even make B&W TVs anymore. Oh they probably do somewhere, but I don't know where. TV has seen a lot of changes over the years in its use mostly, also in it's size. Many people have BIG SCREEN TVs nowadays. I'M thinking of getting one myself for my house of course. I basically grew up watching TV. Why I remember shows like I LOVE LUCY, THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, and every SUNDAY we, our whole family would plop down on the living room floor to watch WALT DISNEY, ED SULLIVAN, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, MUTUAL OF OMAHA'S WILD KINGDOM.

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS SHOW, and LAUGH IN were some others, and those were just a few. Many of those shows are still on. However, I'M sure today's family watches many different shows. In my, not so humble opinion, the content has gone way downhill. Oh you can still find family shows like WALT DISNEY, and things like the DISCOVER CHANNEL. However, you also find shows like, an older one called MARRIED WITH CHILDREN which has only been ruining, I think, our minds for maybe the past ten or fifteen years, or some new show called SHASTA MCNASTY. And of course there're some others, which have equally bad sounding names, but I can't see how a show called SHASTA MCNASTY could ever be popular. The name alone sort of dooms it. Then you have all the shows about EXTRATERRESTRIAL beings or nearly impossible things, which occur. Seems like these shows are taking advantage of a culture, which has reached its peak. In other words our culture has no more milestones to reach for. Seems like we have no vision anymore. In other words we all have too much time on our hands. Now, this can't be true, you say, just look at the fact that teams of scientists are mapping the HUMAN GENOME or at least all the building blocks of the genome, all the chemical compounds atoms, and molecules which make up the HUMAN GENOME. Now, THAT I think is a MILESTONE to mark this time period. Whatever time period historians will note this as. It'll probably be known as the turn of the millennium inventions or something profound like that. Well, I just wanted to put here in writing; my observations of this thing we all take for granted called TV. However, I've only touched on the generalities of TV, I have yet to write about the negatives of TV.

I'LL now write about the negative aspects of TV. First of all watching TV is something us AMERICANS, and many other countries in the world, do as a PAST TIME in other words we watch TV when we have nothing else to do. However it's my again, not so humble opinion, that the very reason we lack vision of how we can better our world, is because we spend too much time engaging in our PAST TIME. I KNOW when I was in high school the one of the main reasons I did so poorly besides the fact that I cut class a lot, was because I watched way too much TV. I remember watching shows like GILLIGANS ISLAND, GET SMART, sometimes THE AVENGERS, etc. I eventually quit watching so much TV about the time I decided to really buckle down and get serious about my life, which meant getting serious about my education. I watched some TV when I was in DENTAL SCHOOL. However, I don't remember watching TV at all when I was in school at UCSB, probably I think only because there weren't any good stations in SANTA BARBRA, CA at least we never really watched any TV, I don't even remember if we had one. Either that or we were all very studious I know I was. The only thing I remember taking time for was my TROPICAL FISH HOBBY, and to go up to LAS CUMBRES PEAK in my TOYOTA CORONA station wagon, the one with a missing front fender. I treated it like a JEEP. I used to go up to LAS CUMBRES PEAK overlooking SANTA BARBARA, and watch the HANG GLIDERS launch and soar out over SANTA BARBARA. Anyway, back to TV. I DID however, watch TV in TULSA in DENTAL SCHOOL. I even picked up the habit of watching such shows as PERRY MASON, THE FUGITIVE, and eventually DR. WHO. DR. WHO was my favorite that's why I'VE used his character here in my SGT. MILKO adventures. He's a good character as I can have him go or do almost anything SGT. MILKO does. I love it. Now, I'VE written a bit about TV some of the positives as well as some of the negatives of watching it, mostly negatives. However, there're many who just refuse to watch TV altogether. I think that's great. TV, to use an expression from my son, is kinda sucky.