television rage

okay, i watched way too much lame television this weekend (thanksgiving), and that is certainly my fault entirely (although i blame it more directly on fear of success - and that there can be no failed success if i never actually mail out my manuscript right?) anyway. i wish there was a way to get this message out more widely to "the people" - or better yet "network executives", because i have absolutely HAD IT with the whole advertising during whatever thing i happen to be watching and taking up the bottom fourth of my fucking television screen. now i am at this point an old enough geezer to remember when we started with the itty bitty network logos in the corner. we were all in an uproar about that, but apparently not enough of one, because it has only gotten so much worse. we now get one of these quarter screen ads, always fully animated and more fucking annoying by the day, at the return of every commercial. and now there are even permanent ads with the logos, such as bravos add for six feet under that remains in the bottom right corner during the entire program (except during the commercials - god forbid we'd want to interfere with the commercials). so i guess the question is when is it going to stop? probably never. i know it sounds rather defeatist, but nothing ever really gets better around here, only worse, so why would something as stupid as television and commercials be any different?

let's chalk my poor attitude up to a series of things recently that have pissed me off in both my personal and professional life, but rather than get into that i am going to take it all out on my television, which deserves it too.

so i have decided that i will not be watching any of these shows. or be trying my damndest at least. if i see a fucking giant ass banner advertising a show then it is OUT. this will be particularly painful as these ads get worse and more frequent, and i'm not promising i can handle it especially considering how much worse my tv addiction has been in the past year. but i'm going to give it the old college try people. maybe if we all do it at once someone will notice?

yeah right.

ps - i forgot to mention the number of times over the past three days that these banner ads actually legitimately interfered with what i was trying to watch. 8 TIMES! five times i could not read subtitles because they were blocked by ads and three times i could not see some important action going on in the bottom of the frame. and that is just fucking RIDICULOUS!