Flutterby™! : Without TV 2008-09-04 16:21:16.607067+00

Without TV

2008-09-04 16:21:16.607067+00 by Dan Lyke 11 comments

Since numerous commenters in the MeFi thread say that anyone who lives without TV will tell you about it, it's a moral imperative that I link to this: Out There: People Who Live Without TV is a fluff piece about Living Without the Screen: Causes and Consequences of Life without Television by Marina Krcmar.

Well, I literally can't make the TV work on my own, so I CAN'T watch unless Mike is either already watching or sets it up for me. Which is really okay; I've watched less TV in the last year than I have since the early 80's when I lived without a TV in the house.

We have begun dividing our friends into two camps: Those who talk about TV shows ad naseum and those who don't. We tend to end up not spending time with the former, if only because we don't know WHAT they're talking about.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-09-05 00:30:44.249649+00 by: markd [edit history]

I guess it's my moral duty to say I live without [broadcast] TV. Have since we moved to Pennsylvania 8+ years ago. Haven't missed it one bit. We do watch the occasional DVD, that's about it.

When I moved here, out in the middle of nowhere and with mountains between me and the nearest transmitter, I picked up the phone and called Dish Network.

I'd been calling them because Dish had a better selection of HD channels than DirecTV did. Now, DirecTV has new satellites up and even more channels.

But now, I'm used to not having a TV, and am happy watching shorts and downloading a few shows over the internet. And it saves me, what, around $1,000 a year?

#Comment Re: made: 2008-09-05 11:38:08.707736+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Miro has been worth using, lots of junk, but the TED presentations are incredible. I would not have found/watched them otherwise.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-09-05 13:00:36.942434+00 by: JT [edit history]

TVs have two purposes for Marilyn and I. My purpose... FIFA. Marilyn's purpose... US Open. Beyond that, if we're eating dinner or going to bed, we'll occasionally turn on the discovery channel for some background noise now and then. Mostly we watch about an hour to two hours a week.

When I was out of town recently, I stayed with two friends in Chattanooga, who watched tv constantly while I was there. It was unusual to see two intelligent and educated people stare at the idiot box for hours.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-09-06 01:05:19.563124+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Nancy and I watched Fido (WikiPedia Page here: Fido) this evening via "on demand".

Enjoyable. weird, and in some deep ways, the most disturbing movies I've seen in a while. Sure, it's a comedy... Hilarious and extremely well done, great sets, decent acting... but it pushes some strange buttons and spun my head around a couple of times.

If you are up for a dark comedy slasher flick, this is the one. We watched it last night, while I went back and forth to the kitchen on my bi-monthly cooking bonanza.

It's set in the 40's or 50's. It's a spoof on zombie movies. There are zombies in servitude everywhere, controlled by a collar. When the collar malfunctions the zombie goes berserk and kills everyone around by eating off their left arm then chewing on their neck. Or vice versa. Considering the carnage that occurs when the collar breaks, the collars are amazingly easy to damage. If the zombies had any wits at all about them, they'd be disabling each other's collars left and right.

The neighbor has a live in girlfriend zombie. She has a habit of chomping her teeth (with her lips permanently pulled back). He's always admonishing her, "Cindy, no teeth! No teeth! ... good girl."

Another great line that doesn't really need any introduction: "Dear, just because when you were a child you had to shoot your father before he ate you, does that mean we ALL have to be unhappy? ...FOREVER?" (not an exact quote, but I like my version better)

I don't like scary movies and I don't like gory movies. This one is not scary but it is definitely gory - horror movie spoof gory. Still, I thought it was HILARIOUS. ("no teeth! no teeth! ...good girl" got me everytime.)

It came out in 2006 and I'd never heard of it. It was on the Sundance channel. I can't believe it doesn't have a massive cult following. I could see it having audience involvement ala Rocky Horror. Oh, and the music is terrific.... totally period-idyllic offset with zombie horror. Mayfield on zombies....actually I wanna watch it again.

Asha and I watch Northern Exposure, Seinfeld, and Ally McBeal on DVD. I collected every episode. It's similar to our efforts to watch every Academy Awards Best Picture in order. We haven't run out of any of them yet - and it's been a couple years since we started. I just recently put the NetFlix on hold because we have a backlog of about eight movies.

As for broadcast, we don't receive the Denver stations well and our TV is an old analog set - so we'll soon be missing everything. Yet, I don't feel like we are missing anything!