400 channels and nothing on
I'm lying in my old bedroom at my parents' house, having decided to crash here after a long day at work. I can hear the sound of television in my parents' room. Its an unfamiliar sound... I don't own a television. I find television incredibly distracting; so much so that when I decide to sit down and watch a movie, I have to devote my whole attention to that activity.
Television's components are distracting. In bars and restaurants I intentionally sit facing away from television sets. If I can see the picture and not hear the sound my brain is drawn to try to reconstruct what's going on. And if I can both see and hear, I'll be unwittingly sucked in by whatever is on, no matter how asinine. I have no acquired immunity from television and television advertising. I don't seem to have the same calluses over my eyes and ears that allow people to have conversations while berated at high volume to buy a discounted mattress.
So now I can't fall asleep, because I can hear the television in the other room. Or maybe because I can tell my parents are watching South Park. If you know my parents, you realize why this is so funny. If you don't know my parents, then visualize the people in the world least likely to watch South Park. That's my parents. My Dad got a TiVo for Hanukkah. I think this gift (of course, purchased at Costco) was residing here temporarily and was tagged as a gift to a family friend. But it was intercepted by my Dad. And now my parents, who don't watch television, are watching South Park. Can someone explain the psychological power of the TiVo, that makes my parents record for later viewing programs they would never have watched in the first place?