The devil in a black box or how I learned relax and love the television.

I went to my room last night at 7:30 to do some work and woke up on the floor three hours later to the sound of Gav's son crying... his mother (soon to be a figure of history) had been admitted to hospital with a kidney infection (a steady diet of speed, booze and pot will do that too you). The boy was crying because he wanted his family back, not just a drug addicted mother who bathed him once a month and made him sleep in his school clothes so that she didn't have to get him dressed in the morning. He hadn't wanted his father to move out and even after everything that's happened in the last six months since Gav has lived here he doesn't want want his mother to disappear for good either... sometimes other people's lives make you realise how lucky you are.



I should pass out more often, today was the first day in ages that I haven't felt like I was being dragged under.


CURRENT MOOD: Awake
CURRENT MUSIC: the voice of some guy on T.V.


When I got up in the morning the television was on but no one was up.


The television is always on these days, it almost never goes off. I almost can't imagine my living room without it being bathed in the blue flicker of the box... is Law and Order really better than reality? I know that everybody loves Raymond, the thing is I used to hate him with all of my little black heart in my previous life when I had a brain. Maybe it is time to skip down the yellow brick road because it sure is scary to feel that you are on first name basis with the residents of Ramsay street (sometimes Gav and I even have conversations about Neighbours where is sounds like we are talking about actual people)...


'If I only had a brain'


The second house I lived in out here in the hills was in a nasty little suburb full of mullet hair cuts and Eminem fetishism, I was sharing with a Chinese business student who's name was Sean. Sean watched television... it was about all he did. He lived in the front bedroom on a dirty mattress on the ground, his room had almost nothing in it: a desk (no chair), a discman (no batteries or headphones or CD's), a golf putter and two golf balls... that was it, no clothes in the cupboard, no books on the shelf (no shelf!)... nothing. He spent hours on end in this empty room with the light on without ever making a sound. It was like he went into his room and just died.


Sean never talked... we could go weeks without exchanging a word... he was pretty much mute unless we were watching television... he watched reality TV and he could talk about the contestants as if they were a real part of his life... sometimes it sounded like Sean had a real life but in truth he hardly left the house and he spent all his time in the null space of his room or in front of the box soaking up another instalment of Big Brother, he was like some kind of television vampire whose only weakness was real life... were he to actually do something he would shrivel up and die like Dracula trapped out doors at dawn.


I used to really think that this was odd but then again; Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You want to be where you can see, our troubles are all the same;

You want to be where everybody knows your name.

Be glad there's one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to go where people know,
People are all the same;
You want to go where everybody knows your name.

Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;

(fade out)