There is nothing wrong with your television

I've been watching episodes of Outer Limits on hulu lately. I just got through the new(in color) episodes that were posted, and contemplated watching some of the old black and white ones. But, then I noticed something. The new episodes are around 44.5 minutes. The old ones are around 51.5 minutes. Comparing a few other old shows to modern ones shows the same tendancy. Basically, it seems that, for either half-hour or full-hour shows, people ended up having twice as many commercials in there.

Interestingly, I can watch either one now, and I will watch about the same amount of commercials, maybe slightly longer for the slightly longer show. Either way, it's somewhere around 2.5 minutes for a 44.5 minute show. 2.5 minutes. If it was 15.5 minutes, I could most likely find a torrent and put up with some of that hassle. 2.5 minutes is hard to beat though when you include all of the hassle that can come with that.

Overall, watching Outer Limits on hulu does not have the same effect. First of all, it's anytime you want, instead of at 2AM when you're already a little tired and in "what was that?!" mode. Second of all, they don't control the horizontal, or the vertical. The can't expand one single image to crystal clarity. When I watch, I change tabs (especially during those agonizing 2.5 minutes). This feels less like being defeated by the show's intro than actually changing the tv channel. I am controlling what I see, and I can skip the intro, because it's just creepy. And suprisingly, the actually show is almost not creepy at all when you cut out the intro.

The first statement though, "There is nothing wrong with your television." That one's interesting, and raises a few questions. Why do I have to watch 6 times as many commercials on it than on hulu? Why are there so many channels, and so little quality?

Often, what media you consume can be a defining feature. In high school, this was simple. There was one kid I was friends with almost strictly due to him watching the Simpsons every Sunday. Comedy Central was only in some lucky areas, so in the early days of South Park, those kids got to be so much cooler than everyone else.

What now? Well, everything pop sucks, and everything not pop is... well, most of it sucks too. I'm not sure how to abstract this problem, but to characterize it, here's something that happened recently. Someone asked me "what music do you like?" My mind is completely blown by the scale of that question. The last three albums I acquired were the following. Mediafriend- "I don't feel like this is happening", Oasis(an American folk band)- "Oasis", and Anamanaguchi- "Dawn Metropolis."

The first album I bought from a guy at the Somerville Fluff Festival. He was selling a cassette decks mounted on cigar boxes with switches to control the the playback speed of the tape. The CD cost "$5 or whatever." Oasis is a band from the early 70's that Pandora recommended, after listening to lots of annoying stuff. The album was being sold on a website from 2001(and it shows), but the links to buy it were all dead. After an hour of google searching, I found a blog that linked to a download on megaupload or something. The third, is a chiptune band that my friend recommended.

So what do I say? I like weird stuff? I like things that take serendipity to find? I don't know.

Despite not having to watch commercials, it seems to take more energy than before to define, or at least describe myself through media that I appreciate.