I flew Jet Blue out to San Diego last week. Two simple words, Direct TV. Well, it's really one word, DirectTV, but kinda like two words, anyway. Nothing eases the pain of a six hour flight like reruns of King of the Hill and quasi educational shows like Crash Test Human.

We don't have TV reception at home. We have a TV, and we watch reams of bad movies on DVD, and we have the means, ahem, to watch "programs" via, ahem, other sources, but we don't have the ability to watch broadcast television. This is mainly because if we did I would watch it, all of it, nonstop, hours and hours of bad TV until they'd cut a hole in my head and mellon ball out the part that makes normal people turn off the TV, because that part in my brain will have eroded into a black tar ball of wasted matter. What doctors refer to as brain poo.

So we don't have broadcast TV, and when I am placed in front of, or anywhere near, broadcast TV, I am as a moth to the flame, a crack head to the rock, a drunkard to a half empty (or full, for you optimists) 40oz, a fifty year old financial analyst to barelylegal.com. I am drawn to the glowing, evil wonder that is Nancy Grace like Christians to a vision of the Virgin in a knotted tree. I want to turn away mind you, but I am incapable. I become entranced by the likes of Bill O'Rielly, Blossom or Oprah until I am unable to refuse their blather. I am but a poisoned fly caught in their banal web of engulfing photons.

After about five and a half hours in the air filled with VH1 Classics, reruns of That 70s Show and many, many others, I hit rock bottom. I noticed my neighbor had tuned into Fox News, so I followed suit and turned the station to The Factor. After only a few moments, I knew I had made a mistake. Yet, I continued to watch, mouth gaped, mind numb and a trickle of drool forming on my chin. I blacked out after that. I can faintly remember deplaning and shuffling through the terminal with a sense that I had somehow been violated, that I had lost something precious, and I could never get it back.

I woke in the middle of the night last night, soaked with sweat and trembling. I had dreamt I was in my middle school guidance councilor's office. She held a stuffed bear and was pointing at various parts of its anatomy, "Is this where the cable news man touched you? It's ok, you're in a safe place now." I started to cry uncontrollably. She held me and whispered, "It's ok, you're safe now, you're safe."