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You see, we don’t pay for television.

Me, I hate commercials, and I hate people flipping to other channels during commercials even more than I hate the commercials. I hate not getting to pick when I get to watch what, and I hate that just as I get caught up in an episode, it ends on a “to be continued…” which of course I never remember to watch the next week.

I also carry some baggage from a previous relationship. My ex believed that television was for all the time. When you wake up. When you’re sleeping. When you’re not even home. The TV always had to be on. I didn’t sleep well for five years.

Anyway, we’ve never felt the need to pay a monthly fee to bring television into our lives. I buy DVDs of all my favourite shows, which I enjoy much more being able to watch in bulk and in quick succession. Perfect Husband manages to get the news and some important sports games using our rabbit ears (remember those)? Which means that our HD TV, Moby, wears rabbit ears. On the shelves below him sit an original NES and N64. Yes, we are hip happening people.

Unfortunately, our new house doesn’t get quite the range of channels using the rabbit ears. We get CBC, of course, and some kind of ethnic channel which plays Hispanic religious programs subtitled in Portuguese, and Iranian Pop (yes, those are real examples). Perfect Husband wanted to watch some big football game, but he was having no luck. So on the off chance that the previous tenants had not unhooked their cable, he dug out an old connector thingy and plugged it in.

Voila. Cable TV.

We probably only have it for a couple weeks to a month, until the cable people get around to dropping by and shutting it off. In the mean time, however, we’ve been gaping at the vast array of complete garbage that we can now access on a regular basis.

…Which is how we ended up watching “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.” Now, I understand that some people really don’t show when they’re pregnant. Maybe you are rather heavy to begin with. Maybe you were told that you were hopelessly infertile. Maybe you have an alien living inside you, so you mistook fetal movements for a restless night Chez ET. But I still hold that the majority of the people appearing on that show definitely fall in the subnormal range of intelligence.

“Even though they weren’t using any form of birth control, Lola found no cause for concern when she skipped her period every now and then.”

“Hello, 911? My coworker just pooper a baby into the toilet. What do I do?”

This last one was the real kicker. I’m sorry. It must be shocking for your unpregnant coworker to suddenly dump a baby into the toilet. It must be appalling for you to get constipated on a camping trip and then drop a baby onto the hard cement floor of a camping facility restroom. There would be shock. There would be fear. But in what world is it NOT someone’s first instinct to grab the baby OUT of the toilet and ask questions later? And how do you stare at a baby, who just landed on its head, lying on a dirty cement floor and not immediately snatch it up?

It seems like it should be an instinct. Baby = under water. Grab first, ask questions later.

But who am I to judge.

In any case, watching cable last night was like gorging on a feast of Fast Food Trash. I feel replete, and a little guilty about it.

…I wonder if it’s on again tonight?