Ornoth

Inna wanted to go to the 2017 Meetin national celebration in Seattle in September, and it made sense to piggyback that with a detour up to Victoria BC to visit my brother, since—after my mother’s death—he’s unlikely to be coming east any longer.

The logistics were enough of a nightmare that we actually needed a travel agent’s services. Inna and her mother flew direct to SFO to visit family for a few days. Then Inna flew OAK (not SFO) to SEA while I simultaneously got from PIT to SEA via IAD. After the Meetin gathering, we’d take the ferry to Victoria BC, then eventually get home flying Air Canada together from YYJ to YYZ to PIT. Meanwhile, Inna’s mother returned on a direct flight from SFO. Yeah. Glad to have an agent handle all that.

Seattle Skyline & Rainier

Danger Man

Self-Portrait in Steel

Inna's on the Ball

The Sky's the Limit

Family @ Observatory Hill

Sunken Garden

Japanese Garden

Full Seattle photoset Full Victoria photoset

Tuesday, the day before I left, was memorable for two reasons.

First, having just gotten over a three-week long summer cold, I woke up with another sore throat, heralding another ugly illness spanning the duration of the trip.

Second, that evening I had a ticket to go see “Walk With Me”, a movie centered around Buddhist icon Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditative community at Plum Village. Between this and other previous films, I’ve become convinced that the medium of film really isn’t a good vehicle for introducing Buddhist philosophy to the masses. But that’s really not a topic for this blogpost…

After I returned home, my sore throat left me with a sleepless night before an early Wednesday morning walk to the bus stop, then a two-bus expedition out to the Pittsburgh airport. Having lived without owning a car for more than twenty years, I hadn’t even thought about driving!

My first flight—from Pittsburgh to DC—was delayed 30 minutes by a maintenance issue, causing me to skip my planned combined breakfast and lunch as I loped through Dulles seeking my connecting flight.

After five hours with absolutely zero legroom in a United cattle car, I touched down at SeaTac hungry, tired, and sick. I ignored the seventeen text messages from our catsitting friend and hoofed it to the Uber lot to meet up with Inna, who had flown in separately from Oakland CA.

Although I’ve made half a dozen trips to the PNW, I’d never been to Seattle, so everything here was new to me.

After a lengthy drive into downtown Seattle, we tried to check into our hotel—the Inn at the WAC—only to discover that our room wasn’t ready. We had only planned to drop our bags before heading out for dinner anyways, so we simply got a recommendation from the desk clerk and headed straight to the nearby Tap House Grill. I had a French dip sandwich and ice cream, while Inna ordered shrimp and tiramisu ice cream, which wound up being her favorite meal of the trip.

We returned to the hotel to find a tray with hot tea, cocoa, a chocolate bar, and a handwritten note—to Mr. and Mrs. Nirenburg—waiting in our room, since the staff had overheard Inna mentioning my illness. Inna tracked down Sheela and Monika, our Pittsburgh friends who were also attending the Meetin gathering, and the four of us chatted briefly in our room. After a long day of travel for me, we opted to skip arrival-day festivities in favor of rest and a quiet evening in bed.

Thursday morning we were up early to join a small group of Meetin people exploring Pike Place Market. Along the way, I snagged a cinnamon bun for breakfast. We observed the market’s outdated manual daily stall-assignment ceremony, then took a brief guided tour with still more Meetin peeps. With tired legs, Inna and I wandered off for some overpriced ice cream. Then I spied a stall selling roasted corn on the cob, but balked at the ludicrous $5 price tag. We both eyed the beautiful ristra hot pepper arrangements—each for different reasons—but realized they would be impossible to transport back to Pittsburgh.

We joined another big Meetin group for lunch at the Pike Brewing Company, but left before ordering when Inna realized she wasn’t sure if she had forgotten her medications in San Francisco. That led to an afternoon of phone tag with doctors and chasing around drugstores before we returned to the hotel, where she found them hidden in the bottom of her bag.

But along the way, Inna picked up some dahlias for our room, and I ducked into Metsker Maps, where a postcard with a bicycle and the phrase “Conquer the Hill” called out to me in anticipation of my upcoming Dirty Dozen ride.

Tired after so much walking, we were content to rest in the hotel until the evening event: a meet-and-greet at the top of Smith Tower. On the way, we experienced elevator malfunctions in both our hotel and our destination. Smith Tower is a lot like Boston’s Custom House Tower. Both are about 35 stories and 490 feet tall, with an open-air skywalk observation deck at the top. We took a few pictures of the view, then went in to chat with other Meetin folks. Those included Mary McDaid (Portland OR), event organizers Anita Christensen (Portland) and Helene Pincus (Las Vegas), and I had to interrogate Deanna Cochener, whose cellphone case loudly announced that she was a Portland Timbers supporter.

Afterward we wandered around with Monika, stopping to admire the Seattle Public Library. The steep hills in downtown Seattle were vaguely reminiscent of Pittsburgh, and we shared an uncomfortable laugh when one woman apologized to us as her dog’s feces literally rolled and bounced down the steep sidewalk into our path. In Westlake Park plaza we found a giant-sized Connect Four game, and I promptly destroyed Inna twice running, despite never having played before. The girls stopped in a mall for Pike Place Chowder, while I brought a theoretically fast Mod Pizza back to the room.

Friday was really the main Meetin day. After Uber failed us—and charged us anyways—we got ourselves invited to share a Lyft summoned by New Yorkers Ricky Evans & Zhenya Brisker. That dropped us at the morning’s activity: a duck tour. While waiting, Inna & I chatted with Laurelee Langan, who was there representing Boston. Despite my having been through at least two dozen duck tours, the tour itself was fine, featuring Amazon’s HQ, the Fremont Troll, houseboats and floatplanes on Lake Union, and lots more. Near the Belltown Apartments, the tour guide indicated we were passing through a quiet zone, which I happily observed, having lived for ten years on the Boston duck tour route myself.

Afterward, rather than spending $33 each to get into the Museum of Pop Culture, we opted to visit a local food court with Sheela and Portlanders Bijana & Ankesh Kadakia. Still illin’, nothing appealed to me but fries.

After lunch, the “Meeps” gathered up again to go through the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. The exhibit was short but breathtaking. In the middle of the tour, I remembered to show people that the abstract background image on my cellphone has for many years been a close-up of a green-and-yellow work of Chihuly glass that I took back at the 2000 Dargon Summit at Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory, which you can see here.

After that, Inna and I returned briefly to the food court before walking down to the Olympic Sculpture Park and rejoining the larger group. We wandered around, enjoying another warm, sunny afternoon. While resting at one point, a kid ran up to Inna asking in an incredulous voice, “Hey lady, is that your belly?!?” She was taken aback but about to respond affirmatively when the kid’s caretaker came up to explain that the kid wasn’t actually referring to her stomach, but the rumbling sound of a nearby passing train!

I walked down to the harborside, having a nice conversation with Bijana, before the group split again, with most people headed predictably toward a bar. Meanwhile, Cha Cha Chen (DC) and I collected Inna and ambled off to meet Anita and the main group of Meeps for a ride up the Space Needle.

The Space Needle was a lot like Boston’s Customs House Tower and the Smith Tower from the day before: a reception room and elevators surrounded by a narrow exterior observation deck. The main difference is that the Needle was crowded to absolute capacity. But it did provide the requisite view of the city, the bay, and the mountains in the distance.

Inna & I were among the first to punt and make our way to the Belltown Pub, the first stop in the group’s planned bar crawl. I had a chicken sandwich and a cookie while we chatted with Helene and Ricky. Eventually we’d skip the bar crawl and drag Helene, Ricky, Zhenya, Sheela, and Monika back to the hotel’s common room for an evening of games: specifically Cheating Moth and Coup.

Saturday that same group got together for breakfast, having been lured away from the Meetin brunch by the promise of Quaffles—waffles made out of croissant dough and cinnamon—at Anchorhead Coffee. On the way there, we posed beneath a huge flower pot and watering can sculpture, and got unexpectedly sprayed with water. The Quaffles made up for it, as probably the best food we had during the entire trip.

Having no interest in the Meetin group activities planned for that day, Inna and I shooed the others away and walked aimlessly around the city, winding up at a Russian bakery called Piroshky Piroshky that Inna had sought out. She sampled their pelmeni (little dumplings), piroshki (potato and cabbage dumplings), and Napoleon cake, but pronounced them all mediocre. Then back to Pioneer Square, where I dragged Inna into Magic Mouse Toys and picked up perennial favorite Fluxx, while waiting for our underground tour.

In brief, Seattle used to have problematic above-ground sewage pipes. Then, after Seattle’s big fire, they decided to put them underground… Not by digging trenches, but by running them down the middle of the street, then filling them over and putting an elevated street over the top. Meanwhile, as buildings were being rebuilt, owners were required to build their primary entrances on the second floor, rather than the first. Wooden planks allowed people to get from the elevated street to the elevated second-floor entrances, spanning the open pits that was the old sidewalks, since they were still at the former street level. The old sidewalks were never filled in, just eventually roofed over, leaving downtown Seattle a maze of underground sidewalks connecting the basements (former first floors) of the surrounding buildings. Much of this work was financed by the mistress of several houses of ill repute. It was an interesting tour.

After that, we wandered around town some more, checking out Seattle’s K&L Gates building, the “Pittsburgh” Lunch, and so forth. Then hopped an Uber to take us to the suburban Seattle Meowtropolitan cat cafe, where we enjoyed some time with a few blasé felines. After an Uber back, I picked up a very yummy dinner from Mae Phim Thai. I spent the evening resting in the hotel room while Inna rejoined the Meetin crew for karaoke.

It felt odd to me, because the Meetin event was nominally a weekend thing, but we’d spent the entire day Saturday on our own. It felt like the social element of the trip had petered out, doubly so because our ferry to Victoria prohibited us from attending the farewell brunch on Sunday.

So the next morning we slept in a little, had a decent breakfast in the hotel, ran into Ricky and Zhenya in the lobby, and made our way to the ferry.

Looking back on Seattle, it seemed an okay town, but throughout its history it seems to have been very poorly slapped together, whether you’re thinking about their former sewage problems or the current explosive growth accompanying Microsoft and Amazon. We did have absolutely gorgeous, sunny weather up until the day we departed, but it’s probably a lot less fun in the rain. The accommodations were really great, except for the horrible elevators. My cold was mostly manageable, but I did wish I’d had the strength to bring my SLR camera along. And the Meetin group were generally enjoyable, although predictably more party- and drinking-oriented than Inna and I.

But overall, I really enjoyed my time in Seattle and could have stayed longer.

At the dock, our Victoria Clipper ferry bobbed and weaved in the wind-blown rain and heavy seas, and Inna didn’t have a particularly pleasant 90 minutes crossing over to Victoria. And as expected, we didn’t get passport stamps for our entry into Canada; cheap bastards.

However, by the time we docked, the seas had calmed and the sun was out, and we walked through downtown and past the Empress Hotel on the way to our lodgings at the Hotel Rialto. After nearly a year, it was really, really enjoyable to be outside the authority of the Trump Presidency. Tired from our journey, we had Indian at nearby Sizzling Tandoor before going back to the hotel and crashing.

Monday I let Inna sleep late, then we hoofed it through Chinatown to pick up our rental car, where we wound up with a RAV4 rather than a VW because the Hertz dealer somehow lost the keys when he got out of the vehicle after driving it up. We’d hoped to drive along the coastline of Vancouver Island up to my brother’s home, but had to settle for the inland highway because they were pressed for time.

We had Thai food for lunch and a nice visit with my brother, plus my sister-in-law, whom I haven’t seen in several years. We took separate cars and met up at the top of Observatory Hill for a brisk but breathtaking panoramic view of the island. Then they headed home while I took Inna up to Victoria’s famous Butchart Gardens.

The gardens were predictably amazing, and predictably crowded. What didn’t run according to plan was the weather, as the predicted day-long rain held off completely. Inna bought me some gelato in the Italian garden, and we took our time enjoying the scenery.

Tired from the walking we’d done all week, we gave up on dinner and just got some basics at 7-Eleven, including some products that you’d have to find in imported food shops at home.

Tuesday morning we wandered around downtown a bit. We looked into the John Fluevog shoe store, chatted with the proprietor of North48 Bicycles, perused the surprisingly well-stocked MEC sporting goods co-op (c.f. REI), and discovered Baggins Shoes, who will print any custom design you want onto a pair of Chuck Taylors or Vans. Then we had brunch with my brother at Willy’s, a diner in town. Sadly, my sister-in-law’s back trouble prevented her from tagging along.

After saying farewell to my brother, Inna and I moseyed down to Craigdarroch Castle—a Victorian mansion rather than a medieval castle, of course—which was cute but not particularly engaging, though Inna found some interest in the stained glass and examples of actual filled-out “dance cards”. By the time we dragged ourselves back to the hotel, we were both completely done with the walking and tourist thing and ready to go home. We had dinner at the hotel—a cube of mac and cheese, topped with tandoori chicken!—before showering, checking into our homeward flights, and turning in.

Wednesday we were up and out, with a quick drive up to Victoria’s leetle jetport. Our Air Canada flight to Toronto was long but uneventful. YYZ was a nightmare of maze-like corridors, eventually leading to a mid-corridor dungeon of a waiting area, with a tileless suspended ceiling and bare light fixtures dangling from their wires. Impatient to get home, we took an Uber from the airport rather than wait for the bus, and were very happy to arrive.

Inna enjoyed Victoria and would have liked to have spent more time there. Like Seattle, we were very fortunate to enjoy unseasonable and atypically good weather. It was especially nice to see my sister-in-law, since her health hasn’t permitted her to travel for some time.

Between the two cities, it was a pretty successful trip, though as always it was really nice to get back home again.

Somewhere in my travels I came across this contrarian secret about Buddhist teacher interviews: if you express anxiety or confusion at an interview, the teacher’s job is to reassure you and give you confidence; whereas if you show up confident and in control, their job is to present you with deeper or more difficult challenges, to spur you to undertake greater effort.

The latter was my experience in a recent interview I had with Michael, one of the teachers at CIMC. I began by telling him that I was fairly satisfied with my life and that when I meditate, no pressing issues seem to come up for me.

I told him that in general I am on top of things, using my planning and organizational strengths to mitigate the risk involved in anything I commit to or undertake. When that happens, he suggested that I examine the energy level and the motive behind the actions I am taking, because sometimes that impulse to have everything under control is driven by fear or anxiety, rather than wisdom.

He then asked whether I had any suffering in my life or any deeply buried insecurities or fears. While my life is generally quite good, of course even I have a couple things I keep way down in the murky depths. Without getting all personal about my own particular demons, it’s important to be able to allow those feelings to reveal themselves, rather than to instinctively suppress them, so that one can then make choices and act out of wisdom rather than reactiveness.

So I left that interview with a bit more anxiety, and more of a sense that I need to do a better job admitting and facing the things I fear, rather than burying them. Joy.

Later that week we held another dharma movie night. I had proposed the animated film “Waking Life”, which is stuffed with philosophical meanderings. Even though it’s mostly a bunch of talking heads, and not everyone is as fascinated by philosophy as I am, I expected people to find it thought-provoking. I might have even hoped it would receive as positive a response as my book club selection had.

But before the movie began, we got into a discussion of our next book club selection: Mark Epstein’s “Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught”. When I was asked my opinion, I was honest: I think the book is logically flawed, ridiculously deluded, and dangerously misleading. On the other hand, a couple people enthusiastically loved it, and wanted me to explain why I disagreed with it. As the only person to openly criticize the book, I was on the defensive, and at a disadvantage because it had been a month and a half since I’d read it, and I didn’t have my notes to refer to. So that unexpected discussion left me feeling a bit singled out.

Then we started the movie, which got a predominantly negative reception. In fact, about a third of the way in, four people (out of nine) got up and walked out of the room, spending the rest of the evening outside on the patio rather than watching the rest of the movie. While I have no problem allowing people to make their own decisions, and I know that disliking the movie isn’t the same as disliking me as a person, I still had some emotional turmoil to work through as a result of their surprisingly blunt rejection of something that has a lot of personal and philosophical meaning to me.

In between those two events, CIMC had a dharma talk by Winnie Nazarko that related to creativity. While the talk didn’t touch any nerves for me, one point she made has stayed with me. In general, people engage in a meditative practice because they’re looking for something, whether it’s the answer to a personal dilemma or relief from generalized existential angst. Winnie emphasized the importance of knowing what your overriding question is, so that you can judge whether or not you’re on the path toward an answer.

When I considered that question for myself, two responses came immediately to mind. The first is my familiar refrain of how to live my life such that I will have no regrets on my deathbed, as I discussed here. The other is to learn how to make decisions which are more consistent with my deeper sense of personal ethics and reflect the person I aspire to be and the kind of world I want to manifest. I think it’s a positive sign that those answers came so easily to me, because it shows that I have a clear understanding of why I practice and what I hope to achieve.

And last night at CIMC Maddy held a dharma talk on generosity, and how it is the basis of practice. As we age, we have to let go of everything we have—our possessions, our relationships, our health, and eventually our lives—and the essence of the spiritual path is learning how to be at peace with that process so that we can both live and die with grace and fulfillment.

If that is so, then acts of generosity are a good way to see if we can let go of our possessions, and what it feels like to do so. By exercising our ability to see beyond our attachment to material possessions, we are practicing and becoming more familiar with the kind of letting go that we must all eventually become accustomed to facing.

On top of that, generosity is a truly ennobling act that is a demonstration that one cares about others’ suffering. And it provides fulfillment beforehand (in contemplating giving), during (in the act of giving), and afterward (in the memory of having given). There aren’t many actions one can take that are so pure and have so many positive effects, both for others as well as for oneself.

These kind are always my favorite. They’re particularly revealing, and I can show off my retentiveness for knowing precise answers.

What was the last song you heard?

The entire 1978 Devo “Q: Are We Not Men?” disc; the final song was “Shrivel-Up”.
 

What were the last two movies you saw?

LotR:RotK and “Shaolin Soccer”.
 

What were the last three things you purchased?

During today’s class I bought a Cherry Coke and a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar. Before that was a $40 grocery trip wherein I saved 23% thanks to my Shaws card; highlighted items include buttery microwave popcorn, black peppercorns, blueberry sorbet, OJ, corn, peas, and Mini Rollo Bites. Before that, a case of assorted “Sci Di” cat fud (sic).
 

What four things do you need to do this weekend?

Pay bills, distribute DargonZine 17-2, print a new 2-week planner, and assemble iniren’s new desk after disassembling her old one.
 

Who are the last five people you talked to?

I’ll give you a few extras, since not all these may count. The Puggle; I thanked a neighbor for holding the door; while waiting for tax help at the BPL, I had a conversation with a guy who filmed the PMC a few years ago, and a quick comment to another guy as I left, and a quick inquiry of which conference room it was in from the help desk; and before all that I spoke to several classmates and my instructor, Ken, at digital photography class.

Sorry, but this one’s gonna be as brief as last week’s, since I can’t answer these questions.

If your life were a movie, what would the title be?

What songs would be on the soundtrack?

Would it be a live-action film or animated? Why?

Casting: who would play you, members of your family, friends, etc?

Describe the movie preview/trailer.

Yaknow, I wouldn’t harp so much about how I don’t watch television or movies, except that people insist on bringing the topic up incessantly…

Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?

I am the most organized person you have ever heard of. I constantly surprise and amaze even the most anal-retentive people. I actually scare most “normal” people, because I combine an obsessive degree of organization with an inhuman level of competence, yielding an incisive, near-infallible mind that is computerlike in its effectiveness and efficiency.
 

Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?

At present my preferred method of planning is a paper-based system which I designed and developed. The calendar section contains two weeks of time/date dependent appointments, along with recurring appointments and multi-day appointments. I have a “need to buy” section, a “general to-do list”, a “future LiveJournal posts” section, a list of “long-term to-dos”, a list of high-priority social contacts I want to cultivate, a “DargonZine to-do list”, a list of my present DargonZine writing projects, and a list of DargonZine stories which I need to critique. Items are added or carried over to the next sheet as needed.
 
Items which are completed are lined out in red marker; items which I do not complete are crossed out in blue marker. In addition, items which will eventually appear in OrnothLand are given red boxes, which are checked off when I have added them to the Web site. Anything DargonZine-related gets lined out with a thin red pen, rather than the usual thick one, until I have posted about it in the project “news” post that I send to my writers each week, at which time it gets the thick red line.
 
All this fits on one side of an 8½ by 11 sheet of paper. I generally do not carry this planner with me.
 
In the past I’ve been known to use the Xircom (nee Franklin) REX as a PDA. It’s a PCMCIA card that’s also a PDA. Unfortunately, Franklin was bought by Xircom was bought by Intel who then just decided to stop making consumer electronics of any type, so there is no more REX. I have never used any other PDA or Palm device. I used Microsoft Outlook briefly, before concluding that I could write a better system myself.
 
Note that this doesn’t include any task-specific planners, such as the DargonZine global status report, the three DZ publication queues and schedules, my cycling graphs and logs and planners, the numerous personal task lists that I maintain in Ilium Software’s ListPro (formerly Netmanage Ecco).
 

Would you say that your desk is organized right now?

My desk is, of course, perfectly organized. I have a roll-top desk with fourteen separate compartments, two small drawers, and four large drawers. The compartments hold: (1) paid bills; (2) business cards, letter opener, and stereo remote controls; (3) unpaid bills due in the next 15 days; (4) checkbooks and payment books; (5) my old REX card (see above); (6) sunglasses and combat knife; (7) and (8) empty, because they’re inaccessible behind my PC; (9) wallet cards that I don’t need to carry daily, such as wholesale club card, calling card, grocery store cards, and blackjack betting strategy; (10) computer reference cards for Javascript, perl, CSS, Kedit, emacs, Adobe Type Library; (11) infrequently-used reference material such as floor plans to the Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Public Library; (12) legal documents such as my passport, mother’s will, safe deposit box keys; (13) computer speakers and CDs full of MP3s; (14) folder with resume material, plus DargonZine folders including printouts of the queue of stories to be reviewed, a printout of the issue currently in production, and printouts of the stories I’m currently working on. The small drawers contain (1) software installation CD-ROMs; (2) old computer punch cards (remember those, kids?) for use as notepads. The drawers contain (1) pens, stapler, tape, the top-drawer usual desk stuff; (2) garbage computer stuff, including voice microcassette recorder and my collection of four dozen Caps Lock keys; (3) Visa and ATM receipts for the past year; (4) computer equipment, including blank CD-ROMs, digital camera, media reader, canned air, and system backup CDs. The desk also has a pull-out witing surface, which is where I keep my bi-weekly planning paper.
 

Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?

CDs are sorted by artist and subsorted by date of initial release. Compilations go at the top, except for CMJ compilations, which are at the bottom. The dozen annual Orny Sampler compilations are also in a separate section. Genres are mixed.
 
Books have always been a royal pain in the ass, due to nonstandard sizing. I vastly prefer trade paperbacks for their uniformity and efficient storage. The latter are stored, again, by author and subsorted by original publication date. I’ve never found an adequate method of storing overside books; some are stored by topic, and some are stored by size. I have separate shelves for computer reference books, philosophy, sexuality, Roman history, Boston’s topographical and architectural history, writing, cycling, and languages. There’s also a separate shelf in the living room that highlights a rolling list of the last two dozen books I’ve read.
 
I only own three DVDs (since I have no player or television, for that matter). They are piled in my CD cabinet. Two are animated feature films, and the third is the DVD highlighting the 2002 Dargon Writers’ Summit in Scotland that Dargon writer Victor Cardoso produced for the group.
 

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?

I have a very firm belief that all complexity is of human origin; there is nothing complex or unpredictable that cannot be traced directly back to people. Specifically, other people, since I make such a substantial effort to be predictable, reliable, responsible, use forethought, and set others’ expectations appropriately, and most people are by nature fallible, inconsistent, capricious, and irresponsible.
 
From that, you should be able to derive my opinion that the most difficult things I’ve ever had to organize have been other people. Any time I’ve been responsible for others, whether it be one of the wargaming conventions I ran as an adolescent, producing DargonZine as I’ve done for so many years, or the DargonZine Writers’ Summits I’ve organized for the past decade, the hardest job has always been organizing and managing the people involved. It certainly would be easier if everyone else were as compulsively organized as myself, but if that were the case, then those events I have organized would never have been such wonderful accomplishments.
 
Besides, if everyone were as organized as me, I wouldn’t be so unique in this world anymore, and then I’d need to find another outlet for my smug sense of superiority.

Yesterday, as I was driving Inna to the airport, we passed a billboard for the new movie "Enough". Inna made a comment about how she'd had more than her fill of the leading actress, Jennifer Lopez, who apparently is an all-pervasive mass media star. I shrugged and told her that there were definite benefits to not being saturated by the mass media; I couldn't have named the actress for any amount of money, nor do I have any idea what she's done before "Enough" or why she's popular.

You see, I made a decision years ago to try an experiment. At the time, I was moving into Boston proper and decided to stop watching television, stop going to movies, and sell my car. That was eight years ago, and I've never had reason to reconsider.

Why? Well, let's start with the car. After I moved into town, I found that I really wasn't using it much. Then I calculated that it was costing me about $9000 a year to have, between car payments, repairs, maintenance, gas, parking, tolls, excise tax, tickets, insurance, and everything else. It just wasn't worth it. So I started buying MBTA passes, broke out the bike again, walked more, had my groceries delivered, and rented or borrowed a car for the rare times I really needed one. All in all, losing the car turned out to be a big win. I do miss it sometimes, simply for the joy of driving, but that's hardly worth $9000 a year to me.

Giving up movies wasn't a big deal, because I've never been a big moviegoer. I really only mention it because it's one of those things that people can't seem to fathom living without. But I find most movies, especially American movies, painfully formulaic and predictable, and my need for dramatic storytelling is well fulfilled by the reading I have to do for DargonZine. The way I figured it, there are better ways to spend $20 and three hours of my life. These days I do go out to see a few very carefully selected movies, but very few, and rarely anything that's "big" or mainstream.

But giving up television? That tends to shock a lot of people. Back in '94, when I looked at what I was going out of my way to watch (Jeopardy, NASCAR auto racing, and NBA basketball), I just couldn't justify spending $35 per month for cable. The final straw -- virtually the last thing I saw before pulling the plug -- was the pathetically overdramatized OJ Simpson "low-speed chase" along the highways of Los Angeles. So when I moved, I didn't bother ordering cable, and figured I'd see how long I could survive. Amazingly, my life did actually get better. I had more time for writing and DargonZine, cycling, concertgoing, work, and sleep. So it's become a permanent situation.

Often people wonder how I possibly get my news without television. Actually, I find myself far better informed about the things I care about then anyone around me, and I often "scoop" my friends with news they haven't heard yet. I get concert listings and local happenings from the Boston Phoenix, the local alternative paper. But most of my news comes from the Internet. The Boston Globe's Boston.com site is a great source for local and national news. I supplement that with My Yahoo! for local, national, NBA, financial, and technology news. I get local weather directly from the National Weather Service, rather than a dumbed-down version edited by a 7th grade dropout with a toupee and the pseudoscientific title of "Meteorologist".

But beyond that, I am able to get more detailed news about specific areas of interest that television could never provide. I get future show dates for all my favorite local and national bands. I get tons of international cycling news and remarkable photography, as well as all kinds of news about local cycling. I get to read the comic strips that I specifically want, including the bisexual, polyamorous, BDSM-oriented "Jake the Rake". I get in-depth local transportation news. Complete weekly open house listings for my neighborhood. Event calendars for local early music, classical music, art studios, and author signings and readings. Upcoming album releases. Visiting warships. Detailed user interface design and Web developer news. Tons of local news from Boston, or my original home town, high school, college, or places I'd like to visit. Live flight data so that I can pick friends up at the airport without waiting. Financial news as soon as it's released. Try getting any of that through your boob tube! But I shouldn't need to tell you about the value of the Internet as a news medium.

Instead, I'll tell you what I lost when I gave up television: saturation by the mass media. I gave up knowing (or caring) who the hell Jennifer Lopez is. I gave up being bombarded by the same old inane and intentionally-annoying commercials, repeated several thousand times per year. I gave up having to sit through the tedium of the news media's fixation on one event for months at a time (the OJ trial, the Florida election recount, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, whatever they're following this year). Apparently I didn't give up anything worth keeping, because eight years later, I still haven't called the cable company.

Well, except to hook up my cable modem, of course...

Yes, I admit that I take a reactionary pleasure in telling people that I don't watch television. I enjoy shocking people. But if that were the only benefit, it wouldn't be worth it at all. In all honesty, I'm now endlessly better informed, have become more physically active, taken a more participatory role in my community, and gotten rid of the truckloads of annoyances and pointless angst that come with television saturation. The reason why I don't watch television is because my life's immensely better without it, as was so obviously demonstrated by Inna's irritation versus my complete lack of reaction to seeing a billboard featuring Jennifer Lopez... whoever she is.

Kill your television.
It's a no-brainer.