Cutting Cable

I've been debating one of my roommates about discontinuing our cable service with Comcast. I'd like to get rid of it. She'd like to find a cheaper alternative. Right now, the three of us—her, our other roommate, and I—pay over $90 a month for extended basic cable, HBO, and HD service, so roughly $30 a month for each of us.

My viewing habits pertain almost exclusively to HBO and FOX on Sunday nights with the occasional 60 minutes or the History channel thrown in there. To the best of my knowledge, my roommate watches a few shows on USA with any regularity and gets into Shark week on Discovery. ...Then of course there's the Steelers, which no Pittsburgher can really do without.

I'm excluding from this the casual watching behavior—the times when the TV goes on because we've just come back from our day and have no other pressing task. Of the three of us and like probably all guys in the industrialized world, I'm probably the one who engages in this behavior the most. This is time I really seek to reclaim. I don't enjoy being the passive consumer. I'd much rather create something: a Ph.D. thesis, a blog post, some software, a good idea, an argument (the good kind), an actual meal, a custom home automation system, etc. ...Or, as a much more likely scenario, I'd rather sit and be present.

This, however, doesn't make a compelling argument to my roommates who can generally avoid the enticing, empty void that is TV's escape (men love "the nothing").

Unfortunately, the monetary argument doesn't work on my roommate either. With any service or purchase, the basic question is "Is it worth the price"? In the case of cable TV, is the few shows that the three of us watch really worth $90/month, $1100/year. Do those shows provide that much joy, laughter, or insight. My answer is absolutely not. The Comcast COO, when asked about this situation and whether an a la carte selection scheme would be possible, smugly replied that the current situation is a "good business model." To that, I'd like to respond with two words in addition to cutting out cable altogether, and they begin with the letters F and Y.

This brings me to Apple and Google TV, which are the new wave of devices with the promise of extending the very-much-needed giant middle finger to the cavalcade of dicks that are the service providers in the U.S., Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, etc. I have had a PC connected to my TV for the better part of a decade now. In that time, we've slowly gained the ability to access a good deal of content over the Internet directly from the broadcasting networks, either from iTunes or the appropriate websites. This has done little to persuade my roommate to cut our cable. She isn't the most technical of people and has yet to really exploit all that the living room PC has to offer (something for which I can't really fault anyone). My hope was that the simpler, easier user interface that the new Apple or Google services may offer in accessing all the potential web content would appeal to my roommate(s).

But I am once again thwarted because, of these two services at the moment, FOX and ABC are going with Apple and Time Warner (for HBO) is going with Google. That's all we really know so far. So, for my roommate, no word on USA or Discovery. And yet, it's the Steelers that give my roommate concern as well. Where trying to explain the concept of local, free-air broadcast transmissions (what happened before cable) in their shiny new digital format that will carry the Steelers into our home long after cable leaves it, seems to confuse her a bit as well.

Yet the potential is there. These services could provide an alternative to the broadcast networks for major league sports. Where's the Apple TV Steelers NFL package for my roommate. The NFL: Want the NFL? go to the N... err... go to CBS... who has a multi-year multibillion dollar contract with them, leaving my roommate without the one single web-enabled device to access it all.

It's hard for me to really take the perspective of those who might be confused or even a little frightened by all the technology around them. I'm not necessarily grouping my roommate in with them, but, as these different methods of accessing the all same content mount up, I can understand that it gets more and more difficult to really ask (1) for some trust in disrupting our lifestyle and (2) to get up the learning curve on some new technology. It's easier to just stick with a business model that works. I get that.

For now, I'm stuck paying for a service I don't want from a company I'd rather piss on... voting with the dollar seems more effective than voting in November these days.

The Girl

I haven't posted anything to this blog for a long time. I've been stuck on this one concept: what do I want in a girl.

The Illusion

I've come realize that to define the traits, qualities, and behaviors I desire in her is essentially an exercise solely in understanding myself. In Truth, an ideal girl is an illusion. She is a construction of my mind to whom I compare and evaluate dates, a process which neither honors nor cherishes a girl as an equal human being. The ideal illusion becomes a lens through which my experience of a girl becomes warped and filtered. It ultimately separates me from reality. Conscious of this, I undertake this construction with the knowledge that it's really a reflection of my own ego, a window into me more so than anyone who I might meet.

In One Word

The one word I would have to use to describe her is Enlightened. Any other description I might give her follows from a realization of that-which-has-no-description. While I am probably not the voice to point you towards what I'm suggesting here, we must nonetheless first agree upon a set of concepts/ideas through which this description can be communicated. So here we go...

The Voice in Her Head

As far as I know, most of us experience our thoughts as language in our heads. Something is speaking to something else.

(Stop reading and observe it for a moment)

This condition implies two entities: one speaking and one listening. Let's call the speaking entity the mind. It's the total of our mental capacities: our ability to reason, produce and comprehend language, interpret the five senses, and generate emotion. The listening entity is perception or consciousness: a silent, peaceful witness to all that happens (and possibly just another function of the mind). It is the act of becoming aware of this situation in our heads, the act of creating a separation between our minds and something else in us that points at... whatever you want to call it.

Being unaware of that dichotomy, we tend to wrap ourselves in our thoughts, our emotions, and our drives to a fault.

Her sense of "Me"

By taking a little space, we gain perspective on our mind and an ability to examine its process, which is to say that we consciously separate all these thoughts and emotions from our sense of identity. This is to become aware of something larger than the individual mental landscape, and the relative importance of all the mental chatter diminishes. By extension, our own concept of an "I" also becomes less important.

The girl I'm after can perceive this.

I think we're at a mutual understanding now that we can go on with a description of her.

Her Quality

Gaining perspective on and, consequently, diminishing her own sense of self, could engender any number of specific behavior traits (I imagine), but there are several I find particularly attractive.

Detachment

The sense of self demands a definition. Most girls I've met define themselves by some condition, physical possession, behavior, or personality trait. They are valuable people because they love their job, because they have access to some exclusive events, because they're gorgeous, because they sit with their friends over brunch on a Sunday morning a la Sex and the City, because they travel, because of the guy next to them, because they do this and not that, because of the clothes they wear, because of their apartment.... I could go on.

In and of themselves, any of these are innocuous. But, as her mind conglomerates these into a definition of herself, she must expend an considerable amount of energy and, under most circumstances, cause some amount of misery in the world (relationship) to maintain and defend that definition.

By becoming truly undefined, she taps a deeper feminine energy and potential. She loses the self-obsession and becomes who she really should be.

Faced Death

I don't quite know what this means to women (if the genders have different perspectives towards it). Death is the last topic you want to talk to a girl about. But there are two concepts here that I find attractive.

The first is that death takes the diminishing sense of self to its extreme. It's a haunting reminder that all the defining characteristics of herself are flawed. We are stripped of everything we hold dear at some point. Clinging and perserving are futile. Everything changes, evolves, cycles. Rather than resist it, as our minds tend to do, she's learned to flow with it. People and circumstances come and go.

Everything is brief.

In accepting the inevitable, her world becomes something wondrous and beautiful. This moment, the only one she has, becomes something precious in and of itself. Content is irrelevant. This space in time is valuable regardless of how its spent. It doesn't have to contribute to a grand, epic life story full of drama and action because no peak experience really differs from the mundane. All things are equally important. Life just moves.

The second concept is that coming to terms with her own demise makes her comfortable with men and her sexuality. Death is the first source of fear and underlines the nagging anxiety omnipresent in women today. Lacking an awareness of it and an acceptance of it, her primary concern is safety... avoiding emotional pain. Men, then, have to obey rules, act predictably, and minimize risk in her relationships.

I don't do well with someone else's rules or expectations.

To really understand attraction is really to bare full witness to the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown. The sexes are microcosms of that. Men are unknown entities: mysterious, powerful, magnetic... psychologically unmanageable. The pull towards us, the surrender to us (to the unknown), is not something from which she distances herself. Quite the opposite, she relishes it, indulges in it... without fear and with the knowledge that there's nothing she can really lose.

(Side Note: I acknowledge that men, of course, have a complimentary responsibility here that most of us tend to divest or ignore in the same way.)

Her Behavior

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on how the qualities I've outlined above express themselves in a girl's behavior. I doubt there's a template. In fact, if one existed, it could be faked. As I continue here, then, I'm outlining below a set of traits that I find attractive.

Focused

Without really defining how, I'm simply going to suggest that a diminished identity and a perspective on the inevitable aligns her with some very deep purpose. No longer necessarily the purpose her mind constructed, but some larger one to which she wants to contribute. This purpose commands her attention, focus, and dedication such that she's not distracted by minutiae, drama, or difficulties. She can get messy, sweaty, and dirty.

Sexy

A detachment from her physical appearance gives her an amazing command over it. Beauty and sexuality are gifts she can honor in ways that tease, entice, and get noticed. Megan Fox (and her team) does this perfectly. Add to it a bit of Eva Mendez's detached, humorous perspective, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Aware

I'm going to notice the attention she gives to the little things. While it may have no cosmic significance, the degree to which she honors and tends to the world around her, including the stuff in it, makes an impression on me.

Emotional Balance

Women probably have a different relationship to emotion than men; one I probably can't understand. However, in recognizing that her mind produces them in attempts to perserve her sense of self, emotions lose their gravity.

A Contradiction

She harbors at least one logical contradiction and knows it.

Accepts Unfairness

Where she has the opportunity to extend generosity or kindness, where she is offering her contribution to the world, she can give others an opportunity to take advantage of that kindness, generosity, or contribution. She's kind and generous in spite of it.

Many girls meet these situations with righteous indignation. They judge those who would take advantage. They feel superior. And it ultimately inflates their own sense of self.

To accept unfairness is to accept people at their worst, without condemnation.

Movies

I enjoy watching movies. It'd be nice if she was a fan.

Technology Literate

My profession gives me an intimate understanding of technology. In reality, I don't expect most people to have my kind of expertise and enjoyment with technology. However, since I'm constructing an ideal girl here, she at least has an affinity for new technologies such that she'd have fun interacting with me through them. She's able to learn, use, and contribute suggestions towards whatever crazy system of computers I might build for our use. And she understands Net Neutrality and the horrible path our Intellectual Property laws are taking.

A Couple of Doesn't's

While I may not know all the traits my ideal girl would display, I can probably safely list a few traits that likely rule her out:

• Owning and carrying around a dog in her purse
• Ever using the meme FML
• Using sex as a bargaining chip
• Dreaming about NY or LA
• Using "because I'm mad at you" as justification for anything (Holding and acting on a grudge).

That was fun. Now onward with reality...