I’m kitty-sitting this week so I don’t know how many posts there’ll be. Not many.

While I have access to a computer, it’s set up for someone else and I’m uncomfortable using the thing. There’ll be no “owl pellets” until next week. My morning routine is in a complete shambles and I lack access to my bookmarks. But, today, I’m back at home, on my own machine and happily smoking indoors. It feels much better. I can actually see the screen without straining my eyes or breaking my neck . . .

My kitty-sitting duties have also given me cable television. I haven’t watched television in a year and, watching it again, after such a hiatus, is an eye-opening experience.   Your culture depresses and terrifies me.

I would never have thought it possible but, while I was gone, television has gotten even worse. It must have happened gradually but to me, who has been gone from its electric embrace for so long, it seems sudden. Two minutes of exposure to the aptly named idiot box is enough to ruin my whole day.

Watching the morning news, I feel like I’m in a Philip K. Dick novel about mind control through meteorology. I actually heard a cop talking about “snow attacks.”

Snow attacks.

Is this what it’s come to? A cop talking about snow attacks? If I leave tv for another year — and I certainly plan to– will I return to find that the snow graphics have been replaced with falling Bin Laden heads? That druids will be giving astrological forecasts? Just what are you people up to? What are you watching?

You’re all up to no good and you’re watching fucking garbage.

I took some things for granted when dealing with humanity; that there was a certain threshold of intelligence that no one in such a successful species in such an advanced culture could possibly dip below but . . . Snow attacks? You people might actually be retarded. So let me explain the glaringly obvious to you.

The commercials are still the best thing on tv but they’re just a shuck and jive. The whole purpose of television is to sell advertising. Everything on it has the same reality and the same goals as a commercial. It’s all a commercial. Even the news.

When you think they’re not lying or that you see the lie, when you catch yourself believing you’re being entertained and not enslaved, informed and not indoctrinated, it’s time to be very fucking careful. Take a good look at your interior. When you think you’re getting the truth, you’re just believing a different lie. You need to stop and ask yourself why you’re so weak and stupid. Just what is the appeal of that particular lie? Why do you believe?

And it’s all fucking lies. Believe me, journalists are always lazy, usually incompetent and occasionally ill-intentioned. I’ve met them and I’ve sort of been one. These fuckers just want a free buffet and to be famous. They have the petty ambitions of third rate actors but lack the talent. Think about how seriously you take your job. They’re not any different. It’s about the paycheck.

Reporters are the bottom rung of well-organized Public Relations machines. They basically cut and paste press releases and they do it fast because they’re only judged on speed. Everything needs to be instant. Thought or refection shall never intervene.

They do this for fear that their freebies, glamour and assorted bullshit will dry up. If that happens, it’ll starve and kill their self-important concept of themselves. These people are egomaniacal twits. The last thing they want is to be you yet they want to be loved by you. Though they view you as suckers, they need your worship.

Their stories are sent ready made to them by companies, government, whathaveyou. They just repeat them. They’re a bunch of fucking parrots. Vampire parrots.

(The astute reader will have noticed that I too am an egomaniacal twit and I certainly don’t want to be you. I make no bones about this. But I don’t give a shit if you even like me. I certainly don’t want you to love me. One should never underestimate my self-absorption. All I care about is whether or not I like/love you. That’s it. Your affection is useless at best and distracting at worst. No one can give me anything that I want because everything I want comes from me. You have nothing of value. I’m a lot of things but I’m not a vampire parrot. I’m an owl. A grumpy one.)

Aside from but including the news, television is a sloppily constructed fiction that is meant to keep you watching so the stations can make money by selling adverts. That’s all. The scary weather and the reports from the crime-ridden outdoors, the manufactured suspense of your favourite shows about the terror outside, are just there to keep you indoors. In front of your fucking tv. And the adverts? Those are just a head fake.

It reminds me of something that occurred in my storied past. I was –ahem– stealing wine from a gala event and I knew I’d get caught. So I took three bottles and made sure that I got caught taking one. That way they thought they got me but I still walked out with two. The commercials are that one bottle of wine. They’re just a feint.

Watching them you’re supposed to feel like “now I’m being sold something.” Lucky, smart and sophisticated you. You caught ‘em. Except you’re being sold something the whole time. And you know what? You’re being sold a lot of fucking crap. So turn that shit off. It’s just confusing you and you don’t need it. You’re already confused enough.