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."

Little Boxes (.mov 5.9 megs), intro to weeds.

This morning the phone rings. It is the "Attendance Coordinator" from P.S. (New York Public Schools) 124. In my day, they called these people Truant Officers or the Dean's secretary, but I'll give them Attendance Coordinator. In this modern age of barely sensical job titles (I go as Systems Architect at more self indulgent periods) how can I fault them. The AC was asking about the low attendance of a student named Scarlet last name held to protect the truant.

Here is were I fail. This is obviously a wrong number. I may have illegitimate children throughout the city, but I know for sure that there isn't a child named Scarlet living at my house, at least I'm pretty sure. I inform the AC that he has the wrong number, and I hang up the phone. A moment later I realized my error. That is when my highly truant inner child spoke to me, "Why didn't you tell them Scarlet was sick, had mono or something. You could of saved that truant girl. Her truancy could of went unpunished for months with your help. You bastard!"

That is when I realized that I have lost something, something important. I grew up and left that truant little boy behind, and with him the days of wandering around the mall trying to steal canned poop from the novelty store, bumming quarter for "the bus" and drinking warm quarts of beer down at the sump until school was out and I could go home and watch Thunder Cats. An innocence lost and forfeited to a System Architect.

I want to sing a little song that, uh, kept me going when I had troubles. -Family Guy