Awake!ned

Life comes at you in strange ways. Despite your best efforts to plan it out step by step, there always seems to be a rock that causes you to stumble off that path and onto a new one. These rocks often cannot be foreseen, for they are small and colored like the ground. Also there are many. Plus they're hard to avoid, because you want to see the scenery on the path, and that girl you brought with you won't stop talking about her day. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that something you didn't see coming can change the way you see yourself. Just such an event occurred earlier this evening.

So I was doing my laundry, and I had everything timed out perfectly. 45 minutes for the dryer cycle to complete. I check the time, return 45 minutes later, and find that there are still 12 minutes remaining. Thus, I was left with a hefty conundrum: do I walk all the way back to my apartment, wait a few minutes, then walk back, or kill the time in the laundry room and keep the unburned calories as my own? I decided to wait it out, and while searching for a distraction, I came across this:

It was a small periodical entitled "Awake!" Seeing as how I was "awake" at the time, I figured it was a magazine that I'd be able to relate to. Upon closer inspection, I found that it was a publication of the good people at Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, a publishing company run by those friendly young men with suits and bicycles, who call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses ("But in the Latin alphabet... Jehovah begins with an 'I'!" (Crusade, 1:52). Well, they seem like happy folk, so let's see what this business is all about.

"Television: How Does It Influence Your Life?" the headline asked, to which I replied "Probably about as much as Jehovah's Whitness' pamphlets have!" only to realize I was alone in the laundry room. A shame, I thought, because that was a mighty zinger.

In addition to the TV-related insight into my life, it posed many other ominous queries, including:

Oh man, I was ready to find out.

First I hit up the main article, titled TV: A Thief of Time?

So apparently I have been watching too much television. I really don't watch that much, but according to the article it's still more than I should be, for you see, as King Solomon wrote, "The Eating of too much honey is not good" (Proverbs 25:27). "The same principle applies to TV viewing. Heavy viewing can cut into family time and hinder reading and academic performance," much like the gluttonous consumption of vast quantities of honey. Did you ever see Winnie the Pooh with a family or a book? Didn't think so.

So I'm pretty bummed at this point... I gotta cut back on TV and honey. It goes on to explain that I'm even worse off because of the types of shows that I watch. "They rely on fights, killings, special effects, and sex to hold the attention of the viewer." And you know what? It's true. I watch way too many shows with violence, sex and special effects (sometimes all in the same scene!), and it's starting to corrupt my fragile mind.

But wait! I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking the same thing, and this magazine saw it coming... What about sex and violence in the Bible? Why, "References to sex and violence in the Bible are written to instruct, not to entertain." That makes sense. So I can watch sex and/or violence, so long as it is in an instructional format. And I always thought those videos would get me in trouble with these people.

So how does TV influence my life? The article was fairly inconclusive, but it did a good job at making me feel bad for wasting my time laughing at Sanford and Son or crying about all the people that Oprah has helped. Is watching House a sin? According to this magazine: maybe. Better play it safe and steer clear of ever watching it.

In addition to this life-altering revelation, "Awake!" also led me to believe that Halloween is evil and should be avoided at all costs...

...and that I may have an eating disorder...

Guess I'll have to cancel my plan for this year's Halloween costume- a bulimic Optimus Prime (he spews circuit breakers! Hilarious!). Thanks for the eye-openers, "Awake!"!

To complete the story, my laundry was folded without further incident.