TV-free blog.

First real rain today in a month -- since the day we moved into the new house. Not counting the persistent drizzle of Aug 31 and Sept 1, which was just enough to wake up the grass, and make it grow to a mowable length.

Been a month without broadcast or cable television, too, except for the cable channels I saw at the Drury Inn in Indianapolis. Our television is set up near three cables sprouting from the wall: and my guess is that one is for cable TV, the second for satellite TV, and the third (the crummy one) for the antenna on the roof. I would need another section of cable to connect even the antenna, and when considering the matter, I decided not to do it, to see what would happen.

No one has complained so far. Everything that Yuriko wants to watch is on videotapes she borrows from friends or gets at sayonara sales -- all sorts of Japanese programming, some better than others, from the looks of them. (For a country with tight gun control, there's an amazing amount of gunplay on Japanese TV.) Lilly has a lot of tapes, too, some Japanese, some English, mostly bought for pennies at sayonara sales. My own tape collection is minuscule, but I don't care.

We also have the option of renting tapes, as we did last Saturday. Lilly picked some Barbie-imitation-princess-archetype story, almost unbearably bad for adults; Yuriko wanted to see Annie Hall, which I'm always happy to see again; and I chose The Gangs of New York, which I haven't been able to watch all the way through, since I won't let Lilly watch it.

There are good television programs out there. It might seem that I'm missing something, but I don't think so. I don't feel compelled to watch cloud formations every day. There will always be clouds, if I want to see them. TV is no different in that way.