Reflections from a Couch Potato
You hear a lot about couch potatoes. Bad couch potato. Squarely middle
to low brow. Somehow you always imagine this overweight guy in boxers and
a T-shirt. Somewhere in there is the phrase, "Oh, I don't watch television."
or "I only watch educational t.v."
Ok, so I'm not actually a very good couch potato. I'm consumed with
working on projects. A continuing cycle because I constantly create new
projects to work upon, but that's another rant.
However, on Saturday the seventeenth of February in the year of our
Lord two thousand and one, Anno Domini, Karen and I took a day off.
We sat on our couch and watched television all day long.
And as we sat and vegetated, I reflected on our sloth. (Ok, ok, so I
was actually washing the dishes during Neptune's Daughter, a charming
1949 musical with Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams, while I was thinking
about our sloth. I said I have a problem. And I promise that that was the
only constructive thing that I did all day long. But, I digress?)
Dore imagines the Slothful
in Purgatory
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Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante puts Sloth in the 4th level of Purgatory.
For our Puritan ancestors, "Idle Hands are the Devil's Playthings" or
some such homily.
Sloth, with couch potatoes as a prime example, is kinda sorta evil. |
We are expected to be constantly running and doing. There is always
laundry to be done. Dishes to be cleaned. (sigh) The bathroom could use
a scrub.
And then there's that movie you need to see, you know the one with the
guy and girl in that place with stuff happening. You know. The one that's
up for that award. What'shisface plays the guy. No not him, the other one.
And of course, could do with some exercise. Maybe a hike.
Have to go outside and enjoy that freezing cold, rainy nature.
Maybe some aerobics at the pre-crack of dawn.
Probably ought to get some culture too. There's that
exhibit on the history of minutiae at the local museum.
Perhaps, go shopping. Cause you know,
desperately need several new widgets. |
Sometimes though, speaking (or would that be writing, well whatever)
as someone who knows, projects and doing are the problem, not sloth. Sometimes
you need a little sloth to recharge your batteries.
I wouldn't want to intellectualize this too much. (except of course,
actually I do, because as Jane Eyre would say, "that's what I delight in."
God, I'm such a literature snob. Suppressing, urge to make further literary
references to show how much I digress in Capt. Kirk tone of voice.) It
is easy to get so caught up in life that you don't have enough brain cells
left to appreciate that movie, nature, culture, shopping. (Really there
is no way to appreciate housework, but trust me, the dust bunnies will
still be there tomorrow.)
Sometimes, you need a little
middle to low brow. Television
is not so much an
opiate for the masses (Thank you Karl
Marx for that mental image), as the warm comfy blanket
under which we occasionally lounge.
And so, I say, slouch low and mumble it loud (but try not
spit out your popcorn), "I am a couch potato and I am
proud of it." |
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