Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

57 channels? Not even.

Posted on Written by

We made a couple of changes to our life when we moved out of our house and into this rental house. For one thing, we moved from a 2800 square foot house without a garage to a 2200 sq. ft. house with a garage, so we took a hard look at many of the things we owned and either said, “Bye,” or “Into a box in the garage you go.” (All of our books? Packed away. ALL. Except the kids’, who have been insistent that their books needed to be liberated, and so they were.)

Another thing was that we got rid of was the satellite TV.

And despite going with Comcast for our internet connection, we didn’t pick up cable. We have no direct connection to the wide world of television out there. I suppose we might be able to get “over the air” broadcasts (are those still happening even?), but we haven’t tried.

One night back at our house I found Darin in the TV room watching some movie and I asked what it was. “I don’t even know,” he said. “It was just on.”

“That is a silly reason to watch something.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Did we need all of these movie channels? We rarely watched stuff off of them. Did we need the 100s of basic cable channels? Not much. We thought about how we were spending $90 a month on satellite—that’s $1080 a year!—on stuff we just never watched.

And things we did want to watch… Well, there was always iTunes. We’d gotten into the habit last year of just buying “Lost” on iTunes every week, because for some reason the ABC-HD feed in our area kept messing up the transmission. Or our satellite dish was pointed the wrong way, but only on Wednesday nights.

$1080 divided by $30 (avg. cost of iTunes subscription?) equals 36 shows a year. I would be amazed if all of us watched 36 separate series a year. Here’s what I’ll be watching:

  • Lost: Final season. SOB.
  • Dollhouse: The name “Joss Whedon” buys a lot. The logic gaps are sometimes infuriating and Eliza Dushku is not exactly right for this material. But it’s okay.
  • Community: So far this has been hilarious. “Sharks, pencils, and Ben Affleck.” Good times.
  • The Simpsons: Yes. Still.
  • 30 Rock: When it’s good, it’s great, and when it’s not, it’s still okay.
  • Chuck: Of course! Even if it’s on NBC!
  • Dexter: A little Michael C. Hall covers up many storytelling weaknesses.

Darin also watches Mad Men (which I personally can’t stand), The Office, and Big Bang Theory (which I’ve enjoyed the few times I’ve seen, but I have a hard time loving sitcoms, despite having three of them in my above list).

I want to watch National Parks (which Nina said KQED is streaming? Let’s get that computer hooked up to the TV, people just discovered iTunes is carrying this one!).

We find series, by the way, following the advice of our most trusted TV critics: Alan Sepinwall (who as every “Chuck” fan knows, is DA MAN) and Ken Tucker (whose in-print stuff for EW is better than his blog, but never mind that). See? Critics are worthwhile, people.

So far it’s worked out great: we have stuff on the Apple TV we want to watch, we can store the old shows (or watch them on the computer, or on our iPhones, or whatever without too much hassle), and we don’t have the lure of just anything being on. Darin has been reading The Lord of the Rings to the kids, and as soon as they finished “The Fellowship of the Ring” we rented the movie. Simple.

What we’re missing out on: Food Network shows. My daughter misses her daily dose of Bobby Flay. Perhaps Food Network will figure out a way to deal with this.

Even if we do end up paying more than $1080 a year—I’m going to try to mark the various series subscriptions in Quicken to keep track of how much we end up spending—on the whole this system is a much better TV experience than watching cable/satellite. No commercials to fast-forward through! No endless promos for other shows! No teasers ruining the entire show before we see it!

Now if Darin would just hook up our DVD player so I could restart the Netflix subscription, that’d be good. Of course, what he really wants to do is get a PS3 “so we can watch Blu-ray disks.” Uh huh. I am the kind of “stupid wife” who “believes that.” My friend Otto also recommends hooking up a Mac mini, so as to use Hulu on the TV. But we don’t have a Mac mini. Maybe the kids will sacrifice their iMac for the cause…. HAHAHAHA. Just kidding.

Since sitting in front of the TV and just watching what’s on is not my idea of a good time, this setup is working perfectly for me. If I want to sit around and stare at a screen for hours to waste time…I’ll use my iPhone to play games, thanks.

§

We also gave up our home phone in the move. Yes, it’s true: Darin and I no longer share a phone. But everyone knows that to contact him you call his cell phone, and having the answering machine at home mostly served as a vehicle for frustration for me (since he never listened to messages). Now I get everything on my phone and it’s much easier for me to stay on top of calls I need to return and messages I need to deal with.

Dang. We really are living in the future.

Diane’s Guide to Enlightenment

Posted on Written by

My descent into touchy-feeliness continues unabated.

First, I gave up gossip because I realized it was making me feel icky—knowing those things about people does not improve my appreciation of their talents, ever; in fact, it can only lessen it. I’m at a point in my life where it’s easier to feel compassion for the mistakes people have made with their lives. Snark is both too easy and leaves me feeling foul inside.

No. Really.

I’m still me, people. Just a me determined to excise snark and sarcasm from my vocabulary. It’s a constant process—now when I let loose at someone and snark I know it’s about me, not about them. Most of the time, when someone says something I find stupid or hurtful, I tell myself, “That is not about whatever they are talking about, that is about them, and that is something they need to deal with.” It makes dealing with the world much, much easier.

I’m also doing meditation and and I’m keeping a gratitude journal. And as with most things, there are iPhone apps for that, and having an app makes things just that much more fun.

§

I was sold on trying meditation again by The Happiness Hypothesis. I’ve tried meditation at various times in my life and always failed miserably—I’d either fall asleep during (possibly, the “lying on the floor” position was not my best choice) or forget to do it. I do well with guided meditations, but that doesn’t seem to be the same thing as garden-variety sit-down-and-shut-up meditation at all. Guided meditation tends to put me “out” much the same way hypnosis does: I wake up at the end of the session feeling pretty good, but with no memory of what happened or what Nigerian scam I’ve agreed to.

What I do now is take 10-20 minutes a day to meditate. I sit on the floor, legs crossed Indian-style, back straight. Sitting this way turns out to be way more painful than it was when I was in kindergarten because I’m so much less flexible, and suddenly the reason that meditation and yoga are so tightly interlinked becomes extremely clear. I put my hands on my lap, palms up, and I try to breathe in on a count of four and out on a count of four.

Brainwave app icon I also put on my headphones and listen to the Brain Wave app from Banzai Labs, which is a binaural beats generator. It has 20 different programs—”Positive Mood Boost,” “Lucid Dreaming,” and “Meditation” are three—but mostly what I’m aware of is the sound of “pink noise.” I thought it was “white noise” but “pink noise” is apparently totally different. It provides just enough cover to help me tune out the outside world, and if the binaural beats are helping me meditate, so much the better.

So far my meditation practice usually goes like this:

One, two…my hips are really tight and my nose itches. I need to get a meditation pillow to sit on. Focus! Breathe in: One, two, three…I’ll do a body check and breathe relaxation into the tense parts of my body. Mostly I’m thinking about things itching. Breathe out: One, two… I wonder if I ran the dishwasher last night. I will push that thought away for right now. Breathe in: One, two… Does this get easier with practice? Practicing, there’s a good idea. Breathe out: One, two, three, four… Hey, I got to four that time! Next stop, enlightenment! Wait, what’s this about the dishwasher? Breathe in: One, two… now my foot itches.

I haven’t had any amazing things happen as a result of doing some meditation: no spiritual experiences, no suddenly becoming psychic (as apparently happened to one woman, who then ran out and wrote a book on meditation, which I happened to read some time ago). My big goal right now is to get to a whole count of four in and out before my mind wanders. This will most likely occur sometime in my next incarnation. But that’s really okay: learning to quiet my mind, if only for a count of two, is pretty good. It’s amazing how loud my mental radio is playing ALL THE TIME.

(I also use Brain Wave on the “Creativity Boost” setting when writing. Does it make me more creative? Who cares? The pink noise drowns out the rest of the world.)

§

I also read in a number of places about “gratitude journals,” which are journals you write in every day about the good things in your life. (Apparently Oprah talks about these; she was not one of my inspirations for doing this. This is not a judgment, just a statement of fact.) All you have to do is write down five things you appreciate every day! How hard could that be?

Gratitude app icon To encourage me to do it, I use the Gratitude! app from the Happy Tapper. Look at the icon: Doesn’t that make you smile? That’s just cute. Seriously: Good job, app icon designer.

The Gratitude! app gives you a page per day to write down 5 (or 10, or whatever) things per day that you are grateful for, plus rate your day from one to five stars, plus stick a picture on the page. For one thing, this app reminds me to take pictures of stuff with my iPhone so I will have a picture for my day’s entry, and since I’ve begun using it I’ve never had a less-than-three-star day. I have to report that, as with meditation, I haven’t had any of the marvelous mystical things that people report happening when they start using a gratitude journal, but I don’t care: it’s just nice to remind myself every day that things are good and honestly I have lots to be happy about.

I’m not too proud to admit that “high-quality chocolate” has made the list more than once. Because some days, I really am all about appreciating the chocolate.

The Happiness Hypothesis

Posted on Written by

At the moment, we have no books at Chez Rental. All of our books are in cardboard boxes in the garage, helpfully labeled “Books.” Well, except for the kids’ books, which were labeled “Girl’s Room: Books” and “Boy’s Room: Books,” and which have been liberated from the garage and into their new rooms.

All of Darin and my books, however: packed.

In an attempt to get some interesting reading material here and there, however, we have actually ventured back into bookstores from time to time and picked up a few books. If they don’t make the cut, out they go! (We’re really good at letting things go right now.) But we don’t have many books around at the moment. Darin, who is not a big believer in e-books, is always looking for something to read, so in a fit of boredom he picked up one of the “flaky” books I’d bought and read it.

“This is really good,” he said. By which he meant: full of substance and not so very flaky after all.

The book is The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, takes 10 Great Ideas from ancient philosophical and religious traditions and investigates them using scientific studies: Is the Golden Rule so golden, for instance? What are the divisions we live with in our daily life, and what do they mean? (For example, mind vs. body, left vs. right, new vs. old.) Is it better to live a life with or without adversity? What in the hell is happiness, anyhow?

The best thing about this book is not the ground he covers, although that’s pretty good. The best thing about this book is Haidt’s writing is immensely clear and conversational: you feel as though he’s discussing these ideas, right here with you, right now. Instead of either being too esoteric or too chatty, he manages to keep the discussion at an adult level that doesn’t presume that you, too, have a degree in philosophy or psychology.

By the way, I can give you one of the takeaways from this book right now: happiness is achievable, right now, no matter who you are or what your circumstances are. So no excuses, people.

One of the best parts of the book is how he shows that meditation, cognitive psychology, and Prozac are all equally effective for managing your mind—the book has, in fact, inspired me to finally give meditation a shot again. (If I manage to keep the practice up, I’ll report back about any and all effects I get from it.)