Fix the Cable

by J.T. Dockery

"I said where'd you get your information from, huh?
You think that you can front when revelation comes?"
--Beastie Boys

"Man has sold his soul for time, language, tools, weapons, and dominance."--William S. Burroughs

"Together we shall save our planet. Or together we shall perish in its flames."--JFK

I'm not much of an activist. No sir, not built it for it, me. Which does not mean that I do not collect information and make decisions, which I in turn put into action, based upon my understanding of that information.

Human beings have not really devised a better form of transmitting information than marks on paper. Feel free to disagree with me. I don't argue points. But I'll discuss anything.

Symbols on paper which can be translated into the reader's mind act as a form of telepathy, just as recorded performance, be it film/video, spoken word, or music, act as a kind of time travel device. Until we conquer time travel or understand telepathy to an extent that humans can standardize its use for the average person (which, hey, is probably not necessarily that far off, if not, nefariously now (I'm talking for common, democratic usage)), marks on paper are the best gadget, insofar as it goes. All other gadgets, including the machine I make these facsimile "marks" on "paper" over the electric radio you're reading right now, appear to me as so much gadgetry, show business, and minstrelsy.

That leads me, cough, to the point of this transmission. Back to my own personal internal "activism," I have for quite a while now, based on too many facts, placed a ban on cable television "news" channels as an improper conduit through which to receive information. It rots the brain, jack, should be avoided at all costs, and I give you this advice like a brother (or sister).

Let's dispense of all tinkertoy arguments of "liberal" vs. "conservative." That either/or thinking is merely a shuck and jive and does not exist within any "news" corporation. Cable "news" channels exist to produce revenue through higher ratings and advertising which benefits the corporation of which backs them by manufacturing drama and entertainment under a mask of "information."

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for free market capitalism. It's just the synthetic network of corporate power style capitalism these cable "news" companies represent is not what I call capitalism. I learned in school that laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a good thing. I guess they don't teach that no more.

ALL of these cable "news" entities are selling me things I don't need, be it war or deodorant, and creating an environment of left vs. right which causes citizens to resent fellow citizens over goofy social issues which man has always debated and which keeps the citizenry with paranoid eyes fixed staring at each other and keeps them from turning those same peepers coldly towards its elected officials (outside of the parameters of soap opera drama) and the shadow government of corporations and industrial complexes which prop them up which get away with murder (for starters).

I fear the fix is in. That whatever was meant to be won or lost was lost long ago, and we just watch the residual maintenance of the status quo with this weird behavioral control and the regimentation of keeping on with the keeping on in a thought police state. But when one arrives at that conclusion, that's when one gets a taste of freedom, and one may just start making moves to split from the whole program. But speaking of a taste of freedom, turning off that idiot box, and at the very least those cable "news" programs, brother, it felt and feels mighty good. A lot of noise cut from my life. It made my teeth whiter, and gave me more confidence to win at business and at pleasure.

If you'd told me as a kid what we'd be using Star Trek technology for, I probably woulda walked off into the woods and never come back. That scenario may still not be entirely out of the question.