I don’t really know how it happened but for a month and a half this summer I spent hours a day binge-watching a soap opera parody from the 70s. I convinced myself this was a worthwhile way to spend my time by drawing freezeframes of the screen and taking notes. I hate the summers so staying in was a no-brainer but the choice of diversion is a little baffling, looking back on it.

I was convinced this weird pop culture artifact from the country’s bicentennial year could say something about its semiquincentennial but I’m not a big idea guy. My other dumb project of defacing presidents is maybe slightly smarter than this, but not by much.

In the end, the experience of consuming some two hundred twenty-three minute bites of audiovisual storytelling reconfirmed that I’d rather watch movies if I have to look at a screen. Two or three hours is about the best duration people have come up with for that medium. The serials are just full of fat and excess. Stuffing plot twists in to stagger to another commercial break. Maybe gorging this way will cure me of ‘shows’ for good. I hope so.

It feels like such a relief not to be watching it anymore. Almost makes me want to go out into the soupy oven outside.

One of the verbal images that hangs over Mary Hartman is that thing about the ‘waxy yellow buildup’ that may or may not remain on her kitchen linoleum floor after she’s mopped it with the product recommended on TV. Makes me wonder what we retain after blasting our retinae and braincells with all this entertainment/data. Making doodles off the screen is my half-assed way of mitigating the damage, I guess.

I really hope it wasn’t all for nothing but maybe I’m fooling myself.

I read William Gass’s “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” into a microphone.