Brain Fuzz

Being sick is boring. But sick I was last Friday, channel-surfing through the several hundred cable channels we now have because I asked my husband to find a cable package with Turner Classic Movies. That's all I wanted. And he wanted National Geographic so he could watch The Dog Whisperer. So I came home one day to find a strange new silver box under my TV and instructions and three different remotes spread out over the coffee table. Turns out that, for an additional $10 a month, we get much more than we bargained for and the ability to essentially Tivo 100 hours of programming, 10 or so of which are now taken up by The Dog Whisperer, 2 for Audrey Hepburn's "Sabrina," and another 3 for whatever that Bowl was that SJSU won.

None of which was on while I was sick. Daytime TV is a slow death no matter how many channels you have. I even gave in to my wonk/hack/whatever side and surfed C-SPAN and the California Channel, where even I couldn't get all that excited about slow formaldahyde gas emissions from hardwood floors or the internationalization of the California Lottery. Where's Senator Kuehl scolding the writer of the new worker's comp laws when you need her?

But there was one bright spot in the dark, slow morass of televisionia. While far from a Scalia fan, turns out the ACLU had a pretty good annual leadership dinner where the President of the ACLU went one-on-one with Justice Scalia about a long list of Supreme Court Cases and whether the Constitution was a living document a-la some kind of natural law or original intent. It was a nice break from the short attention spans and gotcha headlines of the newspapers (as the press person, I get to scan a dozen or so every morning at work) or the black and white natterings of the current events blogs ("You're evil." "No, you're evil." "I'm better than you because I'm decent and can get along with people, and you can't." "I'm better than you because you're uneducated and naive, and I'm not." "You're stupid." "No, you're stupid." Etc.).

Not that I could evoke it again for you all in this blog. ConLaw was something like four years ago for me, and the depth they were going to was beyond what I was able to glean during catch-as-catch-can studying. It was nice, though, to revisit the foundations of a lot of the issues I deal with on a mundane, day-to-day basis, in an exchange between two people that was competitive and combative, yet still respectful and engaging. Equality. Due process. Basic fairness and intent. Goals and limitations.

And then it was over, and I was stuck trying to find something else to hold my attention. At which point I gave up trying to watch TV and put on a music channel, and took a nap.