I’m a big believer in finding and eliminating sources of low-level, ongoing irritation (and not without some prodding from my therapist either — credit where credit is due). It’s a great way to reduce stress — we always minimize1 the effect of “the little things” on our psyche, ignoring that there are often a fucking lot of them.

Here’s a great example; even as cats go, mine is unusually drawn to anything warm to curl up on.2 One of his recent discoveries is the cable box; it is full of toasty warm transformers, after all. Now, that doesn’t really bother me (I’m betting that they get boxes back with more cat fur in them than he’ll shed in his lifetime). What bothers me is that, somehow, every time he jumps up he manages to tap the Guide button on the front of the thing. Since all our TVs have TiVos attached, I never have a remote near me to turn off Comcast’s guide — only TiVo’s guide.

There’s another thing — the IR blasters. Many people with TiVos have these little appendages on their cable box so that it can record The Ultimate Underwater Basket-Weaving Playoffs at 4:30 AM on a cable channel no one has heard of, because they just wiped their TiVo and forgot to turn off suggestions, and it suggests some really weird stuff until you build up some data for it to work with. I never dug out the proper tape to stick the things in place, so when the little turkey rolls over to cook the other side for a while, my channel buttons go away.

That’s just two quick examples, both things that happened today, and probably more of the preceding days than I’d care to admit. Also, even though I don’t really think of myself as a total TV junkie, they’re still contributing to pointless stress in some small way, when they could be fixed and forgotten about. Insert lame Public Service Announcement here.

  1. I mean that, referring to dictionary.com, as represent as less significant or important, and not make small or insignificant. [↩]
  2. And not without reason either — but that’s another show…er…entry. [↩]

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