Flawless taste as usual, Orwell.

I'll second the "sorry Josh". We won't hold it against you.

We even had a tv!

Although, to be honest, we only had a 13" black & white until I was 15 that only picked up ABC, CBS & PBS. I'm not kidding. I suppose that's part of the reason why I'm not big on television in general and have seen maybe 1 or 2 music videos in my life.

Comparatively, the 9 channels I'm currently paying for is extravagant. We get Fox and the Travel Channel...fancy.

We actually grew upi with a 13" BW as well. It got "all three" major networks, three more in the New York/New Jersey area, and PBS. THat was actually more than enough. We watched The Prisoner when it was on, Dan Rather and the Muppet Show during the week (our family television). I missed most of the sitcoms and mainly caught Yankee games until my stepfather started commandeering the TV for Masterpiece Theater, so I started listening to the Yankees on the radio. Eventually I just stopped turning the thing on at all. When I moved over to my dad's in MIchigan he had TV and cable and all that. Since there was little else to do besides get in trouble (which happened anyway) I watched more TV, including some MTV when it still had music playing. I've never had much of an attachment to that medium and I neer cared about it when I wasn't around one. After all, the big games are always showing at the bars.

These days I listen to sports on the radio, I have no reception and I don't even care. What little TV I watch shows me that it is getting progressively worse. I don't really even watch my DVD movies often, and I generally have to track down the remote for it when I do. As much as I hated not having color TV or cable (although Queens didn't have cable then and still might not now for all I know), it is one of the few things about growing up poor that I have really come to appreciate.

Since I left home my parents have added 3 more decent-sized color TVs and the biggest cable package available. It's hard to imagine how they lived without it at this point, considering that they never go out, travel or do much of anything other than work, come home, and sit in front a television. American Idol is their favorite show.

As for what I watch, at the moment it's pretty much exclusive to PBS. Any fictional shows I enjoy end up getting canceled anyway, so I tend not to bother getting into anything. Unfortunately, being the geek that I am, NBC managed to get me hooked on "Chuck" this season, and I've had to follow it every episode, which I almost never do, but I'm genuinely hooked on this one, which means it'll probably only last one season.

http://www.nbc.com/Chuck/

For subsisting off of my Dad's small business, my family always did all right, though there were ups and downs obviously. The lack of a decent TV had more to do with the fact that my parents hardly ever buy anything new ever, which helps with their overall financial situation I suppose. They still have a lot of furniture that was handed down to them by their parents, and have been using the same PC since 1995...they definitely live by the "if it's not broken, don't replace it" motto. I think there's one or two pieces of "new" furniture in the house, and they bought their first new car in their entire lives this past year.