|
- Read Cathy's local affairs column every Saturday in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (see link below).
- Her national affairs column appears every Tuesday exclusively at cathysorbo.com.
- Seattle P-I
- Calendar
- Bio
- Contact
|
 |
|
| Setting our death preferences |
| Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2007 |
Why is it that we humans do so many things that we know are bad for us?
We take in the toxins of tobacco into our lungs, and sometimes simply shove the stuff between our cheek and gums, even though this "smokeless" tobacco is loaded with nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and radiation-emitting polonium.
We consume alcoholic beverages instead of water. We operate automobiles when knowingly impaired. We become emotionally involved with people who are clearly doomed to chew our soul to the quick.
We ingest the overly-processed flesh of animals. We overeat and then force ourselves to vomit.
And the list goes on.
We refer to these self-destructive activities as guilty pleasures, and my guess is that we all have at least one. My favorite guilty pleasure is sunbathing. I do this even though I know that I risk looking as if I've been exhumed.
I love to feel searing heat on my flesh as I lie still as death in a lounge chair on a sizzling red-wood deck. I truly love sunbathing. I can't wait until there's no ozone at all. I want to be able to get a tan at night.
The sun lets me feel good. While sunbathing on my teeny urban deck, I can easily imagine myself on any sun-soaked place on Earth. I can be at Lake Tahoe, on the large deck of a bitchen house in a totally tricked-out chaise-lounge, surrounded by the scent of superheated pine.
I can be in the sandy back garden of an adorably restored 1930's bungalow situated on a particularly nice stretch of Southern California coastline.
If I'm feeling particularly sun-inspired, I go to a secluded rocky outcrop on a clean and quiet beach in Cape Town.
There are others like me. I've seen them. I've seen them at my local lake exposing their sun-hungry flesh for all to see on the first hot day in Spring.
At the park near my home, I?ve seen mothers of children temporarily sunstruck and helpless in a wash of clean hot sunlight, lying prone on a blanket oblivious to the fact that their little ones are playing with petrified dog-poo near the edge of the lake.
Another guilty pleasure includes the mindless watching of television shows. Thankfully, my schedule does not allow for very much of this, otherwise I would know everything about every makeover-themed TV show in existence. But now, thanks to the forward-thinking of us humans, we have created BabyFirstTV, a 24-hour premium channel geared toward infants.
Something tells me this a bad, bad thing.
Their programming includes shows titled Brainy Baby, Tillie Knock Knock and Wonder Box. They say their programming is designed to provide a "unique parent co-viewing experience" but please. If baby is captivated by the pretty colors and sounds emanating from the telly, mom is going to be having that bath she's been wanting for a couple of days, or washing the dishes from the night before, or getting caught up with the laundry that's been piling up.
Sure, it may start out as a co-viewing experience, but the unending to-do list of mommy's will soon rip her away from captivating shows such as Danny and Daddy and Bonnie Bear. Mommy may even afford herself some guilty pleasure time, like surfing the web, shaving her legs or chatting on the phone to a neglected best friend.
The New York Times recently reported that "40 percent of infants are regular viewers of television or videos by age 3 months, and 90 percent are watching regularly by age 2."
I'm thinking less time in the sun, more time spent designing a tiny, bib-based remote control.
|
|
|
|
|
|