I LOVE WATCHING TELEVISION and have collected many hundred channels over the years. There's the Senegalese Recipes Network, Urban Ethics Broadcasting Station, Southeast Asia Travel News, Solipsistic Conundrum Channel and Postmodern Belles-Lettres TV. There's also the New Marxist Network, the Haruki Murakami Channel, Small Rock News, Extreme Chirography Channel, Televisora Plantas Bonitas, All-Mangosteen Network, Junior High Shenanigan Classics and Tele Twenty-First Century Thought. Hundreds more. I was really happy with my choices, glad that I finally had television that suited my taste, my lifestyle, my idiosyncratic tendencies, glad I didn't have to watch any more of that general network stuff with the god-awful shows and nonstop parade of commercials. In fact, I had so many good channels readily available I didn't have enough time to watch them all. Often I'd just flip through each one quickly and see what was going on. I'd started a new job and was trying to impress everyone at the office by staying late. Then one day I turned on the television and found that Small Rock News had been taken off my lineup. There was now in its stead a screen of static snow. "What happened?" I asked the operator who answered my call. "Where'd Small Rock News go?" There was the report of tapping on a distant keyboard. "Sir, it appears the last time you watched Small Rock News was two years ago," she said. Had it been that long? They'd given me a promotion and I was pulling in double my previous salary. With the additional income I'd branched out and dabbled in some new hobbies, like genealogy. "Well, can I get it back?" I asked. "I'm sorry sir, but it seems you've hurt its feelings. There's a note here that says Small Rock News no longer wishes to have anything to do with you." Oh well. I didn't miss it much anyway. "Thank you," I said, and clicked the TV off. Then some months later the Haruki Murakami Channel aired something really trite and banal about talking cats, and I stopped watching that too. It must've been a particularly sensitive channel because it pulled itself out of my lineup soon after. I don't know if becoming senior vice president at the firm had anything to do with it, but a lot of the channels I liked so much previously, channels that were so glib and urbane, started sounding silly and juvenile and generally full of nonsense. Extreme Chirography had a show on elephants, which had nearly nothing to do with the reason I subscribed to that channel in the first place. Then Postmodern Belles-Lettres TV aired a sentiment piece on Henry James, and I threw the remote control against the wall. Were they purposely doing this? A conspiratorial stand? Lord knows what else would come after that. Soon I had only three or four of my original channels left. By the time I'd cut my commitments down at the office to spend more time with my stations it was too late—only Tele Twenty-First Century Thought remained. I tried the public networks but they only reminded me of what I no longer had. Now I watch Tele Twenty-First everyday, hoping that with time, with trust, others will come to me again.


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