The fathomless blank eye that stares at me bothers me most when it is alive.

My roommate bought a television yesterday. It made me sad. With no computers, no microwaves, no telephone, I thought we were going to live in blissful, techless quiet forever, or at least until the end of the semester.

There's no way I could have stopped her. She's so accommodating and unassuming, that to object on such tenuous grounds as my aesthetic well-being would be unconscionable.

I truly, truly, despise the television, perhaps more than I do the telephone. The telephone is obviously, obnoxiously intrusive and anathema to face-to-face conversation, but the television is more tricky, more sneakily nefarious. Watching it, whether it be a show or a movie or a video game, in a group bears the pretence of genuine interaction. But the screen demands your eyes and your mind, try though you may to resist it. It sucks the energy and the attention in the room towards itself and whatever drivel is flickering over its face. Just last night, I was hanging out with some girls from my hall and their friends as they played Guitar Hero. Imagine sitting and staring as other people pressed buttons to simulate actual instrumentation. Not listening to someone actually play a guitar, mind you. It was all but impossible to engage in a conversation of more than two sentences as long as the electronic rock and flashing colors pulsated.

So this morning my roommate woke up and said, "All right! We can watch the news now!" As Matt Lauer pretended to interview Bill Clinton, I gazed forlornly at my silent radio and yearned for NPR.