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Rosalie Casey, Aged 85

That's her, almost four Christmases ago, the one on the far right with my kids. And for the record, she would have absolutely hated me telling all of you how old she was.

My grandmother died tonight at about 20 'til 8, shortly before I arrived in Chattanooga. I got word that this might happen this evening, but where I am and where she was are 2 hours and change apart, so I did what I could to get there. I got there "too late" for some people, but let's be clear; she hadn't really known who I was for a while, and so much of what made my grandmother really my grandmother had slipped away in the last six years. The main reason I needed to be there was to experience things for myself and say goodbye even if she left her body a little before I got to it. So I got to do that tonight, then turned around and came back home. It's important to me that I was there.

And for my kids. My kids will believe me when I say that I saw, and will tend to question what people tell me over the phone or other ways.  Good kids - they're handling it well, and their mom told them before I got home when they were all wrapped in towels and warmth from recent showers. A good plan. A good mom.

My grandmother, when she was at her peak as I knew her, would keep up a running commentary of her activities - you'd hear a near-constant narrative of what was going on right now spliced in with some stream-of-consciousness from inside her head, all of it sharing space with the conversation you were having with her at the time. I never thought I would miss that, and it turns out that I was mistaken.

We will likely inter her ashes sometime over the next couple of days in a memory garden in Chattanooga right next to my granddad's, which have been there since 2004. Once the process of formal goodbyes is finished, the memory-sifting and proper mourning will begin, but for now, I'm content to have made the drive back-and-forth so near the end and then after it was all over.

TV Hates You

I watch more television these days than I have at any time during my adult life.

I'm not deluding myself, though - I know my TV fucking hates me and would kill me if it could. We are not friends, I have it enslaved (I think) and it will rise up, break the remote chains and get me unless I get it first. I make choices about what I watch now instead of just staring at WGN's re-run slate (like when I was a kid), but I know part of that's an illusion.

Most of this comes from a crowd situation I was in today - okay, a class. It's a mistake to put me in "speak your mind" type settings and then expect me to have a lot of friends after. Today's version?

OTHER PERSON: "I think reality TV is harmless; it doesn't hurt anybody. I don't think it's any better or worse than any other thing on TV."

ME: "With all due respect, I couldn't disagree more without hurting myself. I appreciate the effort behind art; I enjoy a good story and appreciate the effort exerted by a writer who wrote it, the people who put it together and filmed it, the actors who acted it. All of these people and the product they make together have a lot more value to me than some schlub thrown in front of a camera to do amateur half-scripted improv until he's funny and then having him do it again and again until you get a good take. I feel like it's the easiest, stupidest, lowest common denominator crap, and that TV is shitting in my brains when I watch it, and I resent that."

It didn't occur to me until after I was finished that I'd probably judged 1/2 the room - and now a good percentage of you. But you came to me - those other poor bastards just got stuck in a classroom with me, and now they have the image of their TV squatting digital turds into their unhinged brainpan whenever they turn on "reality" fucking TV. I have recently explained the behavior of people my kids have seen on reality shows (waiting for Chinese food, in a public space) by claiming that those were not people, merely meatsacks filled with vicious half-smart squirrels. "If a bus hit that meat woman (the one on this show), squirrels would cry 'freedom' and run in every direction." My kids are amused.

Look - I watch Duck Dynasty, which I know is "reality TV" but even the people on that have copped to the "adjusted reality" status of the show, so no one's bullshitting anyone about any of this really happening. The exploited are freely exploited, unlike in some cases where the exploited may or may not know this is happening. If you like Honey Boo-Boo, for instance, we are no longer friends. Most of what I watch other than that, though, is pro sports (actual reality TV - football and hockey - I haven't been able to watch boxing for years) Doctor Who (for reasons previously mentioned) Sherlock, Triple D, two sit-coms and the occasional Nova. I could tell you what's happening on General Hospital, but that's because I talk to my wife about it, mostly. I am also actually watching Gravity Falls. I will watch the Walking Dead when it returns, but I'm no longer excited about it.

What I realize is that none of this is good for me. I tend to analyze TV (and everything), and most TV moves too slowly to do that; by the time it finishes, I've overthought it, and no one is enjoying themselves. Best just to let the DVR watch TV for me and then store it against the day when I might want to watch a show. You should know this, too. Do you? TV needs you more than you need it. I avoided a decade of TV at one point because I was pissed at it. About Moonlighting, I think. I've never seen The Wonder Years, for instance, or Freaks and Geeks. I probably missed out. A bunch of you will remember introducing me to some show or another, if you think about it. The point is, you can just walk away from TV and it'll hate you the same as it does now, trying to woo you back to shit in your head.

Keep a watch on it, though; that blank, black eye has hate behind it and it'll get you if you let it.