Have Not, TiVo Not

In case it hasn’t been made clear enough, we at Pop Whore hold TiVo in very high regard. I’m talking a hardcore RESPEITO level worthy of so much more than the reverence of a wannabe model scorned by another’s fingers in her low carb brownies.

But all jesting in Oklahoman accents and faux bulimia aside, those of you euphonious enough to sit through our tantalizing podcasts know that I verbally go down on TiVo every time it comes up over the course of conversation. Hey, if that’s not reason enough to tune in, or live, for that matter, I don’t know what is. But I digress.

Accordingly, those of you who know this also know that, for reasons somewhat beyond my control, on August 31, 2005 (known herein as “Black Wednesday”), I was forced to give up TiVo. Not surprisingly, a few days later, I woke up in a cold sweat at four in the morning, screaming “Take the baby! Take my little TiVo!”

However saddened by this loss, I have been able to achieve a new plateau of understanding regarding its intricate brilliance.

I suppose the intricate brilliance I speak of, being that a lack of TiVo in its purest form forces you to weed out the shows you choose to watch, is much more beneficial to the media conglomerates than conducive to day-to-day time suckage. But I still feel the need to give credit where credit is due.

To wit, not having TiVo has cut down my TV plickupping ratio by roughly 33.33%. (And before you ask, yes, that’s an exact figure. I had the captive imps in my basement crunching numbers all night.) Nevertheless, this margin of spare time left in the wake of viewing cutbacks has presented me with more questions than answers. Notably:

Did I really need to watch every episode of “The Real World” this shitty season? How much bigger can the eightieth “killer storm” episode of “ER” really be? Will the “Lost” crashtaways every get off the island? Does Alex M. have bad below the waist hygiene? Do I need to sit through another sporadic episode of “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” on the BBC America? (Okay, don’t answer that last one. I know, I miss his hotness too.)

And these questions inevitably lead to more questions...

Does having TiVo force you to watch crap that you normally wouldn’t make it a point to watch? Is this what will come to be known as my moment of clarity? Is that to say that when I do get TiVo again, I won’t season pass these circumferential shows? Will I relapse? Where do I fit in? How many grains of sand are there in the world?

But no matter how hard I tried to make them stop, the questions persisted. In the end, I was left with nothing but the one certainty that the hand that rocks the TiVo is the hand that rules the world.