The West Wing And The Couch-potato

The NBC network’s popular TV serial drama The West Wing was broadcast in America from 22 September 1999 to 14 May 2006. In that same week of September, when the show began in the USA, I began my life in a new town near the Bass Strait, an extension of the Great Southern Ocean. I had just taken a sea-change and retired after a forty-year working life: 1959 to 1999. In total, The West Wing won three Golden Globe Awards and 26 Emmy Awards, including the award for Outstanding Drama Series, which it won four consecutive times from 2000 through 2003.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 24 January 2012.

I don’t think I saw one complete
episode of all the 150+ that came
onto the TV in those first years of
my sea-change from the job-world.

I was fully-settled into my life by the
river’s edge in this oldest town on this
oldest continent1 when The West Wing
hit my TV screen with its rave reviews.

It was not that I did not like this portrayal
of the daily work of the USA government,
its President, First Lady, & the President's
senior staff & advisers who made the cast.

It was, rather, that I don’t tend to watch
TV until midnight when my computer is
shut-down. My wife and son think it best
for me to have a quiet-ending to my day,
to shut-down my brain with some alpha-
waves,2 to ensure I get to sleep at a decent
hour and have as normal a life-narrative as
possible in retirement, in life’s evening-time.3

I was happy to have my son adjust the setting
on my computer so it turns-off automatically
at midnight so that I can turn into a zombie4
and enjoy my last hour as a couch-potato.

1 I live in George Town, the oldest in Australia. Two older towns are now cities, whereas George Town is still a town of about 7000 people. The oldest continental crustal rocks on Earth have ages in the range from about 3.7 to 4.28 billion years. Of these oldest rocks, the very oldest have been found in the Narryer Gneiss Terrane in Western Australia. Some zircon, a mineral belonging to the group of nesosilicates, has the chemical name zirconium silicate with the corresponding chemical formula is ZrSiO4. It has been found in this Narryer Gneiss Terrane of WA. Its age is as great as 4.3 billion years.

2 While watching television, the brain appears to slow to a halt, registering low alpha wave readings on the EEG. This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology. Liquid crystal display TVs seem to emit less alpha-waves. Even if one is reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of activity. Once again, regardless of the content being presented, television essentially turns off your nervous system. Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility. Researchers have said that watching television is similar to staring at a blank wall for several hours. Television: Opiate of the Masses

3 I have an eight hour day devoted to reading and writing, editing and research, scholarship and journalistic activity in these years of my retirement. By midnight I need to shut my intellectual labours down to prepare for sleep and TV has proved to be a useful tool in this way. I also take 2 medications for my bipolar disorder and they have, in combination, a soporific affect resulting in my sleeping for 6 hours at night and 2 in the day out of 11 in bed on average every day.

4 A zombie is a term often used figuratively and applied to a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli.

Ron Price
24 January 2012