Let me entertain you

Up until 1988, Iceland only had one TV channel and it didn't broadcast on a Thursday, in order to encourage the citizens to 'do something active'. It is a medically accepted fact that a majority of Icelandic babies born prior to 1988 were conceived on a Thursday.

I look around and I wonder what would happen if a similar sort of thing was introduced in the UK. On Sky there's something ridiculous like 950 TV channels (and God-knows-how-many DAB radio channels) none of which actually have anything on. I'm not really a massive fan of television. I don't really want it. I think it's a distraction from the possibilities of the world. I'm not saying that I never watch TV (especially when David Tennant is on), it's just who wants to spend their evenings staring at a pixelated oblong? (I'm also talking to you, serial instant messenger users) What happened to conversation? To reading? To going out with your friends? The theatre, the cinema, the pub... whatever? People can't do that any more as they're ensconcing themselves in technological networks; watching TV and checking their MySpaces.

Technology is progress, or so they tell me. And once it arrives and establishes itself, there's no going back. Shops opening on Sundays, bank holidays, Boxing Day, New Year's Day... it would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. These were days of rest for every one. Days where you could spend time with your family or friends or just have some time to yourself to relax and do things you want to do. We're moving towards this twenty-four hour existence, and I wonder how long it'll be before our shopping centres are opening on Christmas Day. You may scoff, but I promise you, it's going to happen. The Metrocentre shopping centre next to where I live opens until 10 in the run up 'til Christmas, and the only reason that they can't keep it open until midnight (as they want to; I know someone who works in the management suite) is because they employ so many people still at school.

We're cultivating this ridiculous accelerated culture where we think that we need to move quickly to seem important. You drink your coffee form a cardboard cup and can order your lover online according to your exact specification (who has the time for first dates?) People are living their lives on finance and get so caught up in keeping up that there's no time to stop and appreciate the small things in life.

Now it exists, now it's established, there'd be outrage if we tried to take Sunday shopping away from people, and shutting down the TV stations on a Thursday would be out of the question. Why? Because people have lost the ability to entertain themselves. People are so used to having everything on tap, and everything to hand that they are incapable of thinking up new and innovative ways to keep themselves amused. In a cheap attempt to keep their already obscene profits as high as possible, TV corporations and chain stores feed people this bullshit about how they need to buy a new pair of shoes on a Sunday (on credit) and how their enjoyment of their Friday night will intensify a hundred fold if they tune in to the latest import-strength American drivel from FOX or CNN or whoever. We're born consumers, pound signs etched into our brains and the companies know that there's no profit to be made from those who shun advertising and who'd rather spend their evenings throwing a Frisbee around the park.

The people who enjoy spending night after night watching TV only do so because it masks the fact that they're not enjoying life that much after all. The solution? I'm thinking early-80s Reykjavík.