I don't keep up with any television shows of whatever genre - news, drama, sitcom, etc. - (I tried to hang in with "The Closer" this summer but missed a few episodes anyway) but last weekend A&E ran a "24" marathon which kind of got my attention but I hate the commercials without which none of it could survive so I went up to the video store and rented all six season-one disks and I've been watching them ever since along with Elizabeth the ballerina who got hooked with me and now her Mom too, and it's not a good thing because we keep popping one after another into the player with occasional stops for a pee break or a run to the kitchen for a snack but on the whole we're not eating well and our eyes are bloodshot with dark circles under them and it's really dark in here with the blinds pulled like a junkie's redoubt, which analogy I find most apt because even though there are no needles involved this stuff is digital smack because what you do in this case is wrap the rubber band around around your neck until the blood vessels in your forehead pop out and then you press "play" and upload directly to the vein in the brain, and when the disk's finished it's like a real bummer of a crash while one of us pushes the remote buttons and someone else stumbles to the player with the next disk (I don't know what's going to happen when season two runs out; someone will have to go to the video store and at best I see lots being drawn, at worst a screaming match about who is less physically and mentally capable of driving a car at the moment, maybe even hysterical phone calls to the store asking if they deliver like pizza guys) then returns to the depression worn in the cushion on the couch to re-numb her butt, and the further reason this isn't good is that I'm afraid the ballerina's legs will go flaccid and that her Mom won't go to work tomorrow (or me either, which is fine with me) and I've gone days at a time without checking my email and, further, I know this isn't great art just a manufactured obstacle course of plot twists designed to frustrate the good guys and their good ends and that no human child can get into as much trouble in a 24 hour period as Kiefer Sutherland's alternately smart and stupid daughter can but, hey, it's in the system and there's nothing to do but let it run its course, which reminds me that Kiefer is trying to stop a deadly bio-engineered virus from being released in American cities but right now he's hanging naked from a barn ceiling somewhere in Mexico and being tortured with electric rods and so forth beyond human endurance so I've gotta go but for God's sake somebody help us.