Television Is Your Full-Time Job?

So what are your favorite websites?  I often feel like I am not getting "enough" from the web (or, as my mom calls it "the www").  Now don't get me wrong, I can waste countless hours on Facebook, I obsessively check my email and I get my news on-line (and from The Economist) but I simply don't have a litany of sites and blogs that I feel compelled to check daily.  A little NPR.org, a little Amazon and I am done.  Off to the bathtub with a copy of Vanity Fair or Bon Appetit (is anyone else still mourning the loss of Gourmet magazine?  The sadness).

Not that you should not constantly check back here to see what brilliance is popping up on ole Scotch and Cupcakes but still... to me it is like television, I end up constantly wondering "How the hell do people watch tv 151 hours a month?"  Yes, that is what the average American adult watches in a month.  Seriously.  If only I were making this up.  That is 35 hours a week - practically a full-time job. Truthfully, I do watch some tv.  I am not a total hermit/social outcast.  I enjoy The Big Bang Theory and am loathe to miss a Cowboys football game. But 151 hours a month?  I don't see that much television in a year.

This makes me wonder:
1) who has an extra five hours A DAY?
2) do these folks not read?
3) did they not have a mother with a strict "no television in the morning" policy.  {I swear to this day if someone turns on the tv in the morning, I am CONVINCED that someone in the house is about to get grounded.  Yes, I know they are adults but it seems so naughty to me}.

I think what makes me most nervous about it is spending so much time being passive and being fed information, images, advertisements and the like.  Even as a kiddo, I was not into television.  I would watch a half hour of Sesame Street and turn it off.  Perhaps I have simply always been a weirdo...

And I know this is totally stream of consciousness but has anyone else heard that Sesame Street is ditching Cookie Monster for Veggie Monster?  If so, c'est tragique!  Yes, edamame is better for you than cookies but, really, CM also ate Volkswagons and very few kids tried that digestive whammy.  We still don't have bebe boy watching television (other than Cowboys games) so I can't confirm or deny this rumor.

And please don't email me screaming about educational television shows that I am depriving my poor child of.  He is fine.  Brilliant even (my pediatrician's words, not mine) and I want to avoid the boob tube for as long as possible.  Please don't get me started on children watching 4 hours of television a day.  Humm, Johnny is obese and illiterate because...

So, that being said, though I normally mock her...  Huge shout out to my mom for raising me to read over watch and for making us "go play outside so the stink could blow off" of us.