I’ve been back in the Home Town for the past few days, fulfilling my filial obligations and occasionally catching up with friends from high school. To this latter end, yesterday I found myself hanging around a campsite at a nearby provincial park visiting with folks.
Now, it seems that different people have different ideas about exactly what constitutes camping
. Some of the folks I was with had tents, and did a substantial amount of cooking over a campfire. Another couple were apparently sleeping in their van and doing their cooking on some sort of propane-powered thingummy. And then there were the strangers across the way, who drove up their Mercedes convertible and had a TV sattelite set up at their campsite.
My question is: if you’re going to go camping — you know, get away from it all, the great outdoors, all that crap — why are you bringing a television at all, let alone ensuring that your television has access to several hundred channels? I admit that I’m a little biased on this issue myself — I’ve never actaully paid for cable service, and it’s been over five years since I’ve lived in a house/apt. where anyone was paying for it — but still, I don’t think I’m entirely out of line here.
Or flip it around: if having your MTV is really that important to you, then why aren’t you just camping in your backyard? Can’t you just set fire to things in the privacy of your own neighbourhood?