yeah, so remember yesterday when my throat was sore? well, i woke up this morning and my tonsils were the size of fucking tennis balls. i have been popping advil all day and swallowing is still not anything even resembling fun. stupid vestigal body parts.

when i was growing up in my parents’ house, my relationship with television was not of the traditional sort. both of my parents have a sort of indignant scorn of the medium, and i can’t really say that i disagree with them. until we got rid of it entirely, my exposure to television was more or less limited when i was small to pbs. sesame street, square one, and the like. sometimes during dinner we would watch that interminable news show with jim lehrer and the other guy.

then of course there were masterpiece theatre and mystery! (with its opening sequence illustrated by edward gorey) on sunday and thursday nights; the kind of thing for which we would all get popsicles and curl up on the couch, and i would be allowed to stay up late enough to watch it. the sherlock holmes series was one of my favorites; there was something terribly compelling about jeremy brett’s holmes and i eventually read all the holmes stories from some huge collection i had my mom buy me. yeah, i was a nerd.

pbs is also pretty much the source of my fascination with britain - all the movies and the dorky british sitcoms. i’ve since been to england twice, as well as to scotland and ireland. i’d like to go back soon, though i don’t know when i can afford it again.

i started thinking about all this again today because i’ve been rereading one of stephen fry’s books, as i mentioned. another writer/actor to whom pbs introduced me, with the jeeves and wooster series. i mentioned it to killfile, who agrees with me that stephen fry is more or less a modern oscar wilde.

i had a point when i started all of this. maybe just that i miss being a dorky pbs-watching kid. i guess i could start reserving my sunday nights for masterpiece theatre again; after all, i have my own place now and i actually have television again, while my parents just keep theirs for movies. which is still not an entirely bad idea.