Human beings are worthless lumps of lazy protoplasm. We only change our bad habits when that bitch — reality — forces us to reconsider our wayward ways. In this respect the great recession has been a wonderful teacher.  It’s sat us down and made us stare at the books.  And arithmetic, being what it is, has brought out the savage budget slasher in all of us.

The amount of money we were handing over to the cable company for the privilege of watching crap on TV could not be justified.  We cut it off — no cable, no satellite, no HD, nada zip zilch!    When annualized that’s $500 bucks. What the hell were we thinking?  $500 dollars wasted on TV. Thank you recession.

OMG no  live TV – how do you survive?  Being old farts we starting reading more but then one day, in the midst of acute Family Guy withdrawal,  we tried streaming. It had been years since I last tried watching video on computers.  Five years ago streaming video was more like steaming pile of video.  I didn’t expect things had improved but I was wrong.  On high-speed internet connections streaming is now good enough to replace TV.   For months we’ve been enjoying free streaming sites like Hulu.  I really enjoy some old, rarely seen, classic TV programs.  Check out this episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  It’s a neat story with a probability lesson and a hard ass skeptic ending.