Earlier this month I made a very grown up decision, probably the most grown up decision I've made in the twenty six years that I've been alive.

From pre-adolescence on, cable television was a dominant figure in my household. With both my parents working full time and the family living in a neighborhood that was segregated from my friends and my school, I had ample time to bathe in the glory of television. Dirty, rotten television.

I am proud to say that despite the strong media presence I experienced while growing up, I still turned out pretty well, and I didn't even have religion to guilt me into morality. A few of my close girlfriends had Television Nazis for parents and cable was prohibited in their households. This made me the media savvy one. Want to know what band this is? Dude, I know. Need to know the gory details of what happens during a face lift procedure? No worries, I just watched one on channel 11. Want to know about Tantric sex, or meteors, or how elastic bands are made? I know, 'cause I am cool.

Television has a reputation for administering powerful brainwashing agents that can whittle people into crazy morons. I do see the media affect morons every day of my life, but there are a lot of factors that play into people's state of malleability. As a kid it didn't take me long to start analyzing the media with a critical eye. Nowadays it is extremely difficult for me to watch something without dissecting it to the point of nauseaum. Ask my current boyfriend and he'll fall to his knees and foam at the mouth in a post-traumatic fit as he recalls what it was like to watch The Watchmen with me.

It's hard to say how I would be different as a person if I had not grown up with a television intravenously attached to my arm. Maybe I would have a more positive world view, or maybe I would be more naive and trip over my idealisms. The only thing that is certain is that I probably wouldn't be so transfixed on the prospect of becoming a zombie hunter. And that would totally suck.

Yesterday marked the day that my cable was officially disabled. I expected to experience some sort of withdrawal symptoms, like feelings of panic or uncontrollable weeping, but it just so happens that I haven't noticed its absence. That's the thing-- television isn't what it used to be.

As much as I love watching drunk, twenty year olds pee in a pool while grinding each other on Much Music's Spring Break Special, I'd rather go back ten years and tune into some Sook Yin Lee. Will I miss wasting minutes of my life watching a Fergie video, analyzing her crotch in an attempt to uncover the truth behind her transsexual mysteriousness? No. Nor will I miss Fox Television, or watching people die on Spike's Most Amazing Crashes Caught on Tape, or worse of all, enduring the horrid propaganda of CNN. Even HBO has gone to shit. True Blood? In Treatment? Entourage? Thankfully AMC has stepped up to the plate, but AMC is not Jesus or Tony Robbins or Mother Teresa. It cannot make my $55 cable bill worthwhile.

Come fall, I will be tuning in to the new seasons of Dexter, Heroes, and Breaking Bad, but it will be via file sharing and not through the increasingly disappointing means of traditional television. My current Utorrent roster includes the season premier of Mad Men, a Japanese horror movie, Open Your Eyes (the original Vanilla Sky), documentaries about Nosatradamus: 2012, Black Metal, and heroin use in the 90's, and biographies on Darwin and Satan: Prince of Darkness.

Yes, a biography on Satan.

Beat that, cable.