NORMAN — Couldn’t they find a nice live girl to love? Did they have to travel to Hell to meet up with their old dead girlfriends? Talk about digging up bones! Eurydice married Orpheus but was bitten by a poisonous snake and died soon after they were wed. So what does Orpheus do? He — being the proverbial fool rushed in where folks with common sense would fear to tread — went straight to Hell. And, he did it without being told to do so.
And then there was Beatrice and Dante. Dante loved Beatrice from afar, which was a good thing since the old girl was married. You could say his was a courtly love and she, in essence, was his poetic muse. So naturally, he takes a tour through the nine circles of Hell, also known as various levels of intense and twisted ways to make damned souls suffer.
But in case you were kept in the dark, be aware that Dante notwithstanding, the state of being in Hell comes in many forms. And there are more than just nine circles of Hell.
Some people simply cannot sit and do nothing. When they watch television they engage in multitasking. They read, exercise, and rush around doing chores while commercials are on. The truth behind such frenetic activity is that if they sit idle, they fall asleep, which leads to another problem. If you sleep in the recliner, you will be staring bug-eyed into the darkness once you do go to bed. No REM. No dreams and no rest.
All of the foregoing is to set the scene. Unless there is a baseball or hockey game on, or a movie, the main reason I sit down to watch television is to be near Hubby. For him, watching television is relaxing. But he is not a relaxed viewer. He “settles” on one program and then channel-surfs while the chosen program appears in a corner of the screen.
Such surfing may include flicking from one program information box to another with such rapidity that the information I may be reading in a half-attentive state is not a description of one program, but rather a mélange of phrases from an untold number of programs.
For example: “A CIA operative travels to (click) Disney World to ride the (click) New York subway (click) and catches a wild salmon in Alaska while (click) a couple of giraffes display a rarely photographed form of “necking” (click) and the President’s motorcade is (click) attacked by the Incredible Fifty Foot Woman (click) and that’s another home run for (click) Tom Cruise as he flies a supersonic jet over (click) the Mongolian Horde as it attacks Russia.”
In a previous house, the kitchen and family rooms were basically an open area. Therefore, when Hubby watched television while I was messing in the kitchen, sometimes I listened to whatever was on but the continuity made no sense. So naturally, I went to see what “weird” disjointed show he was watching.
Quelle surprise! He was channel surfing. I long for the days when you had to walk across the room to change the channel. Back then, no one was energetic enough to run back and forth between the couch and the television to constantly change channels. Consequently, people tended to stay with one channel. Unless, of course, you had a child or two at your beck and call to take on the television dial turning duties.
Sometimes too much technology and convenience stinks.
With all due respect to Dante and in my personal opinion, the number one circle of Hell is slowly going bonkers while an indiscriminate channel surfer is on the premises. However, if you are alone, feel free to channel surf, since the only mind you are in danger of messing up is your own.
Elizabeth is an author and freelance writer. Visit her website www.elizabethcowan.com. Check out her new novel, “The Dionysus Connection,” on Amazon.
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