Throw away your television. Well, maybe not the TV, then you couldn't play video games or watch movies. They rock and are a totally different matter.

Throw away your cable box. (Satellite dish if that's your thing.)

Find a favorite author and read the hell out of their work. Start a religion, plan a rebellion, make an invention, play an instrument. Be weird, be alive.

We have so little time to be young and take advantage of the massive concentration of people our age here. Don't squander it watching "Chapelle Show" re-runs, even though he is hilarious. That Rick James sketch is a gem.

I'm pretty sure cable is going to own a lot of people's free time, though.

It doesn't matter what I say, it's easier to just disregard it than to really listen. People are too jacked in. It's hard not to be, I know.

I'm not claiming the moral high ground and saying I'm totally television-free, either.

I often find myself watching TV when I run around town at night to visit friends.

But the point here is this: you can get so much more from the people that you find zoned out next to you on the couch watching an episode of "American Idol." You can get more from yourself.

Yes, sir, please feed my head for me. I'm too lazy and self-indulgent to actively do it myself. I want to be stimulated but not awake.

These things come in different forms, I guess.

Like, say, fasting for Lent, or putting a month-long ban on physical contact with an affectionate lover to test the strength of what you have. They give perspective.

I've been on a cable diet for almost four years, with the occasional splurge in much the same way. I'll go a week watching maybe an hour of the tube.

I admit there was a time in my life when I sought solace from our cruel world in TV. It's a way to zone out, for sure. But think about what you lose, and don't be lame and think that visiting friends and hanging out are silly.

The look that a friend gives you when you drop by with a bottle of wine is infinitely better.

Having my stereo play all the time is more my thing anyway and always has been. Now I loop a playlist of mp3s about three days long and work, clean, cook, read and write my way through my day. I've also taken up meditating.

There's no other source of social insecurity that is more efficient than your cable service. Everything is so hip and bright -- made for TV. It's dyed, tweaked, pinched and taped into perfection on that damn thing. Cable isn't life. It can't be life, no matter how much you may wish it.

Life is boring. For real, it's boring from day to day. That's something you have to reconcile with yourself.

Wake up. Eat, go, work. Work, go, eat. Sleep. Repeat. Wee, I'm entertained.

The big secret is to make your own fun. That sounds cheap and contrived. It's true though. Don't be so jaded. Have an eye for little things and wonder at the beauty of what's around you.

Take a walk. Burn some of your yang energy and do something with yourself. I recently discovered Frisbee-golf, which is fun, if you dig that.

How about reading? It's worth mentioning it again because it's the anti-T.V. The opposite of having images flashed before you. Make your mind do some gymnastics; come up with the image yourself.

I'm depressed by the idea of a nation of people that can grind themselves to dust at work trying to better their lives, then basically take an egg-beater to the lobe that controls their individuality. Cable is crack without the rock.

Nick Todaro is a senior journalism major from Shreveport and serves as a news editor for The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to nst005@latech.edu.