Brenda is that brain-damaged spazzoid case file on a new cell phone commercial. I can’t remember the brand name – a guy on another blog says he thinks it’s Alltel, but I’m pretty sure Alltel got bought out by someone else. Brenda is a college girl who has to have everything "Brenda-lized, Brenda-licious, totally Brenda-tized." Her music, her clothes, her whole way of life has to be "Brenda-lized," which, I’m guessing by her dorm room decor, means totally cluttered and chaotic. Her decorating style can best be described as "someone barfed a box of crayons on the wall," but I guess temporarily blinding your houseguests is the risk one must take if one is to be truly "Brenda-licious."

But Brenda herself was just the beginning. After all, television is loaded with completely annoying characters that we are supposed to find endearing, and it hasn’t been enough yet to make me quit TV. Case in point: the "are you gellin’" retards at Dr. Scholl’s. Hey guys, I am so not gellin’. Your commercial is smellin’. In fact, I’m tellin’ a felon to put a gun to your melon and PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER.

Sorry... lost it for a minute. Back to my happy space. I’m really a peacenik, hippy-trippy goth child yadda yadda yadda. OK. Let’s go back to Brenda.

What got me about Brenda was her roommate. Her poor, stressed-out, cowering-on-her-own-side-of-the-room roommate. Notice that the roommate is studying, trying to better herself so she can graduate with honors and land a great job as Brenda’s future psychiatric health care provider. That is when she will strike. She will inject radiator fluid into Brenda’s medication. And I really don’t want Brenda’s roommate to go to jail for that. She seems too nice and otherwise levelheaded.

But we’re not supposed to see her that way. The commercial makes it very clear that we’re supposed to think Brenda is cool and her roommate is a total loser who will wind up a spinster in a run-down house with 48 cats. All because she didn’t spray-paint her sneakers and use felt-tipped markers as eyeliner.

I am not Brenda. I am Brenda’s roommate. And I’m tired of TV telling me I’m not cool. I am a quiet person. I watch the T-Mobile commercial that challenges us to see if 1500 anytime minutes per month is enough for the average cell phone user. That’s more minutes than I spend talking on the phone in an entire year. In fact, considering that’s 25 hours, I don’t think I’ve spoken for a total of 1500 minutes over the course of my entire life.

It’s not just commercials. There are a lot of things I don’t get about TV. Why did everyone love Raymond when he allowed himself to stay married to such a mean woman? And where the hell were his kids? The house was too eerily quiet for there to be three kids living in it. Adults with three children do not have the uninterrupted conversations that family kept having. My sister has three kids. I don’t think she’s finished a sentence since the first one learned to talk. Every time I call her, it sounds like she’s hosting the Daytona 500 in her living room.

Why do studio execs keep putting Jenna Elfman on TV? Why are people so desperate to be on reality TV shows that they’ll make total asses of themselves? Why are we still bothering to call it reality TV? And for the love of God, who told Michael Rappaport he was funny? He’s quite talented as a dramatic actor, but he puts so much effort into his attempts at comic delivery, I keep waiting for the veins in his forehead to explode.

But despite all this stupidity, I have been watching lots and lots of TV. Then my doctor told me I needed to exercise. So I turned off the TV and went outside and started to jog. Thirty seconds later, wheezing and gasping and trying to dial 911 on my cell phone (I’ve carried over approximately 37 million unused minutes), my jog ended. I couldn’t jog three blocks because I’d spent the past several years sitting on my couch, eating junk food and watching TV.

So my withdrawal begins. I am giving up television. I am going to jog every day after work and try to find other things to do in the evenings. I understand there are these things called "books" that can be quite enjoyable. I will try to find some.

I will build up my stamina. Right now, I can jog three blocks. That’s it. But Confucius said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Confucious was obviously a jogger.

I am making this commitment to the maybe twelve people who will stumble across this blog on MySpace. But the commitment is now made. I must follow through.