Dear People without Televisions,

As I sink into my nest of pillows and blankets on the couch every night before Iron Chef, The Office, America's Next Top Model, Community, 30 Rock, etc., I know this vapid fare does not make me a better wife, mother, voter, cook, or sex partner. It only serves to dull my mind as well as my body.

"Hey baby? Grab me another Bud while you're in there."

Thereby I concede: I lose, you win. You are a better person than me, wholly entitled to that smug expression. Your kids are not mentally flattened by the likes of Spongebob and Hannah Montana. Their impressionable young minds are not swirling down the toilets of the Jersey Shore.

Can we be done with this now?

Because if one more television non-owner comes up to me and manages to find a way to inform me of their non-television ownership status within the first 30 seconds of our initial meeting, I'm liable to let loose a serious string of expletives.

It is obnoxious when you say, "Well--heh-heh--having not owned a television for the past 12 years ... " three seconds after I've extended my hand and introduced myself. Did you fail to notice that no one mentioned Satan's box or any of its relevant contents? And no, your jolly self-deprecating tone does not help. At all.

Remember when the first People With Cell Phones felt the need to say, "I'm calling you on my cell," at the beginning of every conversation? That is you, except they have faded, you have not.

Now for the bad news, sugartits. Having a television set is no longer relevant. You can watch mind-sucking slop online 24/7. Courtesy of a high-speed internet connection, the Cartoon Network will gladly deliver unto you Courage the Cowardly Dog starring in "Son of the Chicken from Outer Space" in all of it's glorious mediocrity.

Gee, you're in a tough situation. You either give up involvement in the modern world or try desperately to differentiate yourself within it. Because, whether or not you choose to dip your intellectual ladle into the barrel of online sewage is irrelevant, baby. Your choices are limited.

You could simply banish the evil Internet from your life, thereby joining the ranks of Aunt Gertie and Uncle Fred. Buy a cane while you're at it so you can shake something at the kids while you croak from the screen door, "Hey you kids! Get off the grass!"

Here's my advice: Come over to the dark side, if only for a moment. Click on, log in, drop down.

Behold a darling bevy of 16 and Pregnant mother's-to-be, or the luscious queens of RuPaul's Drag Race. Do what you do best and wax superior when the hellish reality of Hoarders comes spilling from your sleek iMac. Have an innocuous tab at the ready (Salon, HuffPo, or perhaps Epinion's latest commentary on Samsung's DualView digital camera). When the Missus wanders in to see what your chortling over, with one clandestine click, you'll temporarily banish Snookie & Co. until you are alone again with your new little friends.

You have another option. You could revamp your clever unlike bottom feeders like you, I don't have a television speech to sound more like this: "Although I'm completely savvy regarding today's online media, I never, ever use my Cox DOCSIS 3.0 enhanced wireless ultimate high speed connection to watch (ahem) television shows."

Only trouble is, no one will believe you.

* * *

Ask Erin, vol. 1

Dear Erin,

Riddle me this: why are we immune to our own farts?

Dan, South Carolina.

Dear Dan: This question recalled Erica Jong's groundbreaking 1973 novel Fear of Flying, in which she says people enjoy their own flatulence. I hadn't read the book in years; hence a reread was in order.

When I finally found the passage, it read, "Despite what Auden says about all people loving the smell of their own farts, my reek was beginning to offend my nostrils." Why, Jong wasn't a self-fart lover at all--just a reference pimp.

I went in search of Auden's farts. I found them in the 1962 Viking Book of Aphorisms, which he compiled with Louis Kronenberger in 1962.

The "Self-Love" section includes this Spartan entry: "Every man likes the smell of his own farts," which is credited to an unnamed Icelandic Proverb. So neither Jong nor Auden actually admitted savoring their own emissions. This gent, however, on Is It Normal? was much more upfront: "Whenever I fart, I enjoy the smell that I release. I tend to wave with my hand upwards between my legs so I can get a better whiff."

But why doth he or anyone enjoy said indulgence so grandly? Perhaps we are proud of having nourished ourselves. After all, the fart is representative of our triumph over starvation. For woman hath put forth platter of roasted meat after chest-thumping man hath slain ferocious beast.

Both should be proud!

Both should enjoy this brief and playful interlude that denotes proper ingestion, this happy mile marker on the road to the universal punctuation mark of sustenance: the turd.