Today is the last day of National TV Turn-Off week.

     Readers of this column have no doubt noticed the anti-TV thread in my writing, and I’m sure both of you wonder where it comes from.

      I guess I should devote some words to clarification. When I write things such as, “…I have developed a healthy and robust contempt for anyone who watches TV,” I am referencing the serial TV watchers, not those among us who might catch a documentary or watch an ASU Sun Devil football game, or even the episode of Bewitched where Daren is forced to share a hotel room with Patrick Henry and Genghis Kahn and has until Monday to create his ad campaign and his boss keeps popping in to see how it’s going and he just can’t seem to keep Kahn in the closet. That was a good episode.

     The trouble lies with the class of people who use television as the infrastructure of their social and cultural lives. Studies has revealed that habitual TV watchers actually believe they have more friends than they do, because they have blurred the lines between people they know in reality and people they know on television. I’ve heard some TV watchers say, “I watched this stupid show last night, because nothing was on…”

     What about not watching? Not an option, I suppose.

     I feel like I’m from outer space when I talk with people who all seem to know what’s on TV and are all up on the latest episode of “Extreme Home Improvement Fund Mis-Allocation” or “Look how Shallow and Back-Stabbing I Can Be In 90 Minutes.”

     I am just completely out of the loop when it comes to television. But the people I choose as friends are as well, which leads me to my by-no-means scholarly theory that our nation is polarizing into two camps: one of TV watchers and the other of TV rejecters.

     Indeed. I am even developing a Romeo and Juliet story about the two camps. The TV watchers will speak only in commercial sound bytes and show references, and so will be unable to communicate with the other camp. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, I plan on beginning the novel, right after I watch Apocalypse Now on VHS for the third time this week. I try to watch Apocalypse Now at least three times a week, just to keep my mind in the logical range. And I wouldn’t be able to watch Apocalypse Now three times a week if it weren’t for my father, who when he visited last Christmas, talked me into buying a TV/VCR combination, and even went halves on it for me, just to ensure the TV would become a reality in my home.

     He had to talk me into it, but I am grateful, because now I am able to watch Apocalypse Now three times a week.

     So, the television has certainly eroded our intellect over the past 50 years, but my theory of the two camps suggests that new generations will continue to move away from it. More evidence of this trend is the TV-B-Gone. Made by Cornfield Electronics, the TV-B-Gone is a universal remote control that will turn off any television set. The TV-B-Gone sold out the first week it was offered, and Cornfield had to scramble to make more.

     I carry a TV-B-Gone on my keychain; my dear friend Wiley Davis gave it to me for Christmas – the same Christmas when my dad went halves on the set with me.

     With my TV-B-Gone, I have enjoyed many guerilla TV assassinations in bars around Portland, Ore.

     But where would I be going with this if I didn’t offer a real direct-action against television? Okay, here goes…

     I’ve been kicking this idea around ever since I arrived in Portland, but I’ve been too busy watching Apocalypse Now three times a week to get it off the ground. The idea is to prepare a large amount of food and load it up in catering chafers and then go door-to-door asking strangers if you can serve them dinner. Once inside (allowing the subjects are receptive to the idea) one in your team will employ a TV-B-Gone to kill the set, and then, with any luck, a group of strangers will spontaneously share a meal, and talk, without even considering the television.

     Of course some will slam their doors, and others might call the cops, and that would be interesting also. But if just one family bites, they may become inspired to do the same thing on another night, and the next thing you know, random shared dinners and warm conversations with strangers may become the norm in our neighborhoods.

     Think of it. You could start out in Eagle River, and work your way to Spenard. All you’d need to make it happen is a car, some people with restaurant experience, bulk pasta and salad fixin’s, a TV-B-Gone and some clean shirts. We could call it the Suppertime Revolution. Game?

To learn more – and watch less – visit TVBGone.com or WhiteDot.org.