Watching TV is a waste of time.

Really.

Unlike music, to make sense out of anything displayed on TV you have to sit and watch the story unfold. Music lets you roam while listening. In fact, good music almost forces you to move; a good beat gets your feet and hips moving, a kickin’ guitar solo begs to be emulated with an air guitar, and meaningful vocals must be accompanied.

A TV show, on the other hand, may draw your interest and engage your curiosity, but to get the most out of the show you have to sit and watch, and doing so wastes time.

I guess if you’ve learned something while watching TV then you haven’t completely tossed away a portion of your life, but what happens when you watch a show that you doesn’t even offer entertainment? You’ve watched it, perhaps expecting something meaningful, or at least something humorous, in return for your time and the show gives you nothing. Zip. Nada. What then?

It’s time lost, my friend, never to be regained, and it may make you angry that you’ve wasted it. You could have been baking a cake, performing open heart surgery, or playing the tuba.

Well, I’m going to save you two minutes and four seconds of your precious time. No need to thank me. It’s my job.

Two minutes and four seconds is the length of time of the short movie My Pepper Heart by PES, a short animated film that is featured in The Animation Show and is a free download this week at the iTunes Store.

I know it’s free and you may be curious about the show and this particular episode, but trust me on this, downloading My Pepper Heart by PES is not only a waste of your time, it’s a waste of your precious hard drive space.

What’s it about? It’s a red pepper expanding and contracting to the sound of a beating heart. That’s it. Two minutes and four seconds of it.

I’m sure there’s some artistic, metaphysical, sociological, or psychological significance to it, but I guess it’s too obtuse or I’m too dense to see it.

Still, if curiosity has the better of you and you need to see for yourself... Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you need something that’s somewhat less of a time waster, you might check out the video podcast, Free TV.

Even if you stay awake 23 hours each day there’s no way you can do everything you might be interested in. You can perform only so many open heart surgeries in a day. This is where TV can come in handy.

Catchin’ a curl on Free TV

Like surfing, BMX racing, or maybe FMX motorcross? Free TV covers it in a uniquely fresh way using high-art videography and the latest music to bring sports and the people who play them closer to you.

I have no desire to free style a BMX bike in a competition, but I do, however, enjoy watching these insane people performing stunts that must keep their moms swilling Mylanta like it was Kool-Aid.

There are only seven 22 minute long episodes of Free TV, but more are on the way. If you’ve got to sit and watch TV you may as well watch something cool: Free TV. It’s free!

Most women would consider an hour spent watching old Three Stooges movies a complete waste of time.

Will women ever understand the men in their lives? Most men will tell you that watching the classic comedy team yuk it up is hardly a waste. The time is actually spent learning and appreciating the roots of our popular culture. Many of today’s comedians take many of their comedic cues from the skits of Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe. In fact most physical humor was popularized by that threesome, and physical is not something you can listen to, it has to be watched to be fully appreciated.

If you are hankering for more modern humor, however, look no further than Barats & Bereta, a comedy team offering some of their routines in bite sized pieces geared for Internet consumption.

Maxwell doing his Valedictorian Rap in Barats & Bereta

You have got to watch Maxwell Dorian: Valedictorian and Mother’s Day. I’ve never laughed so hard. Well, almost as hard as for that episode of The Three Stooges where they were cooks, and they had to make pancakes and wound up serving potholders instead... ahhh, man! That still gets me going.

Anyway, there are a bunch of Barats & Bereta podcast episodes, each about two minutes long, and each are gems.

Time spent laughing is never a waste. Get Barats & Bereta at the iTunes Store.

That’s going to do it for this week, my friends. I should point out that Apple and third party developers are going absolutely nuts developing and releasing games for the iPod. It seems like every week new games appear in iTunes.

This week Yahtzee, Cubis 2, and the ever-so-playable Tetris make their appearance at the iTunes Store. Absolute time wasters, the lot of them, and every one is five bucks well spent. Check them out.

Other freebies at the iTunes Store:

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.