1 Daytime TV. You quickly get a very sad picture of this country, from the shows but even worse for the ads for job training, ambulance-chasing lawyers, snake oil medicines and those folks who can get you a power chair through Medicare, maybe. You have to ask yourself, am I really part of this audience? Save your video hours for the one or two shows actually worth watching, and DVDs from the library, which won’t cost you unless you bring them back late.

And if you catch yourself watching any of the judge shows, flush your remote. I believe the shows exist to make us feel better about ourselves, by parading plaintiffs and defendants before us whose lives suck even worse than ours. Someone who bought a used car wants a refund because the ‘78 Impala died three days after the check cleared. A woman who kicked out her deadbeat boyfriend but left his cell phone in her name because “he needed it.” And sometimes even poeple dragged before Judge Whoever — there seems to be an endless supply — because they punched outsomeone or took a hammer to their car. You turn off the set feeling unclean.

2 - Overcarpentering. Sure, now that I’m home I have the time I kept wishing for to reorganize that closet, move that shelf, replace that light switch. Fine. Do what you need to do to keep the household functioning. But it’s easy to get into fix-it mode and just stay there, as opposed to, say, looking for work. More online applications to file, the ones where they make you re-type your entire work history even though you also uploaded a resume? Oh wait, that doorknob upstairs was coming loose again. And that one blind has never hung straight….

3 - The Wicked, Wicked Internet. I saw a cartoon once that captured my sentiments about the Web perfectly. There was a guy sitting at a desk with a stack of stuff on it labeled BUSINESS, and off to one side was a carnival barker and a pretty girl throwing confetti and waving for him to come over. It seems that about half the people who read reddit check it at least 125 times daily. (I’m not saying which half I’m in). Whoe spisodes of TV shgows on Hulu, Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person’s from yesterday. The computer can be an even worse time sucker than the TV, because it reaches back.

4 - Blogging. Take it from me.