Last night, I was all set to collapse on the couch and watch Grey's Anatomy, which my faithful DVR was obediently recording so that I could avoid being tainted by commercials. Instead of 30 seconds of my life being sucked away by ads and propaganda and hype, I have about a 10-second interlude of movie/medicine/lawyer/show/vitamins/hemorrhoids/candy and then back to my chosen brain-melting show.

But no. Instead, it was the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. I was appalled, at the wanton disregard my DVR showed for my plans. Sure, sure, it's for a good cause - but clearly not more important than me watching GREY'S. Seriously.

And I have a sister with muscular dystrophy, but I still think the priorities were askew.

So, fine. I'm resilient, I can cope. I wandered through the guide and found an episode of House on one of the rerun channels, so I clicked there. Except instead it was the US Open tennis stuff running over an hour past schedule. The horror!

But I pieced myself together, amidst great heartache and grief, and found some sort of true crime show on MSNBC, with which I was willing to console myself.

Except the closed captioning didn't work. I was at an all-time TV-watching low.

I felt pummelled by the vagaries of the DVR, and had to settle for a countdown show on E!.