A few (well, many) years ago, Francois Truffaut, the great artsy French director,  made a film based on Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel “Fahrenheit 451.” The premise of the novel was that a future society would ban the reading of books, and would enforce this dictat by burning them. The title came from the fact that the flashpoint of book paper is (surprise, surprise) 451 degrees Fahrenheit (or 233 degrees Celsius if your are European, or 506 degrees absolute if you are a science weenie). But that’s not the point here.

The point is that in the film, everywhere that you looked there was a big screen television set.

Like today.

Practically every watering hole has become a sports bar, so that it is impossible to drink yourself into pleasant oblivion without a soundtrack provided by nattering sports commentators. Half of them are retired professional athletes, whose vocabularly is retricted to phrases like “he’s giving 110%.” This is, of course, mathematically impossible, and reflects the fact that the sports figure majored in kinesthesia while in college. [N.B. “College” is a synonym for “farm club.”] Kinesthesia is a subject that, in a more truthful age, was called “gym.” But you do not need a command of fifth grade arithmetic to make twenty million dollars a year by throwing or catching a ball of some kind, or merely beating your opponent to a bloody pulp.

And what comes squirting off the screen, in addition to high resolution pictures of overpaid gorillas prancing about? Food ads! And not just one at a time, oh no. They come in continuous volleys, three, four, five, one after another, adjuring you to stuff your fat face with yet another cholesterol and carbohydrate goodie. No wonder we are all fatties! Our bodies evolved their hard-wired programming during the Ice Age, when you had better eat everything you encountered on the exceedingly rare occasions when you actually encountered something (or someone, perhaps) edible. We are all Pavlov’s dogs, drooling uncontrollably at the sight of food. More, more, we cry!

And if we are not watching so-called sporting events, what are we subjected to? Cooking shows. (Peculiarly enough, most people who watch cooking shows have never cooked a meal in their life. They go out to a restaurant for 92% of their meals, and for the other 8%, they order takeout.) And much of the time the shows are not just animated recipe books. They are insane productions dressed up with the trappings of professional football, or perhaps mediaeval tournaments.

And we don’t only suffer this onslaught in bars. Our homes are filled with a multiplicity of televison screens. Restaurants are covered with television screens. Airports are covered with televison screens. Airplanes have television screens at your seat. There are urinals in mens’ rooms surmounted by television screens.

There is no escape.

Aren’t we lucky?

We no longer need to wait for an otherwise unemployed stumblebum to parade past us on the sidewalk, carrying a signboard proclaiming “Eat at Joe’s.”

If we choose our location carefully, so that we are part of the ultratypical market used to test products, we can receive endless previews of the latest innovation, such as chocolate and artichoke soup. (It sounds revolting to me, but de gustibus non disputandum est. Or chacon a son gout. Or whatever floats your boat.) Or watch the newest advertising campaign, which features half naked cuties wiggling about and licking long, thin food products.

I hate to break this off, but I have to head out to the kitchen. I have just been seized by an uncontrollable hankering for pickled herring.