You know, as hard as this may be for you to believe of your tender-hearted, ego-stroking TV columnist, sometimes all of these shows I rave about do something so seemingly kind and generous that all it does is piss me off. Like, I watched this week’s “True Blood” minisode, which was a very thoughtful gesture on HBO’s part. But instead, I bit the hand that fed me. You know what? Fuck you, HBO. How dare you tease me with girl-on-Pam action. And how dare Fox give hope to all these annoying, god-awful wannabe ingénues spamming my Facebook with their pointless “Glee” dreams. As if stomaching Cory Monteith’s voice every week isn’t bad enough.

Where do we turn when primetime is full of suck? All 50 other channels, baby.

Whether you’re partial to The Biography Channel on a slow Sunday afternoon or a Lifetime Original Movie on a lonely Friday night, I think we can all agree nothing beats the random, time-consuming shows that are always there during our most boring times of need. And such variety! Click — some bro lost millions to a chick with a straight flush. Click — anthropologists discover that Cleopatra met aliens. Click — 10 minutes to make a wedding dress out of glitter. Click — hot girls gone wild. Click — “Golden Girls” gone wild. Heck, you can even watch “Hannah Montana” if you want to! (Although we will judge you.)

Instead of bombarding you with morals or content, these shows let your mind wander free. I like to just leave the TV on in the background while I do pretty much everything, from cooking to showering. Yes, my electricity bill is atrocious but I also, at any time, can tune in and learn something. Like how bullfrogs hunt or why you shouldn’t Botox your eyelids. Hey, that little girl saved her best friend with the Heimlich maneuver she learned off “SpongeBob.” You can’t tell me that wasn’t a slap in the face of the public education system.

As I always tell people, nothing says more about a person than what they will watch when there’s nothing else on. If you’re lying on the couch with your latest conquest for some post-sex TV and he turns on the Weather Channel, you know there’s a problem. I am a Food Network and Travel Channel girl myself, though I have been known to throw a little Animal Planet in my day. Most girls up the ante with some TLC and Bravo, whereas guys often gravitate toward Spike, “MythBusters” or ESPN1-through-188633. There’s no end to the mélange of TV labels you can give to someone in order to identify their personality. For example, if I said, “She’s such a MTV-E!-ABC Family,” you would know exactly what kind of a person we’re looking at here. It’s like classifying a species.

So the next time you’re at home, bored, watching whatever it is you watch, consider what your random television choices say about you. Or don’t, you know, if you watch something like QVC. In that case, you’re better off not knowing.