Force-fed by the tube

Used to be I had a few minutes to myself when I pumped my gas, and it was lovely.

As the fuel whooshed through the hose and the numbers ticked over, my mind wandered, free as a dainty butterfly, alighting on whatever topic took its fancy: My, this corner of Columbia Road and Dot Ave is trafficky. I wonder whether those yams in the fridge are still OK. Are newspapers doomed? Pie is good.

Lofty thoughts they were not, but they were mine, and I was quite partial to them.

But now those reveries are history, snatched away by the little screens that sit atop the pumps at my favorite gas station.

I can't be alone with my thoughts anywhere, because televisions are everywhere. Not just at the gas station, but in malls and elevators, too. And in airport lounges, where the anchors continuously bleating their sorry headlines make me want to eat my own head. And in restaurants, where nobody seems to enjoy chatting with bartenders anymore, preferring to stare up at the screens in silence.

Gas Station TV sends "content" through 6,000 screens in 425 cities, and its reach is growing. Each month about 20 million hapless drivers see its screens. Like 90 percent of the pumpers surveyed by GSTV, I am mesmerized.

Here is an ad for the Chevy Traverse, 24 miles per gallon on the highway. Oh good, here are the NASCAR results. Previews for a menacing "CSI: New York" and a hokey "New Adventures of Old Christine" are next. Up pops an impossibly unfurrowed Nicole Kidman in a segment called "Tips, Clips & Gossip." A perversely chipper young man tells me about the weather. A bottle of wiper fluid appears: "Dirty Windshield? Grab a bottle!" Then the enormous Traverse is back, its seats collapsing with one touch.

Just under half of what we see is advertising, designed - according to an e-mail from GSTV CEO David Leider - to reach consumers "at a desirable point of purchase where they are mobile and can be influenced to take action at a nearby retailer."

Super. Instead of meandering thoughts, we now get someone's attempt at mind control.

But nowhere is the ubiquity of television more annoying than in restaurants. I used to like sports bars. When I wanted to see a game, I went to one and ate buffalo wings. When I didn't, I went somewhere else. Now there is no somewhere else.

Naturally, the Red Sox are to blame. Until recently, nobody cared enough about them to stay away from their usual haunts just because they lacked televisions. But after the glorious victories began piling up, restaurants got worried that customers would give them a miss if they didn't show the games, so up went legions of flat-screen monstrosities.

I tried this Asian fusion restaurant in Malden recently. The décor was all Zennish, painstakingly designed to evoke calm with its neutral colors, billowy chiffon curtains, and bamboo plants. But up on the wall behind the bar were two giant flat-screen televisions, where a gaggle of glossy anchors dressed in bright colors were yammering away in a noncalming manner. And despite my riveting company, the constant motion on my periphery made it impossible to look away.

There is almost no escape. Not at tiny Tacos Lupita in Lynn, where the heavenly tacos come with blaring soccer games and beauty pageants. Nor at swank Stella in the South End, where well-heeled patrons stare up silently at the television behind the dimly-lighted quartz bar.

There is plenty of other technology to crowd out our thoughts, but most of it we can escape. My BlackBerry, addictive as it is, has an off switch. The video-crammed world does not. At the gas station recently, I tried looking away from the screen, up Columbia Road. My eyes found the little TV at the next pump.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.