[TheForge] [YAK] TV

Thu Nov 6 13:06:01 2003

The second thing I do in the morning is turn on the tube. Until last 
year we watched a 13" tv so we could tell everyone we "just watched a 
little tv" but now we are up to a 19".

If I get up early I can catch the end of the farm report...corn is 
down. Then I like to see if I can use mind control and make Katy Couric 
cross or uncross her legs...sometimes it works! or seems to anyway.

Most days I go out to my shop then where I listen to Wisconsin public 
radio...sometimes Minnesota public but WPR is better. If I come into 
the house during the day (my shop is at home) I turn on the radio to 
continue listening to what I was listening to in my shop.

I tape Peter Jennings news and the News Hour (Jim Lehrer) so I can zip 
thru most of it. I like to see what trouble our fearless (or is that 
feckless?) leader GB2 (bring 'em on!!) has gotten us into. Another 
bombing? That proves were kicking their asses. Ha!

I'm not above watching Seinfeld reruns. I know most of the episodes by 
heart now and they are still funny. You guys will be sorry when we are 
all in the nursing home and you don't know any of the trivial pursuit 
answers. Like for instance where did Neuman work? and what is a bro or 
manzier? Gotcha.

I keep a little multi band radio on the stand next to the bed. We live 
"on top" as they say around here (southeast Minnesota). Elevation about 
1200'. I can pick up Chicago, Louisville, Denver, Cedar Rapids Iowa 
(all AM), and others depending on the weather and lately the solar 
flares. If I wake up in the night I plug in my earphone and listen to 
reports of alien abductions on Coast to Coast AM with George Noori. 
Sometimes I even go back to sleep with the earphone in my ear.

I guess I am plugged in 24 hours a day some days.

I still find the time to read...just finishing the second of two 
detective novels (The Silence of the Rain) by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, 
a Brazilian writer. Recently read Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux and 
Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers. I also read The Wall Street Journal 
most days, Newsweek and whatever else I run into.

I guess you could say TV has ruined my life.

Bob

On Wednesday, November 5, 2003, at 10:47 PM, Peter Fels And Phoebe 
Palmer wrote:

> I once pitched a TV down a flight of steps into the back yard  when it 
> had lied to me once too often. It was very satisfing!
> We have a tube hooked up to the VCR now and use it once in a while. If 
> the quality of the programming was better we might reconsider.
> But I neither read nor wrote when the thing was hooked to an 
> antenna...it sucked , attention.
> If one were to build a machine to hypnotize folks into buying  
> politics and products...you know just what it would look like.
> This silly damn puter burns up enough time as it 
> is.......................PF
>
> Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>>> Seems to me that TV is simply another tool.
>>
>> Heh. In a manner of speaking.  Like a can opener is a tool.  But if
>> can openers were like a TV, the norm would be that if you own a can
>> opener, canned beans, canned fruit, canned spaghetti, canned bread,
>> canned milk etc. would all replace not only the un-canned varieties
>> of those but most other food as well.
>>
>> Stop me if I've said this before... :-)
>>
>> We didn't have electricity until my kids were about 8 so the gift TV
>> from the in-laws sat in the attic.  Then we got power and watched TV.
>> I kvetched about it but I zombied, too.  To salve my conscience, I
>> ranted about how destructive it was and tried to point out to the kids
>> the ways in which the medium manipulates yr mind and creates a
>> specious reality.
>>
>> When the boys were about 12, they dropped the TV down the stairs while
>> we weren't at home and broke it.  After a hasty conference, they hit
>> on a strategy.  When we came home, they announced that they had been
>> thinking about my comments and had put it away in the attic.  It was
>> several years later before there was something in the news (Reagan
>> getting shot, maybe?) that merited digging out the TV and then the
>> story came out.
>>
>> Just this year, my wife dragged home an "old" TV her (former) boss was
>> disposing of.  (Hey, did you know you can have TV in *color* now?)  We
>> use it once in a while to watch video tapes but otherwise it sits face
>> to wall in a corner.  We go to the cinema to see a movie, then come
>> home and rent the tape.  By plugging a set of computer speakers into
>> the VCR, I can cuddle with my own personal speaker and can then hear
>> the sound-track dialog that I missed in the cinema due to my hearing
>> loss. (Um, right.  Wear those ear muffs during power hammering,
>> recreational explosions, air and abrasive tool use etc.)
>>
>> - Mike
>>
>>
>
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