TV shows used to come with only a few black and white pixels, and they were broadcast through the air by carrier-wave pigeon, also known as “analog.” The only shows available were I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, Lassie, Perry Mason, and Who Wants To Be A $64,000 Question? You can still get that programming on your old TV set, which sucks the pixels through your roof-top antenna, through a wire, under the carpet and directly into your toaster oven because you didn’t read the instructions first. But why would you live with that? Here’s how you can get the very best of new TV technology.
Since you’re too cheap to buy an expensive HD TV, you get an analog converter box so you can watch more pixels in those old shows. You don’t know why you need this box, except that home repair TV show guys said you do. So you buy a converter, and you finally get it all hooked-up incorrectly to discover the picture is still fuzzy, so you give up and get a new HD, 60-inch, flat-screen, LED TV, with a built-in wi-fi internet streaming cappuccino machine. But you must also get “Cable” for the introductory new subscriber price that after six months increases to a mid-sized yacht payment.
Soon (12 days later) a guy with huge steel-toed shoes, a 1/8th mile ladder, and an Iraqi Security tool belt arrives and asks to use the bathroom. Twenty minutes later he leaves, without using the fragrance spritzer. The next day he arrives again to install your “Cable”. This happens in the middle of a winter snowstorm at 7:00 pm (dark), and he needs you to shine the flashlight (yours, which he borrowed) at the top of the telephone pole where he is working. Two hours later he has routed the “Cable” from the top of the pole to the place on your house’s exterior wall farthest from your new TV, drilled through most of the major load-bearing walls, used the bathroom again, tacked the “Cable” along several miles of baseboards, hooked the “Cable” into the new TV, programmed the remote control and left by retracing his muddy footprints.
You quickly discover you spent $2500 and committed to a year contract in order to get constant reruns of I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith , Lassie, Perry Mason and Who Wants To Be A $64,000 Question?, along with the new “reality” hits like Ice Road Truckers, Orange County Choppers and Ice Chopping with the Kardashians in Orange County.
Now you can view 800 HD “Cable” channels on a large HD TV, and that’s okay for a few days until your 5 year-old tells you that you can use the TV’s wi-fi capability in a clever way! You can “Stream” movies and old TV shows directly to your TV! All right over your “Cable” internet service! All you need is a subscription to a “Streaming Service” like Netflix, Blockbuster or Video Vern’s Streaming Movie and Cigar Shop. Then you can login to this service and “Stream” any of the 14 available episodes of Marcus Welby, MD directly to your new TV! You almost have it working but you get a funny feeling about something…damn…you don’t have wi-fi in your house! But that’s easily solved. All you need is a new fifty dollar “wireless router”, without wires, that you connect to your “cable modem” with a wire! You test it out like this:
• make a scotch and soda
• turn on the TV and see snow on every channel
• fiddle with the TV for 20 minutes while cursing
• make another scotch and soda
• check that your cable modem and wi-fi boxes are on and all the lights are flashing
• fiddle with the TV for another 20 minutes
• make a double scotch and soda
• get a brain storm!
• turn on your computer and pay your already-delinquent “Cable” bill
• make another double scotch and soda
• notice the TV picture is even worse than before!
• because you’re drunk!
• finally access your “Streaming” service totally by accident
• watch Barney give orders to Goober while Andy is in Mount Pilot on Sheriff business
Success! Wasn’t it worth it? Admit it, you like it. Of course you do, with that much alcohol in your brain. Plus, you learned new swear words that you can use on your next project: enabling iPhone Kindle Tweets on your toaster oven. Good luck!