You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Choosing a new TV.
What size. What model? Smart or stupid.
Plasma? LED? COD?
My Plasma went dark the other day. A dark TV has few options. It’s a paper weight? A boat anchor. An interesting item to look at on garbage pick up day.
Dark? Can you imagine? A 2004 Panasonic Plasma, valued at $4000 when purchased. 13 years of flawless crisp service and then POOOF. A visual black hole.
Who do I complain to?
The old gal turns on. I know there’s power because I see the red power button glowing. But accept a signal that represents a broadcast picture?
Not today boss.
I’m not sure what happened. It’s like quantum physics to me after a few beers.
Maybe it was the electrical storm last night. Maybe the old Panasonic just died. Maybe her electronic heart full of mysterious glow in the dark gasses, simply fizzled, a figment of her once illustrious existence.
“Electrical storm,” I mutter. “Had to be.” I surmise this as I look around the house and see anything with a clock flashing on and off. On and off. Shooting me the digital bird.
“Reset us bitch!,” they all seem to say in unison.
I turn off the TV. I turn on the TV. I get a blank screen, like a Kardashian vision for world peace?
The TV has power. I can see the screen sparkle with a dull illuminated black. It’s like the gasses are firing behind the screen, dancing, excited, ready to grab a signal and explode them onto the glass. But there is no signal, nothing to grab and illuminate. The TV is sad. It has one singular purpose and now it is unable to accomplish this goal.
IT HAS TO BE THE DIRECTV DVR!
“God Damn Directv,” I grumble. “I hate this monolithic monstrosity that secretly deducts money from me each month like a cat burglar fumbling through my bank account.
I call the bastards at the satellite giant and a man begins asking me questions off a pre-scripted checklist.
“Is it plugged in?”
Are you stupid, I think.
“Is the cable loose?”
Does someone wipe your butt for you?, I muse.
“What error code do you see on your screen?”
“Are you not listening to me, moron? I got nothing. I got black, like dracula’s heart. Capiche?”
“I think I’m understanding you,” the telecommunicator with the red dot on his forehead says in a dialect thicker than mushroom soup.
“So your TV has power, but your screen is blank?”
“Yes. Correct. Absolutely. Now you get it. photons are bursting against a glass prism like the fourth of July with no fireworks.”
Before he can say another word, I tell him what I expect.
“Look. The box is dead. Send me a new box. Simple. Done. Got it?”
After a few moments of himming and hawing the man from the nation of Sacred Cows says. “OK sir, your new DVR will be sent to you in 3-5 days.”
I hit end call. I am frustrated. No TV for 3-5 days.
Damn Directv.
That’s about the time my son opens his pie hole.
“it’s not your DVR. It’s the HDMI port on the back of your TV.”
I look at him like prehistoric man looked at the gigantic stones mysteriously erected in Wiltshire, England.
“Huh?” I say with all the delicacy of a butcher chopping blood sausage.
“My XBOX doesn’t play either. So it’s the port on the back of the TV. Not the DVR.”
“Oh,” I say like a man who has suddenly seen the light shined upon him by the master of snarkiness.
“So I just paid $19.99 to Directv for a new box I didn’t really need?”
“Pretty much,” he says staring at some oblivion on his phone.
I feel like a chump.
“Great.”
I stare at the blank screen with the muted black resonance. If he’s right, then the entire TV is shot. 13 years of dedicated, flawless performance, finally has come to an end.
I don’t feel like spending hundreds of dollars on a new TV. When I last bought one, it was so expensive. It had no smart technology. There was only one HDMI port on the back of the set. One? Now they have more holes than a cavity convention in London.
Even though I know I need a new TV, I go to the cable section of Best Buy. I stare at my options. For some reason that even I cannot explain, I buy $25 dollar HDMI cable.
“That’s not gonna work,” the snarky bastard on the couch says.
“Why?”
“Because it’s the portal on the back of the TV. It’s not the cable. I told you that.”
I hook the cable up to the back of the TV and the little snark ass is right.
New cable, same illuminated nothingness.
I grumble, now angry that I have to buy a new TV and I’ve ordered a new Directv box.
I start googling flat screens to see what the going rate is. It’s a lot cheaper than the $4000 dollars the Panasonic cost in 2004.
3 days later, the Directv box arrives. I look at it and think; “Maybe this will magically fix it.”
I plug in the box and hook it up to the new HDMI cable and wait for the screen to light up like sunshine and rainbows.
I wait and wait and wait. I am staring at illuminated dull black.
“I told you. it’s the port. Nothing you hook up to the port is going to show,” he says like he has some kind of electrical engineering degree from MIT.
Damn. I gotta get me a new TV, I say.
Crap. I’ve wasted 19 dollars on a new box. I’ve spent 25 dollars on a cable. 45 dollars worth of scientific deduction to simply be wrong and a snarky ass wisenheimer to be right.
Stupid thoughts go through my head like: Will the garbage man pick up the Panasonic? How much does that thing weigh? Can I even lift it alone?
It’s like burying a pet. I am sad, but I want to be done with it.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
I take the old DVR and throw it in the trash.
“Hey I had a bunch of recorded shows on that,” he says, suddenly with some concern in his voice.
I like the new DVR. I paid for a new DVR.
“If you want the old one, it’s in the trash,” I say with a degree of smarminess in my voice.
He stares at me incredulously.
Buying a new TV.
Life’s Crazy™