Cable Boxed Out

I’m kicking myself really, possibly the most historic moment to take place in my entire generation and the ultimate irony is that I couldn’t watch it, because I don’t have TV. Recently the people who brought you television have stopped sending the “snow signals” we’ve all known and loved over the years. The barely visible, barely audible transmissions broadcast locally for decades are, at least in some places, a thing of the past. Thus, we have no other choice than to go out and spend fifty dollars on these digital converter boxes (ten if you bring in a government provided coupon, of which, in the midst of economic crisis, ironically, they’ve run out of). The problem is that the fuzzy channels are no more, either you receive a digital signal or you don’t, which means you wait around for ten minutes just to see if you CAN watch tv. Now, again, you’re getting frustrated saying, why didn’t you just watch it over the internet on CNN? The short answer, is I did, but because all that information has to be uploaded and cannot be telecast, I had to wait on the delay which then led to an edited version, and though I can now watch it in snippets, doesn’t have the same power as watching it live. Now you’re asking, why not go to a bar, the library, break into your neighbor’s house, call your friends? I explored most of these options, save for the bar, I didn’t like the subtext of being briefed with the future of this country surrounded by people drinking their breakfasts at eight in the morning. In the end, I didn’t watch it, I caught snippets on news websites, and heard them discussed on NPR. My mom expressed reservations about specific quotes I hadn’t heard as yet and dissected them. This is how I receive my news.

In a world full of watered-down, flattened-out, spun-around, topsy-turvy factual event dispense, I have complicated my sources even further. Gaining my up-to-the-minute updates through third and sometimes fourth-party sources. And though many of you are now groaning, aching and wishing you hadn’t read this, I’m proud of it, rather than gaining a newswriter’s opinion, or the networks, or the company who pays for CNN’s banner ads, or the secret agenda of the fox news corporation, I’m getting the input of people. They may have the wrong information, their facts may be twisted and terrible misinformed, but their opinions about them are there own. Their own readings of subjectively delivered news coverage is there own, even if they think Bill O’Reilly holds merit, I have to believe that there is a reason they said so. Maybe Bill O’Reilly is holding their entire family hostage, which is a great deal more likely than his opinions holding merit, but their opinion would still be important, it would prove what we’ve all known for many years, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families to prove his points. Whilst I, get as convoluted as possible with my non-sequiturs as possible in order to prove my own.

In light of this discovery, I’ve decided not to discount anything the people around me say, just because it sounds different or insane. If you tell me you were abducted by aliens who decided to destroy us when MASH was cancelled but got sucked into the cable tv abyss, I believe you. If you’re convinced someone is after you because you’ve recreated great moments of the cold war in your imagination, don’t walk into any dark alleys in your imagination, you’ll get stabbed, I believe you. If you tell me Bill O’Reilly is a nice man deep down, he’s just angry and frustrated, get bent, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families with the possibility of eating them. If you’re sorry you didn’t speak up about political corruption and the destruction of our economic stability until it was hip to do so, you should be ashamed of yourself, for that, and wearing pants that clearly don’t fit you and your father’s salvaged prescription glasses from the 80s, they weren’t cool then, your father wasn’t cool then, and as his progeny your twice as uncool for wearing them.

I’ve also decided that it’s okay I don’t watch tv, it’s okay I don’t stay up on current events, or sound smart when I talk, look strangers in the eye, have very little grace and poor depth perception. I’m comfortable with not being a part of a historic piece of media coverage, though I secretly envy everyone who went to DC ie T ,A and S. Everyone can remember where they were when JFK was assassinated and what they did in the aftermath. I can remember where I was when I heard about 9/11 and what I did in the aftermath. Whenever someone asks me where I was when Barack Obama was delivering his historic inaugural address, I will proudly state, I was in bed, fast asleep, dreaming of something weird, because I had the freedom to.