New Television

Our old TV developed some form of wet macular degeneration and the picture had begun to disappear into a distressingly central red hole. There was some debate about replacement because in the last seven months or so, we've watched approximately 8 hours of cable TV - all of which was either Antiques Roadshow or Colbert Report, and a termination of cable service is, frankly, imminent. It won't bother our provider, I'm sure, as teh interweb connexion comes down the cable too, so we'll still have to pay for all that.

Recently I bought a new laptop - which plays Blu-Ray - and the zeitgeist swung back to pro-telly. We hauled a new TV, Mr. Slim, home from a store that was doing monster business. No downturn here in Orange County, CA as far as I can see.

The very first thing we did was get Mr. Slim on the web and sign in to YouTube. I was a little afraid of telling the TV my YouTube password because who knows what it'll upload? I mean, who knows when a hacker will write the first virus for it? - but weblust prevailed.

I couldn't be bothered to type in a real search term on a remote, so STB suggested the ever popular search term "cats". Cats was entered, we selected "Funny Cats" and spent the next 2:45 with tears of laughter streaming down our faces.

I know, but cats are funny. You just have to go with it.

So in five minutes, Mr. Slim provided more entertainment than the cable box has provided in the last month. Then I discovered how to make the picture full-screen and the world of YouTube expanded to fifty inches. Then I learned to type on the remote and we achieved escape velocity.



Mr. Slim is shown above, playing a Dead Weather video streamed on YouTube. Above him, on the chimney breast, is the elegant work by SS DeRech, the 1958 "Woman Sans Bats".