I’ve been working very hard all morning and I’m not even out of bed yet. I’m surfing all the TV channels we have on this new cable set up.We got a box and everything We also got two handy-dandy user guides. One is a 16 page quick reference guide. You may ask; “If the quick reference guide is 16 pages how long is the full guide?†Don’t ask.
Okay, the regular guide is 64 pages thereby the reason I am still sitting in bed trying to “guide†myself through the byzantine intricacies of modern day TV. Of prime interest was how many more channels will we get? According to the quick-ref we get 901 In actuality we get a few more than we used to-like 75, maybe a 100. I’m still not sure. From 800-901 is “radioâ€. You get all kinds of music-anything you want. You get all the classics from opera, classic rock, classic country; classic R&B etc. I’ve suddenly lost my respect for the word “classicâ€. All music all the time-but no video.
Channels 700-780 are high definition-we don’t have that yet. In short everything from about 100 on up to 800 is pay for view or “on demand†which is another way of saying pay-for-view. Many of the channels we acquired are , you might guess; cooking shows; infomercial channels selling hair-restoration products, fancy ladders, home shopping networks. Oh yeah there are those exercise channels to offset the consequences of the cooking shows. Have you noticed the exercise shows are usually a very fit young woman with a throaty voice in front of several other very fit women in very brief outfits on a beach in the sun doing a very sexy-I mean strenuous routine? All of the ten shows are the same-not that I was checking or anything like that. Oh that reminds me there are a number of “adult†channels, wink -wink , nudge-nudge You have to pay for them-but I’m not allowed to watch them anyway-‘cuz I guess I’m not adult enough-or sumpthin’.
That’s not bad enough but they give you this remote thingy that’s hard to comprehend itself. It’s 8 by 2 and has 35 buttons or controls, whatever they call them- 35 Gotta be simple eh? I recognize most of them-the numbers for the channels; the volume and channel selects. But then there is “settingsâ€; “page’ (page?) and “SEL†with a bunch of arrows. There are also buttons for “LAST†and “FAVâ€? There are three buttons “A, B and Câ€- I don’t have a clue what they are for. There are different colors for the buttons red, yellow blue, light blue which signify absolutely nothing. That’s just part of the problem. They squeeze all these little buttons into such a small space. Now I have small hands and yet I’m always hitting the wrong button even if I know what the button means. Of course at my age declining vision further complicates the effort to properly use the remote.
But the bigger issue here, beyond these annoyances is simplicity. I thought technology was to make our lives easier-simpler. Has it? Remember we used to have get up and walk all the way to the TV to turn the channel or turn up the volume? What an ingenious device the remote seemed back then. So where are we now? We have, I think, 4 remotes-5 really but we haven’t been able to find one for the longest time. They are of similar design as described above. So we in our 7th decade (yikees ) likely will have to find our glasses to make sure we hit the right buttons. Or find our glasses to search for the remote. I don’t know how many miles I’ve averaged over the years searching for the remote or the right remote. I’m sure long ago I surpassed the mileage that would have accumulated had I made the 5-6 foot trek across the room to manually switch the dials as in the old days. My wife, always helpful, will suggest I go to the TV rather than fruitlessly search for the remote. She doesn’t understand it’s a “man thingâ€.
We have four recliners in our living room. Talk about remote-eating monsters-there’s a hundred places the remote can be swallowed up. Here’s an all too typical scenario. You’re watching TV, remote in hand so you can surf the channels during commercials. The phone rings. If you are like us you have wireless phones in the house-very convenient- but just like a remote-you can never find them. So you get up thinking “Where did I leave that darn phone?†You start dashing around the house ; remote in hand searching for the phone. The phone is ringing all the time teasing you. In your head you’re counting down with the answering machine. You pick it up just as the message comes on and you hear your wife intoning: “We’re not able to come to the phone...â€. You find yourself yelling “Hello Hello Hang on †trying to be heard over the slow-motion transcribed voice of your beloved. The tape finishes just as the calling party hangs up. The ID says “private caller†You yell at the wireless phone using words your mother would never approve of.
You storm back to where the phone should have been hanging and not so gently slam it down. You sulk back to the couch and continue watching NASCAR (Hey I’m a fan). You discover the race ended while you were shouting at the phone. You utter another not-so-favorite word of your mother’s and reach for the TV remote.
It’s gone.
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