Chewing Gum for the Eyes

"Nah, it's dead easy. You won't have any trouble, trust me."

Of course I should have known better, particularly as these words were coming from an electronics store saleschild (See
"Many Happy Returns"). However, this kid seemed genuinely knowledgeable and helpful; and after all, he had no reason to cause me pain did he? A few hours later I was beginning to wonder.

I'd had misgivings from the get-go, of course. Ever since the picture on our trusty 18-year old TV had taken on a lozenge shape and gradually became smaller and smaller, I knew that this was going to cost me a lot of money and bother. It had seen good service, since long before I'd arrived in the States and considering the amount of use it's had (Dear Wife tends to use TV for background noise) and that it had been dropped from a reasonable height during the move when The World's Most Irritating Dog ™ knocked it off the couch, we didn't really begrudge it anything.

We have an almost equally ancient portable TV, which I won in a raffle many years ago so that was brought down from the bedroom, receiving a field promotion to main TV set. I was fine with this arrangement as I rarely watch the darn thing anyway, but as I said, Dear Wife is something of an addict and she was less than thrilled. So, after weeks of listening to her whine I finally allowed myself to be worn down and agreed that yes, we could dump a chunk of our dwindling savings into a new gogglebox. Anything for a bit of peace and quiet, that's me. And the World Cup was about to start and you can't appreciate the finer points of the beautiful game on a 12 inch screen now, can you?

I figured 3, maybe 4 hundred dollars tops and we'd be in business but as you may have guessed, it's a long time since I last bought a television. Pretty much, that would buy you a shoebox with a hole cut in the front and a puppet inside. No nowadays, TV sets, like apparently everything else, require an investment several times the price of my first car. And if you'd like it to work past 2008, when the whole world will be digitalized, they cost even more.

Dear Wife took copious notes as the saleschild jabbered on in that foreign language they all have. I can't even remember enough of the jargon to make fun of it here, but at one point I had to hold up my hand and ask "You do realize, we're both over forty and haven't the faintest idea what you're on about, right?" But of course, there was no stopping him and after a while, my eyes glazed over so I wandered off to check out the home theaters (which aren't going to be an option until I either win the lottery, or figure out how to rob banks and get away with it.)

Eventually I was called back and asked to choose between several dinner table-sized televisions. This didn't take too long, but naturally we'd only just begun.

"Now, you'll also need RF Cables, Video Cables, Audio Cables, Component Cables; a Monster Power Surge Protector, a kick in the nuts and would you like fries with that?"

By the time we reached the check out, it was all just so many numbers and I wrote the check in a daze. Still, it was exciting being the new owner of a flat screen TV and as we apparently had also bought a DVD player, I was looking forward to being able to watch my movies in the rectangular format in which they were filmed. We even stopped by Target to pick up a couple of DVDs in order to try it out (Apollo 13 for me, some piece of soppy junk for Dear Wife). It was heady stuff.

Unfortunately, pixies were not included in the purchase which meant I'd to complete the set up myself. I was a shade apprehensive about this, my track record with technical stuff not being exactly stellar, but the saleschild assured me it would be a snap. Plus, I've recently sharpened a chainsaw all by myself (albeit under supervision) so I figured I could probably handle this without too much problem.

OK, you already know where this is going, don't you?

Hours later, tired, frustrated and very, very cranky I sat amidst a pile of cardboard, Styrofoam and the remains of dozens of blister packs (oh, there's a special place in hell for whoever invented those fiendish items of torment), no nearer my goal of watching The Godfather in widescreen format. The TV itself worked OK, although the saleschild had warned us we couldn't expect the crystal clear, sharper-than-real-life picture we were enjoying in the store. Our basic satellite service uses low quality cables apparently and it won't be until we junk all our current equipment and upgrade to the nifty (read: expensive) High Definition stuff that we'll get the full benefit of the technology. I wasn't too thrilled about that but could see the logic behind it.

No, the big challenge came when we tried to hook the thing up through the VCR and/or the DVD player. It should have been very simple. The user manual (I can't call it an instruction book - I was assigned text books in college that were smaller than this) even contained the sentence "Connecting a VCR or DVD is very simple."

Pah!

Hooking up the VCR meant everything worked just fine until I hit the play button and received a fuzzy blizzard superimposed with the warning "No Signal". The DVD player on the other hand, worked just fine. As long as we were willing to forego actually viewing the DVD as it's running, that is.

I undid cables, did them up again, removed them from holes and pushed them into other holes. I even attempted to follow the user manual several times but nothing seemed to work. It didn't take long before I was swearing and throwing things across the room but even that didn't help. We've had the darn thing for almost two weeks now and I still haven't had the emotional wherewithal to call the store and ask them to walk me through the process.

And the World Cup went ahead and started without me. And the games are on in the middle of the day. And I have no way to record them.

It's a good job I get to work from home sometimes.