My roof leaked onto my TV. One rainy night when I was away the poor thing drowned, MAFS and all. I called a roof plumber and he turned up brandishing a silicone gun up alongside his temple like Bond with his Berretta, and he fixed the roof and I bought another TV and placed it where the drowned one had stood. The next time it rained, the new TV was enfiladed with runnels and rivulets and goaded into a wan supernova because the roof man turned out to be more of a faith healer who prayed for droughts as his business model rather than a guy who plugged leaks.
So, two TVs down now. And it’s going to get worse. Stick around. I get dumber. My misanthropy gets ratified. Because another roof guy turns up, and this one lets loose a retinue of apprentices to skitter across my roof iron like tattooed chimps, hunting leaks and extruding goo into cracks and crannies. Good as new, they say.
I buy another TV. There’s only one place in the sitting room it can logically go – right on top of the chalk silhouettes of the dead Samsung and the drowned Sony. But I feel uneasy about putting it there. Can I trust those goo-extruding apprentices? Have they extruded efficaciously? Or merely joyously? I have a foreboding that what I’m asking of this smart TV is an unconscionable demand like that made by “Bull” Antill when he ordered the Light Horse to perform the third charge at The Nek. Everyone recognised that as certain, pointless death, and did it anyway. Goodbye, cobber. God bless you.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
Now, the difference between a roof plumber and a cigarette seller is this: if you give the cigarette seller the money, they are legally bound to give you the smokes, but if you give a roof plumber the money you’ve more or less placed a bet, and you must wait until it rains to see if you’ve won, by which time the roof plumber is many shires distant on unrelated escapades. I lost. Again. As I was paying the bloke at the local tip, he eyed me suspiciously and asked where I was getting all these new, and newly dead, TVs. He couldn’t figure out what sort of scam I was running.
The next roof repairer arrived pre-heated from arguing with the cops about one thing and another, but he soon cooled down and fixed the roof. He did. It has rained since and the newest new TV has lived to tell the tale. Which is good. But … not nearly as good as it ought to be. Because now I have the chance to watch TV – and that’s a flawlessly dismal way to kill a night.
If nothing but tosh is broadcast, then I don’t care how big and pixilated and beyond reality your viewing experience is, you’d be better off gluing your face to the floor and watching dust mites socialise. If your TV is only worth what is broadcast, which seems right and fair, then Blaupunkt et al should pay you to take the thing home.
You’d be better off gluing your face to the floor and watching dust mites socialise.
How did this happen? In the 1950s, bright-eyed futurists told our forebears of a life-enhancing invention the like of which humanity had never seen. Sit it in your living room (under a sturdy roof – the thing is not a submarine) and stare into its glass belly and in there you will see the wonders of this world and many more worlds besides.
This magic device will contain every story and every symphony of which humanity is capable. All loveliness will be in it, as well as live battles between gladiators and beasts, and beauties that will have you edging helplessly towards the screen, and monsters that will have you sheltering behind your sofa, beguiling mysteries and bloody wars, news from Mongolia and fart jokes from Hollywood. This was TV’s promise and potential … but you wanted MAFS instead. Yes, I blame you, Australia. My TV is sating your appetite.
