I consider myself at the forefront of technology. I have an iPhone, which I adore. I have several relatively modern Mac computers running the very latest operating system (including Vista! Ugh). I have the fastest DSL that “at&t” will provide. I have … an iPod shuffle. Uhh shit, is that it?

Maybe it is because my favorite new gadget is my new TV.

Let me tell you about my new TV. It’s silver plastic. It has stereo speakers. It weighs a hundred pounds. It has like three inputs, maybe four.

It’s a Sony KV-27FS100.

State of the fucking art.

In 2002.

Holland’s friend at work got a new plasma screen (or whatever — it’s flat) from his parents so with a small house and a big heart, he was willing to give away his old tv, which was only a gift to begin with. Props to you, Mister well I don’t know your last name. So there I was in South Austin (what a trek) loading this heavy bastard of plastic and glass into my back seat.

For nearly the past two years Holland and I have been watching most of our TV on my 20 inch iMac, downloading it from, well it must be from something. That wire plugs into the wall and I imagine it goes somewhere. We sure do get a lot of shows and movies from … somewhere. And no commercials either. I subscribe to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on iTunes and the rest, well I’m a big slut for hard drives and let’s leave it at that.

We have had a television, a 12 inch model from some abandoned room in Holland’s mom’s house. It’s very cute and easy to pick up with one hand. Back in NJ after I failed to convince Verizon that I only wanted DSL and not a telephone, then I subscribed to Comcast and got HBO by lucky accident, it got more use than I expected. But since moving to Texas the rabbit ears don’t pick up much worth watching. It’s kind of nice since you’ll turn on the tv when you know there’s something you must watch (mainly the Superbowl and the Simpsons). Otherwise it’s off.

It surprises me what a difference a big TV makes. There’s still literally nothing worth watching. With some sophisticated RCA rabbit ears bought only 2 years ago at Target, we get only 6 stations in English (but I’m debating my decision to delete the Spanish channels, since they offer an incredible level of enthusiasm). As far as I can tell, TV is a government franchised method to advertise pickup trucks.

But these 27 bright diagonal inches of nothing entice me. Only a little bigger (and less widescreen) than my iMac, which holds literally over 600GB of entertainment offerings, I’m watching CSI Miami reruns on TV. I like CSI: Miami because Horatio cares about the children.

Maybe this will pass.

About the time this TV was manufactured in late 2004, I bought a Nintendo GameCube. I hooked it up via trickery to an old Apple computer monitor. Recently Holland and I have enjoyed Paper Mario on the Game Cube and wish there were more GameCube games worth playing. Sadly there are not.

After so much time where the excuse not to buy a Wii was that our TV was the same size as the controller, now what is our excuse?

The excuse is you can’t fucking buy a Wii, even a year and a half after its debut. It’s just as well, because the next time I go to Target to pick up prescription drugs, expired meat, and beer, if they have a Wii on the shelf then it’s mine.

This is regarding Pop Culture.
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