Quote:
"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Television, like Old Marley is dead. Dead as a door-nail and it still haunts and torments us with promises of a better future while all the while dragging the forged chains of TV Guides from the past along with it. My path to entertainment's redemption and my salvation from the endless suffering of terrible sitcoms, ridiculous reality based shows, overly bias news programs and the eternal rattling and gasping of those most hideous of spectres, the info-mercials, had to begin somewhere. The solution was obvious. Just turn the damn electronic box off.
I could not bring myself to do just that. It wasn't that easy. Or was it? What was compelling me to continually cough up the $60.00 a month for what was promised to be endless entertainment? Was I happy? Certainly not. Was I spending my valuable and scarce leisure hours enjoying the holiday feasts that were being served up each night? In a word, no. I had to figure out why it was so damned hard cutting myself away from that Ghost of Television Present. In the original tale I've used as a vehicle for this rant, the Ghost of Christmas Present gave Scrooge a dire warning.
Quote:
" 'My life upon this globe is very brief,' replied the Ghost. 'It ends to-night.'
'To-night!' cried Scrooge.
'To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.'
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?'
'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here.'
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!' "
The innocence of television has been long lost and all but forgotten by those that remember what sitting in front of the telly through the 60's was like. Magic. Magic enough to stay my hand at dialing up my provider and canceling my tv dish. Original ideas abounded, Hell, we had Irwin Allen to thank for that. Television was an adventure. At least it was when the parents left it alone. So "Ignorance" wasn't the problem. I knew what I had as a child and loved it. It's the "Want" that's the Bogie here. The culprit. The chain that fetters my hand. It was the "Want" in having tv to be as it was, nostalgia be damned, that tormenting mistress! So unlike Scrooge who was warned most of the boy Ignorance, it is the girl Want that froze my bones.
So what is the solution to my dilemma? Do I bury the Ghost of Television Present? What would that leave me with, the Ghosts of Television Past and 5 fuzzy channels off the old rooftop antenna? Hardly promising, most assuredly far from exciting but it would at least be free. No more tithings to the Tallyman. Hell, I could even sit through the commercials knowing that I wasn't loosing a sou. I think I might be finding my salvation in becoming more like Scrooge and saving a farthing or two and living that spartan life....So be it. Scrooge it shall be. I killed the dish. It was good.
Quote:
" Stave IV
The Last of the Spirits
THE PHANTOM SLOWLY, GRAVELY, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
'I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?' said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
'You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not yet happened, but will happen in the time before us,' Scrooge pursued. 'Is that so, Spirit?'
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
'Ghost of the Future!' he exclaimed, 'I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?'
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them. "
That hand...that fleshless digit pointed through the mists and they parted before my very eyes...yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus. Behold the big box electronics stores, whose shelves are bending under the weight of a multitude of box sets.
*cue a choral chorus*
Hundreds of televisons shows all lined up like those toys in the window at the beginning of our tale. In one fell swoop the Spectre of Christmas Future saved me from my Doom as a newly born Scrooge, and showed me the Tiny Tim that lay hidden inside. I could have both damn-it! Both! Penny pinching tv and the shows of my youth, AD FREE. I shall use the tolls the dish extracted to fuel the nostalgia of my childhood....
Thus ends my tale of woe and not so much as a rant as I had thought. All is good now and all is well. The tv has now become a friend again. My wish for you all this holiday season is to enjoy yourselves in the company of others and to not fear the Tallyman as there is almost always a way around him and his Bogies.
Tk
