Doing The Electronics Dance

In the last two months, the scanner died, the digital camera got sick, and the kitchen CD player went on strike. And why shouldn't it go on strike? After all the poor old doddering thing is more than a year old-- ancient by electronic gadget standards. At this point, it just wants to put its feet up on the ottoman, eat Sara Lee Snackin' Cake, and watch reruns of The Rifleman. Playing CDs is exhausting and while the occasional Tom Waits song is still doable, my new Christmas CD is absolutely out of the question.

And if the CD player is ancient, the computer has long passed senility-- and it shows. If we ask it (politely) to download flash or pdf. files, the computer blinks at us in shock as though we have asked it to do a strip tease dance in front of a crowd of drunken iPods.

The fact is Dave could slave away 24 hours a day in the salt mines and his paycheck still couldn't keep up with the insane blackmail demands of the Obsolete 'R Us electronics that make our house the happy haven we call home. Last summer, for example, was a nightmare of consumerism gone awry.

For reasons I am not at liberty to discuss, we have to have two TV sets. And since we are physically incapable of watching commercials (we begin by wretching and then pass out from brain damage) we have to have two videotape players. So at the beginning of the summer we had our full and complete quota of:
2 TVs
2 VCRs
0 DVD players

Then tragedy struck and one of the VCRs decided to eat tapes. We put up with this for an absurdly long time. Then:
Dave: (Insert Bad Words Here) we have to get a new VCR.
LJ: Hey! This would be a good time to get a DVD player just like all the Kool Kidz have.
Dave: I don't think we can hook up a DVD player to our TVs. They are pretty old.
LJ: (Laughs carelessly) Oh Dave, don't be so silly.

Literary sidenote: Whenever you see a character laughing "carelessly" you know that doom is lurking up ahead on the Road of Life.

So we went to Ed's Evil Emporium where they sell cheap electronics and we brought home a combination VCR/DVD player. After a long and thoughtful discussion of where we would most enjoy watching DVDs-- i.e. living room vs. the bedroom-- Dave turned out to be 50% right. It did not want to get married to the old geezer in the bedroom, but it did hook up with the living room TV. All was well. Sort of. There were many convoluted discussions at the video rental store.
Dave: Tape or DVD?
LJ: Well, we could watch the comedy in the living room and then go into the bedroom with our tasty snacks and watch the drama.
Dave: The comedy DVDs are all gone. They only have it on tape.
LJ: Too bad, I hear the outtakes are hilarious. How about we watch this documentary in the living room, switch to this drama in the bedroom and watch the comedy next week?.

These halcyon days of yore lasted about two weeks. And then Doom dropped by and broke our TV in the bedroom.
Dave: (More Bad Words)
LJ: Hey! This would be a good time to get a flat screen TV like all the Kool Kidz have.
Dave: (Sigh)
Off once more to Ed's Evil Emporium, tra la, and we trotted home with a shiny, new flat screen TV. Quick discussion in re: living room vs. bedroom and bedroom won.

Story so far: The living room has an old TV with a new DVD player, the bedroom has a new TV with an old VCR player. You just know this can't last.

Doom dropped in and broke our other TV.
Dave: (Several Bad Words)
LJ: (Different Bad Words)

Another trip, another TV. Not so big this time, not so expensive, but still a flat screen. About two days later, the old VCR player decided it just couldn't keep up with the lusty young TV and dropped dead of a heart attack. More bad words, more trips, more electronics.

Which is how we came to end the summer with a new quota:
2 TVs
2 VCR/DVD players
274 Swear words
More than 2 dollars charged on our credit card

So if that CD player thinks it is going to be retiring any time soon, it had better think again.