We are always a little behind when it comes to technological advances.  While most people are texting, twittering, iPoding and whatever-the-helling, we are still over here playing with fire and saying things like, “Ow!  Fire hot!”

We were very proud of ourselves when we bought a Gamecube while it was still the most recently available Nintendo offering of the day.  Hours of entertainment, got a whole bunch more than our money’s worth, it was great.  But after a while we were consuled out, and ready to move on.  We packed up the Cube and didn’t look at it or think about it for a at least a couple of years.

Recently I’d been getting this urge to drag out the Gamecube from wherever it was buried, in one of the many boxes of crap in our house.  We’d moved a couple of times in the last two years, and we just haven’t had the energy, inclination, inspiration, or self discipline to actually finish organizing our house into something resembling a home.  We have stacks of boxes in the living room, the kitchen, our bedroom, the attic, our garage, and the in-laws’ garage.  After much digging, piling, and tantrum-throwing, I discovered the Cube and all its accessories in a box in the kitchen.  The games were with the movies and a tangle of many electronic cables that at one time served some purpose, but now just fill up space under the category of “Might need later.”

So I finally extricated the Gamecube and all its accessories and games (it’s been a couple of hours by now), and I’m all jazzed and ready to play.  Hook it up, turn on the TV, adjust the input setting on the remote, turn on the cube and…

Everything is in black and white.  What?  Graphics are fine, game plays fine, but there is no color.  How is this possible?

I frantically google (yes, I’ve upgraded to google, have you heard of it?) the holy stuffing out of combinations like “gamecube black and white help” and “color problems gamecube”, and I may have thrown in a couple of “wtf gamecube is being a jerk”.  As far as I could tell, the the most consistent results I came up with were that it was either the Cube itself, or there was something wrong/broken with the video input cable that came with the Cube.  Since option number 2 was cheaper, we decided to go with that and hope for the best.

So the next day we head out and pick up a new Gamecube cable, taking the opportunity to trade in some games I knew or suspected I wouldn’t play again, and with the credit they ended up owing me $1.34–HA!  I can at least be proud of myself for that move.  Ahem.  So we go home, hook everything up, and power it up.

Black and white.

I was so disappointed I could cry.  We couldn’t afford to repair our Gamecube.  It was over.  Finished.  All my hopes of rescuing Zelda dashed…

But then I began to think… I really put my brain to use about this problem I was having.  Yes, the fire was hot, but perhaps I could use a stick to prop Twilight Princess over the fire and…  err, what I mean is, I may not be able to afford to repair my Gamecube, but I bet I could buy a used Gamecube pretty cheap!  I mean the Wii’s been out for a while, right?

After making a few phone calls, I discovered a Used Game shop down the street from my house was selling them for only $25!  That’s not bad at all, especially having saved myself $15 on that stupid cable purchase by trading in all my games, so it’d be okay to splurge a little here, right?

So I ran down to the little shop and picked up the new Cube (ugh, my experience there is best saved for some other post), bring it home, hook it all up (still using my new cable, you know, just in case), flip everything on…

Black and white.

WTF!!!  I seriously felt like chucking my entire living room set out the window at that moment, I was so confounded.  I try the old cable again, still black and white.  I could not believe our TV–our brand new TV–was broken!

The irony is that despite my record as a TV owner, when the Gamecube first came up black and white I was convinced that it couldn’t be my TV, because this TV was barely a month old.  It had to be the Cube.  I stupidly took that for granted, so much so that I traded in a bunch of games, spent my credit on a new cable (we have three now!), spent $25 on a new Gamecube altogether, before realizing it was the TV itself.

What’s worse?  I stupidly didn’t try the Cube in any of the other jacks until after everything went down.  Much to my chagrin and humiliation, the problem was only with that particular set of jacks.  We have four sets.  *Hangs head in shame*

Ahem, so, the moral here is:  Anyone interested in buying a Gamecube?

The plot thickens!

Anyway, the TV broke just outside the warranty, and we were all sad and outraged and so forth. So my in-laws were like, “Here, take our old one–the picture sucks, but it’s something for now!”  And we were all, “Yay!”

The picture did suck by the way.  Whatever makes color work in tube TVs (and I won’t pretend to know) was all messed up in this one. Everything was 80s-green-and-pink (one of my most despised color combinations, I’ll have you know). =P But I digress.

Anyway, we had that crappy TV for a couple of years, and then my parents bought an uber-cool home theater sized flatscreen plasma thingamadealio, and told us, “Hey, we have this old TV, and yeah, it’s old and it’s a tube TV, but all the colors work and it’s a better picture than the other one! Plus it’s friggin’ HUGE and weighs about 200 pounds! Like owning a man, but better, because it’s entertaining and stays mostly out of the way!  Plus you always know where it is, and if it annoys you there’s a handy mute button! It’ll be great!” And we were all, “Yay!”

So we lug that beast home, nearly break it just trying to get it in the apartment (we are both 5′5″, and we scarcely weigh 230 combined), somehow manage to not kill ourselves in the process, get it all set up and it’s all cool!  Works great, picture’s great, everything is fan-freakin’-tabulous.  So then my in-laws are like, “Sweet, can we have our old TV back? Because we’d love to set the Wii up in the office and that way we don’t have to fight over who gets to use the TV!” And we were like, “Sure, take it, our new TV is great and we’re all good here now! Plus we’ve been hoarding it for two years and it’s yours, so it’s only fair that you get it back now!” And they were all, “Yay!”

Well, we had the big one for a few months, but then it was time to move again (the second move in less than as many years).  So we wrestle with it again and it’s a friggin’ nightmare because it weighs more than Mount Rushmore being raided by a sea of Leprechauns (with all their gold, mind you).  But we manage to get it all set up, once again without hurting ourselves or it (we have youth to thank for that, without youth I think that TV might still be in the middle of the parking lot at our old apartment). Get it all set up and we’re good and everything.

A couple of weeks later, the TV completely burns out. Everything is dead except sound. Call around, everyone says it’s more cost effective to just buy a new one because no one even makes tube TVs anymore except really crappy companies, and it’s just pointless to repair them in this technological age.

That is why we spent $700 on a new TV. We paid extra for the lifetime warranty. We are done screwing around with TVs. We are so freakin’ tired of moving TVs in and out of our house for the last five years, we are just done.

That monstrosity that was once my parents’ TV, BTW, is still in our bedroom, on the floor by the dresser covered in a bedsheet. We just can’t bring ourselves to move it again. [Insert emotions, and things like fists being shaken in the air, the finger, etc. etc.]

We’re looking into having someone pick it up for us, as I understand there are companies that do this.  God bless ‘em.  I just hope they don’t charge by the pound…

Author’s Note:  This is in no way intended to make anyone feel bad about giving us TVs that have crappy pictures, or weigh etc. and then break on us and so forth.  We have a lot of gratitude for those of you who have bestowed on us your appliances.  ;)

For example, the last time I was drunk (roughly five minutes ago) I became extremely enamored of chess. I know this seems off the subject, but bear with me. I watched the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” and afterward I started reading chess related items on the internet, the entertainment of which was strengthened by the amount of alcohol in my system. At any rate, I was reading about chess, which led, predictably, to staring at the floor. And thanks to old Cappy Morgan, I started to notice that the inanimate objects around the room, particularly the carpet, were actually moving towards me. It was as though they wanted to get to know me better, and maybe take me out later for drinks. I found this extremely fascinating for the three seconds it took for me to fall down. But the real humor came from noticing that it all happened in slow motion, which takes place a lot when you’re drunk, and therefore can be overdone. Just like in all those action movies that contain some scene where the crook or hero walks toward the camera in slow motion while something behind him (building, car, airplane, the neighbor’s dog, etc.) explodes, or is just generally spouting flames everywhere.

Here I must take a moment to “reign myself in” before I start to send the wrong message, such as: “Walking away from fire in slow motion is no longer cool.” Oh wait, that’s actually a good message. I meant: “Drinking is cool! It doesn’t really make you act like a piece of asparagus that’s been dipped in LSD and then jammed into an electrical outlet!” Where was I going with this? Oh yes, before I start accidentally sending that message, let me just say this: Nothing happens when an LSD laced stalk of asparagus gets plugged in, so don’t even bother. No wait! Let me try this again: I don’t recommend getting drunk on any kind of regular, or irregular for that matter, basis. Despite the humor that can arise, alcohol tends to magnify emotions, so that you start blubbering like an idiot when Tom Hanks falls through the floor while wrapped in a carpet in “Money Pit.” Also, it can put you in the compromising position of simultaneously trying to decide whether or not to throw up, while determining how far away the toilet is, in inches (268).

So, all you young folks out there, please leave getting drunk to the professionals, like Ted Kennedy. Also, when contemplating gravity, don’t forget your asparagus! I mean helmet!

When my woman gets a hankering
For a little playful spanking
She knows that I’m her satisfying man

So we hop into the sack
And she lays across my lap
Then I spank her till I cannot feel my hands

Rosy cheeks
They look so good on you
Rosy cheeks
And you know that we ain’t through
Until it hurts me more than it hurts you

We use all the common phrases
But with slightly twisted meanings
And if you get confused it really shows

‘Cause “screwing” isn’t what you think
And “69″ is a record
And “doggy style” is a spanking on the nose

Rosy cheeks
They look so good on you
Rosy cheeks
And you know that we ain’t through
Until it hurts me more than it hurts you

Are we really so profane
Just ’cause we dabble in some pain
After all we meant for better and for worse

And we really aren’t that different
in spite of what you’ve heard
You think “safe” means use a condom
We think “safe” means choose a word

Rosy cheeks
They look so good on you
Rosy cheeks
And you know that we ain’t through
Until it hurts me more than it hurts you

It has also been said that an Irish man would step over the bodies of twelve naked women to get to a bottle of whisky; my personal limit is five.

hair everywhere oh god

Background info: Hava is my girlfriend.

———–

I am a brawny butterball
a corpulent cow of three thousand eighty-two pounds.
Look how my stomach sags like a hammock
strung between stumpy legs.
Point to a beast whose proportions are as fine as these!
What’s that?
You find my jowls rolly,
each polished gray fold flawlessly foldy,
every blush brushstroke copacetic in its utter pinkness—
of course you do!

Copyright (C) 2009 ThePontificators.com