Reasons why it is stupid to buy an expensive television

Holler there, cyber stalkers! (yeah, right. No one reads this thing, but hey, I can dream of a world full of restraining orders, cant I?) Been on a slight hiatus slurking around on craigslist looking for a larger entertainment center because, guess what? We have a new TV!

It is that magical time of year called Tax Refund Time. During TRT the sales of zillion dollar television sets seems to skyrocket, especially by people who make five dollars a year. It is interesting. The bigger, swankier and more confrusing a set can be the better people seem to like it. Not me.

If it was up to me, I would make all televisions be the old console kind. You know, the kind with wood paneling and knobs. We had one growing up. It was in the house when I was born and it still isnt dead. Plasmas dont do that! You also cant kick them, either! What, I would like to know, is the reason to have a TV if you cant kick it when the shows are crappy or when Victor on the Young and the Restless divorces Nikki for Ashley and you cant stand it??

I digress. So, knowing that it is TRT and especially living on a military post where privates with nothing better to do than buy bazillion dollar boob tubes every year, Paul (brilliant man that he is!) started looking at the craigslist here and found about eleventy billion sets for about 30-40 bucks apiece. we got a 32'' wonder for 30 dollars! Oh yeah!

People laughed at me and my excitement over this purchase. I told them to go to hell and that they are stupid. This is why (and my original point).

1. You can kick a tube TV.

2. I have kids. Kids area slobbery, tantrum throwing, juice box tossing, destructive creatures. I have a hard enough time scotch guarding my furniture and worrying over that. The last thing I need to have on my mind, other than the rising price of dr peppers, is the screen on my idiot box getting all messed up cause one of my baby darlings barfed on it or touched it with fingers coated in macaroni and cheese dust.

3. new tvs burn out and do not last as long as a million lb tube TV. It is the honest truth.

4.I dont give a fig about having a crystal clear picture and being able to see the pores on Victor Newman's nose. As long as I can still see his moustache, that is all I care about.

5. We dont play video games in our house. We are too busy doing other things that are way more productive like searching the free column on craigslist. That and writing cheesy blogs no one will read and drinking store brand sodas and deciding which tastes the most like dr pepper. My vote is on Dr. Bob from Harris Teeter. Anyway, I have noticed most people obsessed with the badass new TVs are also obsessed with video games and have every single one known to man. I wont even get started on that tangent.

6. new TVs are expensive and cost money. Money which could be spent on more Dr. Bob.

7. I am not an environmental weirdo. I recycle (if I dont the army will take me behind the woodshed and one of us wont return) and I am cheap, so therefore I am pretty environmentally friendly by default, and since everyone is tossing out their tube TV's, I am just preventing those lovely beasts from yesteryear from ending up in a landfill all alone with no one to watch them.


So, long story short, new gigantic zillion pound TV, but our entertainment center (solid cherry, queen anne styling bought at Kinston Used Furniture for 98 bucks--Holleration!) is a fraction of an inch too small for our new glassy-eyed inducing, QVC addict making machine. And all of the armoires I have seen are ugly. Or overpriced. Or made for the new, ultra thin (that just makes TVs sound like a sanitary napkin to me.) sets and wont support the massive awesome that is our gray monster. I will just perch it on top of the other one. We can pretend it is a console.