In 1979, we had a black and white TV that had rabbit ears on top.
For you kids out there, that’s a television antenna with two telescoping VHF rods projecting from a weighted base sitting on top of the TV. A cord ran from the base to a pair of screws on the back of the TV. You get better reception with the twin rods.
The big pain in the ass is when you have a weak signal or begin to lose reception. You start seeing “snow.” Snow is a screenful of little scrambled circles that interfere with the image.
To fix that, you get up, walk over to the TV, and move the rabbit ears around until the snow goes away. You can change the channel, but be aware that each channel receives signals from a different transmitter so each one may look its best with the rabbit ears arranged in a different position.
A bigger pain in the ass is all the commercials.
When you just get sick of the shitty reception and the fucking ads, what you did was go to the kitchen during the commercial break to refill your drink, perhaps even check the messages on your answering machine.
You tried to watch TV but ended up in the kitchen wondering why you shouldn’t just turn the thing off and do something else.
The good news is that with advancements in technology, and perhaps a little less greed, the future will fix all this crap.
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In 2026, we had a 55-inch flatscreen HD TV mounted on the wall. We were streaming feature films without commercial interruptions. There’s a small fee, of course, but it’s great not have the interference. There are multiple inputs on the flatscreen, and one of them is connected to an HD antenna.
For you kids out there, that’s an antenna shaped like a thick piece of black plastic notebook paper with a wire connected to an input of the flatscreen. When there’s something on local TV, we switch to the HD antenna. You get better reception with the antenna in the window.
The big pain in the ass is when you have a weak signal or begin to lose reception. You start seeing a screenful of little digital scrambled squares that interfere with the image.
To fix that, you get up, walk over to the TV, and move the black antenna card around until the scramble goes away. You can change the channel, but be aware that each channel may look its best with the rabbit ears arranged in a different position.
A bigger pain in the ass are the fucking commercials. Fortunately, we paid a fee not to see them. Wait, all of a sudden there are fucking commercials again. However, if we pay an even higher motherfucking monthly streaming fee, then we won’t see commercials. Until they change the fees again, of course.
Fuck this. I’m just going into the kitchen to refill my drink. Perhaps even check the messages on my cellphone.
The good news is that with advancements in technology, and perhaps a little less greed, the future will fix all this shit.
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In 2073, we had SimWalls in four different com sectors of our lunar habitat and could watch 3D simulations of oldies and HoloQuads beamed from Earth.
The big pain in the ass is when the moon is between Earth-based International Space Antennae transmitters during a new lunar phase. The signal degrades a little.
To fix that, you get up, walk over...
THE END_