Now I know we have all lost out collective minds. I just saw a video about a television that costs more than my car. I'm not kidding. I'll admit, the thing is beautiful, but it's still just a TV. That is to say, a chunk of plastic with wires running through it.
I enjoy a good movie as much as anyone and I know there is an entire world of video games both online and off. I just won't venture there.
Growing up, back in the stone age, there were three television stations and they were black and white. Seems like they went off the air around 11pm and didn't come back until about 7 in the morning. I remember getting up early on Saturday to watch cartoons and having to watch the test pattern on the screen until Tom and Jerry came on. Those were the days.
Now, it seems we're all imprisoned by electronics. If it's not our computers, it's our television or a play station. I think we're hypnotized by the glitter and pissing our lives away in an electrically enduced fantastical coma. For goodness sake, unplug from the matrix! This is your life we're talking about! You're not going to get another one.
So now we have super televisions with a g-zillion channels and a million g-zillion commercials selling us stuff we don't need and really don't want if we were to pause long enough to think. I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's quote. He said, "Getting and Spending we lay waste our lives."
But back to the television. This particular super TV is made by LG, but I'm sure Sony and Samsung and all the other big consumer electronic companies will soon have something similar, if they don't already.
The LG OLED TV 55em9700 is big. It has a 55 inche screen, but the most compelling feature is the dazzling details, rich color and perfect black, plus its ability to maintain detail even with rapidly changing scenes. This is probably why it's so appealing to gamers. Here's where I saw the video. Watch it and see for yourself, but be prepared. It's got a hefty price tag, like $12,000 hefty. Yep. That's right. $12,000 for a TV. It's smart and it's slick, but it's still just a TV.
I imagine, like some low-budget horror flick, once you look at the screen your mind will be taken over. Maybe it already has. Maybe that's why we have to prepare for the zombie apocolypse.
We've forgotten how to live. We've forgotten how delicious an ordinary life can be. Somehow, someone sold us the idea that we are all special. We aren't special. We're ordinary, every last one of us. That's where out power lies, in our ordinariness.
I was married for too long to a cocaine and meth addict. Once, in a rare moment of honesty, he admitted that he could not face the ordinariness of his life without cocaine. Maybe television is that same addiction for some people and now they can get a greater high with a $12,000 TV.
