So, last night Zeus was sitting up there on mount Olympus, when he looked down and realized Ed was enjoying life too much. He thought he had already foiled Ed by striking down his hacked satellite box so that he no longer received a steady stream of boob channels. But what is this? Ed was still happy? The Zeus saw the source of Ed's happiness... it was his FREE GIANT TELEVISION. So Zeus, in a fit of anger, threw down a lightning bolt and doth smote Ed's FREE GIANT TELEVISION. And Ed was sad. Woe upon be to Ed!
Seriously, I am quite upset. I was driving home yesterday and I saw Alan pumping along the road on his bike with a roll of paper towels in a plastic sack. We both arrived at my house at the same time and he said he was sitting his hole when he heard a loud electric surge and a pop and his Internet connection went dead. He thought the house had been hit by lightning.
So I went inside and checked the cable modem. Sure enough the wireless router was dead. It would not even turn on when I plugged it in. The cable modem had lights lit up, however they were blinking moronically and nothing was being transmitted. It was probably fried as well.
That really sucked, but it was not the end of the world. I'll have to call some bright house tech out so he can roam through my house and touch my stuff before he installs a new cable modem. So, no Internet for a couple of days. I would live. As long as I had my giant TV. I wandered into the living room and hit the button to turn it on. The little green light did not turn on. Confused, I hit it again. Nothing. That is when I realized it was dead. I fell to my knee's and shook my fist at the heavens. Whhhyyy?
I liked that TV. It was one of the largest tube televisions mass-produced. It hulked on my living room floor with all its tube goodness. The picture was bright and sharp and I loved it. Tonight I will yank open the back in hopes that perhaps it was simply a fuse or something that blew, however I do not have high hopes. Once a television loses its soul it cannot be brought back to life. It was strange because the television was plugged into a multi-plug that I thought had a surge protector. Nothing else that was plugged into it was damaged.
I ended up just laying in bed last night and reading a book. Life sucks.
2026 Update
Dialing the time machine back to 2006, where Zeus has personally murdered Ed's giant tube television.
Ah, 2006. A time when a television was a massive tube shrine that you wrestled into your living room and mourned when it died, and when 'no internet' meant a few days of blessed quiet instead of a full-scale existential collapse. The details here are a museum exhibit: a cable modem with moronic blinking lights, a router that dies from a lightning surge, a hacked satellite box delivering channels Ed definitely paid for, and a paper-towel delivery by bicycle as a social call. Now the TV is a thin glass slab that updates its terms of service, the internet is a utility you'd sell a kidney to restore, and no technician roams your house—you get a self-install kit and a chatbot. Ed fell to his knees over a free TV that probably weighed as much as a small car. The gods were not angry, Ed. They were doing you a favor: you got to read a book.
“2006 Ed, did it ever occur to you that Zeus might have been punishing you for the hacked satellite box rather than the free TV? And after you pried open that tube monster's back, what exactly were you hoping to find—a soul, or just a $2 fuse?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you might be onto something there. I mean, sure, the hacked satellite box was a sin against the cable gods, but I figured I'd already paid for that when the signal went dark. The free TV felt like a blessing, like the universe finally cutting me a break. So when Zeus smote it, I assumed it was because I was enjoying myself too much, not because he had a grudge over the boob channels. But now you got me wondering if he was just biding his time, letting me get attached before he pulled the plug. That's droll, in a cruel sort of way. As for prying open the back, I was hoping for a $2 fuse, maybe a loose solder joint, something simple and fixable. I wasn't expecting a soul. But if I found one, I probably would've tried to revive it, not gonna lie. Instead I found a whole lot of nothing and a faint smell of burnt dust. So now the hulk sits there, a monument to my hubris and my empty wallet.
