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(Taken From My Official Newsletter, Issue 42,
July 2005)
Or this could be titled: no one listed
to Kevin McCarthy, so why should they listen to me? If you’ve ever seen the
end of the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, you’ll
understand. The alien body snatchers are taking over the world
and our man McCarthy is trying to warn a world that doesn’t
care.
I feel like Kev McCarthy. The end
is coming and I’m the
only one who sees it. I feel I’m losing myself--not to
aliens from a dying planet, but to an insidious electronic
invention of human design. People are unaware of the evil they’re
bringing into their homes. I bet you’ve got one already,
maybe two. This infection has been eating away at you and you
didn’t even notice. I bet you tell your friends how much
you love this technological advancement and how they should
they should get one too--you don’t even realize you’re
spreading the infection with your deluded lies.
Have you guessed what it is yet? No?
Well, I’ll tell
you. It’s the Digital Video Recorder or DVR.
No, no, no, listen to me. Stop laughing.
This isn’t crazy
talk. Listen to my experiences with DVR and tell me you haven’t
exhibited the same symptoms.
My cable provider started it. They offered me a deal on DVR
to compete with TiVo. Free installation. Low monthly subscription.
It sounded like a great idea. I wanted the ability to pause
live television and even rewind it. I wanted to record multiple
shows and fast-forward through the ads. I let their technicians
enter my home and implant the disease in my living room.
At first I didn’t notice anything different. I set up
my recording schedule and watched the programs pile up in my
library. I loved all the features. I especially loved the time
it saved me. It was time I could spend doing other things.
A one-hour show, in reality, runs just over 40 minutes without
ads. Ah reality. I use that word, but I don’t know what
it means anymore. I remember being told once that a sign of
insanity is the inability to tell one second from one hour.
I can’t anymore. How can I, when an hour is only forty
minutes and those forty minutes can be experienced now, then
or later? When I sit down and watch TV, what am I watching--the
past or the present? I have become too accustomed to hitting
fast-forward or rewind. I sit down to shows in progress and
can watch them from the start. I get a kick out of watching
the time clock showing me catching up with now.
This may sound like the ravings of
the insane and maybe they are as the things I’ve told you are only the beginning.
While watching live television I have tried to fast-forward
beyond the present, forgetting that I’m in the now.
So far, I’ve kept my confusion to the TV world, but I
have urges to apply this to the real world. When I’m stuck
in the middle of a boring conversation, I want to hit delete
or fast-forward to the end. I want some moments to never end
and I wish the remote would pause the world for me so that
I can live the moment forever. This is crazy of course, but
when I stop believing it’s crazy, I’ll know it is
too late for me. I fear I’ve lost Julie already. She’s
locked away in her DVR world and only leaves it to contaminate
others with her misguided lies.
I know some of you have experienced the same happenings. So
while there is still a piece of me left, I beg of you to throw
out your DVRs before they destroy you like they have destroyed
me. It really is now or never...or is it then or never...
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