To save money I use an indoor antennae to receive local broadcast-type Television stations.
No funds for paying the exorbitant rate the local cable TV firm charges, even for the most basic offering.
Most of my TV watching is the three “public” TV channels. The PBS folks.
I also receive the “basic” channels such as ABC, NBC, Fox and that CW thing.
When the change was made awhile back regarding how TV stations broadcast their signal and convertors were required to receive the new signals the local CBS station was unable to be received within the shanty.
Maybe an outside antennae would allow reception but those antennae cost money and you either have to be able to install it yourself or able to afford to hie somebody to do the job.
If you are akin to the Disgruntled Old Coot you have no friends able or willing to install the antennae.
Food or a TV station? I have lived fine without being able to see the CBS station so my few funds will be used to buy food, pay for medical care and the taxes that will eventually ensure I leave the shanty and live in the pick-up truck. Sniff.
There is a DVD player attached to the TV. A mighty-fine device. I remember the VHS tape player era but did not grab a VHS tape player until long after they were first available.
As with audio CDs I delayed obtaining those new-fangled things until the player’s cost plummeted and ample used tapes, CDs, etc. were available at low cost .
I sigh with satisfaction when thinking about the years when 8-track tapes were the in-thing then the advance to cassette tapes and ever onwards as technology continuously advanced.
Today’s media-containing devices are more efficient in many ways.
No more fast-forwarding or rewinding a tape to find a desired song or return to a movie’s start.
There is no “Please be kind, rewind” stickers on a DVD.
Yes, I am an Old Coot. I was studying basic electronics when a hand-held calculator with only basic functions such as add, subtract, divide and multiply cost several hundred dollars.
I lived in an area full of working-poor folks so us vile spawn of that socio-economic group despised by the USA ruling class used slide rules to play with numbers.
.
DVDs are so neato!!! Lightweight, small compared to VHS tapes and used DVDs can be bought at various thrift stores at low prices.
Wheeeeeee!!!!!
Leaving history behind where history resides and ignoring the future I return to the thought that prompted the entry of this post into what may be the world’s finest blog.
Or if not the finest perhaps the most Disgruntled blog nestled within the immense Web thing.
Screeching and screaming.
A trend I have noticed for a few years but that aural obnoxiousness has reached immense proportions.
Akin to the laugh-track added to the sit-com type TV shows I wonder if there is now a device that allows broadcast engineers to add recorded screams and shrieks to some TV shows.
Below is not TV show screaming but an acceptable example of what I am writing about.
.
Sometimes I watch the Ellen TV show. But not often. Ellen seems to be a nice person and does her job quite well; better than other folks performing that type of TV broadcast.
But, her audiences often engage in what rankles me; screaming and screeching during the show’s opening and at various times throughout the show.
.
The females squawking in the above clip are not as bothersome as the cackling I hear via the TV.
Ellen is not the only TV show with a clutch of cackling, screeching, screaming dames.
Yes, from what I can see and hear it is primarily the daffy dames filling the air with ear-piercing vocalizations.
I did not notice this shrieking in the past, at least not to the extent I see nowadays.
I have observed the audience during the shrieking events when the camera panned the audience.
Many times I noticed that the shrieking and screeching volume seemed to be far out of proportion to the females making that noise.
There were times when I did not see even ONE gal with an open mind needed to create that gawd-awful racket.
This I wonder if screams and screeches are being added at the “appropriate” times by a sound engineer.
Television viewers have been bombarded by the laugh track for decades.
I always despised that addition, when used, to TV shows.
Further proof of my Disgruntled Old Cootness is that my laughing, chortling or chuckling in response to humor is extremely rare within my shanty or anywhere.
My sense of humor appears to be different than the vast majority of other folks.
Most TV comedy shows are tripe aimed at a group of folks I am glad I do not belong to.
Hey!!! That’s my Opinion ™ and I am sticking with it and if you do not like it meet me by the bike racks after school.
Do kids still meet at the bike racks after school to decide upon a place to engage in a brawl?
Maybe kids today just shoot each other.
It is a time saver, I suppose.
I was young in a different era when the Chicano gangs I constantly fought used fists and feet and very rarely knives and guns as is the norm of the past couple decades.
Today’s gang bangers refer to their ancestors of my youth as OGs, old gangstas’, in recognition of the differences between then and now.
Again, as is typical of my inanity, I have wandered off the topic I was semi-following.
Reviewing the stuff already mentioned we have:
- No cable TV
- Indoor antennae
- Poverty
- Stations received
- Advent of HD Television
- Ponder outside antennae
- Unable to receive the CBS station signal
- DVDs, CDs, 8-track tapes, cassettes and slide rules
- World’s best or perhaps merely the most Disgruntled blog
- Finally mentioned main topic of screeching and screaming on TV shows
- My bizarre perhaps perverted sense of humor (example below)
- Generational differences
- Street fighting
- This list
.
I feel compelled to give an example of my definitely non-politically correct sense of humor.
I was never able to remember jokes very well and with the growth of mold, cob webs or whatever is increasingly occupying my aged decrepit brain my memory ability has fallen into the murky depths where memory goes to die.
Okay, here is one joke I heard awhile back I perceives as humorous but not laugh-out-loud funny.
“Yeah, my grandpa died at Auschwitz. He fell out of the guard tower.”
Hello reader… let it be known that laughing out loud at anytime or any place is extremely rare for me. Even a minor chuckle is very very rare.
Hey… I just remembered another joke I liked.
“Two bikers walked out of the bar. Standing at the top of the steps they looked down to see a HUGE doberman pinscher dog licking its balls.
One biker said to the other biker ‘I wish I could do that.’ The other biker said ‘You better make sure you are really good friends first’.”
I like that joke but it is merely a minor chortle inducer.
I am not the only person that has noticed the intense screeching and screaming on TV shows;
Why do TV talk shows with live audiences scream and shrill so loud you have to mute it?
Look below for a fellow Disgruntled Dude who is angered by a scream but not the scream-type that prompted this post:
.
Dear Hollywood: Please stop using the Wilhelm Scream
.
Audience members screaming/squealing: I don’t get it
The beginning post of the linked-to message board (link above) receives a 5-star rating from me with 1-star at the low end and 5-stars being super-neato!!!!
That post is so pertinent to this post and well-written it deserves to be replicated here:
“Any idea why this brilliant classy trend is so hot, ie how many members of an audience now (mostly women I think, but not all), instead of simply applauding like normal human beings, emit this high-pitched scream or squeal or whatever you call it (typically by going “WOOOOOO”)? Classic examples include prime time game show and the mental midgets who stand outside the “Today Show” buiding (sic) so they can make complete morons out of themselves in front of the whole country. gawd. I can’t even watch shows with audiences anymore thanks to this lunacy. It’s like these shrill harpies from hell all got unleashed at once. wtfo? Are people so desensitized now that I’m the only one who sees this?“
I will watch the Today TV show but only briefly to see if any important news events have occurred.
The incessant screaming of the horde assembled outside forces me to depart after the brief watching period.
Other TV shows where that mind-numbing abhorrent aural onslaught descends upon me results in my avoiding that show or forces me to turn to a different channel or turn the TV off to sit in its restful slumber.
“…there needs to be a law passed banning screaming cheers of any kind on TV!“
.
If you are confronted with the soul-devouring screeching of an audience or, if it exists, the addition of SCREAMING via an electronic device by those producing the TV show then one sure cure is:
.
.
For 15 years and a few months I did not have a Television inside my shanty. I did not have on inside my car when I lived in that cramped mobile living/sleeping venue.
I substituted non-fiction reading and became increasingly more Disgruntled while growing Older and evolving into a Coot.
It takes some effort to cast off even a small amount of the garbage shoved into our heads by the powerful few with the wealth and ability to hire lackeys to create propaganda systems that are very effective and that we are immersed in for life.
TV is a powerful propaganda tool and my mere avoidance of the device greatly assisted my awakening to reality.
Toss in the reading of thousands of books about a plethora of topics and with a horde of differing viewpoints, etc. and then those life experiences and voila’… sitting here tossing pixels onto wires running pert-near’ everywhere is the Disgruntled One.
I brought a TV into my Nebraska shanty in 1995 or thereabouts and that was done to allow warnings of approaching tornadoes.
I was inside the USA’s “Tornado Alley” where TV reports are the best method of being forewarned of possible death swooping down upon a possible victim.
Toss in age and increasing physical limitations and the TV provides an at-times useful device.
During my non-TV years I learned via a library-sourced information conveyor of a group of anti-TV folks calling themselves S.E.T. The Society for the Eradication of Television.
I did not specifically endorse eradicating the device but, instead, believed in encouraging limiting the dern’ critters use and to disallow the powered elites from using TV as a propaganda source.
Yeah, right. Good luck with that idea!!!!
I need to beginning preparing myself for the now-arduous, painful task of mowing the lawn.
Shout out the mantra of “Old Age Sucks” and whatever other method available to support your resident Disgruntle Old Coot.
Thank you.
