Category: Television
There is nothing wrong with your television set... Do not attempt to adjust the picture, we are controlling transmission... If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume... If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper... We will control the horizontal, we will control the vertical... We can roll the image, make it flutter... We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity... For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear... We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your television set... You are about to participate in a great adventure... You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to ...
I remember very clearly when the first episode of the television series The Outer Limits came out. It was called The Galaxy Being and I was six years old (1963).
This episode was my very first contact with the genre of science fiction, and boy did it scare the holy moly out of me! That strange alien was something way beyond my youthful imagination, and it gave me nightmares for a very long time. Perhaps even subconsciously to this very day.
Downstairs in the cellar, we had an entertainment area which had white walls and a smooth linoleum floor. In front of the old-fashioned black and white television (back then we only had 3 stations), there was this fifties-design chair with thick cushions you could sink into.
However, when the alien first appeared with it's eerie metallic screeching voice, I jumped from the false comforts of that chair and hid behind it, peaking from the side, I stayed in that position for the rest of the show, and even thirty minutes after that before I had mustered up enough courage to go back upstairs. Mommy ... I'm so scared, the alien is coming!
Because it was evening, it was dark outside and for some reason the windows downstairs didn't have any curtains. This meant that should the alien come my way, it would be able to look inside and upon spotting my reclined body behind the chair, would dispose of me with it's heat x-rays, as he did to the other victims on the television.
At the end of the episode, the poor alien was forced to disintegrate itself in order to save humanity, although on his planet in another faraway solar system there was no such thing as death. As a child, I hadn't yet heard about this foreign concept called death, so I had to ponder about it for a few moments. Pure darkness and silence. Before disposing of himself, the alien gave some powerful words of advice to humanity, pleading everyone to avoid violence and love each other.
I felt very sorry for the poor alien when he disposed of himself in an explosion of sparks and smoke. Part of death I guessed.
The episode ends with everyone breathing a sigh of relief and going back to their daily lives as if nothing had happened.
Then the narrator fades back in and ends the show with the following reaction:
"The planet Earth is a speck of dust remote and alone in the void. There are powers in the universe inscrutable and profound. Fear cannot save us. Rage cannot help us. We must see the strange in a new light, the light of understanding. And to achieve this, we must begin to understand ourselves, and each other."
We now return control of your television set to you, until next week at this same time when the control voice will take you to ...
"Adventurous radio station operator contacts a fellow experimenter in another galaxy. The operator locks in 3D communication, but a DJ who wants to impress his girlfriend with the station's range, boosts the signal all the way up, unknowingly sucking the alien, who's composed of electricity, into the remote desert town."
Watch The Galaxy Being.
Alright so we finally gave in and splurged big time. This television has everything you'd ever need and even more. It's got many fancy features including: Full HD LED, 3D, Interactive TV, SmartTV, HDMI, Wifi, Scart, USB, EasyLink and last but not least Ambient Lighting.
The remote control looks like belongs as part of a cockpit panel, and on the back it has its own mini-keyboard. I also purchased a separate wireless keyboard with integrated mouse-pad so that we can more naturally navigate the SmartTV interface and also surf the internet.
Too bad it is so complicated that I can only figure out about half the possibilities. I will have to ask my son to instruct me on how to use all of the options.
Philips 6100-serie Ultraslanke 3D Smart LED-TV
I cannot believe that she died today.
As a teenager I had the biggest crush on her and that poster of her in that skin-tight red swimming suit was an all time classic that's for sure.
Well, if it means anything to you now, thanks alot for all of the pleasure you brought me while I was growing up and trying to make sense of the world as a crazed young man in need of direction.
Now that I finally decided to go for a digital television subscription, for only a little more than ten euros a month I can get something like 277 extra stations via the cable.
Don't you think that so many available stations is a bit exaggerated?
I can zap my way from the first to the last station and it takes me about an hour, especially since switching stations via the settop box has a slight couple second delay longer than the regular television (bummer).
Ignoring the many German, Italian, French, Russian, Polish and other foreign channels, there are some useful and interesting stations I like, namely: History Channel, Golfer's TV, North American Sports, Discovery Science, Discovery Civilization, TCM, MGM International and SciFi.
Time to become reborn as a good old couch potato, I say.
About ten months ago they decided to rearrange the television channels and radio stations on the cable.
Configuring and re-tuning all of the televisions, radios and video recorders to work again is a real pain. So you can imagine why I have been procrastinating this for many months.
Most appartussesAbout ten months ago they decided to rearrange all of the television channels and radio stations on the cable network.
Configuring and retuning all of the televisions, radios and video recorders to work again is a real pain. So you can imagine why I have been procrastinating this for many, many months. Such a task is something one does not like to do during the weekend.
Most of our apparatuses do channel selection via the cable automatically by selecting the correct item in the menu and pressing the ok-button. While after this action all of the stations are present, they are unfortunately not in the correct order.
Nederland 1 is located on channel twenty-eight, channel two is Deutsche Welle, SBS 6 is located on channel thirty-three, and the fish tank (meaning that station is reserved for future use) appears about five times. Things are completely mixed up.
Each apparatus has its own so-called standard way to accomplish this, but each device is not compatible with the other.
This means that in the end I manually have to run by the stations one by one and choose which channel that is supposed to be. Each user instructions manual has to be studied carefully, and a slightly different procedure must be followed for each television, radio, etc.
Even the video recorders have to be reprogrammed, because their selections must match the television to which they are connected. Otherwise if one wishes to record As The World Turns, the video will only show a blue screen and Marlies will be very upset she missed an important episode.
We are a typical modern family of two parents and four kids, and we own: four televisions, one video recorder, one dvd recorder, and several radios.
At last every audio-visual device in our house has been synchronized. For easy reference I printed out a table listing the programmed television and radio stations.
Glad that that is over and done with. I will use the remaining half-day of this weekend to relax and prepare myself for the upcoming work week.
I am reminded of the nineteen sixties TV series called "Branded" which I watched every week when I was around eight years old. This was a great program and I loved it.
The star character is Chuck Connors. He plays an army officer named Jason McCord, a West Point graduate and decorated army officer, who has always been a good and honest soldier. He is the only known survivor of the Battle of Bitter Creek. However, despite his courage and perseverance in that battle, for some reason he is dishonorably discharged for cowardice. Rather than reveal the killed army commander who was really responsible for the massacre, thereby bringing the deceased man in disrepute, McCord remains and accepts complete blame on himself.
I never really understood this part of the series, but nonetheless accepted it in faith. Why didn't he just tell the truth, thereby saving his skin and remaining in the army that he loved the most? Without this twist the series would have reverted to a meaningless adventure, even if this thin gossamer of illogical truth barely held the series together in the first place. No ten year-old in his right mind would let go of such a great series for such a lame reason as this. I was infatuated with the idea of being an underdog and rooted for McCord every week.
The saga continues. The poor man who has been unfairly treated has no home, and he has nowhere to turn. McCord has no choice except to travel westward. Putting his army training to use and doing engineer work for hire, he is always trying to prove through his actions that he didn't deserve the brand of "coward."
At the start of each thirty-minute episode, the same classic scene is played:
McCord's commanding officer rips off his army decorations and breaks his saber in half, chucking the bottom half of it right out of the fort's gates. McCord leaves the fort's walls, picks up the broken half-saber, and heads out..."As far as I am concerned, this is one of the classic premises, even if now it would appear pretty corny and unrealistic. At the time, and in the ten year old's mind, it was unsettling and fantastic at the same time.
Now even more than thirty-five years later, I can really relate to this episode. Considering my situation, you could say that I am also a kind of McCord and it is time to travel westward in a symbolic kind of way. My army decorations have been torn off my shoulders and my broken half-saber is held tightly in my right hand.
All but one died, There at Bitter Creek, And they say he ran away ...Branded!
Marked with a coward's shame.
What do you do when you're branded,
Will you fight for your name?He was innocent,
Not a charge was true,
But the world will never know...Branded!
Scorned as the one who ran.
What do you do when you're branded
And you know you're a man?And wherever you go
for the rest of your life
You must prove...
You're a man.
Time to be the underdog again. This should be fun, I hope. Maybe someday they will dedicate a television series to me and my cause.
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