Were
the old TVs doing something illegal?
by
Robert LaFrance
I was thinking today (my head still
hurts) about those big old televisions that used to adorn our houses - the ones
that weighed about a metric tonne each. Remember them and the computer monitors
that needed a mule and a crane to lift them from one room to another? Today I
can easily carry a 32” flat-screen television in one hand, whereas back in 1975
I would have been hard pressed to carry a 17-inch TV with the help of lemonade
and a Merle Haggard 8-track.
My question is: what happened to all
that stuff that was jammed into the backside (so to speak) of the old TVs?
SOMETHING must have been in there.
Today televisions are as flat as the top of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head and,
curiously enough, that space that disappeared from the back of the old TVs is
just about the size of his head. Can that be a coincidence?
Looking at photos of the old
televisions and computer monitors that mostly came to North American from Japan
and other Far East countries, I am now prepared to put forth a theory on the
matter.
Drugs. All that time the North
American and European drug problems have gotten worse and worse, so the only
conclusion I can come to is that those big backs on the TVs and monitors held
all kinds of deadly drugs. Looking at the actions of all our political leaders
during that period, and realizing that each of them owned a large TV, can we
doubt that drugs were heavily involved?
I think I have proven my case
(Q.E.D. as they say in math), but now we have to figure out how the drugs are
getting in today, because it only takes a glance at the headlines to know that
world leaders are still ‘on the line’.
*****************************
Turning from the subject of
television to the subject of television commercials, are we finding fewer cases
of positive statements these days?
Last evening, while I was watching a
show called ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery’ in which she solved eight murders,
three embezzlements, and a spitting on the sidewalk while the police stood by
baffled, there came on my (flat-screen) TV a commercial about a miracle product
that would clean one’s bathtub, flush, kitchen sink and little Johnny’s dirty
sneakers.
At end of the commercial the proviso
came on the screen – in small letters – “results may vary”. Of course the idea
of that little warning was that if I spend the $19.99 for this minor miracle,
it might be as useless as my neighbour Flug’s nephew, who is at the moment on a
sight-seeing tour of Renous, NB.
As I’ve mentioned dozens of times in
these pages, I was once employed by Environment Canada as a weatherman. In
reporting the weather to the public, we were all warned to NEVER use
percentages, as in “there’s a 40% chance of snow in Resolute Bay”. I recall our
instructor in Ottawa warning us about using that wishy-washy way of
forecasting.
“Guys and gals,” he said, as he
brandished a .38 calibre Smith and Wesson revolver, “if I EVER hear of you
doing this, no matter where you’re stationed – Inuvik or Saskatoon – I will
hunt you down and shoot you. Say it’s going to snow or not.” We never used
percentages in our forecasts. Looking at the weather girls and boys on TV now,
one can’t help but notice that it’s a 40% chance here and there. It’s called
CYA, or ‘Covering Your Bum’.
Then there is the matter of
political and other polling. Even though pollsters are almost always wrong
because people lie to them, they continue to rake in the money and continue to
have their findings broadcast to the nations. Who is paying for these things?
Like the ‘results may vary’ sleaze,
pollsters always have their little proviso at the end of their published poll
results. “We certify that this poll is correct to within four percentage points
19 times out of 20”. What does that mean?
This is called wiggle room, or
wriggle room if you’re a language purist. Like the previous two examples, the
pollsters’ statement at the end is merely saying: “Hey, we don’t have any idea
what’s going to happen and we’re leaving ourselves some space in case we’re
left standing there with an omelette clinging to our beards”. Such as in the
latest Alberta and BC elections.
My favourite poll result of all time
was during the 1974 federal election campaign when the NDP and their leader Ed
Broadbent were found to have 45% of the popular vote sewn up, while Pierre
Trudeau and the Liberals were mired in third place with 28%. The Liberals won a
majority and the NDP got 16 seats.
-end-
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