Losing Your Friends

Losing my friends… sheesh!

This Blogging may seem like it is primarily about Peterborough TV available only in our area. The rest can tune out now – unless the Huge Cut Backs on Global TV/Canwest are affecting your area too. But it is more. It is about losing your friends.

Our setting…
Usually in the morning as we have our breakfast we watch the News of Canada and Ontario – receiving it from either the local CBC affiliate – CHEX TV – or from Global TV that broadcast the Toronto area news.

CHEX TV is a hurried edition of Canada and some Ontario news from the frantic CBC programming before 8 AM. After 8 AM on CHEX TV they start selling you some fantastic cooker, exercise machine or some other baloney. It has been ages since I have stopped long enough to see any of it – as I quickly grab the remote and BLEEP it out or off. I cannot understand why they have that on every day – who buys that C-R-A-P?

Knowing that the local CHEX station broadcasts nothing but baloney I usually hit on the Global Station out of Toronto. It is broadcast via a repeater tower somewhere south of us – fuzzy but a great program. You always know what will happen to traffic should you head in from our city to Toronto by automobile.

I used the word “Fuzzy”. That refers to the signal quality. We pick this station up via an old fashioned TV antennae mounted outside. This technology was used by Noah on his ark.

Now even if you have Cable that you may pay too much for each month – the Global TV people nuked the Toronto program from that area as well from what I have been told.

Instead of anything from Toronto – we now hear from Hamilton CHCH TV that broadcasts all that is happening at the west end of Lake Ontario. We live near the middle of the Lake relatively. Hamilton is of little or no interest to us. Weather in Hamilton is different than anywhere else in Ontario.

Nothing is relevant now. All my old friends are gone from TV. By other means I could watch Detroit, or New York or wherever – but it is about as irrelevant.

The world has changed rapidly. The economic condition of our country is in trouble. Our Canadian CBC TV is in trouble and cut backs are to follow there soon as well. With Global gone… and CBC dwindling – we will only be able to get programs for the Stupid.

Oh wow! I can now buy a silly slow cooker that will cook my French fries in less time! I can get a stair climber that will help me get rid of my big belly – faster than any old silly diet will. I can buy and buy and buy…

But if that isn’t satisfying enough I can be religiously converted and reconverted with a whole host of religious TV… of all different flavors. Following that – I can get “mushed and pushed” by heart grabbing stories from some poor fly infested country somewhere and World Vision will get me to phone now… call now… CONTACT US NOW… or this poor little child that we took the photos of will die – (we took the photo at least two years ago and the child is likely already in heaven) – but they need your money NOW!

As I listen to some of my Older Friends – seniors now… they miss the old stuff. They remember when the local news was there for them. They enjoyed that. It came on TV later in the evening. In the morning and over lunch and into the afternoon you could turn on the TV – and get the “Test Pattern” with an old Indian Head on the screen and a series of circles and lines and – well – a test pattern to see if your TV is working today. Too funny really… too funny.

In 2009 we no longer have the faithful old Test Pattern – we simply have some “dumb” on… that you can check to see if the TV is working.

Seniors are seniors – because they lost many old friends along the way.

I have decided that given the events of recent days… CBC cut backs… Global TV dieing… Hamilton TV as my last possible connection with an outside world – I AM A SENIOR. I HAVE LOST MY FRIENDS… and well I am not happy about it! So there!

The comedy of it all… all these years I have watched cranky old guys mutter about funny things that I knew nothing about. Things bugged them and they simply muttered,

NOW I AM MUTTERING TOO. So I guess…. I am now old.

NO I AM NOT – my friends are gone and I am not a happy camper.
I think I will walk over to McDonalds… and meet some old guys there today. They feel the same as I do… I heard them muttering to each other last time I was there.

“slow cookers… stair climbers… diet pills… happy pills… fast cookers… religious tv… whacko preachers… impossible promises… more happy cookers… silly blah blah blah blah… I want to know what is going on… what is the matter with the politicians… stupid bunch of… if I was running it all and could put my two cents in… ”

~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/