I think our television just died. For a while now, the picture is sometimes dark and wonky for a few minutes when it's first turned on and then it suddenly flips to normal; other times, it's normal from the second it's on. This morning was an 'instantly normal' day until just now, when I was playing a video game and the screen suddenly went black. In a way I have no right to complain; that television was (a) free and (b) at least fifteen years old. It's one of those big console televisions that's more like a piece of furniture, with big stereo speakers on each side of the screen. My grandparents bought it and kept it for 4 or 5 months before they decided to get a huge-screen projection television that my grandmother could see better (she had macular degeneration). They decided to buy the huge projection TV during a Labor Day sale, and since Labor Day is about a week before my birthday, they gave me the almost-new console TV as a birthday gift; it was much bigger, better and nicer than the one I had at the time. For a while I've wanted a flat-screen, but as long as this TV worked fine, which it did until quite recently, there seemed better things to do with the money.

Then, by the time the sometimes-wonky picture thing started, we had the house on the market so I wanted to try to work through the minor irritant until we moved, if we could, because I know my luck. If we spend a couple of thousand dollars on a big flat-screen television now, there will be some little thing about it which is completely incompatible with the living room in the new house. It might be just an inch or so too tall so that it juts over a window on the only wall it can go upon, or a couple of inches so wide that it prevents a door from being opened and closed, or because of the way the light is going to hit it, we need an LCD instead of a plasma - that's the kind of thing that would happen to me, so I wanted to wait until we saw where the TV would eventually go and buy a TV that worked in that space.

But if the old TV is really dead, I have no choice. I can maybe buy a smaller one with a view to it being in our bedroom or spare room - anyway, put to a 'secondary TV' type use. It's not really a matter of being upset about the death of the appliance itself, it's more a wailing, "Why NOOOOOOOOOWWWW!" because while I could maybe - MAYBE - cope without video games for a while or delay watching the new Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 5 that I bought last night - it's absolutely vital that I have a working television tomorrow. There's this little sporting competition going on that I'm kinda interested in seeing. You may have heard.

Since I took several minutes typing this, I went to check the TV. It appears that it is trying to come back to life. I have a picture again but it is jumping vertically in an erratic manner. If it recovers tonight and dies tomorrow in the middle of the Super Bowl *in a Prince Humperdinck voice* I shall be VERY put out.