I’ve offended my television!

I often wear a t-shirt that says, “kill your television”. In a tongue-in-cheek way, it makes sense.

We haven’t subscribed to cable since 1998 or so, and that’s how I manage to do crazy time consuming things like gardening, sewing, reading, exercising, blogging, cooking from scratch, taking classes, etc. It’s also how I manage to stay relatively checked out of consumer culture, thereby saving cash so we can pay off the mortgage and say “adios” to Citibank sooner rather than later.

It’s not so amusing though now that our TV set has finally taken a hint and decided to become haunted by blue ghosts!

Everyone I’ve lamented to today had the same reaction…something along the lines of “now you have an excuse to upgrade to a plasma or a flat panel.”

Our TV viewing is limited to our one at a time Netflix subscription and DVDs we borrow from the library. That hardly justifies dropping $1,000 or more on a new TV. Not to mention that I’m tired of things being manufactured with a finite life as part of a huge strategy to get us to buy new things instead of repairing our old things. It’s wasteful and unnecessary. Heck, I still bring my shoes to be reheeled!

So instead of seeing this as an opportunity to impress our neighbors by having a fancy TV conspicuously delivered on block party day, Jeff has downloaded our TV’s repair manual. If the issue is what we think it is, we’ll be able to fix it ourselves for under $100.

Of course we’ll still have a giant rear projection circa 2002 Samsung TV, but who cares? I’m not ready to part ways with the Samsung (or $1,000) just yet.

Please wish us luck, or send some good DIY TV fixing vibes our way :)