television love letter

Television, my voluptuous darling. Speaking in the colloquial, in the formal, in melodic advertisement jingle. We organized a religion around you, setting our dinners before your altar and our minds before your judgement. You told us about the sexual frustrations of 20 something generics arguing on MTV. This we noted with lack of awe and taciturn understanding. It is a difficult life getting lavish housing for free in a city you are not from, living with sexy singles who forget to take out the garbage every once in awhile. And yum, you served us tasty sit-coms about average everyday people made extraordinary by their comedic problems. These were sublte revelations for us, illustrating that no matter how funny or terrible life may become, everything perpetually works out in the end, that life is like a swimming pool: you dive in, get wet, and when you get out, everything is the same. And your brave sporting events, those eloquent sermons of the American spirit, outlining the nature of the free market: you compete, try your best, bring your A game everyday, and you too can own shiny, worthless, golden things. Sometimes you tear your ligaments or pull a hamstring, but who said capitalism was without its injuries. Those courageous players, still playing children games, and accumulating wealth because of it. Also, television my darling, your product recommendations are excellent advice for living a practical life. My new SUV makes me forget about the debt I incurred to own it when i am crumpling shopping carts with my front fender in parking lots, and the anti-depressant recommended by that doctor with the liquor smooth voice only very occasionally gives me diarreha and suicidal thoughts. 8 out of 10 of us agree, TV, that your news broadcasts are informative: they tell us what cities murders happen in, thus keeping property values down, which is a boon to my slum-lord friends who own pink con-apt complexes in Watts. When they get letters complaining about ruptured water mains, because of you TV they respond by saying there was a rape across the corner. But we are not always reverant or idle. When you talk about the social lifes of rich celebrities, we feel like we are participating in something greater than ourselves with you as our peer, kind television, mediating the information in a manner that even my nephew who has cerebral palsy can join in on the fun. We also love your music, which we hear in the shopping mall, and it comforts us and reminds us of you. Oh picture-sound, oh sweet love noise, oh mini-series mavin, oh my sweet date to movies edited for basic cable. To you I raise the golden pears of my mind in tribute, to you I rush home in a frenzy, not pausing to take off my coat when I curl up before you, adoration gleaming in my eyes and expectation fulminous in my breast. Your Carls Jr. commercials are beyond compare, and I am not even hungry. Always there, transmitting away the very best you have to offer, never running out of things to say, breathing over me when I fall asleep drunk on the couch like a sweet parent, humming the songs of weed whackers and tampons, translating my desires from the human to the specific material of the language of things. TV, may you watch over my life with sapphire light and euphonic sound, protect me from my boredom, and never let me accept limits for what i can and can't own, Amen.