Dishing It Up
THE old Stonebroke Non-Profit Fireant & Rodent Ranch nestled here in the nearly virgin pines of New Monia, Texas continues its schlep into the 21st century at a pace that is far out distancing the rate of monetarial income. Ever since Hurricane Ikey strutted his self through the middle of my TV receptor arrangement, my beautiful bride Princess Penny, Duchess of Stonebroke has been rattling on about how she can’t tell who’s what on the big screen in the viewing room of the mansion.
AS you well know, we have long been operating from the signal achieved through the use of a castoff washtub bass that once belonged to my identical third cousin Arthur ‘Don’t Call Me Art’ Dekko. He had lost interest in playing it after the instrument developed a rusty spot near the juncture of the “sound disc” and the “thumping cable” therefore rendering the mechanism to play 3 degrees off key which was unacceptable to Arthur’s perfectly pitched ear holes. I salvaged it when he abandoned it like an ugly kitten and The Penny had started using it as a mosquito breeder/nursery down by the back fence over in the corner where the weeds are thickest.
WITH no help other than a treacherously old wooden ladder, a 20 foot section of drill pipe, a hank of coat hanger wire and a half wad of duct tape I created with my own two hard working hands an antenna that received, from somewhere in the peeping deepness of outer space, a middling color montage that was reminiscent of an animated Jackson Pollack portrait, only a little more abstract; if you would. I considered it my finest hour at the time.
SOON my finest hour turned to fifteen minutes and after that it was time for Joe the Plumber to have his quarter hour, so without consultation P. Penny commanded via the internet that a total stranger come to our abode and install... yea, hoist on my very drill pipe... a modernistic dish that talks to the satellites and pushes moving pictures into the TV box that are clearly...as in less fuzzy... superior to the messages I was getting (free, mind you) from the washtub bass that even I have now recycled back into its true purpose in life, a mosquito breeder/nursery over by the weedy spot by the rear fence... in the corner.
OFTEN I have rebuked you and others when you tried to use the excuse that...”well, I just didn’t have the time...” to do whatever it was that you didn’t do for me. Now I have a deeper understanding of the phrase as I am in the predicament of having to watch TV at least 12 to 14 hours a day trying to get my money’s worth of moving pictures from space. I can see that time is a precious commodity not to be taken lightly.
EVEN as I sacrifice these few minutes to write this note to you I am missing whatever they are selling on the Jewelry Channel or the Shop Latino Channel. I’m missing what plot is cooking on WE: Women’s Entertainment, what the weather is like in Spokane and the general vicinity attached. Can you tell me who’s winning on the Horse Racing Channel?...well neither can I because I’m wasting my time writing when I could be watching TV. Why, just yesterday I was in perusal of a program about girl’s boot camp and saw a drill instructor bite the head off a chicken. I could be missing something similar right this very minute.
POOR old Arthur sits off to the side when he’s televising anymore as he is convinced that now someone is watching us here at the homestead through a telescope of a sort or we could be sucked in and have to fly around in space forever after. He saw a Sci-Fi flick about that one time and we had to take the tube out of his Fline Skwirls MotorBike Clubhouse for a brief period. We replaced it when he said his little possum-headed dog, George, was missing seeing Hannah Montana reruns on Saturday mornings.
I have yet to see a bill come in from the Incorporated Dish Company Of America, but I’m betting it will be a whopper so I’d best get back in the den and scan through some more transmissions. Besides, it’s almost noon and I’m starting to get hungry. I wonder what’s on the Food Channel right now?
Hope to see you soon if we both have the time.
Your Loving Cousin,
Rev. Dr. Buck Stonebroke
