Sunday, April 17, 2011

Mr. Logo and I didn't buy a TV til we'd been married about 4 years. Mostly we got it so we could watch videos, which is a good thing, because we immediately moved to Greece with it where it couldn't receive television signal anyway. So we watched video cassette tapes on the built-in VCR, whoooooa, old school. Periodically after that we actually bothered with getting cable, but sometimes not.

In 2002, it died. It was tossed in a dumpster, with no particular honors despite it's many years of faithful dust collection and distinguished service as a child distractor so I could occasionally engage in acts of extreme neglect, like dashing through the shower or preparing a meal without a small child attached to my hip.

The new TV was a duel system, enabling us to watch European AND US television stations. It returned to the US with us and mostly we used it more movies and video games, but from time to time, we have paid for television as well.
But...
some friends were in a transition recently and we played host to this for a while.
What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in a sleek silhouette, clarity of picture, and sheer enormousness.

This week it went to Spokane to our friends' new home and we decided to upgrade to a flat screen, after all, it is not really sexy for your television to have junk in its trunk.
Thing One was pushing for a TV large enough to cover the whole freaking wall, and Thing Two thought the same size would be perfect.
Mr. Logo and I however, decided to go with a screen just about the same size as our old TV.
Ah, juuuust right!

And now, some poetry
-----------------------------
Dilemma by David Budbill


I want to be
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

---------------------
The Discovery of Sex by Debra Spencer


We try to be discreet standing in the dark
hallway by the front door. He gets his hands
up inside the front of my shirt and I put mine
down inside the back of his jeans. We are crazy
for skin, each other's skin, warm silky skin.
Our tongues are in each other's mouths,
where they belong, home at last. At first

we hope my mother won't see us, but later we don't care,
we forget her. Suddenly she makes a noise
like a game show alarm and says Hey! Stop that!
and we put our hands out where she can see them.
Our mouths stay pressed together, though, and
when she isn't looking anymore our hands go
back inside each other's clothes. We could

go where no one can see us, but we are
good kids, from good families, trying to have
as much discreet sex as possible with my mother and father
four feet away watching strangers kiss on TV,
my mother and father who once did as we are doing,
something we can't imagine because we know

that before we put our mouths together, before
the back seat of his parents' car where our skins
finally become one-before us, these things
were unknown! Our parents look on in disbelief
as we pioneer delights they thought only they knew
before those delights gave them us.

Years later, still we try to be discreet, standing
in the kitchen now where we think she can't see us. I
slip my hands down inside the back of his jeans
and he gets up under the front of my shirt.
We open our mouths to kiss and suddenly Hey! Hey!
says our daughter glaring from the kitchen doorway.
Get a room! she says, as we put our hands
out where she can see them.

6 comments:

S said...

myth busters woo hoo!
that tv looks like the perfect size. Unfortunately, the distance from couch to our tv is about 5' and so we cannot get a big tv. sigh...but I got tv channels now woo hoo!

The sex poem is adorable! THanx

quilly said...

I have a 19 inch flat screen TV and a 21 inch flat screen computer monitor. My priorities are in order.

Loved the Dilemma poem. I am certain it was written about me ...

lime said...

groovy tv. ours still has junk in its trunk. whatever. it works. good enough for me. hoping it goes on working because we have a dying dryer and dying fridge.

LOVE the poems.

Anonymous said...

wait until all these flat screen start dying and people start screaming about the amount of mercury we're sending to the landfills...along with the cfl bulbs. you think tuna has mercury now? you ain't seen nothin' yet.
ok...yes i'm being hypocritical..we broke down and bought a small (22") flat screen. it was only afterwords i learned about the mercury content...shame on me.

David Budbill said...

Dear Logoplhile, I tried to contact you by what I guessed was your email. Let me know if I succeeded.

Anonymous said...

No longer pipe, no longer dance.