my trusty old telly died yesterday.

yesterday being the day before the airing of the season finale for buffy season 6 round here today. yes! buffy! essential television! absolutely essential television!
i can barely live with missing an episode every once in a while, but not a season finale. yeah, i know what will happen, i know there will be the thread of yet another apocalypse, yeah spike will get a soul, yeah, yeah, yeah. but still. it's buffy! it's important!

my telly had been acting up this past week, making loud, aggressive "phrewwwt" like sounds when turning him on, a strange, burning plastic smell emerging, the image fluttering, at random, moving stripes disturbing my enjoyment of the talented mr.ripley sunday night.

he hadn't been in good condition for ages anyway. the remote broke years ago (i think shortly after his 10th birthday), and the replacement i bought worked in regards to changing channels and volume, but not in regards to reconfiguring channels.
the buttons on the actual telly got all jammed sometime over the past two years or so, too. the connection plug for the cable had broken at the same time as the remote: the cable had to be supported by a book put up against it at all times - otherwise the cable just slipped out.

yesterday afternoon, when i turned my beloved little telly on to check whether george w. had already started bombing iraq, he uttered a final angry "phrewwwwwwwwt" (longer than ever before), threw out more smoke than ever before, flickered violently - and was dead.
my knowledge on the internal setup of televisions is rather limited, so i have no idea what exactly happened and what gave him the final blow, but considering his medical history and the fact he didn't respond at all anymore, i decided even attempting to resuscitate him would be neither affordable nor actually make a lot of sense.

so i bought a cheap little no-name telly that i still couldn't really afford.
but he's purty. he's shiny and silver. he doesn't smell like burning plastic. he doesn't flicker. he has got telly text. i can finally watch all 34 channels available via cable here (yay! two shopping channels! three french channels! a turkish sports channel!)

but best of all, i doubt there will be any terrible surprises and spontaenous implosions tonight after 21:15, when it counts. :)