Goodbye old friend

NOT the best of weeks here in the [Gorp] household. And to top it all off, some bad news. I'm losing something very close to me, something I didn't think would ever leave me.

I'm talking about this piece of work right here:



This bad boy has a long and storied history. Originally used by my grandma(r), it saw a lot of action. And I mean action. Used to watch Knight Rider on it while playing with army men in her apartment.

Then he came home. Our home. He went to the basement, the boiler room in fact. That's where he is right now, on a shelf. But beforehand he was on a table, captaining one of the sickest gaming rigs of the time. My NES got booted from the basement proper years ago, and the TV that used to be there up and died. This one took its place and was magnificent.

The old TV was prone to fuzzing up and having its vertical scroll go haywire. I don't know if you remember what life was like when you had to adjust that thing, but it was part of the joy that was watching television in the 80s and early 90s.

This new guy was perfectly stable. Pristine signal. Never fucked up. He was dependable. If you wanted to play some Rampart, he was game. When you played Bases Loaded or Ice Hockey, it was like HD. I am dead serious. The colors were sharp and you could see ever square end of every pixel. Hell, he even made the Intellivision look magnificent.

But as time went on, the NES got less and less use as the PlayStation, then the PS2, came in. By 2000, he was in semi-retirement. By 2002, he was done. Not done done, but I was done with the NES. We retired the NES (though the setup is still in its spot, ready to go at a moment's notice) and kicked the TV to the shelf because it wasn't compatible with any cables we had. A computer now occupies its space.

I learned that tomorrow I have to haul the old buddy upstairs so he can be trashed. He'll become one with a landfill somewhere, unless they use some parts for recycling or something. I'm sure he has some nasty chemicals inside there, though.

I think he's okay with it. Deep down inside, every appliance knows that one day this day must come. Just like everyone else, everything has to degrade, break down, retire and get trashed. Except plastics. Those motherfuckers have to be melted or something, they never go away. EVER.

I'm okay with it too. Old buddy was there for me, but he's been replaced now. That's the way it goes with inanimate objects.

It's tempting to say that a lot of memories are going to the landfill. That's not true. They're here with me, and as long as those neutrons are functionl, they are not going anywhere.

So long, dude.