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GenePool
Humor
Dear MediaOne
Dear MediaOne Cable Television--
To begin with, I would like to thank you for the fabulous service you have provided me and my family over the years. We are consistently delighted by the great variety of channels you offer, and most of which come in quite clearly.
Your unwavering attention to detail has brought my family closer together. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I was on vacation and both of my children (Becky, 11 and Timmy, 9) were on summer break. With no funds to spare we had planned to spend much of the week watching television. Imagine our surprise, then, when on Wednesday of that week, we discovered we had no cable channels whatsoever! While jarring at first, this forced us to spend many hours doing other things, bonding things, like playing video games and shrieking at one another. Imagine our delight in discovering that we had been brought together by, of all things, your attentive auditing department, which "accidentally" placed a block on our line. Sure, your courteous technician-- when removing the block a mere fifty hours later-- said it was because the auditors mis-identified us as cable thieves, but we know it was all about family togetherness.
I could cite many more examples, but that is not why I am writing. As much as it pains me to do so, I would like to lodge a complaint.
There is a channel currently being sent to our home that is part of the basic cable package; we don't pay extra for it, which is good, but we get it automatically, which is bad. The channel is Home & Gardens Television (HGTV) and I would like for you to stop sending it to us immediately.
The problem is not with me; it is my wife I am worried about. She cannot seem to stop watching it. I fear this may cause permanent damage.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with some of the programming you are providing-- goodness knows, with all those channels it must be difficult to keep track-- so let me describe some of what I have seen on HGTV.
Other People's Homes: about ninety percent of what is shown on HGTV consists of this. The problem is that in every single case the homes being shown belong to people considerably more wealthy than me and my wife. This is very depressing. To complicate matters, the homes are often outlandishly absurd. There is an entire show devoted to unique uses of water in homes, featuring one man who put a waterfall in his condo, with the head of his bed hanging out over the water. One couple installed a pond in their living room in a house with no outer walls. These are not design geniuses. These are deviants.
Bizarre Design Decisions: There are many, many, many shows devoted to interior and exterior design, featuring decorators and landscapers who are not from this planet, handing out decorating tips that are clearly insane. How insane? Do you think gluing bits of hay to a wall-- giving it the appearance of needing a shave-- is sane? Of course not. Neither is nailing a tree branch to the top of a window and hanging a curtain from it, which was fortunately not in the same room as the hairy walls.
Impossible People: Frequently, a HGTV show will introduce "ordinary" people that simply do not exist in the real world. In addition to being far too wealthy (we heard this phrase the other night: "the room was completely redone, and for only ten thousand dollars!",) the couples featured can't possibly be real couples. For example, the other night I watched a purported husband and wife actively debate the patterns for their living room curtains. Self-evidently, the man was gay. Maybe he simply hadn't realized it yet, but then there was the couple who were trying to choose decorative plant life to place in front of their outdoor hot tub, and the guy whose wife picked a shade of soft pink to cover the walls of their bedroom. And many others. My point is, there just can't be this many wealthy married white men who are also unrealized homosexuals. It's statistically impossible. My guess is, they are actors hired by HGTV.
You can't even imagine the kind of trouble this network is causing in my home. For example, the other night we watched as a pair of alien decorators created a wood-paneling effect on a ceiling. What they did was-- and you will find this funny I am sure-- they painted the ceiling brown. Then they painted it gold. While the gold paint was drying, they brushed across it with a broom. By all rights, they should have been absolutely covered in flecks of gold paint (to say nothing of what would happen the next time they used the broom) and yet, there was no evidence that any extensive facial paint removal ever took place. Of course not; they are extraterrestrial beings. All they had to do was wash their disguises. I, on the other hand, would be forced to shave my head and eyebrows and scour my face for weeks. Yet my wife thinks we can do this. She thinks we should do this.
Worse, she doesn't understand why I have no interest in the color of our curtains, walls or ceilings. I also think the couch should stay where it is (because it is heavy) and the rugs are just fine, I don't know what stenciling is or what it has to do with our hallway, and I don't want to have anything to do with anything sold in the Christmas Tree Shop, Joanne Fabrics, or the local plant nursery. This is because I am a heterosexual male. But since the men on HGTV care about this stuff, my wife assumes that there is something wrong with me.
I have already brought my complaints to the attention of HGTV, but this proved fruitless. I even recommended changes, such as: actual couples, houses that obey all the known laws of physics, fewer aliens. I proposed a show called Trailer Park Treasures, a half hour devoted to decorating tips for mobile homes. (Does this not sound like a good idea to you, MediaOne? "Jolene loved it when we reshaped the tin foil on the TV antennas into decorative swans, and Billy-Bob said it improved the reception.") Unfortunately, HGTV does not take suggestions.
So I am asking you kindly to please remove this channel from my basic cable. It won't be any more difficult than what you did last year when you decided I should stop watching so many Celtics games, except then you took away all the channels for six days whereas now I would like you to take away only one, but permanently. Otherwise, I fear that some time in the near future I will be too busy trimming the hay on my walls to enjoy your cable service.
Sincerely yours,
Gene Doucette
© 2002, Gene Doucette
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