The Idiot, er, Slab: a rant

I'm not much of a TV viewer. In fact, it's been years since I've bothered to sit down and watch the good old 'idiot box'.

Crikey, what happened? In the years since I stopped paying attention, the humble telly has become a monster! It doesn't even look like a telly any more. Modern TVs are as thin as a sheet of tissue paper and take up half a wall. And now there's digital TV and they're going to turn off the analog thingy and I had to get a set-top box for the microscopic 30cm box that I only ever watch the motorcycle racing on anyway.

The number of remote controls has proliferated and I had to get Boomerang Boy to tell me which buttons to press on which remote, just to turn the bloody thing on. I took copious notes that I keep by the box of remote controls. Seriously!

I used to be able to turn on the TV and change the channel via an on/off knob and a channel-changing knob on the front of the TV. Gee, what a novel concept! Now I have to press half a dozen buttons on various different remote controls, in a complex sequence that would do the space-program proud. Just the thought of it raises my blood pressure.

I liked my television uncomplicated. I liked 5 channels and a channel-changing knob. Now you need a pilot's licence to work the space-aged things that are HD, 3D, LCD, 4WD or Plasma (wtf? I thought that was something to do with blood). No-one watches videos any more, and DVDs will soon be as obsolete as clay tablets. Blue things are taking over the world - Bluetooths (Blueteeth? God, what are we doing to the English language?), Bluerays.... I'll tell you what's blue - me, that's what! Me and my language when I try to work my bloody TV!

I had a look in the TV section of a department store recently, and the latest enormous new-fangled things seem to do everything except the laundry and the dishes (proof that they were invented by men!). They cost about as much as a new Aston Martin, too... but where's the effing ON switch? I was too embarrassed to ask, and slunk out of the shop in search of coffee, sympathy and a psychiatrist.

Who needs a TV anyway? These days, despite the existence of millions of channels, there's nothing worth watching. Reality TV? Four thousand different-but-similar CSIs? No thanks, I just can't be bothered.

Quite apart from everything else (I'm on a roll now) what are we to call the latest generation of hi-tech wafer-thin wall-sized tv/game console/dvd/blue-thing/music/recording/watching/listening slivers? Your TV no longer bears any resemblance to a box. Are we to relinquish the term box for something more appropriate? Slab just doesn't sound right.

If we continue to call the TV a box, what will we be doing to the minds of the next generation, who can see very clearly that a TV is nothing like a box? They're still reeling from being told that their constant requests for new technology sound 'like a broken record', and wondering why that's a bad thing. In their world, the only records that get broken are sporting records. Most of them have never seen a vinyl record. Those who have think they're some kind of ancient frisbee prototype.

HD3DLCDTVs, Blueteeth, MP3 players, iPods, and bloody e-Banking are doing my head in. The e-juggernaut (iJuggernaut? Bluejuggernaut?) is out of control, and so am I. I am a woman on the edge, and it's all your fault, geek overlords of the world. I beg you, pleeeease, for the love of God, give up this rampant technology-tweaking obsession! It's frustrating, expensive and downright ugly.

Henry David Thoreau once said that 'men have become the tools of their tools', and he was right. Me, I'm opting out.