Patrick M Brennan

I broke comments on my blog today, trying to install a plugin. I’ve been losing the battle against the comment spammers lately, and I thought I would make it harder for robots to post to the blog, but I seem to have shot myself in the foot instead.

I love my TV-B-Gone. It’s been a favorite gadget of mine for about a year now. TV-B-Gone is a universal TV remote with only one function: it turns televisions off. Now I’m not an anti-television fanatic, but I prefer not to be bombarded with TV in certain situations, such as when we go out to eat, or to have a nice drink out. It’s getting harder and harder to find public places without a television clutching at our eyeballs. Lately, even the local grocery store has installed TVs, in the aisles as well as at the checkouts.

Here’s the thing: having a television in the room makes it hard for me to pay attention to what I’m doing. A bit of movement, a flash of color, an unexpected sound, and my eyes will be drawn involuntarily to the screen. It’s very difficult to avoid being distracted by it. This drives me bonkers, since I don’t want to give my attention to something I don’t choose to give my attention to. For one thing, it’s rude to the person(s) I’m out with. Besides that, I am starting to feel cramped by advertising. Is there no time at all when I can be free of the relentless deluge of pitches to buy more?

Well: TV-B-Gone is made for such situations. It is programmed with the OFF codes for hundreds of models of televisions, and it will beam them all out at the push of a button. Most TVs will turn off instantly; the older the set, the longer it will take TV-B-Gone to work its magic. TV-B-Gone is discreet: it’s small, easily concealed, and it looks like any other electronic fob on a keychain, such as one might use to manage a car lock. I have found that even when I feel very conspicuous in my use of the device, it isn’t noticed.

There is a certain level of etiquette involved in using the TV-B-Gone. If the television is truly being watched by someone, I will not turn it off. I won’t turn off the TVs in a sports bar, for example. But you may have noticed that most of the time, a television in a public place is not actually being watched by anyone. It seems to be there for no other reason than the proprietor’s belief that someone, at some time, will wish to glance at the giant blaring tube. In these cases, not only has my use of my TV-B-Gone been appropriate, but I’ll bet that some of the other people there were actually glad that the TV had been turned off.

I recommend that anyone wishing to reclaim a bit of their mental space back from the advertisers go out and purchase a TV-B-Gone.