No Beer, No TV Make Mike Something Something

As much as I would like to consider myself up to date on the current technology, I find that my frugality has left me choking on the dust of bigger and better things. It's not that I'm complaining, it's just one aspect of my technological deficiency has become overly apparent in recent days.

I'm talking about my television. About five years ago, Mollie and I found ourselves with a decent amount of cash just lying around and decided to upgrade our TV. We walked around Circuit City, enviously eying the shiny flat screen models. While we had the cash on hand to purchase a reasonably large one, the width of the opening in our entertainment center dictated that any wide screen we purchased would have a height of about one foot! That, added to the fact that digital TVs will have vertical and horizontal black-out bars framing the picture when playing a program that was recorded in analogue, but is being broadcast in digital (or something like that - I saw it on my parent's TV this weekend), led us to buy the largest tube TV that would fit in our enclosure.

I'm not complaining about the size of our TV, either. It is plenty large to enjoy a movie from across our small living room. However, where I have been technologically left behind is the shape of my TV. It is 4:3, while most programs now seem to be broadcast in 15:4 (or some similar ratio). Basically, my TV is almost a square, while the picture it is trying to display is a long rectangle. The end result, the ends of the picture are cut off. This is mostly annoying when you have to guess at the first two or three letters of a word, or cannot see the score for one team. It has, however, resulted in one very funny scene. For some strange reason, we were watching an interview of the Williams sisters. In one shot, they showed the shoulders-up of both girls. Those whose televisions are not of antiquitous vintage would not have had a problem, but my TV showed half of each girl's face, cut off right down the center. I'm really tired, so I'll try to illustrate this for you.
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To my tires mind, those circles represent onee eye of Venus and one eye of Serena in a box that is my TV. Neato!

Perhaps I should get more sleep!