True Disgust

True Disgust


Some time ago within the last year, our cable provider went digital.  Meaning, if we wanted to continue receiving broadcast television from them, we needed to pay monthly for a “digital receiver” (just imagine a black box, like a VCR).  The cable running out of the wall and into the TV wouldn’t cut it anymore.  The cable company advertised that this would allow them to provide better service to their customers in the long run.  But it was also purported off the cuff by an on-the-ground employee handling the distribution of these receivers that it was just because too many people were stealing cable.  So who the hell knows what to believe.

I didn’t think this change would be a problem.  No one here really watches television.  The TV mostly collects dust as everyone sits in front of their computers or whatever.  That is, except once a year, my mom will sit down and watch a five-hour New Year’s special aired from her home country.  I don’t know what her particular interest in it is, but it’s always been that way.  On the evening of January 1st, she will tune in and watch it.  The problem was, my mom didn’t know about the switch to digital, or about the fact that we lacked a digital receiver.  I figured I should mention it at some point, but I continued to put it off.  I felt strongly that she wouldn’t bother paying monthly for a receiver.  Just to watch a program that airs once a year?  It just didn’t seem likely, right?

Then came December 27th.  I had just remembered the New Year’s special was nearing, so I decided to tell her then.  In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid idea trying to explain it to her this late.  Especially since English isn’t her 1st language, and her 1st language isn’t mine.  That being said, when I told her we didn’t have cable anymore, and that we needed a digital receiver to watch her show, she simply said what amounted to,  “I don’t need it.”  A breath of relief.  I couldn’t be 100% certain, but it seemed like she got the gist.

Then came January 1st.  My mom came home from work, got out of her work clothes and into her home clothes, and came into the living room to turn on the TV.  As I sat at the PC in the living room, my denial preventing me from believing that she actually didn’t understand my explanation, or that my explanation was so poor so as to be misunderstood.  Then my mom turns to me and asks why the TV isn’t working.  In other words, why aren’t we getting any channels?  Denial gave way to panic.  I began trying to explain to her again, this time with different words, simpler ideas, and hand gestures.  It’s clear from just her expression that not only did she not get my current explanation, but also my previous one back on December 27th.  Then it became definitive after she plainly said “I don’t understand,” while she turned to leave to make dinner.  /Ah fucking crap./  While the New Years special aired for the next two and a half hours, I racked my head for ideas.



Idea #1: Get a digital receiver.

Plausibility of execution: low.  There’s monthly payments involved, not to mention we’d probably have to order it.  There’s no way we’d get it in two and a half hours.  Let’s put that one on the back burner.

Idea #2: Look for an online stream of the special.

Although the special is from her home country, it’s re-broadcasted on a local station here that airs programs from her country.  Their channel is how she watches the special.  I look up the channel’s web page, trying to find any streaming options.  I see info on things I’m not familiar with like “Over-the-Air” and other non-pertinent things like the TV schedule.  Then in the next minute, I see on their FAQ page, “Why don’t you stream your programs?”  Apparently it’s because their station is only licensed to air these programs on TV.  Streaming these programs requires a different type of licensing deal.  /Fuck./

Idea #3:  Look for an online stream straight from the source.

Instead of looking for the stream from the local station, why not look for a website streaming straight from the source?  I recalled that during the specials, the word “LIVE” was in the corner of the screen.  After a bit of research, I found a stream of the channel that airs the special from her country.  However, what I saw in the stream was not the special, but a game of soccer from teams in her country.  I waited for a couple of minutes, but it still showed the soccer match.  /What?/  I began racking my brain.  /Maybe the special hasn’t started?/  However, from what I remembered from the TV schedule on the local station’s web site, not only should it already have started, but it was halfway through.  Double checking the schedule confirmed it.  Ah.  After some thought it dawned on me.  The local station is only re-broadcasting it.  It isn’t necessarily live.  It could be pre-recorded.  The word “LIVE” I remember being displayed in the corner is probably a graphic placed “inside” the footage by the special, as opposed to layered on top of it by the broadcast station.  So if it were a recording, then the recording could still have “LIVE” in the corner.  I look up the airing date of the special and see, “December 31st.”  The day before this day.  Idea rejected.

Idea #4: Look for ideas online.

After typing, “how to watch local channels” into my browser’s search bar, I get something.  I learn that you can watch “Over-the-Air” channels via antenna. Over-the-Air, like the local station’s channel that broadcasts the special.  This never occurred to me.  I assumed antennas were completely fazed out, but apparently local channels broadcast digital signals that require a digital antenna and a modern enough TV.  /Alright, next step, buy an antenna./  At this point, it was about 8 pm.  I checked for how much longer the local electronic store will be open for on their web site.  The corner of the screen usually says “Open till XXX.”  However, this time it says, “Open at 10 am.”  /What?/  Checking their store hours for that days, I see, “11:00 am - 7:00 pm.”  /WHAT?/  It didn’t occur to me then, but looking back on it now, it was probably their New Years hours.

This was a slight problem.  I had no way of getting an antenna at this hour.  This was the only electronic store within a reasonable distance.  However, there was still one thing I could do.  From what I remember on the TV schedule on the local station’s web site that broadcasts the special, the special would be re-aired one more time the next day, at 12 pm.  So what I could do is buy an antenna at the electronics store the next day when it opened at 10 am.  There was another problem though.  My mom would be at work during the time of airing.  The solution then?  To record the program.

We have several recording devices here at home.  However none for recording from a digital antenna, at least as far as I know.  It just so happens though that the electronic store sells such a device for about $30.  Again, think of a black box.  The digital antenna costs about $15.  So with tax, about $47 total.  /Crap./  I don’t like spending money.  I’ve been told I’m very frugal.  Even having to spend $5 gives me pause.  Not to mention I just made a big purchase the other day to treat myself for once.  The voice in the back of my head which is practically always right warned me not to make that big purchase, and I’m starting to see why.  It also told me not to buy these two devices as I stepped out of the house the next morning.

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The next day, I got to the electronics store at about 10:20am.  The reason why I ignored the voice on the back of my head was because this was a matter involving my mother.  I tend to easily put aside things like frugality and personal matters when it comes to helping her.  It’s not something I gave too much thought to, I just do it.
Thinking it’d be difficult to find given its niche, I immediately ask an employee by the TV section to help me find the recording device.  I show her the device on my phone, and as she looks up the device on her own work computer by a register, she says, “I’ve never seen that before.  Can you wait here one second?”  I oblige, and watch as she walks away to find another employee to help her.  I stand there for what feels like quite a while.  I began to worry, as the broadcast starts in less than two hours.  I need time not only to get home, but to figure out how to hook up and work the devices.  Also, there might be a chance that after I get home, I find out I’m in need of some other device, so I’ll need time to run back to this store.  There’s also a chance that the devices don’t work.  According to the reviews, the recorder didn’t seem to work properly for half of the reviewers.

My worry gave way to boredom, and I began looking at some of the stuff on the two shelves behind me.  And I immediately find both the recorder and the antenna.  /Ahhhh crap…/  I waited around until the employee returned to inform her that I found what I was looking for, and she rang up the items.  According to the receipt, I finally left the store at 10:41am.

I got home and began hooking everything up as quickly as possible.  I had about one hour left to prepare.  It’s not just hooking up the antenna to the recorder, and then the recorder to the TV though.  The recorder records TV shows onto a flash drive or external hard drive.  This brings up a few complications, but before I dealt with that, I plugged in and turned everything on.  The antenna ended up needing time to scan for available channels, and this ended up taking much longer than I anticipated.  /Crap crap crap./  After it was done, I made sure to flip through the channels to see if the channel broadcasting the special was there.  /Good, it’s there…/  The picture was a lot clearer than I was expecting from an antenna.  I was expecting some static based on my previous experience using analog antennas, but saw none.   Then I got to work on the flash drive issue.

My flash drive holds roughly 28 GB when it’s empty.  It wasn’t empty, so I went ahead and deleted everything on it, since I have copies of all the files on it elsewhere.  As my computer went through the process of deleting everything, I began to think.  /I’m pretty sure 28 GB is more than enough space, but the program is like five fucking hours long.  Is that even right?  How can the program be that long?  That’s like almost a school day…/  Ultimately, I didn’t know how much space gets used up for each minute of footage.  Because the special was so long, it was easy enough for me to believe that 28 GB might be a bit under what I needed.  I needed to run a test.  As I was thinking these things, I noticed it was taking forever for my flash drive to delete everything off of itself.  /Are you kidding me right now?/  Maybe it just felt like a long time because of the impending deadline.

When it was finally done, I plugged the flash drive into the recorder and began doing a test recording.  An infomercial about some weight loss belt advertised by paid actors claiming they weren’t paid actors was playing, so I decided to record ten minutes of it.  After about 8 minutes, I got impatient and deeming it was good enough, I stopped the recording.  I unplugged the flash drive, plugged it into my computer, and checked to see what the file size was of the video.  It was roughly 0.75 GB.  If we round up, we could say that 10 minutes equals 1 GB of recording.  Therefore 1 hours equals 6 GB.  Therefore 5 hours equals 30 GB.  Ah crap….  My 28 GB of space wasn’t gonna be enough.  It was just shy of enough.

I have a second flash drive, also with 28 GB of space when empty.  However, it’s paired with a particular device that it holds important files for.  For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to this device as Bill.  I needed to move those files off of the flash drive and onto Bill.  Bill is barely in use anymore, so I had to go through the hassle of setting it up and plugging it into a monitor and power source.  Once it booted up, Bill also needed several updates before it let me do anything with it.  Because I hardly turn this thing on, it had accumulated a huge backlog of required updates.  Crap crap crap.  This was taking too much time.  And just to do something as simple as record a TV special.  This was all taking too much time.

*COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH!*

/Ah crap./  I started coughing pretty hard.  It started off light, but at some point it felt like I was trying to push a lung out of my throat.  Up until a few days prior I had been sick for two weeks, with a cough that persisted even longer.  I thought I’d finally gotten over all of it, but the stress of the situation seemed to brought my cough back.  I hated that cough.  I still do.  But I had to put up with it.  Even if I made it worse.  I had to get this right.  I had to make sure I succeeded here.

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There are people that I know who I dislike.  In general, I don’t really like anyone or dislike anyone, but there are some people in particular I don’t like.  They can make a good first impression, but they’re self-righteous and sententious.  They have a habit of making promises that no one asks them to make.  They don’t always follow through with them.  They also have a habit of not following through with promises I do ask of them.  I suspect based on nothing that they make these promises to protect their own pride, because they make them when they feel like they’re imposing on someone.  So to make themselves feel better, they make big promises, instead of simply apologizing, owning up to what they’re doing, and getting out of the way as quickly as possible.  It’s almost the equivalent of making an excuse.  It’s avoiding guilt.  It’s disgusting.  I don’t think of the things they do as good or evil, bad or good.  It just annoys the ever-living crap out of me.  And they even don’t follow through most of the time when it really counts.  You were lying to yourself and to others.  So to avoid being like them, I have to succeed.  I have to not be like them.

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The updates seemed to have finished, but all Bill gave me was a black screen.  I waited a beat, but still nothing popped up on the screen.  Impatient, I unplugged Bill, plugged it back in, and started the updates once again.  As the second attempt at updating went on,  I tried a few alternate storage devices to record the special on.  Two external hard drives.  There were problems with both.  One wasn’t compatible with the recorder.  The other was compatible, but had a host of other issues I didn’t have time to deal with.  It was one obstacle after another.  I’d think I’d find a path out of this mess, and at the end of it I’d find a huge fucking wall saying too bad.  I continued to cough my brains out.

Finally the updates concluded, and Bill was giving me picture.  I moved everything important off of the flash drive and onto Bill’s internal storage.  After that, I unplugged the flash drive, plugged it into my PC to have it formatted, and at last, I had my two flash drives prepped for recording with five minutes left till the start of the special.

The situation was this: recording for five hours would in theory amount to 32 GB of video.  I had two 28 GB flash drives.  Therefore, I would record the 1st half of the special on one flash drive, and during a commercial break, swap in the 2nd flash drive to record the 2nd half.  Which meant my job wasn’t done yet, sadly.

At 12pm with the program playing, I hit the record button.  It’s showtime, boys.  In two hours and thirty minutes, I would need to stop the recording, swap the flash drives, and start the recording again.  A timer in the upper left corner of the screen shows how long the recording’s been going on.  Ideally, I could use this to tell me when to swap, but it was currently showing “0:00:00.”  It shows that at the start of recording, but one minute in, it still displayed the same numbers.  However, this is normal.  During the test runs, it did the same thing, but the recording came out fine.  The timer was merely bugged.  Or at least that’s what I told myself.  The reviews I read complaining about the recorders failure rate came to mind.  I consider myself to be a relatively paranoid guy, so I tried not to let it get to me.  There would be no way for me to know if the recording was coming out right for the next two hours and thirty minutes.

After what felt like a long time, I looked at the clock, and it said 12:38.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Most days I feel like there isn’t enough time in the day for me to do what I want.  But today, it felt like time was at a dead snail’s crawl.  The five hour program continued on in my infinite neuroticism.  The special was a musical competition program consisting of popular musicians and musical groups from my mom’s country.  Honestly, I didn’t care for most of it.  Maybe it was just because I was under a lot of stress, but also I don’t think of myself as a music enthusiast and I’ve always been very picky about music.  For the longest time growing up, I didn’t even think I liked music at all.  Anything I heard on the radio in the car or at school, which were some of the few sources of music for me, didn’t sound appealing to me in the slightest.  Occasionally I would hear something from a commercial I’d like, but I can count the number of times this happened on one hand.  The time continued to drag on painfully and mercilessly slow.

Finally, during a commercial break at around 2:37pm, I stopped the recording and hastily swapped out the flash drives.  I plugged the 1st flash drive into my computer and checked to see if everything came out alright.  /Phew…/  Everything seemed to be in order.  I played the recording on my computer, and it worked.  The quality was good.  It was the appropriate length too.  I skipped to the end to make sure it ended at the same point I stopped the recording, and it did.  I checked the total file size, and it came out to about 16 GB.  Presumably, the 2nd flash drive would end up with a video file of around the same size, totaling to 32 GB.  It looked like my math was on point.  Things were finally looking up.  All that stress and work was for something after all.  My coughing was rather mild now.

The program finally ended, and I stopped the recording for the last time.

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I waited for my mom to come home somewhat anxiously.  The anxiety was mild enough to not really bother me, but it was there nonetheless.  It was getting late, past the time that she would usually arrive home.  /Oh great, of course it’d be today of all days…/  I felt like my job wasn’t complete until I showed her the recording, and I had already gotten bored and tired of the job, and just wanted it over with.  I left the house and walked toward the parking space she leaves the car, and it just so happened she arrived just after I got there.  I helped bring in the groceries she bought, which explained the slight lateness.  Once we got in the house, she went to change while I put the groceries away.  Once she came back, I had everything prepared.  I turned my laptop on ahead of time, and had the 1st flash drive plugged in.  I was still in the middle of putting a box of yogurt into the fridge to which she said she’d handle it.  I then went to the living room to grab my laptop.  With a lazy turn of the laptop towards my mom so as not to add any flourish, I played the video in front of her.  The look on her face was not what I expected.  She looked somewhat annoyed.

She ask me what it was, how I got it, and so on, and I explained to her everything, how I bought an antenna, and that I recorded the program today.  How much of it she understood I don’t know.  How much of an effect it had an her expression seemed little.  She said she’d watch it later, presumably on some other day, and I walked away feeling a bit annoyed myself.

That night, I thought about the events of that day and the day before over.  I thought I was annoyed that all my work was for nothing.  That my work wasn’t recognized or shown gratitude.  That I wasted $47.  I thought what I did was the optimal call.  I thought what I did for my mom would make her happy.  I thought everyone would be happiest this way.  But then I remembered the voice in the back of my head.  The one that’s always right.  I thought about the events of that day and the day before.  I thought about them over and over and over again.

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That’s when I realized it.

I didn’t do everything that I did today solely for my mom.  I didn’t think about it enough.  I said as much earlier that I didn’t put much thought into it.  When I did think about it that night, I realized I probably did all of that for my own sake.  Or at least partly.  I felt guilt that I didn’t tell my mom sooner about what happened with our cable provider.  That my explanations didn’t reach her.  That she missed her special because of me.  I was just trying to cover my own ass.  And when I didn’t get the reaction out of her that I wanted when I showed her the recording, I was annoyed I didn’t get the sense of self-satisfaction I was looking for.  She was probably upset that I spent money on her, when I didn’t have much money to begin with.  For something that aired once a year.  I ignored the voice in the back of my head because I couldn’t admit to any of this.  Because of my pride and ego.

It was all so disgusting.

I’ve held a belief that everyone who grows up in society will eventually become a hypocrite.   Unless you purge yourself of all ideology, you cannot avoid it.  My intention in saying this is not to persuade anyone of anything, but merely to state my personal view.  I don’t think this is a cynical view, but a natural one.  I believe that at a person’s core, they are emotional.  Ideology and ideological thinking are layered on top by society.  You are taught that you should think and analyze in terms of rules and fairness.  However, the core is still there.  And the core is where reactions tend to originate.  Not always, but generally.  And the core and layer are not necessarily compatible.

What will eventually happen at times is that an emotional knee-jerk reaction will occur, and instantaneously an ideological reason for that emotional reaction will be born.  But sometimes it won’t be an ideological reason, but an ideological rationalization.  Or maybe it’s always a rationalization.  Since people are taught to think in terms of rules and fairness, they will unconsciously rationalize their emotion with some moral or ideological rule.  The original emotion become muddled and hidden.  The problem is that the ideology merely needs to rationalize the emotion.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be consistent with any previous ideological rationalizations made before.  It can be inconsistent.  And that inconsistency can go unnoticed without deep introspection and honesty.  It would be consistent if a person’s core was ideological, but I don’t believe it generally is.

I am not above this, and I never believed I was.  I always believed I was going to become a hypocrite, and was likely already one.  However, at the very least what I wanted was to at least avoid becoming the worst type of hypocrite imaginable.  I wanted to avoid become those disgusting people I hated the most.

But everything I did was disgusting.
I was almost everything like those people that I hate.
I became that in less than 7 days.
It was utterly disgusting.
I was truly disgusting.


END