Along a perfectly decent urban street in our area there is a certain bedroom window that can never be shut, because the cable from the satellite dish has no other means of running to the TV within. Summer's inquisitive bugs and winter's whistling winds don't matter to the occupant, it seems, so long as the supply of visual dross remains constant. And this person is not necessarily an idiot. A pretty expensive car is parked outside. And the place is neat -- not like an idiot's might be.
And then, in town, in one of those old, quaint redbricked terraced houses, which nevertheless looked pretty cramped, the front parlour window is completely obscured by the arse of a huge flatscreen TV. So, this particular parlour harbours a creature who does not pine for natural light. But surely he/she does. Just as the character in the first house surely dislikes the bugs and the cold. Hates them, even, and yet endures the discomfort, year after year. Possibly they pay even more in electricity to light and heat their homes than they do for the privilege of filling their minds with technicolour fog.
That's the power of television.
Beat that, Dickens.
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