late_night_tv raze i dream of it more often than i would have expected. i haven't had basic cable in years. i can't remember the last time i turned the television on for any reason at all. the remote is no good to me now. the sensor died long before we sent cogeco packing. sometimes if i spent ten or twenty minutes pointing that plastic wand at the screen and working the volume control i could coax it back into working for a while. the last time i was able to pull off that little magic trick, i was watching a documentary about michael jordan's brief stint as a baseball player. there are five grey buttons beside four ports that live beneath the mirror i've made of my tv screen. i don't remember what any of them are for. used to be i'd rummage around in the basement of my mother's house after everyone else was asleep. the same way i did back when i still visited on the weekends. now i'm usually in my own room, in the house i lived in before this one, probing the program guide for channels that no longer exist. there's a strange urgency sewn up in such a doomed, mundane act. as if unearthing some small piece of past entertainment, however insignificant, might offer the answer to a question i'm not brave enough to ask. 240731 what's it to you? who go blather from