Please send you Great Lakes samplers this way.

It was always Sunday when the TV People came… in the year of our lord 1990. If I think back on it, I believe they picked Sundays because they knew that I couldn’t sleep but in fits and starts. Codeine for my happy hour, upping the anti and trying not to become a 4:30 am drunk. My work days would start at 8:30, but only in casual attire. TV people…. think hard on that. Television people. Men and women with bodies just like yours and mine (maybe more in shape, more fit than your average everyday non TV person, with necks like bulls on steroids), but instead of a face, a head, a small portable TV is affixed right into the neck, antennas jutting out the top, carving the air where they walked. Small dials served as eyes, or maybe a mouth. Old news programs looped over their faces, displaying suburbia’s hidden agendas and downplaying genocides. I knew that sometimes they’d turn the dial to another station, sit down in front of me and play children’s movies like Snow White and her poisoned apple until I eventually fell asleep. After that, they’d slip under my covers and feel me up. I only knew this because in the morning I would have scratches from their antennas and buttons and knobs in strange places on my body. At first it didn’t really matter to me, as long as I’d get some good old fashioned shut-eye.

This Sunday was different however because I’d just decided that I’d had enough of these electric people taking advantage of me and my body and my bed and this was it. I was only going to pretend to be asleep, and then I was going to smash their screenface in with my fist. The evening’s insomnia started out as per usual, hunky dory, and A-OK. Soon enough one of the male TV persons came in, sat down across from me and began my early morning/late night entertainment. Only this time wasn’t quite so usual because the movie his face was highlighting was “Gone with the Wind,” what I considered the ultimate romance movie. As the movie progressed, I found myself falling in love with the robotic man. What is a TV but a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance? A love machine. When Rhett kissed Scarlett, I leaned over, turned the knob to off and put my hand on one of his antennas. The TV screen made a small popping noise as it turned black and I knew that this was going to be a strange night, mostly because I had no idea where to put my tongue.