Breaking Into Television
11.09.08
I originally had other plans for my Sunday, but then I decided that I'd rather smash apart my old school, super-not-flatscreen 40" TV into little pieces.
(Well, okay, the old girl died on me, and I couldn't countenance another week of seeing it sit all sad in the middle of my living room blocking my view of the more modest 30" TV that now takes its place.)
The smashing actually serves a utilitarian purpose. Despite the rumors, I don't have (a) super-strength or (b) a garbage/TV shoot in my apartment or (c) any immediately available "hey, you're big and strapping and have minimal social obligations, so why don't you come over to my apartment purely for the purpose of helping me carry absurdly large televisions down to the curb with me" friends.
So I smashed, and I documented, and away we go:
Here's a pretty crappy picture of my TV, pre-smashy smash, followed by a picture with Ninja in front for scale. (Technically, the obstructed-view Lysol can is there for scale. The cat is there because she is wayward and appears where she's not meant to appear.)
Step One involved unscrewing some screws and prying the case in half. This exposes the wiggity-wampity inside.
(I'm not an A/V man, so I may be getting some of the technical terms wrong here.)
Here, I'm separating the two halves. Then I've separating the front half into two halves.
Weird Discovery: When I bashed off the end of the wiggity-wampity, a gas escaped. This is one of three ways that I may die unexpectedly over the next few days.
With the wiggity-wampity removed, I wrapped up the big glass part (which turned out to be far more three-dimensional than I'd originally expected). Then I smashed it with a hammer.
I used a second towel when I saw that I was hammering through the first towel. Then I ripped it open to view what was left.
What was left was, not surprisingly, broken glass. When I saw Penn Gillete do the same trick, what was left was a Rolex, but hey...
I spent a lot of time scooping out glass into double-lined force-flex trash bags in storage boxes. Found a frame and a metal mesh screen inside the glass.
And some white powder, which was hopefully not asbestos. Or anthrax.
(That would be Unexpected Death Source #2, by the way. And Unexpected Death Source #3, for those interested, is "stray shard of glass that works its way up my foot and into my heart, like in Lord of the Rings, except with feet and glass".)
Here's what was left at the end. Turns out that despite all of my smashing and my scooping and my double-lined, force-flex trash bagging, what remained of the main screen was still too heavy to carry. I ultimately had to wrap it back up in that flower blanket you see there, tie it up with rope and toboggan it down the six floors to the curb.
Joke's on me, though. Trash pick up isn't till Tuesday this week, because of Veteran's Day. So I've got a weird flower toboggan downstairs that the super's going to be pissed over, and three quarters of a TV still up here in my kitchen that's no doubt going to confuse my roommate when she comes in at 3 this morning.
Stoopid Veterans*.
*Is something that someone should never say to veterans because they are awesome.