Who Was That Masked Man?
What do you do when you have a bunch of TV and don’t want to pay the disposal or recycling fees? Put on a superhero costume and make it into an event!
Pecka said police believe he had a helper: another man in a white jumpsuit who also wore a TV as he made deliveries.
“We determined there was no credible threat to residents and that this was strictly an inconvenience,” Pecka said. “It was” — (long pause) — “unique.”
After borrowing a truck from the county’s Solid Waste department, a half-dozen police officers collected the television sets in about an hour Sunday, Pecka said. The county will recycle them.
There was no additional cost to residents, and the incident didn’t impair normal police activity, Pecka said. The department doesn’t plan to investigate further, he said, although officials encourage residents to contact police if it happens again.
Around here, at least, CRT (non-flat) televisions are literally worth less than nothing. You can’t give them away, and they cost $10-20 to dispose of. The county took care of it, but I’d be rather pissed if this happened to me.
The first television I ever got was my grandmother’s. It had no remote. It didn’t even have a dial. It had thirteen buttons on the front that you programmed using a screwdriver. But it was a remarkably good television in terms of picture clarity. After college when I moved in with two roommates, we all chipped in and purchased a television. This one had a remote, and RCA cable ports. A couple years later one of the two roommates left town in the middle of the night following a cold war with the other roommate instigated by an argument about the movie Mighty Ducks 3, watched on said TV. When the remaining roommate and I parted ways, he got the washer and dryer and I got that television.
I finally got rid of it about three years ago. It was in perfect working condition, minus a slight purple burn-in. Fewer and fewer things were working on it and the streaming services started putting blocks to prevent them from working on CRT televisions unless you could fool it with even more adapters. So I finally took it down to the county dump, paid $20 because it was over 22″, and we became a two flat-screen family. I was raised thrifty and getting rid of an operational – if useful – piece of hardware was kind of difficult.
So yeah, this is illegal dumping with style.
Okay, I am reassured to see the city is helping the dumpees. I was a bit humorless on Twitter yesterday, noting that I know enough elderly and/or disabled people for whom having a CRT dumped on their lawn would be a logistical nightmare. (Or even for people like me whose emotional storehouse is badly in need of restocking right now. Coming home to a CRT dumped on my lawn and no help in getting rid of it would end in both tears, and me just leaving the damn thing there forever)
I am Old, so I remember pre-remote TVs, the big old color I-think-it-was Magnavox that stood in the corner of my parents’ living room for most of my growing up years, and how we had to palaver over which show would be watched on one of the five stations we got, and when that tv died, I think Bulky Waste picked it up, but that was like 1986.Report
As of a few years ago, there were tens of millions of old CRT televisions stacked in warehouses around the country because the recycling companies couldn’t find any way to dispose of the leaded glass in the tubes. So far as I know, no one has found a way to deal with that problem.Report
I, for one, really need more information about this dispute over Mighty Ducks 3. WE NEED THE TEA!Report
The short version is that Roommate #1 was kind of a temperamental guy and liked to watch Mighty Ducks when he was sad. Roommate #2 thought that it was a terrible movie and said so. Repeatedly. Roommate #1 argued that it was a feel-good movie and plot inconsistencies were not central to the experience. Roommate #2 said Roommate #1 was being irrational. Roommate #1 went into his room and never spoke to Roommate #2 again. Then left in the middle of the night a couple weeks later.
Roommate #1 was an usher at my wedding. I attended Roommate #2’s wedding, but he didn’t attend mine because Roommate #1 was going to be there. Seven years wasn’t enough distance, I guess, for an argument over Mighty Ducks 3.Report
Wow. One can only hope that Roommate #2 can learn to just let people enjoy things.Report
First TV I remember was my parents little black and white box. It had a screen about the size of a small laptop computer. I distinctly remember watching two shows on it: the original Star Trek and the Muppet Show. I’ve rewatched both those series in the past year or two. Trek is both a classic and also a campy show that hasn’t aged wonderfully. The Muppet Show, on the other hand, is a timeless piece of fossilized show business. The people they had on in their run? Especially the last lingering fragments of the old vaudeville circuits? Fascination.Report