My new Discovery – C3S

C 3 S

This is not the title of a new bollywood movie.

This is the abbreviation of a new kind of VD – i.e. Virtual Disease.

It is a very widespread but quite unknown disease. If you watch the television and if you are a remote control “control freak” - then chances are you might be suffering from it too.

This is not a new disease. But it is quite unknown.

How do I know?
I am the discoverer of this disease.

It is neither a physical disease - nor a mental disease. In fact it is not completely a Human disease. Rather it arises from the human tendency to form a symbiotic relationship with electronic devices of entertainment. Hence the new term - Virtual Disease - which is also coined by me.C3S stands for "Continuous Channels Changing Syndrome"

• Its medium of manifestation is Television.
• Its source of origin lies in the Cable TV / Satellite TV and the multitude of channels that they bring to us.
• And its medium of transfer is the Remote Control.

Beware. For it’s a very contagious disease.

I should know – after all I was about to get terminally infected by it.

How did I discover this disease?
It was one of those rare occasions when I happened to find the Remote Control unattended. (When I say “rare” here, believe me I mean it). So I grabbed this opportunity of a life-time and put on the Idiot-Box.
 
I scanned through the News channels – nothing much interesting to watch, the usual stuff…
Then I moved on to the daily entertainment channels with their daily soaps (which attract the women folk of my home like the light attracts insects) or the comedy serials (where the only ones who laugh are the voices in the back-ground)… I surfed through them for a while, not finding anything worth watching…

Then I moved on to the regional channels – especially the ones I don’t understand… Sometimes it’s safe to watch such channels – Since you have to only put up with the action going on over the screen and don’t understand what’s being said, you get tortured only half way… (Whoever said “Ignorance is bliss” was damn right…)

By this time, my sister was hovering around me demanding me to handover the custody of Remote to her or else she would not be responsible for what happened to me…
I disregarded her and continued changing the channels in a vain attempt to find something worth watching…

And when I finally arrived at Discovery Channel (God be praised for such oasis in the deserts of the TV-scape), my sister decided to act upon her threat… She snatched the remote from my hand, banged it over my head and changed the channel – all in 2 seconds flat!!!

When I recovered from the daze, she was busy changing the channels every 3-5 seconds... I asked her why she did what she did, since I was watching a good programme. And to this she said “What programme? You have been continuously changing channels for the past 15 minutes”…

I would have retorted back that she was doing the same thing now, had I not been illuminated at that very moment by the spark of a new discovery inside my empty head…
So this was how I discovered this new Virtual Disease…

(Source: Jim Davies' Garfield strip published on 2008-04-14)

I watched my sister change channels – staring at the TV with wide, unblinking eyes, while the TV stared back at her – like two lovers staring deep into each other’s eyes… And I realized that we 21st century humans have truly become pseudo-electronic creatures… We have formed symbiotic relationships with electronic gadgets of entertainment – like the TV, the MP3 player, the Walkman, the Mobile phone… We cannot live without them just as they cannot live without us

But Not Me, No Sir!
I refrain from all such temptations! No TV for me, no DVD Player… No dumb iPods, or silly Mobile phones…

I have my darling computer to play around with… Me staring at its screen while it staring out at me – both holding hands (or rather me holding it by it’s “mouse”) - like two lovers staring deep into each other’s eyes…
;o)