I love my TV.

I’m a bit of a cheap bastard. My wife and I both make good salaries, but we prefer to live a relatively restrained middle class lifestyle because we like the idea of saving it up so we can retire early and spend more time doing none of your damn business.

Anyway, a little over a year ago my bosses got it in their heads that I had done an okay job at my place of employment and they gave me a bonus. It was a rather large bonus. I guess that I, like, worked hard, and stuff.

Prior to getting said bonus, my TV was a 10-year old, 27 inch piece of shit with blown speakers. The reason the speakers were blown is that my children didn’t like it when I ran the vacuum while SpongeBob TardPants was on, so they would crank the volume to the max so they could hear Bob’s nattering, Patrick’s blithering, and Squidward’s whining.

Where was I? Oh, yeah: the bonus check. I got this bonus and decided, “Fuck it, I’m blowing this entire thing on a righteous TV.”

Here’s the part where you may demand I cut off my testicles, wrap them up in a pretty little box, and send them to Gloria Steinem. I gave the big-ass bonus check to my wife and said, “Please go buy me a big TV.”

I did this because I realize that I am mentally deficient in the technology department and she is some kind of Borg. She gets tech stuff way better than I do, so I knew my money (actually, it’s our money – I’m not being sarcastic for a change) was in good hands.

I gave her some basic instructions as to my desires:

• I wanted it to be 50 inches or bigger
• I wanted an awesome sound system
• I didn’t want there to be any money leftover

While you read this next part, I’m going to just go mail my nuts to Ms. Steinem.

She set it all up herself, programmed the universal remote, and then taught me how to use it.

Enough about how much I suck at technology, let’s talk about my TV. It’s a 52” Sharp Aquos LCD Special – It’s The Most Expensive One They Had – Edition. There are little Bose speakers all over the room, it has a Blu Ray thingy, and it goes really loud and I can hear bullets whiz passed my head and shit.

I love my TV, and I love my wife too.

My kids also love it, and they understand that if they ever fuck it up then they’re in some serious poo,

Recently we were watching the extenda-dance-mix version of The Fellowship of the Ring. My 10-year-old son had already seen it, but it was the first time for eight-year-old daughter. We were watching the scene where Gandalf was battling the badass Balrog in the Mines of Moria on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.

You know how it goes: Gandalf makes the bridge collapse and the Balrog goes down, but being that the Balrog is a creature of shadow then that automatically makes him an asshole, so he lashes out with his whip and gets Gandalf by the leg in an effort to take his adversary with him. Gandalf is left grasping the edge, unable to pull himself up because he’s too weary from battle and they don’t have Geritol on Middle Earth.

Frodo gets the typical “NO!” freaked out look on his face and tries to rush to save Gandalf, but Boromir holds him back.

Gandalf falls, and probably breaks a hip.

My daughter is devastated because Gandalf reminds her of Santa Claus. “Why did Boromir stop him? Frodo could have helped Gandalf.”

“Well, Sweetie,” I said, trying to assuage her dismay and at the same time not give away that Gandalf was actually okay and all the nice and important people in the movie don’t die, while the bad people all do die, “Frodo is the most important person in the group because he’s carrying the ring, and Boromir knew that Frodo could have fallen too, and then there would be no one to carry the ring to the fires of Mordor, and then all the good people would die, because the ring is bad.”

“Then why didn’t Boromir go and save Gandalf instead?” she asked.

“Well, duh,” my son piped in. “It’s because Boromir’s a dick.”

“What did you say?” my wife interjected.

“Boromir’s not a dick,” my daughter said.

At this point I’m too busy laughing to back my wife up on the apparent “no calling people dicks rule” we now have in our house.

“Yes he is,” said my son. “That’s why he tries to steal the ring from Frodo.”

“You’re not supposed to give away the movie!” my daughter yells.

We ended up having to pause the movie at that point. They were still bitching at each other about it at bed time. Almost an hour after we had them tucked in I could hear them whispering to each other down the hall: “Boromir’s a dick,” my son said.

“No he’s not,” came the whispered reply.

“Is too. And Sam is gay.”