It is technology so important and innovative that Oprah did a whole show around it a couple of years ago and gave everyone in her audience this precious gift. It is TiVo.

Now some of you are already agreeing with me and many of you are saying Ti What? Are you talking about Dorothy’s little dog? What are you talking about?

Before I go into a long technical description of the wonders of this device, let me just shorten it by saying it’s a vcr ‘biggy sized’. It is television deluxe and it is the reason I can watch a full episode or movie without bothering my husband with, what did I miss, who said what and why did they vote him off?

My life before this revolutionary device was basically bits and pieces of television viewing and every commercial meant I could get up and put in another load of laundry before the show continued. Commercials are waste of my time and I had to do something productive during their time on my TV. I am an expert laundry loader but even for the longer cable commercials I still would end up missing a few minutes of my favorite show. Too much laundry!

My other complaint would be that I miss too many episodes in a season and playing catch up became too frustrating. Either I made an appointment with my TV or forget the season until reruns. How many times have I finally got to watch a show the second time and it’s the very same first show I saw? How crazy is that…..its a bad timing disease.

TiVo is a brand of Digital Video Recorder or DVR, it’s like Coca Cola for soft drinks. It’s a brand that represents them all. Their slogan is “You have a life, TiVo gets it.” Well with TiVo, I have a life and my TV gets it!

Why am I bemoaning this precious gift from the gods….because now my television screen has the ability to show hunting and fishing and monster trucks every waking hour of the day! No matter how much I program to record great stuff like “Sense and Sensibility”, HGTV, or any George Clooney movie…… it can’t pick it up because my hours are full of testosterone driven programming. The space is full.

This device is a box that sits along with all the other black boxes on your TV set and miles of cable wiring in the back becomes a sea of even more confusion. It is best to bring in a professional, like your teenage son or a musician to install it.

What does this thing do? It records all the time. You can pause live TV. For example, when all the men were out of the room getting chips during the wardrobe malfunction of the Superbowl because they would not be caught dead watching Justin Timberlake perform, and the great pop out occurred. That became the top TiVo’d moment of the year. TV’s across America were replaying the incident immediately after it happened. The rest of the country caught up when the news media began playing it over and over and over again, but they had a blurred screen….not so with TiVo.

You can stop whatever you are watching with a touch of a button. You can program the device to record every episode in a whole season of Desperate Housewives. You can put in your favorite actors and it will record his or her’s every movie for you. You never have to watch a commercial ever again! It watches your likes and dislikes and begins recording for you things you might like. Mine for a long time began recording every kid’s show available because that was all that was recorded. Until now….the men have taken over. I have lost.

You can push thumbs up on things you like to try to get it to record them and thumbs down on things you don’t like. I hit the down button all five times on every hunting show, but the evil device realizes there are more men than women in my house and bamm! Another hunting show! Another Fishing show! Another Monster truck show! Where is my musicals? Gone to deleted heaven along with Sandra Dee movies.

How I wish I could TiVo life! Rewind and play again the wonderful moments of my life, or freeze the ugly ones before they happen. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a machine that would only show the things I like and delete all the bad stuff?

If only I could program my life without interruptions…..without ugliness.

I wish I could have that kind of control over my kids’ life too. If I could control the images and influences that go into their little brains by TiVoing only what I think they should see…..every day of their life. They would Never see a commercial so they could Never get the greedy give me’s.

I could delete certain things they did, like color their whole face with red lipstick or cut their own hair or poor out the whole bag of cereal.

The world needs to be on TiVo so that we could control the stupidness of those who try to run it. Delete the evil terrorist. Rewrite history with a little rewind and play again.

The battles of radio versus tv, color vs black and white, UHF vs VHF, cable vs broadcast, cable vs satellite, analog vs digital are now over. It is TiVo against them all and we the viewers will win.

Jump on the bandwagon America and let us oust the commercials from our lives, pick programming we are interested in and do away with mindless channel surfing where we are forced to watch the gutter of TV world. With TiVo, you can watch Seinfield all day long everyday if that is what you want.

Advertisers still can exist if they change their rules. Product endorsements will be fine with me. Paying for specific channels is still acceptable and no commercials are allowed. I will not be a slave to their brain washing tactics anymore.

Hallelujah, the TiVo has come to save us. No more junk and no more power of the three networks anymore.

Unfortunately, I now have to figure a way to brainwash the TiVo into ignoring the male influence of my house and begin recording my girlie stuff. Maybe if I spray paint it pink? Either that or I am doomed to camouflage and the Grave Digger eternally on my screen.

Can I reprogram my children? Where is technology advances where it counts!

myhometown@bellsouth.net