Demonic TV

I've been working to replace my kitchen floor with tile. Today was grout day. In an effort to minimize traffic in our kitchen, I decided it would be a good idea to make a move from the family room to the living room. Wait, those room titles beg two questions: (1) if you have friends over, is it still a family room? and (2) if your house was possessed, could you escape the apparitions in the living room?... I digress. So my wife's old 25" Sony TV is in the living room. The wife was in charge of the little one and from my post in the grout sweatshop I heard her say something about turning on the tv. This was followed by Spongebob at full volume and some "what the heck's." My curiosity got the best of me so I went to investigate. It seems that the TV, although working properly 5 minutes earlier, decided it was time to misbehave. It no longer responded to the remote control and the only buttons that worked on the front panel were power and volume down. Sounds interesting, eh? Here's where it gets better. You could turn on the tv and turn the volume down but once you let go of the volume button, as if possessed, it would get so loud that every time Patrick made a sound it was like he raped my ear drum. I'm totally not into that... especially without protection.

I finished working in the "grout sweatshop" and messed with the TV for a few more minutes but to no avail. Alas, I turned to the internet. A quick search revealed that this is a rather common problem with that series of TV and Sony issued a service bulletin for those who had a warranty. I was now frustrated that a $10 part was causing me to slowly lose sanity. What was worse was that I started day dreaming about how the TV would look after I carried it upstairs and threw it out the window. As I continued reading I came across a post where someone else was angry but had more restraint than I. It seems that in his frustration he pushed all the buttons simultaneously and it caused the TV to return from it's amnesia. Viola! It worked for me too. I'm glad that worked because I was about to call three priests and lay down plastic in case it started spewing split pea soup.