Loud And Clear

In case there is any doubt, I am the king of my house. I’m hoping that putting that in print makes it so; otherwise, I have a serious problem. I have all the trappings of this, the main one being my 50-inch Samsung LCD HD TV with surround-sound.

I know that’s pretty common in households today, but I got mine about five years ago at nearly half price, as it was a clearance display model. It was one of the happiest purchases I ever made.

It has yielded the Colt Brennan UH football season, annual Super Bowls and a bevy of my favorite movies. The viewing is pretty sweet – provided I can utilize all features to their maximum capability.

Enter the “mothers.”

Since the start of this year, both my mother and my mother-in-law have moved in with us. By “us,” I mean my TV and me. Every night now, like clockwork, my life goes like this: I’ll be sitting in the living room watching TV and my wife, the messenger, will come in and ask me to turn down the volume so her mother can go to sleep. I’ll adjust it down a few notches and jump back into my chair. Then my mom comes out and in Japanese asks me to turn down the TV “sukoshi.”

By the time I’m done, I’m sitting six inches away from a 50-inch screen just so I can hear the television. It got so bad that I bought one of those infomercial hearing aid-type listening devices.

So now I’m using a $9.95 piece of junk listening device to hear a $1,000 surround-sound setup.

Yeah, I’m king of the house all right.

Ron’s WEBSITE of the week

Laurene sent in her Web site in time for the Halloween season. It hosts stories, photos and videos of the paranormal here in the islands:

HauntedHawaii.net

Get spooked and then send your favorite Web sites to me at rnagasawa@midweek.com