That was it. White bold text on a black screen. It was late I guess and the programming had run out, but I thought with computers and access to all sorts of shows with just a click of a button that we as a society had gotten past the blank screen.

As I sat there watching this screen sitting patiently, unflinching, behind my friends playing pool I began to wonder about what else might be going on during the transmission (or the lack thereof). Was there drone noise that frequently accompanies these types of screens? Was there music being played, something with an organ, to keep people at least modestly entertained in the audible realm. Maybe there was radio programming going on, describing the current situation in Haiti or the (then) upcoming State of the Union speech. The world may never know for sure, but I like to think that there was something special going on behind the muted screen that eschewed the apparent lack of production and effort. That if we had just reached our drunk limbs over to turn on the sound, we would have been blasted with a cacophony of sound that would stimulate our ears to the point that we wouldn’t mind the abject status of the screen.