I see, said the blind man to the deaf lady . . .

With the holiday season upon us, I've had more time to do nothing. And what does a guy do when he has nothing to do? Of course, he watches TV.

So, I have watched some pretty random shows lately. So random, I can't remember what they were called, but what I found interesting about a number of them is that they like to do this narration thing. - that in between dialogue, a voice explaines what is going on. It is actually what kept me watching. Not because it enhanced the story but quite the opposite. It's oddness just kept me glued.

Well, I turned to a random show tonight and it too had this narration thing going on. I had some sort of thought like "not another one! How many shows like this can the viewing public handle?" Then another thought struck me: "maybe this is not really for the viewing public. Maybe this is some sort of feature for the visually impaired." But surely, technology had not advanced this far had it?

I decided to play with the audio settings on my TV. Right away I noticed they were set to "SAP". I have never known what SAP means but I have always been curious. In the past I settled for the "Stereo" setting beacuse I understood that and "mono" is boring. Well, you guessed it, when I set my audio back to stereo, the voice disappeared! Amazing. I actually thought these shows were starting a new trend and that I was at the forefront.

But I wonder, how does a visually impaired person go about changing the settings on their TV? I have the pleasure of good eyesight and even I didn't notice the settings were changed.

Point of the story: if you are ever bored and are watching a dull show on TV, turn your audio to "SAP" and close your eyes to really experience the show. It will come alive! No not really, but I bet you are tempted to try it, aren't you?

And hey, I'll save you some time: wikipedia says that SAP means Second Audio Program. Who? was to know they could broadcast more than one audio signal?