Michael J. Nelson

A recent Internet meme featured a goofy song set to clips from an obscure mid-’70s wilderness “epic” called Buffalo Rider. I watched the whole film and can tell you the title is not a euphemism (thank the heavens); it’s a 19th century period piece about a guy who tames and rides a buffalo (technically the American bison, but American Bison Rider makes for a terrible title). Well, truth is, he kind of tames the buffalo—mostly the poor brute ambles about trying to scrape its rider off on low tree branches, angrily chases after bears, and generally goes about as he wishes and looks decidedly untamed, save for the fact that there’s a guy on his back.

The following shocking true story of how my old, forgotten stereo system saved my life contains themes of sex and violence. OK, not sex. And the violence is against birds, but once you get the whole story, I’m sure you’ll come to believe that they deserved even worse.

It used to be such a nice place to live, my house. A modest home in a neat, modest neighborhood with nice, quiet neighbors. And then they moved in. The crows.

Although I’ve lived a fairly mundane existence, there are several points of mild interest: I was once nearly killed by wasps. I have met Jesse “The Body” Ventura on a number of occasions (I preferred the wasps, for what it’s worth). And I once ate nothing but bacon for 29 straight days. No, I didn’t eat much bacon—didn’t eat much of anything at all—but yes, everything I did eat was bacon. Still, despite these moderately fascinating midlights (highlights is too strong a word), people seem inordinately intrigued by what I consider a biographical detail of little to no importance, something I’ve mentioned in this column before: that is my having had no source of regular TV (i.e., cable, satellite, or over-the-air) for more than a decade. “Why? What happened?!” they say, with the same pitying tone they might ask, “Are you ill? Have you had some sort of brain trauma?” (For the record, I can’t account for every hour I’ve been alive, but no, none that I can remember.)

Something huge has recently transpired, something world changing. It happened almost without notice while we were all distracted by other things, but it represents a profound cultural shift. When purchasing a piece of electronic gear, it is now nearly impossible to avoid reading the damned manual.