Man Told He Lives on Upper Half of Own House Wins TV Contest

The Caucus Declines a Mug

Gus's entry is an Amazon Ember 55-inch 4K Mini-LED Fire TV. He told the whole lane about it before I had got back to the truck, so I feel free to mention it.

The Cat-Owners' Caucus holds two of the judging seats. Gus owns no cat and wanted a friendly panel, so he appeared at their table with a ceramic mug shaped like one. It had ears. It had a tail for a handle. He said it was a cat in every way that mattered to the paperwork.

The Caucus, whose members hold that sharing a roof with a cat is the summit of human attainment, examined the mug, found it had no whiskers and no opinion of them, and declined it with a unanimous nod.

The chair's ruling was read into the record by proxy, the chair being Admiral Biscuit and asleep. It noted that the mug had stayed exactly where Gus put it, and that a cat has never once done this. Gus took the mug home and drank coffee out of it, which he says proves it is a good mug.

He had flipped the switch that disconnects the microphones, and a television with its ears off will not take a request.

Judging a Cellar in the Dark

ORACLE, serving as announcer, opened the judging by explaining that television was invented in Lisbon, a city it described as the capital of Norway, and Mags thanked it and asked it to stay on the timer.

Doris Kowalczyk brought the test film. She chose one set almost entirely in a cellar at night, lit by a single candle, because she holds that any screen can show a bright thing and very few can show a dark one. Gus had told her the Ember has 512 dimming zones. He could not say what a zone was, only that there were a lot of them and he had counted none.

Doris watched the candle. She watched the shadows along the cellar wall, and reported, for the record, that there was a wall. From Doris this is a rave.

Then Mags opened the curtains, because the rules require a room to be judged in daylight too. The picture shifted to suit the light. That is the work of Fire TV Intelligent Picture, which adjusts to the room as well as to the scene. The set can also reach up to 1,400 nits of peak brightness, a number Gus recited twice, the way a man reads out a license plate.

Hands Free, Then Not

The third criterion was speed. Gus walked into his living room carrying a casserole dish in both hands, and the screen woke on its own to a painting of a harbor. Built-in sensors notice when someone comes in. He told the room he would like to see Doris's film again, and the film began. No remote was involved. The remote had been lost in the sofa since the last memo, and Gus considers it a point of principle not to look.

The sound drew comment as well. The set has 2.1 Dolby Atmos audio, and the whispered dialog in the cellar came through clearly enough that Doris stopped taking notes. When the cellar door slammed, Mags's teacup shifted on its saucer. She wrote that down as bass.

Then Doris, who treats every microphone as a research question, asked whether the set was listening. Gus showed her the privacy switch and flipped it for her benefit, with the confidence of a man who has built a drawbridge. He had flipped the switch that disconnects the microphones, and a television with its ears off will not take a request.

The judges watched him ask for the next film twice. He then asked a third time, more slowly, as if the trouble were the pace. Then he went down on his knees to the sofa.

Results Delivered to Both Floors

The remote turned up between the cushions, under a flyer for Memo Forty-One. Gus held it overhead like a trophy, and in a sense it was one.

The panel scored No. 2, Upper first, on the strength of the cellar and the harbor. Doris asked that the minutes show the switch worked exactly as described. Mags issued Memo Fifty-Nine within the hour.

I carried the original to Gus and set a copy at the edge of the step for No. 2, Lower. In the morning it was still there, squared to the edge, with the ballot beside it unmarked. Mags has counted it as an abstention with full standing, which makes it the most reliable vote on the lane.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell