local69
Have you ever wanted to read a YouTube video? Me neither! Here's a spook-tastic YouTube video I wrote that I ran out of inspiration on.
local69
We observe the output of a CRT television screen with evidence of timeworn VHS footage. The screen is layered with bars of alternating brightness, and the vertical hold is on the fritz, often distorting whatever sounds are heard at the time it flickers the screen. We hear sleazy muzak playing, calm, but with a crude beat to it. It sounds like a cross between elevator music and some raunchy rhythm and blues with a saxophone thrown in.
On the screen, the background resembles that of crumpled burgundy velvet, barely illuminated so that the visible color accentuates errant, soft curves. In the upper left is an odd source of overly bright light that, upon close inspection, appears to be coming from the close-up 3/4ths underside of an ordinary gray streetlamp. All this is muted behind the information being digitally projected on screen.
A blue bar stretches across 90% of the screen about three inches down from the top. In the upper right, sitting atop the blue bar, we see the station's handle which reads "local69" [sic]. It is written in an unitalicized, bold, desaturated pink sans serif font.
The blue bar is displaying header text indicating the left column displays the time a program will be on, and the right column displays the name of the program airing at that particular time.
Below the bar, in large, white, ugly sans-serif text, reads the program schedule:
1:00 AM - GIRNING FOR COOKIES
1:25 AM - STATION BUMPER
1:30 AM - TWIN PEAKS
2:00 AM - ERASERHEAD
3:30 AM - AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS
4:00 AM - MICHAEL CAINE SEX CHAT
7:00 AM - GAY WEREWOLF BOWLING PINBALL
Before the music can finish its next melodic phrase, we cut to the insidious underlord of all televised programming and the nemesis to all sanity and rationality: A commercial.
An off-cyan background fills the screen. Thin, white text in some wretched sans-serif font, Arial in this case, more or less reads what a generic male voice says. This text appears with a "shimmering fade-out" effect not unfamiliar to anyone who's ever seen a Youtube lyrics video from...well, honestly, they're still around now for some reason. Windows Movie Maker is just that ubiquitous. Not all text is narrated. As the following ad is read, footage of Super Mario Bros. 1 is super-imposed over the images of people feigning pain, discomfort, and gastrointestinal distress, as you might see in a typical commercial for prescription medication.
Narration only: "Hey there, all you cats and kittens! Eat your hat and chew your mittens!"
"Do you suffer from?"
"Water retention." Captioned as "Water Retentetion".
"Seattle sleeplessness."
"Loss of urine." Captioned as "Loose of urine", pronounced as "YOO-rine".
"Humber."
"Regeneration."
"Diarrhea." Captioned as "Diyoharrorheehreaahrhh".
"Kawaii."
Here the captioning ends. The narrator changes to a generic female voice.
"Then you need to go out and impulse-buy a Rolls Royce by Tiger Electronics!" Footage plays of one of those damn off-road soccer mom minivan SUV things or whatever the hell you have nowadays. It's driving down an unremarkable road.
The footage cuts out jarringly. We see the aforementioned burgundy background seen during the channel programming list earlier. Instead of the programming list, we get vintage VHS-font lettering that you'd see on an old tape camcorder in the 90s, as if the 1990s were somehow more frightening than the 21st century by any stretch of the imagination.
The text "CATHY'S WEDDING" is on screen for less than a second, and is replaced with the following unspoken text:
NATIONAL SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
We hear one of John Philip Sousa's more banal marching band songs playing, slowed down to maybe 66.6% speed for the hell of it, and playing distorted and garbled because everybody used to keep their VHS tapes out in the hot sun all day on a roof surrounded by tar.
White linework depicting Bob Ross's smiling face is shown on the left side of the screen. To the right reads the following:
DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON
After a few seconds, further text is added:
YOU MIGHT SEE URANUS
The above text "DO NOT" is removed, along with all lines referencing Uranus. After a few seconds, further text is added:
YOU LOOK; I'M BITTER.
After a few seconds, further text is added:
IT WAS A ROBOT HEAD
The screen goes completley black. We hear the male narrator say, exactly as before, the word "Humber". The video mercifully and unceremoniously ends.