The HDTV Repairman

A woman called a local repair shop because her family's new HDTV wasn't working. Not sure of how to handle problems with an HD set, she thought he would fix the problem.

When the repairman arrived, he pressed the TV power switch, looked at the screen, and remarked, "Well lookit that! That's the clearest closeup of the La Brea Tar Pits that I've ever seen!"

"Uh, that's not the tar pits," the woman replied. "The screen isn't working. That's why it's black."

"I know, ma'am; just a little HD humor." The woman wasn't amused.

So he went straight to work. He unplugged the cables in the back of the set, took off the back panel, drilled a hole in the frame of the plasma screen, drained all the liquid plasma into a Ziploc bag, and connected his voltage meter to some of the inside circuits. After turning the meter on and checking the readout, he said "Aha! That's the problem."

He then disconnected his meter from the circuitry, pumped the plasma back into the frame and sealed the hole shut with hardening steel putty, replaced the back panel, reconnected the cables, plugged the set into the wall outlet and turned it on to a documentary of the La Brea Tar Pits on the cable nature channel.

"How did you fix it so quickly?" the woman asked.

"That's why I'm certified and get paid the big bucks, ma'am," the repairman answered. "After seeing the needle not moving on the voltage meter, I deducted all other possibilities for the TV malfunction and correctly concluded that the TV wasn't plugged in.

"That'll be $150, please."