OBITUARY: The Last Person on Earth Who Knew How to Program a VCR Has Passed, Taking the Secret of Blinking 12:00 With Them

It is with heavy hearts and perpetually blinking appliances that we announce the passing of Gerald “Gerry” Thompson, age 86; the last known human capable of programming a VCR. With him goes the final ember of an ancient and mysterious craft, one that future civilizations will one day misinterpret as sorcery.

The world will remember Gerry not as just a man, but as the final guardian of a sacred art: the ability to silence the flashing “12:00” without calling a hotline, consulting a cryptic manual, or hurling the VCR out the nearest window.

The Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge

To his neighbors, Gerry was a mild-mannered retiree who liked crossword puzzles, Tab Cola, and yelling at squirrels. But to those in the know, he was a tech mystic of the highest order. Families would line up outside his door with casseroles, broken VCRs, and desperate pleas.

“Gerry, please,” they would beg, clutching their copies of The Lion King on VHS, “make the blinking stop. My child hasn’t slept in weeks!”

Where others saw chaos, Gerry saw clarity. Where others fumbled with tracking buttons and tape heads, Gerry moved with the steady grace of a monk. He alone knew how to record Murder, She Wrote at exactly 8 p.m. without accidentally capturing 20 minutes of the evening news.

Apprentices Who Couldn’t Endure

Many tried to learn from him. Few succeeded. Gerry once took on an eager 17-year-old apprentice in the late ’90s. The boy made it as far as setting the clock to daylight savings before fleeing the garage in tears, never to return.

“He said the manual had diagrams shaped like cursed runes,” the boy’s mother recalled. “He hasn’t been the same since.”

An Era of Blinking Icons

The world Gerry inhabited was one of blinking digital displays. The microwave flashed 12:00 after every storm. Digital alarm clocks reset if you sneezed too hard near the outlet. Car radios lost their presets every time you replaced a battery.

But the VCR was the ultimate test, the Everest of electronics. Its tiny red numerals blinked endlessly, a defiant reminder that human beings were never meant to master time itself.

A Life of Service

Gerry’s legacy stretches back to the BetaMax wars of the late ’70s, when VHS and Beta battled for supremacy. He was Switzerland in that war... neutral, patient, fluent in both. In the ’80s, he guided suburban families through the dawn of VHS, helping them record Dallas while simultaneously playing Knight Rider. In the ’90s, when LaserDisc briefly seduced the nation, Gerry cautioned: “It’s too big, it’ll never fit on a shelf. Mark my words.”

And mark them we did.

Neighbors paid him in pies, beer, beef jerky, and on one occasion, a used lawnmower. Children whispered legends of “Mr. Thompson, the man who could make cartoons appear on demand.” In 1993, he famously reprogrammed an entire church’s video system so that Sunday school could watch VeggieTales without accidentally recording over The Ten Commandments.

The Manuals of Madness

Although every VCR came with a manual, these were written in a font so small, only ants could read them, and translated poorly from Japanese into something resembling binary. Phrases like “Press Mode Until Moon Symbol Is Activated” and “Begin from Nonexistent Channel 0” terrified even the bravest.

Yet Gerry thrived in this chaos. He could skim those pamphlets, nod solemnly, and with three button presses, tame the beast.

The Final Curtain

When asked how he did it, Gerry simply smiled and said, “Patience. And knowing which buttons not to touch.” He carried the wisdom of when to press “Menu,” when to avoid “Reset,” and why “Timer Record” was not to be trifled with after midnight. Like the movie Gremlins but... with less actual Gremlins.

His final act of service came just last year, when a local nursing home begged him to fix their VCR so residents could watch Matlock. Though his hands shook, he succeeded. The applause was thunderous. Someone at the nursing station wept.

He returned home, lay down in his recliner, and fell asleep. Wheel of Fortune played on a perfectly programmed timer.

The Remote Control Crisis

In the wake of Gerry’s passing, the world faces not just the loss of VCR programming, but also the related crisis of missing remotes.

Every household has at least three: one for the TV, one for the cable box, and one for a device no one remembers. All are missing.

This has led to the development of the Remote Finder Initiative, a bold new program aimed at tackling one of humanity’s greatest challenges: locating remotes before you die of thirst trying to change the channel manually.

The Remote Finder Initiative

1. Phase One: Attach car-key beepers to remotes. A simple press and they’ll chirp from beneath the couch cushion or the freezer drawer.
2. Phase Two: Missing remote alerts on milk cartons. “Have you seen me?” beside a grainy picture of a Sony remote last spotted in 1992.
3. Phase Three: An official government hotline: 1-800-LOST-REM. Operators are standing by, but can only offer condolences and suggest retracing your steps.

Researchers are optimistic, though critics argue this could lead to remote-dependency syndrome: “If we find every remote, humans will forget how to stand up and press buttons like our ancestors did.”

The Legacy Lives On

Gerry is survived by:

• Two rewinder machines shaped like sports cars.
• A closet full of tangled RCA cables.
• A stack of Blockbuster late fees he never paid.
• And one half-recorded episode of Knight Rider that cuts off just as KITT jumps a canyon.

His funeral will be held at 3 p.m., though it will begin recording at 2:58 just to be safe.

In Memoriam

Let us not mourn the blinking 12:00, but cherish it as a symbol of resilience. For every VCR that mocked us with its infernal glow, there was a Gerry who said, “I can fix that.”

And though his knowledge has gone, his legend will remain. Burned forever into the static-filled memories of an age, when we still believed we were masters of our machines.

The world will blink 12:00 in his honor.