Twentieth century television static.

I miss the static, or “snow” that analog televisions displayed in the absence of a signal. The Wikipedia tells me Indonesians call it semut bertengkar, the “war of the ants,” and that it was made up of a mix of “cosmic microwave background radiation, or more localized radio wave noise from nearby electronic devices.”

I liked it because it was what it was: noise. As television evolved, circuits came along to hide the noise behind placid blue screens, and honest noise gave way to a different kind of noise masquerading as signal, a pervasive, inescapable noise that exhausts me. I miss the noise of my youth.