Burning Down the House
We have a fireplace.
It’s the first place I’ve ever lived in with a fireplace as an adult. When I was a kid, living in New Hampshire, we had this enormous fireplace where my father threatened to toss my toys into if I didn’t pick up after myself. I remember many winter nights with a roaring fire, mom and dad on the couch with a drink each, and me on the rug in front of the fire with my plastic green army men that my father would in turn step on the next morning, cursing and pitching each one into the fireplace to meet a melty-end.
Now that I’m an adult, I’ve craved a fireplace. There’s something awesome about a giant flame in your living room that you can watch. Put on any tv show, any at all, and it won’t compare to a good, well-built fire in your fireplace. Hell, I can’t even put the tv on and have a fire at the same time. I think it’s disrespectful to the fire gods.
So last night I had a fire going. Ang suggested it actually, because it’s been bitterly cold around here lately. I had some wood and some materials to burn, so fuck it, let’s have a fire.
Ang was in the kitchen making a stew and I started to load up the fireplace. If you’ve never built a fire in a fireplace, let me break it down for you: You need to start a base of crumpled newspapers. Take one sheet of old newspaper and crumple into into a loose ball. You can’t crumple it into a tight ball because oxygen won’t get inside the material and allow it to burn fully. Instead you’ll just get little burning balls of material that won’t spread the fire.
So after you’ve crumpled up a dozen or so balls of newspaper you then set up your wood base. Small pieces of scrap wood work best, because they’ll catch easier than say a whole log. A log requires a lot of heat to burn through, otherwise the fire will patter out long before the log is fully engulfed and have a chance to provide you with a lasting fire. Scrap wood will burn quick and through, generating that log heat.
After you get a good small fire going, with lots of red and orange flames, add one log at a time. A log should be about 12 to 16 inches in length, maybe 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Wait til the first log catches and add another. With two logs burning, you should have enough flame to last you about an hour. Add logs as appropriate, never letting the fire burn down to just embers.
Oh, and an important tip: make sure your flume is open BEFORE you do any of this.
But it wasn’t the flume I forgot to open last night as I started my fire. It was the materials I was burning.
It’s somewhat bad practice to burn anything other than wood and paper in the fireplace, however I’ve burnt boxes from Xmas and last night a shoe box that was taking up room in my closet. I had built up my fire with too much material to begin with, starting with that newspaper base and then some chunked up portions of plywood that we had once used to stiffen up our bed when we couldn’t fit the boxspring in our old apartment. I had used three sections of this chopped up plywood to make a small A-frame in the fireplace, with the paper underneath everything and the shoebox under the two pieces making the “roof” of the A-frame.
Obviously everything caught, and burnt fast. Before I knew it, flames were licking out of the metal screen and onto the hearth. Thankfully we don’t have a mantle.
Ang, becoming concerned with the amount of smoke and brightness of the fire took one look at the fireplace and immediately bailed out of the house. The smoke detector started to go off which led the dog to freak out. Meanwhile, I started to fill up the smallest fucking measuring cup we own with water to help knock down the flames.
After about five attempts with the measuring cup and a scorched finger later, the materials in the fireplace were soaking in about an inch of water, crackling, pitching embers out of the flume. I waved the smoke away from the smoke detector and Ang came back in.
If I could see through the smoke, I’m sure I would’ve seen Ang giving me that look that every wife spends hours a day perfecting; that “you know you fucked up, right?” look.
I cleared my throat, eyes burning a bit, finger tip throbbing. ”Uh, I’m gonna go do those dishes…”
Why Being Late for a Wedding Can be a Good Thing
There was that air of tension for a brief second where I knew, before she even said it, that we were going to have to turn around.
My wife Ang and I were on our way to my Cousin Jaime’s wedding in Maine this past weekend. I’d been at a training school for work all week and on Friday after school we took off to Maine. Everything was fine.
But sometime during the night, when the temperatures in Southern Maine dropped down below zero, Ang’s Prius decided to do what any wild beast would do in those temperatures a have a fucking stroke. The next morning, the (thankfully) less expensive of the two Prius’s batteries had shit the bed. We found this out half-way to the wedding.
First off, a compliant: Who the hell has a late-morning wedding? When I woke up that morning, obviously not knowing what time the wedding was, I called Jaime’s father Uncle John (she probably refers to him as “dad” but…) to ask what time the wedding was. I was shocked that at 9 in the morning he told me it was at “eleven, but you might want to get there at 1030ish”. Damnit!
So we rushed, got showered and dressed at my mom’s house a few towns over and took off. We were halfway there when I realized I didn’t have any dashboard read out.
If you’ve never piloted a Prius before, it’s all digital read outs on the dash. No dials. At first I thought I had the little dimmer switch turned down for some reason, but that wasn’t it. Then I thought it might’ve been an optical illusion produced by my polarized sunglasses and the sun or something, and when I pulled my shades down, all I saw was black.
The car was still running though, and we pulled over to the side of Main Street to see if it was something we could fix if we just turned the car off and back on again. I pushed the ignition button and got no response. Queue panic from my wife.
God bless her, but if anything happens to her car she wigs out. So now it’s all tense, we need to be at this wedding, very little time to spare and Ang says “turn back to your mother’s.”
Fuck!
We get back and, knowing nothing about cars, let alone Hybrids, I start googling “Prius + Problems + Cold Weather” and get a bunch of Toyota forums about people in high altitude/cold weather areas having significant ignition and battery problems with their Priuses(i?)
Ang takes the more direct approach and calls the dealership from where she bought the car directly. After a few minutes of on-the-phone diagnostics, we discover that one of the two batteries the Prius runs on is likely dead or close to it. We need to get to a dealership, stat, to replace said battery.
So about ten minutes going the opposite direction, we get to a dealership and all is taken care of. By the time we’re back on the road, the ceremony is definitely over. We can still make the reception, which I guess is at the same place as the wedding.
At this point, I should tell you about the funny feeling I get when I have to deal with my extended family.
Things have always been a little awkward with my dad’s side of the family, even from when I was a kid. I don’t really understand why this is, and I simply accept it. The family is large and I hardly know any of my relatives except the “cool ones” who have achieved this status either by showing some signs of kindness towards me or just by giving me butt-loads of cash during the holidays. Whenever I come around, I feel like I have nothing to say, and things suddenly become very awkward. Instantly, the tough-talking, ass-kicking, moderately successful man with the swagger of a guy who gets paid to knock people out is diminished to that clumsy, mush-mouthed 13 year old from fifteen years ago any time my Aunt Peggy comes around. I can’t explain it.
We pull up to the reception hall and I’m instantly relieved that I listened to my wife’s advice and didn’t wear my three piece suit to this thing, and instead opted for a cashmere sweater and slacks: nearly everyone was in denim and sweatshirts, save a few adults who managed to put on some business-casual button-down shirts. The only ties were being worn by members of the groom’s wedding party; they were dressed in rental black and red three pieces and looked more Ska band than Groomsmen.
Likewise, bridesmaids were dressed in some sort of Katy Perry-like tube dresses and black lace fingerless gloves with red lace accents. My cousin did look gorgeous in her white wedding gown, complete with a pair of black and white Ray-Ban Wayfarers.
Oh yeah, and everyone was shitfaced.
As soon as we walked in, I was greeted by the bulk of my extended family. Hugs were had all around, our gift was taken from us, and slowly, like a spreading pool of blood, the awkwardness set in.
First I had to apologize about a million times for being late. Next I had to explain why I was wearing hiking boots and not decent shoes (I had forgot to pack them) when nearly everyone else was in loafers at best, gym shoes at worst. To compound things, the inevitably and albeit obligatory questions about my mother and father started to surface:
“Is your mom going to make it?”
“How’s your father?”
“What’s going on with them?”
These weren’t the usual questions asked out of absenteeism. No, they knew exactly what’s going on with my mother and father and the nasty separation/divorce. The know all about my father’s self-exile to some remote campground out in NH and my mother’s slipping sanity. They just wanted the gossip.
“Oh, I see your mother all the time at the Shaw’s” one of my aunt’s said. ”Awesome?” I say in return. I mean, what else can I say? Then Jaime finally made her way over.
Blitzed, she punched me in the chest and with thick tongue said “you missed the wedding, ass.” I felt about >< this tall.
To make matters worse, her younger brother Josh, whom I haven’t seen in YEARS swings by and gives me a hug. I don’t recognize him and it’s not until later that Ang points him out to me. Again, I feel about as tall as my boot laces.
We eventually sit with a pair of watered down beers at a table away from my family. Joining us is a remote friend of Jaime’s whom she used to work with, and her husband Greg. The woman (I can’t remember her name) came across like Sarah Palin (she disclosed that she went as Palin for Halloween this past year) only drunk. Both couples had a lot in common and I could see Ang and I becoming this couple in roughly five years. I kinda wish now I had gotten their contact info. They were cool.
After nursing our one beer each (we had no cash for tipping at the open bar, and I felt like a shitheel for not tipping on the two watered down Natty-Ice’s) and eating some finger food, we left, promising we’d see everyone at the “after-party.” Obviously, we didn’t intend to be at the after party.
The more distance I put us between my family the better I felt. I knew the night before this wedding wasn’t something I wanted to really be a part of, but out of love for my cousin, who I treat more like a distant sister, I manned up. For forty minutes.
In the end, being late for the wedding should’ve come across as some sort of omen; being late should’ve told us to phone it in, send out the gift via certified first class mail and send a heart-felt apology letter. It would’ve been easier on my psyche.
Highway to Hell
If such a crayon existed called “Surprised” you could take it out of the box, stick it into that sharpener on the backside, and then color me with it once I found out that my commute didn’t make the top 75 Worst Commutes in America, according to The Daily Beast
Of course, anyone and everyone who commutes to and from work tends to think theirs is the worst commute imaginable. That is, unless of course you either A) are flown by private jet everywhere you go, or B) move through a secret tunnel system, utilizing not-yet-known underground tube technology ala Dick Cheney.
It’s relative, is what I’m saying.
But my commute, in all honesty, is balls. First, if you take a look at the list, there’s some real imaginable nightmares in the top few. I’ve been on the Hollywood Freeway out in LA and I recognize a total clusterfuck when I see one, as well as the SE X’way just outside of Boston (one of two systems that got mentioned on the list which were from New England, the other being in RI). Boston, famous for it’s ‘Big Dig’ from the 70s through the 90s, is well known to be a maze of on and off ramps, ever changing exit numbers, and confusing instructions for your exit mounted on overhead signage planted a mere 400 meters from the exit in question.
But the point I want to make here is that RT 6 on Cape Cod should’ve made this list of the top 75. If you’ve never had the joy (read: bleeding face-feeling) of having to navigate the main artery of Cape Cod let me break it down for you:
There’s only three real ways to get from point A to B on Cape Cod: US RT 6, 6A (which is the old RT 6) and RT 28. Route 6 is the traditional highway which in places splits into four lanes (two each way) but for the most part is two lanes (one each way) divided by some pithy plastic sticks. Route 6 is so nicknamed “Suicide Alley” by the people who are forced to use it on a daily basis, because of the high average of fatalities found on it. Read the local paper and you’ll see that at least once a day there’s a major crash in or around RT 6.
6A and 28 are clogged, serpentine alternatives lined with shops, stores and in the case of Dennisport, a small village along the southern mid-coast of Cape Cod; a dilapidated shantytown of boarded up stores and child molesters. In the summers, these two routes are largely parking lot death traps as you’ll be cruising at 40 mph and be forced to slam on your breaks as the doofus with Jersey tags in front of you is stopping suddenly to pull into one of the ten thousand fried seafood and soft serve ice cream stands you’ll find littered up and down both routes.
Fall provides a slight reprieve from the summer time buffoonery of the Off-Codders and tourists who flood the main corridor trying to get to beaches and t shirt stores and otherwise clog up your commute. However, like a stay of execution, the reprieve is short lived because when the foliage starts to change from the lush greens to the brake light red, traffic cone orange and construction worker vest yellow of the Fall season, the cars with the funny license plates return to make a ten minute drive across town into a half hour mind bender where thoughts from homicide to suicide race through a motorists head.
Winter is no picnic either, as Massachusetts as a whole refuses to salt their roadways, and instead use sand which contain fist-sized boulders within. As you drive thirty or forty feet behind someone, expect to see cracks and pits in your windshield developing as rocks pelt your vehicle like small arms fire in the narrow streets of Baghdad.
Also, they don’t really “plow” on Cape. They kinda “scrape” the top layer of shit off the roadways, leaving this packed bullshit snow over the roads which are completely impassable in anything less than four wheel drive/tank treads.
When the roads are clear, unless you’re driving really early in the morning (this is me, fortunately, on my way into my office) or really late at night, expect to be caught behind some nutsack holding the throttle steady at exactly five miles under the speed limit for the next twenty miles. This ballbag will be utterly oblivious to the growing train of cars piloted by pissed off denizens of Cape Cod forming behind him/her, and will refuse to pull over to the side to let people by. And forget waiting to pass them on a broken yellow line, as every opportunity to do so will be thwarted by on-coming traffic.
This, and the fact that drivers on Cape Cod have a habit of not paying attention to dick, is why I got rid of my motorcycle last Fall.
According to Google, I live 38 minutes from my office. I suspect Google Maps gets that number assuming I’m doing about 50 mph and sprinkling in the occasional stop sign or red light. In relation to this information, it’s not entirely inaccurate for this time of year. Though, come summer time, I can expect my commute, mid-day (when I’d normally be coming home) to be triple to quadruple that amount of time, just based off of the congestion of traffic alone. If there’s some asinine parade going on in town or the Fourth of July weekend, I can expect to get home faster if I hoof it.
And out of everyone at my office, I live third closest… we’ve got guys who travel from well over 100 miles away who work here.
The Good Out of the Bad
Last night I posted this on my Facebook wall:
“I know I’ll catch shit for this: that earthquake was the best thing that could happen to Haiti. There, I said it.”
On it’s surface the comment reads somewhat callously. White guy in New England who’s never experienced an earthquake of any kind, let alone in the middle of a third-world country, making a snide remark about how likely the event IMPROVED the infrastructure of the tiny shared island nation.
However, I assure you, Glen Beck I am not.
No, what I wanted to do was set a trap; a trap I knew that my highly reactionary wife would step right into and spring, which would lead me to writing this article.
Within a few hours of me posting my comment, she fired back with some CNN.com article describing the death and destruction in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capitol. I’m sure she sat there, on our tattered couch, laptop on pillow on lap, in smug satisfaction as she clicked “send” thinking to herself “I’ll show him.”
Ah, huh.
No, obviously even without an Act of God Haiti is a tragedy. A country run by General Who-Knows as he’s known to the local population, and Who-Cares by anyone living outside of it. It’s a nation who shares an island with the Dominican Republic, which if you’ve ever had to live next door to Dominicans, you should know how dreadful a situations that is anyway.
The infrastructure of Haiti is piece-meal at best. Is it any wonder that when an earthquake a whole point higher on the Richter Scale hits San Francisco, everyone in the Bay Area shrugs it off with a chuckle, but when an earthquake of slightly minor proportions hits Haiti, there’s a triple digit deathtoll (now quad-digit as of pub-time -ed)?
That’s because Haiti is literally being held together with corrugated steel, mud and straw bricks and chicken wire. These poor people live in the minimalist of conditions, and I’m not talking about exposed brick and white space. They have NOTHING. They have our thrown away clothing on their backs and wobbly tables with nails sticking out of it to eat off of. Their literacy rate hovers around the same numbers as my body fat percentage. Of course we shouldn’t be surprised when there’s a significant loss of life in Haiti as the result of a natural disaster.
Why is this “good for Haiti” then?
Because when was the last time you even THOUGHT of Haiti before this earthquake hit? As an American, sitting at home on the world wide web that you take for granted, reading blogs about the battle between Conan O’Brien and NBC, until yesterday you didn’t give two shits about Haiti or it’s people.
Don’t worry though, it doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, but it does tend to put things into perspective. These people, who would lose their homes even on a gusty day, have real problems. You know what the biggest problem in my life is right now? Fucking Comcast. A cable company who I feel is screwing me over around every corner. In Haiti, they don’t even have cable! Over half the population doesn’t even have electricity or running water, for chrissakes!
Now, because of this earthquake, developed nations like the US, Canada, etc are going to be flooding Haiti with supplies like food and fresh water, electrical generators, man power to remove rubble and debris, medics and doctors to treat the sick and wounded. We have fucking firefighters flying out from California, the closest thing we have to a third-world-like government, to help the Haitians.
So yeah, I’m sorry that it took an act of God to get Americans, let alone the rest of the world, to lift their heads out of their asses long enough to pay attention to a backwards country, but I tend to be an optimist.
FNG
FNG (Military Jargon, noun, pronounced Eff-En-Gee): Inexperienced personnel that requires extensive training and supervision; Fucking New Guy, see also: Rookie.
Where I work there’s a high rate of turn over. People come and people go like the breeze. Of course, as a product of this, we’re always getting a new guy who is absolutely clueless as to what’s going on.
I come back from being away for pretty much a month to find in my office this kid. And by “kid” I mean this guy is 18 years old, fresh out of where ever he came from, complete with teenage acne, patchy facial hair and a lack of eye contact. His stature is smaller than my 120 lb, 5′4″ wife. My waist line is probably the same as his chest size (32 inches). He looks lost and confused, stuck behind my desk like a wadded up bad idea that didn’t make it to the trash can.
Jesus.
“Who are you?” I ask. He gives me his name, not with a lot of confidence but not exactly whispering it either. I ask him what the hell he’s doing in my office and he tells me that he was told to come here so I could help train him, make him the man that I am. I smile, pull my hoodie off from my head to reveal my vacation Mohawk, drop my bag and walk to down to my little room where I change clothes and use the bathroom.
I find out that one of my superiors has passed the buck to me to train this guy. He, the superior, sugar coats his reasoning to me as I’m standing in front of him with a frothy toothbrush hanging out of my mouth.
“Jim, you’re the best we got in your department. I don’t have the time to sit down and show this kid the ropes, it’s up to you. He’s your pet now.” I’m told. I reply back that I already have a 50 lb Labrador that thinks it’s a lapdog, I don’t need another. As he walks away, my superior curtly tells me to “get it done” and not in the ironic Larry the Cable Guy way either.
So I come back to my office and I’m looking at this kid. He tells me his name and I tell him mine and we go from there. He has a lot of questions about me (which I sort’ve fend off), about our work (which I try not to be negative about, but I don’t sugar coat it either) and what’s to be expected of him. To this I tell him:
“Just show up on time, ready to work. Have a good attitude even in the shittiest of situations, be prepared to take criticism, and learn from your mistakes.” All generic advice, but advice I should probably learn to take as well.
I was once the ‘new guy’ too, and probably shared this kid’s ridiculous sense of nervousness. Two months ago this guy was probably busying himself with Xbox and skateboards or whatever it is kids do now-a-days. Now he’s showing up to work with his first very own real apartment that he’s just realizing that he has to fully furnish.
True story, when I dropped that bit of knowledge on him, he looked like I just hit him in the chest with a baseball bat.
“You mean they don’t furnish the apartments?” He asked.
“Well, I mean, some they do, but usually not. I mean, there’s going to be appliances and shit, but-”
“Like a blender?”
“What?”
“You said appliances…”
“Yeah, like a stove and a fridge…”
“Oh. So like a couch?”
“No, that’s furniture, that’s not an appliance.”
“Oh.”
Wow.
I’m ten years older than this kid, so I can’t talk to you like I grew up in the ‘old days’ but seriously, I was kinda-sorta on my own by his age, living a few states away and getting by just fine. I didn’t know how the world worked then, and even now I only have half a clue. The difference between Me Now and Me Then is that now I know where to look for answers to life’s questions, like ‘when can I contribute to my IRA again for 2010′ and ‘How fucking fast does a cheetah run?”
I go to Google.
This kid hasn’t figured that out yet, and it’s up to me to show him.
It’s an amazing amount of responsibility, and it’s not a task I feel like undertaking with my usual blasé approach . The last time I took a kid under my wing it resulted in him going overseas to fight pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Do I want to be responsible for telling this kid’s parents that their son got shanked by some opportunistic jihadist with a hatred of corn-fed Americans and a love of sharp knives? No. Absolutely not.
That and I don’t want this kid to pick up my bad habits, which I’m sure he will anyway. I don’t want him to have my sour attitude or my apparent lack of serious maturity. As another one of my co-workers put it, when they learned I was going to be sitting on this egg of an FNG until he hatched into a productive member of our team: “He’s going to learn all the bad things you do, but hopefully, he’ll learn all the good things you do around here, too.”
It’s just a process that I’m becoming all too familiar with. It’s a cycle, because likely, in 6 months, this kid will have moved on to bigger and better things, and I’ll be walking into my office to stare at the next little fucker that’s come down the line.
TidBits: New Year’s Edition
Comcast, again:
Honestly, their website sucks. I’m actually finding this more often than not: Companies will hand the reigns over to some third-party website people who take all the stress of maintaining a reliable website off the hands of the company, and in turn, make things absolutely hellish on customers.
To wit: I’m trying to pay all my bills (online of course, …I haven’t bought a book of stamps since like, 1996) and when I get to Comcast’s site from clicking the link in the email, it brings me to the log-on screen I’m familiar with. I pump in my info, and then I’m brought to another log-on on screen.
This log-on screen tells me that I’m logging into ‘My Sign-In’ which will keep me logged into “all of Comcasts other great sites!”, what these are I have no clue, but apparently my log-in information is still the same, so I pump it in AGAIN, and am brought to a screen that tells me “account cannot be access because user has failed to make account secure.”
Ooohkay…. what?
I’ve been an unfortunate subscriber to Comcast for over two years now, and I think they’re giving me a heart attack on purpose. It seems that any time I alter my service just a little bit, all sorts of wild shit gets fucked up days or even weeks later. You’d think a company as big as Comcast (they just BOUGHT NBC from General Electric for chrissakes,) would have their shit together enough so where a customer like myself logs in, all their information would be right there in front of them, and not be led about the nose through a maze of log-in screens only to find out that for some reason they don’t have your account information.
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to GIVE money to some one or service, and not be able to do so. I wish I could just not pay it, and be like “fuck you and your website,” but then they’d just shut our shit down.
By the way, from all the button clicking and navigating around that site, there appears to be no way to confirm or “secure” the account, resulting in my having to call them eventually later today. Great, now I get to spend half an hour later today dealing with some prick on the phone just to give them 150 bucks.
I still don’t understand why I don’t just cancel my account and live without all this bullshit.
Other Movie-Goers:
Last night, in celebration of our one year anniversary, Ang and I went out to the local theatre to see “Sherlock Holmes.” We never go to the movies, which was puzzling to me until last night.
I forgot about how when you go out to the movies, usually there’s going to be other people there, and these people are usually not very considerate of other movie goers.
I’m one of those types of people who like to get to the theatre a little early, get soda and popcorn, get good seats, and have the conversation while the stupid movie trivia is playing on the screen. If you haven’t figured out by now from reading all my blogs, I’m sort’ve anal-retentive about shit. I like to be comfortable long before the movie or even the previews start.
So imagine the bullshit rage I flip into when people show up late, stumbling through the dark after the house lights have dropped and there’s shit on the screen. Imagine me going for my pistol when those asshole make a a bee-line for the seats directly behind us, and then engage in some stupid conversation.
It started off brilliantly: we arrived ten minutes early, got our snacks out, settled in. There were only two or three other couples and everyone was spread out. We had seats on the left hand side, back-middle, where we’d be able to take in the whole screen without being overwhelmed.
Then this family of five came in, two adults three children, all of them yapping. Nothing had started yet, so it wasn’t a big deal, but they sat directly across the aisle from us. Aggravation level is at about a 3.
The lights drop, more people shuffle in under the wire, aggravation level rising to 5, like, come on people, get it together.
Then, at the start of the “Iron Man 2″ trailer, these three girls show up, late teens, early 20s, and sit DIRECTLY BEHIND US, put their feet up, and start fucking talking about whatever conversation they had started in the parking lot outside. Aggravation level now around an 8.
We get up and move, making a big deal about it. I’m wearing a mohawk and skinny jeans, and want to say some shit to these people like a skanky punk would, but I don’t, I just show them my ass as we shuffle out of the seats. We take seats further down and on the right hand side of the aisle, slightly too close to the screen, so I’m craning my neck up, being bombarded by all the wild shit going on on the screen. Aggravation level at critical.
In my heart of hearts I wish I had a plank of wood with nails in the end of it to brandish at idiots. Maybe a cricket bat or something.
Sins of a Dog Owner
It’s Xmas morning when the following takes place:
It was roughly like 0930 and the wife and I had opened all our gifts, put coffee on, and were in this post-Xmas morning glow. That kinda awe when you realize that the other person got you way too much awesome shit. It was during this period when I decided it would be a good idea to take the dog for a quick walk.
The schedule we keep Ivy, our yellow lab, is in two parts: She’ll get me up between 0600 and 0700 to be let out to pee and eat breakfast. While this is going on, I’ll feed the ferrets and get my bearings. I’ll work for a bit, either in my office or in front of the tv and usually by 0900-1000 she’ll want to go outside again to take a big shit.
Since living at our last place, I’ve neglected to put Ivy on a leash. I hate leashes, I think they’re a pain in the ass. Ivy isn’t the type of dog that ‘walks you’ instead of you walking her, but she does tend to dawdle at every piss-soaked piece of sidewalk between here and where ever we’re going, which sucks when it’s below 30 degrees outside. Without the leash, I can keep walking forward (and keep warm) and she’ll usually catch up once I’ve gone maybe fifty feet ahead.
This is also ideal for when Ang and I go hiking. Ivy can sniff whatever she wants and we can keep up our pace. We seldom run into other dogs on the trails, but if we do, usually they’re unleashed too, and never does anything negative or “bad” happen.
So where we moved to, we’re a bit out of the way in a sleepy neighborhood at the end of a cul de sac. We have a front yard and a long dirt driveway and 4/5s the time, Ivy’s really good about staying within those confines. But lately, she’s taking her liberty too far.
I would let her out but stand by the door “just in case” she decided to follow a scent too far into the woods around our house. Many times I’ve been putting on a sweater and slipping into my boat shoes after waiting for up to ten minutes by the door (which is my self-imposed time limit) to hear her jingling collar coming up the driveway through the darkness. Where she went, who knows, but at least she came back. This is definitely problematic.
So back to what I was talking about on Xmas morning. I again, forgo a leash because I figure we’re gonna go out, come back, all within like ten minutes. None of the few neighbors I have would likely be out and Ivy can run around in the snow drifts, do her dirty business, and we can get back to play with all the shit I got for Xmas within those ten minutes.
Of course when we get to the end of the driveway, the old miserable lonely cunt next door is out there with her 400 lb German Shepherd, a dog that needs to be groomed worse than Joaquin Phoenix’s face.
Obviously I don’t like the woman. I’ve had minor interactions with her before and she’s awkward and annoying. She’s preachy like an old spinster would be. She keeps her equally long driveway entrance blocked by parking her Buick right at the end of it. Her giant Shep is aggressive, but leashed.
So as we come around the bend in our driveway, of course Ivy see’s him.
She doesn’t have issues with other dogs, usually. Usually she just ignores them. But this other dog starts yanking on his leash and barking. And being that I have Ivy off of a leash, I kinda trot up along side her to grab her collar in case she decides to go bluddy loony tunes all of a sudden.
I greet the woman with a hearty “merry xmas” and she says nothing. Her dog is barking and freaking the fuck out. I bring Ivy close so they can sniff each other in the hopes the dog relaxes and we can all move on. Instead of saying “merry xmas” back or even “good morning” she says in this bitchy tone: ”Don’t you have a leash.”
Notice no “?”. She spoke it like a comment or an order. I try to play the role of a plaintive dog owner and instead of going into a big long thing about my personal belief’s regarding leashes, I just say “ah, yeah, but I couldn’t find it and she had to go,” and to this the woman says “you know, ___________ (our town) has leash laws, you could get fined and your dog could get taken away by animal control.”
That last bit, to me, sounded like a fucking threat. I smile, wish her a merry xmas again, and pull Ivy away up the street so she can do her business, literally putting this miserable woman behind us.
The next thing is that Ivy typically doesn’t just shit “anywhere.” She goes out of her way to find someplace where people typically won’t walk. Although this might be on someone else’s property, it’s practically never on their front lawn or driveway, but more along the sides of the property, in a tree line or in some bushes. I have no personal hang ups about this at all.
So as Ivy bounded into someone’s yard to sniff out a patch to poop on, this woman comes around the corner with her shepherd. She’s looking at me, and then looks over at Ivy, who’s in a squatting position, right on this neighbor’s front lawn. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to deviate from her normal pooping procedures.
I smile some dumb smile, shrugging my shoulders as if to say “what can you do” and fully prepare myself to get a tongue-lashing from this woman at best, and and at worse, the cops called on me.
“That’s not right,” she says to me. I have to agree. Ivy finishes, shakes, and comes trotting back to me. We leave.
“You’re not going to pick it up?!” She calls after us.
My number one sin as a dog owner is that I’m not a poop picker-upper. We don’t live in a built up area, Ivy doesn’t shit where people would normally walk. Even though this particular time she shat right in someone’s front lawn, there was snow covering every thing and the shit would be gone within 24 hours, I’m sure. I’m not one of those people who carry little baggies with them where ever they go just to bend over and carry dog shit with them until they find a receptacle. Sorry, I won’t do it.
If that makes me a bad dog owner, then fine, whatever. But I’m not mistreating my dog, I’m mistreating the people who live around us, there’s a difference. As someone once said: the more time I spend with my dog, the less I like people.
Or something like that.
TidBits: Snowed In Edition
On Friend Requests:
I have this guy I used to be best friends with growing up. In high school we sadly parted ways. He went with one crowd and I another – that shit is real elementary, it happens to everyone.
I literally hadn’t heard jackshit from this kid in close to almost ten years, and suddenly, as soon as I turned my Facebook account back on, I get a friend request from him.
I know what you’re thinking, or perhaps even saying to yourself: ”Who cares?” I care. That shit fucked me up a few different ways because one, I like to keep my “friends” on Facebook to a minimum; it keeps the News Feed clear of unneccesary crap as well as limits the amount of information about me that gets out there. The other reason why the friend request was bothersome was because it was nothing more than just the request. No attached note or message saying “hey what’s up, I’d love to reconnect, we had good times” or anything. Nothing asking me about what I’m doing now-a-days, just a blank “add me” button to stare at.
I was friends with this guy for like… five or six years. And by “friends” I mean basically sleeping over at each other’s houses every other night. We were inseparable, we did everything and went everywhere together. When he slipped on a patch of ice and broke his ankle as a kid, it was I who ran and got help. And he couldn’t take two seconds to pound out one sentence to go with his request?
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I have a high expectation for people, or maybe I’m just a prick, but either way he should’ve/could’ve asked how I was doing in the very least. No, what he was doing was just trying to inflate his Facebook “Friends” numbers and turn around and shit all over my News Feed. And I ain’t havin’ that.
So I took the intiative and sent him a message telling him how I felt (by now I had received two of the same request, I had ignored the first one a few days ago) about his seemingly ambivalent approach towards me. I was a real ball breaker, with the hopes that he won’t bother sending me another request.
Does it make me an asshole, yes. But at the same time it saves me from two days of awkward conversations that peter out into me inevitably deleting him. I’m just trying to save myself time and aggravation.
On Televised Violence:
I’ve been keeping half an eye turned towards Mtv’s Jersey Shore (read my review at the IRdC here), and was recently informed by my wife that a female character nicknamed (presumably by her pimp) ‘Snookie’ was physically assaulted at a bar after running her mouth – and it was caught on tape.
Of course I had to watch the footage.
If you haven’t seen the web-only footage (Mtv won’t air it, more on that in a sec), basically the diminutive skank with a love of trucker hats is standing on a bar stool and calling out some asshole who keeps stealing her and her friend’s pre-paid shots of booze. She goes on a five minute long, insult-laden tirade on this guy, putting her hands in his face and coming within inches of assaulting him first. The guy has enough and cracks her in the face with a straight punch. He then (kinda) hustles out of the bar while a small army of guidos (kinda) chase him outside, where he’s met by the local constabulary.
Do I condone what happened to Snookie? No. Do I think she kinda asked for it? …Maybe.
Either way, Mtv had decided that on it’s televised episode, they wouldn’t show the actual punch. Instead, they black out the screen but give you the audio. The audio consists of shit-talking abruptly silenced by the sound of a handclap, followed by a chorus of “ooooh”s, followed by a bunch of bleeped out cursing. The shot comes back in with the assailant in retreat and Snookie on her side, crumpled up like a bumper after a head-on collision.
My beef is this: Mtv won’t show a random stranger, who happens to be a dude, striking a female he didn’t know, in a public place that served alcohol. They will however, show a promo for their other ultra-trashy reality television program “Teen Mom” where one of the teen mothers backs her baby’s daddy into a corner and slaps the shit out of him in anger.
And I’m not talking about like, one slap here. I’m talking about taking this dude (who’s admittedly bigger than her) by the throat, slamming him into a corner, striking his chest multiple times, and then cracking him across his jowls. Mtv has no problem airing this, let alone using it in the commercial for the next episode.
It’s a double standard.
I think it’s far worse to show domestic violence than just regular, standard violence. I think it’s also a bad idea to show violence of any kind that’s centered around rearing a child, on a show that’s decidedly marketed towards teenage women, oppose to “Jersey Shore”’s demographic which is conceivably slightly older in age.
Hey Mtv: Just because it’s chick-on-dude violence doesn’t mean it’s ok to show it. Just because the guy’s bigger than the girl doesn’t make it ok either. That young woman on the show (Amber is her name, I watched a few eps this morning…) is psychologically unbalanced and dangerous. You have untold amounts of footage of her crying in her car, on the phone, and in public places. What makes you think it’s ok to air footage of her acting out in violence towards the father of her child?
It’s bad enough that there’s a stigma out there that men can’t be abused by their partners, but please don’t add to it and make it seem like it’s “normal” because it’s not. Hundreds, maybe thousands of men take physical abuse from their spouses or girl/boyfriends in silence, because they’re afraid no one will understand them. It’s a real problem.
So next time, how about you run that same stupid PSA text from that episode of “Jersey Shore” over the next episode of “Teen Mom” ? It’d make up for running those Kid Rock videos back in 2002.
On The Holidays:
I wish Xmas was over with already. I have all the gifts wrapped, trees up, lights are plugged in and I’m broke. I’m really broke.
After paying all the bills and getting the last minute items shipped out, my bank account is tapped and it’s still like, ten days before my next paycheck. I’m thankful that I’m on vacation for the next few weeks, because I’m not even certain that I’d be able to afford to put gas in my truck right now to make the commute.
I’m exaggerating obviously, but money’s tight, and that’s no joke. The Holidays are rough on people for different reasons; maybe you’re broke, so broke you can’t afford gifts for Xmas, maybe you’re away from family, maybe you’ve lost people this time of year? For all the joy the tv says that this time of year is supposed to bring, there’s a lot of long faces in the crowd.
It seems too, that The Holidays get longer and longer every year. And I’m not talking like, they start decorating the stores earlier, I’m talking about how I seem to be ready for them earlier and earlier each year. This lends itself to me sitting in front of the tv, watching the days tick by. When I was a kid, this would be because I couldn’t wait for Xmas to get there, because the tree would be surrounded in a wall of wrapped boxes. As I’m an adult, it’s because I’m just ready for all this shit to be over with – I’m waiting for the day AFTER Xmas, where I can wipe my brow, look at my bank account and sigh in a little relief.
Thank god Google’s been kicking ass in the stock market, that’s all I’m gonna say.
Fat Lil’ Fucker
Lately, I can’t really comment on health and fitness. The holidays are rough even on the most ultra-religious Nazi fitness fanatic. Every where you turn there’s home-baked this, chocolate-dipped that. Hell, just the other night, Ang and I made like 50 M&M cookies to bring into my work (full disclosure, I didn’t know I was supposed to leave some behind, naturally, I got an earful of this all week).
So I haven’t exactly been on my game. As I was wrapping up work this past week in anticipation of my holiday vacation, I wasn’t really able to get over to the gym as much, if at all. I feel lethargic and weak.
To help combat this, however, Ang and I have been doing hikes out in Nickerson State Park, with loaded packs on our backs. These aren’t grueling hikes up the sides of mountains by any means, but at least it’s SOMETHING.
***
So last night I was in the local Shaw’s, getting some quick stuff for a carb-y meal of chicken parm; chicken breasts, angel hair pasta, sauce, the whole bit. I get to the check out and I’m standing behind this guy and his 12 year old kid. At first glance this kid looks hypoglycemic, badly stretched skin, yellow in color, eyes are simply dark colored dots poked into the middle of his face. There’s one of those little dividers between his dad’s groceries and what appears to be the kid’s own purchase: a small mountain of candy.
I’m not talking about a couple snickers bars and a thing of M&Ms, I’m talking about the hardcore candy, that stuff in the red packaging that’s glistening in sugar: gummy worms, sour patch kids, swedish fish, etc. The stuff goes for a dollar a pack I believe, and in the end, this kid was buying over 15 dollars worth of the stuff.
In the mix as well, a few packs of gum, you know, because he needs something to do with his mouth between stuffing handfuls of confectionary into it.
I looked at the dad, who was non-pulsed by the scenario. And that scenario was this: The kid probably managed to roll off of his fat ass long enough to clean his room, and daddy threw him a Jackson as a reward with the promise that he could spend it on whatever he wanted. Obviously dad must’ve seen the inevitable purchase of weapons-grade candy, because he was cool as shit about the purchase.
Literally, as soon as he finished paying for a bunch of small groceries (which I would’ve loved to have seen) his kid stepped up and paid for the candy with his own wad of greasy ones. I must’ve had a horrified look on my face because the cashier glanced at me, then the dad before taking the kid’s money.
I felt like I had to be a responsible adult. I felt like I had to say something to this father, that he was allowing his kid to kill himself. To me, this was no worse than allowing your kid to buy a 30 rack of Ice House and pound the whole case down before heading out to school.
How was the father allowing the kid to get this out of control? Where was the authority? I mean, easily, had it been my little butterball and he started grabbing up bags of candy with his little Vienna Sausage fingers I would’ve slapped that shit out of his hands real quick.
“No!” I would’ve yelled. ”No fucking way, no, if that’s how you’re going to blow your wad, then obviously you don’t deserve this money,” and yoink, there goes his allowance.
The whole scenario was so outrageously irresponsible. Giving a kid money, allowing him to make a poor purchasing decision with no immediate repercussions, as well as allowing the kid to consume easily 200 times his daily allotment of sugars in one sitting reminded me of how, as a nation don’t deserve a public health option.
How hard would it to have been to be the dad and be like “no, you’re not buying that” or even “ok, you can buy candy, but how about you pick one of those bags and put the rest back.”?
No, instead dad is setting his kid up for failure. At this rate he’ll be a diabetic by 22, his teeth will have rotted out by 28, he’ll have complications from all his medical issues by 35, and likely be in the grave by 60. And by the looks of things, this isn’t just a snapshot judgement; the kid probably weighed around 140 and couldn’t have even been in his teens yet.
***
Did I end up saying anything? No. I knew that it would just create trouble, an awkwardness in the Shaw’s that would likely get me banned for life. I kept looking at the dad, the cashier, the kid and then down at my own food in utter disbelief. At one point my mouth opened to be like “hey…” but I knew I’d be swinging at a bad pitch, so I just clamped it and watched father and son waddle off like two human peanut M&Ms.
As my wife said after I told her the whole story when I got home “James, there’s nothing you can do – you probably would’ve gotten punched out by the dad. Think of it like this: That kid will be dead in a few decades, and there will be more air for us to breathe.”
Fuck Comcast 2
After spending literally an entire afternoon on the phone between Comcast and their third party contracted E911 people, I finally got our landline set up.
To put it another way, I spent roughly 6 hours attempting to outfit our new apartment with a technology that’s been around since 1880-something, can be replicated with two soup cans and a string, all to save myself 30 dollars.
Yeah, I’d have killed myself too.
The drama starts here: I fucking hate Comcast. If you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where you have another cable/internet/phone provider, good for you- you don’t know the levels of aggravation myself and nearly 5 million other Comcast subscribers are subjected to nearly every day.
By talking to my neighbors and co-workers, all of which HAVE to be Comcast subscribers (we do have the option for DirectTv and Fios – Verizon’s DSL service, but Comcast is the only service available on Cape Cod that provides high-speed internet access through coaxial cable) our experiences are shared; frustratingly confusing and hard to navigate automated menus when calling into customer support, inattentive customer support reps with a habit of buck-passing the customer once they realize there’s it’s not their department’s problem, tech service that usually leaves things more messed up than before they showed up, etc.
“It’s like dealing with a company manned by 14 year olds,” spoke a co-worker who also has felt the strain of having to deal with Comcast. “I’ve had them for five years, and no matter what, they’ll fuck something up as soon as I call them,” he explained.
All I wanted to do was set up a landline at our apartment. Because of some sort of geographic anomaly, we can’t get cell service where we just moved to, so we need a dedicated phone line that works. Ang is on the job hunt again and it makes things a little hard if potential employers can’t reach her by conventional means. I work in a field that requires me to be “on-call” 24/7. I pitched the idea to my bosses that I could be reached at home via email instead of by phone, but my bosses felt that the “old ways” were better. So a phone line was what I got.
First I called Comcast’s shitty customer service hotline and was greeted by a pre-recorded message from Shaquille O’Neal and Ben Stein, two people who have probably the most annoying, mouth breathing voices on the planet, each welcoming and thanking me for calling Comcast. After five minutes of verifying certain information, like the last four digits of my cell phone’s number and pressing a bunch of buttons to talk to a human being, I finally get a hold of someone in the phone department.
I explain my case and site how apprehensive I am about taking on the service, given my and Comcast’s track record/rocky relationship. I tell them that I’ve had numerous experiences where I’ve received sub-par treatment on both ends of the service, both from the office folks I speak to on the phone and from the techs in the field (I made sure I brought up the fact that the last tech that came out to do our cable/internet install completely fucked up our internet). I shrewdly asked if there was any way to get a better deal on the price of adding a phone line.
“Well,” this woman starts. “Right now you’re paying 120 dollars a month for just cable and internet, adding the phone service will bring you to 140 and change. You’d be paying 20 dollars more a month for a 40 dollar a month service,”
“A phone line is a 40 dollar a month service?” I hear my father’s voice coming out of my mouth.
“Yes sir,”
“Says who?” I ask. There’s a pause.
“Well, says Comcast, sir.”
So according to Comcast, they’re going to charge me 40 dollars a month for a technology that’s widely available ANYWHERE. They say they’re going to “save” me 20 dollars a month if I bundle the cable and internet together with a dedicated phone line. How the hell is a phone line 40 dollars a month?
I asked this, in polite terms.
“Well sir, you get unlimited long distance in the domestic US and Canada,” great, so I’m going to be paying for “unlimited” long distance that I’ll never use (I plan on prank calling Canada at least twice a week now -ed).
Granted I have one parent in Maine and another in Florida, I talk to them mostly from my cell phone, which I’d do from work if I really needed to chat with them. Mom uses email just as extensively as I do, and 9/10s the time that’s how we communicate. My father, still uses a phone for most of his communication, but even then, I call him once every two weeks for a 30 minute phone call from my cell phone.
“Ok, so, what if I don’t want unlimited long distance?” I ask. The woman seems baffled by this.
“Well, you could opt for the local only service, but that’s only going to cover you for your own town; any calls made outside of ________ will cost you 5 cents a minute.”
“Ok, that’s fine,” I say. I really only need the device to receive in-coming calls, and really, what’s 5 cents a minute if Ang needs to reach me to tell me to bring home milk? She starts to back pedal.
“Sir, um, it can get costly…”
“Do you think it’ll run me more than 40 dollars a month?” I ask. She corrects me and tells me that I’d only be paying 20 dollars a month, on top of my cable and internet. “Ok, well do you think it’ll run me more than 20 bucks a month?”
“I don’t know sir. But we’d have to send out a technician to set up the phone system in your house for that service, and since it’s an analog install, we’d have to charge you a technician’s fee, which is by the hour.”
“What’s the tech fee?”
“Twenty-five dollars an hour,” Jesus!
In the end, I opted for a self-install with their stupid unlimited long distance. I don’t see myself carrying on like the babbling idiots in the commercials for Comcast’s unlimited long distance plan; some woman jabbering into a phone as she walks around her house. I see an old, battered table top model from Kmart sitting on the counter, receiver tethered to its base by some tangled plastic chord. I see the thing ringing once or twice a month, maybe. Ang and I have already discussed that we’re not handing out this number to anyone other than my work, her work, and select few other people.
So with the little phone modem thing on order, and committing myself to paying out the ass for something I hopefully won’t need in the foreseeable future, I get a voice mail about an hour later.
“Mr. N, we’re from Comcast and we see you have an order in for our dedicated phone line service,” says the cheery foreign call center worker. “We need you to call in and activate the device for E911 service before we can ship it out to you. Please call us back at 1-800….”
Ok, not unreasonable, but I’m just curious as to why the woman whom I spoke to on the phone earlier couldn’t have handled this when I ordered the goddamn thing. Plus I have to listen to the message again because the person who left the message sputtered out the number to call so quickly in a mushy-mouth way, that it’s hard to hear.
What I find out is that the number given is the central Comcast customer service number. Awesome.
Back to navigating around Shaq and Ben Stein’s voices, back to another maze of automated options. I finally get a hold of someone and explain the message I got. They seem just as baffled by it as I was.
“Well sir,” some black college kid says, “let me put you on hold so I can figure out what’s going on here… did they give you a confirmation number?” And they did, and given my past experiences with Comcast, I know to write this number down. If you ever have the unfortunate experience of dealing with Comcast, WRITE DOWN YOUR CONFIRMATION NUMBERS! Believe me, it’s the only way you’ll get anything done in a timely manner. I was once on hold for 35 minutes just so the fucking idiot on the other end of the phone could look something up for me. I nearly bled out from my wrist wounds.
So he comes back from putting me on hold and instructs me to call an 866 number that will take me through an automated process in setting up the E911 system. I balk.
Being a cop in my former life, I know all about the E911 service. It was introduced pretty extensively right at the end of the last decade by local police so that if you should call 911, and not be able to talk into the phone (sick and dying, hostage taking, etc) they can instantly see where you’re calling from.
Yes, it’s exactly like Caller ID, and half the time it doesn’t work or will fault and send out a signal to the police station if there’s a power surge, causing the cops to show up unexpectedly at your front door. This is highly problematic if it’s Geisha Night.
So I ask if it’s necessary that I go through this step. The gentleman I speak with says that not only is the E911 service an FCC regulation, but they can’t ship me the modem until I go through with the task of setting it up.
He assures me it takes less than 5 minutes and they only want to confirm my address. He says it’s just pushing buttons on my phone and he’ll be happy to transfer me.
Sigh, ok, fine.
I sit on hold and here a few clicks. I’m disconnected. Apparently Leroy doesn’t know how to transfer calls.
If I had been holding a gun, I probably would’ve fired it into the ceiling by now.
I call back, hi Shaq, hi Ben; I know the number combination to navigate back to a human being by heart now (2-1-2-2-4-0). I get a different service rep on the line now and explain the situation, AGAIN, asking if I can just get the number to the place I need to call to set this shit up.
“I’d be happy to transfer you,”
NO NO NO NO….. just the number please.
I get it, hang up. My brow is drenched in sweat.
I call and get some fucking mish-mash of instructions that I guess are for technicians and not for an average Joe like myself to hear. I’m confused so I just start picking options blindly, including mashing the ‘0′ key to talk to an operator.
“Sorry, we cannot provide that service at this time,” says the computer.
I finally wade through a bunch of bullshit and get to an option that will let me speak to a human. I excitedly press the button.
I get some bored sounding housewife who starts reading through a script, prompting me to say “yes” in certain fields. I stop her, and start to ask a question about the install, because I was unsure if I was pressing the right options and if she could confirm what I had done and make changes if something was really fucked up.
This of course takes her for a loop.
She stutters, there’s a long “uhhhh”
Long story short, I was worried that I might have tied my cell phone number to the account as well, which could result in me not being able to make calls with my cell, which is kinda a big deal to me. I ask if she can go back in there and see if I tethered the two numbers inadvertently.
“Uh, I can’t do that, I’m not authorized. I’m going to have to send this back to Comcast and have a service rep remove that information for you,” wait what?
“No no, no, its fine, don’t worry about it, let’s just move forward with this, and if it’s a big deal, I’ll deal with Comcast later,” I say.
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t go forward with this install, if there’s a chance we could be cutting off 911 services from a cell phone it’s a big deal.”
“But I don’t think I screwed up that bad, let’s just get this over with so I can get my fancy modem and we’ll all just have a great day after that,”
“I’m sorry, I can’t, hold please,” and the line cuts out. Suddenly there’s Shaq and Ben Stein again. Motherfucker.
I hang up. At this point I’m so mad that I nearly want to chop a tree down with my bare hands.
I wish I weren’t so dependent on Comcast for everything – like some sort of battered wife with no one else to turn to, so she keeps going back to the abuse. I could opt for DirectTv but if we can’t even get cell service, what makes me think I’ll be able to get a satellite feed where we’re at? We’re literally surrounded by trees and lobster gear. There’s Verizon, but I don’t want to use DSL, and from what I understand the service isn’t that great either.
Then I read this article in the NYT this morning.
I got half a chub.
In short, this guy and his hot wife dropped about five bones on a Mac Mini, a wireless mouse, keyboard and some extra cables and gave their cable company the fucking heave-ho. They get all their television and movies through the computer and internet connection, circumventing the cable company (except for the internet access, which by itself is roughly 40 bucks a month.
He justifies the largely one time expense as being a cure-all to subscribing to a cable company for 140 bucks a month with not much to show for it except for a bunch of unwatched channels.
He gets the shows he wants and pipes in his Netflix feed seamlessly over WiFi.
It’s a little something to get used to, he explains in the article, but well worth it. He ends up freeing about 1600 dollars a year.
Though, I’m sure he’s not stuck in a hole in the middle of the woods with no cell reception, either. Another problem, this option isn’t really viable for sports enthusiasts who have to watch the game. The writer’s solution: Head to the bar.
This option echoes conversations regarding cable television (and subsequently its service) for years: why is the customer paying out the ass for a bunch of shit he doesn’t need? On one of my old blogs, I suggested that cable companies perhaps start custom-tailoring customer’s channel options, allowing the customer to purchase unlimited access to whatever and however many channels they wanted, for a low price, say, a dollar a channel, 5 dollars for a premium channel like HBO. Being that local channels are all digital now this idea is even more advantageous to the cable companies, because it’s nearly guaranteed that people will want at least the local channels, plus grab up a few of the other channels too (for me it’d be Discovery, Vh1, NatGeo, AMC and Food Network, plus the locals).
But using the internet to get around the cable company is a do-able plan with the right materials, anyway. Ang is by far a bigger proponent to watching television online, as she watches a few of her favorite shows (Dexter, Desperate Housewives, Family Guy) on sites like SideReel.com and Hulu. As for myself, I’m more into purchasing stand alone episodes of my favorite programs (American Dad, 24, Sunny) on iTunes. My argument is that there’s better picture quality, though sidereel – which is largely ad-free oppose to Hulu – isn’t bad, it’s just smaller. Either way, even a season’s pass to one of my favorite shows on iTunes will run me maybe 40 bucks, which is a fraction of the cost of my cable bill.
In the end, I called back the third party E911 service number and followed the fully automated maze without talking to a human and without entering my cell phone’s number. I completed the process in just fewer than 15 confusing minutes.
I let about a half an hour go by and I called back Comcast. I got through to a service rep and asked if he could confirm that the device is now being shipped since I completed my end of the deal with the third party service. The rep on the phone said that the unit was shipped earlier this afternoon and I should be getting it at my office’s address by Tuesday.
I breathed out. Ok.
Hell, maybe the next place we move to, we’ll just cut out tv, cable and internet all together. …I know, big talk, right?
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Sounding Off...
incessantramble on Burning Down the House css5150 on Highway to Hell tittletoo on The Good Out of the Bad css5150 on The Good Out of the Bad 
The Good Out of the … on Fuck Comcast 2
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