ninme

So, I’m having a crisis, and I need advice. It’s about my cable. And since my cable is your ninme, who better to ask for the advice.

I have a man coming to crawl around beneath my desk again today. Because the modem has to be power-cycled every single time one steps away from the computer for a few hours. Last week they were here crawling around beneath the desk, in the bedroom, downstairs in the power/phone/cable box, and all they could tell us was that our ethernet cord looked a little old (they gave us a new one) and that four cable modems in three years was not a Good Thing. So obviously the problem wasn’t fixed and they’re coming again, even though by this point when I call to ask for them I end up with some uneducated hick in a call bank somewhere who’s only true passion in life is her cigarette break telling me it’s “the length of the cable” (which runs from the bedroom into here, because why would anyone use the second bedroom as an office when one can watch TV in one’s bedroom as well as in the living room?!), the length of a pristine and carefully hung cable, which we’ve had for three years, which is obviously the cause of the two to three week old problem. When they start trying to fob me off with bullshit answers like that, I know the business-customer relationship is starting to suffer.

So Peter wants to go back to the DSL we had in Philly. Fine. I want to go back to the DSL we had in Philly. But right now we get Comcast to power our ISP, so my email doesn’t have to change. If we got DSL, because Qwest (most retarded phone company ever) offers their own DSL service, and it’s their phone lines, my ISP isn’t allowed to offer me DSL service. Even though they can offer me dial-up service over Qwest’s phone lines, and cable service over Comcast’s cable lines. So Peter wants to switch to Qwest, but that would mean switching the email I’ve had since I was 18.

And then there’s cable television. One hears rumours about bills in congress to force the cable companies to let the FCC make them offer a la carte options for the cable line up (why the usually-irritating-as-hell family groups aren’t behind this, I don’t know, since if you use a v-chip you’re still paying for some stoned teenager to get an artificially low price on the gyrating women which so offend these people’s children, and they’re paying the channel featuring those gyrating women to tell their advertisers how many homes they reach through subscribers, but no, the family groups would rather just force the cable companies to stop showing bad things, at least before 10 o’clock) but then one immediately hears about these bills being unanimously voted down in committee. Meanwhile we’re paying close to $60 a month, plus taxes, for my channels: PBS (which is free), NBC (free), FOXnews, BBC America, and very, very occasionally A&E. And CBC when there’s the Olympics. That’s 4 cable channels, for 60 bucks.

Now, I can get the most basic of cable for $13, but that would deprive me of all my BBC shows, none of which are available on Netflix (because this is America!), which would force me into a life of crime, BitTorrenting them. And that’s nice, isn’t it. And then, given the age in which we live, how can I not watch my Brit Hume? And even if I could get by without my Brit Hume, what if something happens? Sure I suppose Fox would cut to Fox News coverage, but not necessarily. On a 9/11, maybe, but a tsunami? I doubt it. A 7/7, certainly not.

So, I don’t know what to do. Aside from running away to the Shetland Islands and raising sheep for the rest of my life, but then where would you get your ninme?