News Update: Comsast Still Sux.

Well, still no internet. While waiting for the guy on Monday I really seriously considered cancelling everything Comcast offers (including my cable) out of spite if they couldn’t fix it. I decided to watch a full day’s worth of cable programming to see if there is anything on there worth paying for. Here’s what I saw…

Maury: This show is actually pretty interesting. I think it picked up the lower socio-economic demographic when Jerry Springer cancelled his show. This show dealt with paternity and DNA tests. That’s the best idea that cable programming ever came up with. An idea so good, in fact, that it’s also used by Montel, Sally Jesse, Jerry Springer and every one else in the talk show business. Having a cable show without teens who don’t know who their Babby Daddy is, is like having a convenience store that doesn’t sell overpriced milk and white bread. Normally I think I could do without these type of shows, but this was a doozy. Up first was a rednecky white girl who had been on a couple of previous shows for DNA tests. The previous 3 men tested turned out NOT to be the father, so she was eager for this one to turn out to be the father because he was a really nice guy and she was tired of coming back to Maury and having people think she’s a slut. Well, suitor number 4 is NOT the father. [cue the tears and her running off stage]. I forget what her name was, but let’s just call her “Amber Lynn” because she looks like an Amber Lynn (I have a rare gift of being able to tell people what they look like their names are. “You don’t look like a Maria, are you sure you’re not a Svetlana?”)

Then when I thought it couldn’t get any better, up next on Maury was Sholanda (her real name). What I like about Maury is the diversity. It’s like a ghetto Bennetton ad. You have redneck white teens and ghetto black teens who can come on and commiserate with each other about how hard it is to find your Baby Daddy. (you can also have multicultural stage full of promiscuous teens or drug addicts who steal from their parents…quality TV). At the high end of society we have the President meeting with Tony Blair and Jaques Chirac and maybe Zhang Ze Min, and on the lower end we have rednecks who can share the stage with the Sholandas of the world. Unity is possible, people. We’re not all that different it turns out. Sholanda could relate to what Amber Lynn was going through. Sholanda had been on the show 9 times and had 10 men tested and none of them was the father. Apparently, Sholanda is not the type of girl who gives up easily (which is surprising, given how easy it seems to be to get her into her pants) and she decides that she is SURE that number 11 is the father. Querry: if she’s so sure that he’s the father, why didn’t she test him first? Well, it was no surprise to me, but number 11 is NOT the father. [cue the crying and running off stage]. Maury vows that he will help her keep testing everyone that she had sex with and keep her coming back, hopefully during sweeps week, because he really wants to help her find out who is the father. He also assures that he is not laughing at her…no really, he’s not. He just thought of a funny joke that had nothing to do with her sleeping with at least a dozen men and not knowing who the father of her baby is. That’s what he was laughing at…not her plight. What? No…sorry, the joke just slipped his mind so he can’t tell you what it was about.

Judge Judy: I hate this woman. What an annoying, pushy, overbearing self-important ass. This is why people hate judges. They are petty bureaucrats who revel in their ability to use their power to intimidate you. They’re like mall security guards with a law degree. In this one she gave a guy money when a mall security guard damaged his car by beating up a shoplifter on the hood of his car. She also berated the guard for lying about how the damage happened. Someone using their petty power to abuse a security guard in public: the poetic justice is deafening.

She also gave a verbal smackdown to a grandma who was suing her son’s ex girlfriend. She believed that since the woman broke up with her son, that the baby furniture was no longer a gift and she had to give it back. Classy! I can live without this show.

Judge Alex: I think this guy is Cuban. I would probably hate this guy if he was Argentinian, but I don’t mind that he’s Cuban. Cubans don’t use as much hair gel as Argentinians and will never win the World Cup, so I cut them some slack. Still, I hate Judge Alex because he’s got no charisma and is freakishly tall. People of normal height, like me, have to use our good looks, personality and mad dancing skillz to get dates, but these freakish tall mutants can sit around with no personality and get dates by reaching things on high shelves in a bookstore for a pretty girl without using a ladder. I think we should tax tallies to make up for the budget deficit. We tax the rich even though they actually work for the money, so why not tax the tall people who did nothing to get where they are?

Anyway, Judge Alex is so boring that I can’t even remember what his case was about. I can live without this show.

Judge Mathis: I think we see a theme here. I am not crazy about Judge Mathis either, because he bullies the litigants (Like Judge Judy, but unlike Judge Alex, who has no personality). In this episode we see an unattractive woman who sued her stripper dancing instructor because she wanted to cancel her lessons. She didn’t like the fact that men were allowed to walk in and view the classes. She won. By the way, no one involved with the stripper lessons (including the instructor) is anyone that you would want to see nekkid. If you did see them nekkid, you would probably scream “My eyes!!! I’m blinded…and my brain is burning, make it stop!!!”).

Props to Judge Mathis for awarding money to a guy with Cornrolls in his hair who cried at the mental abuse his baby momma was inflicting on him by playing games with his visitation and telling him that he is not the father. The guy looked like Coolio’s younger broke little brother. I’m surprised he cried on national television, but if I thought it would get me a few thousand bucks, I might cry on TV too. Anyway, I could live without this show too.

Power Lunch: CNBC talk about the stock markets. Eh…it’s okay, but nothing I heard on there would ever make it onto Ninja Stock Picks, so I don’t need this show either.

At about 3pm, The Comcast guy came for the fourth installment of the House of Pain. Of course, he came late and didn't bother to bring a laptop. After staring at my computer the way my cat used to stare at rice pilaf, he looked at the poles and wires outside and said

Tech: "all the lights on your modem are on, so the internet should be
working.

"Ninja: "Yeah...but yet it's not...I guess that's why I asked them to send
you with a laptop...you know, to see why it's not working."

Tech: "They didn't tell me you needed a laptop."

Ninja: Yeah...the first guy said I needed it, he wrote "need laptop" on the
work order; the next guy showed up without one, requested a laptop for the next
visit, the third guy never showed up but claimed that he not only showed up, but
acutally fixed it; then they sent you.

Tech then calls someone with a laptop and leaves, then comes back with a Dell. A freakin' Dell! Now, I love my iMac the way that Rosie O'Donnell loves chocolate. I love My iMac more than Angelina Jolie loves deviant sex. So bringing a Dell into my house is like bringing pork chops to a bar mitzvah. Still, I sufferred the indignity so that I could get my internet working. What lengths I'll suffer through for illegally downloaded music and fetish porn! Since I'm Catholic, even joking about stuff like that is a sin, so we'll add that to the list of sins that I'll have to attone for if I ever go to confession. I haven't been to confession since I was 12, so the list is getting pretty long. He got the Dell working on my modem but said my computer still wasn’t detecting the IP address and my Apple was probably broken and that I should get a PC because the Techs are better at working with those. Telling an Apple user that he should trade his iMac for a PC is like telling a preacher that his daughter is a slut. That ended the service call. FVCK COMCAST!!! I’m cancelling. NOBODY INSULTS MY iMAC!!!








Anyway, later, in a last ditch effort, I went to a bookstore and bought an Apple book that had a chapter on what looked like things that had to do with the internet. (TCP/IP, PPPoE, DCHP etc.). $22 later I’m sitting home and playing with the settings and it found the IP address (which shouldn’t be possible if the internet card were broken like the Comcast guy claimed). But still no internet. I think maybe I’ll just