News From Yesterday

In the good new department, I am at least tentatively in the XHOTY Finals.  Thanks for all your continued support!  Keep up the good work as I infinitely prefer being the "thrill of victory" guy, and not the "agony of defeat" guy from the Wide World of Xanga.

So there's good and bad news abounding with the good folks at Comcast.  The bad news is that I barely even scratched the surface with my assessment that the woman that set up my appointment was a stupid whore.  She may in fact be a the stupidest whore that ever whored.  As you may recall, I explained to her a number of different ways that a Comcast technician had visited us on Saturday.  He checked all the equipment on site.  He went through all the possible problems.  His assessment was that the only possible culprit was the actual cable itself and we'd need a new one put in the ground.  I thought this was crystal clear when we set up the appointment time.  I was wrong.

I went to the gate expecting a beat up pickup truck driven by a guy with three teeth who wears long sleeve shirts even in a Texas July to hide track marks.  Instead my heart hit my stomach when I saw a nice shiny Comcast van, the kind that's as big as my kitchen like the one that was parked outside my place on Saturday and driven by a nice, shiny Comcast technician like the one who couldn't get shit done for me on Saturday.  Sure enough, history started repeating itself.  Does anyone talk to anyone at that fucking place?  Thankfully the difference between the slapnuts that got sent to me on Saturday and the guy I got yesterday was night and day.  This guy, James, in addition to being competent, was pretty cool.  We shot the breeze a little bit about comic books and their recent films when he noticed that I had Iron Man and the Hulk pitted in mortal combat on one of my book shelves.  Action figures are fun.  He was extremely sympathetic and seemed just as ticked off as I was that they sent him, though for different reasons.  I was pissed because I might not get my cable fixed.  He was pissed that they sent him for a problem he couldn't fix when there were other people he could be helping.  But he decided to give it the old college try, something that apparently Mr. John T. Useless on Saturday didn't do.  In about five minutes time he tracked down the busted wire, patched it, and contacted his home office to set up an actual appointment for a rewiring.  I really wish that I had gotten the name the guy on Saturday, because in light of recent events he looks like either an incompetent idiot, or a willfully negligent sack of shit who didn't attempt any real effort or follow through on what he said he would do.

So I've got the service back up and running again, at least until the mow again.  The signal for the upstairs TV is very poor, and the other one is a little slow as well, but I'm at least connected to the world again.  My hope is that I can find a smith who can melt down the silver lining of this dark cloud of an episode and fashion it into some sort of clubbing implement for when I have to deal with these people again.

Drunken Shenanigans

And now for something happier, the tale of the rest of my Saturday.  It's the tale of me drinking with my brother and friends on Saturday night, a tale of triumph and tragedy, a tale of beer and, well, beer.

The whole thing was set up by an old pal who got married about four months ago and dropped off the face of the earth.  That was more so because he bought a house in the middle of nowhere around that same time.  His wife is super cool and always comes to hang out with us.  In fact the expressed purpose of this evening according to one in the group was to get his wife drunk so that we'd have stories to tell about her.  Up until now most of these evenings devolved into us mocking our pal endlessly over poor decisions he's made while drunk, including throwing a light bulb at a taxi and dragging a newspaper machine for several hundred yards down a sidewalk because he has a klepto streak a mile wide when he drinks.  I shared a house with him for a little while and damn near half the stuff on the walls of his room came from him taking it while hammered. 

Believe it or not the strangest sight of the evening came before anyone had cracked their first cold one open.  On the way to the burger place we were meeting we pulled up to a red light and there was a homeless guy going up and down the line asking for money.  Sadly this is not a rare sight in Houston, but I don't carry cash because I don't trust this entire city.  What set this one apart was what happened next.  A second homeless guy, whom we'll designate HG2, approaches.  He was shirtless and it looked like he was wearing a towel around his waist.  He was yelling and looking for a fight.  Sadly, this wouldn't be the first time I've seen this happen as turf disputes break out sometimes.  What put it securely in the "WTF?" files was the third guy, HG3.  There was nothing special about HG3 except what he was carrying: a cell phone that he was using to record the impending fight.  I have never been sadder to see a light turn green in my life, which sort makes me a bad person, doesn't it?

So we hit a place called Bubba's.  If you are ever in Houston GO THERE.  THE POWER OF MY BLOG COMPELS YOU!!!  It's just damn good stuff, and they do buffalo burgers which taste great and have a laundry list of other benefits.  On top of that you can get buckets of Lone Star, the national beer of Texas.  In addition to being an awesome beer, the inside of the caps have little pictographs which function as a decent enough BAC meter.  If you can't figure them out you should probably stop drinking.  Or drink more.  Some people think better drunk.  Most of the great writers were alkies.  Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Judy Bloom; the list goes on and on.  Anyways, we had a blast.  Got caught up on the comings and goings of old pals.  After eating, we hit a bar, which was where the fun really began because that's when the real drinking began and that's where we saw a ghost of sorts.

My brother, G, is quite a character, especially after a few drinks.  I've always said that everything I know about being a man I learned from my father, everything I learned about being a guy I learned from G.  Up until a few years ago, G was the king of whatever party he stepped into.  It was a rare occasion that he'd ever leave alone, and if he did it was probably with at least two or three numbers stuffed in his back pocket.  You remember the scene in Cruel Intentions towards the beginning where Ryan Phillipe just walks up a girl, says he's going to buy her lunch, and she goes with him at a drop of a hat?  That's how easy he'd make it look sometimes.  One friend used to say that he lived on a different plane of existence from the rest of us where life worked like it does in Cinemax movies.  In terms of simplistic labels, G was always "The Hunky One" in the family.  There was always far more to him, but it was still accurate.  That changed quite a bit when he settled down and landed a steady girlfriend.  Then he became sort of like Beethoven the St. Bernard when he'd drink.  He'd be very good for months at a time then have a few too many, get off his leash, have wacky adventures, and end up in the doghouse.  He never cheated on her, just made a massive ass of himself from time to time and spent a few of his Sundays apologizing.  Well, he's single again, and we got to see him in action once more.   

(As a brief aside, the other thing he's famous for when drinking are malapropisms.  One that always come to mind is, just before attempting to make a sweeping generalization about women, "Now, no offense to the female genitalia...".  The other classic came at following a cousin's wedding in New Orleans.  As my uncles tried to decide which one of them was the fattest, G piped up with this expert opinion: "I think the fat rankings here go Timmy, then Danny, and then Sacajawea."  He thinks he may have been going for Sasquatch, but even that doesn't make any damn sense.)

Anyways, the night went in the same direction it always does with this bunch: drunk dialing!  No one was really home this evening, so everyone got some moronic messages, including my wife.  Sorry dear.  What saw the good old G come out were the arrival of some ladies the next table over.  Looking around the room I don't think that was an accident.  I'd say that they were definitely on the prowl, and our group consisted of two girls with five guys. So looking from the bar an educated guess might say that there were three good targets there.  The joke was on them.  Two were there with SO's, I'm married, and one more of us is attached, which left G as the lone gunman for the evening.  What set the whole thing in motion was actually one of the girls, Vicki, who gets a little goofy when she drinks.  I came back from the bathroom just in time to see her throw a huge glass of ice water in G's face.  I never really got an explanation why, but he tried to retaliate by putting ice down her shirt.  In her drunken escape efforts she literally fell right into one of these women's lap.  Ice as an icebreaker, oh the irony.  After that you might as well have painted a target on the girl. 

The real fun was the running commentary that we started supplying from our table as G put the moves on.  Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 meets the Love Boat.  Even more entertaining was Vicki's guilty conscience over being credited with an assist in the box score.  Most of G's female friends are a strange sort who can wrap their minds around the fact that he's a really awesome friend, but never the sort they would try to set a friend up with.  Sure enough, with in 10 minutes, they went to "go get another round" for everyone and disappeared.  There's something of a bell curve in how good you feel for your buddy in this situation over time.  You go from "Woohoo!  Go bro!" to "I'm getting hungry" to "Screw it, let's get some Taco Cabana.  He can catch a ride with his new BFF."  And that was the gist of the text messages we sent G over the next 20 minutes.  We actually spotted him on the way to the car making out with this chick on a picnic table outside and his roommate shouted out that we were going to get some grub.  It would seem that G made  a good enough impression as she was kind enough to give him a ride to Taco Cabana afterwards.  She actually came in with him and jokingly gave us shit for bailing on our buddy.  I think she was a little off put by my quick reply that I "wouldn't care if he was disarming a friggin' nuke.  I was hungry."  She left not too long after that, which allowed us to eat and give a few high fives and back pats. 

This was interrupted by the arrival the tiniest stripper I've ever seen, or, as we dubbed her on the ride home, "Tinkerboobs".  Now, the assertion that she's a stripper is a bit of profiling on my part, but it seems a safe enough bet.  She definitely had implants.  She was probably somewhere around 5'2 (and that was in her gigantic stripper standard issued platform heels), very petite, and looked like she was smuggling a pair of Butterball turkeys back home.  This was coupled with the fact that she arrived around 2 am and there's about half a dozen strip clubs within a 5 mile radius of this place.  Of course, you could almost say that about any place in Houston thanks to our pathological fear of zoning laws.  She entered with a guy who looked like he belonged in a Backstreet Boys cover band.  As I'm sure everyone has experienced, no drunk guy is ever as quiet as he thinks he is.  So there's a decent chance they heard the following three comments in rapid succession:

Roommate:  "Hey G, I dare you to ask her she'd like to dance on your pole."

G: "Nah, her boyfriend looks like the fighting type."

Me:  "Hey, wasn't that guy in Color Me Badd?"

Good times, good times.

Urge to Kill...Rising...

Well Saturday was a lot of fun.  First off, the Comcast guy actually arrived before 9 pm so I was pleasantly surprised.  I was less pleasantly surprised to how worthless the whole ordeal came to be.  So in talking with the second guy on the phone back on Thursday, even he figured the cable needed to be replaced.  The TV service and internet went out at the same time.  Barring the miraculous failure of two cable boxes and the modem at the precise same moment or my service being canceled without Comcast even knowing about it, the problem was the actual cable itself.  I knew, they knew, the American people knew.  To the tech they sent to check our service it was a total surprise.  Comcast sent me a guy on Saturday driving a van the size of my kitchen who confirmed what we already knew (something happened to the cable, possibly severed by a lawnmower) in about five minutes.  Somehow he is unequipped to repair this problem.  I can only assume that his humongous van is filled with the bodies of the actual competent people he had to murder so that he could get this job.  Honestly, it's not really the guy's fault.  They use a completely different set of guys and department to actually lay down new cable.  It the fault of the dipshits who came up with this massively retarded system.  Bottom line: I now have to take another day off of work for the installation guys, who if past history is an indication will be almost impossible to communicate with because of some combination of drugs, alcohol, or just not speaking english.  Of course, they were supposed to contact me on Sunday.  Ha ha ha ha.  That was good one.  So I just got off the phone with the idiots.  After being transferred twice after relaying my story I finally get the tech support office.  The conversation went something like this:

Idiot: How can I help you?

Me: (relay the entire process I've been through dating back to when the services stopped on Thursday through Saturday's visit)

Idiot:  So do you have an account with us?

Me:  (gives account information through clenched and then silently refers to her as a stupid whore.  You think I call you people for my fucking health?  Because it doesn't do my blood pressure any fucking favors!)

Idiot:  So did you actually see the mower sever the wire?

Me:  No, I didn't.  One of your techs actually came out to my house and that was his assessment, and said that I was going to need new cable laid down. (As was part of the entire story I told you when this phone call began, Lil' Miss Listening Skills.)

Idiot:  Please hold sir.

Me:  (bangs phone against head)

Idiot: (returns, we agree on a time window for tomorrow, and then hang up)

Me: Stupid whore.

I'm in the process of drafting angry e-mails to both Comcast and my HOA explaining (respectively) the virtues of sending people equipped to handle obvious problems and using a grounds crew that is capable of planting something without pulling my cable up.  I am however drafting this entry first so that I don't use the following sentences.  I HAVE TO WASTE MY VACATION TIME BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE ARE FUCK UPS!  I AM SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF THIS SHIT!  I SHOULD NOT BE THE ONE MADE TO PAY BECAUSE YOUR RIGHT HAND HAS DOESN'T KNOW HOW FAR THE LEFT ONE'S THUMB IS UP YOUR ASS!  THANK YOUR LUCKY FUCKING STARS YOUR INCOMPETENCE HAS LEFT ME WITHOUT INTERNET SERVICE AT MY HOME BECAUSE I'M SURE THERE'S PLENTY OF SITES OUT THERE THAT CAN TEACH ME HOW TO TAKE HOUSEHOLD MATERIALS AND COOK UP SOMETHING THAT WILL LEVEL YOUR SORRY FUCKING OFFICES DOWN TO THE GROUND! 

I may end up using those words anyways, but signing the message Barbara Bush.  I don't know if she's a Comcast customer, but I'm pretty sure she and G.H.W. Bush have a home in or around Houston.  That should get the wheels turning.

Back to Routine

It's Friday, time to clear out the junk drawer for the first time in a while.  I think you should all first know that I have been a member of Xanga for 548 days.

-Dan Cook died back on the fourth of July.  I realize that was like a week ago, but I've been busy both on and off of here and I think it's a piece of news worth noting.  He is one of the last of a dying breed of sports journalists, namely the kind that don't suck and actually bother to report things.  Growing up in SA he was pretty much the alpha and omega of sports journalists in that town.  Honest to a fault, he was never afraid to share an unscripted opinion or two, particularly in the latter stages of his career when he knew that no one would have the balls to fire  what many considered a living legend.  If you haven't heard his name then you have likely heard his most famous quotation.  "It ain't over til the fat lady sings" is from this guy.  Plenty have instinctively attributed that one to Yogi Bera, but it was Dan Cook who actually said it first by all verifiable accounts.  As Yogi himself said about all those quotes, "I didn't really say half the stuff I said."  I'd think of Dan every time I had to mute ESPN when I went to check a score and simply couldn't stand to hear their anchors brainless ass kissing.  He'll be greatly missed.

-Of course, the ineptitude of Dan's potential heirs probably helped his legend grow a little bit too.  There was a guy named Chuck Miketinac who got canned after saying that a local high school football team's defense was "shakier than Katherine Hepburn in a helicopter."  It really didn't fly well with the old timers who had been watching Channel 5's sports coverage for years and were just looking for a reason to hate the young punk.  There was a guy named Luke Stuckmeier, I think, who I'm pretty sure was still going through puberty at the time.  I'd swear I heard his voice crack once when he was reading off baseball scores.  The eventual permanent replacement as the head sports guy was Joe Reinagel, a somewhat douchebaggy guy who holds two interesting distinctions in my life.  First, I have a photo of my sister and I with him in our mascot gear when he attended a pep rally.  Second, he has a daughter about my age whom my best friend nailed in a hot tub the summer before our senior year of high school.

-My damn cable and internet are out and someone is going to die for it.  Will it be the the first moron I talked to who assured me that it was a "node issue" and that if I just sat tight it would be taken care of?  Is it the second I talked to several hours later who told there was no outage listed for any nodes after putting me on hold several times?  Or will it be the complex grounds crew that I'm beginning to suspect as the culprits in the whole thing?  Both services went out at the same time yesterday around the time they were out mowing.  This hasn't been a problem in the past, but the recently planted some new stuff  (which has since died, because they didn't water it).  I'm really hoping that they didn't some how dig up my cable in the process and expose it to a lawnmower or weedwhacker.

-As a result of all of this I missed the season premiere of "Burn Notice" on USA.  If you aren't watching it, you should.  Unless inconsistent accents by actresses bothers you.  Gabrielle Anwar's roaming Irish accent ranks right up there with Halle Berry's ever changing "Where in the hell is she from in this scene?" accent from the first X-Men movie.

-At last check I am at 88% towards attaining Xanga True status.  I will be sorely disappointed if the benefits do not include a greatest hits compilation from Spandau Ballet.

-If you got that last joke without the assistance of google you need help.  If you got it and thought that it was funny you may be beyond help.

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