The Contrarian

Comcast is The Devil.

Crappy service, high prices, anti-competitive market dominance, misleading broadband claims, poor technical support, annoyingly high-volume advertising, secretive (and possibly illegal) traffic "shaping," weak-ass On-Demand selection, piss-poor packaging structures, useless website.

And they can't even get someone to my house to add a service within the 4-hour window they quoted me TWO WEEKS AGO. You start to understand why Mona "The Hammer" Shaw took such drastic action.

People, I implore you: do not vote Republican (or even Libertarian). There needs to be stricter Federal regulation of all corporate entities doing business with the public spectrum. Sorry, but the the "market" can't "decide" this shit. Or else you get our current situation, in which consumer choice is strangled by profit-hungry monopolies and US broadband penetration is the laughing stock of the rest of the free world.

Your next President is gonna decide how the FCC is staffed. Let's make sure it's not with cronyist douchebags.

Oh, and FUCK COMCAST.

UPDATE:

The technician never came. He was supposed to be here at 11 AM. I called Comcast a total of 11 times. With each call, there was approx. 30 min. hold time. With each call, I was told that the they'd contacted dispatch and the technician would be ringing me directly within fifteen minutes. He never did.

On my 8th call, at 5 PM, I was on hold for around 20 minutes. The customer service rep came back on to tell me that the technician had come to my building at 4:45, and asked the concierge to be let up. The front desk supposedly called us but "we didn't answer." So the technician simply left.

I checked in with our wonderful concierge, Clyde, who told me that no one from Comcast came to our building today. They lied! When I called back, I was told a supervisor would ring me in a few minutes. Never happened. When I called back again, I was told that there was no way they could send back another technician, 'cause it was quittin' time. Nice.

On my 11th Comcast call, I finally spoke to a woman who actually gave a shit. She told me they could simply FedEx the DVR to us. Wow. And only after 8 hours and 11 calls!

It is my fondest wish that the new Democratic administration (preferably Barack Obama's) will put pressure on the FCC to revoke Comcast's franchise license. At the very least, Congress should hold hearings to investigate the company's monopolistic hold on the cable industry.

I encourage anyone who has had similar experiences to log them at www.ComcastMustDie.com, and to write your representative to alert them of the company's fraudulent and anti-competitive behavior. You can also file comments with the FCC urging Chairman Martin to take Comcast's neutral net violations seriously.

Thank you and goodnight.

Apple Screws Early Adopters.

"Look into my eyes. Now open your wallet."

Just found out that the Wise and Powerful Steve Jobs has decided to lower the retail cost of the iPhone by two hundred bucks. That's right: the 8 GB flagship model has been slashed from $599 to $399. This comes just a couple of months after countless tech addicts stood in line to purchase one at what may have been an artificial price-point.

Are geeks handy with torches and pitchforks? 'Cause if I were Jobs, I'd start digging a deeper moat around Apple HQ.

It seems foolish to risk offending those customers who do the grunt work of hyping your overpriced lifestyle device. Especially since we're still waiting for those promised software bumps that are supposed to take the iPhone from a cool plaything to a truly all-in-one device worthy of the Apple brand. They can start with copy & paste functionality, MMS and Flash/Java support. A more practical RSS system would be nice, too.

Adding insult to injury, the soon-to-be released Touch iPod has pretty much the same features as the iPhone, minus the ability to, you know, make calls. But with a mere 16 GB of storage space (the regular iPod, re-branded as "Classic," is up to 160 GB), it might not be enough to satisfy real music and video junkies.

Apple is also unveiling the Wi-Fi iTunes Store for use with their new music player. This means you can now download that crappy Fergie single while waiting in line for your Frappuccino™. Seriously. When away from the coffeeshop, you're on your own as far as finding an open network — the device doesn't have a fallback internet provider. Not like the iPhone, which utilizes AT&T's pack mule-paced EDGE network.

According to reports, the iPhone will receive Wi-Fi downloading capability with the next upgrade. Forgive me if can only muster the tiniest "yay."

I Go Chop Your Dollar

I have never been to Nigeria. Nor do I have plans to go and find out what it is actually like. I’d rather just make things up about the place — the food, culture, history, food, etc. Do they have Christmas there? Who knows?

Anyway, there are a host of reasons why I won’t be going to Nigeria anytime soon. For one, I don’t envy the scores of oil employees who are getting the shit scared out of them by local militias as they go about their workaday lives perpetrating the wholesale rape of the Niger Delta. To quote the great Donald Fagen, “I don’t need that kind of action.” I’m more of a clock-in, clock-out guy. I can do without Czech automatics or painted spears in my face. [Editor's note: really?]

And besides, those local jungle armies  — boosted on power-weed, Jack Daniels and impromptu Gods — have been advancing the ball a bit because the oil interests have started greasing the pillars on those offshore rigs so the little buggers can’t scurry up them. Necessity is the mother of invention. Point being, I am not reaching out to Nigeria.

But Nigeria seems to be reaching out to me.

In fact, just the other day I had a nice email from my good friend Mallam Mohammed Tanko of the Indo-Nig Group Ltd, based on Victoria Island in Lagos. Mallam is a great guy. He’s been trying to get me a bunch of cash from some multi-million dollar bank account the Nigerian government recently quarantined. Mallam is in Indonesia right now on business, but he’ll be returning to Lagos soon, whereby we can “conclude our glorious transaction.”

Imagine my excitement! A world of adventure!

But just as I was about to mail my first payment to Mallam — you know, to move the process along — my better half suggested that my new associate was not an honest man. Indeed, she claimed he was trying to scam me. “What?” I asked, incredulously. “How can you talk that way about Mallam?”

Neverthless, I got out of the bathtub, flipped on the thing with the keys and the pretty screen, and discovered she was right: Mallam was attempting to rip me off via the infamous Nigerian 419 Scam. Said scam, I learned, is a variation on The Spanish Prisoner — an elaborate confidence trick dating to the 16th century.

Imagine my outrage! Mallam had betrayed me!

I sulked, wounded.

Then, I did the best thing I could think of  — I called the Secret Service. My man there was very helpful. Unfortunately, he insisted I not attribute anything along the lines of an official quote from his organization. Still, from my own investigations I can say that law enforcement officials estimate losses to the public from the 419 scam to be around several hundred million dollars.

Mallam has been a busy man.

And for the shit icing on my poop cake, it turns out 419 is not only the Nigerian national pastime, it’s also pretty much the national anthem. Herewith I present the video for "I Go Chop Your Dollar," the Nigerian hit song about 419.

Yeah.

And as if that weren’t enough, the Nigerian 419’s have just about spawned their own literary genre. I can attest to that. Check out this mind-frying literary equivalent of a Zappa tune played sideways:

The embassy was sent. The governor of Caria was very much pleased into the apartment. It had the appearance of containing some magnificent as these. It is necessary, however, to a just appreciation of the deposits of the river seems to have projected somewhat beyond the line Mediterranean, at a point two thousand miles distant from the place rallied around Cleopatra, and called upon her to take the crown. She did in their personal and political career, to believe in a retrogression uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad same consideration and favor that he had evinced toward the mother. The wife, he left her in Antioch, a large and strongly-fortified city, where beautiful boy, his son by the Cleopatra whom he had divorced.

Not even Thomas Pynchon can touch that.