Sweaters keep me from killing.

RAGE!! Its Wednesday, December 8, 2010, I'm fighting the urge to destroy humanity, and this is The Side.

I said previously that writing is done best when in a rather bad mood. This has been proven false. If it was true, I'd be Dickens, Hemingway, and Shakespeare all rolled into one right now. There seems to be a tipping point. You get in a foul mood and you're ready to write. You get in a homicidal rage and you can't write because you're too busy looking for an axe.



You know its bad when you're looking to Jack Nicholson for advice about your emotional well being.

TELEVISION!!

Not having Cable nowadays is kind of a pain. I don't miss it. Fact of the matter is that I have plenty of stuff to watch without it and probably watch too much TV as it is. So do I want or need more channels to sift through? Nope. So why is it a problem? Its a problem in that when people are talking about a TV that's on Cable and ask me about it my answer is simply "I don't have Cable" which then leads to either an incredulous look, or a sympathetic "ah". The kind of extended, deep "ah" typically reserved for hearing someone has ass cancer. It's pretty annoying.

And apparently it has frustrated the Missus, so when we were waylaid by sales people at Sam's Club the other day she was fairly susceptible. She doesn't even like the service they ere selling. My father has it, and we just got back from visiting him. She can't stand it. But the saleswoman was very good at her job, and we saw on the list of channels Boomerang, which shows older cartoons. We've got kids and they like cartoons and I'm sure they would love The Smurfs. So the basic package did look appealing.

Well, in a bit of wheeling and dealing to sell us the young lady bumped us up to the next package for a lower price. Sounded like a sweet deal. We hadn't had lunch yet. We temporarily went insane and signed up.

Then came lunch and with that we returned to sanity. I looked through the list of channels we'd be receiving to see if AMC was included so I could check out THE WALKING DEAD. I didn't see it on there, and what's more Boomerang wasn't in the package that we'd been sold. It was in the basic package, but not the next one up. The one channel that had been the selling point wasn't in what we bought. I had to think that the girl must have known that, as you should know the product you're selling. It made no sense that a larger package did not include channels that smaller package did. So we did some digging. The special deal we got wasn't quite as special as the deal that was sent to us (and everyone else) in the mail. So we were feeling a bit suckered. I was already feeling stupid for signing up in the first place, but all this made getting the Missus on board with canceling very easy.

That proved to be the easiest part of canceling. Calling the phone number only let me leave a message since it seems they have very limited business hours. They said they'd call back in the message and despite leaving my home and cell numbers I had not been called after two days. So I called again and spent about an hour on hold just to leave another message. The most heinous part was the automated voice telling me between bursts of muzack that I had under two minutes until I would talk to someone. Then two minutes later it told me my wait would be longer than ten minutes.



So it led to me returning to Sam's Club after resolving not to light anyone on fire. Sure enough the same salesgirl was there. I complimented her sales skills, and explained that now isn't a good time at all for a downwardly mobile fella like me to be getting anything that will require money that isn't gas or food. She was very good about it, and matter was resolved. Which is a little bit of a shame since my brain was already putting together a top 10 reasons why that TV service sucks.

That got waylaid by me getting a flat tire in the Sam's Club parking lot.

I'm totally blaming those TV people for it. The company, not the salesgirl. She'd have probably helped me change the tire if I hadn't canceled the deal.

TIS THE SEASON!!

"Is a sweater gift?"

"What?"

"Is a sweater a gift? If I gave you a sweater for Christmas, would you consider it a gift?"

"Depends on the sweater."

"What?"

"Is the sweater awesome?"

"I think its like a tie. You give a guy a tie, its like 'I could think of anything you'd actually want, but here's something'. A tie isn't a gift. Its a gift placeholder"

"Depends on the tie. Is the tie awesome?"

"How can a tie be awesome?"

"Could be a power tie. A fella could always use a good power tie."

"I think if you give someone a tie or a sweater its just like saying 'I couldn't think of anything thoughtful, here's a tie and a sweater'.?

"Someone gave me a Jerry Garcia painted tie once."

"I've never seen you wear it."

"For good reason. I look horrible in it."

"Who look's good in a Jerry Garcia painted tie?"

"I dunno. Jerry Garcia?"

MUSIC!!

Had some Robert Plant last time, figure I should give Jimmy Page some equal time.



Alright, that's it for today. I'm going to go have fun with hypothermia now. See you Friday.