Saturday, December 26, 2009

You Gotta Love Cable

My first cable bill arrived--$167. (That includes Internet and phone service everywhere in NA.) That's up from around $67 when I didn't have cable (only a local landline and Internet).

So what have I watched now that I'm a couch potato? Well, I get HBO "free" for 90 days but I have only found it/watched it once, when I stumbled across a riveting documentary on the Mumbai massacre, using intercepted recorded cell phone calls of the the Muslim terrorists being urged on by their handlers to go find some Jews to especially kill, because that would be even "fifty times better" than the run-of-the-mill mayhem they were perpetrating by just gunning down Indians and tourists. It just made me mad and feel like "those folks" are out to kill me. (No, I'm not Jewish.) My friends chide me to be more tolerant but I dunno.

I think I have 1999 choices (many are radio channels that play over TV). At least you have to go past "1999" to surf the listings and get back to "1." I watch football on weekends at channels 2, 4, 5 or 7. I go to ESPN on Monday nights. Other than that, when I'm up I go to the Comedy Channel at 11 pm to watch Jon Stewart, and I watch the history channel. Over and over. That's it. Nothing else is worth sitting there for an hour for.

I have learned about the two thousand year history of beer. I know a lot of things about Jesus Christ now, and several other early biblical figures like Noah. Boy, was he old. I can't wait til they get the Ark down off that mountain in Turkey where it's at. The RAF is always battling the Luftwaffe, and the Nazis are always overreaching in Europe and sealing their fate. And the Allies are always surmounting the incredible difficulties of landing in Normandy. And the battles in Korea raged back and forth with little change in the lines ultimately. Except for the beer part, and the biblical figures part, I already knew a lot of this stuff from reading books.

Is this $100 well spent?

6 comments:

Rainmaker said...

You just gotta call up and threaten to pinch them off...then they'll drop your rates.

;)

Unknown said...

You know, I'm kind of a TV addict, but ever since I went cold turkey in March because I sold my TV for the move, I have a hard time sitting through whole TV shows. Instead I just waste copious amounts of time on the internet...

A Plain Observer said...

we have I dont know how many dozen channels; maybe hundreds? and they keep calling to offer me more. My husband yells "get it!!! get it!!!". And my answer is why??? Here I am sitting in front of what I still call "tv guide" trying not to miss "Patty Hearst" story (because I grew up hearing about it) and I can't find it on these channels I never watch.
Like you, I get it from books.

Jason said...

I recently bought two cables - one for video, one for audio - that I could attach from my laptop to the TV. They cost about $12 (including shipping) and I can watch ESPN360.com, Netflix and a host of other shows streamed online on my TV if I want big screen excitement. It's not HD quallity but to me it's a lot better than paying an extra $100/month.

jeanne said...

that's insane. is that basic cable??

ShirleyPerly said...

I had no idea cable was so expensive! Our local providers are always trying to get us to buy cable but we keep refusing. We just don't have time to watch TV unless we're on travel, in which case it's usually already available at hotels. In Hawaii, where we have no TV service at all (not even local channels), we make good use of our Netflix subscription or go to the condo gym where there's a TV with cable there. Good excuse to work out ;-)