I know you are all wait­ing with bated breath for my excit­ing new sub­stan­tive post. Or at least, it amuses me to imag­ine so. But the Evil Car­toon Bird has struck again. So instead of our pre­vi­ously sched­uled pro­gram­ming, we present more rant­ing about the evils of cable companies.

So Wednes­day evening there was a storm. Inter­nets go out. Which is dumb, because cable lines are buried. Oddly enough, the TV didn’t go out. I wait a few hours. I call the cable com­pany. I sit on hold for another two hours. At the 1’45″ mark, the Inter­nets come back. I stay on the line until I get some­one so I can com­plain. I com­plain. They tell me there was an out­age, but it’s fixed now and all will be well.

Thurs­day. Beau­ti­ful weather. Same time as Wednes­day, the Inter­nets go out. TV still works. Weird. I wait a few hours. I call the cable com­pany. I sit on hold for another two hours. This time, the Inter­nets don’t come back. I com­plain. They tell me there’s an out­age. I get a ser­vice credit (like, $5). Inter­nets come back late that night.

Today. About 2pm. Absolutely gor­geous. Clear skies, 71°F. What am I doing? Yelling at the cable com­pany. Because the Inter­nets are gone again. This time, they’re off for most of the day. The worst part of it is that Call Cen­ter Moron doesn’t know any­thing about the pre­vi­ous out­ages, doesn’t know any­one who would know about them, doesn’t know any­one (in the whole com­pany!) who would know what is going on, or when it’s going to stop. “We can’t pre­dict out­ages.” Bull­shit. You’re doing some­thing. Three days in a row! This ser­vice is total crap and I have no alter­na­tives, and they have no incen­tive to do bet­ter. As if a $5 ser­vice credit will make me feel like I’ve won and make me go away.

There was a cam­paign here in Key Mid­west­ern Swing State to “open the doors to cable com­pe­ti­tion.” There was a bill. It passed and was signed by our new Gov­er­nor, Lib­eral Demo­c­rat. Large National Tele­phone Com­pany was the pri­mary lob­by­ing force behind the bill. The bill abol­ished all munic­i­pal cable fran­chise agreements.

“How won­der­ful!” I can hear you exclaim. “Key Mid­west­ern Swing State has taken a great step towards a true laissez-​​faire cable tele­vi­sion market!”

But alas, this is not the case. The bill did away with munic­i­pal fran­chise agree­ments by cre­at­ing a State fran­chise agree­ment! Instead of local tyrants dic­tat­ing the terms on which cus­tomers may pur­chase cable tele­vi­sion and Inter­net ser­vices, State tyrants will get to do it. And have done it. And have prices dropped? No. Because the bill didn’t actu­ally open the doors to cable com­pe­ti­tion. It just made it so that the tele­phone com­pany can get it’s “fair share” of the pub­lic pie. Are there new choices? No. The choice is still “cable or DSL,” not “which cable com­pany?” Actu­ally, when the bill was signed, my cable bill went up by four and a half dol­lars a month. And now the ser­vice is get­ting shitty.

Tyrants are every­where and they’re not going away. What amazes me most is that peo­ple are so con­fused about what tyranny is that they’ll embrace a big­ger tyrant who comes along to “save” them from the petty ones.