Things with these foreign girls are going all right. Been learning a fair amount, but it's hard to communicate - there is a language barrier, after all. I think I will start learning some Spanish.

There is one language that is universal, though...

I pulled out my music theory homework today, and the oldest girl's eyes got big; she pointed at it excitedly, took the music, stared at it, and asked me if I play. I told her that I am in fact familiar with music (tried to explain that I play the electric bass; I don't know if she got it.)

Turns out that both she and her older sister (not in school) play the guitar. Needless to say I told her we absolutely MUST play some time. Music crosses every language barrier. I also told her I'd teach her English if she would teach me Spanish. She said it's a deal.

So far, so good. :-)

There are four new Wingin' It cast members this year... and Emily is one of them. Now, I asked her to go out with me a while ago and she said she'd be delighted, but I couldn't get in touch with her after that - really got the vibe that she was blowing me off - but now she totally seems interested, and frankly, I am not going to give up on her until she says no, so if she's not into me, I hope she's patient. :-p

We played a pretty sweet gig on Saturday. It was a Battle of the Bands at the Championship out in Lemoyne. If you're familiar with the place you are probably asking the right question - what the hell were you playing there for, CB? Well, suffice it to say we were the only band that actually played music (screaming, distortion so heavy I can't make out the notes, drummer using double-kick excessively, or any chord with a flatted 5th instantly disqualifies you from being musical), but let me tell you, we pretty much had our groove on... and they were digging it, too.

We were the ONLY band that got the girls to get up and shake their asses. (Pushing out an ass-shaking sound is something we pride ourselves on.) We were the only band that didn't bring our own fans with us, but I did not hear one bad review, or even see someone standing there with one of those disapproving/disgusted facial expressions. Everyone liked what we were doing - and I got a bass solo, which in turn got a lot of cheering and yelling for more. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

There WERE some talented musicians there. Seven bands and not a single bad drummer. Only one band besides us actually had solos in their music IIRC, and there was WAY too much screaming. The only other band that played anything musical at all was actually quite good. They had a good singer, too, which I thought was awesome, because I was getting sick of screaming and punk-rock pseudo-speaking.

More later. Wingin' It tryouts are tonight. :-)

I am he as you are he and we are me... it's all the same, anyway.

But it's also NOT... it's SO, TOTALLY NOT... you know?!

Dear Comcast,
It has come to my attention (and by "my attention" I mean "everyone's attention" since it was a major headline on /.) that you have been forging RST (TCP connection reset) packets to interfere with the practice of using "torrents", which are kind of like decentralized filesharing networks. In layman's terms, you have been doing illegal things (the online equivalent of mail fraud, criminal impersonation, or what have you) that are supposed to make certain kinds of traffic "really fucking slow". The problem is: nobody I know wants to pay an outrageous fee for "high-speed" internet that runs at <1/10th of its advertised speed. YOU GUESSED IT... basically, you fucked up and can't even forge a damn RST packet right, AND NOW MY CONNECTION IS SLOW ALL THE TIME, NO MATTER WHAT! I can't stream Internet radio, I can't watch YouTube... I can barely even surf vanilla, plain-old hypertext without having to wait WAY TOO LONG to download a few kilobytes of data! Bottom line: this is unacceptable.

Now I know that you have many rooms full of lawyers and executives in nice Italian suits saying it's OK, you can get away with it, and I know you have accountants who like it because it means more money for you. Hell, we'd all like some more money. Here's the thing: the only reason you can get away with it is because YOU HAVE A MONOPOLY. Everybody and their brother knows it; you are the only cable provider in BASICALLY EVERYWHERE, USA! The government looks the other way because of those millions you spend on lobbying every year... but here's the thing...

Your consumers are PISSED. We can only take so much. We shouldn't have to take ANY, but that's besides the point. I, for one, am writing my representatives RIGHT NOW. You shouldn't have a monopoly, but as long as you do, YOU SHOULDN'T STICK IT TO YOUR CUSTOMERS SO DAMN MUCH! WE PAY YOUR SALARY! WE BUY YOUR PRODUCT! GIVE US A BREAK ONCE IN A WHILE!

You are never going to let me buy or own my set-top box... it will always be "customer premises equipment". You will never let me choose which channels I want - if all I watch is Cartoon Network, I'll still have to pay [way too much] per month for your not-so-basic cable package (I say this because "basic cable" does not actually include all the channels). The least you could do is let me download what I want, when I want, at the speed I pay for. The contract says you can terminate my connection if I am an "excessive burden" on the network... come on... play hard, but PLAY FAIR, Comcast.

Your consumers are pissed, and, believe it or not, we are a very large majority of television-watchers. If all of us decide to take steps against you, you better listen up.

Fuck Comcast.

A new family started coming to our church this summer. They are from Spain.

I met the two oldest girls at lunch today. Needless to say there is a big communication barrier. They know Spanish and French, but not much English. (It does not help that all I have is three years of Latin. OK I lie; I can understand their French really well, and enough of the Spanish to grasp at the meaning.)

I guess this will teach me just how much of communication is non-verbal. (IIRC it is about 90% anyway.)

Does my knack for getting things across shatter international barriers? We'll see.

Digital cable and high-speed internet are ridiculously inefficient economic systems.

My hope is that it will go the way of the telephone. A while ago (when Ma Bell had a monopoly on US telephone service), you had to rent your phone from the telco. They were all the same phone. Nowadays we can buy our own phones so that we can choose which ones we want.

I should be able to choose my own set-top box, cable modem, etc. and I should be able to own it. "Customer premises equipment" is a stupid idea. The demarc is OUTSIDE my house, dammit.