Okay.  Today is gripe time for me.    I opened my cable bill from Charter Communications,  and was a bit alarmed, because once again it appears that they have raised their rates for basic cable.    I am now paying sixty dollars a month for basic cable.    For this sixty dollars,  I get this.    About twenty watchable channels,  about twenty channels that are in languages other than English,  and about twenty channels that just flat out suck.

First of all,  I don’t speak Korean.   I don’t speak Japanese.   I don’t speak Mandarin Chinese or Tagolog.   I don’t speak Spanish either.   Why then would these channels be costing me money in the first place.   The Asian stations are comical to watch,  and the Spanish stations are like going to a strip joint,  with all the half naked women parading around what appear to be children’s shows in a sort of sick ripoff of Wonderama and Romper Room.

Then virtually every morning when I wake up,  all I see on almost every channel is infomercials.  This goes on every morning on almost every channel until 9 AM.     I don’t pay for infomercials.  In fact,  infomercials pay the cable companies to put that crap on in the first place.   I am sick of waking up and seeing that Australian guy yelling and screaming about the greatness of some dopey product that you get in the mail and breaks the first time you use it.   I am probably the only guy on earth that was happy that Billy Mays died! (Just kidding)

Then you watch any movie or program,  and they not only accellerate the credits,  but they put them in a little box off to the side so you can’t even read them. Why do they do this? So they can run more commercials in between programming.  Some people do like to see the credits,  and I am one of them.

They also have “Bugs” that pop up throughout the shows and movies to promote original programming that turns out to be shows that are really stupid.    I have friends that work for some of the major networks,  and they call them bugs because they bug the shit out of people.   Some networks make the bugs so big that they blotto out the show that you are trying to watch in the first place.

I am expected to pay sixty dollars a month for this nonsense.  It sucks!   So it comes down to this.  Either pay these exorbitant rates to watch TV,  or cut the cord and go back to local channels.    Decisions decisions.   I have about had it with this crap.    JD

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