I hope you have all been keeping the faith on that "boycott Clamato" thing in my absence. We will bring Clamato to its knees! Not to suggest that clams have knees or anything. Maybe they do. They're probably just biding their time on this whole evolution thing, awaiting their moment to rise and claim the earth by divine right, smashing the state underneath the awesome grandeur of their Red Tide. Just imagine the glorious tiny deep knee bends!

Anyway, maybe mobile pants and clams will fight it out one day on Pay Per View. We can but dream.

The reason for me being incommunicado for a stretch was of course that Thanksgiving reared its turkey head and I was at home and therefore subject to the whim of AT&T Broadband, which sucks a mammoth amount of ass. Or butt, if you prefer the PG version. We were unable to get DSL in our current digs, and therefore were forced into a Cable modem situation. One of the great things about having a cable modem is that you get a modem which looks like a cross between the shiny black Alien head from Aliens and a suped up Future-Toaster (which, in itself, looks a lot like a shiny black alien head, without the second jaw thing or as much ichor dripping from its thristing snout thing). Sadly, though the modem looks keenbean and all, it is:

a. incapable of remaining vertical on my little computer rack, performing a near-nightly ritual in which it pirouettes daintily and falls over on its side, owing to it being shaped like an alien head and all. Actually it kind of looks like a shark fin too, though I wouldn't recommend anyone making soup out of it.

and

2. seldom functional.

When it works, it's fast as something very fast. Say, one of those lizards that run across the water on their back feet. That kind of fast. Way faster than our DSL was. But it goes out with stunning regularity and when it goes out you can:

a. Take all the wires out and go eat some cereal. Usually a high-fiber choice like Just Right or Special K will do the trick, though sometimes you have to kick it into high gear with some All-Bran. Then, after you have had some internal flora exercise, you return to your computer den, where you patiently reconnect all the wires, wondering if you should do it in some special order, or if maybe you should have tried the Cookie Crisp, with the end result being that it still doesn't work.

or

2. Call the apes at tech support who will tell you to disconnect all the wires and wait a while and then reconnect them (they never even mention what you should snack on in the interim, which I feel is a major factor in their low success record). The end result of this will be that it still doesn't work. If you really pester them they get all defensive and threaten to actually send one of their goons to your home where he will disconnect and reconnect all the wires, and probably clear out your pantry while he's waiting. If you push them past even this sad state, they will just say "powercycle the modem" until you hang up.

That's enough about AT&T.

Another thought occurred to me while we were cooking up our turkey this Thanksgiving: by living on the fourth floor of my apartment hive, I am placing an obscene amount of trust in the people who live below me. This thought really hit me when I began to hear a chorus of smoke alarms going off in the building. Then, it got worse when I realized that most of my experience with my fellow apartment drones is hearing them sitting in the hot tub of an evening and making hooting noises. Best not to think about it.

~~~

Another thing here: What do all seven of you think about having a "comments" feature on this here weblog thingy? Email me and let me know. Of course, if I did enable comments, there would be no calling me a chucklehead or doing anything but lauding sycophantic praise upon me. That would be OK right?