And while we're ranting, who the hell is Pete?

I am soooooo with you, Con. (Well, on Comcast's frakking jackholedness, not the shoes - which are lovely on you, but which would make me topple over in a fit of clumsy imbalance.)

Why do new customers get cheap rates for 6 months and old customers get jacked up rates every year? Who do they think they are, the county tax assessor, for Pete's sake? And why do I keep PAYING them? Honestly, the only cable shows I regularly try to remember to watch anymore that I would not want to watch as a series on DVD, or that I cannot get on ye olde Interweb, are Ace of Cakes and Dirty Jobs. And 7 times out of 10, I forget to watch them.

For this I pay $60 a month? What is WRONG with me?

I'm not saying I don't enjoy a good Project Runway or America's Top Model marathon on the occasional Saturday, or that I don't get good tips from Ina Garten or Alton Brown now and then, or that the Roloff family has lost their charm. (I won't go into the Reba reruns and Hanna Montana episodes I get sucked into, or the number of times I have watched 28 Days or A Walk to Remember, because something ELSE is clearly wrong with me. No worries, though, I'm going to redeem myself with American Psycho tonight... which clearly means that there is yet something ELSE wrong with me... SIGH.)

I'm just saying that I have gotten spoiled with this concept of queuing up an entire season of, say, Planet Earth or The Closer, and being able to watch up to 12 commercial-free episodes in a row.

And I'm also saying that if I didn't have cable, I could put the money I saved toward sending my brother an Ace of Cakes cake birthday cake 10 months from now. Because yes, they are THAT DAMN EXPENSIVE.

That's all I'm saying.