Charter Cable, Charter Communications, A Wired World Company, Dan Aykroyd

That is for the benefit of anyone who might be using a search engine to look for any of the above items.

Last night my mood deteriorated into something akin to three squirells fighting over one nut in a wool sock. I cut myself on some broken glass. The dinner I cooked tasted like Elmer's Glue and Uncooked Rice. And Charter Cable started sucking my eyeballs out of my head with a silly straw.

Full disclosure: My problem doesn't make much sense.

My remote control works for the TV, VCR, and stereo, but not for the digital cable box. What's worse, I guess the audio level on the cable box must be turned all the way down, because I'm getting nothing. Nothing, Jerry.

I called Charter knowing full well that I would sit on hold. I played my new video games and sat on hold for half an hour. Then Woman #1 came on. She was confused. She hung up on me. I called her one of the worst of names I could muster and redialed. I sat on hold for another half an hour, listenting to cable pitch-man Dan Aykroyd's career going down the toilet and trying to understand how my appoximate wait time could be twenty minutes for thirty straight minutes. Woman #2 comes on, is a little more helpful, then says she can't do anything except send a guy out in a week and a half.

"And in the meantine?" I ventured.

"Well..." she said.

That's all she said.

I'm not sure what is more depressing...that Dan Aykroyd has fallen so far from Conehead Grace that he is now reduced himself to picking up pennies in the sewer that Is Charter Cable...or that I have been giving a sizeable check to this company for the last three years.

This is what Charter has to say about customer service:

Charter Communications started with one goal: To provide its customers with high-quality service, the latest technology and a range of programming -- all at a fair price. That hasn't changed.

Excuse me, I just swallowed my tongue.

This mission statement must have been the dying words of a company employee fascinated wiht the idea of auto-erotic asphixiation.

Here is my little submission to the customer service department...

Maybe is makes no difference to you. I have to imagine a company with more than three billion to blow on sub-par broadband service probably has more to think about than keeping its customers happy. But have you considered a possible investment in customer service...service that doesn't require a customer to wait on hold for thirty minutes only to be discounted and hung up on?

Maybe a service that doesn't require a customer to wait an entire weekend day for a service tech who never shows up.

I am not an unreasonable fellow. In fact, I understand you have a lot on your plate.

But it must be nice to have a monopoly on cable service and routinely stick it to your customers.

I'm doing as much as I can. I canceled all of my movie channels. I am denying myself broadband service. It is my weak middle finger to the multi-billion dollar industry.

Some celeb on a morning talk show this week said they were reducing their consumption of everything.

I am not.

But I am cutting back. And the first place I'm cutting is around the pot-bellied porkers that run my cable service.