When Cable Companies Want To Lose Your Business

Alright, let's get the confessional stuff out of the way first. My roommate neglected to pay the Bright House bill for the last 2 months. Yes, it was irresponsible and yes, he had ample warning. I even left the notice hanging on our door in plain sight for him to find. He had every opportunity to pay the bill and he didn't, so when they disconnected our internet service, that was totally on us. (Well, him.)

What Bright House didn't have to do, however, is make us wait a full business week before they would turn it back on, and that is after paying the previous balance in full. It used to be they would turn off the bandwidth running to the modem remotely, then if you paid the bill over the phone the service would automatically resume. It appears they are not doing that anymore. Now it seems they send technicians out at 10:30 at night to physically disable the connection. At least that's what they told us when we called. I smelled bullshit immediately but not even threatening to sign up for U-Verse sped up anything. See, right before the service went down we were on a Skype Conference Call. I think Bright House might have screwed up on the remote switch off, saw bandwidth being pushed through to our modem, realized their mistake, shat a brick and cut us off.


Now do they not only want to make us wait, they also want to charge us a $30 reconnection fee. Why the fuck they are going through the pretense of sending a tech out on Friday morning is a question without an answer. From what I hear people are dropping their cable packages in droves and moving to just using the internet for media delivery. You would think telecoms would see this trend and make it work for both customers and the company, but between Bright House's antics with us and the latest round of bandwidth caps, telecoms are racing to the bottom.

P.S.: I wrote and published this blog using the only connection in the neighborhood that is open and has an web pipe. It's shit, only works in one part of the condo, and is too goddamn slow to do much of anything. The chucklefuck with the other open network has got a crap router. I'm going to be damn shocked at the tech theater display tomorrow if the Bright House tech needs to actually enter the condo.

Review: The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

It's not really that long, it just feels that way

This movie kind of flew under the radar when it was released in 2007, and for good reason. I'm a found footage and fake documentary nut, and when I saw a gif of this film appear on reddit a few weeks back I had to track it down. The title itself implies video tapes that must contain some horrific evidence left behind by someone or something. Too bad the film, then, plays out like a cheap program shown at 3:00 in the afternoon on TruCrime.

John Erick Dowdle directed The Poughkeepsie Tapes and co-wrote it with his brother. It is a feux documentary presented in the style of a true crime movie. A bunch of tapes were found in the house of a big time serial killer still on the loose, 240 hours worth. The footage shows the graphic and violent nature by which the "The Water Street Butcher" stalked, captured, and killed his victims save for one he kept alive. The movie tracks the progress of the killer in a linear fashion up to the point the tapes were discovered.

Most of the movie is shown through a series of talking head interviews, which really bog the film down. A good mockumentary or found footage film shows a sequence of events happening from beginning to end. I understand The Water Street Butcher killings are supposed to have occurred over a decade or so, but the movie just doesn't work with a bunch of people talking about something you know is fake. It's mostly law enforcement and forensic specialists interviews, some of whom are not very good actors. For a film that does have a fairly twisted killer as its villain, all the talking heads break a lot of the tension.

When the film does actually bother to show footage from the tapes, it can get a little unnerving. I typically don't become unnerved at violence in horror movies, but I will admit that if I do feel a level of disgust with what I'm seeing then the film is working on some level. There are only a few scenes in the film like this but they are effective and show what could have been an extremely disturbing film. I don't know why the Dowdle brothers felt they needed to pad the film with so much cheap documentary filler when by 2006 (when the film was made) the found footage genre was well established.

Overall The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a bit of letdown. It reminds a little bit of The Last Broadcast, though that movie had a fairly good build up. I was expecting a plot twist that never really happened and the end of the movie is supposed to make you think "the killer is still out there." Meh, stop trying to inject reality into your fake movie.

Intellectual Checkmate, Atheists! 11 Year Old Boy Says CASE CLOSED!

Christianity: Running Shit Into The Ground For Over 2000 Years

A Nebraska pastor's son had a near death experience, wrote a book about it, and now The Today Show has filler for their next ad break. Kid says the "Holy Spirit" sat next to him, nobody was old, and his great grand-father gave him a pep talk. Did I mention the kid's father is a pastor?  Welp, I guess that's all the proof I needed. Now I've really got reason to think thunderf00t's an ass! Hallelujha!

Seriously, why do they run with this garbage? Do they have a deal with the publishing industry that every time the kitty gets low TV will trot out another human interest story. As soon as I saw a book attached to this deal I smelled a rat. An exploitative rat, the worst kind. Of course, NBC is served by catering to dottering old ladies with one foot in the grave already and moms who haven't begun the days homeschooling lessons. I don't know why people consume corny sweetness in the morning just eat Nancy Grace's vitriolic shit in the afternoons. Doesn't seem like a healthy diet to me.

jmrexford's webcam video January 13, 2011, 02:25 PM

Jennifer Rexford has been working for BP as part of the clean -up since January, 2011. Over the course of the last 8 weeks she has posted a series of videos documenting her own illness as a result of hazardous conditions. BP is not covering her health care and she is losing a battle of attrition with both her health and the law. Once the mainstream media lost interest in the overall story of the Gulf Spill, they moved on, just as they will move on from the Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear story when it stops providing them with images to exploit.

Jennifer's life is a story that didn't end when the rest of the world moved on. She and everyone else BP is exploiting deserve better.