Cox castration

Maybe it was the fact that I whined about technology last week or proclaimed proudly that I will never have a cell phone's wee wee stuck in my ear, but whatever it was the information super highway - and by extension my ability to write to you folks - was severly hindered to the point of castration this weekend.

All I wanted to do Friday after dinner out with the parental units-in-law - Texas Road House where they just don't pull your pork, they pull and serve it up slathered in enough bbq sauce to coat a barn and an outhouse in Texas - was come home and watch the Dodger game and Giants game on the Internet simultaneously (technology is like a high-maintenance nympho girlfriend - sure the sex is hotter than anything you'd see on late night Cinamax, but the attitude is enough to yank your balls out and shove them in your nostrils). The game was on TV, sure, but I'd much rather listen to someone who is actually watching the game and knows what the hell he's talking about (Vin Scully) rather than two putzes (Darren Sutton and Mark Grace) who would rather talk about ballpark hot dogs and the amount of beach balls at Dodger Stadium than give their viewers interesting nuggets about the players involved sprinkled with some fun baseball stories. That's right, I've been spoiled. It's what happens when you listen to the greatest announcer in any sport.

But I digress.

Beer in hand - because that's the only way to enjoy a Dodger game - I saddle up to the computer and log onto the world wide web. After waiting the typical eight minutes to boot up - my computer is slower than a doped-up hippo tugging a piano - I click on the Internet icon and type in mlb.com. Nothing. I hit "stop" and type the address again. Zilch. OK, I say to myself, there's more than one way to skin a midget hooker, so I type in dodgers.com. They're site will have a link to the video feed. White screen of oblivion greets me.

I turn on Wife's machine. Her computer zips up to ready mode in less time than it takes me to ask a bartender "another beer, please." (I'm nothing if not polite) I click on the Internet icon and type in the same thing. It's like the information superhighway has been closed for one of those late night repair sessions. What the hell are they doing installing rubberized asphalt on the damn thing?

Finally, defeated and inebriated - the perfect mixture to a) watch the Dodgers blow another game this week, and b) see Dodger enemy Numero Uno, Barry Bonds, hit record-tying homer 755 (which thankfully he didn't Friday night. The big softie waited until Saturday when I was much cooler-headed, otherwise there'd be a size 8-1/2 Nike stuck in the big screen).

But it troubled me that both computers had flaky Internet connections. I tried some other sites that weren't so multimedia involved, and those seemed to pop up, albeit slow, but navigatable. I rebooted with no success. I restarted the Internet. Still, with the same results, and when I clicked to close it down up jumped 60-some-odd browser windows. 6-0. If I were trying to hide porn, I'd lose the game. Naughty nurse nymphos would be splashed in every nook and cranny of my computer screen.

In my book, when 60 windows fill the screen that's never a good sign.

I concluded, after rummaging through my vast tech skills that roll through my melon (which is to say I can turn the machine on and molest the mouse, that's about it) either we have a bad modem or a virus.

So Saturday morning I wake up determined to figure out the problem. I update the virus scanner on Wife's machine (now she can safely scan Hunky Hugo's House of Hotties.com and shop until her fingers grind down to nubs) and after reading up on problems with Norton, which is on my computer, I purge it from my machine and download a different chunk software that promises to not only wipe out computer viruses, but also cure head colds, mad cow disease and herpes. With our flaky Internet connection, I'm able to download it.

But still our information superhighway is running slower than a constipated senior citizen in search of a bathroom at Casino Arizona. And that's when I throw up my hands and call it a day. My eyes hurt, my head hurts and all I want to do is watch the Fox Game of the Week. The yardwork I planned to do was tossed out, and the only chore that gets completed is sprucing up the bathrooms, because, dammit, if we can't have Internet access at least Wife and I can crap on clean seats.

Then, a wonderous thing happened. Wife, who is smarter than a 3-headed Einstein, decided to check our connection later that evening.

"Hey, I think we're up," she says

"Aw, you're drunk. Stop teasing," I slur (Dodger game was about to start, do the math).

"No, really, I can get on mlb.com."

I hurdle the couch and stampeed a cat on my way to the computer. Lo and behold, she wasn't lying. All the sites I tested over the past two days came up without a glich. It was like I lost my virginity all over again, just longer and a helluva lot more gratifying.

"What did you do," I ask.

"Nothing. Maybe all your upgrading and downloading worked."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. Bill Gates is nothign more than a telephone operator compared to me."

I learned the reality today, though. I slaved over the keyboards for six hours Saturday only to find out that Cox, our Internet "provider" if you want to call it that, had statewide problems Friday and Saturday. No phone call. No little scrolly message on our TV. Not even a pleasant "Hello suckers. You probably noticed your Internet works about as well as dog shit shoved into a vending machine coin slot. Don't worry, it's not you, it's us. Our bad" e-mail.

So, thanks Cox for eating a hole through my Saturday and shoving a turd bomb through the center. May your customer service department contract the clap from the desk chairs and cold sores from the drinking fountain.