Since moving into my house, I have stubbornly refused to have cable or satellite tv installed. Sure I have a TV. I even have a TiVo-like PVR. But I found before moving that I was spending way too much time staring at the thing and allowing the conservative media to fill my head with freakish notions.
So I decided when I moved that I would only watch DVDs.
Fast forward now, 6 months later. I haven't seen a single new episode of The Simpsons. I have only seen a few clips of The Daily Show on the internet. I have only heard about the Discovery Channel's coverage of Mt St Helens. And I have avoided all of the general pop-culture and advertisements that surround live-ish TV. (It's ok, I still know about the current Coca-Cola products because I go to the movies in time for The Twenty every week).
But the inner circle of friends have started noticing cracks in my surface. I've started making arrangements to be at their houses for tonight's episode of Mad TV (where Swan reappears for one episode!) or for the Gay Marriage episode of The Simpsons coming on Feb. 20.
It's like I'm using my friends for their TV. Or maybe I'm using TV as an excuse to hang out with Dan…
ANYWAY, this week I've been struggling especially hard with the whole Dish Network thing. I had finally decided that I would break down and call for my free installation to reunite the Dish once again with my TV. I have priced it out, worked it into my super tight budget and decided to call on Monday.
Then came today. Like a screaming message from The Cosmos, The Universe has derailed my plans.
You see, I hate spam.
And I believe the only way to combat spam is to absolutely flat refuse to purchase things that arrive in my spam filters.
Notice the use of the word Absolute. Again, my friends know me. Absolute means I can't quote and live by this part of The Bible if I don't pay attention to that part of The Bible (i.e. The Book of Leviticus has that anti-Gay thing, but it also has an anti-Shell Fish thing, meaning you can't eat shrimp and quote The Bible about how Gay is bad, or else you become an instant hypocrite. Or another favorite example, you can't be FOR capital punishment and AGAINST abortion. if you're pro-life, you have to be ALL pro-life, not Convenient pro-life. but I digress).
So in my absolute refusal to purchase things from spammers, I have backed myself into a space where I can no longer purchase The Dish Network.
You see, this morning on my two blogs (this one and pdxmotw.com) there were over 50 spam comments posted and over 30 of those were from The Dish Network installers.
Add to that, in my email there were 189 spam messages trapped by the spam filters since yesterday at 3pm. That's less than 22 hours ago. That's one spam message every 4 minutes. 20+ of them were for The Dish Network.
So, you see. I almost broke but was saved by The Universe. No Dish Network for me. Bad Spammers. I hope you rot in hell. No, really. Now I have to go start all over by looking into DirecTV and see what they have to offer…
