Paying the Piper

"The time has come, the walrus said...."

The simple facts of the matter are this: I owe Comcast money. Comcast provides my tv, my phone and my internet. I can not afford to pay up on the schedule they want - it would take me a few more days (next Thursday's paycheck, to be precise) to pay them up to the point they want, and I would immediately have the next month's payment to deal with, and that money needs to go to the landlord.

So, sometime on Sunday Feb. 12th, 2012, or shortly thereafter, they will be disconnecting me.

It's really stupid in the long run. It will take me awhile to pay them off completely, plus all the fees they are inevitably going to charge, plus the monies they will want in advance. They will lose my business, which doesn't mean much to them. I am going to have to get and invest in a cell phone, money which could be going to my bill.

As it is, I pay for tv channels in which I am not interested, and which I do not watch. I have to pay for "levels" of service to get the channels and choices I want. The Comcast people have told me that this having to take a bundle approach is due to legislation passed by the US Congress.

Whatever the story is, unless there is some little miracle along the way, my ability to post, use the internet, and the ability of my family, friends, and workplace to get a hold of me is about to be severely compromised.

If, and when, I can afford to re-up, I won't be going for anything other than basic cable, just the way I wanted to start out. Oh, well, their loss.

The computer I'm currently using doesn't seem to have what it takes to set up a wireless connection - my old computer found one when I booted it up again to copy files off of it. Of course, it barely runs. Funny, I thought when I bought this one that it had a wireless thingy built in, but at the moment it sure doesn't want to be found. Oh, well.

Right now I'm going to go and sulk a bit before I start the long walk to work. I wish the buses ran a little more frequently. But then again, there's a lot of things I wish for these days, and my wishes don't really seem to have much to do with it, or come true.

I'm sure I'll have more to post by Saturday, which is my day off, and the last day on which I can be sure of having an internet connection. Look for a mega post, I guess.

To paraphrase the carpenter, I've had a pleasant run.

Now, even the Dead are dying

George Romero's 1968 movie "Night of the Living Dead" was not properly copyrighted. There used to be lots of bad dupes and third rate extra poor quality videos copies of it out there. Personally, I think that helped  build the movie's reputation. It was like you were seeing something you really shouldn't be seeing, something surreptitiously filmed, something that was - and maybe should be - suppressed. As the years went by, the original negative became available (long story), prints were struck and --- it still played.



Today brought word that Bill Hinzman, known far and wide as the Cemetery Zombie passed away yesterday. He was basically the first new world order screen zombie, of the slow lurching eat your flesh and brains school of zombie-dom.

He was a second cameraman on the shoot when Romero pressed him into service. He later collaborated with Romero on The Crazies, and the 1974 tv documentary O.J. Simpson : The Juice on the Loose.

He directed two low budget horrors, The Majorettes, and Flesh Eater, in which he reprised his role as the Cemetary Zombie. He was 75.

In one of those synchronicity of events thingys, yesterday also saw the passing of Josephine Streiner. She played one of the ghouls on Night of the Living Dead - it was her car that Barbara wreaked trying to get away from Hinzman's Cemetery Zombie; in real life she was the mother of Russell Streiner who produced the movie, and Gary Streiner, who was its sound engineer.

Russ (left) and Gary (right) Streiner

The brothers have asked that those who wish to remember their mother send a contribution to Fix the Chapel, a fund set up to save (and restore) the Evans City, Pa. Chapel used in the filming from destruction. (Gary Streiner is the director of that project.)

Fix the Chapel (a.k.a. Save the Chapel - website)

Save the Chapel Facebook page

At the website, one can even buy t-shirts and hoodies as part of the fundriaser:

Personally, I except both Mr. Hinzman and Ms. Streiner to come lurching towards me, later, tonight, alone, in the dark.... they can never die, now.

Monday today, all day.

If you work in retail, you rarely get weekends.

But one still hates Mondays.

...and that's the kind of day it is shaping up to be.

Found on the web today