"Dear Valued Customer"

That's the salutation on the mass-mailing from the Evil Bastards at the Cable Company, announcing how they are going to "realign" some of the cable channels, for no goddamn good reason other than they can. And then they are going to "add a couple of exciting new channels", which means that in a couple of months, there will be an exciting new rate increase of about four bucks.

"Exciting new channels." What a load of horseshit. Unless one of those new channels shows cable TV executives being interrogated by CIA torturers interrogators under the direct supervision of Vice President Vlad Cheney, I can't see anything exciting about it.

In one of the more recent Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich, one of the bail-jumpers was staying home because the cable company was supposed to come by any day now. He had been waiting for five months. Whenever one character in the story mentioned the words "cable company", the other party to the conversation would invariably respond with "those fuckers."

That's about how I feel.

Those fuckers.