REAL ART IN THE BIG EASY!
Cox Communications Imposed
Extended Hiatus Finally Ends

Well, that took much longer than expected. Somehow, I missed my cable guy on Friday a week ago and the soonest they could reschedule was seven days later. So I've had no internet, cable television, or even a telephone for over a week. Well okay, I did have my bottom of the line Tracfone, but the minutes are expensive so I kept phone conversations to a minimum. And I did have good old reliable free broadcast TV all week, and some of the signals were pretty strong, so it's not like I've been in limbo or anything. I suppose I could have picked up a newspaper, especially because the local daily, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is a pretty good paper, especially when compared to that awful Baton Rouge paper I've been dealing with for the last three years.

Instead, I concentrated on getting settled here in my new apartment which is literally ten minutes from downtown New Orleans when the traffic is good. And I've been continuing to unpack even today, which is why I'm cutting this post short--I'm tired, and it's hard to concentrate. At any rate, Real Art is back, and I'm in a city I love, standing ready to jump into the local arts and performance scene as soon as I've got a day job to pay the bills. I'm excited.

One last thing. The cable guy accidentally hooked me up with the standard basic cable package instead of the limited action I've been getting in BR for three years. Cable TV is extraordinarily seductive. I mean, it sucks; there's rarely anything actually worth watching. But flipping channels is like playing the slots: you never know when you might hit the jackpot. Earlier tonight, I lost a few hours because Goodfellas was on Spike TV. I didn't really watch the whole thing, but the movie served as a kind of base while I surfed all the shitty shows on other channels.

God, I'm no better than anybody. I know how awful television is, but there I sat lapping it up. For fuck's sake, I even took in some FOX News! It's sick, just sick. I hope they hurry up and correct this, get me back to the twenty or so channels I had before. It's like being a recovering addict and having a bunch of heroin in the house.

How can I resist?

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