Better than coffee

It started off as a simple distraction, which is how most of these stories tend to start. Kyle thought that a good half-hour of lighthearted prose would get him in the mood to peel open his next take-home exam and apply the right amount of obfuscation and correct answers in order pull B-minus in said class. Exam time at Rice University is like that-- you have to punish yourself in order to get anything started. Some people jog themselves to death on the Outer Loop, some would gorge themselves with gas station snack cakes, while others turn to untraditional punishment. And writing prose was indeed punishment for Kyle. He hated writing fiction and as he compulsively poured back over the words he was writing, he understood why.

It sucked.

For years, our hero's mother had pleaded that he not to put things off until the last minute. And for years, our hero would jokingly cover his ears and sing Our Nation's Anthem in response. Some people never learn. Since that seemed to be the theme of the evening-- not learning, and it's consequences on grades and life and the friends who had to put up with his crappy fiction writing-- Kyle decided he would write a fantastic few paragraphs on the perils of being a lazy stoner with no work ethic.

He was about a quarter-way finished when, on the other side of Houston, a Christmas party was about to undo Kyle in the worst way. See, this guy Mort Crenshaw was just drunk enough to be having some major luck with this chick from Billing Inquiries. She had bad, crumpled hair but good teeth and a nice rack and Mort worked in IT so who the fuck was he to judge what creatures he'd sleep with tonight. Or marry. I mean, intra-office relationships usually get pretty serious. They have to. Your professional career is at stake otherwise.

Anyways.

He excused himself to go take a leak but drunkenly found himself in a room on the opposite end of the building full of beeping, blinking machines. In case you've never been drunk before, machines that blink and boop are infuriating unless they're pumping "Satisfaction" at full bass. So Mort Crenshaw began to take a leak on said machines.

Or, as it goes, the main DHCP server for all Comcast subscribers. High voltage, high current, and all very expensive. In case you weren't aware or will be purchasing service in the area soon, Comcast has a monopoly in Houston when it comes to cable Internet. You know where this is going.

The lights on the machines only flashed red for a second, then they all went out.

Just to clarify, Mort was electrocuted and singed his penis off and died. Kyle would have wanted him to go out that way, too, because that's what idiots who knock out the Internet deserve. But don't go hating on Mort too bad. Turns out this girl he was hitting on at the party always had a huge crush on him. He was so close to getting with her, too. And they would have had beautiful kids.

To paraphrase my buddy Kurt Vonnegut, it goes as such.

When Kyle realized his Internet was out he immediately tried everything in his extensive knowledge of electrical engineering topics to get it working again. He power cycled (i.e. unplugged) the router, then power cycled (i.e. unplugged) the modem, followed by a futile attempt to power cycle (i.e. unplug) the computer itself. No luck. Then he tried to pull the oven out of his kitchen and throw it out the window, which also failed but did help him vent a little frustration.

Kyle didn't particularly need the Internet in order to take his test, you know. He just needed the satisfaction of knowing that he could always check his e-mail or search YouTube for videos of fat guys playing Zelda riffs on ukuleles or purchase a book about pottery on Amazon. More importantly he needed the Internet so he could publish his story when it was finished and pray to Jesus that someone would leave him a comment. Kyle really gets off on that shit.

With few options left and even less pride, Kyle decided to call Comcast to see if he could rectify things. He hadn't had much luck calling Comcast in the past. Using a language made entirely of curse words, brand names, and "'let me speak with your supervisor," doesn't really fix anything ever, but Kyle had no concept of manners or decency in these situations. That's probably because he never had to hold a menial, service industry job back in high school and deal with angry people all day long.

Just my opinion.

Kyle never really got a chance to yell at anyone that night. At least any live people. Something amazing happened while Kyle was busy simultaneously navigating the Comcast tech support phone system and debasing it with the verbiage of a dying German during WWII. Some poor EMT pulled our friend Mort's stinking, piss-burned, crispy body off the server equipment and, with each hand double-gloved with latex, pressed the "reset" switch that Mort had been so selfishly lying upon.

Zing. Blink orange, blink green, solid green. Everything was working again.

Kyle decided this was a sign. A sign that he needed to spend the rest of his evening dicking around on the Internet. Since he had already started both writing himself into the story and depending on pictures to make it funnier, he trashed it and moved on to Google Reader.

Because after all, someone else out there had a story to read.