Fuck You, Cable Guy...and Congrats, New Orleans.

Unlike a majority of the working populace, I don’t normally hate Mondays. Monday is the first of my two days off. Because I work late at night most of the time on Sunday, and because we home school (A rant about the horrific quality of public schools at a later date), the family stays up late and we all sleep in on Monday morning. Typically, Mondays are nice and quiet and relaxing around here.

Today is not typical. I didn’t sleep well at all, and just as I was actually getting some solid sleep, I was awakened by the beautiful serenade of the neighbor’s rat terrier losing her fucking mind. I love these neighbors. They are the same age as the wife and I; they have a daughter almost the same age as ours and they are best friends; they are laid back and we often just hang out and chill. We take turns watching each other’s kid as needed. We walk each other’s dogs as needed. They help out the wife when I’m not around. Seriously, I couldn’t ask for better neighbors. Except that they have this annoying abomination of a dog who yappy barks like a maniac at anything, everything, and probably a lot of shit that doesn’t exist. She’s like the old homeless lady downtown yelling about the second-coming of Christ and the evils of cheeseburgers at people that only she can see. Yeah, we get it Daffy, there is evil outside your door and all 12 pounds of you is going to protect your house by annoying it into submission with your bark. Way to go, dog.

The drilling starts at about 8:03. Well, I say “drilling,” but it sounds more like someone has rigged a jackhammer with a jet engine and is trying to break apart granite, directly outside my front door. Fuck. This is obviously the evil that Daffy is going bat-shit crazy over, it is very real. It doesn’t excuse the fact that her bark is like 6,000 jagged fingernails on a chalkboard at 8 o’clock in the morning, but at least I know she’s not drunk and imagining shit. I decide to move to the couch, turn on some SportsCenter to drown out the mayhem outside, and hopefully, fall back asleep. I then find out that the source of all of the outside chaos is directly related to cable television. My cable is dead (which means my internet is also dead, so you’ll not really get this in a timely manner). I take the dogs out and find some dude has the community cable box completely disassembled. Ah yes, they warned us that the upgrade was coming, but I didn’t expect it would be first thing on a Monday. Usually, the only time the cable company does anything is between the hours of 1 and 4 three weeks from Wednesday. Way to be motivated this week, cable fuckers. Fuck you and whatever the fuck you're doing to the cable box. My cable experience had better be infinitely better after all of this nonsense. Fuckers.

So, here I am. I’m tired, I’m annoyed, and I have no access to instantly gratifying, mindless entertainment to distract me from feeling shit about stuff. And, as usual, my daughter feels the need to narrate her every move and tell me every thought she’s having the minute she wakes up. I love my kid, but damn, does she really need to talk non-stop from the time she opens her eyes? Daddy needs to be left alone right now. Seriously. Stop talking. Fuck this Monday.

Of course, my Monday morning probably pales in comparison to the massive hangover that likely has half the city of New Orleans calling in sick this morning. There are a bunch of people in New Orleans promising God that they will never drink again as they are hunched over the toilet throwing up the poor choices they made in the revelry following last night’s Super Bowl victory by the Saints. I’m not a Saints fan, but it was cool to see them finally win something after professionally sucking the rest of the NFL’s ass for the past 43 years. It’s also pretty cool that the poor souls who are stuck living in that shithole of a city finally have something to brag about beyond being the murder capital of America and the place where thousands of women drunkenly sacrifice their dignity for worthless plastic beads every March. Don’t get me wrong, I like titties, and if some chick wants to show them to me and 1,000 other strangers on a street after pounding a couple of Hurricanes, I won’t stop her; but I hope she doesn’t expect me to think highly of her for doing so. If as a city, all you have to brag about is “Chicks come here to get drunk and flash their titties” or “People come here to get shot,” you need something else. Now, after 43 years of abject suck, the Saints have given the city something else. Drink up, New Orleans. Enjoy it. Next week, life will be back to its normal level of suck and you’ll be back to wishing you lived somewhere else.