Our Weekly Wednesday Answer Page

I am not in the habit of complaining overmuch about my health. Much of what I suffer from is a fact of life and has been relegated to background noise, not worth mentioning, and no one enjoys a constant diet of bitching and moaning. This latest nastiness, however, is worthy of note, if only to memorialize it as an actual journal  entry. I need not describe it, as most everyone in J-land who has suffered from it already knows the details. Bonnie, bless her soul, has been largely immunized to it through constant exposure, and we can only hope that it stays that way.

In our area, we have three entities responsible for  providing content and communications (I am here ignoring radio because for me it is a medium of last resort, as when the power goes out.)

For communications we have Citizens Communications, formerly the ill-fated Global Crossing (ill-fated for us, anyway, as GLBC bought Frontier Corp. not long before the corporate honchos danced away with what Wikipedia describes as "astounding gains", leaving employees, including Bonnie, with very shaky pensions) and Time Warner Cable.

For content we have Dish Network and Time Warner Cable.

You will discern the common denominator.

Despite the fact that Time Warner has a virtual stranglehold on our local area, they feel it necessary to mail out glossy, four-color, picture-laden more-than-weekly brochures touting their various bundled products (digital tv! digital phone! broadband!) Every year our cable rates are raised, presumably because 'programming costs more.' Along with that, they continually play with the schedule, moving most of the decent programming to digital and bestowing upon us backward (read cheap) troglodytes the picked-over leavings that nobody wants to watch. They have done one nice thing for us, removing TBS and Animal Planet from ala carte status.

However, being the greedy corporation that they are ...

Although the two channels will be ala carte for four days only, the latest bill reflects the idea that we should pay for the full month. What they presumably planned to do is to give us a credit on next month's bill for the overage, having earned a shitpile of interest in the meantime.

Bonnie discovered this because she became curious about the new lineup and wondered how long it would be before we had access to the ala carte channels. She was surprised to learn that our actual bill was $1.13 less than the printed bill that came in the mail. Due to this felicitous discovery we will have that $1.13 in our account, rather than in Time Warner's account. Multiply that small sum by thousands of customers, and you will see how clever Time Warner is being.

I hope that was coherent; my thinking is not currently of the clearest.

Here is the answer for the March fourth Cryptocrostic -

 

These puzzles are meant to inform as well as entertain; you will sometimes discover words that are somewhat uncommon. We try to stay away from too much of that, but we can't resist tossing in some lesser-known words from time to time.

Peace.

Bonnie and Walt