So we gave up Comcast cable yesterday, we are without cable for the first time in 20 years.

It seems like I am still in shock to tell you the truth. So, what has lead me to this lowly crossroads you might ask, and even if you didn’t I will tell you anyway. Bride and I are struggling with the crappy economy, like most everyone I know. In some ways, it has been enlightening and other ways it just plain sucks. The enlightening part is that we are now making it with less income than we have since we were first married, 20 years ago. Bride and I have always been the stereotypical DINK’s, dual income, no Kids. We never worried about money, if on Friday night we wanted to go to Daytona or Jekyll Island for the weekend, poof – we went. We have always been blessed, we have lived very a good life for the last 20+ years we have been hanging out together. What we found was that we had a bunch of crap that somehow weaseled its way into our lives and tricked us into thinking they were necessities. We looked at many of these wanton irrelevant lifestyle items as something we actually “needed” to get by. What a bunch of shit that turned out to be. You could always count on the Oatmeal’s to have everyone of the latest and greatest gadgets, from TV’s to cell phones to surround sound to the fastest cable modem that could be had. Our immersion into the materialist American attitude that we are continually bombarded with by advertisers is a big part of our countries problems right now, and we found it to be one of ours as well.

It has been enlightening to even recognize it, let alone start stripping away the “needed” gadgetry that swirls around our lives. We no longer have new cars, new cell phones, new televisions, new appliances, new this, the latest that. And you know what, I feel enlightened by the lack of it all. We would work our butts off to get all the stuff that we were told we needed. Only thing is we didn’t really need it all! Our society is geared towards consumption, our economy needs to peoples gross consumption to work correctly. Our recent economy woes are just one example. I can hardly blame us, we are indoctrinated at a very young age and from many different fronts. Happy meals with action figures for movies, new bicycles with 854 gears and shock absorbers, come on shocks on a bike we really need that? When I was a kid we got our bikes second hand from some guy in Westville, Ohio. You know what, we were happy to have a bike, it did not need shock absorbers, hell it did not even need a good paint job. When I was stationed in Annapolis I used to find old junk bikes and fix them up, and sell them to folks on the base. In the military everyone is somewhat a transient so if they left the bike, no biggie if it was used and cheap anyway. To this day I have never bought a new bike, and I have had many.

As I sit here pounding this out on my computer, I am reminded, I am one LUCKY dude. A LOT of people in this country do not have it as lucky as me, let alone when compared to other places in the world. I guess it has been harder for me to truly “get it” than I thought. Even with the problems that we face, we are still better off than many. We used to give a lot more to charity, lately there just has not been as much money so I try hard to volunteer my time to worthy causes. I am also now convinced that organizations that help folks need both the people who give money to keep programs going and the folks to actually do the helping. I like doing the actual helping more than the financially supporting my causes. It is a lot harder for me but I get more satisfaction from it then just penning a check.

The one thing that still gets in my craw is the fact the government has not even considered downsizing. While most normal folks have been forced to cut back here and there, turn off cable, wait on buying that new car, our government has been spending like a drunken sailor. At our expense by the way! I want my government to cut back, at the city, state and federal level. I have seen none of it, not anything that is significant anyway. They continue to tax us, add fees and any other manner of jackin’ our money from us to pay for all of it. BULLSHIT I say. We have all had to make hard choices, it is time for our elected officials to do the same, make the hard choices. While this program or that project might be terribly important maybe, just maybe we can’t afford to do it, we got to cut the cable off. That is part of the problem, most of the programs are gems, they offer many benefits to our elected officials. Benefits that will help them get reelected. Things like bringing jobs and money to his or her district and of course they have to scratch the back of the corporations that put them in office to begin with. Someone needs to say – BULLSHIT, we are turning the cable off. It would most likely end that political career, that is why they will not do it, with anything, no soup for you (spoken like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld) is what we need to say to our elected officials.

I suppose the whole thing is messing with my sense of fair play. Yes, I still believe that life in the United States should be fair, I may be in the minority but I still believe it can be – or at least it can be again. I know fair is what you pay to get on a bus and where you go to get a funnel cake, but I still believe. Maybe that is why I get so frustrated with all levels of government. Maybe, just maybe I need to become an activist, not a Politian because I do not want to become part of the problem. I am convinced that there is some secret room that new politicians, from the smallest city councilman to the big white house in DC, are taken into. That small little room someplace where they are indoctrinated into some secret club. I would guess the lineage could be tracked all the way back to the Templar Knights from the days of the crusades. I think, we the populace, should develop another little room for them, one that can track its lineage back to the days when folks were bled to heal them. In our little room, we would be performing a BUNCH of plexiotomies. Yes, I say we give them all plexiotomies. That is where they remove the skin around the belly button and install a small piece of plexiglass. Why you might ask? Well that will allow them to see when they walk with their heads up their asses.

Bride has, at more times than not, been the primary breadwinner in our house, and I liked being a “kept” man by the way. She is not working right now, I am not saying that is a bad thing, it is just a thing and not by our choice. I love her being able to be home more, more home cooked dinners and whatnot for me. The decision was made for her to stop working before all hell broke loose with the economy. She struggles some with feelings of inadequacy, not bringing in an income after being a breadwinner is very hard. She is a rock though, I do not think I could do it. Having to Give up a life that gave her so much satisfaction has been the hardest thing I have ever seen anyone do, but for medical reasons it had to be done. For those who know Bride you know she is not a knitter so she also struggles with finding a hobby that can keep her as interested in the life she had to give up. I have never been prouder of my Bride, I just love her so much and consider myself the luckiest man alive that she actually said yes when I asked her, 20 years ago now to marry me.

Who needs cable, there is nothing but crap on TV anyway – turn them off, it saved us 150 bucks a month! And write your elected officials and tell them to turn off cable as well!