Memo to Oslo

My wife cancelled the ground-line phone service we'd been getting via the cable company, without realizing that this would also require us to get a new cable-modem connection for the high-speed DSL Internet service.

So Friday morning, I had no Internet and -- because my wife was working lunch shift as the school cafeteria lady -- it fell my duty to go to the cable company and get this mess straightened out, a task for which my impatient temperament makes me particularly ill-suited. (Please hit the tip jar, so I can hire an intern to deal with mundane crap like this.)

After a 10-minute wait behind the herd of mouth-breathing subliterates demanding service -- Why did the cable company cancel their pro-wrestling premium pay-per-view? Can payment be made in food stamps? -- until it was my turn to talk to the friendly woman at the counter named Vonda, who accepted the old Internet modem I was turning in and disappeared into the backroom.

Tempus fugits and time is money, and every minute I waste standing in line at the cable company is a minute I'm not doing something for which I might be paid money. By contrast, Vonda is being paid $20 an hour, no matter how slowly and inefficiently she performs her job, but can't be fired unless her employer is prepared to spend the money necessary to fight a wrongful-termination suit.

Vonda is a woman and is therefore a "protected class" under state and federal law. She has full benefits and a salary, but any actual work she does is strictly optional. Her company has a government-licensed monopoly on cable service in our county, and I can't even get online to rattle the tip jar. (Thanks to Randall in Ohio, Eric in Texas, and Barry in Missouri for their contributions. Whether it's $1, $10, $25 or $50, every donation is appreciated by my wife and six kids.)

Welcome to the 21st century, you see. So my time is wasted while Vonda goes to the backroom and I stand there at the counter amid the mouth-breathing wrestling fans. Well, as my late father said, "Whoever told you life was supposed to be fair, son?"

Vonda returns to tell me that it will be a few minutes before the new modem is ready. Does this mean I'll have time enough to go smoke a cigarette? Yes, probably, says Vonda.

So I go outside, fire up a Parliament Light and start flipping through my cell-phone, trying to find someone I need to call, perhaps to get some usefulness out of this time I'm being forced to waste at the cable company. (Fact: Hunter S. Thompson never had to deal with this kind of two-bit crap.)

Ah, Stogie at Saberpoint! I call to thank him for his services and -- since I haven't seen any news the past 14 hours -- ask him what's up. He tells me that Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. We talk a few more minutes before Vonda comes trotting out the front door of the cable company office, waving some paperwork I need to sign.

Great. Well, good-bye, Stogie. Hello, Vonda.

No justice in the world, you see? Even Obama admits he's done nothing to merit the Nobel Prize, while I'm compelled to deal with Vonda and the cable company, merely to get my Internet service re-connected. He's the Leader of the Free World, the object of worldwide admiration, and I'm an inconsequential peon, dealing with the cable company.

People ignore my e-mails and don't return my phone calls. Allahpundit hasn't linked me in months and you can go count the trackbacks at my Hot Air Greenroom special report to see how little interest conservative bloggers have paid to my reporting on the Sparkman case in Kentucky. Even Moe Lane won't link it.

Why? Because I suck, which is why Erik Telford makes sure I'm never invited to attend important conferences like the Defending the Dream Summit.

Dad was right. Life is unfair. You'd think a middle-aged man would be mature enough to deal with that. And now Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Because I suck.

Ah, well, I've still got the Paco Award. They can't take that away from me, can they? Hit the tip jar.

UPDATE: 5:25 p.m.: Michelle Malkin notices that the DNC Humor Commissars have now classified sarcasm as terrorism, which means we're all doomed to be waterboarded at the Blogospheric Gitmo.