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I mowed the lawn for the first time this year yesterday. I did as much of it as I could, since I ripped the crankline out by the root on the last crank. Luckily it started on that one. I didn’t use any more oomph than I usually do, but it was nevertheless the most gratifying breakdown I’ve ever had. GORILLA ARMS! OOMGOWAH! I suppose I’ll have to take it down to Jerry’s Lawnmower Repair this week for a general enema.

Because of school, our yard has grown Clampett-like. The neighbors, I’m sure, have looked at our yard once or twice this winter and clicked their tongues. Fuck em.

My mission this summer, though, is to mow my lawn exactly 4 days after my Seabee neighbor. Mrs Seabee is a tongue clicker. A very annoying person with few redeeming qualities. I guess she has one or two qualities that aren’t annoying. I guess. She hasn’t yet shit in my mailbox. That’s something.

So, to raise the stakes, I’ll mow exactly 4 days after they mow. That way, their lawn will look 4 days shaggier than my lawn for the bulk of the summer. That will surely be irksome.

It’s possible…probable… that she will escalate by getting her husband to mow the day after I mow. That will not work. My response will be to mow the day after they re-mow with a lower blade clearance. My lawn will look like the fucking eighteenth green at a public golf course, if that’s what it takes.

And it will be perfectly obvious to them what I’m doing, at least by the 2nd or 3rd week of summer. She will know that something sinister and ineluctable is happening next door. She will not win. I will grind her pride-of-lawn into a fine mulch beneath my workboots. Then I will use it as a fertilizer for my yard.

It’s the little things that make life worth living.

Privacy fences are a necessary part of suburbia, because few things are more fraught and tedious than feeling obliged to talk to the neighbors. Fences allow people to ignore other people, and that’s healthy. A neighbor who’s out of sight behind a fence, even if he’s slaughtering pigs in his backyard, is better than a neighbor who putters around in a fenceless garden waiting to spring a conversation trap on the unsuspecting.

I wish fences weren’t necessary, but since houses in the suburbs are packed tight, they are. So while I live in the suburbs I’ll always require a fence (I have other plans, though).

There’s a circle around a person that, if someone is outside its radius, there is no obligation for those two people to talk. That’s a pretty good distance. There’s an obligation to wave at the other person, perhaps, or to nod, but not to talk.

Similarly, there’s another circle around a person that defines the limit beyond which one isn’t even obligated to acknowledge someone else, even if he can be seen. At that distance, by convention, it’s okay and proper to pretend your neighbor doesn’t exist. That’s a very good distance. I believe figure 7 clearly illustrates the progression, although you’ll have to enlarge it to see:

Of course, the best circle of all, the circle beyond which neighbors actually can’t be seen, was omitted for reasons of space.

It takes a lot of acreage, probably 3 or 4 acres, to really be confident that all the neighbors lie outside the pretend circle. It’s an actual distance, too, I think: the distance where one can pretend that the neighbor’s image on the retina is no longer an image of a person, but only a collection of unresolved neural firings. And obviously the “pretend radius” is smaller than the actual radius where people’s images can’t be resolved, but that’s okay.

It’s all mostly pretend anyway.

Let me get this out of the way: I’m not a leader. There is an extra ingredient one has to have on top of being smart and observant and glib, let’s call it Ingredient Q, in order to be a leader. Ingredient Q involves being able to suffer idiots. I don’t possess that ingredient. I never will.

Watching television or listening to politicians or hobnobbing with union reps involves interacting (or at least observing) people who possess Ingredient Q. These people amaze me. How one can transform an idea for how things could be made better into an actual process that proceeds in the face of resistance from idiots is a talent that I have no patience for. I simply cannot suffer idiots for any length of time; it’s my own cross to bear.

So, because I don’t possess Ingredient Q, I can only (like all the Q-less people I know) create ideas, then fall back into the calming waters of cynicism as I watch the buffalo herd rumble off into Idiot Prairie. So I said all that. Now for the rant proper:

I’m getting pretty worked up about what I see happening in Long Beach. I never got this worked up about Vacaville. I didn’t have thirty years of history with the place; I didn’t have emotional buy-in. So what if a little farmland was cleared to make way for a spanking new subdivision? It wasn’t my home, really. I was just passing through.

But it was somebody’s home. Somebody was emotionally invested in the place, I’m sure of it. Vacaville was their home, their backyard, and they had an interest in how their backyard transmogrified.

The term “NIMBY” is used dismissively, to pigeonhole people. “They don’t want a 7-11 constructed in their neighborhood?” NIMBY. The 7-11 must be built; these foolish people just don’t want it in their backyard, they want it in somebody else’s backyard. They’re selfish; they say “let somebody else take the fall” for Progress.

But on the contrary, NIMBY-ism is good and important, and is sometimes the only thing that stands between a neighborhood and the bulldozers. Because if people won’t speak out when something wrong is happening to their own backyard, when will they speak out? Who else will advocate for an area? Who will speak for the trees? The answer is “not a goddamn soul.”

NIMBY-ism should be cultivated, not dismissed. If everybody speaks up for their own backyard, developers will have to tear something crappy down before building something crappy up.

I don’t know the exact mechanisms that allowed northern California and Germany and England to keep Progress from fucking up the countryside, but I do know it wasn’t out of the goodness of developers’ hearts. I do know that. Rules were involved. It would be beneficial to examine law in those places to see how Progress shook out the way it did, but that sounds like a lot of work. Also, even if I found the specific mechanisms that worked in California or Germany, there’s certainly no guarantee that those mechanisms would function the same way here. Here is different; we have a different history and a different problem to fix, since we’ve waited (and are still waiting) so long to do something about it.

Change for the better, when a place is already somewhat degraded, is going to cost someone money. So the argument that it’s too costly isn’t useful. Of course it’ll be costly for some people. The trick is to corner those people who fucked us over by taking advantage of the rules, then make them pay for the change. I don’t care if these people complain. If elected, I’ll counter their arguments with a hearty “Go fuck yourself” before I introduce legislation designed purposely to screw them to the wall. If someone has to pay to fix things–and someone always has to pay–the people who broke the things to begin with should start emptying their pockets. So, in my opinion, which is apparently better than most of the mouth-breathers passing laws down here, here are some rules that would keep Long Beach from becoming Calcutta:

1. Greenbelts. Make it so outlying areas (but still in the city limits) can only be inherited or sold to the government. This will eventually kill off suburban creep.

Won’t happen, but it’s a nice fantasy. A 9 on the masturbation meter.

2. Tax the shit out of businesses that are located outside the central zone of the city. the point of this law would be to get rid of the Jr Food Stores, the Kwikee Marts, the Paul’s Pool & Spas; make them move closer to city center. People such as myself will be forced to order their commerce so that they get things done on calculated downtown trips, instead of popping down to the Jr Food Store for a quart of Old Milwaukee and Cheetos as the impulse strikes them. That bullshit has to stop.

Could happen.

3. The closer a business is to city center (or some similar mechanism), the fewer taxes it has to pay.

Could happen.

4. Demolition insurance. This is the biggie; this is the one that keeps more damage from happening the quickest. Any business that builds, must buy demolition insurance, so that if they go out of business–which they usually do–the box they built on the graves of possums and raccoons and wildebeests and trees must be demolished. Trees must be replanted, and wildebeests must be shipped in from elsewhere to replenish the populations that were killed and displaced. Will the insurance be expensive? You’re damn right, it’ll be expensive. The point is to NOT build the thing in the first place. But if someone is bound and determined to build a dive where it shouldn’t be built, they should insure us that the place will disappear when their business falls apart.

Should happen. A solid 10. I get excited just thinking about it.

5. Only people who’ve lived in a town 5 years or longer will be allowed to vote in local elections. That will keep the transients (such as myself in Vacaville) from being able to trash a place because they know their time there will be limited. This is huge, y’all; it keeps the carpetbaggers and various other assholes from having a voice.

Should happen.

Rules. They separate us from the jerks. And as I said earlier, there’s absolutely no way I’ll ever be in a position to institute rules, since I lack Ingredient Q. I can only rant, and hope that someone who does possess the key ingredient has had the same ideas, or sees these ideas and acts on them.

But I don’t have that hope. What will happen is that, eventually, I’ll move away from here to some place where those rules (or similar ones) have already been enacted. As a Q-less person, that’s really my only option for physical and mental health.

What is it about Southern Progress that makes it suck so? Are the natives just thoughtless idiots? Probably; they probably are. In all probability, they are. Idiots is what they are, probably. You know what I bet? I bet they’re idiots.

Some places do Progress right. California’s pretty good at it; the greenbelts between towns were incredibly farsighted. Germany and most of Europe are good at it. Very good. I lived in Germany, a crowded place, in two different neighborhoods, and in both places I could walk down the road and five minutes later be in dark forest.

Here, I can’t do that. First of all, there’s no walking here; there aren’t any sidewalks. Also, there are no public forests. There are NO public forests here. There’s Desoto, which is all well and good for the people of Wiggins and north Saucier (and greater Bumfuck and east Jesus), but it does me no good. There are woods here, but people own them, and they’re fenced and festooned with “no trespassing” signs.

If California or Germany “progressed” like southern Mississippi, they would be hellholes. Southern Mississippi is not a hellhole yet, but with double the population and no change to the “business friendly” land laws, it will turn into hell.

So it’s not too late to keep this place from becoming Calcutta, but the rules need to change. Also, it would help if the idiots became less idiotic. Hey, you know what would help? The idiots? If there weren’t so many of them, that would help.

The nicest people I know say “I’m all for progress, but…” when confronted with some hard industrial or commercial nut that’s fallen into their backyard. “I’m all for progress, but I don’t see why those condos they’re talking about building on the beach need to be twelve stories tall. I mean, progress is good, and it’ll help with the tax base, and jobs, but why do they need to be twelve stories tall?”

These are nice people. They don’t want to cause a ruckus or anything, but won’t all these condos and Oreck factories and jobs slithering into their backyards make more pollution and traffic? They understand that some pollution and traffic are necessary consequences of progress, and don’t get them wrong, they’re all for Progress, but isn’t an extra eight stories of concrete a bit much? They understand that the enlarged tax base will keep their own taxes down while still allowing the city to afford to improve the roads and upgrade the sewer systems. And with improved roads and upgraded sewer systems, the town will be more attractive to businesses, so that they can have more condos and more people coming in to live in them. They understand that’s Progress, and there’s simply no stopping it.

Yes, these are nice people, who have no idea how they wake up one morning forty years later and are surrounded by desolation.

Progress sucks. “Progress,” when used by local burghers to stampede the citizens into accepting things they shouldn’t accept, means to allow businessmen to do whatever their little hearts desire, with no accountability for their selfish actions. Consider this example of Progress:

the Piggly Wiggly, click pic to embiggen

This is Progress: a strip mall that’s been vacant for at least twenty years, while other strip malls sprouted around it, like weeds. This building does nothing for anybody. But because it’s cheaper for capitalists to throw up another strip mall five hundred yards down the road where once trees were, instead of using this hulking thing (or knocking it down to make their own hulking thing), that’s what’s done. In a clueless, lawless place, that’s what’s done.

Here’s another picture of Progress:

the Beatline Dump, click to embiggen.

This place has been a de facto garbage dump almost as long as I’ve been alive. It used to be a general store, which I vaguely remember, but it burned down. Afterwards, the owner has periodically piled it high with trash; the city periodically cites the owner for it, and some of the trash gets moved around, but then the city moves on to new business, and the owner starts dumping his garbage here again. Currently, the property is in its “semi-cleared” state, but the owner has begun to cocoon the property in a new layer of trash. A year from now a beautiful garbage butterfly will once again emerge in glory.

White Harbor

This is the corner of White Harbor and Highway 90, the beach highway. It looks like these acres have been cleared, and a project is ready to rise. Looks are deceiving. This land was cleared years ago, and a system of broken PVC piping and cracked concrete foundations was put in. The project was apparently declared a success, and the developers have taken several years off to celebrate.

The Dahl House, click to embiggen

This is the Dahl House, a hideous structure on Pineville Road that until last year was home to a thriving, small bakery. The bakery built a new place on Beatline (where trees used to be), and this, their old place, became a shitty dive of a restaurant that lasted four months. I fully expect the building to change hands several times in the next couple of years before it begins the long slide toward final garbagehood.

the old Hancock Bank

This Hancock Bank moved farther away from the city center, to Beatline and Pineville. Meanwhile, the bunker they left behind is up for sale or lease, and has been for at least a year. It will eventually fall apart, despite the “God Bless America” sign jammed in the hedge in front.

Here’s a final, more subtle example of Progress:

the Alamo

This is the former home of the late WJ Quarles, a Long Beach founding father. It is as nearly in the center of town as is possible. It’s been falling apart for decades, although the historic sign that was put out front fifteen years or so ago is a nice touch. Its historical value is nil to anyone but descendants of the Quarles family, yet here it still squats. It’s like our own little Alamo, but without the patina of significance. This would be a great place for a Piggly Wiggly, if a shell of a Piggly Wiggly didn’t already exist two hundred yards to the east. Instead, it rots, while wild places close by and elsewhere are cleared to make way for exciting new potential garbage dumps. Nice sign, though.

There are more examples of Progress in my little town, but decency forbids me to continue taking pictures of them.

Nice people will look at these pictures, sigh, and say, “Well, that’s Progress. You’ve got to take the good with the bad. You know?” Capitalists and businessmen, of course, couldn’t give two shits about it. But nice people will sigh, because they take Progress as a given. It’s above argument. It just is.

The thing is, I’m not very nice, and I’m going to argue against Progress, in the next post.

I live in a very safe neighborhood. Nobody leaves their backyard lights on at night.

I think I can make a case that the safety of a neighborhood varies inversely with the number of houses that leave their backyard lights on at night. I think it’s reasonable to believe that if a man’s house has been burgled, he’s apt to want his backyard lit up. It stands to reason. I would. Just give me this one.

I think, because you allowed that as a given, that nobody’s house in eyesight of mine has been burgled anytime recently. And I can see if a light were shining in eight backyards next to mine. Nine out of nine houses that I can observe from my backyard have not been burgled.

The only backyard that’s ever lit up (it’s not now) is the vacant house’s directly across from mine. And I can find it in my heart to believe that that is a kindness the owners are bestowing on their neighbors, for safety’s sake.

So there’s no crime here.

One reason, apart from being Long Beach, which hasn’t really changed much in twenty five years, is that this particular neighborhood has only one entrance. Bad guys don’t like that. So this neighborhood doesn’t cater to criminals. Green Acres doesn’t either, maybe less so. That neighborhood is a confusing warren unless you know it.

On a larger scale, though, when you get down to it, there aren’t that many bad guys. We live in a society of few bad guys. I base that statement on my assumption that bad guys have to be related to good guys, and I can count on two fingers the number of relatives I have that have been in trouble as adults. I have a lot of relatives, most of whom I don’t see except at funerals, but even so.

So there aren’t that many bad guys. If you put them all together, the whole lot of them, they’d make a stadium or sixty’s full of people, true. But when you spread em out over the whole country, every little burg you’ve ever driven through, every enormous city, there’s not really that many of them.

Which is good; it means we don’t live in a Bladerunner world (here’s where the word “yet” would be, if I were in a less optimistic mood).

* which, if not the name of a towering novel by a dead Russian, should at least have been the name of a Fox Network docudrama, but it googled empty.$

$ “googled empty” also googled empty.

I was talking to my next-door neighbor yesterday, for three or four minutes. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. The subject happened to be the air travel industry. My neighbor said that he thought it might be a good idea to re-regulate the industry, for the sake of the nation’s economy. He said that, even though it reeked of socialism, it might be a good idea. Then his wife called him back inside.

My next-door neighbor thinks differently than I do. He is a chief navy petty officer, and a policeman, yet somehow he thinks he’s also a full participant in capitalism. And by saying that he thinks the airline industry should be re-regulated, he’s saying that there is some minimal right that a citizen has to rapid travel; that somehow a broken system of air travel will impede his rise to affluence.

My neighbor lives in a fantastic dreamworld, in which televised rags-to-riches anecdotal evidence is evidence. I think most people live in that world, where an honest worker can depend on one day retiring to his mansion and the commies only come out at night. It’s a fantastic world, yes it is.

The right to air travel doesn’t even register on me. What citizens should have a right to is free health-fucking-care, Junior, and the right to work for a living wage. Get those cleared up, and we’ll start talking about your right to jet to Gramma’s house on All Saints’ Day.

Also, I hate to break it to you, pal, but you’re never going to be the rich man of your dreams. You’re going to die an industrious worker who yearns to be the rich man of his dreams.

Industry should be rewarded. Someone who works harder than some other one should have access to more things. If the opportunity to have more things wasn’t available, fewer people would be industrious. I know that. I’m not for total redistribution of wealth.

But redistribution of wealth, to some degree, is a necessity, and already happens. That’s what progressive taxation is all about. Progressive taxation is why there are not riots in the streets. Listen up, y’all!

The current American system is not set up to see to it that each citizen’s basic necessities are taken care of. It’s set up to insure that the degree of misery experienced by the weak never rises to the point that they openly revolt. Ostensibly, our system is set up to insure that we each have a clear run at life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It says so right there in the owner’s manual. But they didn’t really mean everybody, even from the start. Don’t kid yourself.

That’s our current system. When you’ve got some people buying yachts to store their caviar on, and you’ve got some other people dying of poverty and addiction because they don’t have food or can’t get treatment, you’ve got a system that hasn’t quite found the wealth redistribution sweet spot.

It’s remarkable. What a profound crock of shit. That shit crocks profoundly.

Neighbor, you’ll never be rich enough so that, in a just system, you’d lose more value than you’d get back. Ain’t gonna happen. You have a terrifically misplaced sense of your own destiny. I’m surprised I have to tell you this. Get your ass to thinking.

A just redistribution of wealth has been done, or nearly so. Look at Scandinavia. When my neighbor looks at Scandinavia, he thinks about the tax burden. He thinks about how much harder it is to become rich there. News flash, Neighbor: you’re never going to be rich here, either.

Take a dollar, buy a lottery ticket, clutch it in your trembling hand, and dream your dreamy dreams. The rich thank you for your support.

I’m 41, so I think it’s time I take vindictive pleasure in being here to see another year rung in despite all my enemies. HOO HA HA! Take that, forces of evil! I made it to another year, despite everything!

I have many enemies, all of which would have taken pleasure in seeing my obituary in the paper last year. Osama Bin Laden, for example, would have liked nothing better than to have thwarted my ability to write ‘2005’ on my checks. Take that, you scum! Also, the manager guy down at Choice Supermarket, who always gives me a stern evil-eye when I come in there to sniff through his beer selection, and two times out of three leave empty-handed because I find it wanting… I’m still alive, you bastard! I’ll be in there in January! Hoo Ha Ha!

Yes, I have a long list of enemies who would like nothing better than to see me reduced to ashes in an urn on somebody’s mantle. Many of my bitter enemies technically don’t even know I exist, but if they did know, they’d rather I didn’t. George Bush, my bitterest enemy, has no clue that I work tirelessly at despising him. I take umbrage at everything he does. Sometimes I go out of my way to seek out his image on the net, just to gaze at him, at his yam head, in revulsion, in order to take umbrage more fully. I do!

I’d like nothing better than to be alone in the same room with him, so I could slap the jesus out of that yammy head.

Also, the kid down the street who picked on my kid last year, who knows I exist, whose name is Caleb or Jebediah or Methuselah; I have a tall-boy of head-slapping jesus with his name on it. It’s next to the pony keg of head-slapping jesus I reserve for the night I’m alone with Rumsfeld.

I made it to 2005, you lousy bastards! I have thwarted you all! HOO HA HA! HOO HA HA!*

From here on out, my New Years’ resolutions will always be the same: to foil my enemies by living to see another year.

*the editors would like to thank Scott Adams for the exclamation “Hoo ha ha,” which connotes just the right mixture of power-drunkenness and diabolism appropriate to mean-spirited New Year’s resolutions. The editors flirted briefly with “Ah hah hah,” but found it lacked a sense of evil intention and depended too much on stark insanity. The simpler “Hah hah” was also considered and rejected.

So props to Mr Adams, even though he’s probably going to find himself in our “Big Book of Bitter Enemies” one of these days, because of his “charming” use of faux guilelessness when he says that he’s only in it for our money. He re-states that in every forward to every compendium he’s ever produced, “charmingly,” and the editors are getting tired of it.

To digest the fact that we had the largest voter turnout in 30 years and still lost the popular vote, we have to assume that the sixties are well and truly dead. Democrats can no longer wring their hands and say “If only we had gotten the silent majority to vote, we would have turned the rascals out.” Well, the silent majority finally did vote. Turns out they’re republicans.

Kerry did as well as he possibly could, given that he stuck to his idealistic guns.

A democratic win, the way the US is shaped now, can only be achieved by either a republican blunder on the order of Watergate, or by a nomination of a pragmatic democratic candidate. A successful candidate will have to be one who is ‘for’ conservative issues that are cost-free, eg: late-term abortion ban, same-sex marriage ban. The repubs get a lot of mileage by weighing in ‘for’ issues that don’t cost money. They attract a huge amount of votes by pressing these hot buttons. They get elected, then put these things aside and get down to their real business, which is to hand over the economy to the rich.

The next democratic nominee, to win, will have to be ‘for’ these cost-free issues, so he can get elected, put them aside, and get down to our real business, which is to keep the rich from getting richer at the expense of everyone else.

That’s pragmatism. That’s how Clinton won.

Democrats will have to decide between pragmatism and idealism to avoid being steam-rolled in 2008. If we stick to our idealistic guns, we will be permanently marginalized.

The fact is that the US is a conservative, ignorant, God-fearing nation of frightened sheep yearning for John Wayne to lead his platoon up that mountain and kill those japs that have been plaguing us through the first reel.

That’s a fact. The republicans understand that, and have used it to their advantage.

In this election, many Naderites opted for pragmatism by switching to Kerry. It would’ve worked in 2000, but yesterday it wasn’t enough; the fulcrum of pragmatism has shifted farther to the right since 9/11. If we, as liberals, want to participate in national politics in 2008, or at any time in the future, we will have to back a candidate who leans right on the moral—but cost-free—issues, in order to stop the hemorrhaging on all the other fronts that concern us, like the environment and the economy. I will not enjoy casting a vote for someone who pays lip service to the denial of rights to women and gays, but I will, hoping that that’s all it is—lip service.

With the huge turnout, and failing some stupendous administration blunder, pragmatism is the only bullet left in the barrel. We’ll probably find out whether that bullet’s a dud in 2008. If it is, the final option is either make the best of it, or leave.

I plan on being in a position to exercise that option.

The pic came from here, which may or may not be where it originated.

This morning I awake to find that a Bush/Cheney sign has sprouted in my neighbor’s lawn, like a mushroom. It’s a week before the election, and now our short cul-de-sac is no longer an all Kerry bastion. Before, courtesy of Carole and me, our little dead-end road was staunchly democrat, in that the only signs up were in our lawn. Now my world has darkened.

It’s funny; I didn’t realize my neighbor pulled in over 200 grand a year and feasted on the bodies of children. I could’ve sworn he was a navy petty officer working part-time as a policeman to make ends meet.

I know others who eat babies, of course. My brother; the guy I sit next to in Microbiology; my mother (my own mother!). The garbagemen who picked up everybody else’s garbage today, but left ours on the curb, they almost certainly enjoy a baby from time to time.

May God forgive the baby eaters.

I’ve spent the last three hours mesmerized by the free wireless connection that my laptop has tapped into. I was able to download many programs that I’ve come to depend on while using my regular ‘puter, but have been too lazy to transfer to the laptop via my linksys cables and paraphernalia.

And yet, 95% of these programs had to do with the web. Only one—winamp—had any use beyond it. So now that I’ve done all this, I’m left with a kind of embarrassing realization: this free connection doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to make me get rid of the dsl connection I’m paying for; it’s too haphazard for that (not to mention too fraught with concerns of morality, or at least courtesy). It does allow me to sit in a completely different room while I surf, true. Frankly, though, the comfiest comfy chair in the house is the one that I’m sitting in now, in front of my ‘mainframe.’

So what I’m left with is the sly joy of receiving something I already have for no more than I’m already paying.

I thought this was going to be more fun than that. One reads of actual people who drive around in their cars looking for unencrypted wireless connections, and I never had reason to question the sly motivation to do that before now.

I guess it’s because they’re up to no good.

Apparently my neighbor doesn’t have his computer turned on all the time, which is a travesty. I’ll have to talk up the benefits of continuous connections at the next block party, provided I can think of some, and provided we have a block party. Until then, the erratic nature of my freeloading connection will be cause for concern.

Today I fired up my laptop to make sure it still works. It does, but it also is doing a golden, golden, unlooked-for thing: it’s tapped into somebody’s nearby wireless connection. Some neighbor of mine has unknowingly picked up a freeloader.

How do I feel about this? I feel great. Great! My house is now a “wireless hotspot.” A very inexpensive wireless hotspot.

[cue diabolical laughter] Exxxcellent!