Is there a dishwalla in the house?

One day while going thru the mail, right between a Limited Too catalog and a letter from the Scooter Store, I found an advertisement for a satellite television service. Basically, they offered twice as many channels for the same price I was paying for cable. It all seemed simple enough.

I was tired of being bamboozled by the cable company and watching my favorite channels--SoapNet, Game Show Network, etc.--slowly be taken away one by one. So I called. An appointment was made for someone to come out Friday morning between 8 AM and 12 Noon.

Ah yes, the four hour window. That always slightly irks me. How did we get to this point in society where we place the satellite, and cable guy on such a pedestal that we'll wait hours for them? Even a doctor can usually get you in within two hours of your appointment. But because these people hold the keys to Stephen Colbert, Dancing With The Stars, and Steve Wilkos, we'll wait all day.

Anyway, the lady at the satellite place said I would need a letter from my landlord giving them permission to install a dish. Well, that didn't sound like such a big deal, until I got the letter. Among other things, it stated that the dish couldn't be mounted on the building or the fence. But... that's all there is.

I actually considered mounting it to my car. I thought, if I just park in the exact same spot every day... I mean, I was gonna put tape down where my tires were supposed to go.

The letter went on to state that the dish must be mounted either on a tripod or on a pole in a five gallon bucket. Uh, does that seem odd to anyone but me?

However, after doing a bit of online research, I found other people had actually done these pole-and-bucket installations. Well, giddy up then! Welcome to Redneck Satellite Installation 101. I was fairly certain there was going to be some duct tape involved in this at some point.

So off to Lowe's I went. Allow me to say here that I love going to Lowe's. There's something about walking thru aisles of laminate flooring, two-by-tens, and high performance toilets. It's akin to opening the hood of a car. I feel like I'm really accomplishing something, even when I have no clue what I'm doing.

I procured a couple of bags of Quikrete and a six foot iron pole and was on my way. The pole was a joy to fit into my mid-sized American sedan. I'm sure some of you are wondering, what about the bucket Bone? Nice to see you're paying attention. Actually, I found someone who said they would give me a bucket. When you start asking people if they have a five gallon bucket, you might be surprised at how many actually do.

I poured the concrete and put up the pole on Thanksgiving. I'm sure the neighbors probably thought it was just another one of my strange holiday observances, as they already know I celebrate Festivus. Then I took the day off work Friday, woke up at 7:45 AM, and waited. And waited. And... waited.

That's right, the four hour window wasn't quite enough for Satellite Joe. He finally came rolling in around 1:45 PM. Nice. I handed him the letter. After looking it over for between sixty and ninety seconds, he said, and I quote, "We can't do this."

Apparently, the company is not allowed to mount a dish to a pole in a bucket. Have you ever heard such nonsense! So basically, my landlord has placed so many restrictions on how and where a dish can be installed that it's next to impossible to do within the rules. It's kinda like giving a kid a car and saying you can't use keys to start it, you can't put gas in it, and the tires can't touch the ground.

After a few minutes of discussing and explaining, Satellite Joe departed, despite my protests of "I saw them do it on the internet!" Now I have a bucket and a pole on my patio for no apparent reason. And no way to watch the Dallas/Green Bay game Thursday night.

So if anyone out there has NFL Network, I'm not above inviting myself over. I'll be there between 2 PM and 6 PM.

"He's got thirteen channels of wrestling comin' in strong from a satellite send. A two hundred function remote control. Big screen TV with stereo..."