Mom: Your sister says that you and your brother want surf and turf for Easter dinner.

of note: it is said that "atheists" will attempt to blaspheme any holy dinner with crustaceans and sarcasm. In lieu of crustaceans, mollusks may be used with a heavy dose of self defacing wit.

Me: She asked us what we wanted to eat, and I mentioned lobster, and then Matt got excited about the idea of surf and turf.

Mom: Well, it kind of makes sense, as Jesus turned a fish into loaves of bread.

Me: Fish into bread?

Mom: Well, something like that...

also of note: My mother went to Catholic school and was raised by her very strict, very Polish, very Catholic grandmother.

Me: Amen.

of interest: I was raised by a pack of secular wolves.

Matthew. 14:13-21b

And they say unto him, We have here but one white fish, and no bread. He said, Bring it hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and he took the whitefish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and the fish becamith bread and cheddar goldfish, and he gave the fishbread and goldfish to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full of fishy bread and goldfish. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children and a couple of dogs and one very small goat and those who could not partake of the fishy bread for they hast wheat allergies.

I went to to my Mom's today and helped her hook up her new fangled high speed cable internet access. She has been using a cheapo dialup serviced provided by non other than Walmart. They have a $10.00 a month dialup plan that she has been using forever.

I've mentioned a few times that she might want to try broadband internet access, but she has just retired, and was unwilling to pay the extra cost.

She moved into a new Apartment a few months ago, and since then her dialup access has been spotty at best. Her phone lines at the new apartment are noisy as hell, and she would get dropped off of the internet fairly often. I wanted to help my her upgrade to a better internet connection, but the question was how.

Rewind maybe a year ago or more to my boss Nick trying to convince my to switch to Vonage, a Voice over IP phone service. Basically, Voice over IP is a phone service that works over your broadband internet connection instead of the normal copper lines that your local provider uses to give you phone service. Now this all sounded great, getting rid of our local service which stunk and was very expensive, but we had been using Vonage at the space where I worked and it just plain sucked. We'd try to have phone conferences over the Vonage line, but it would be filled with static and echo, and people would drop in and out, and the net connection for every one else would be dog ( tam says, "Dawgs aint slow" ) slow while we were on the phone. Mind you, we were on a very crappy Verizon DSL connection that was spotty at best even when we weren't on the phone.

Fast forward a year to my friend Brian trying to convince me to try Vonage. I complained how it sucked at work, but he had been using it at home over his cable broadband connection, and he had no complaints. I decided to give it a try. I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised. The Vonage line is much cheaper then our old Verizon phone service, almost two thirds in fact, and we get unlimited long distance and local calls, as well as access to our voice messaging via the web. And we have had none of the problems we had where I worked. It has been great.

So how does this relate to my mother's crappy dialup issues you may wonder? Well, its basically a question of broadband cost vs. Voice Over IP savings. My mom's local phone provider was charging her about $40.00 a month with at least a $10.00 month long distance bill, and I imagine for some months it could be upwards of $20.00 for long distance. Her dial up was costing her about $10.00 a month for a grand total of $60.00 a month cost for phone and internet.

• Local phone: $40.00
• Long Distance: $10.00 (on a good month)
• Dial up service: $10.00
• total: $60.00

I did a little research and found that her local cable broadband provider was offering a special rate of $29.95 a month for the first year of service if you singed up before October 1st. An unlimited long distance and local calling plan from Vonage is $24.95 a month, totaling at $54.90.

• Optima Online year special rate: $29.95
• Vonage unlimited continental and Canada calling plan: $24.95
• total: $54.90

Mind you, this does not include tax and such, so throw in an extra 5-10 dollars for both totals.

In the end, my mom could save about $5.00 a month and get broadband to boot, a win/win if you ask me. So I helped her order the cable and Vonage, and today I went out to her new apartment and got her all set up. I threw in a wireless router and network card as a present from her favorite son, and she is now surfing the net like a pro while simultaneously talking to her loving son on her new voice over IP phone service.

So I say to all you dialup users out there who despise the local phone provider, The future is now. Throw off the shackles of local phone service and awash yourself in the freedom of high speed internet, where the porn flows like cheap wine, and pirated movies and mp3s fall like rain from the heavens.

Last weekend at about 4:00 AM I was awoken by a extremely loud explosion and crunching sound. In my half sleep I assumed it was car accident somewhere in the vicinity, and I went back to sleep.

My mother was spending the night on our couch, and would be taking the morning train back to Long Island. I was stirred from a half sleep again a few minutes later. My mother was calling my name. I got up, put on some pants and headed downstairs to find all the lights in the house blinking on and off like strobes, the battery backup for my computer beeping incessantly, and the filter from the fish tank spurting air and water in a spastic fit of stops and starts like a turrets patient on speed. Lights from fire trucks on the street were streaming in through the front shutters and my mother sat nervously on the couch.

I stood at the top of the stairs in a daze. I had surmised in a half sleep that I was either in a lucid dream, or some of the mescaline I had taken back in high school was finally taking its tole. I walked downstairs to peak out the blinds to see half of my neighborhood on the street, and at least a dozen fireman and policemen mulling about. I proceeded to turn off the battery backups and fishtank filters to stop the incessant noise, and attempted to calm my mother. She asked me to venture out to the street to query the firemen about the nature of the situation. She was concerned for our welfare, and rightly so, but I mentioned that I assumed if we were in any imminent danger the fireman would come to rescue us from our home, and that the last thing they needed was another gawker on the street asking questions. She did not appear pleased with this reply, and continued to ask me to venture outside for the next few minutes. I assured her we were safe.

Moments later a fireman rang our doorbell. It seems there had been an underground fire, and the heat and smoke had built up pressure and blew a manhole cover off and into the underside of a car on the street. The car had been destroyed, and smoke from the fire was seeping into people's basements. The fireman wanted to be sure that we were in no danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. My mother shot me a look. Three firemen streamed down our narrow hallway bumping their axes and oxygen tanks against each wall trying to navigate their way to our basement.

I went upstairs to apprise Tamara and Julie of the situation only to find them sound asleep. I knocked on Julie's door, and her response was to shush the dog from barking, "Julie?", I questioned through the door, "Are you awake, did you hear the explosion?" Her room is in the front of the house, and I could hear the fireman and neighbors just outside her windows. The fire truck lights flashed bright red and white beams on the ceiling of her room, but she remained in deep sleep. "Julie, there was an underground fire, and the firemen are here to check for carbon monoxide." "Wah? ok, I'm up." she replied. She appeared downstairs a few minutes later, not so much shaken, but with a quizzical look on her face, and sleep still in her eyes. Tamara soon followed with much the same look.

The firemen returned from the basement, It seemed there was some carbon monoxide, and they would come back in a few minutes to check again. They were concerned about the reading they had gotten from our basement. My mother shot me another look. The living room started to smell of smoke. Tamara and Julie quickly identified the cutest of the firemen, and headed outside to get a closer look.

A few minutes later the firemen returned. They wanted us to open the basement doors to let the smoke air out. The doors to our basement are basically flat metal hatches that give , if but cumbersome, access to the basement. There metal doors are padlocked, and only our landlord has the keys. We informed the firemen of this, and they asked us if they could cut the locks. It seems that fireman are rarely hindered from gaining access to places, and in about ten seconds they had lifted the front basement doors frame and all from the cement encasement. Why cut a lock when you can remove the door in its entirety. The brawny firemen flexed their muscles and threw the door encasement aside as Tam and Julie watched swooning. I must admit I was a bit overcome by their masculinity at this point as well.

The lights stopped flickering, and the fish talk filters stopped spitting and sputtering. The basement began to air out, and after a short while the firemen took their leave. They left the metal basement door off, but it's a minor price to pay for our lives, and I soon realized that this seemingly heavy door only weighed fifty pounds or so. It was easily placed back into its normal position. Somehow, my replacing the metal door encasement had little of the sexy bravado of the fireman's, and it only seemed to cheapen the experience for everyone involved.

Days later, I was in the basement darkroom loading some film into a developing tank. The spool I was using turned out to have a chip in the middle, and was proving difficult. After a minute or so wrestling with the film, I got it loaded. I looked to the left, and to my surprise I saw rays of light streaming into the basement. I didn't notice the light at first because my eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness. I set the tank on the table, raised my fists into the air and let out a slow howl, "Noooooo!" The fireman may just have saved my life, but by yanking the basement door from its cement encasement they let streams of penetrating, film destroying light into my darkroom. Damn sexy firemen.