I have been making some rather incompetent attempts to get a Linksys WRT54G up and running so I can do some Consumerist blogging naked in bed or sitting on the toilet. These, as you may have guessed, have not met with much success, meaning I am currently writing this to you fully clothed and, as usual, full of shit.

Today, I finally almost got the thing working. All I needed to do was enter my DSL username and password. I entered these bits of information once, three years ago, and I’ve never had any reason to know them since then.

So I called Eircom DSL customer support. It was 5:00pm. The customer service office closes at 5:30, so I figured I had plenty of time to actually get my username and password even from a bunch of ex-monopolist bunglers like Eircom.

For the next thirty minutes, I sat on hold, listening to Vivaldi’s Le Quattro Stagioni as performed by a child’s jack-in-the-box. Finally, upon the point of plunging number two pencils eraser deep into my own ear canals, a suassive computer voice informed me: “Thank you for waiting! We are now connecting you to an Eircom technical support representative.”

I stifled my howl of frustration as the phone rang. I heard the clatter of plastic as the phone was picked up; the scrape of techie stubble made static on the line. I opened my mouth, ready to speak, idealistically dreaming of an evening spent blogging naked perched upon the ivory rim of my own namesake. But before I could…

“Sorry,” the voice on the other end said. “We’re now closed!” And then he unceremoniously hung up on me.

Eircom’s head-offices firebombed. Strange American found screaming outside, not blinking, staring directly into the sun. Next on RTE1.

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