The Epic Battle of the Band[width]

It's eventide again and a blissful silence has settled upon the House of Derp. The young Derps are peacefully entering Dreamland and the local airbase has mercifully grounded the F-16s until dawn. All is right with the world.

OR IS IT?! (Cue suspenseful background music)

The silence is pierced by angry murmurs from the master bedroom:

"It's MY turn!"

"Relax! There's only 20 minutes left!"

"Argh! I don't WANT to wait. It's my TURN!"

"I SAID, you can have it in 20!"

"Ugh! You're such a jerk, Derpus!"

What, you ask, has brought such ugly contention to the Kingdom of Derp? Alas. It began several months ago when, out of necessity, the Derps were forced to cancel our satellite service. I won't deny that I felt a strong pang of regret when I watched Derpus hand the box containing the glorious DVR over to the UPS man. Then, it was gone. HGTV, gone. TLC, gone. The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, NATGEO, ABC Family, gone, gone, gone. Gone were my beloved documentaries and home improvement shows. Gone were my redic "reality" shows and lurid teen soaps. All the wonderfully useless programming that filled those kid-free hours between 8 and 11.

Now, I know for some, this might have been a wonderful opportunity to reevaluate priorities and set life-changing goals. These hours would be much better spent on things like reading, exercise, etc. It could have opened up a whole new avenue of self discovery that led to enlightenment.

Did we do that? Of course not! We're Derps! Instead, we began a nightly ritual of squabbling over whose turn it is to use what little bandwidth is available for video streaming via our cheap-ass Internet service. (FYI-Clear Wireless sucks monkey balls!) Watching something together is simply out of the question. I loathe the endless crime dramas favored by Derpus, and he'd spend the evening poking needles into his eyeballs before he'd watch 'Downton Abbey' or 'Firefly'. I'm afraid we've reached an impasse. I suppose we could get a faster service, but that would require an extra $20 a month and I'm pretty sure Derpus would sooner get a divorce than come up off the cash, so for now, at approximately 8pm, the cycle repeats:

"Do you have to watch 'Pretty Little Liars'? This show is for 13 year olds."

"Do you really wanna go there? You know you'd watch if it were called 'Pretty Little Liars of the NYPD'."

"Yeah, probably."

Sigh.