You know you have a problem when your cable suddenly goes out and your house falls silent. Completely, utterly silent.

You know you have a severe problem when, twenty minutes later, service still hasn’t been restored and you’re beginning to feel like a crackhead going cold turkey (I’m only guessing, of course).

I’m all twitchy, jittery, restless, tapping my foot. I’ve checked a few things and nothing indicates it’s my problem. I’ve turned the TV on and off a few times and I’m still seeing nothing but

That’s Comcast-ese for “Gotcha, sucka!”

I can call them, of course, but all they’ll do is offer to book an appointment for a serviceman to come out a couple of days from now. By then everything will have already come back on, or I will have slit my wrists.

I could call my son and ask if his cable is still on. He lives a mile and a half away. Of course his will still be on; it’s always on. And if it’s not, he’s got satellite, too. All I can accomplish by calling him is distracting myself for a few minutes while I interrupt his coding, a task particularly bad to interrupt if he’s “in the zone.”

I could go back into the other room and disconnect and reconnect all my cable connections, reset the router, etc. Kind of like jiggling the plug when a light won’t come on. There’s really no reason it should work, and if it does, I won’t really know why. If it doesn’t, I’ll just be that much more frustrated. But what if I sit here thinking about it but not doing it, when doing it is all that needs to be done?

This probably wouldn’t have seemed so bad if I hadn’t been happily multi-tasking — watching a new TV show (not a rerun!) and at the same time, on the computer, playing Warhammer, participating in a warband assault on a Destro-held keep in Etaine. Dammit. We were rolling, too.

One hour later: Did all the plug-jiggling. Nothing. Called Comcast and after the usual For-English-press-one-para-Espaniol-dos -If-you’re-calling-about-phone-service-press-one-If-you’re-calling-about-high-speed-Internet-service-press-two-To-ensure-the-best-customer-service-this-call-may-be-recorded voicemail runaround, I actually got a recording saying they were having a problem in this area. (They probably set that up so live people wouldn’t have to listen to any more screaming customers.)

Sigh. So, what’ll it be? Minesweeper? Solitaire? Bejeweled?

Book, anyone?