if my ISP won't "let go" of the DNS for my IP then can I not put it in my DNS?

[pls at post.here.adam]

Hello,

Sorry if the title is too obfuscated. I have a DSL line connected to
my home network w/ firewall.  Surfing, etc is fine.  However we'd also
like to host a website (or sites via apache's virtual domains).  While
I could access our site using the IP #, some of the people sharing the
costs wouldn't want them or their friends to have to do that.  Like
everyone else, we want a name on 'da net.  

Unfortunately when I spoke to our ISP/DSL provider (PacBell) they said
that for single IP dsl customers such as ourselves we cannot register
a domain and use our IP because PacBell "doesn't release or let go of
their DNS record for that IP".

However, as far as I can figure, if I have mysite.com registered and I
maintain my own DNS or use someone like granitecanyon, then any user
in the world who queries mysite.com will be directed to the DNS server
authoritative for my domain name and that server will passre my IP to
the user and they come to our site.  Isn't this correct?

A problem that I might see is that I or granitecanyon would be
"claiming" to be authoritative for an IP that is not rightfully ours.
But since it *is* mine as long as I have DSL with them, is this
actually true?  Nothing in my pre-sales literature or final infopack
stated anything about not being able to use my own IP.

The other problem I can see is with reverse IP look ups since that, I
guess *has* to go back to PacBell - can someone tell me I'm wrong and
if so what I need to do?  I wonder how many things will break if my IP
doesn't resolve back to my registered domain name.  I can't think of
any server that would do that.  FTP sites that do a reverse DNS lookup
would still get a valid hostname, just PacBells...  Am I missing
anything here?

Things like MX should work since that info will come out of my own
DNS, right?

I also heard there were some "pseudo" DNS type services out there.
While that is the *last* resort - I really want to get real DNS
working as much for the experience as for keeping it simple - I would
still appreciate pointers to more info about this as I failed to track
down any such info.

For now its the raw IP road so I am hoping someone can help

thanks,

Adam

post here so everyone can benefit, but to write me:
a d a m - s a t p a c b e l l d o t n e t