about a year ago me and Dan discovered HBO's Deadwood and it occurred to me that good TV actually exists and that you just have to pay for it. Luckily Kevin owned 2 seasons on dvd and we just borrowed them for an extended period of time. We even got hammered on whiskey while watching episodes in order to make it authentic. Deadwood is/was so awesome i actually use italics to type it. Deadwood. I'm not a historian but it felt really immersive and realistic, the kind of western i really dig, and all the more compelling because the characters were so well-rendered to the last. Also, Calamity Jane drank so much i felt like a poser holding my pathetic whiskey and coke.

And Al...good old Al...

anyway, it follows that Dan and I discovered Rome (which you will note i ALSO properly italicized) and pretty much fell back into the fanboy pit after nearly a year of NOT parking our asses in front of the TV for hours and hours at a time. If Deadwood was about drinkin, whorin', and makin' people die, then Rome simply shucked off the old west gear, cranked the dial back a few thousand years, and did it all over again with more incest and sacrificial blood smeared all over everything. The opening credits, like Deadwood, are basically *WIN* and gee golly HBO has some good people workin' for them.

So having seen some damn great TV (well, technically it's not TV, but HBO, they tell me) may i humbly suggest that the next time you tune in to America's Next Top Fattest Talent Survival of the Dancing Network Celebrity you take the sharpest object you can find and just start puncturing yourself until something life-giving seeps out uncontrollably, because you're a moron. No, seriously. There are millions of you out there eating that crap up, is why they keep pushing it out. Alarum bells are ringing. There is filet mignon out there after all and you keep eating the damn hot dogs.

Speaking of crap TV that isn't some variation on watching Danny Bonaduce defile his own corpse, I noticed something really strange on the CW18 rerun-o-rama tonight. "Everybody Loves Raymond", "King of Queens", and "According to Jim" were essentially the same show. I don't mean plot, because i haven't actually watched that many episodes, but i mean, from a character standpoint, it seems like you have 4 archetypes from which there appears to be a hysterical and irrational fear of deviating from:

The blundering, headstrong, emotionally stunted "Dad" character (usually likes sports, pulls a shortsighted, deceptive plot-advancing shtick and ends the show with a sheepishly-revealing emotional denouement)

The slender, attractive, controlling wife whose wit, intellect, and general capacity for extreme competence utterly defeats any semblance of marital balance.

Quirky comic-relief male friend of "Dad" character whose own stunted level of maturity is apparently meant to bolster the "Dad" character's thin aura of dignity.

Some goofy family member who primarily delivers well-timed zingers so the audience doesn't go more than 15 seconds without a joke.

i think i nailed them. I guess when you look at "family" sitcoms by those lights reality TV actually seems pioneering and dynamic.

I can't talk about TV shows anymore right now because it's hard to type with my hands involuntarily balling into fists.

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Oh yeah. There's been a lot of flooding in the republic lately, with all kinds of places being declared Federal Disaster areas, which inevitably brings about a ritual that would make me chuckle except for the fact that, you know, people are suffering and stuff? Sooner or later, a governor or the president of the Yoo-nited States is somehow required to show up and go, "Yessir, that's some mighty damaged shit. It's good to know our hardworking men and women are working around the clock to set things right and un-submerge people's houses or build new ones or whatever it is you fine folks are doing to advance the cause of FREEDOM in this great country." (Actually i don't know exactly what they say because quoting politicians is like quoting a story you wrote in your head, i just know that "FREEDOM" is an awesome word because it means everything and nothing at once and it fits in anywhere)

Thing is, when a person of supposed importance with secret service protection shows up somewhere, you pretty much have to stop everything you're doing, have them sweep the place to, i dunno, ferret out assassins or potentially embarrassing confrontations with pissed-off taxpayers, and just generally let things grind to a halt while they do their "I'm just a regular person sympathizing with this situation and i'm not so high-and-mighty-as-all-that because-i'm-here-in-the-trenches-with-you" thing.

I'm just an average monkey with a crappy apartment and internet access, with no teams of data-miners or information-gatherers at my command, and i could still come up with some pretty good figures on what's going on on the other side of the world from the comfort of my sittin-chair, so i'm kind of foggy on why P.R. is so necessary that you need to gum up the workings of relief efforts in order to be seen there.

But i know what the problem is. Gay marriage. It is WRONG and the COUNTRY IS FALLING APART BECAUSE OF IT! We must stop everything until that is settled. The sacred institution of marriage is the bedrock upon which all things move and operate and the minute we start entertaining the notion that same-sex relationships are at all valid the WHOLE SHOOTIN' MATCH is in the fire. Oh, you'll probably blame gas prices and other economic woes and the general decay of culture as a whole as the catalyst for why this great country is coming apart at the seams, but i'm gonna write my congressmen letters admonishing them to hold the line against the real enemy...people who be different!

Ahh, bitterness. sorry, i just been kinda busy lately and it's maybe getting to me.

NURSE!