I discovered a bit from Clay Shirky, talking about how television was the way post-griminess industrial society chose to cope with free time. Included was the bit that enough time is wasted watching television to produce all of Wikipedia 2000 times over.
Thank you to the Sci-Fi Channel (and/or whoever ends up owning them) for getting it and letting me download BSG off your website in a flash thing.
Also, Scott Ian is the motherfuckin’ man, though I think Baltar is very clearly supposed to be a Factured Fairlytales version of Jesus (the beard was the givaway, I thought). 
Update: Turns out Sci-Fi is owned by NBC Universal, who in turn is owned by GE (80%) and Vivendi (20%).
A friend of mine IM’d me an article ostensibly about how Russia is tragically under the (now-former) KGB’s thumb again. Yes, yes, we all know Putin is a dirty bastard who should never be in charge of anything more involved than [insert menial civil-service gig here]. And the more media-savvy (ahem) will figure out that the BBC is making a big deal about this because Putin is holding up some deal a British bigwig cares about. This works because the bigwig in question (or one of his minions) will drop tidbits of information about Putin and Russia to reporters at cocktail parties, reporters fill in a few blanks in the mad-lib stories, and wham! Propaganda in action, baby!
But that’s all old-hat, really. What I want to concentrate on is the fact that the “new Russian military intelligence HQ” has a giant oldskool Batman logo on it’s floor:
Now that’s just awesome.
It’s actually pretty amazing how crazy TV has gotten since I stopped watching it. Obviously, I can’t know for certain how crazy it is, since I don’t own one, but I read bloggers talk about ABC putting on shows about “how soon is the apocalypse,” and supposedly some CNN anchor was recycling bullshit from WorldNetDaily (the same folks who brought you the “American Hiroshima” amusement park ride last year) about an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. And when that didn’t happen there was supposed to be a nuclear attack on the U.S. in 2006-09-12, and then again in late September — or, for those reading this in the archives, a month and a few weeks before I wrote this, respectively. I could knock on wood, but I won’t: Fate can kiss my ass.
Politically, I think the U.S. wants to attack Iran shortly after the mid-term election, but I have an itching suspicion the military won’t be ready in time. In which case a Democratic victory may provide some friction — though not enough to stop another war.
And, for the record, America is in such a state culturally that Mutual Assured Destruction is presently considered the measured response among the political class — thanks for voting with your fetuses, freaks.
Meanwhile, another 10 million people slid into poverty this year. Those already in poverty were (unsurprisingly) pushed even lower down. The wealthy are throwing the middle class off the ladder by the hundreds of thousands, and they knock others off in a mad scramble not to hit bottom, who in turn knock those below them off the ladder, and on down the line until the number of families living in their car swells some more. A few souls from the middle classes don’t even bother to scramble and choose to swan-dive instead — much respect, thump thump.
Comment on this...