PMSimon.com

I wrote a whole piece on the Mary Mapes Vanity Fair excerpt. I finished it- tons of quotes, lots of opinion- and then I read it and I realized that I don't care.

I don't care. There, I said it.

I don't care because I spent an entire day dealing with technical difficulties that knocked All Access out for a while, spent hours catching up, spent a lot of energy on all of this and I'm tired, so tired, and when I saw the Mapes piece I'd written late last night I thought, well, this is all pretty good but it doesn't reflect anything in which I'm interested.

That's something that talk radio has to deal with, too. The core listeners- the "P1s," in the parlance of the industry- want to hear every twist and turn of the Plame/Wilson/Libby thing. Most other people have other things about which to worry. Me, too. I have my opinions, but I'd be lying if I tried to pass them off as the stuff I'm into at the moment. I'm not into it. I'm into getting through the workday. I'm into the new basketball season, into HDTV, into lots of things but not politics at the moment. The bite-sized items at All Access are about as much as I can muster at the moment.

THis can al change tomorrow. Probably will. But I just deleted an entire column, flushed it down the digital drain, and I'm feeling pretty good about that.

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Late night of work tonight. More tomorrow- in the meantime, got to say hi to some friends last night, so go buy their book. Thanks.

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Not again. Not another late night and no time to write.

Yeah, again. And it was World Usability Day, too. Believe it or not, I have something to write about that. It'll have to wait until tomorrow. And because we're expecting a repairman here to deal with that usability issue, that's fitting.

See, there's always a silver lining...

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Yesterday was, as I noted, World Usability Day, dedicated to scolding those nasty manufacturers and software programmers and engineers for making things so complicated. And the truth is that most things generally aren't all that complicated.

Except for TV. Shouldn't be, but is.

We've been through this before.

1970: Buy set, pull out antenna, plug in, turn channel.

1980: Buy set, attach cable to box, attach box to set, plug in, turn channel.

1990: Buy set, attach cable to set, plug in, hit channel-up or channel-down on remote.

2005: Go to store. Decide among CRT, LCD, plasma, LCD projection, DLP projection. Decide among 1080i, 720p, 480i native resolution. Haul set home. Attach cable. Wince, because you're not getting HDTV- you're watching stretched standard-def TV. Go get cable box from cable company, plug it in, attach. Try to set TV and cable to proper resolution. Try to figure out where all the buttons are on the remote, which has several for features you don't get. Find guide button, find program, select, read message on screen insisting you aren't subscribed to the channel, call cable company, curse.

At this very moment, I'm waiting for a Cox Cable guy to come see why our state-of-the-art Motorola HD DVR is screwing up. If you turn it off, it unilaterally decides you aren't subscribed to any digital channels and therefore won't record any shows you've selected. And when you turn it on and note that your shows didn't record, you change the channel and it asks you to call to subscribe, then, seconds later, thinks "oh, he IS subscribed" and turns on the channel. But you lose the ability to record shows by scheduling them in advance, which is what I pay six bucks to do.

And then there's the stutter. Randomly, the video will drop frames, meaning that when there's any motion, the picture has a slight, barely noticeable but definitely annoying hesitation, the picture losing and then sharpening definition every two or three seconds.

But that's not a usability problem. The scheduling thing is. So is the Mystery Message. A red light keeps flashing, warning us that we have a message to read. But there's nothing in the menus about messages. You hit the Menu button, a menu for the Pioneer Passport Echo DVR software pops up. Messages? Nothing. So you hit the button for "more options" and get the Motorola box menu. Messages? Nope. Somewhere, urgent messages are trying vainly to reach us. Someday, they'll break through whatever time-space wall is blocking them and burst into this dimension, advising me that I can buy "Jerry Springer's Greatest Transsexual Fights" or "WWE Extremely Raw With Bacteria Crawling All Over It XVIII" on pay-per-view.

Hey, the cable guy's here. Let's see what he says...

...Okay, I'm back. He has no idea why there's a problem. If refreshing the box tonight doesn't work, we'll have to swap the box out. I STILL don't know why it's not working, and I bet the replacement does the same thing. We'll see, but the most telling thing about the usability, or lack thereof, of this box is that I've read the manual backwards and forwards and STILL don't know how to get it to do certain things. And the TV's the same- the manual's no help.

I'll admit, the HD picture IS astounding. When it works.

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Today's mystery:

Here's a typical construction warning sign posted on Palos Verdes Drive West, just south of the PVE/RPV border. It's been there for a few weeks:

Let's take a closer look. Scrawled over the tape is this:

And at the bottom is this:

"Rod Steiger, Construction Ahead Director"?

Baffling.

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Cable guy never called back. Un-subscription problem still there. Stuttering worse- InHD 1 and 2 nearly unwatchable, college football on InHD 1 was herky-jerky and weird, like a bad video game, TNT, Discovery, and KCET bad, too (KCET showed "A Prairie Home Companion" in HD today, and between the weird frame-dropping and the artifacts and the disturbing Garrison Keillor croaking along with horrible bluegrass/folk ditties, I can't imagine anyone sitting through it. Why the hell LIKES that stuff?)

Called Cox Cable. Very nice and apologetic CSR is sending another tech tomorrow to swap the box. It had better work this time.

Oh, and I was told the answer to Friday's mystery: the messages that set off the red light flashing on the cable box aren't for me. Yes, the light says "Message" and it's flashing, but it doesn't mean anything.

Ah. I see. So, if the light is signaling something like a lost signal and it's not for me, who is it for? Someone who can't see it?

Am I the last sane person left in the world?

Don't answer that, please.

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Box swapped out, line from pole replaced, connections at splitters redone. Stuttering seems gone, unsubscribe bug intermittent. Maybe it'll work.

And seconds ago, I discovered that it doesn't work. The set was on when the box was supposed to record both "Desperate Housewives" and "Family Guy." The latter is recording; the former froze on a screen indicating that we hadn't subscribed to the channel. I was there to manually get the recording going, but if I'm going to pay about six bucks a month for DVR service, shouldn't it record channels for which I've paid?

Oh, Cox Cable is going to hear about this.

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Another mystery sign along PV Drive West:

Should I be worried here? Do the authorities know about this?

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This was in the coupon insert in the Sunday papers this week:

Let's get a few things clear right off the bat:

1. I am not in favor of censorship, period.

2. I know that, as the children's book and Stewie Griffin say, everybody poops.

3. I understand that this is an ad for Kandoo, which I know is a flushable butt wipe for kids.

Nevertheless, I do not want to see a frog wiping his ass. Not even a cartoon frog.

(By the way, this HAS to be a male frog. Female frogs do not find bathroom humor funny. Just off camera, this frog's girlfriend is standing there shaking her head while a bunch of drunk frog guys is laughing and saying "hey, look, Ted took a dump in public! He's a riot!")

There's been a trend towards allowing bodily functions in public. First, those bears using a particular brand of toilet paper in the woods, and now this. Maybe, and I don't want to get all L. Brent Bozell on you, maybe we're sliding down that slippery slope to the point where someone hires Paris Hilton to use Cottonelle on camera in a commercial. You don't want to see that, do you? (Say no, please)

Or perhaps you do. And maybe there's absolutely nothing wrong with being frank about bodily functions. OK, then, I suppose you leave the door open when you go to the bathroom. Stall door- open. Let everyone see everything. Do you want THAT?

We have to stop this frog.

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Yeah, well, whoopee.

Busy day today, highlighted by finding out someone had "borrowed" my bank account to pass forged checks. I wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone I like. The week is not turning out all that great, but I have hopes for improvement.

And then I hope for a long, restful vacation. See where that'll get me.

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Today's a day off, because I have to deal with some issues. You'd probably do the same thing under the circumstances, and I'm afraid I won't be all that entertaining anyway given the situation. Sorry to be so cryptic, but that's all I can say for now.

This has not been a good week.

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One of the hardest things to do is to be professionally funny while things in your real life are very serious.

That's been my problem this week. It's nearly impossible to be cheery and of good humor when you've spent any time at all in a medical complex. There's a rule, I believe, for medical offices: muted lighting that aims for "tasteful" but only reaches "depressing," muzak that aims for "soothing" but only reaches "depressing"... that, plus the staff whose grins aim for "reassuring" but whose news falls way short of that, and you get out of there and get back to work and the material just, er, trickles out. I spent all afternoon staring at a bunch of stories I needed to write for All Access and I just... didn't... have it. As someone that I used to work for at an ill-fated radio network would have put it, I didn't have "the funny."

But "the funny" is what they pay me for, and so I wrote stuff. I just posted it. I have no idea whether it's funny or witty or useful, but it's the best I could do today. I fear that this is going to be the way it is for a while, although I know I'll get it together, as I think I did during other rough times. Right now, I just want to crawl into bed and hope for the Bobby Ewing treatment. I hope my readers will understand.

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When you've got the blues like I do, there's a surefire cure:

Well, OK, it's not a cure. But it's a palliative, and when I was sitting here at the desk reeling from the week gone by, I decided to throw in the ol' Looney Tunes again. And this time, I watched one of the Warner Bros. studio's lesser show biz parodies, from 1956:

"Wideo Wabbit" is a terrible cartoon, actually- they took a second crack at the idea with better results three years later with "People Are Bunny," featuring a parody of Art Linkletter and some of the same gags as this one. But here's the setup, the classified ad that gets Bugs to the studio and sets the plot, such as it is, in motion:

QTTV at 1351 N. Van Ness might resemble KTTV at the corner of Sunset and Van Ness in Hollywood, which sat there for decades until Fox moved Channel 11 across town. In later years, it was Metromedia Square and sported a bizarre sideways-lightning-bolt-like scuplture on top; in the cartoon, it looked like this:

The plot, as I said, ain't much: Bugs is lured to the station to be the victim on Elmer Fudd's "Sportsman's Hour," a hunting show that inexplicably takes place on stage with a studio audience:

The usual chase ensues, with a character voiced by Frank Nelson doing a muted version of his typical Frank Nelson unctious "yeeeee-essss" voice holding down the fort...

...while Bugs and Elmer do the requisite dashing-into-studios schtick, complete with a visit to the "Liverace" studio. It's all standard fare and not terribly funny, except for this part, which isn't funny but is absolutely cringeworthy by 21st century standards:

And Bugs-as-Groucho- more precisely, Bugs doing an epically horrible Groucho impression- actually asks the $50. question "have you stopped beating your wife?" Hey, kids, it's comedy!

(The Groucho glasses and cigar come back at the iris-out, just so Bugs, having dressed Elmer in a pink bunny suit and blown him to smithereens, can come in, plunk the guise on the Fudd face, and, in Ed Norton garb, say "sheesh! What a grouch-o!"

That's all, folks.

The cartoon, on the whole, is a pretty fascinating look at the way Americans saw TV in 1956- all still shiny and new and modern, but also old-timey and vaudevillian. I do wish it had been funny.

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Here's an idea: while shopping at your local discount store, why not just stop for a few minutes and have a medical procedure performed on you? It's cheap, easy, and fun!

Well, not fun, exactly. But $24. is cheap, I guess, and it was easy, because there was no line and the "medical procedure" was this year's flu shot. Two years ago, I got a shot and caught no flu; last year, I went through two flu bouts after the shortage meant I let the flu thing slide. We were in the Long Beach Wal-Mart with a cart full of floss and wrapping paper, they were doing the shots, so, what the hell, I thought, let's get this over with.

And the shot was incident-free, as far as I know. Look, it's a leap of faith to have someone you don't know shove a hypodermic needle in your arm. At least Rafael Palmeiro KNEW the guy who was shooting whatever he was caught with in his ass. (You could read that several ways; choose wisely) All I knew was that this card table was set up, they had shots, they had official-looking forms waiving any right you have to sue or something like that, and they were taking cash. Sounds good to me.

So far, so good- my arm hasn't fallen off. We'll see if I catch anything this winter. If I do, of course, the shot-givers will be long gone. Not that I could do anything about it, anyway; I think I signed away my right to, er, everything.

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Tech fetish weekend:

Finally saw the Video iPod at the Apple Store in Costa Mesa yesterday. I want one. I don't NEED it, but I want it. The picture's surprisingly sharp and totally watchable, and it's thinner and lighter than the 40GB iPod Photo I have. It doesn't do live TV, and it's still a pain to convert existing video to a compatible format, but I want it. Can't justify it, but I want it.

Another thing I wanted was a Slingbox. That's the thing that you hook a cable or satellite box into, and then connect it to the Net, allowing you to watch whatever's on the box anywhere in the world you have broadband, and anywhere on your hime network. I wanted it because I want to be able to watch the NBA League Pass games while I work; I don't have satellite in my home office. Slingbox seems at first to be the solution to a problem nobody knew they had, but for me it's perfect. So we went to buy a new vacuum at Best Buy, the sales manager saw me checking out the Slingbox, we chatted, he asked what he could do to get me to buy it, I told him he could give me a discount on the plug-in network extenders... and he did, so I bought it, along with the vacuum.

Verdict on the Slingbox: terrific. Installation was easy, just a matter of connecting the cords from the satellite box to the Slingbox and the Slingbox to the TV, plugging the Slingbox into the network extender, and running the software setup, a matter of maybe 15 minutes of work. I have the video in a window on my monitor desktop, and it's more than watchable. Streaming is smooth and clear, remote operation- channel changing, guide operation- is fine. And now I can watch those Sixers games that start at 4 pm Pacific time while I crank out the afternoon copy. If I'm gonna pay all that money to get all the NBA games, at least now I can actually watch them.

But I still want that iPod. And a 42 inch plasma HDTV. Donations accepted.

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Yesterday: washing dishes, Pyrex bowl slips out of my hands, shatters, gouges several deep cuts in my left hand and a couple of smaller ones in my right. We made it into the car before the gushing slowed to the point where we decided not to go to the emergency room. I had to prop my hand up all night to keep the clotting happening.

Today: Cutting a loaf of bread, knife slices through the bread and my left index finger. More blood, more bandages.

I'm distracted right now. I really need to be kept away from sharp objects. I need to be kept away from anything that could potentially become a sharp object.

I need to just do nothing for a while.

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Got no time tonight- spent way too long in waiting rooms today.

This came out today. Buy it:

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We passed a Metro bus tonight and noticed that they now have TV monitors on board. There appear to be two- we saw them glowing through the side windows as we passed, and they seem to have some sort of ADHD news product on them, with lots of scrolls and text boxes and stuff. We don't ride the bus, not because of the it's-for-the-poor-people attitude but because it just doesn't go anywhere we need to go, so we didn't know that the buses are now sort-of-TV-capable. JetBlue, it ain't, but at least there's something to look at besides the growing puddle beneath the bedraggled guy across the aisle.

Some supermarkets- not ours, but I've seen it elsewhere- have "Checkout Channel" video screens at the registers. A few airlines have satellite TV at every seat. There's TV everywhere you look.

And this is a good thing.

In fact, that's been bothering me this week- doctors' waiting rooms don't have TVs. You sit there in gloom, old magazines are the only distraction... what kind of atmosphere is that? Cheer us up. Show cartoons on plasma monitors. Show old "Three Stooges" shorts- "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!" I don't want to sit there on an uncomfortable chair with nothing but the January 2005 edition of Inland Empire magazine. I want to be distracted, amused, comforted. I want to let my mind wander. I want TV.

This should be mandatory. Call the FDA. Call the AMA. Make it happen.

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OK, so now there's Open Source Media, which is taking a bunch of big bloggers and consolidating them into a, well, kinda like a newspaper site, but more like an exclusive club to which you and I aren't invited, except to read the wisdom of the chosen and to occasionally be allowed to participate in the "carnivals" nobody will read. (Think of it as the Huffington Post without the inane postings of celebrities who have nothing to say) Granted, the blogs involved in OSM are many of the very best, but I thought blogging was supposed to be wide open and democratic (small "d") and without the artificial construct that the print media had- in the papers, you're nothing if you're not in the big dailies or major magazines, but on the web, everyone's equal. Turns out some are more equal than others, and some of the folks that embraced the non-elitist model really just yearned to be the elite, when it comes down to it. (Check out the pictures of the Huffington Post-Yahoo!-Gawker Media party to grasp how desperately the blogosphere wants to become the media elite they've been parodying- it's not unlike Howard Stern's co-opting by the Hollywood stars he used to lampoon after he made a movie and began taking dinner at Nobu with David Spade and Chris Rock)

Good for them. Hope it works. It's nice to have an alternative to the Times-Post-Tribune-Globe-Inquirer-Herald et al., no question. But I liked it better when these guys were creating something entirely new, something utterly unlike the mainstream media. Now, they're just trying to create their own mainstream, complete with gates and guards and editors and little letters-to-the-editor/carnival sections where the rabble can play. Guess I'll continue to float out here by myself- most of the time, independence is better.

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Yeah, it's stupid, and it's the kind of thing he did to other people 20 years ago, but wnen I saw this, I laughed.

December 16 should be interesting.

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What I did today:

Nothing.

Sweet.

(Thanks to Johnny Wendell at KTLK/Los Angeles for the on-air shout. And congrats to Larry Wachs on getting www.regularguys.com back in action)

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Don't have much today. Lots of work, no energy. The holiday's starting early in my mind, and not a moment too soon, actually.

Really, is any work going to get done this week? Is anybody's head into this? In three days, it's family, turkey, football, that string-bean-and-mushroom-soup-with-crunchy-onion-things casserole. Work? Don't care.

And it's no time for political rants or world affairs. It's time instead for the Traditional Holiday Stories:

In this one, the traditional turkey looks for help in hiding, and pleads with the traditional duck for said assistance.

After much violence involving stuffing the traditional turkey in unusual places, the traditional duck manages to fool the traditional hunting pig for a moment.

But the traditional hunting pig describes the traditional meal he'd planned, making the traditional duck a traditional devil.

Much traditional alleged hilarity ensues, culminating in the traditional turkey turning the tables and causing much bodily harm to the traditional duck. And everyone lived happily ever after. The end.

This story, of course, predated turducken.

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Last night, I really needed a laugh.

This made me laugh:

Sometimes, really stupid is exactly what you need.

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Are you the funniest person alive? Then we need you!

Just don't expect to be paid like the funniest person alive. It's radio.

[SYNDICATED SHOW NAME REDACTED] is searching for a Head Comedy Writer.

I can recall when people did radio shows without writers. (OK, they used prep sheets. I still shudder at the thought of jocks at one station where I worked perusing the Electric Weenie for jokes to use)

We don’t use any prep services - YOU will be our prep service.

You read the prep services and filter out the crap for us.

Must be able to think quickly and instantly make topics from politics to relationships laugh-out-loud FUNNY! This is an off-air position, with possible on-air expansion in the future for the right candidate.

Make us look good. Please. We'll hide you until you threaten to leave, then we'll put you on the air as a wacky stunt-boy and make sure you stay on that level forever.

Send package including 10 national news stories and original jokes pertaining to those stories

Tip: Just transcribe the stuff I write at All Access verbatim and pass it off as your own. Lots of people do that. Works for them.

Man, my attitude is getting really rank. This holiday can't come soon enough.

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It's the day before the holiday, and, of course, I am SO not motivated to do anything. I don't want to go shopping, I don't want to talk about medical stuff, I don't want to write or read or think. I've been writing and reading and thinking all day anyway, but I am ready to hang it up for the week.

But news on the personal front today got a little better. Very little, but it's at least moving in a better direction. No, not gonna say what, because, again, it's not my story to tell, but we'll take positive wherever we can get it. And with T.O. getting smoked in arbitration, with a long weekend and turkey and string bean casserole and football and basketball and sleeping later on the menu, I'm feeling a lot better at the moment. I'm not going to ruin the mood by hanging out in front of the computer.

Talk to you tomorrow.

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How was it?

Quite nice, actually. We were privileged to spend the day with great friends and great food. And we have a lot for which to be thankful, even as we enter another period of trial and uncertainty. And maybe that's why this is maybe my favorite holiday: it's a chance to recognize how lucky we are.

That, and the food. And that we're not the Detroit Lions.

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While everyone else was eating turkey and watching football and sitting in hopeless traffic on the 405, the Editorial Board, or some of it, of Open Source Media/Pajamas Media was doing a "blogjam" and trying to figure out what went wrong and what to do about it. Interesting to see some really sharp people floundering so miserably, and very interesting that they aren't really getting to the point of the matter, which is:

What the hell are you supposed to be?

The site as inaugurated is a sparse, incoherent blob. Is it a portal? Is it a news site? Is it a HuffPo-style group blog? WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE?

They don't seem to have an answer yet. That should have been determined before they launched, dontcha think?

Blogs by nature work best as the reflection of individuals and small groups of people (like Power Line). They don't NEED to be grouped together and fenced off from the hoi polloi. Want more opinions like the one you're reading? Try the links and blogrolls. Want a diversity of opinion? Go explore what's out there- Google is your friend, and you never know when you'll find something you really like. Pajamas Media is, by nature, restrictive- it's material from a privileged group of specially anointed blogs, as if the board wanted to create an exclusive club in which they were the only members. It's the He-Man Woman Haters Club for bloggers- a bunch of kids in a treehouse putting a sign up to keep the less prominent among them out.

Who needs THAT?

Nobody, which is why they're agonizing over what to do next. Here's my suggestion: dissolve. You can't launch a business without a coherent business plan, and I don't see a plan here. If they wanted to create an online news source based on their collective blogs, they needed to come up with something more akin to a real news site with actual bureaus and reporters, but that's not their forte- they're opinionistas- and they'll find out exactly what that costs to do soon enough. If they wanted a place to aggregate opinions, all they needed to do was set up links to their blogs or make it an RSS-feed-fest, but that's no business plan- it's unnecessary, and anyone can create that themselves- better- with a basic RSS reader. What they have is an unholy hybrid of news feed and opinion feed, wholly redundant with existing sources and even more unwieldy and pointless than the Huffington Mess. Unless there's a better idea- and judging by the "blogjam" entries, they're fishing now- cutting and running before this loses more money might be the best idea they can have.

If you're having meetings or "blogjams" to try and determine what you should be and what the vision is AFTER you've launched, you're toast. I'd like to see what this bunch can do, but for God's sake they ought to pull it off the web and sit down to craft a very specific plan with specific objectives before they put it back up.

But it's still astonishing that so many smart people signed up for something without a point or a plan. And when your fellow bloggers have already set up a death pool for your demise, it's only polite to oblige.

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"Walk the Line"- I keep thinking it's called "Ring of Fire"- is pretty good. It follows the Standard Biopic Instruction Book, which calls for:

a) Movie starts at important moment in subject's life.
b) Immediate flashback to youth, rapidly going to major trauma
c) Parental abuse of some sort is depicted
d) Narrative follows life back to important moment of part a), with small problems magnified to provide drama
e) Once script returns to point a), there's less than a half hour left, advancing the story a few years
f) The end.

And that's "Walk the Ring of Fire Line." It does this better- I think a lot better- than last year's "Ray," despite the facts that Ray Charles' life was more interesting than Johnny Cash's and, in this one, you never once buy Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. I mean, he dresses like Johnny Cash and holds his guitar way up like Johnny Cash but he doesn't sound or look like the man. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, sure. Robert Patrick- Agent Doggett!- and Shelby Lynne (!) as Johnny's parents are strong as well. The Phoenix boy- well, he IS a good actor, but you never buy him as the real thing, not like Jamie Foxx inhabited Ray Charles. Doesn't matter- the movie's stronger overall, despite borrowing from the Big Book of Biopic Cliches.

Yeah, it's worth a matinee, despite the fact that you'll have to put up with annoying people in the theater with you. The usual talkers and phone texters were joined in the back row of the Regal Avenue 13 today by someone who, as soon as the movie started, whipped out a huge sandwich loaded with onions, stinking up the theater. You wanna eat lunch? GO OUTSIDE THE THEATER, PINHEAD. Don't make me hurt you.

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Here it is, unedited, raw footage of the rarely-seen Incredible Fetching Cat- click on the picture and live the magic:

"Harry Potter," my ass. This one has action, plot, and an adorable animal. You'll overlook the lack of production values.

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Two thoughts at the end of a busy day:

1. I gotta give plaudits, kudos, and props to the folks at Sling Media for the Slingbox, a gadget that may be needed by few people but is working like a charm for me. The thing looks like a large silver candy bar and connects to your computer network and to your cable or satellite box or DVR or whatever. And all it does is allow you to watch whatever's on that box wherever you may be, as long as you have a broadband conncetion to the Net or are on the home network.

My need for it was because I can't, for various reasons, add a satellite receiver in my home office. I get the NBA League Pass through Dish Network, and most games start at 4 or 4:30 pm PT, while I'm still working. But I wanted to have access to Sixers games here. Solution: Slingbox on the least-used Dish receiver (the one in the kitchen- yes, there's satellite TV in the kitchen here). Now, I can pop the Dish picture up in a window on my office monitor and watch whatever game I want. I can also get those games and whatever else is on the satellite via my laptop wherever I travel. If and when they do software for the Palm Treo and for Macs, it'll be perfect. As it stands, I may be one of a handful of people for whom this thing is worth $250. plus the network-via-electrical-wiring adapters, but I'm very, very pleased, about as pleased as I've been with any gadget lately.

2. I am powerless over my addiction to Sudoku.

I know, it's a stupid number puzzle and I'll get bored with it soon enough. And it's weirdly hyped by newspapers as some sort of worldwide craze- I remember it in Dell puzzle magazines years ago, and it apparently spread to Japan, then back to the UK and US. Now, it's in all the papers, and there are a zillion Sudoku book collections. I'm on my second. Yeah, I'm an old fart doing pencil puzzles like I'm on the porch at the assisted care facility. But it's addictive.

And when all else fails, I can always just use this and cheat.

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I watched and reported on most of today's Senate Commerce Committee indecency dog-and-pony show- er, "open hearing"- and if I never have to see another one of those besuited drips again, that'll be fine with me. Everyone performed to expectations, with only Jack Valenti- Jack Valenti!- raising the question of why everyone lost their bearings when Janet Jackson's breastette came up for air for a split second. Predictably, nobody had any answer for that.

The NAB's Bruce Reese and Clear Channel's representative both whipped out the "if we have to be regulated, crack down on satellite, too" card, the coward's way out- instead of fighting back, they tell the bully to hit that other undeserving guy while he's at it. Everyone else from the entertainment industry tried to pass themselves off as paragons of virtue; Joe Pantoliano had the best statement but, shockingly, gave absolutely the worst cold read I've heard in ages. Poor guy was shaking with terror. He did better with questions, but he got out-acted by Preston Freakin' Padden.

And you expect the Christian Coalition and Trinity Broadcasting folks to be a little scary- the Christian Coalition woman seemed to be pining for a return to the days of "Leave It to Beaver" in prime time on all channels- but the scariest was Lisa Fager of something called "Industry Ears," a left-wing "hip-hop media watchdog" who went the furthest in wanting anyone edging anywhere near indecency to be fined, their license taken away, drawn and quartered, that sort of thing. (Well, OK, just fined and having their licenses taken away, but you get the idea) She at one point said that racially offensive terms- I assume she means the N-word- ought to be banned as indecent. Frankly, she's not wrong in decrying misogyny and self-hatred in rap, but she seems to want the government to crack down and she doesn't quite grasp the dangers of censorship, but considering her political leanings, I suppose censorship isn't a negative if it's targeting something you don't like.

The result of this thing is that everyone congratulated themselves on "doing something" and went home. The biggest news is that the FCC will try to force cable and satellite to sell channels a la carte, which means that you can kiss a lot of smaller cable networks goodbye- they only exist because they can be sold as part of the larger basic or expanded basic tier. All you'll get is the biggest channels. This will be portrayed as a victory for the consumer, when in fact it'll be a victory for a few cheap or overly sensitive consumers and will raise bills for the rest of us.

Gee, and they got it all in before the holidays, too.

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What do you call it when your head hurts, like, right here (points to left side of forehead), and it feels like a buffalo has crawled into your sinus cavity and is trying to chew its way back out through your eyebrow?

Yeah, like that.

Been that way all day. It hit me shortly after waking up, got a lot worse just before we had to leave for an appointment, responded a little- just a little- to a Benadryl infusion that also left me a little sleepy/dizzy, and has me now sitting crosseyed and dazed in front of the computer.

Perhaps I ought to put an end to that. Excuse me.

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