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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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