Syntax of Things

A Little Leap Year Bitterness

Because I only have a two-and-a-half mile commute to work, I can stretch a tank of gas for almost a solid month before being faced with the task of visiting a gas station. As a result, I don't usually pay that much attention to fuel prices, occasionally glancing at the $hell station's marquee on my way home. The last few weeks I've noticed that the prices have been steadily creeping toward all-time highs. Just last week, regular jumped from $2.09 to $2.19 overnight. And the excuse they give? Something about converting from winter to summer grade gasoline. That's all beyond me. I'm pretty sure that my car will run just fine on either grade and I'm also fairly certain that the difference between winter and summer in San Diego is so negligible that most of us would probably just as soon drive around with the wrong season in our tanks.

+ Compare the gasoline prices of your favorite cities

Peter Gammons's Urine

One of the most obvious lessons learned from my attempt to blog a Southern California "storm" (read: heavy drizzle) was that storm blogging should be left to those who will actually experience a storm. Not that I was over my head in my attempts, but I have to realize that just because I get excited at the prospect of a coming weather event doesn't mean that it will translate a) into an interesting post and b) into an actual weather event. I've come to expect as much from San Diego weather. It hardly ever lives up to its promise.

Wednesday night as the storm was being touted as a true monster by everyone in the weather media, I started flipping through the channels. Not just the Weather Channel but also every local news channel and even a few radio stations. In doing so, I landed on ESPN and caught SportsCenter just as Dan Patrick was interviewing ex-Brave Gary Sheffield. Of course, the issue was steroids and the fact that just the day before Sheffield had accepted a NY Post reporter's dare to be tested for 'roids, only to back away a day later when the reporter revealed that he had actually lined up the test. Sheffield requested the interview with ESPN in order to present his side of the story. In the course of the interview, Sheff denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs, said that the reporter had tricked him, insisted that he would take a test but the union would not let him. Patrick decided to lean on him, and this is where the interview turned ugly.

In an offer that seemed fueled more by whiskey than journalism (even ESPN-style journalism), Patrick asked if Sheffield would be willing to submit to a test if it were arranged by and taken along with an ESPN reporter. Patrick's suggestion you ask? Peter Gammons. Mental image here is simply too much to take. For one, I don't want to think of P. Gammons and G. Sheffield tinkling in a cup in a locker room in order to prove anything. Then there's the very idea of Gammons on steroids. What drug-fueled bullshit rumors could he possible come up with if his already atrophied brain were juiced? Jeff Bagwell to Boston for a minor leaguer? This possibly explains too much. Finally, and I'll leave you with this, anyone who follows baseball and who pays the least bit of attention to Gammon's true homer leanings knows that Gammons probably doesn't pee in a cup without the assistance of Nomar Garciaparra or one of his beloved Red Sox.

Storm Watch 2004! Day Two (Update 6:00 pm)

6:00 am (2/26) - Truly amazing what eight hours can do to a San Diego weather forecast. No, it's not sunny outside and it has started to rain--somewhat moderate showers--but the weather gurus have backed off of their predictions of four inches for parts of the county. The bulk of the storm will stay north of the city, so San Diego can expect possibly an inch. To make up for their blown call, they've now decided to forecast 15-ft waves between this afternoon and Saturday morning.

Just before bed last night, I made an amazing discovery. You know how they say that animals are often early predictors of cataclysmic events? It seems Homer, the neurotic wonder, suffers from some sort of rain related identity crisis.

6:45 am (2/26) - The drive to work had none of those hidden obstacles, no palm fronds or over-flowing ditches. The usual two minute traffic report on the radio took over five minutes, so it appears that San Diego drivers have prepared for the commute by not slowing down. Besides, the weather makes for much more interesting cel phone conversation. Looking at the radar, it seems that we will definitely be spared the worst of the storm. That's what I get for high-hopes and listening to the local weather hacks. I'll remain on storm watch for the rest of the day. Air traffic has finally reversed course.**

8:35 am (2/26) - Hail spotting. Rain light all morning. Hail always seems to be a feature of a west coast storm. I'm thinking Courtney Love's brain-sized hail. Or maybe my desire to see the Passion... sized hail. Ok, tiny.

11:10 am (2/26) - Rain has ended. Maybe an outside chance of a shower passing by over the next six hours. I'm not even sure San Diego has reached the half-inch mark. Figures.

6:00 pm (2/26) - "Storm" is over. Well, it never started. A lot of heavy drizzle. I'm going to spend the next 24 hours recuperating from all of the excitement. Well, that and I need to catch up on some work and sleep and a fantasy baseball league draft.

I'm officially off of Storm Watch 2004. (I like the radar, though. Might keep it around for a few more days.)

**My office window overlooks the airport. I'm never far away from the sound of a jet.

Storm Watch 2004 (Update 10:55 pm)

Almost as rare as snow in Tampa, a second "storm" is predicted to hit San Diego in the next twelve hours. Being the weather junky that I am, I've decided to place Syntax of Things on "Storm Watch 2004." For the next twenty-four hours, I'll be blogging the storm. In anticipation, I've added a dynamic image of the current San Diego radar. Along with this, I'll be monitoring all of the local weather outlets and making personal observations to keep everyone current on the situation here in "America's Finest City."

5:00 pm (2/25) - No sign of the storm. Radio is predicting that some parts of the county could receive up to four inches of rain, a remarkable amount seeing that the record at Lindberg Field for a single day is 3 1/2 inches. It seems that the impending storm has already had an effect on gas prices. The station where I get my gas increased its price for regular unleaded four cents since yesterday, up to an astonishing $2.19. Saturday, the price was $2.05. I guess with all of the doom and gloom forecasts, people preparing for the storm are driving up demand.

5:14 pm (2/25) - Matt Baylow, Local 8 Microclimate Meteorologist, just said that the storm has been delayed by six hours. Instead of arriving in time for dinner, the rain will not likely start until just after Art Bell (or whoever hosts that show now) is signing off. Heaviest rain can be expected during the morning commute tomorrow. Thankfully, I don't have to travel the freeway to get to the salt mine. Anyway, skies are still clear; airplanes still on approach over my house.* Still, the National Weather Service has issued watches that cover the next 18 hours.

10:55 pm (2/25) - Wouldn't you know it. I've been without internet service since six o'clock. In the meantime, the skies have finally become mostly cloudy and a nice wind has developed. During his earlier weather segment, channel 9/51 weather lunatic John Coleman promised that this would be a "nice storm." He seemed to be mostly concerned about the tidal surge and coastal flooding, but did reiterate that some of the burn areas would receive significant amounts of rain. Coleman may be a bit pickled, but he's usually accurate. I have to give the man some credit; he was one of the founders of the Weather Channel. After showing his "supercomputer" models, he leaped into an editorial on how San Diegans are lucky that this isn't the norm. As if we didn't know. He also said that after this "winter blast" we probably wouldn't see more rain for the rest of the season. I do remember him saying the same thing after the Christmas night rains. I think his forecasts generally extend only past his next bottle.

So tonights final update: bedtime, no rain. All news channels with team coverage.

* A sure sign that a storm approacheth is when the air traffic reverses its normal arrival/departure pattern. Because I live under the flight path, I'm able to monitor this phenomenon. If arriving planes fly over my house, all is ok. Planes departing overhead, rain, fog, wind, or a combination of the three is imminent.

Up Yours, Mate

And baseball worries over a little steroid use:

[Australian rugby player] John Hopoate...has been slapped with a 12-week suspension for what league officials called the "most disgusting" behavior they have ever encountered.

The accused professed his innocence. He claimed that what he did was actually an attempt to administer a wedgie to his opponents. "I'm a great believer in what happens on the field should stay there," he said.

One of his opponents didn't see it that way: "I think I know the difference between a wedgie and someone sticking their finger up my bum."

But there was video of the heinous act - don't be looking for it on SportsCenter - and the testimony of outraged victims, who said they knew quite well the difference between a wedgie and what Hopoate did. {Story here}

See Rock City

If you've ever driven much in the South, you've probably seen the barn roofs painted with the slogan "See Rock City." Maybe you've wondered to yourself just what is this Rock City. Could it be that nice of a place that every barn between here and Bessemer has that on the roof? Or perhaps you've only seen what's left of the advertisement, the permanent black paint having faded or part of the roof missing, so that you're left reading it in abstract: "S e oc it". The man responsible for painting all of those barn roofs has died.

As if lured by that slogan, my parents took my brother and me to see Rock City. It was a long time ago, but I do remember rocks, plenty of rocks. No city. And bumper stickers everywhere. Every car tagged with one while its owner stood awestruck at the site of seven states or managed to make it through Fat Man's Squeeze without getting stuck. My dad left the parking lot with much hate in his heart. Not even Ruby Falls could wash away the sight of that bumper sticker befouling the chrome of the Chevy.

{Thanks to largehearted boy for pointing this out}

If You're Reading This, You Might Be the Only One

My apologies to anyone trying to visit today only to wait for the page to load. It seems that the Typepad hardware was hustling for beads in New Orleans...or something. Just when I was about to sing the praises of this service, they have to go and have a bad day. I jinxed it, I suppose. Anyway, I guess there's always this. Hmmm, a blog, a book, nah.

Laissez la bonne exposition de seins

Since it's Mardi Gras, I think I'll spend the day playing the role of "Useless Trivia Man" and tell everyone I know that Mobile, Alabama, not New Orleans, is the original home of Mardi Gras in the U.S. I know people in both cities love to debate this fact, and all concede that New Orleans is the true "home" of what all of us know as the modern day Mardi Gras celebration, the one of bead throwing and boob showing--not necessarily in that order. But Mobile still puts on a pretty nice party in its own right. My fondest MG memory will always be sitting in Bienville Square on Shrove Tuesday, surrounded by thousands of drunk and getting drunker revelers, and watching the cops on horseback ride by and yank underage drinkers up by the collar to escort them on the horse's thigh to the nearest station for processing. I think it was that day that my then wife lost her I.D. and we ended up leaving for a Godfather's Pizza so that we could sober up and try to remember where her I.D. could be. (Turned out it was in the liner of her jacket).

Mobile also originated the throwing of MoonPies from the floats. Nothing beats a plastic-wrapped, banana- or chocolate-flavored projectile hitting you in the face. Unless, of course, its one of those doubloons smacking you on any part of the body. To see all of those people standing along the parade route holding open huge garbage bags in order to collect this useless booty is a life-altering experience. On numerous occasions, I witnessed grown women hip check kids out of the way for a plastic flute or a rubber chicken. Ah, Mardi Gras.

Not to be outdone, San Diego has its own Mardi Gras party. If you're willing to pay fifteen bucks to stand in a cordoned-off section of downtown, you too can be part of the largest Mardi Gras west of the Rockies (or so they tell me). Since I can always find something better to do with $15, I haven't checked out San Diego's Fat Tuesday celebration, but I hear it's a nice rip-off of the real thing. Since it's 21 and up, the booze flows freely (figure of speech, mind you) and the beads are earned, if you catch my drift.

Nope, no Mardi Gras for me. I'm going to spend my day cloaked in the purple and gold cape of knowledge. At some point, I'll probably consider what I'm going to pretend to give up for Lent, but I can tell you that I would rather consider the lint in my belly button. I'm off to a pretty good start however. I've decided to give up this (not necessarily suitable for work or pregnant women), at least for now.

What the World Needs Now...

Picker, R.A. Nicholson, 1973, 12" x 16"

E. and I need something for the walls in our bedroom. Forget the lousy prints at IKEA. Why settle for the taste of otherworld Scandinavians when the thrift stores are full of just what we're looking for?

It's Not What You See or Smell

Maybe I spent too much of my shot-shooting, alcohol fueled days feeding off of the bottom shelf, but I always laugh at the notion that vodka is tasteless and odorless, or as this article puts it, has "no distinguishing features." Are you kidding me? Perhaps people don't notice the features because they start thinking about it after a few shots and then everything becomes featureless.

Vodka was my poison for a time. I used it mostly because I was broke and I needed a quick trip to numb. I'd point to the crude labels at the lower left and the bartender, often a friend, would make sure to put in a third finger for the price of two. And there was always a feature, the searing burn, the fight to keep it below the throat, a pain that lasted until something absorbed it. One shot would chase away the shakes so that I didn't have to two fist the second. By the third or fourth, I'd had enough to let beer take over, the pace car pulled off the road and the speed was now up to my discretion, always dependent on my lack of money or the generosity of friends.

But vodka takes its toll. Nights lost in fumes of stupor. I found myself apologizing for things I couldn't remember doing. Too many times I'd wake up in the front seat of my car not remembering how I'd even managed to make it home or I'd come to in a strange bed, my head being pounded by a featureless fist.

With vodka, the taste exists in the imagination of the user.

And my imagination finally called it quits. One shot was enough to start a blackout, enough to send me down a staircase. Enough to break my nose or bloody my chin in fights I don't remember. Strange the imagination's defense mechanism, a liquid paper over all of those things that it's probably best one not remember.

It's been four years since my last shot, since my last drink period. I don't look back fondly on those days, no drinker's nostalgia or romanticized notions of what I'm missing. Vodka turned on me with a jaded lover's fury. I once looked forward to our meetings at the bar, the first kiss of the night, but found myself being stalked. So don't mind me when I laugh when they say it has no features. I know better.

{Link from My Brilliant Mistakes.}

Rainy Days and Sundays

Thunderclap. Just one. Enough to ruffle the feathers of my neurotic dog. He barks because he can, duty bound. The unfamiliar sound could be anything, could be the downstairs dog coming to steal his favorite toy or the UPS man invading his private space. His is a world where thunder exists as just another noise; rain is as mysterious as his kong. I watch the radar, the sky. He watches out the window and wonders at the drips and the slowly filling ditches. If only it rained more often, he'd understand its beauty, wouldn't take for granted the moment the rainbow comes out. All the colors of hope he'd wear around his neck like a collar.

Fifty Years of Howl-ing Madness

Howl wasn't first performed until 1955, wasn't published until '56, and didn't cause Ferlinghetti to be tried for obscenity until '57, but fifty years ago this year, Allen Ginsberg began composing one of the most influential poems of the 20th century:

"Howl" was overtly antiwar and anti-capitalist. It mocked the FBI, condemned "scholars of war" and, at the dawn of the age of Hugh Hefner's suave playboy, celebrated the male sexual outlaw who made love in "empty lots & diner / backyards." It also challenged the conventional poetry of its day. It was boldly lyrical, intensely personal, ironic, ambiguous — and very funny.

+ Legal history of "Howl"
+ Ginsberg on LitKicks
+ Ginsberg's FBI file
+ Six Gallery Reading
+ Text of "Howl"

Just Leave Us Alone

This pisses me off.

And now it looks as if the good folks in Ireland will have to deal with the same absurd smoking ban that many American smokers--especially those of us in California--have been faced with for some time now.

File Under "F" Words

Others cannot envision a day when use of the F-word will elicit no more than a shrug. After all, it was once considered so shocking that it did not even appear in any dictionaries of the English language from 1795 to 1965, according to the etymological website www.wordorigins.org. But today this most versatile of Anglo-Saxonisms is pushing the cultural envelope from many different directions: as a transitive and intransitive verb, as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, and as a bellowed exclamation. --Don Aucoin, Boston Globe, 2/12/2004 {Link from Ed.}

It's one of the best things we can do with someone, one of the worst to someone. And this is how we make people!...Do it too casually and we get broken homes, disease...and unwanted babies. So there's bound to be some difficulty about the word. It's our worst word, at least of one syllable, and maybe our strongest." --Roy Blount, Jr., "Enough to Perpetuate the Race," Foreword to The F Word

I realized the power of the word fuck at a very early age when I asked my mom what it meant. I was seven and curious, having seen the word scribbled on the bathroom wall at school. Mom didn't know this last bit of detail and assumed that my precociousness was getting the better of her. I remember the seriousness reddening her face and then the TV being turned off. When the word had been thoroughly defined, including the visuals from some "It's My Body" book she'd been storing for much later use, I didn't feel that I had been given some super-secret power reserved for adults and juvenile delinquients. I felt sick. And for months, if not years, after that day, I was troubled by these horrible images: my parents, the preacher and his wife, my teacher and who knows.

Along with the definition of the word, I was given one bit of advice from Mom: "Never, ever say that word! Ever!" And I didn't. Nor did I ever hear my parents say it. Even though they were fairly religious, my parents never really shied away from a good curse word and I'd hear them all, except "fuck." Soon enough, I believed that word existed only on walls and HBO, and I was fine with that.

But the omnipresent ear of a mother can only hold so much power over the vocabulary of a peer-pressured teen eager to impress friends who had already started saying words like prick and suck. I don't remember the exact day or what I was doing, but I do know that it seemed natural, a word as comfortable as "chicken" or "turd," and it was extremely liberating. I knew Pandora's box had been opened and I was in no rush to close the lid. As long as I could keep it in my pocket to be used only around friends, I'd be okay. But then I found that it became so entrenched in my everyday speech that I had trouble finding a replacement. "Friggin" or "f'n" all carried the same punishment in my house. (I found this out the hard way.) It wasn't long before it would come out, and this time my mom didn't need to provide a definition. That familiar reddening of her face said it all.

The Perfect Age

Finally, someone else shares my feelings about being 33, and that someone is Jack Black:

It's the landmark year. I'm a Jew. Thirty-three is when Christ died. So though I'm a Jew, in the back of my mind I still think that I gotta get it done before I'm thirty-four because well, I don't know why. He got it done before He was thirty-four.

The Secret Life of a Dentist Hater

Maybe it's the fact that I have zero pain tolerance. Or perhaps it's encoded in my DNA. I'm not sure what it is, but I hate dentists. I can't put a finger on when my hatred began or why. Maybe hate is just another way of saying fear, and if so, I can find solace in the fact that I'm not alone, that upwards of 12 percent of the population of the U.S. shares in this phobia. In any case, after nearly fifteen years of avoiding them I was finally forced to one by a wife who clings to the twice-a-year propaganda. She found one of those sedation dentistry offices. They specialize in the hardcore cases, offering a magic pill to knock one out of consciousness so that they can repair all of the damage the hate-fear-avoidance created. So Monday I made the first visit. Nothing invasive, all reassurances and guarantees of comfort and amnesia. Much talk of the blue pill and only a brief lecture on the importance of this and future visits. Before I knew it, I'd been scheduled for a mid-March, four-hour tour of the back of my eyelids, and a tentative second visit sometime in late March. The damage isn't as bad as it could have been, but it's bad enough.

Headline Funny

I hate to link to WorldNetDaily, but check out this headline:

Semicolon keeps same-sex marriages going

Song on the Brain (2/16)

When I was a boy still being dressed in monogrammed sweaters by a Mom who also seemed to favor the bowl cut hairdo for her boys, I looked forward to going to Sunday night church service. On most Sunday nights, the choir would rest from their gruesome morning recital, so those moments before the long, boring sermons were always filled with requests from the pews. I had two favorites, their numbers memorized so that when Mr. Decker, the music director, would ask for a hymn I could raise my hand and depending on my mood call out one of the two selections. Most times, I would ask for number 685, the true and steady march of "Onward Christian Soldiers." To me, this hymn came as close as you could get to the Casey Kasem top 40 that I had listened to earlier that afternoon. The organist would pound the bass, making the entire sanctuary shudder, waking up even the most devout slumberer in the congregation.

And then there was 414, "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder," perhaps the most requested song in the entire hymnal. Its popularity resulted not from the words--I thought it was "Roll Is Called a Piano" until I was able to read--or the music, but it was Mr. Decker's delivery. Mr. Decker looked like an old Ronald Reagan. He'd been a choir leader in one church or another since World War II and had now been relegated to Sunday nights when all he needed to do was turn to the right page and make sure that he could read the small print in the hymnal. But for "Roll" he reached back to those glory days when his voice could make the blue hairs swoon. On the final chorus, everyone knew to let him take over, and take over he did, stretching the final yonder out until his waddle was the color of Jesus' wound in the stain glass over the choir loft.

"When the roll is called up yooonderrrrrr..rrrrr...rrr...rrrr" [pause and then fast] "When the roll is called up yonder I'll be there!"

So in memory of Mr. Decker and my bowl haircut, this week's song on the brain is Johnny Cash's version of #414.

Damn Yankees

I guess I would have to turn in my official Baseball Fan badge if I didn't make some sort of comment about the A-Rod to the Yankees trade. Really, though, what else can be said? I'm not surprised that the trade went down. The Rangers had to rid themselves of A-Rod's contract and all of the baggage of the tradeus interruptus with the Red Sox. When Boston pulled out (sorry) and with almost every other team in baseball crying about financial woes and downsizing team salaries, there was left but one team to consummate a deal--the damn, intolerable, team of Satan known as the New York Yankees.

So while Yankee fans everywhere have started saving money for their 2004 World Champions shirts, the rest of us are left to wonder two things: who's next and who cares? And of course, we'll all be wanting to find someone to blame, so we should just settle on blaming Bud Selig if for no other reason than because he is--in the words of a Yankee fan, I'm sure--"a friggin idiot."

+ The Onion was a year premature, but spot on
+ Get your Yankees Suck gear

Do You Have Reservations?

I wish I could tell a story of red roses and dark chocolate candies, of a paddle boat in a lake with a gentle breeze playing at our hair. I want nothing more than to describe a perfect day where a husband and wife forgot the world if only for that 24 hours and withdrew to a place previously unknown to them or to anyone. But that's not my Valentine story. In truth, I'm not remotely romantic and in confessing this I must also add that if I were to attempt to be romantic, my wife would suspect some sort of lechery on my part. But I love my wife and sometimes I want to find ways to express this without being clichéd or feeling fifteen. So how do you make up for the fact that despite being warned by countless co-workers and friends to call for a reservation somewhere, you didn't? And after calling around and driving to various upscale places to find that the wait ranged from an hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours, how do you recover from the absurdity of having to settle on the Sizzler? The Sizzler on Valentine's Day evening where even there the food took nearly an hour to reach our table and where the steak that should have been medium was rare and where the cashier who looked like a moonlighting porn star couldn't even muster a smile. Even she felt my shame.

The day wasn't a total loss and my wife was actually quite understanding, managing to laugh at the fact that I'd assumed we could get a table at Black Angus if all else failed. Before the Sizzler, we went to see The Dreamers. Again, not exactly the most fitting Valentine fare, but a love story that only Bertolucci could manage. Take the over-used movie plot formula where the parents leave an empty house to some teenagers and put this formula in the hands of Bertolucci. Instead of a wild party complete with keg stands and torn down walls, you get wine drinking and incest. Of course, there was nudity and another type of wall dismantling. I enjoyed the film and believed that a nice dinner would end up making the day complete.

It wasn't to be. Forgive me, E. Next year, we'll go roller skating and I'll make sure to call ahead.

A Nod to Her Majesty

I've been devoting a lot of my listening time to the Decemberists. Thanks to my California tax refund, I was finally able to free up a few bucks to buy their latest album, "Her Majesty the Decemberists." If you haven't heard (of) them and if you like well-crafted songs that surround great storytelling, then you should do yourself the favor of checking them out. As for me, I'll be eagerly awaiting their live show in San Diego in early April.

+ The Decemberists, "The Soldiering Life" video

If, on the other hand, you want it loud--and I do mean loud--check out the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs player and you, too, can give the gift of noise to your neighborhood.

There's Smoke in Your Eyes

I've long neglected adding a category that is near and dear to my, um, lungs. (Perhaps not so dear, but anyway.) I've been a smoker for almost half of my life, and for half of that time I've been thinking about quitting. Like Twain said, quitting is easy, I do it a couple of times a day. So for all of us who pay for the roads and the school improvements and the airport runways but who are made to feel as if we were George W. at a Mensa gathering, this category is for you.

+ The Female Celebrity Smoking List {link from pullquote}

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day.

Stand UP, Be Heard!

It seems that FCC chairman Michael (son of a Colon) Powell was a nipple hair away from holding hearings that could have resulted in CBS losing its license. I must say that I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me, the civil libertarian, finds the very notion of a government entity legislating morality and defining decency appalling. But there is another part of me--the moral relativist and shepherd to a new flock--that believes some good could come from this. Before you write me off as being a right-wing nutjob, take a look at the Syntax of Things "watch list," the top 5 offenders of my standards of decency:

MTV. Not for the same reason that the moral highroaders want this station eliminated. I'm asking for their license revocation because they are simply irrelevant these days. They stopped being relevant about the time all of their VJs dropped their last names. I would allow them to keep their broadcasting rights if they agree to change their moniker. I'm thinking something like NMTV (no music tv) or VLMTV (very little...). I'm also willing to drop my complaint if they could quit being the catalyst for the vast amount of worthless crap that spills over into mainstream America. Do I even need to list examples?

Fox News. Again, not for the obvious reasons. I think this network should lose its license based on the simple fact that it gives Shepard Smith an hour a day.

San Diego Local Access Channel 23. Ok, so I'm thinking more local than global on this one, but the stuff on this channel is dangerous. At some point last year, they aired a mini-series on which a lady spent countless hours railing against one of the local banks. I never figured out what her complaint was, but she had a lot of paperwork and some pretty angry diatribes. Along with this, channel 23 seems to be the breeding ground for every future American Idol audition castaway. On any given night, one can watch a lady yodeling or some half-hour video of a guy lip-synching five seconds behind some horrible music he feels we should all hear.

All Spanish Language TV. This has to be indecent.

CBN. Though no evidence exists that a human clone is actually in our midst, I'm convinced that Pat Robertson's "son" is actually his clone. If that's not indecency enough, these people actually really believe that they can heal through the airwaves. Watching someone pray on TV is just plain creepy. Give me a saggy boob any day over some squinting Christian who says that your goiter is better and will be healed if you make out your check to CBN and mail it in today.

There are plenty of more stations on the bubble, but I have to start somewhere.

Separated at Birth?

Public Service Announcement

Please be aware that this site is now sending out a crypic message. According to an analysis of the content of SoT, I'm telling all of you to "hit target."

You can thank me later.

{Link from Cup of Chicha.}