I wanted to get some work done on a movie recap, I had some checks to write, I felt like update the site, and I needed to spend more than five minutes at a stretch on e-mail. Thus, I cracked out the Mountain Dew Livewire and Pop-Tarts for an evening of writing. The TV, of course, was on as a nightlight. Yeah, yeah, "warm, glowing, warming glow." It soon became clear that I wasn't going to get any work done because I was being hypnotized by the absolute crap I was seeing on TV.

First of all, some jackass gave Jimmy Kimmel a talk show. I hate this person. A lot. The less said about the geniuses in ABC's programming department the better, however. (*cough* Sports Night *cough*)

Speaking of talentless talk show hosts, Carson Daly. What. The. Hell? First of all, he can't conduct an interview for shit. Second, a recent show featured footage of the O.J. Simpson police chase FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. And third, he spent ten minutes setting up a bit and the punch line was that boy bands suck, like, way to bite the hand that got you a late night talk show in the first place, dumbass. And quit stealing Ashton Kutcher's kids. What if they pick up some of your bad habits?

So then there are the infomercials. Woo. The other day, someone almost had me buying a system which would enable me to make thousands of dollars a week just by placing classified ads in the newspaper. I decided against it, though, because $39.99 is just too much to pay for a video that explains the concept of a pyramid scheme. (Of course, the best informercial ever featured Florence Henderson teaching her friends to cook. "Soup from dried beans in fifteen minutes? That's crazy talk.")

On paper, I have no problem with rerunning the local 10:00 newscast again at 2 AM. But when the local 10:00 newscast sucks donkey balls, we're going to have some problems. All the un-clever puns and nonsensical in-jokes are painful enough the first time around, thank you, and will someone please do something about these people's hair?

Okay, maybe it's not all bad, but what about the dating shows? Dating EX-periment? The hell? Shipmates? I hate that crap. Elimidate? Not happening. What happened to the carefree days of Bzzz!? Does anyone remember Bzzz!? That show ruled, with the 'Simpatico' round. Ahh.

And then there are the damn newsmagazine shows. Extra. Celebrity Justice, which has been having less and less to do with the law every time I've watched it. And does anybody really believe that Inside Edition has been on for nineteen years?

Commercials are your friend, except when they're for food. I do not like fast food commercials to the point where they make me nauseated. I absolutely cannot stand to sit through a burger commercial if they're going to show me the food the whole time. Maybe it's that I work in food, but the whole thing disgusts me. If I were physically capable of it, I probably would vomit after about seven seconds of burger-y badness.

The other category of commercials I downright despise is car dealership commercials. Like, if the stated purpose of advertising is to induce the consumer to purchase the product, I fail to see how television advertising automobiles is effective. How do these establishments stay in business? They have sales every other damn week: "factory authorized clearance," "no money down," "0% interest." That's right, 0% interest -- from me.

Oh, and I thought of another one: furniture store commercials. Any reasonable person knows that the Mattress King should be shot on sight (Quad Citians, imagine Mary Good with a crown and staff), but how many "going out of business" sales can one store actually have? At what point does that become false advertising?

So why do I do it? Why do I suffer through all the tripe every night (other than the fact that I'm supposed to be working and the TV is supposed to be on for 'ambiance')? Well, there's a really cool lady that comes on around 1:35. She has a healthy respect for common sense and she doesn't tolerate stupidity. She deals with the issues before her in a succinct, organized manner and manages to entertain the hell out of me while doing so. That woman's name is Judge Judy.

Reading: Re-reading Getting Unstuck. It's the closest a book has ever come to changing my life, and it's got little quizzes I can take. I like quizzes. Speaking of which, I took some quizzes at The Spark yesterday, where I learned that I am 61% slutty and 64% gay. Listening to: The RENT soundtrack. I love this music to the point where I sing it at work (when no one's around, though). Watching: Yesterday I watched half of Imitation of Life and half of The Last Picture Show, both of which are older movies, but each is oddly interesting in its own way. I'll have to finish them tomorrow or something. Oh, and The Amazing Race. Come on, Chip and Reichen!