I work till 2am every night, and have been missing prime time tv for nearly 5 years now.  I've never seen American Idol, Grey's Anatomy, or most anything else people are watching.  After work I'll watch an hour or two of adult swim, and then go read in bed (gotta love Tim and Eric's new show).  Suffice to say, I've missed pretty much every important show since the new millennium.  Thanks to bittorrent, I've stayed up on a few kickass shows.  These include 24, Battlestar Galactica, and (thanks to a recommend from my dad) Heroes.

So Tony Blair's recently announced favorite U2 song is "Where the Streets Have No Name".  Seems a decent choice--it's one of my top five U2 favs--and at least he didn't go with "Beautiful Day".  Lyrically, the song combines a lot of idealism in the face of calamity with lots of desert imagery.  It's pretty hard to avoid thinking Iraq wasn't at least subconsciously on his mind in selecting this song as his favorite. Lyrics like:

This diary is partly inspired by elveta's diary the other day.  There was some good conversation there, so if you're a Dylan fan and missed it, it's good stuff.

While Bob Dylan's latest has been getting mostly amazing reviews, there have been a few scattered "well it's no Love and Theft"s around.  Well I finally had a chance to pick up the new album today and give it a few listens.  No, it's not Love and Theft--I'm pretty sure it's better.

Gore has been doing the rounds.  The Daily Show tonight, but also Leno, SNL, and a ton of other places.  He's usually asked, "Are you running in 08?", and he always says "I have no plans to run."  If there's a followup, he says "I'm running a different kind of campaign right now."  

I'm tired of Ann Coulter.  She bores me.  She gets more diaries devoted to her here than she deserves.  Ann isn't a psychotic and she isn't stupid--she's just selling her schtik, and it's made her famous and rich.  Whatever.  People do all kinds of things for money and fame.  The real problem isn't Ann Coulter.  It's the networks who keep putting her on television.  And we just encourage the buzz around her by treating her as if she matters.

So anybody catch this?  Gore was great.  He says he has no plans to do a nude scene in any future movie sequels, although he's not making a "Shermaneque statement" on the subject.  He also confirms that, yes, there IS a running feud with Lindsay Lohan, although he won't get into details:  "She knows what she did."

It's been too many years since I last read Nietzsche.  When I first read him, I couldn't afford the books.  Instead I copy/pasted them off the internet and printed them off at work.  I snuck them out in black notebooks that I also requisitioned from work.  So thanks P&G!!  You made me an amateur philosopher.  Tonight I picked up a Nietzsche reader at the library, and was immediately hooked again.

There's a neon pair of tits (courtesy of MSNBC) near the top of the ads here at dKos.  Cool, fine, whatever.  What bothers me is that the link simply goes to the generic MSNBC-TV page.  There's no story at all, unless you search for it.  I honestly don't care about these "sexy" dKos ads, but I'm annoyed that the link doesn't go to a story.  It's just a neon pair of tits that leads to the main MSNBC-TV page.  That seems really, really tacky to me.

A co-worker of mine was a background extra on "Blue Velvet".  It was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is about two hours down the road from here.  To her it was just another movie (many get shot in Wilmington).  When I tell her it's one of the greatest American movies ever made, she just gives me a blank look.

I don't know how many folks know about this, but rock-and-roll god Brian Wilson will call you at home and answer a question for a $100 hurricane relief donation given via his site.  If that's not good enough, Brian will also match your donation.  

Whatever happened to quality sitcoms?  I grew up on Good Times and MASH reruns.  The first good sitcoms I remember in real-time were Cheers and the Cosby Show.  Then came FOX with Married with Children and the Simpsons.  Later on came Seinfeld.  After that nothing.  My girlfriend loves "That 70's Show", but I don't see what's so great about it.  The network dramas were good for a while too--Dallas and Hillstreet Blues (which I barely remember), then St. Elsewhere, then L.A. Law, and Twin Peaks (which I worshipped).  A bunch of Law and Order shows.  All good stuff.

The American standard of living is falling.  We're stuck in a pointless war.  Gas is at three dollars.  Our most exotic city is destroyed by an act of God just 4 years after our cultural and economic capital was attacked and deeply scarred by terrorists.  Our atheletes take steroids. Television is crap.  The commercials are crap.  The news isn't the news anymore--it's just media now, the same as the commercials.  We're running up debt, exporting our manufacturing, and losing our bookstores, music stores, and other expressions of culture to a censoring WalMart business model.  Morale is low in these States.

Many grassroots types are thrilled about a Dean chairmanship of the DNC.  We lost in 2003/4, but maybe this will make all those hours and dollars worthwhile, right?

Screw that.  Deep down we know we're being played.  Why else would Dean suddenly be such a serious contender for the big office?  Wasn't he destroyed forever after his Iowa scream?  Wasn't the DNC partly responsible?  Isn't Dean over?  Why is he suddenly being taken seriously again for the DNC top job?  Conspiracy theory below: