My cable lineup has added something called the Product Information Network (PIN) – an all-infomercial channel. For me, this is something like sending a case of Ring Dings to the home of a member of Overeaters Anonymous every week. I can’t get enough of these fake earnest sales pitches. My current favorite is for something called Bloussant, a pill women take that is supposed to increase their bust size. They even splurged on some Tron-level graphics which show the green 3-D outline of a woman’s chest with, apparently, air being pumped into it. When Arthur C. Clarke envisioned the future, I don’t think this was it.

There are two categories of funny TV shows: smart funny and comedy club funny. Smart funny, whose apex came with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, gets its laughs from characters; comedy club funny, with current examples like The King of Queens, gets its laughs from situations. This is not to say that comedy club funny (which I thought of calling ‘sitcom funny,’ but they’re all sitcoms) can’t be hilarious and entertaining. I don’t miss KofQ, and the brilliant Fawlty Towers is perhaps the apex of this type. But for the long haul, smart funny rules. Discuss?

“Hello Kitty has no mouth, but man can she hum.” Hilarious. (thanks to Moira, who truly exemplifies that words mean things)

I’m seriously thinking of entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest this year. Here’s my latest (purposely) bad prose:

Pa’s moonshinin’ ain’t gonna cost me another beau, thought Elvina, as she hitched up her Daisy Dukes, cinched her bandana top, kicked aside Tater, the Gloops’ near-blind hound, and threw open the torn screen door to meet her paramour, Elwood R. Sanderson, Revenuer.

After all my proselytizing about being an anti-consumer, I spent the day yesterday on a near-religious pilgrimage to the shrine of IKEA, a massive ziggurat dedicated to the love of cut-rate housewares. It’s right next to Woodfield Mall in the Chicago suburbs, a scary church of consumerism in its own right. The giant three-level IKEA is truly something to see, and although I still have very little impulse to shop for anything, it’s a fun place to browse around in. I got some picture frames and an area rug which seemed much cooler hanging from the IKEA ceiling than it did when I got it home. Such are the trials of a reluctant consumer.

Celebrity identification quiz:
a. b. c.

1. Faith Hill
2. Christina Aguilera
3. Britney Spears

My new favorite website: Robot Frank’s Life

Bonus robot link: Monkey vs. Robot

Watched “The Weakest Link” last night. It was fun, but I guess game shows are not designed to hold my interest for very long. (So you’re thinking, well, Survivor is a game show. He likes Survivor. Well, Survivor transcends the genre. So there.) I like the snippy British host, and it’s fun to try to answer all the rapid-fire questions yourself. But in the final analysis, if I want to play Trivial Pursuit, I can do that myself. And if I want to see other people being humiliated on national television…well, I guess there are good uses for the show after all.

Well, my homegrown comments system is up, complete with comment counts. All the Blogvoices comments are lost, but if you want to make an omelet… I hope to be adding things like a cookie so you only have to enter your information once, like Blogvoices does. I may also put it in a little floating window, but for now I kind of like having a separate page for the comments. Let me know what you think of this system.

I’m addicted to reading weblogs, and my latest sub-genre interest is photo blogs. I think the finest example I’ve seen is Mike Clarke’s site, Hunkabutta.com. He’s a Canadian living in Tokyo, and after looking at his amazing photos and reading his text, you feel like you’re there. I want to be Mike Clarke when I grow up.

I also enjoy Laura Holder not Com– she has a mix of gritty webcam-style shots and some cool travel and panorama photos. And how can I forget Reid Stott’s Photodude weblog, which has gorgeous shots in the right-side ‘Pixel Pile.’ Check’em out.