Pop culture hurricane last night, with Survivor at 7 (the witch is dead!) and a special screening of Series 7 at the Majestic at 9. I’m almost glad Blogger was down last night; my brain was so hot I couldn’t really form sentences.

Series 7 (which I’ve written about in the past) was phenomenal and disturbing. Anyone who is interested in pop culture and especially the “reality” craze should see it. It’s about a reality show where the contestants actually shoot (or knife or strangle or lethally inject) each other. The tone is spot-on, complete with re-enactments, confessionals, sappy flashbacks, and all the hallmarks we have come to expect from reality TV. What’s so horrifying about it is the hairs-breadth that separates the show I watched at 7 from the show I watched at 9.

As for Jerri’s ouster, I have mixed feelings. She was evil, and deserved the vote, but she was, as my Survivor-obsessed friend Wendy noted, about the only person left with a distinct personality. Life is full of these tradeoffs.

You know, I can stand hateful religious intolerance. I just can’t stand bad grammar.
(via Metafilter)

Learning about life with Northern Exposure:
Chris Stevens: It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself.

Anyone remember which episode this was?

Due to the fact that I’ve been searching everywhere for my 1999 tax info (don’t ask), I’ve been plowing through just about every piece of paper and storage container I own. It’s been great to realize how much I could (safely) throw out. Or give away, in the case of non-paper items. Anyone want a foot-high stack of Utne Readers? I keep coming back to that cultural touchstone, Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.”

Last time when I wrote about being an anti-consumer, I forgot to link to a cool site that gives good strategies for de-junking your life: Rule Your Stuff.

Richard Lewis on The Daily Show last night:
[On Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”] I play myself. Which is hard, because I don’t know who I am.

My father liked taking pictures of the TV screen. That fact alone should give you a little glimpse into his personality. I have piles of prints he took. This is one of my favorites; I don’t know why. I have it up on my bulletin board in the computer room. I was looking at it tonight and thought, “This should go up on the weblog.” Don’t know why. Enjoy.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I sent around an unsolicited web project pitch to my former employer, WEAC. You can read it if you want. I’m heavily influenced by the Cluetrain Manifesto, an extremely important book about the future of the web which manages to pack in tons of ideas while being quite an entertaining read.

While I don’t think it talks about weblogs specifically, one of the main points is how the web allows people to speak in their authentic voices, so different from the corporate “your call is important to us” patter. And that’s what blogs do, after all. Power to the people.

Even Britney Spears has a weblog now. Isn’t that one of the seven signs?

(Yes, I feel dirty. But I guess if I’m just shilling for search engine hits, I should also mention Justin Timberlake, ‘N Sync, and hot lesbian sex.)

Favorite Oscar moment:
It’s split between staring at Bjork’s swan draped over her neck, and Jim Moret (I think) saying to Anthony Hopkins on the red carpet, “You’ve played Hannibal, and I’ve also seen you play Picasso, I’ve seen you play Nixon – what makes you such a chameleon?”

He’s an actor, you doofus.

BONUS: Disturbing photo of Bjork. (Thanks, Kevin)

Now Microsoft tells us that Windows XP will need 256MB of RAM (!) for “acceptable performance.” Aren’t things getting just a little out of hand here? How hard can the tail wag the dog? Being the geek that I am, I remember getting a Commodore 64 (great computer!) and being astonished at having 64K (!!) of RAM. What would anyone do with that amount of memory? It had word processing, cool games (Jumpman!), and pretty much everything you needed in a computer. Where oh where have those days gone? (Cue Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man: “When I was a boy, we ate dirt and we liked it!”)

I promise I will try to refrain from the exclamation marks in future.