I’m finding that blogging is taking up more and more of my brainspace lately. It’s an addictive pastime on many levels: self-expression, exploration, design, geekiness, and most insidious of all, intense need for validation. “You like me – you really like me!” I pour over my site traffic reports like a starving man gazing at a bucket of KFC.

This despite the many problems with Blogger lately, including its destruction of the first version of this post. I will be the first to line up to pay for Blogger Pro, and it’s hard to complain about a free service. But when something becomes this central to your daily activities, it’s hard to be without it.

I will be entering treatment shortly.

Today’s synonyms:
dogsbody, lickspittle, factotum

In honor of the Super Bowl, I present the undisputed best TV commercial ever made: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

I was expecting that with just two days until Survivor II, I would be all twitterpated with anticipation. I did feel a little excitement when I saw Colleen “I should have won that thing” Haskell on a Chap-Stick commercial, but that was probably another kind of excitement. As it is, I’m looking forward to watching the new series, but I don’t think you can recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the original. Maybe I’m still reeling from Richard Hatch’s win, after which I my extremities went numb for several days.

Here we go again
Well, just days after the era of the Puppet King has commenced, we?re back to that old saw, vouchers, or as new-age media conservatives like to call it, ?parental choice.? The simple fact is, conservatives have two goals here: dismantle the public school system so they can stop paying school taxes, and grab the resulting multi-billion-dollar private education market. It?s a double whammy of economic benefit for wealthy conservatives, who aren?t really convinced that everyone should get an education, anyway.

They realize they can?t attack public education head-on, which results in a lot of hypocritical ?No child left behind? rhetoric (sound familiar?). Meanwhile, they chip away at it, bit by bit. They?ve already created the conventional wisdom which says U.S. public schools are failing, and greedy teachers and overzealous bureaucrats are mostly to blame. At the same time, Bush proposes mandatory testing, piling on federal bureaucracy while promoting private schools which don?t have to educate disabled or even underachieving students if they don?t want to. While we?re at it, let?s drain the underperforming schools in poor neighborhoods of tax money ? that?ll encourage competition!

It?s an amazing triumph of rhetoric over reality. Words mean things, indeed.

Why does every crappy movie have to have a web site? Even the thought of watching ?Dude, Where?s My Car?? makes my internal organs feel as though they will quiver and burst, and production photos and inane, bandwidth-clogging Flash movies just add insult to injury. Even if you enjoyed the movie, what?s the point?

As a side note, the budget of even a modest $20 million production that will beat a hasty retreat to Encore could pay 400 teachers? salaries for a year. Think about that the next time you sit through ?Don?t Tell Mom the Babysitter?s Dead? on cable.

Now this is funny. Stupid, but funny.

So Tim McVeigh’s execution may be broadcast over closed-circuit television. (My apologies to my colleague Mosey for blogging Salon, but this was just too good to pass up.) This is fascinating for many pop culture and political reasons. The question really is, why weren’t all of GWB’s executions televised? I believe people should have to confront the results of their pro-death-penalty stance, especially when the condemned isn’t a famous evildoer whose death everyone is supposed to cheer.

And since watching someone drift away after lethal injection doesn’t make for very good television, I would suggest hanging. Or even better, firing squad. Let’s show five or six of those in a row, with state troopers pulling the trigger, and see how national attitudes change.

I’ve come to believe that the new media is not cable internet, or TiVo, or advertisements played for you as you stand at the urinal. It’s good old-fashioned radio. Low tech, high touch. In the last few months I’ve rediscovered National Public Radio, which has an amazing amount of lively, thoughtful programming every day. My current favorite program is Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s The Splendid Table, which comes on Sunday mornings with tales of ice wine, chef school and Chinese New Year celebrations. Good stuff.

I dare you to read this and tell me you’re still perfectly comfortable with this man holding the nuclear launch codes.