Archive for August 25th, 2008


I Just Had My 15 Minutes

August 25th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

My final year of law school starts today. As a preemptive battery charging measure, I went on a self-imposed Internet hiatus this weekend. I played some video games, watched some TV, took my wife to Delaware to meet our brand new niece. I purposely ignored my feed reader and (mostly) my email.

While I was gone, the Internet blew up in my face. I can’t leave that thing unattended. (It’s like the boiler in The Shining, only instead of highly pressurized steam, it explodes in rainbow-scented unicorn farts.)

Phil Plait – scientist, skeptic and geek-in-charge at the Bad Astronomy blog – got wind of my Dalek comic, and posted about it on Saturday afternoon. He even used the word “want” in the title, in that peculiar, it-might-be-a-noun kind of way that you usually only see on blogs that fetishize the latest Apple iProduct.

In 24 hours, we got more hits than we’ve racked up in any previous month. Some wonderful people even plunked down their money for the t-shirt, so I’ll actually be able to donate something to the Robert Lancaster medical fund.

So, thanks to everyone who’s wandered through at Phil’s urging. I hope it was worth the click. Extra special thanks to everyone who bought a t-shirt. If you’d care to take a picture of yourself in it, email it to oskar[at symbol]suburbanpanic[dot]com, and I will post it. We can share my fleeting Internet fame.

Double-secret thanks to Rebecca at Skepchick.org, who pointed Phil to the comic in the first place.
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I’d Like to Ruin Television for You: Friday Night Fight

August 25th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

Okay, so the past few TV posts have lacked a certain amount of. . . humor. Trust me, I don’t find raking through the muck of television land any funnier than you do. It’s a chore. That, and my left testicle ran away. Rolled, actually. I think it was demanding more exercise, so I slapped it and it fell off, rolled down the couch, across the floor, and into the garden. That’s how devoted I am to you, dear reader. I dropped my left nut for you.

ABC hasn’t shown any signs of life on Friday night since the days of Urkel and Mr. Belvedere or, as I like to call it, the decline of Western Civilization. This year is no exception, and the quality has slid down the slippery piffle slope at an accelerated pace. Again they give us Wife Swap, which has two families swapping wives, but the swapping is less Swingtown and The Ice Storm and more like trading chlamydia for crabs. After an hour of yelling, crying, broken bottles, thrown furniture and a lot of swearing, I decided that I should calm down. It’s only a television show. At ten o’clock is the fairly reliable, yet outdated 20/20, whose usefulness came to an end with the advent of Ashleigh Banfield and Anderson Cooper. It’s a Neanderthal process in a Cro-Magnon world.

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I’d Like to Ruin Television for You: Oh Those Midseason Blues

August 25th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

Talking about midseason shows and replacements on Network TV is a little like trying to channel a trendy Nostradamian figure while trying to stay away from the syrupy ickiness of an E! News (quite the contradiction) “host.” I will attempt to guide you through the muddle of Fall and into the “Shroud of Midseason.” While some networks have cemented schedules of certain shows that they KNOW will be coming back, there is also an unknown factor mixed with guesswork and a little transmutation, much like the wok of a crazed alchemist/psychic farting around with capacitors and transistors.

I am delaying. It’s true. I’m trying to find words that will soothe and make it all better. I want to apply a Band-Aid brand Band-Aid to the seeping wounds caused to our psyches by popular entertainment. I’m stumbling, I know, and I’m fishing for sharks in a pond with a piece of gum on frayed twine. I suppose I’ll start with the known quantities.

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