The voice of comedy

I saw some stand-up comedy by Demetri Martin the other day. I really appreciate his sensibilities but I didn't find myself laughing very much at the jokes. Then I imagined how the jokes would sound being told by Mitch Hedberg and I laughed a lot more.

Hooray for the DVR

So, I've been away for a few days at a conference (which, incidentally, was a really good one; I'll probably post something to Blern about it). I was a little disappointed on Sunday when I had to catch a flight during the NFL playoffs, but I managed to see the end of the second half of the Bears-Saints game in a bar at the airport, and I got to see a fair amount of the Colts-Pats game once I got to the hotel in Atlanta. My Saints got eliminated. Oh well.

Anyhoo, the real reason I'm posting is to share that the amount of disappointment I felt on Sunday is nothing compared to the geeky glee I'm feeling upon my return home, as a result of all the stuff I've found waiting for me on the DVR. I'm talking about new episodes of 24, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, and Studio 60! Sweet. I should make some popcorn. :D

January mp3 club!

There's a variety of moods in this month's mp3 club offerings, plus a brand new, bloggy, unfinished sort of look. Remember, these songs are for members of the club only.

Best of Bootie 06

Hey, I've been sharing this with people who like music. There's a CD full of mashup mp3s available for free download at Best of Bootie 2006. Read through the list of artists in the list and tell me that doesn't sound cool. You can download all 21 songs in a .zip file at the site.

RIP RAW

Robert Anton Wilson died today. If you're not familiar with RAW, you might want to check out his Wikipedia entry, which describes him as a "novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher." If you at all consider yourself a student of the weird, you've probably already read some of his writings.

His most famous book is probably The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which he co-wrote with Robert Shea, but some of his other works may be more accessible to the newcomer. Volume One of Cosmic Trigger remains one of my all time favorites, and the three volumes of The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles are an entertaining, fictionalized account of the evolution of the Illuminati. Masks of the Illuminati is another fun read.

Wilson influenced a great many people, and he continually urged people to question, which seems to be a less and less popular activity for most folks these days. He made quite a contribution during his time here among us.

I'll end this post with a great RAW quote: "I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it."

TV, part 1: BSG

It's great to have a DVR: it makes television actually watchable. I'm not tied to any broadcast schedule, recording stuff is easy, and I can skip commercials. Bliss.

There's not much going on currently in the way of new shows right now, so I'll take this opportunity to share some of my favorite TV entertainment with you. If you're reading this, and you have any recommendations for shows I might like, feel free to send them my way.

Battlestar Galactica. I'm a science fiction fan, and I just started watching this show a couple of months ago. It's freakin' awesome. I am, of course, talking about the recent "re-imagined" series that airs on the SciFi network and not the series with Lorne Greene from back in the 1970s (although I watched that one too). If you like sci-fi and you haven't been watching this, do yourself a favor and rent the Season 1 DVDs.

The show tells the story of the last remaining members of the human race, around 40,000 people, traveling through space in a fleet of ships, searching for the legendary planet "Earth," all the while being chased and hunted by the robotic Cylons. That's the basic plot, anyway.

What makes the show so good, though, is the intense drama and the relationships between the believable, flawed, sympathetic characters. These people are faced with some crazy desperate situations in which the fate of all of humanity is sometimes at stake. They often have to make some hard choices. Sometimes they make bad choices and have to face the consequences. This ain't Star Trek. Don't expect every problem to be resolved at the end of the hour.

The show in general is really entertaining, but every once in a while, there is a scene that will just blow you away (if you're in touch with your inner sci-fi geek). I’m talking about the kind of stuff that makes you say "Whoa," or "No Way," or "Oh. My. Gods." I'm not gonna share any spoilers. You'll see.

BSG also has numerous strong female characters, which isn’t always the case in sci-fi entertainment. The human President is a woman, and so are several of the primary Cylons (holy crap, Number Six is hot!), and I can't forget Starbuck, a particularly bad-ass human pilot. Sexism doesn’t seem to play much of a role in how people deal with each other in this show. Women can be as tough as men (or tougher).

Overall, BSG gets my highest rating. New Season 3 episodes resume on the SciFi channel on Sunday, January 21. But if you want to enjoy it fully, rent the DVDs and start watching from the beginning. You won’t regret it.

Become Rich Today

What is the deal with those commercials offering easy money by working at home? I've seen the exact same TV commercial in several cities while traveling, with a different Web address at the bottom of the screen in each city's version of the commercial.

Last night I saw the same commercial, twice in a row, with a different URL on each one. 9NewLife.com, or 11WorkAtHome.com, or some such.

I decided to get online and find out what's behind these mysterious ads, and luckily, the work has already been done for me. According to what I read over at cockeyed.com, the commercials apparently are a tactic designed to provide multi-level marketers with new leads -- you give them your name and contact information, and these sites sell your information to various companies that will then contact you and try to get you into their marketing schemes. Yeesh.

I still don't know for sure what all the different URLs are about. My original theory, that there must be different ads in different cities, doesn't seem to be the case, since I saw two of them in a row with different URLs. I'll let you know if I learn anything more.

I guess working at home in my spare time won't make me rich after all. Cockeyed.com has a lot of fun stuff to read, by the way (such as this and this and this).