I walked around pretty much all of today continually hearing from people who knew me, people who see me because we have classes together, people who know me from work, professors I had a couple years ago... pretty much everybody, all saying "Damn, you look exhausted." And they were all right. I did look exhausted. You wanna know why? BECAUSE I WAS EXHAUSTED. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even find the energy to insult people... I couldn't muster enough force to get the words to audibly roll off my tongue in a coherent manner. More often than not, people got a grumble, or some mangled gibberish that could only be interpreted as an insult if I were fluent in some of those gurgly languages that the pygmies speak... The fact that I couldn't even manage to verbally attack my stats professor should indicate to you just how off my game I was. The biggest insult for him that I could muster? I sat and worked the Red Eye crossword while he gave a review for the test we have on Friday... That's all. But I digress, because apparently it is customary to find the most exhausted looking person available, and heap all the work that you don't want to do upon them. At least that's how I understood things today. Sorry, I'm tired, so I'm a little whiny.

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Can we talk a little bit about television? (This part could get messy, so if you want to bow out now, I'll totally understand!)

First off, I need to note my saving graces on the airwaves when the Cubs are not on have to be the old classics. By classics, I don't mean I Love Lucy or anything... I'm not 65 for Christ's sake! (Although Lucy was pretty damn funny by the standards of the day!) Anyway, my idea of the classics are shows like MASH, Cheers, Law & Order, (I generally stick pretty closely to plain ol' Law & Order as opposed to the spinoffs, although occasionally those can be intriguing,) Roseanne, you know... the greats. Aside from that, television is pretty much entirely crap. Reality shows = GARBAGE ... People, you need to go out and live life instead of sitting at home watching whiny beautiful people bitch about how rough they've got it while they live rent-free and try to win shit. ANYWAY, something about the classics that upsets me though, I was under the impression that Nick at Night was dedicated to bringing the classics to the masses. For the most part they do a good job, however I do have a small bone to pick with the fine folks at Nick at Night. It has to do with "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." Now don't get me wrong, FPOBA is a fine show. I'd be lying if I said I didn't watch it before the Nick at Night folks decided to air it. However, NOW it is a different story. FPOBA is NOT a prime-time classic tv calibre show... at least not just yet. Given time, it might earn a certain nostalgic spot in our hearts and DESERVE to be in the prime time classics line up... THIS, however, is not that time. If I want a prime time classic comedy about a well-to-do african american family and all the hijinx their kids get into, I'll take the Cosby show any day of the week. I think I speak for many people when I say that I am fine with the Huxtables occupying that spot in my classic comedy line up for the moment. I love the Banks family of Bel Air and all, but leave them to the after school crowd. Because there's nothing like coming home after a tough day in the twelfth grade and relaxing with the Fresh Prince. Like I said, I'd be lying if I said I never watched and enjoyed Fresh Prince... however, it's not PRIME TIME material just yet... SORRY. Leave it to the REAL classics kids! ...The ones that I can safely fall asleep to at night...

Aside from the classics, I've got a few other axes to grind while I'm at it. (We've already touched upon reality TV, so I'll just let that sleeping dog lie... although I do smell a REAL RANT coming on for that one.) So aside from those, Howard Stern. Seriously? I thought he got all those FCC fines a few months ago and said he was done, that the fines were the final nail in his coffin. Am I wrong? Did my feeble brain just make this shit up? I mean really, it's not enough that people listen to this man talk about touching himself, and paying for women strip down so he can tell them if he thinks they need to have boob jobs, we have to actually SEE it on tv? Ok, fine, you can make your free speech argument, just as long as I can counter with my "I'm just REALLY glad I've got a functional remote when this shit is on TV" argument. Furthermore, celebrity tabloid news shows. Let's lose these altogether. If I REALLY want to know all the details of Courtney Cox's $12,000 skin regimen or what food Britney Spears served her guests at her surprise wedding, I'll learn to read, and I'll pick up one of those lame tabloid magazines, or if I'm really desperate, I'll seek it out online... I don't need it occupying a time slot that could be filled with something like a REAL news show, or sports, or classic TV... you know, something that will not turn my brain into macaroni salad. And we wonder why our kids are either anorexic because they wanna be like Mary Kate, or obese because they spend so much time watching this crap... Oh, and kids are scoring lower on standardized tests too? Am I the only one seeing the correlation here??? Here's a hint: TURN OFF THE TV AND GIVE LITTLE SUZIE AND TINY TIM A COPY OF MOBY DICK AND A FRISBEE!! Jesus, that way if they don't get a higher education based on actual education and learning, they'll at least have a shot based on some form of athletic prowess... I work in a NCAA Division I athletic department... believe me, you don't have to be ALL THAT SMART or ALL THAT TALENTED... (note to my athlete friends; please don't take this personally, because the fact that you're able to read this and see the humor automatically means I'm not talking about you, but you do know who I'm talking about!) [Stop, Breathe, inhale.... exhale....]

Wow... Ok, back to what has apparently turned into a rant.

Oh and I have to ask, wasn't the point of MTV2 to have a place where MTV would actually air MUSIC videos? You know at one point, the M in MTV stood for MUSIC... but MTV2 has turned into another MTV, where they air crappy shows that nobody wants to watch... This upsets me! They ruined the first MTV badly enough that when they realized their audience was starting to watch MTV2 instead because we wanted to see videos that they just spread out and violated the one bastian of pure music video hope that we had left.

As far as whole channels go though, I gotta say that few things bother me more than the spanish channels. Yeah, I support multiculturalism, and embracing your heritage and all that, but I also know that I don't live in Mexico. I don't spend ten pesos on a whole bottle of tequila, and I didn't have a sombrero on my head the last time I checked. So why do I have 5 spanish channels? GOOD FUCKING QUESTION. When spanish becomes the official language of the US, or Illinois, or even Chicago, THEN AND ONLY THEN will I be ok with this. If you're going to air television programming in a language other than english, be an equal opportunity provider. I want to see a Polish channel, and a German channel, and a Chinese channel, and a Swahili chanel... don't discriminate! Otherwise stop accusing me of discriminating when I bitch about this stuff!

There are more channels and shows that bother me, but we'll talk about those another time I think. What we need to address now are the commercials.

I'm tired of seeing Jared the subway guy. We get it. The guy used to eat babies all day, and when he switched to subway sandwiches he dropped a billion pounds or something... let me speak for the masses when I say WE'RE OVER IT!

MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE PRESENTLY ON TV I HATE HATE HATE the McDonalds ads where there is some sad sack sitting alone in a room with nothing to keep them company other than a puddle of what used to be their pride, and apparently several schizophrenically split personalities. You know the ads I'm referring to, people all alone, talking to themselves about people stealing their chicken... these are the poster children for paranoid schizophrenia. So what is McDonalds trying to say here? Eat this overpriced, crappy chicken of ours and develop organic brain diseases? Gee that's an effective ad campaign if ever I came across one.

Wow... this was quite the unintended rant... that kinda wore me out... as if I wasn't already beat! ~ I think I'm gonna go to bed now.

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I think I should note that I was in the room today when one of my classmates referred to someone they knew as "A totally wretched human being." And hearing someone else utter this phrase made my heart leap with joy! It was a beautiful thing!