I have watched my quota of Fox News for the year.

So last night we watched the two parts of John Stewarts interview on O'Reilly. Watching anything on Fox is something best not done alone, it's like a team sport. You have to support each other and rally the team on and occasionally dump cold drinks over each other. Also, it's particularly fun to watch anything political with someone you're newly dating, because then the actual talking about things starts. Like, do you vote in local elections? How did you feel about Kerry? Exactly how libertarian are you?

From the start, the Boy said that John Stewart always comes off looking like a loser from these sparring matches, because he looks diminutive. It's true that next to O'Reilly he looks smaller, and a little tired. But I think I only love him more for lack of sweeping gestures and spray tan. After all, Stewarts best interview skill is that he knows what he's fucking talking about, and he doesn't talk about what he doesn't know. O'Reilly kept trying to make the point that it was ridiculous for Stewart to be seen as a serious newsman, to which Stewart kept agreeing. But I think he should be taken seriously as a pundit. I like him more when he's talking seriously about a subject than when he's making Jewish jokes. He's articulate and reasonable and passionate. He always takes the high road in argument, like for instance when Beck was brought up. He could have gone off about so many apeshit things that man's done, but instead his only rebuttal was that Glenn Beck wasn't Everyman because he had a tv show. Short, sweet, dismissive and yet not insulting. O'Reilly, of course, was pretty much himself. His cameramen kept laughing the whole time, which was kind of nice. He DID look diminutive though, and kinda gray at the gills. I think the Fox News makeup artist did it on purpose, OR he wouldn't let them put makeup on him cause it might have been poisoned with narrative minded nanobots.

I wonder why Stewart did the interview in the first place. I imagine it was some sort of trade off agreement for guests that have been on his show, or maybe he just does it for himself, to have a chance to be serious.

Regardless of whether or not its a good thing, I agree Stewart is the Anchor of our generation. There's no one else I can think of who would even begin to qualify. I grew up with Gwen Ifill and Morley Safer, but I'm safely in the minority there, because I come from a weird family. And maybe the point is that within our generation, the news is so utterly ridiculous, it can't be stomached without a filter of incredulity and impotent rage. Also, the Daily Show is sort of like the accompaniment to your daily intake of internet news. You have to be prepared before you watch it, know the back stories, know the headlines, to really appreciate what they choose to comment on. So its News Cliffnotes, but also Destinos? It's not like we really get our news from the Daily Show. More like we get our fortitude to keep reading and watching news from the Daily Show.

In related thoughts, I'm trying to force myself to think of the internet differently. Specifically as not "the internet" cause I feel like I should be living in Seattle about to foreclose on my house every time I say that. It's archaic. It doesn't begin to encompass what the network actually is, and what it does for us, and what it should do for us. I really want us to recognize the extent of how much we changed in the past ten years, how all our internet growing pains resolved themselves into neater more maneageable adult neuroses. But instead it will be forgotten as people push past their iphones and kindles into the brightly lit LED future.

But seriously, fuck the term Social Media.

The longest word in the english language you can make out of my name is "blathering"

Some random things...

1)We went to St. Luke's again Sunday. No, really, we woke up at like 7 and got batteries for the flashlights, and we were all super charged and stuff. It was mega cool. It was super mega cool. We found the scariest rape room in all of Cleveland. And you will see those pictures someday. After Flickr stops taking it's sweet ass time loading those pictures. I've been trying to load them for 48 hours now. 48 hours for 155 pictures is redonkalous. Oh, and I'm bringing that back.

2) The Saturday before, Alli and I were going to try and see Capitalism: A Love Story. But I was late, and we missed it. Oh capitalism, guess I don't love you that much. So instead we went to Collinwood to look at some artsy stuff. I bought a picture, and Alli made Sasha over at Waterloo Cafe try and steam some Baileys for her espresso. I wanted to try and get a copy of the new Pink Eye Magazine, so I could look at my shit in there, but we got drunk too fast and couldn't wait out its arrival. So we headed back to Prosperity and had dinner, drank some more. Two mandolin players showed up, and a couple of drunk guys jigged. A pitfall to getting drunk with Alli (no, there are no pitfalls, not really) is that her mom and my mom hang out and get drunk too. Also, both of us laugh like our mothers. So here we are, 30, drinking alcoholic coffee drinks in a woodlined bar with a bunch of older people in nice coats, laughing like our mothers and tapping our feet to fucking mandolins, and it just all kind of hits you at once. But it hits you, kisses you on the forehead, and then runs away giggling. You get old, after all. I mean, you do. I don't.

Afterwards, we met up with some people at Tina's, which is a place I'm pretty sure doesn't exist except when you're looking for it. And even that is sketchy. I saw some guys I hadn't seen in a while, and Nikki from the Exchange sang a great version of Journey, which means of course that the entire bar sang a great version of Journey, and we stayed out way later than we had meant to, given our 7 am appointment (see above). There was a guy named Bob, who had a beer holder made of a bobcat head. Simultaneously really cool and really reprehensible. On the way home, I put on that Calvin Harris album I was so unimpressed by the first time I listened to it. And it turns out that Calvin Harris is specifically for driving home at 2 am from the karoake bar, otherwise it totally sucks. How come no one told me this?

3)It happened today. The flu season's first analysis of the word "pandemic". Pandemic and I have hated each other ever since I watched the dvd special features interviews of 28 Days Later. PANDEMIC PANDEMIC PANDEMIC. Until you are all dying of smallpox, I don't want to hear that word ever again. My mother talked me into signing up for a flu shot this year. Last year, I was sick all winter from that shot. I told my mother if it happens again, she's paying my sick leave. She doesn't care, she's a nurse. Nurses have no pity.

4)If you haven't seen it already, go watch the Daily Show segment from last night where John Oliver calls CNN a bunch of...well go watch it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

5) I really have to sit and write these Halloween stories. I'll do it this weekend, I promise. I mean, I'm all out of Angel episodes on my DVR, so I have time now. I don't know what I will write them about, but I'm sure enough alcohol can fix that. I don't believe in ghosts, or supernatural stuff, or anything that makes up a good ghost story. I don't even really believe in good ghost stories. Making up stuff about dead people wandering around lost between worlds seems to be overly sentimental and trite, unless you are talking about zombies which is okay, or god-killing metaphors for Adam and Eve, which is also okay. But ghosts are always sad, or angry and sad, or confused and sad. Be careful what you're projecting about yourself, ghosthunters. I think it would be amusing to make a film about a group of donkey ghosthunters. I imagine it would play pretty much normal. Oh no, the flashlight moved! Bray Bray Bray!

6) They Might Be Giants - this Thursday. Haunted House friday. Pumpkin carving Saturday? Apple picking Sunday. No, not really. Fuck apple picking this year. It's going to be Christmas before I get to make a decent apple pie. I would like to pretend I'll be doing lots of cooking in the next few weeks, but quite frankly, I haven't done my dishes in a month. If, by some miracle, I do actually get them done, I don't think I need to be creating anymore. Ever again. I think I will learn to eat with my hands and cook everything in the toaster oven on foil. Eventually I will start only wearing foil, and sleeping on foil. I will go blind from the shininess.