Miscellany Based on Cities in Georgia

Needmore!
I’d forgotten the degree to which having an office job cuts into your free time. Spend eight or nine hours in an office doing nothing but writing what passes for “humor,” and the last thing you want to do when you get home is write stuff on a weblog.

And somehow, I’m getting even less accomplished than when I was working from home with more distractions. I’m sure I just need to get back in the routine of going to work, but it’s been a month already and it still feels all weird.

Social Circle!
Whatever the WordPress people did to their blog editor, they messed it up something fierce. It makes it a real pain to write anything on here and give the good people the crucial updates on my rock and roll life. If this keeps up, I’ll have to actually talk to people in person. And that means they can talk back and interrupt me to contradict me or to talk about themselves, all things I don’t have to bother with on a blog.

Plus, all the blog editing programs I can find either suck or are currently broken. I’ve started writing one for OS X, but that goes back to the no free time problem.

Rome!
I was so surprised by how “The Sopranos” lived up to the hype around it, that I decided to check out some other HBO series. I’d seen “Deadwood” in hotels before, and it just doesn’t do anything for me at all. Last night I decided to try out “Rome,” because as with anything about ancient Rome, it has obvious appeal: fight scenes and nudity.

The show has enough of those, but really not much else. It’s got super-high production values, obviously, but the writing and plotting are just kind of predictable. Not necessarily bad, just kind of “there.” I made it through the first two episodes and I’m not really compelled to keep watching it. Maybe it gets better?

Cumming!
snicker

Decatur!
Rain clued me into the fact that Roy Blount, Jr.’s new book, Long Time Leaving, is out now. (Blount grew up in Decatur, just like I did for several years!)

I don’t believe I’ve managed to convince anyone to be a fan of Blount’s, and if you’re not already, this book isn’t going to win you over. But I like it so far. I’m still impressed at his ability to make prose feel like poetry — he rambles and meanders around a topic for a few pages, throwing out seemingly unrelated bits of information, and it’s not until the end of it that the whole picture comes together, like a sudden jolt. Still, this one feels even more like a collection of disparate essays and magazine columns than his previous collections.

Bethlehem!
A new collection of the comic book Fables is out, this one containing the Christmas special. It’s not my favorite of the collections, but if you’ve been reading Fables, it’s a must-have. And if you haven’t been reading it, then there’s something wrong with you.

Cox!
The Bush Administration is having more fun with checks and balances this week. I can’t read much before my eyes glaze over with liberal rage, but from the picture and the headline it looks like something about GW ordering Senator Palpatine not to testify before the increasingly powerless Galactic Senate Congress. Dumb old Constitution!

Doraville!
This TV Funhouse ran quite a while ago (the Robert Blake references are your first clue), but it still cracks me up every time. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen on SNL in the past couple of years. Don’t question it!

Zebulon!
I just like saying “Zebulon!” I hope when the aliens come, one of them is named Zebulon. And they land in Roswell.