The "do not click this link" worked like a charm! I love the site and have bookmarked it. Yep, laughed, too. Even while reading about Buffy, Angel, etc. :-) Great cross-referncing of characteristics, etc.

Yeah, well, I figured most of you would click on it.

I have a certain sick fascination with trying to quantify and label everything around me, so seeing someone (or a group of someones, whatever) deconstruct broad swaths of pop culture really appealed to me.

Especially as that's about the way I watch almost anything anymore: "What are they trying to imply here? How am I being manipulated right now?"

... I'm not sure if you're referring to my fantasy of having a couple of human-repro Bots as companions since I've written about that before?

I guess I label and quantify different things. Due to past experience, and to present circumstances, it's people I tend to ask "What are they trying to imply here? How am I being manipulated right now?" So, I escape. Well-written TV shows help me do that.

Still and all, I can also enjoy doing some deconstruction on those escape routes. ;-)

And, who knows? Those well-written TV shows on DVD (and occasional movies on DVD since I rarely go out to a movie and don't have cable) may keep me up to date on pop culture in my reclusiveness.

Not necessarily a bad thing. News I can get on the web or in print media -- in depth and with opinions, if I want. But pop culture? It's an important component of societal norms and what may come in the future of politics, science, etc.

So.... Um... your media intake is entirely Luddite? Printed matter and such?

Or you partake of DVDs? Is this a NetFlix / Blockbuster kind of thing, or do you have the massive Wall-o'-Purchased-Media?

I'd say there are some things you've missed in 15 years, but most of 'em are either available in rental/purchase format, so you may not have missed 'em after all.

Good media, after all, is good media, regardless of origin.

Mostly, though, it continues to be Newton Minow's "vast wasteland."

Well, the anti-movies thing really started in Las Cruces -- boycotting Allen Theaters because, being a local monopoly, they never bothered putting in good sound or anything like that.

And I was pretty anti-TV even before then. I remember being resentful that there were hours during the week that I couldn't go over to the Nuke House and talk to anyone, because you'd all be glued to the tube watching The X Files or Star Trek: Next Generation.

I've seen maybe a half-dozen movies in theaters since 1995. I've seen only maybe a dozen or two more on video since then. Why not more? Dunno... I don't like the passivity; I hate being manipulated, and that includes the intent of the director.

So what do I do for entertainment / media input? Mostly listen to music -- mostly old school, but a few new things cycled in; 2700 CDs provides for a pretty might "play it on random" experience -- and browse the web. Short attention span, yes... but at my pace, and I can take it or leave it.

(I don't even like the fact that so many people are linking video clips. I value my time / control over my time too much! I don't want to take input at the presenters' pace; I want to consume at *my* pace.)

I do read some dead tree materials. My bathroom reading for the last week or two has been the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae. Before then it was the 2nd edition of Winning Ways.

My wife has pointed out that I'm one of the few people she knows that doesn't do much fiction reading for pleasure. I will re-read old favorites, but I feel that reading a new series is too much of a commitment: I have to learn the world, the characters, the system... and I just don't want to do that. *shrug*

Oh, and while I have you here...

You DO know Rush tickets are on sale in your area, right now?

Get 'em while they're hot!

(1) I have a family. Ergo, I'm poor.

(2) Rush hasn't really excited me in 10+ years. And I saw them back then...

Meh.