Bereft of ideas, I turn to random thoughts and non-sequitur photos.

Here in the Delaware Valley, we escaped the tragic snowstorm that pummeled the northeast last weekend. We'll pay for that one, I'm sure. If I can put in a request, make it a Saturday night, so I can sleep until they clear the streets. Thanks.

Meanwhile, the TV writers' strike is doing two things. First, it's saving me a ton of money on my electric bill, since the TV is mostly in the "off" position; which has a downside since it's new and I'd like to enjoy something besides football games on Sunday afternoon. Second, it has created even more dopey "reality" shows with names like Choir Challenge and game shows with rules that probably take longer than the show to explain. Any time you do a show where Michael Bolton is rounding up singers to compete in a choir showdown, you know that there aren't any writers left in the world.

Michael Vick had a "deathbed" confessional last week, where he wrote an impassioned letter to his judge, saying that he was "sorry" he ever got involved in dog fighting. Sure, now he's sorry. Before he got caught he was fine with it. I don't know what he expected to accomplish with such a letter. His lawyer probably wrote it, since I didn't notice any misspellings or grammatical errors.

 
By this time, I expected that a dark horse presidential candidate would have emerged from the shadows to overtake the gathering of boobs that the good people of Iowa will have to decide on soon. Obama and Clinton will spend the next year sniping at each other, while John Edwards will continue to tell us that he is the most qualified, citing some "empirical evidence" that he is the most popular Democrat. Stop saying empirical, John and you'll have a better chance.

On the Republican side, they seem to take turns saying something stupid in a sort of political circle jerk. The Mormon, the Christian and the generally uneducated leave no stone unturned when it comes to goofball ideas and beliefs that will no doubt meld the party into one giant ball of hypocrisy until they disappear up their own mouth holes. Is it over yet?

My free trial of HBO and Starz ran out during the day on Sunday. Horrified, I ran to the web to find out how much it would cost to bring them back. $89.50 a month. Jesus. I listed some more Ebola stuff in a futile effort to drum up the money to bring back the twentieth showing of Talladega Nights and the ten HBO channels that show the same programs in different time zones. I think it's mostly that I hate jumping over those blank channels and partly because I was all set to watch AC Hookers on Sunday night, only to find out that the HBO deal stopped during the Eagles game. GRAPHIC LANGUAGE, NUDITY, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT, ADULT CONTENT. I don't think it was a coincidence.