I get the attraction to American Idol, but I don't get the masochistic urges of people who audition for the show. The ones who get immediately Gonged in the tryouts especially are psychotic as well as narcissistic.

I was playing Neverwinter Nights last night and I tried not to listen in, but Jon kept hitting the pause button on the TiVo, calling me over, and saying "listen to this loser!" It was apalling but part of me was deeply amused. I'm not particularly fond of laughing at people who are publicly humiliated but my god what were they thinking?

I seem to be getting sucked into watching more and more television, thanks to the Evil Goodness of TiVo. Not only do I watch 24 and CSI, but CSI:NY and now Battlestar Galactica. The new version on the SciFi channel is actually quite compelling to the geek in me. I have no problems with the female Starbuck. She's my favorite part of the series. Edward James Olmos can of course act better in his sleep than Lorne Greene ever could and he makes a great Commander Adama. The guy who plays Apollo is a bit white bread but he plays him like a guy with a stick up his butt (as opposed to completely comatose the way Richard Hatch played him in the 70's) so there's potential for some character development there. And yeah, there's some unresolved sexual tension between Starbuck and Apollo - so what? I recall that being the case in the original 70's show, too.

And yeah, I like the Cylons. Battlestar Galactica was where I first coined the term "needs more exploding robots" and these Cylons are far more insidious. Plus, they blow up real good, too. And the Vipers don't bank to turn! They use these small jet-thingys to change position. Someone studied rudimentary physics, hooray! Not me, of course.

In haste I linked to a sanitized version of the murder of the Coptic Christians yesterday. Here is a more informative article, though it doesn't go into any detail about the 8-year old. She had her throat cut and was stabbed repeatedly, as well.