Did anyone see Sarah Palin’s interview this evening on The CBS Evening News? It was actually frightening thinking that this is someone who could soon be — as the saying goes — a “heartbeat away” from the presidency.

Here are a few highlights:

COURIC:  Do you consider yourself a feminist?

PALIN:  I do.  A feminist who believes in equal rights.

As opposed to…what? Are there feminists who don’t believe in equal rights?  I sort of thought that the feminist movement’s very purpose was to address gender inequality.  It was one of the few times Palin actually answered the question, even if the answer was a bit laughable.

COURIC:  It will take about ten years for domestic drilling to have an impact on consumers.  So isn’t the notion of “Drill, Baby, Drill” a bit misleading to people who think this will automatically lower their gas prices and quickly?

PALIN:  Well we shoulda started ten years ago, tapping into domestic supplies that America is so rich in.  Alaska has billions of gallons of oil, hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas onshore and offshore.  Shoulda started doing it ten years ago, but better late than never.  It’s got to be an “all of the above” approach to energy independence.

So if we had started ten years ago on a project that would take ten years’ time for consumers to start feeling the benefits, we’d be feeling the benefits.  I think that’s what she’s saying.  And I think we already could have figured that much out.

What many of us still can’t seem to figure out is what happens ten years after that, when we’re suddenly getting plenty of oil — assuming that works out — and we’re just as dependent as we ever were on a commodity that still has a limited supply.  Human nature would dictate that we’d just blindly go on enjoying the use of the newly-obtained oil, without regard for what happens next.  And that’s reckless.  Environmentally and economically.

Couric then asked about Palin’s swipe at Joe Biden, when, speaking at a political rally, she said, “I’ve been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.”

COURIC:  When you have a 72-year-old running mate, is that a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden’s been around a while?

PALIN:  Oh, no, it wasn’t negative at all.

Stop the music.  That was a lie.  You can tell, from the way she said the remark, that it was not intended as a positive remark.  She continued:

PALIN:  He’s got a lot of experience, and just stating the fact there that we’ve been hearing his speeches for all these years.  He’s got a tremendous amount of experience, and you know, I’m the new energy, the new face, the new ideas.  And he’s got the experience.

Seriously.  She really said that.  This, coming from the woman whose running mate’s entire campaign is centered on the relative lack of experience of Barack Obama.  So if she’s now trying to portray experience as a bad thing, and the “fresh face/new idea” person as the good thing, what, exactly is she saying about that 72-year-old, experienced running mate of hers?

COURIC:  In establishing your world view, I was curious: what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and understand the world?

PALIN:  I’ve read most of them, again, with a great appreciation of the press, of the media —

COURIC:  Which ones specifically?  I’m curious.

PALIN:  Um, all of ‘em.  Any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

COURIC:  Can you name a few?

PALIN:  I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.  Alaska isn’t a foreign country where it’s kind of suggested, it seems like, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, DC may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?”  Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Wow.  Just wow.

Asked about whether she feels global warming is manmade, (and Katie had to ask more than once to get an answer), she eventually got around to saying this:

PALIN:  …There are man’s activities that can be contributed [sic] to the issues that we’re dealing with now with these impacts.  I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical and over history we have seen changes there.  But, um, kinda doesn’t matter at this point as we debate, “What caused it?”  The point is, it’s real, we need to do something about it.

It kinda doesn’t matter what caused it?  Can someone please explain to me how we can do something about it if we don’t get definitive answers about what caused it?  I agree that there are cyclical weather patterns that are in the mix; that, however, does not mean that we should not be working to identify the elements of global warming that are manmade and to deal with them immediately.

Then there was this, when asked about homosexuality:

PALIN:  I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions they make in their own personal relationships.  I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay.  And I love her dearly.  She is not my “gay friend,” she is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that is a choice I haven’t made.

I’d like to be a fly on the wall the next time these two dear friends get together for coffee.  I’d love to know how her friend would react to the asinine notion that being gay is a choice.  Anyone who genuinely believes that homosexuality is merely a matter of choice must, by definition, believe that they themselves could just have easily “chosen” to be gay, too.  Could you have gone the “other way” — whichever that way is — on a whim?

The only “choice” when it comes to homosexuality is whether or not to act on the urges you feel.  But being gay or straight — being attracted to whomever you are attracted to — is not something that you just choose to do one morning like one chooses what color shirt to pull out of the closet.

Thursday night’s vice presidential debate ought to be a hoot.

Back in December of 2005, after nearly two years of blogging, I made a decision that got me in a little hot water with some of my regular readers:  I decided to move my blog from AOL, where it had been since I first launched it in February, 2004, to Blogger.  (I’m now using Wordpress at my own site, for those of you who read via a feed reader.)

I made the decision because of what was a series of poor examples of customer service from AOL itself, culminating in the appearance of banner ads that we bloggers had absolutely no control over.  We weren’t even told that we were going to have them until they appeared.  It made some of us angry.  So we packed up and left.

And some of the people who had been fairly loyal readers in “J-Land,” AOL’s special name for its little blogging community, really let those of us who were leaving hold it.  We were traitors.  We were the scum of the earth.  We were fair-weather friends who were being childish and over-reacting.

More than one person tossed a few “good riddances” our way.  Some seemed to take great pleasure in stating that they’d never set their virtual foot in Blogger, where a lot of us ended up.

These angry people — who were going to let their feelings be known, a courtesy they refused us — decided they were going to make AOL J-Land better than it had ever been.  One day, they pledged, beating on their chests, J-Land would never even miss those of us who had been there from the start or nearly the start.  And they accused us of acting like we were the ones in “junior high.”

Fast forward to present day, as many AOL J-Landers are just learning some surprising news, despite claims that everyone should have, but apparently didn’t, receive email notification of a major change:  As of November 1, 2008, AOL J-Land will be no more.  AOL is shutting down (their word for it is “sunsetting,” if you can believe that!) its journals community and several other services because, apparently, they weren’t generating enough income.  And, those journal writers who opt-in will can their journals’ contents transferred to — wait for it — Blogger.

No, really.  I am not making this up.

Had we stayed put in J-Land, aggravation about AOL’s cavalier treatment of us aside, we might have seen more red flags go up a while back when novelist John Scalzi, who had been blogging professionally for AOL for some time, was suddenly out the door.  Granted, he made it clear that it was a mutual decision at the time; but the fact that AOL would even consider dropping their most popular blogger, a writer who motivated countless discussions on his blog and through posts on other blogs, and served as the host of a kind of community square, spoke volumes.

The sad thing is that the majority of folks who are in J-Land are genuinely nice people.  They’re incredibly supportive of each other.  One blogger does a post about a death in the family or a medical crisis, for example, and they’ll receive dozens of comments of condolence or prayer in no time.  And there are some long-time readers of this blog who never for a moment stooped to the level of the childish “our way or the highway” types who were more interested in controlling what other people did than worrying about the quality of the community.  They got it:  they understood that a blogger’s value has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with the software that runs the mechanics of the webpage itself.  It’s about the person, not where that person writes.

But like many problematic factions, the squeaky wheels were pretty loud.  Much louder, unfortunately, than the good people who tried to state what should have been obvious in a valiant effort to keep unity afloat.

Another sad thing is that there were several notable bloggers in J-Land who have since passed away.  Since they’re no longer around to “opt-in” to a transfer, blogs like those started by Frank or Pam will suddenly just cease to exist.  Sorry, says AOL; it’s not their problem.

I really feel bad for the good people who weighed their options and felt that staying with AOL was their best option.  I hope they’ll find a better place to blog and will continue to share their unique voices with the rest of us.  I’ve always believed that blogging gives us all a great way to see other people’s perspectives and help us all think about things in ways we might never have considered before.  They deserve much better than to find they no longer have a place in the blogosphere to call home.

As for those venomous territorial bloggers who were so quick to write us off as being unworthy of their attention, I wonder how they now feel about being treated as though they’re the “deadwood.”  Not exactly a happy place to be, is it?

And I’m willing to say something they refused to say when they had the chance:  even those folks deserve better treatment than that.

I’m not sure exactly how you can have a meme to determine whether one surfs the internet like a man or a woman without asking something about porn, but I gave this little quiz a shot and here’s what I got.

Your Surfing Habits are 80% Male, 20% Female

If we had to guess, we would guess that you are a man. You use the internet to make your life more efficient - and to make you smarter. For you, the internet is like a vast encyclopedia. You search and surf extensively. You look up everything online.

Good guess.

When he’s not trying to make it out like he single-handedly saved the world by suspending his campaign — where was Palin and why didn’t she step up? — to solve the economic crisis, he’s making a big deal about Obama’s previous statements that he’d be willing to meet with foreign leaders without precondition.

First, and let me get this one out of the way, if McCain has all of the answers about the nation’s economic ills, I wonder why he felt the need to suspend the campaign and “rush” back to Washington to begin with:  why didn’t he take care of these issues while they were still merely possibilities? Why did it have to go this far before he took action?  Isn’t fending off problems before they happen part of leadership?

As for the whole precondition debate, I’d love it if we could never hear this word again.

I wish our candidates for the Oval Office would just drop it.  It’s a pointless debate:  whether the president himself or one of his representatives further down the chain of command meets with someone without setting specific requirements or not, a meeting without precondition will have already happened.  So what real difference does who conducts the meeting actually make?

And if the president is supposed to be our chief representatives to other countries, then shouldn’t he have the option — even if he never, ever uses it — to make such a meeting in a crisis?

Let’s go back to Hillary’s famous 3am phone call scenario.  A crisis happens.  A quick decision has to be made.  The president needs to make contact with a foreign leader.  What do you prefer to have happen: a series of meetings between lower-level people with preconditions that have to be met before the process can move forward so that people in the next level up can then get together, working their way up to a meeting of the two leaders; or our president getting the other nation’s leader on the phone in whatever manner it takes to resolve a crisis before it escalates to something worse?

And let me save you some time:  if you believe that in a crisis, preconditions should be thrown out of the window in favor of solving a problem with as small a cost as possible, then the whole argument over preconditions goes right out the window with it.  If you’re for preconditions sometimes, then you’re obviously not against them all of the time, so why engage in such a pointless argument?

It’s not an example of the naivate of a would-be president who says preconditions may not be imposed; it’s an example of the naivate of voters who’d allow themselves to be fooled by an obvious smokescreen that blinds us to the real problems in the world.

Like the economy, stupid.

I made a modification of the typeface here at Patrick’s Place.  The body type is now a closer match to the new logo.  Granted, it’s not the same typeface, but it looks closer than what I had before.

But what do you think:  is this typeface still as easy to read?  Does it give you a headache?  Or does it make the blog look a little crisper and cleaner?

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little preoccupied with the economy these days; it’s not that I have some massive portfolio of stocks that I’m watching take a nosedive, nor am I struggling to pay an adjustable rate mortgage whose payments have suddenly jumped hundreds of dollars to an unaffordable level.

My biggest problem is credit card debt. Stupid credit card debt. The kind that only people with far too little common sense manage to build up.

And so now I’m working to get things turned around. I can report that in the past few weeks — nearing a month now, in fact — I haven’t put a single thing on a credit card that I haven’t either immediately repaid or scheduled a payment to pay for. In other words, I have managed not to increase my debt load. That’s definitely a good thing.

If only some millionaire would take pity on me and mail me a check. Believe me: I don’t need a million bucks. Not anywhere close. So anyone out there with money burning a hole in their pocket…you just let me know!

In the meantime, I found this list of the 25 top careers to pursue in a recession.

Give it a look because you’ll use it for this week’s answer. Unless, of course, you’re rich, in which case you’re allowed to skip this week’s question, provided that you send me a check. (And of the non-bouncing variety, if you don’t mind.)

• First to play last week: Rick of Mmmm, That’s Good Coffee…. Congratulations!

(According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here is this week’s “Sunday Seven” question. Either answer in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your blog in which you answer the questions. A general link to your blog cannot count. Enjoy!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Name the seven career fields from the above list that you’d be least likely to pursue, even if you really needed a job.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.) You may include this link in the URL space when leaving your comment, or in the comment itself. As long as it’s there in one spot or the other.

I have been blessed with some amazing friends.  I’ve never been “Mr. Popularity,” one of those types who seems to be surrounded by friends at every moment.  Then again, I’ve never truly wanted to be, despite occasional bouts of lonliness or depression at various points.

I found this little friend quiz and gave it a try. I can’t really admit that my relationship with my own family is “strained,” although there are times when I definitely seek out advice from my friends long before my family. But I couldn’t agree more with the last two lines.

Its fundamentals may be strong, as one candidate for president seems to believe, but the economy‘s a little rough at the moment. That’s the topic of this week’s set of questions.

• First to play last week: Cat of Sweet Memes. Congratulations!

(According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. Overall, do you feel like you’re in better financial shape now than you were five years ago, worse shape, or roughly the same shape?

2. Of the debts you currently owe, what percentage of them would you say are unnecessary debts that were caused by not watching your money closely enough?

3. Are you worried about the economy’s effect on your job?

4. Take the quiz: What’s Your Money Personality?

5. Should the government bail out the struggling banks, or should the government divide the money they’re going to give the banks among taxpayers as a one-time “shot in the arm” for America’s workers?

6. If a rich stranger were to hand you a check in an amount equal to a year’s salary, would that amount take care of all of your debt, make you feel financially stress-free, both or neither?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), send me an email! I’d love to be able to include it in a future edition of the Saturday Six.

MY ANSWERS:
1. Slightly better, but should be much better.

2. Honestly, probably 70% or so. I’m not proud.

3. Very.

4. Your Money Personality is Healthy

You have a good relationship with money.

You don’t spend wildly, but you’re not opposed to treating yourself on occasion.

In general, you save some of what you earn.

You know the importance of a nest egg.

You aren’t afraid of being financially literate - you embrace learning more about finances.

From a retirement plan to having an emergency fund, you know what you need to have to be safe.

5. I’d vote for the shot-in-the-arm for workers. The banks are more guilty than consumers who over-extended themselves, because the banks are supposed to know better even when the consumers don’t.

6. Probably both.

I was able to catch a bit of The Late Show with David Letterman last night, when David Letterman was still talking about John McCain’s sudden decision to bow out of a scheduled appearance the night before.  McCain canceled his appearance at the last minute, so he could play superhero and “race” to Washington to save the country from an economy he told Letterman was “about to crater.”

In the clips below — from Wednesday’s show — Letterman, who made it clear that he regards McCain as a real hero for his war service, wasn’t particularly amused:

“So the economy is about to crater.  You’re a senator, a fourth-term senator from Arizona.  You go back to Washington.  You handle what you need to handle.  Don’t suspend your campaign.  You let your campaign go on, shouldered by your vice presidential nominee.  That’s what you do.  You don’t quit.  Or is that really a good thing to do?”

Then there was this about McCain’s absent “second string quarterback:”

“You say, ‘I gotta get back to Washington to save this country.’  Good for you.  ‘And while I’m gone, campaigining in my stead will be my great running mate from the state of Alaska, Sarah Palin.  And she comes out and campaigns.  What happened there?  What’s the problem?  Where is she?  Why isn’t she doing that?”

Here’s a clip of nine minutes’ worth of Letterman’s remarks on McCain’s last-minute decision.  Enjoy.

Towards the end of the clip, Letterman points out that McCain had called him personally to tell him he was “racing back to Washington,” then pointed to a supposedly-live clip of McCain sitting down for an interview with Katie Couric.

Maybe his pit crew had to change a tire during the race to the airport and they just happened to stop right outside CBS News?

On last night’s show, Letterman pointed out that after all of that, McCain didn’t actually leave for Washington until Thursday morning, which would have given him time to make Letterman’s show with no problem.

The ongoing drama with the New AT&T continues.

First, let me recap:

• In mid-July, I signed up for “Auto Draft” service, which allows the New AT&T to automatically debit the payment due from my checking account on the due date.  One less thing for me to worry about, assuming they don’t screw things up. I received an email from them thanking me for enrolling.  So they clearly knew I had done so.  Just sayin’…
• In August, I got an email saying my payment was past due.  I went to the website and saw that the payment was due.  So I attempted to pay it online and a box popped up warning me that since I was already enrolled in Auto Draft, I should not proceed with a payment because doing so could result in my checking account being debited twice.  So I followed their website’s instructions, and waited for them to just debit the money as I had previously instructed.
• They didn’t.  My telephone service was suspended.  I called — on my cell phone — and explained why I hadn’t paid, and reminded them that they had my account info:  just debit the payment and be done with it!  They informed me that it takes at least a full month for Auto Draft to kick in, no matter what the website says.  So I paid.  Phone was back on that day.
• September’s payment was due on Wednesday, Sept. 10.  They authorized a debit from my account on Thursday, Sept. 4th for the amount due plus a $30 reconnect fee for my prior month’s “late” payment.  On Saturday, Sept. 6th, they suspended my internet service for “non-payment,” despite the fact that they had already authorized the auto draft two days before that for a payment that still wasn’t due for another four days.  When I called and pointed all of this out, they told me there was nothing I could do until the billing department returned the following Monday.  I asked for a supervisor, and my internet was restored that Sunday.
• Fed up with two months’ worth of foolishness, I cancelled my home telephone service on Tuesday, Sept. 9th.

This brings me to last night, when I received an email from the New AT&T stating that I owed $82.  Eighty-two bucks for just internet service?  Yeah, something’s wrong.  Again.

So this morning I call them up and try to get answers.  It turns out that while they credited me money for the local phone service, they just went ahead and billed me through October 2nd on long distance service.  Did you catch that?  I’ve still got unlimited long distance through October 2nd on a dead phone I cancelled on September 9th.

I asked why the same computer system that could see I’d cancelled my local service and could issue a credit for that was somehow able to miss that detail on the long distance service.  She didn’t have an answer for that, which didn’t surprise me at all.  There’s no explaining a series of screw-ups this large.

And to make matters worse, they can’t correct the problem until the next billing cycle — after they just go ahead and debit the extra money they already know I don’t owe them from my checking account in October.  They’ll give me a credit in November, but they still will have shorted me in October.  Guess times must be tough at the phone company, too.

But the one good bit of news is that after the customer service rep sat through this story and read all of the notes previous reps had left as they sorted through this comedy of errors, she did credit me the $30 reconnect fee I should never have had to pay to begin with.  There’s just no way to know whether that will drop the amount they debit from $82 to $52, or whether I’ll see that $30 in November along with the extra long distance.

I don’t know what’s going on with the “New AT&T,” but I sure wish we could get the old one back.

I’m just waiting for them to send me one of those silly little surveys about their customer service.  I can’t wait to tackle the question about whether or not I’d recommend the New AT&T to my friends!

Everyone who is a big fan of Sarah Palin, or who thinks that she was the perfect choice for John McCain to make as his running mate should be concerned about this.  I quote from Jeff Tompkins’ blog:

“On September 7, eight days after Gov. Sarah Palin was announced as McCain’s running-mate and three days after the Republican convention ended, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said Palin would answer no questions until the media treated her with ‘some level of respect and deference.’”

Respect and deference?  Does anyone believe that McCain would make such a demand about Obama or Biden?  Does anyone think that McCain thinks anyone else should be treated with “some level” of respect and deference?

But wait.  It gets better.  Quoting Jeff’s blog again:

“At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

“McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.”

It was McCain who made experience such a major issue by comparing his experience, including his vast experience as a Prisoner of War, which is somehow supposed to make him ready to lead from Day One, to Obama’s.  (Yes, this “Day One” thing has been made to sound so dire by both sides that it only seems appropriate that we capitalize it!)

When McCain then selected relative unknown Palin as his running mate, he insisted that she was more experienced than Obama.

So…

Why isn’t Obama demanding a similar style for his debate with McCain?  If he has less experience than Palin, and Palin can’t handle a “real” debate, then you’d think Obama would be making the most demands.

If Palin is the perfect choice as a running mate, ready to lead from Day One, and so much more experienced than Obama is, why can’t she handle the same kind of debate Obama himself is headed towards?  Why limit anything?  Why not turn her loose on Biden and watch the proverbial bloodbath?

Sounds like a double standard to me.  And when it is focused on the politician labeled “one heartbeat away from the presidency,” that should give everyone pause.

The public deserves answers from those who want to lead the nation.  The public deserves answers to questions that aren’t “softballs.”  And the public deserves candidates who aren’t afraid of facing the press to answer its questions.

If the questions are unfair, we’ll know it.  But we can’t judge a candidate by his or her answers if the candidate won’t provide any.  And any candidate who isn’t willing to step up clearly isn’t ready to lead from Day One.  The pressure coming from the press corps is nothing compared to the pressure of leading a country and making decisions that affect people’s lives on a daily basis.

If you can’t handle the former, how can you seriously be expected to be able to handle the latter?

Today was supposed to be the day some friends of mine from church headed to the hospital to deliver their son, Lucas.  Lucas apparently wasn’t all that patient about it, and decided he wanted to be a “Monday’s Child” instead of a “Tuesday’s Child,” so he was born yesterday morning.

After work, I dropped by the hospital for a quick hello just to see him.

The mom, Christi, looked amazing in the recovery room, reminding me why women are supposed to be the ones to give birth:  no man could go through childbirth of any kind and not require three or four months in ICU!

At least.

The dad, Rick, was holding Lucas when I walked into the room.  As I watched, I noticed that Lucas’s hands — the tiniest little hands — were folded together just under his chin, fingers intertwined, as if he were praying.  So precious.

Welcome to the world, little Lucas.

This week, several prime time television shows make their season debuts, and in some cases, their big premieres.  Yesterday morning, while flipping through the morning news programs, I caught a clip of NBC’s Today featuring a guest from the show Heroes.

I’ve never seen an episode of Heroes, because long before it premiered, I realized that it was going to be one of those shows that you have to watch too carefully…the kind you have to drop everything else for so that you can sit glued to the set so you won’t miss any important clue about some dramatic revelation.

(It’s entirely possible, since I’ve never seen the show, that I was wrong about that little guess.  But by now, it’s too late to just pick up in the middle, so it doesn’t matter any more.)

Anyway, this actor made the comment that he thought the long wait during summer hiatus — and in the case of Heroes, the wait was apparently much longer than that — was a good thing because it makes the fans just want the show that much more.

Nope.

Sorry.

Wrong.

The television viewer in me doesn’t buy that ridiculous argument for a second.  Waiting three months to see the next new episode of a show I like enough to make time to watch during the regular season doesn’t make me want that next episode more.  It makes me want to see what other shows are out there that have newer episodes available sooner.

A couple of seasons ago, I liked a show on USA Network called The 4400.  It was a science fiction series about 4,400 people who disappeared over a period of decades, then reappeared all at once from outer space with an agenda to dramatically change the world.  Some of the returning people seemed to have good motives, but all did not.

USA scheduled the show to air against traditional television seasons, so the show would have its “season” premiere in June or so, then run through the summer and wrap up that “season” in August.  By the time the following June rolled around, despite a ridiculous number of reruns of the few episodes that had been produced, you still had to go back and re-watch everything so you’d remember all of the little plotlines you were about to see advance in the next season.

It didn’t make me want to see the show that much more; in fact, waiting almost a full year to see a new episode since the cliffhanger the previous summer was almost enough to make me forget the show had ever been there.  I almost managed to miss one of the show’s season premieres because it didn’t occur to me to even look for it.  I happened to see a promo for it and realized it was that time of year.

Of course, the fact that The 4400 was a cable program says a lot about the traditional networks’ stubborn refusal to have a 52-week television season.  By taking summers off — and filling the summer months with that ridiculous reality crap — the networks just invite viewers to go elsewhere for entertainment.

And they hope that every September, when it’s time for premiere week, that those loyal viewers remember to come back and see what’s new.  They could afford to do that back when there were only three or four channels to choose from. But as competitive as the business is these days, with umpteen million channels out there hoping for your attention any time you pick up the remote, that three-month “downtime” just isn’t a good idea.

In the old days, a season was more than 30 weekly episodes.  There are some shows nowadays that seem generous if they manage to pop out 18 new shows in a given season.  And I’m not talking about the klunkers that get canceled after a few weeks.

It’s time the networks do away with the end of the season and keep new shows on all year round.  If they have to force limited-run series like Biggest Loser and Survivor into the mix, that’s fine; just give one or two shows a breather now and then to make room for them.  That’s still better than putting all of your regular programs on rerun patrol.  Then I’d have no reason to hunt down new shows when my favorites have nothing new for me.

The only show I’m looking forward to seeing is CSI:, the original one, not the Miami or New York versions, to see what happens with Warrick’s apparent murder.  (I’m pretty sure the character is being killed off, because it looked like he had sustained injuries that would not lend themselves to a “miracle recovery” in the season finale.  The promo I saw the other day indicated that CSI: doesn’t return until the first week or so of October, so it’s that much longer I have to wait around to see what happens next.  And it’s that much longer that I have to stew about it.

How about you?  Any shows you’re eagerly awaiting this season?  How would you feel about the networks killing the “summer vacation” scheduling plan?  Would you be more likely to get into a show that would offer more new episodes year-round?

On this date in 1989, an unwelcome visitor named Hugo made its mark in Charleston as a Category 4 hurricane.  It had been a Category 5 before weakening slightly just before landfall.  It caused $7 billion in damage in the mainland United States, making it the costliest storm up to that point.  (It is now the sixth-costliest.)

I was living in Columbia at the time, and Hugo was so powerful when it got 100 miles inland and reached Columbia that it knocked our power out for a week!

Charleston has been lucky over the last 19 years.  (Excuse me while I knock on something made of wood for a moment.)

I don’t like hurricanes.  Why am I living on the coast?

I’m just hoping that luck doesn’t run out any time soon.