Can we try TV chemotherapy?

My television, with years of excellent service under her belt, is dying.

I knew she* had a cancer of some sort when white lines began appearing
at the top of the screen when first powered on. But those lines faded
fairly quickly and I hoped they were merely a sign of age.

Sadly, whatever malady afflicts my poor JVC has spread so that now she
has become a defacto editor of all television shows, randomly fading
any given scene to black. While sometimes I appreciate the effort to
spare me further idiocy, the sound remains and after a few seconds,
the picture fades right back in.

This is simply unacceptable when one has The Office and Scrubs to
watch. Fortunately a backup TV exists, but it will not serve us in the
long-term. No, I must look towards the future. I must look towards...
a new television.

Since I'm not technically jobless anymore (lawyer w/clients =
employed, no matter how little he is making), it seems that buying a
TV is probably a wise move. I'm concerned about wasting money on a TV
that is obsolete out of the box (i.e. non-HD, non-digital, etc.) but I
do not have much to spend on such luxuries.

Suggestions are welcome, but mostly I just wanted to share my sadness
at losing a valued member of the household.

*Yes, my television was of the female gender. No, not for any particular reason.

Best Ends

Let's just pretend I've apologized profusely for the lack of updates, and then move on to an actual post, eh?

Best Movie Ending: This is a tough one for me, as I have seen a great many movies (984 at last count). But the first one that comes to mind was The Shawshank Redemption. Say what you will about the feasibility of two ex-cons living in a shack in Mexico, but from the moment Andy escapes, to the moment Redd begins his search, I was on the edge of my seat.

Best TV Ending: It seems to me that it's really, really hard to pull of ending a television show well. The format just doesn't lend itself to a non-episodic ending (problem, non-solution, failure of non-solution, realization of actual solution: all in 22 to 43 minutes) and many shows have met their end with decidedly mixed results. The best you can generally hope for is for a few kernels of excellence in an otherwise so-so finale.* The exception (you knew there had to be one) in my opinion is the series finale of The Office (UK version, of course). I won't give it away -- because it's absolutely amazing if you don't know what happens -- but it achieved exactly 100% of what I wanted from that series. Brilliant.

Best Game Ending: Another area that is rife with disappointment. Beyond the "YOU HAVE WON PLAY AGAIN?" of the NES days, even today's whiz-bang games still often lack a real punch at the ending. I'm not terribly well-rounded when it comes to games -- console titles like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy aren't my thing -- but from the many computer games I've played, the Starcraft and Diablo series stands out as pretty well-finished products. Perhaps that's only because the entirety of the storyline was good, and the endings just kept up the excellence.

Best Book Ending: Tough call. I am not as well-read as I'd like, so it's difficult for me to really say. In fact, I'm just going to leave this to the librarians and English majors, and plead ignorance.

Best Life Ending: Trick question. Life doesn't really end, does it? I guess if someone dies while saving 80 nuns and 120 children from certain doom while curing cancer and ending world hunger, that'd be a pretty good ending. Until I do that, however, the story is often better than how it ends, as far as life goes.

*Buffy ended this way; so did Angel. Seinfeld, in my opinion, didn't really even reach the so-so level. MASH probably holds the gold in this category, but since I didn't see it at the time, and thus did not have the emotional connection to the characters, I went with my own personal favorite.

Obligatory Voting Post

You should vote. Today should probably be a holiday to make it easier on you, but even though it isn't, vote anyhow.

I live in one of the most liberal cities in this hemisphere, a place where my largely progressive vote will most likely be but one in a huge tide of left-leaning ballots, but I'm still voting.

Even if you're the opposite, you should vote as well. I'd rather that some of you thought a little bit harder before you did, and about the right things, so here's a list of what to consider today:

The Iraq War
Government disaster response
Whether your congressman is corrupt
Whether your party supports the corruption
The environment

Your positions on these things don't matter to me. Everyone can disagree. Vote your conscience. But do not vote based on:

John Kerry's inability to read a teleprompter
The gay marriage boogeyman
Anything involving "culture wars"
Fear

These are red herrings. None of them truly matter to the welfare of our country because all are irrelevant to this election, especially that last one. Finally, don't vote based on any ad you've seen on TV, ever. They are all (Democrat and Republican alike) distortions and should be taken about as seriously as you would take voting advice found on the back of a sugar packet.

2-0

My exceptional legal career continued today, as I went to court to fight what I considered to be an unjust MUNI ticket. Also, because I didn't know it would only cost $100 (the MUNI website says fines can be $500) until after I scheduled the court date.

Turns out, it takes 45 minutes but all the judge asked for was my MUNI pass at the time -- which I gave him -- and the whole thing was dismissed.

Will I remember this 40 years from now, when I sit atop the Supreme Court dispensing justice as a robe-clad modern-day gladiator of the legal arena? Probably not. But it was still fun to win one.

Oh, and I'm 2-0 because I fought a parking ticket in law school and won that, too. For those keeping score.