Monthly Archives: October 2009

Some Random Stuff for Your Pipe

October 30, 2009
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1. Today’s Mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom! Tonight we’re going to this restaurant down by the water that is famous for their king crab legs. I’m not the biggest fan of crab legs (I’ll eat them occasionally, but feel like every time I do I’m pressing my luck because I’m just waiting for a really fishy tasting one to ruin them for me) so I’ll just get a steak or something.

2. Dear Survivor contestants. Stop being mean to Shambo! You guys are really getting on my nerves. After Shambo was forced to send someone to the other tribe the bitchy girls were like “Yeah, that was totally her way of throwing her power in our faces.” Um, what? I hate you people. Love, Craig.

3. I’m reading Star Wars: Death Troopers and it is awesome! Star Wars and Zombies? What’s not to love? You’ll get a full review when I’m done, but I already highly recommend it!

4. Here’s the Legend of the Seeker season 2 poster. I stand by this show and think it’s really awesome. I’m excited for the new season to premiere on November 7th! The day before my birthday! ::wink wink::

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5. So I watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on DVD the other day. It wasn’t as awful as I remember but it still wasn’t nearly as good as it should have been. The human parts weren’t as excruciatingly painful as I thought they were the first time around. It was stupid fun I suppose. I just wish the final fight was a bit longer. The battle in the woods at the midway point was ten times better than the final one.

6. The original V miniseries and V: The Final Battle are both airing Sunday on SciFi SyFy. I’ve never seen either of them before so I’m pretty excited even though I’m sure they’re really dated. I just remember being petrified when I saw glimpses of peeling skin and green lizard people when my older brothers watched it when I was a kid.

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If Frankenstein wants a seat on the subway, it would be wise to give it to him:

October 28, 2009
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Just Sign the Damn Thing Already!

October 28, 2009
By

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Let’s say you have something that needs to be signed by all departments at work. Just a standard form that is routed around the office for signature. I hate when you have those people that are like “I need to be last.” It is declared like a proclamation from the mountaintops. “I am the most important person here!” Um, really? I don’t think so. You will be in whatever position I put you in and you will like it. You can’t even bring it to them and say “Oh, Person A is busy, I figured I’d get your’s in the meantime.” No, because they need to see Person A’s before they write their own.

People don’t do this because they’re higher up on the organization chart. By all means, the head of the company should be last. I completely agree with that. But some people think they should be last (or near the end) because their department function is more important than others, and therefore us peons need to sign before they will even think of signing because they are way too busy and important to deal with such things until everyone else is certain that it should be signed. We can be the same level in the corporate chain, but they think they have more authority because of what they do and it drives me crazy. And the thing is, you can’t force a person to sign. They withhold their signature as a show of power.

But I also think they do this out of fear and lack of confidence in their own job. If they insist on signing last they can see a list of ten other signatures and be pretty assured that those ten other people checked everything out and that it all seems to be in proper order. They’re so unsure of themselves that seeing the other signatures gives them a sense of security. It’s like they’re worried about signing too early for fear that someone will see their signature and be like “Oh holy fuck! This is so wrong! Why did you sign it when you shouldn’t have?!” Meanwhile, the only people that go crazy like that are usually the same people that do douchey things like withholding their signature, so they should have nothing to worry about.

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Teach Me Something Tuesday #25: Pat Buchanan and Shoulder Hair

October 27, 2009
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Today I’m welcoming the handsome and talented David from Che Bello who is here to bring us another installment of Teach Me Something Tuesday:

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Anybody who’s ever paid attention to a political race or any kind of opinion polling is familiar with a proportion. “100% of authors of today’s TMST think Kári is adorable,” a headline might read. Or “64% of Craig’s shoulder hairs have grown more than an inch in the past 12 hours.” These are both magnificent examples of proportions, one distinctly more horrifying than the other. But in political races, we’re often dealing with a population so large that we can’t ask everyone any given question. Even surveying all of Craig’s shoulder hairs would be a daunting proposition, imagine if you had to talk to every person in the country! So, how do we say anything about the population with any certainty at all? We construct the almighty CONFIDENCE INTERVAL!

::trumpets sounding, and all that jazz::

Let’s say you’ve been hired by me to find out how many people agree with the ideas of nutjob Pat Buchanan. (For the latest vile nutjobbery, see here.) It should be 0%, but, sadly, we don’t often see extremes in public opinion. You go out and do a survey of a randomly sampled group of people that is representative and proportional to the population along demographics such as gender, ethnicity, education level, etc. (if you were to sample gun-brandishing veterans who can’t find manufacturing jobs anymore and don’t mind blaming it on immigrants, your sample would be pretty biased (and wouldn’t have the collective sense God promised a doorknob)), and what you come back with is that 42% of the population agree with his statements. So, are you ready to definitively say that that’s the true proportion that you would get if you asked everyone? Since you only took a sample, it can’t be. We use confidence intervals to say “Given the information that we’ve gathered, we think the true value we’re estimating is between x and y.”

So how do we do that? The basic form of any confidence interval is our estimate plus/minus a margin of error. This margin of error has two pieces: a critical value from what we call the z-table, and the standard deviation of our estimate. The z-distribution is familiar to you as a bell curve; it’s the normal distribution. We use the normal distribution here because of the central limit theorem. With repeated sampling, we know that the distribution of our proportions would be normal. That is to say if we took lots and lots of samples and made a histogram of the proportions of support for Buchanan for each one, it would eventually take the shape of a normal model. Or, if we took repeated samples of ten of Craig’s exes, eventually we could get a good estimate of how long the famed Puntabuschlong really is. This is true of all sampling distributions, even if the underlying population you’re sampling from is highly skewed. (The population, not the Puntabuschlong.) If you’re having trouble believing this, and that’s okay, as it’s a pretty earth-shattering revelation, check out the fun simulation here. Given that, we can use the normal model to set how wide our confidence interval should be. For a 95% confidence interval, the associated z-value is 1.96, because on the normal model 95% of the data fall within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean.

The second piece of our margin of error is the standard deviation of our estimate. We find this by taking the square root of [(our estimate)(1-our estimate)/N], with N being our sample size. It should be intuitive that dividing by our sample size is a good idea — the larger the number of people you’ve talked to, the more precise your estimate will be. That’s just another way of saying that its standard deviation (the average distance from each observation to the mean) will be smaller. Talking to more people means you can more closely pinpoint where the true proportion lies given the data you have.

So, putting those pieces together, we take our estimate (.42), and add/subtract 1.96(standard deviation). Let’s say that you sampled 2000 people. That means our standard deviation is sqrt[(.42)(.58)/2000], or 0.011. Multiplying this by 1.96 gives us .0216. If we subtract that from our estimate, we get .3984. And if we add that to our estimate, we get .4416. And now we’ve constructed a confidence interval for the true amount of support for Pat Buchanan in the population: .3984 to .4416. That means that we’re 95% certain that the true proportion of support, if we asked everyone in the country, for Pat Buchanan would fall between those two numbers. If this were true, I would stab myself in the eyes. The last polling data on Pat Buchanan comes from the 2000 election cycle, but none of them indicate much more than 20% support at that time, and I doubt it’s climbed much given his encouragement of John McCain to go to war on Iran for electoral benefits.

So the next time you’re looking at political polling data, you’ll now be able to think critically about it. Most firms don’t even publish confidence intervals, instead just giving news outlets their point estimates and saying the margin of error is 3 or 4 or whatever number of points. That leaves it up to the public to add and subtract the margins of error from both candidates and see if they overlap, meaning that the race would be too close to call. But with so few people being mathematically-minded or statistically educated, most people take estimates at face value. Stop doing this today and you’ll be well on your way to impressing someone in a political discussion (and winning your way into this cute statistician’s heart.) By the way, the confidence interval for proportion of the time shoulder hair turns me on? 0.00 to 0.01.

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Black Dynamite

October 26, 2009
By

I must see this movie immediately!

DY-NA-MITE!

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Paranormal Activity – Review

October 26, 2009
By

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Me and Michelle saw Paranormal Activity yesterday. We generally like to go to the first viewings to avoid crowds and besides two other people, we were the only ones in the theater. It was the perfect experience for a movie like this. The theater was in complete silence for the duration of the movie and it was spooky as hell. This movie is getting hyped as the scariest movie of the decade, people throwing up in the theaters, all that business. And while I can’t quite go that far, I would definitely say this was pretty damn scary.

The movie is a Blair Witch/Cloverfield type fake raw footage movie about a couple who believe they are being haunted. Well the girl believes she’s being haunted, the guy was a little annoying and skeptical about it even after all this crazy shit was going on, but that was my only complaint. I really enjoyed the idea of what they were being haunted by. They could have gone one of two ways, and they definitely went the cooler and less expected route, which I thought was great. As with all movies done in this style, it’s a bit anti-climactic since they generally have to end very abruptly, but I thought the ending was done well and suitably frightening.

The good thing about seeing scary movies during the day is that you have the whole rest of the day to get over it so it’s not like you’re going right to bed petrified. The only post movie fright I had was this morning in the shower. It’s that brief moment of time where you need to rinse the shampoo out of your hair and the soap off your face and you need to close your eyes. It’s a very vulnerable moment and this morning I tried to do it as quickly as possible.

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Random Bits and Bytes

October 23, 2009
By

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1. I finished Chosen, the third book in the House of Night series. I’d normally give a full review, but writing reviews for stuff none of my readers have read (or at least none of my commenters) isn’t very fun. So I’ll just say that it was another extremely fun read. And I’ll add the following:

2. My enjoyment of the book above was despite the fact that it had one of my least favorite plot devices ever in it. It’s when the main character can’t or doesn’t confide in their friends and keeps secrets because either they don’t want to involve their friends for fear that they’ll get hurt, or they won’t understand. The Harry Potter books did a great job of avoiding this. Harry almost always confided in Ron and Hermione and look how well that turned out! However in Chosen, secrets were kept, and even worse, the friends got really mad when they found out (lying my omission isn’t really lying people!). Drives. Me. Crazy! What are some of your pet peeve plot devices?

3. I’ve done four days of working out in my 30 day program. Today’s a rest day, thank goodness! But it’s going really well so far, despite the fact that they make me do a billion and a half lunges that make me want to saw my legs off.

4. James just left this comment on the other post, but it’s so funny, it’s worth mentioning here. It’s a list of things to do with the crappy resistance band that comes with the game.

5. I picked up the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen DVD last night. I know what you’re thinking. “But Craig, didn’t you hate that movie?” And the answer sadly is yes. I felt my IQ drop at least 20 points while I held it in my hand, but I just couldn’t resist! It’s Transformers! In my defense, I only got the single disc edition and it was super cheap at Target. Also, I remember it being one of the worst movies on the face of the planet. So it has to be better than I remember, right? Sigh. At least I’ll get to fast forward through all the crappy human parts.

6. “I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat. And then on some dark, cold night I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face.” – Sue Sylvester from Glee

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Blogger Karaoke Night!

October 21, 2009
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Yay! Okay, so we had Blogger Karaoke Night this past Saturday, and it was awesome! Scheduled attendees included Enrico, Josh, David, Chris D., FDot, Jere, Kári (from this TMST), and myself of course!

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Me and Jere were the first to arrive, and we waited like 5 hours (okay, maybe like 10 minutes) for other people to start arriving, and I’m sure he was worried that this was all some elaborate plot for me to get some alone time with him, which is actually a pretty smart idea now that I think of it.

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But then Kári came and we started ordering drinks and Kári ordered a gin & tonic, which made my heart grow three sizes too big, and may or may not explain the ridiculous grin on my face in this picture.

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And then FDot came and was awesome and then OMG Polt and Dave S. came! My Mom predicted that people who read my blog are crazy fun-loving enough to come from way out of town for tonight, and she was right!

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And then David came and none of us had done karaoke yet as we were riveted by the anime they were playing, but he immediately put a stop to that and got the party started with Love Shack.

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And then Enrico and Josh came really fashionably late and started singing right away.

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Enrico was all like “I’m putting this picture on my pillowcase later.”

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Enrico and Josh were also picking out songs for everyone else to sing.

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They picked a Christina Aguilera song for Chris D., but doesn’t he look like an old time crooner in that vest? I feel like he should be singing Unforgettable.

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I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I imagine Josh being all like “OMG I don’t know this song! It’s sooo old!” And Enrico being all like “Yeah, I know, it’s like, from the 80′s. Just smile and nod.”

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And this is one of my favorite pictures ever because I’m sorry, but Polt looks sooooo creepy in it. Like he’s all like “Come child, sit next to me and sing.”

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Here are me and Dave S! He came all the way from Ohio! Him and Polt shared a hotel room. Oh to be a fly!

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Not sure what’s going on here. By the confusion/disgust on their faces I’m thinking maybe this is an Enrico and Josh song?

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Yeah, definitely gotta be an Enrico and Josh song.

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Now let me tell you. It may not look like much, but Jere is rapping like a mother fucker in this picture. That whole wall was doing Lady Marmalade and Jere was Lil’ Kim and he was amazing!

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I forget who David was but he was also amazing. He’s like an actual singer and shit!

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Me and Enrico! His beard is just as magnificent in person as it is on the internet. Oh, and the rest of him is pretty swell too!

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Me and Josh! Josh talks in funny voices that make me laugh heartily and his beard is just as magnificent as mine!

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So after karaoke we decided to go to dinner and we found this diner that couldn’t seat all ten of us together so we had to sit at three different booths. Wait, is Kári drinking a milkshake? I really want a milkshake now. Oh, and I heard there was some fry stealing going on at this table.

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Jere’s face in this picture makes my heart sing a song of joy.

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And this was my table AKA teh coolest table evar! Even though Dave S. put ketchup on his chili fries ::shudders::

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After dinner we decided to go to this Japanese bar/restaurant thingamajig that David knew about. So we all got on the subway to go downtown, and Josh was all like “I don’t feel well!”

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And then he was all like “VOMCOPTERZ!”

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And then he was all like “Yum, much better.” While Enrico was all like ::blink, blink::

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Meanwhile, Polt was all like “I have had it up to here with all these twinks fooling around, and their Britney Spearsberg songs, and their internets.”

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AND OMG HE WAS A SUICIDE BOMBER! And Dave S. was all like “Are those Super Viagra boxers, and if so, where can I get them?”

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And Chris D. was all like “I will destroy the evidence with my super smoldering gaze extreme maximus!”

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And he shot laser beams out of his eyes and destroyed my camera! Can you believe it?!

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And then the subway exploded and everyone but me died, and thankfully I was able to save my memory card with all the pictures because I’m awesome like that. Now I know there are loads of unanswered questions. Like, what song did I have to sing at karaoke? Where did Craig go after the subway explosion? What was in the purple giftbag in the fourth picture? For those answers and more, check out everyone else’s blogs to get the same night from different perspectives!

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Death by Wii EA Sports Active

October 19, 2009
By


OooOoOOoOOOoooOOOoo! I am the ghoooost of Craaaiiiig reaching out from the grave! No, I wasn’t murdered during Blogger Karaoke Night (as much as they wanted to). Oh you’ll be hearing about the night later this week, but there are pictures on Facebook if you want a preview. Instead, I have died from working out for the first time in over a year. Upon my friend Lance’s recommendation I picked up Wii’s EA Sports Active (about two months ago and it’s been sitting on the entertainment center with the bestest of intentions).

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Oh Craig, but you’re soooo good looking! You don’t need to work out! We think you’re perfect just the way you are!” See? Aren’t I good at that? Oh, except David. He’s nodding his head in approval and wondering why I’m blogging and not working out at this very minute. So to prove to you that I am a disgusting slob, I remind you of THIS post where I got zebra stripe sunburns from my fatty fat fat rolls. And yeah, that was a year ago, so there has been a whole year of not working out since then.

Anyway, unlike Wii Fit where you just get to pick the fun games and watch your parents do silly stuff, EA Sports Active has a 30 Day Challenge where it tells you exactly which exercises to do. I only did the first day yesterday, but exercises thus far have included bicep curls and row thingamajigs (Both done with a resistance band. The game came with one, but it was pretty cheap so I got a better one from Target.), running, aerobics, and cardio-karate. In the beginning I was asked if I wanted to do easy, medium, or hard. I LOLed at the idea of doing easy. “Puny mortals!” I laughed as I chose medium. Anyway, the point of the story is that I was a sweaty, disgusting mess after my 25 minutes were up and subsequently died. And even though I’m dead, I’m somehow still sore as heck. And I have to do it again today! With new exercies! I’m going to die and die and die for 30 days. Luckily it’s 2 days on, 1 day off, 2 days on, 1 day off, and so forth. I’m already looking forward to Tuesday.

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Television Round-Up

October 16, 2009
By

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Gossip Girl: An okay season I guess. Blair is easily the best part of the show. I feel like not much is really going on. Yeah, there’s drama here and there, but really, what’s the point? We need some solid storylines stat!

Heroes: I already gave you my thoughts.

90210: I’m sorry, but I really like this show. I love Silver and Adrianna. Even Annie is a lot better than last season. And Liam needs to get his act together because I want to really like him. The only things that bug me are 1. Teddy being ancient and supposed to be in high school. He’s 31! 2. Navid, what is your appeal? and 3. When will Naomi’s sister finally get her comeuppance?

America’s Next Top Model: This season is totally blah. I don’t even think Tyra cares about it. None of these girls are really very good. I’m sorry, but I think the under 5’7″ season was a bad idea! Nicole is probably the best, even though she is a wackadoo. And Sundai is pretty adorable!

Glee: Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! Jane Lynch is pure genius. “Look at me. Even in the heat of battle, I am so elegant, regal.” I also love that everyone is a good singer. Quinn’s song this week was amazing. I love when the supporting characters get songs, like her and Mercedes. When are Puck and Kurt gonna get songs? A duet would be fantastic! Those two lovebirds are totally gonna get it on.

Modern Family: Regardless of the major gay face in the advertising, this is one of the funniest new sitcoms in a long time. Everyone is pitch perfect. The only one that annoys me is the husband of the blond woman, but I think that’s the point. Ed O’Neill is genius and so great to have back, and the gay couple played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet never fail to crack me up. “I gave her a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings, and she gave me a hint.”

Cougar Town: All the episodes are on my DVR, waiting to be watched. Anyone watching? How is it?

Survivor: This is an awful season. I can’t stand any of the people except Shambo, who gets treated like crap by everyone on her tribe. I couldn’t believe when she couldn’t participate in the reward last night. Why not make one of the people who sat out of the challenge miss out on the feast? Idiots. And Russell needs to go away immediately. I don’t know why reality show producers think we love villains. We don’t!

Grey’s Anatomy: Pretty good season so far. I don’t miss George as much as I thought I would. I guess the writers weren’t giving him that much to do in the last two season anyway, so he’s not terribly missed. Callie was amazing last night. I love her and Arizona together. Meredith’s pregnancy leave was totally handled really well and I’m glad that she’ll still be in every episode, especially considering the show is named after her.

Community: Watched the first 15 minutes of the first episode and canceled recording and haven’t looked back since. I know that’s a bit hasty, and I’m sure there are those of you who love it, but if it didn’t grab me right away, why add it to my already enormous watch list?

Parks and Recreation: So much better than last season. I’m really enjoying it.

The Office: Pretty good season so far. Much better than the slow start to last season and I thought Jim and Pam’s wedding episode was really great. Best sitcom wedding award still goes to Woody and Kelly in Cheers. I saw that episode again a few months ago and it is easily one of the best sitcom episodes ever.

30 Rock: Glad it’s back, but haven’t watched last night’s premiere yet.

Project Runway: This show can do no wrong. Even with the boring challenges (Whatever happened to making an outfit out of car parts? And blue is not a challenge!) this show never ceases to entertain. Christopher is adorable, but he’s not gonna win. I think it’ll probably be Logan, Althea or Carol Hannah. Yeah, way to narrow it down Craig.

Dollhouse: Meh. Only watched the premiere so far. Will watch the other episodes soon, but what’s the rush? It’s not that great.

Stargate Universe: Have the episodes on my DVR but haven’t watched any yet. Anyone watching? How is it?

Star Wars: Clone Wars: This season has been a lot stronger than last season. They gave up on a lot of the slapstick which was really dragging down last season. And Asoka has gotten a lot better and doesn’t make me want to poke my eyes out anymore. I also like the continuity they are building between episodes, and the new villain Cad Bane is pretty badass.

Desperate Housewives: I know, I’m still watching, but it’s still good! It always makes me laugh and this year’s mystery is good! I couldn’t believe when Susan was gonna drop the car on that kid! Crazy!

Family Guy: The premiere was one of the funniest new episodes I’ve seen in a long time. I love when Stewie and Brian go off and do their own thing, and their travels to alternate universes was pure genius. The following episodes were standard Family Guy fun.

Damn, I watch a lot of TV!

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