antimeria

Because Eamonn asked about podcasts he should check out, here are five I listen to:

1. Stuff You Should Know. A podcast about random cool things, like ninja and crazy government experiments.
2. Uhh Yeah Dude. A news and comedy podcast by two guys in LA. Jonathan is a vegan and recovering rasta, and Seth has some neatness issues and watches a lot of TV. It reminds me vaguely of Car Talk, if Click and Clack talked about jerking off.
3. Fresh Produce. Essentially a radio show, with a mix of deep cuts and current hits and remixes. Pain in the ass to find on iTunes, though.
4. Savage Love. A lot of people probably know this one already, but other people’s sex questions are funny.
5. This American Life. Pretty sure everyone knows about this show, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Anything else I should be listening to?

I’m not an emotional person (see #5), and in general, things don’t get to me. But I lost it when Andrew Sullivan linked to a National Review post by Heather MacDonald on gay marriage, which bemoaned the “institutionalized severing of biology from parenthood”:

Orphans and abandoned children are raised by non-biological adoptive parents… But these arrangements were considered outliers to the normal practice of conceiving and raising children, forced on the parties by sad necessity.

As most people reading this know, I’m adopted (see #4), and although I’ve had a sometimes-contentious relationship with my parents, they are two of the most caring and devoted people I know. Their faith was one of the major reasons they wanted to adopt, and they would be devastated if someone told them their act of love a “second-best solution.” MacDonald’s dismissal of loving parents because they don’t conform to her vision of a “traditional family” is one of the most despicable, hurtful things I’ve ever read–and it’s worse because I’m sure she thinks she’s being perfectly reasonable.

In my last post, I wrote that to modern-day conservatives, “Outliers are to be homogenized or destroyed.” I think I need to go farther and put the stamp on it: conservatives see nothing wrong with denying outliers and nonconformists their very humanity in the name of getting their way.

It goes without saying that the rest of her post is pure drivel, so full of half-baked claims not even worth addressing that I hesitated to link it. And of course, any self-respecting conservative commentator needs an astounding lack of self-awareness (bold mine):

The facile libertarian argument that gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved is astoundingly blind to the complexity of human institutions and to the web of sometimes imperceptible meanings and practices that compose them.

Heather MacDonald, go fuck yourself with a pineapple, and pray to your god that I never see you on the street.

Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, has an interview in today’s Daily Beast which reveals some interesting tidbits:

Betty married Don because he was the whole package. He looked good on paper and that’s what she wanted…. Being put on a pedestal, being worshipped and adored, being accepted, in a way it’s almost more flattering to have a man be that attached to you who doesn’t know you. I think she’s very susceptible to that. … She might not even be able to express it, but what she wants is for all of her needs to be met, with anticipation.
[...]
Whatever Roger’s true feelings are for Joan—and whatever they are, they are deep and we’ve always known that—he sure as hell welcomed the opportunity, not just because of her skills, to have her back in his life in that way. I am not big on giving the audience what they want but I am big on giving Roger and Joan what they want, if they can get close to it.

Can’t wait for season 4.

Apparently a lot of DVR users are willing to put up with ads:

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content?

The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected.

“It’s still a passive activity,” he said.

Maybe. I know I said I’d put up with longer commercial breaks if everything were available on demand, but it turns out I’m a lying bitch. I skip just about everything.

Also, no one watches commercials when they’re “watching commercials.” It’s time for a bathroom break, or to get another beer, or (for the nerdy among us) to check our RSS feeds. On the other hand, this is

In related news, The Office, Heroes and Fringe are doing well among the DVR set:

“House,” second among all shows in its live program rating (to “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC), became the top show in terms of commercials viewed within three days with a 5.68 rating (about 6.53 million), gaining almost 18 percent. NBC’s comedy “The Office” had one of the single biggest gains — 26 percent from its live program rating — to 3.92 (4.5 million) for its rating including playbacks. The supposedly struggling NBC drama “Heroes” jumped 22 percent, as did another apparently flagging drama, “Fringe” on Fox. And a new ABC drama, the appropriately named “Flash Forward,” looks even more like a hit than it did with its original rating because its rating increased 14 percent with playbacks.

I never watched Fringe, even though Lt. Daniels got a major role. Is it any good?

Tangential to all this, apparently DirecTV doesn’t believe that Christina Hendricks is worth seeing in HD. This is a grave injustice, and [Congress/the free market] should get involved immediately.

This is probably the only thing that Dan Choi and David Chang have in common.

Choi: “My parents always brag about me in church…[My mom] would talk about me graduating from West Point and being a Harvard student and going to Iraq and coming back, being very involved in church, and bragging about all this stuff. They even got to the point where it was like, ”And he’s a tall Korean, too!” Their validation of their existence is through living vicariously and bragging about all these things that I’ve accomplished and done.”

Chang: “Koreans are a funny bunch…They say, ‘This is my son. He’s going to Harvard. He’s going to be an investment banker. He’s going to make $3.4 million a year.’ There’s a Cold War arms race among Asian parents: ‘This is my daughter who finished medical school while an undergraduate and can play Beethoven’s Fifth on the violin with her toes.’ My dad gave up on me long ago, this son who did terrible in school. Now he can throw me back into the ring.”