Once more, a Republican legislator with an anti-gay voting record gets caught in a buttfucking scandal. How many does this make in the last year or so? I’ve lost count.

…we really are living through a true Golden Age of Television.

I was just marveling at how the characterization of Grandpa on The Boondocks is so successful in balancing verisimilitude with the demands for heightened “quirkiness” demanded by comedy, when it occurred to me that I watch way too much TV.

But then I started thinking about exactly what I watch, and I realized I’m not ashamed of a single one of the programs I watch regularly. None of these pleasures are at all guilty. The weird thing is, I do often feel guilty when talking about them.

Even though there are hours and hours of quality new programming each week, there still exists a strong anti-televisual bias in our culture. It’s like it wormed its way into the culture during the “vast wasteland” of the 1960s and then just set up shop, never being reconsidered, just unconsciously adopted as part of being an American (especially if one has progressive leanings).

Phooey, I say, and balderdash. Serial television these days is easily more complex than the books that float up the best-seller lists, and the creativity and verve that shows up in Adult Swim programming and the like is definitely worthy of consideration. We are living in an era when genuine artfulness is being integrated into mass entertainment, and it’s time for snobbishness to take a powder.

I just noticed that a new Subway commercial features the theme song from The Odd Couple. There’s no narration until the end, so it seems the commercial-makers were relying on the audience recognizing the music.

Now, I was one of those saddos who spent his childhood soaking up defunct sitcoms, and I imagine the movie is even less-watched than the TV show. The theme is immediately recognizable to me, but I couldn’t guarantee it would jump out at a typical peer. I’d doubt that anyone younger than me wouldn’t know it at all.

And yet there it was. Is it one of those themes that has burrowed into the cultural consciousness, or are the commercial-makers appealing to a very narrow demographic?

Thanks to Pete and Amy for the responses, both of which were very helpful.

Pete had suggested requesting something other than one of the spiffy new branded, not yet generic, drugs. This is great advice in the absence of the context I failed to provide: this new scrip is a replacement for one of the older meds that had lost its efficacy for me. I had assumed this new drug would be just a step, maybe two, up from the previous one.

Why did I assume this? Because my doctor is pretty conservative in his appearance and demeanor, and his waiting room has no literature other than Christian children’s books and evangelical magazines. Because of his presumed conservatism, which is not necessarily a fair assumption, I had thought he would be conservative in his attitude toward meds as well. This assumption was buttressed by his reaction the first time I saw him and told him I needed my old scrip rewritten: I told him I had been prescribed 40mg daily but had cut down to 20mg daily; I also told him that I thought it would be a good idea to go back up to 40, especially since I’d been off my meds completely for a while at that point. Without even scratching his chin, he wrote out a 20mg scrip.

The antihistamine nose spray and pills he prescribed on that visit, though, should have been a tip-off. They were fancy-schmancy branded stuff, but I was in enough misery at that point that I shelled out the dough without blinking. To the doc’s credit, the expenso stuff did knock out the worst of the symptoms within two days and whipped the problem completely in four.

Lesson learned: Even if he is socially and politically conservative, which he may not be, my doctor appears to want the most aggressive, new-fangled meds available unless he is continuing an existing course of treatment.

Amy made several great points and suggestions, but she hit it out of the park with her first in the revised edition, last in the unsigned original:

Ask the pharmacist *why* it was declined– it might be something as simple as the “release� mechanism (XR or ER vs. plain old dissolve/release); the pharmacist can then call your doc and ask for a new scrip for the approved drug– or they can call to ask for another drug altogether, which saves you the trouble

This was exactly what had happened, but it was handled entirely without my involvement. The last I’d heard from the pharmacy, they’d contacted the insurance company who was then contacting the doc. It was at that point that I discovered that even the doc’s authorization might not be useful, as the fine print suggests that Step Two (as my plan calls it) drugs might not be covered for a maintenance prescription.

Apparently, though, the insurance company and doc all know this is a common problem. I don’t know if there were shady negotiations conducted in a smoky back room, but at some point overnight my scrip for Wellbutrin XP was canceled and magically replaced by an order for Wellbutrin SR, which is available generically as Plain Ol’ Bupropion SR. The insurance company are apparently glad to cover this, and my copay is a very reasonable eight bucks per month.

So it all worked out in the end, but I’m definitely carrying a copy of the formulary in the next time I need something prescribed.

(By the way, doesn’t “formulary” sound more like a recipe book for drug-making than a whitelist of acceptable drugs?)

So for the second time in a week, my department head has lamented that our declining reference-query numbers can not justify a reference staff of four.

I’m librarian number four.

I think my position is guaranteed until the end of the fiscal year, but after that I dunno.

I really fucking don’t want to go on a job search right now.

Apparently, my pharmaceutical insurance only covers maintenance scrips for generic formulations. You know, the stuff that for the most part you can get for $12 at Wal-Mart anyway. The verbiage in the brochures suggests they might spring for the good stuff when it’s a one-time deal, but for something like an antidepressant it’s no-brand-names-allowed.

This truly sucks.

Are you allowed to call up the doctor and say you can’t afford the scrip they just wrote out for you and you’d like a new scrip for a less effective medication? Seriously, I need to know.

So apparently JK Rowling has outed the late Hogwarts headmaster.

And his vendetta against Grindlewald was the fury of a lover scorned.

I’m…wow.

You know, this does add a certain new element to the clandestine Dumbledore/Snape relationship.

“Because you are crackheads, children.”

Just watched an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that closed on that line. Standing alone it probably looks kind of funny. In context, as written, it was very funny. But in context and performed by Danny deVito, it was frigging hilarious.

And it looked so effortless, like there wasn’t an ounce of thought behind it. He says it and acts it, but he doesn’t punch it, doesn’t draw attention, just makes it seem natural. But it’s so obviously not, because no natural reading of that line could come as such a surprise and leave me cackling.

(It is very rare for me to literally laugh out loud at a funny in a TV show. This made me laugh long and hard enough that it was blog-worthy.)

So he does this totally unnatural reading, but he does it in such a naturalistic way that it doesn’t come off as unnatural, and the way he does it is unexpectable and maximally humorous.

And that’s less than two seconds of performance. I wonder how much effort and preparation and consideration beforehand went into that <2 seconds?

Saw two different instances of this one over the weekend, had my camera with me and everything, but (dammit!) couldn’t find a place to pull over either time.

Ah! But they’re proud enough of it to make it available online:

“Embryos…are just tiny babies!”

I spit on you, Prolife Across America. Not because of your political position, even though I disagree with it, but because of your willfully ignorant rhetoric.

An embryo is most emphatically not a tiny baby. It just ain’t. No way, no how. One might be able to make a convincing argument that a fetus is a tiny baby, but there’s a reason we make the distinction between embryos and fetuses. Check it out here. That last photo, labeled “23″, is the end of the embryonic stage and the beginning of the fetal stage. Compare and contrast with the images preceding it. See the difference? Now contrast the last unambiguously embryonic photo, number 22, with the images in the billboard above.

One might as well say that an acorn is just a tiny oak tree.

But even that isn’t what’s got me so fired up. It’s wrong-headed, malicious, intentionally distorting of the truth, and downright evil, but I’m used to distortion and lies from pro-lifers. What pushed me over the edge was the presentation.

Ellipsis abuse and an unnecessary exclamation point, all in a bastardized Comic Sans? It is to puke. Also, talking babies creep me the fuck out.

Soooooo…Claire really has a thing for rapists, doesn’t she?

The thing is, I’m like 98% certain it’s not intentional. I think, in fact, that it’s the opposite of intentional. It’s just a perfect storm of weaknesses in writing, directing, and acting that makes the intended-to-be-cute-and-confident West come off more as Creepy Stalker Date-Rape Boy.

Also, “West” is the stupidest name for a character in, like, ever.

Also, I hate Criss Angel and have nothing but contempt for Uri Geller. Not Heroes related, but their damned commercial keeps popping up. I’ve seen some of Mr. Angel’s cable show, and you can just tell that Mr. Angel is a total dweeb who thinks he can come of ass a bad-ass by slapping on the Rough Boy drag.

Ooh, and Maya’s about to get an extreme lobotomy courtesy of Sylar. Alas, there will be some sort of Ironic Twist or Unexpected Salvation. Pity, since Maya and Alejandro are bloody annoying.