I had MTV running in the background as I was reading the news and checking weblogs this morning and suddenly my TV freaked. The picture disintegrated and was replaced by a black screen with a glowing, vertical line through it. It looked like that on all the channels and seeing as the sound was gone as well I just assumed the cable company had screwed up.

I turned the TV off, waited a little while and turned it back on only to find that the sound was back, but the screen was still F-ed. I turned it off again and a few minutes later something started to smell burnt. I started sniffing every appliance in the apartment, but I couldn't quite locate the origin of the smell. At this point I was sure the picture tubes were blown and the thought of schlepping my 28" TV down three flights of stairs out into the snow and freezing cold to get it fixed did not sit well with me at all. And seeing as our washing machine has been busted for a week I felt pretty Amish right then.

But I went about my day and an hour later I checked to see if the TV had magically healed itself (not unlike Joey's barcalounger, Rosita) and it had. So it must have been the damn cable company after all. And when I later went down to the basement it turned out someone had fixed the washer, so I've been upgraded from Amish to totally dependent on technology again.

I went by school today to hand in an application for an office, so I can get kicking on the thesis thing. Three others I know have also applied, so the plan is that we get an office together and somehow be able to keep each other at it instead of sitting individually watching MTV. I know the guy in charge of distributing offices, so I had a little talk with him (not in Sopranos way, obviously) and I think there's a good change that it'll work out.
And I also picked up tickets for Grant-Lee Phillips, so we're definitely going to that show tonight. I listened to a bunch of tracks from Mobilize yesterday and I liked them a lot more than the stuff he did with Grant Lee Buffalo. Some of it reminded me of what Beck did on his Sea Change album. And a lot of people seemed to be going, so it should be fun.

Oh, Johnny called and he wants his shirt back, honey.

I was thinking of an unrelated thing, to quote TMBG, which was that there's a debate in the Danish blogging community about how people use their blogs. The point which was made was that when you blog about breakfast, parties, and your fear of your television set blowing up you're not reaching the medium's full potential. A weblog can be seen as your virtual bullhorn, which you should use to voice your opinions about more important matters. While I can follow this way of thinking I personally have no desire to discuss politics, the environment, religion, or something of a similarly important nature on a regular basis. I discuss these matters with my friends and I prefer that to writing about Bush or Saddam and then being thrashed in the comments for being a lefty-commie-pinko-bastard like it seems to be the case on so many other blogs.

I mean I could link to this or to articles, where France and Germany are referred to as the Axis of Weasels, but what's the point? The War Bloggers are convinced they know the truth (not to the point where they'll actually suit up for combat themselves, but you know what I mean) and the rest of us, who haven't seen the evidence that Iraq are building the infamous weapons of mass destruction or that there's a link between Saddam and Bin Laden are just cowards (which is about 82% of the people of Europe). I mean what's the point of saying that the people of Iraq won't be "free" (whatever the hell that means anyway) just because Saddam is captured or killed or whatever Bush wants to do with him. Or that the whole thing is about oil and money and the fact that Daddy didn't get to kill Saddam, so now Sonny-Boy has to have a go at him.

Does anyone actually believe that bloggers of any political conviction can sway people's opinions about anything? It's not like we're known as a group of people too bothered by fact checking the ramblings we spew out on a daily basis. And if you look at the links from one blog to another it seems most of us only link to people we already agree with anyway. And if not it's just to show others how big an idiot someone is.

So instead of getting all worked up every day and writing about how stupid this approaching war is I choose to focus on whatever happens in my everyday life. I write about the things I care about and leave the propaganda to others.
I write about music and television shows, because this is what I know and care about and the chances of convincing someone that a show or band is cool are a lot better than convincing someone to change their views on politics or war. If that is a cop-out or a sure-fire never to reach the full potential of blogging then so be it. But that's just the way it's going to be round here.