yikes
I was tending to some comic matters on Monday; I will see about getting this out of here on Tue’s day.

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It got stupider than I was expecting. That is probably good. It is possibly very, very bad, however. I will try Wedne’s day instead.

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I was shocked as anyone to learn today that Stephen Colbert will not, as I reported earlier, be replacing Barbara Walters on “The View.”

However, the same source assures me that Barbara Walters still intends to replace Alex Trebek.

Alex Trebek, of course, is leaving Jeopardy in 2016 to replace The Ultimate Warrior.

Stephen Colbert will be replaced by Comedy Central’s next-biggest star, ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, who will be replaced by a battle bot.

Daniel Tosh was not in the running, obviously, because he is set to replace Nelson Mandela, who himself replaced Carlos Mencia.

Ben Stein will not be replacing anyone since I managed to temporarily forget that he existed.

As for Craig Ferguson, his contract calls for him to get a late night show on CBS five years after some guy from the Daily Show gets it.

I posted something roughly equivalent to these on twittarrrgh yesterday (yeserday being Thursday). Nobody cared. Nor should they have. I do not do things worth caring about on Twitter. From the looks of things almost nobody does. When they do it makes no sense and I am hoping to catch one of those fluke flows of interest by posting garbage because I never learned any useful skills. Still, it was a much faster and to the point not-caring than accompanied my classic “late night show” related commentary, that I often spent hours dwelling on and putting together.
At one point in my life, when I had approximately less friends than now, I watched many of such programs, and despite whatever inept, skewed idea of how people talk to each other this left me with, I drew my best pictures while peripherally acknowledging and occasionally looking directly at these shows.
I also used to write about them a lot, and from my recollection I primarily complained and it was terrible..

Recently I have written much about them, again but more out of habit and compulsion than because I thought my gripes about what is not entertaining are entertaining. Hopefully that will stay buried.

I had not watched any of the old late night hosts regularly for fivish finkel years, but I liked knowing they were around. I liked there being video evidence that someone I understood and liked before I became stuck in my ways still existed and interacted with the world in the present. Outside my immediate family, and sometimes not even in it, nobody I knew in the 1990s has any contact with me now. These oafs in suits were important to me. They were consistent, and they were just mature enough that I did not arbitrarily decree myself too smart to watch them like I did with stuff that came on earlier (I did not start watching stupid wrestling until 2001ish, I think). Unfortunately, when one of them becomes moderately newsworthy I feel compelled to comment, and that again forces me not only to give it priority I can hardly spare, but also to be unique among commenters, which is not my trait when the topic is relatively normal people.

Now Jay Leno is gone, David Letterman is going, Alex Trebek is going. Alex Trebek is on television earlier in the day and not an especially entertaining presence, not deliberately, but I have to think whoever is put on instead of him will be distinctly irritating. I will be surprised if the Muppets last another 10 years. But that is part of life, right? The stuff you used to like goes away and you cannot stop it. But in my case the stuff I like almost invariably is a few decades older than me. I am stuck in a past I never lived in. And that is absurd; I rely on a computer for almost all things and can create little without it, and society’s attitude toward the mentally ill has improved considerably even in just the last few years. I would be profoundly disabled at this age if I had lived ten years earlier, and if I had lived ten years later I would only have smirky computer cartoons to watch and would be expelled and arrested if I drew pictures of bats killing each other with swords and bombs while at school. I was fortunate! I was merely quietly redistributed to various special education programs throughout the state who saw to it that I learned no skills, that would lead to me panicking about garbage I posted on twitter years later. If my life had gone some other way, this whole post here would be a lie because I did not do any of these things and reading it would be a huge waste of time.

I like Colbert –and I am surprised how much I do; back in 1999 I didn’t understand why Brian Unger and A Whitney Brown got fired but his uninspiring dorkiness got to stay on– but I also like that he only has a half hour program, that he stays in character during interviews, which I now skip on other “talk” programs, and that Comedy Central makes really cheap deals with the musical guests so their performances (or anything related to Breaking Bad for some reason) are usually deleted by the time I get to the show they appeared on in the online archive, since I have been perpetually three months behind for the past year, which prevents me from forcing myself to listen to music I hate just because it seems unfair to dismiss them without a chance to prove themselves. So then with those segments skipped I can more quickly tend to something else of importance, like watching the next day’s show and only being 2 months and 29 days behind.

I worry that I have lost the ability to become fan of new things. Is it stubborn contrariness? Do I sincerely not like the way television and films are made? Am I impossibly jealous as a result of never accomplishing anything, with people younger than me continually arriving and getting recognition? Yes, but is it permanent?

I will not run out of entertainment; I have 15 years of missed video games to deal with, and I still like the old ones that I liked before, and some more than I formerly liked them (though perhaps just as many that I like less). Likewise there are plenty of television shows and films that exist that I have not yet had a chance at. But I am not likely to share an interest with contemporary society again.

I started watching Conan O’Zarkike’s program again (as I divulged) when I started to fixate on these topics, but he is still the Conan that I -stopped- watching a few years ago based on his increasing desire to turn himself into one of those contemporary sorts that I cannot stand, by begging for viewer submissions or devoting uncomfortably large portions of airtime to sponsored content. A few days after I posted this, they showed an Xmen-themed movie trailer straight out during time usually reserved for a comedy attempt piece. One of the pioneers of messing with pretentious movie footage to make it sillier is now content to deliver ads direct, and then show a commercial break. It is not just a matter of Conan pleading with the audience/advertisers to like him after losing a prestigious job; he was doing this before he got and lost that job (the xmen preview was a new low, though). I would not shut up about it. Even the few that I like are disappointing. I have a huge problem.

And worse! I found out just today that Conan’s show used approximately the same joke about Barbara Walters as I did, two nights before I did, because they are put on the Tbs website late and I watch them yet later than that. That there is Conan O’Brien’s semi-cohost Andy Richter inserted into a clip from The View in a sketch that I was too distracted to pay attention to because I was horrified that I now looked like I had ripped this joke off of someone else on twitter. And I actually twittered the joke AT Stephen Colbert’s account. Nobody famous would ever have awareness of anything I did UNLESS I had done something derivative or terrible, and theoretically I would be blocked forever after the first error. So now Stephen Colbert hates me. But since I only think that it is not enough to make me too bitter to watch his show and at least free myself from the never ending duty to watch his program that never stops being made.
It is fine here; I can explain it, and we are surrounded by things too dumb for anyone else to have thought of, providing ample evidence that I have no desire to copy anyone else. But on twitter I only get one chance and no space to explain anything. If I mention something twice I look crazy. Anybody who looks awkward on twitter is dead to the world, unless their gimmick is to be awkward and not think things through. I think things near, far, over, under and through and am still too awkward to acknowledge.
In fact I only know Barbara Walters is retiring at all because of an earlier Conan-related Barbara Walters joke so I cannot even claim that I did not know. Theoretically, nobody else has any awareness of anything I like except momentarily for the purposes of thinking I ripped it off. See I can’t win in this, so it is better if nobody reads my posts. It is not all that original a joke either because its effectiveness depends on the idea of a man taking a woman’s place being inherently funny. I personally disagree on the grounds that Barbara Walters is funny to mention for many reasons, but I am not in any condition to elaborate at this time. Gosh i did not come here to talk about this! I watched the non-guest segments of Tuesday’s Conan as I was eating halfway through formatting this. I am only days behind on that, rather than years, because O’Brien’s gang does not keep old episodes on the internet indefinitely like Colbert’s does, forcing me to be up to date. If there is in fact a complete archive, and for some reason you know about it, please do not tell me. Even skipping the interviews I do not have time to be watching 3 tv shows (I also still watch the Jon Stewart Daily Show from months behind. That is another old gripe. But gee Chris Christie sure closed that bridge lane, didn’t he!).

Somebody probably did that Craig Ferguson joke already, too. Who, I have no idea. There are too many people that I have to beat at everything and even if I do it will not matter, but I am obsessed with trying. And again it is not a joke that is good enough that I should have been heralded for making it, but I should be shunned for taking it. I didn’t, but surely to somebody I look like I did. I will always lose unless I do dumb, useless things. And we all knew that already! So this is also useless, and I need less useless things cluttering my mind, so I must dump them here or risk tripping over them in the dark and injuring myself.

My next post will probably be about Mr. Peanut.