Goodbye, writer's strike. I'll miss you.

While everyone is rejoicing about the settlement of the writer's strike, I have to say I'm a little sad (like poor, doomed Dawson, at left) because I read a lot more during primetime than I would have otherwise.

I'm not one of those high-minded, 'kill your television' types, who attributes the downfall of society to watching the tube but, like most of America, I do find myself watching too much stupid fucking television. (Getting a DVR has changed how we watch, but there is a new pressure: a feeling of getting too far behind in what we record and then feeling a perceived pressing need to watch so as to clear it out and not get even further behind. Ah, technology, you millstone around my neck.)

If anything, I'm reading more books simultaneously than I have in years--I just finished Leif Enger's new one (loved it! will blog soon!), I'm reading a birding book, Michael Wex's Nu?, a book on black barber shops, a collection of interviews w/ the Beatles and I'm anxious to start Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, not to mention being only 3 weeks behind in my New Yorker's, which is a rarity.

In any event, now that we'll have our favorite programs back (in a few months, anyway), I hope I can maintain a better balance of good books and too muck stupid fucking television. As for the writers, good for you for getting what you deserve. Now get back to work. Heroes was just getting good.