5:43 PM:

This week's Friday Five (found, as usual, via my sister):

1. How many TVs do you have in your home? One, in the living room. Also a TV radio in the bedroom, but I haven't used the TV band of that since moving to Michigan. (In NY, where I lacked cable, I sometimes had to use it to supply the soundtrack to Buffy while watching the fuzzy image onscreen.)

2. On average, how much TV do you watch in a week? Umm, lots. Although it depends on how you define "watch." I tend to have the TV on in the background to provide ambient noise during most of my waking time at home.

3. Do you feel that television is bad for young children? Sure. Then again, there are few things that aren't bad for them in mass quantities...

4. What TV shows do you absolutely HAVE to watch, and if you miss them, you're heartbroken? Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

5. If you had the power to create your own television network, what would your line-up look like? To simplify things, I'm gonna stick with currently running shows (plus two imports, the full runs of which haven't yet been seen in the States), even though reruns are staples of my television diet. Live With Regis and Kelly. The View. Jeopardy. Buffy. Gilmore Girls. The Drew Carey Show. The Simpsons. Boston Public (utter train wreck, but that's gotten to be its appeal). The Daily Show. Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Saturday Night Live. (I'd settle for just the "Weekend Update" segment. Tina Fey's take on Leonard Nimoy vs. the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle this past week? Comedy gold.) Iron Chef. Nigella Bites. Home Movies. South Park. Powerpuff Girls. Sex and the City. And I keep thinking of series I'm forgetting, so I think I'm gonna just arbitrarily stop here.

9:40 PM:

It turns out that the Buffy people went so far as to put the Cassie Newton site on the Web. (If you don't watch Buffy, don't bother clicking there. And I confess that this is here partly because I think it's cool, and partly in an effort to make them right about what happens when you Google that name. Benign Googlebombing: it's a good thing!)

12:29 PM:

Oh, I should mention that we've got a two-day break here at The University That No Longer Loves Me. Which I'm moderately thrilled about; a couple days to convalesce and catch up are just what the doctor ordered.

Is it just me, or does Leona's voice sound different on the new episodes of Between the Lions?

Y'know, it turns out that I actually like the way this journal looks in pink. It's easier on the eyes than the bright yellow I've used until now. On the other hand... well, my journal just doesn't feel "pink" to me, y'know? Pink is happy; pink is soothing; pink is pretty; pink is peaceful. (Okay, maybe not shocking pink, but that's a pink of a different color.) My journal is rarely any of that.

But who knows. The present color scheme's gonna stay through the end of the month, I figure. After that, we'll see...

So I was looking over the new stuff at the Very Secret Diaries Merchandise page, when I saw a "Figwit Lives!" shirt.

"Figwit?" thought I. "Who's Figwit?"

It turns out that this is not actually a Very Secret Diaries reference, although I gather there's an overlapping fan base thing going on here. It turns out that Figwit is an unnamed elf who makes a short cameo appearance in the Elven Council scene of the Fellowship of the Ring film. (To see him on video, it seems, you need to get the widescreen version-- the pan'n'scan one cuts him out.) It further turns out that there are now enough fan sites to support a Yahoo category devoted to him.

Somebody needs to write a paper about this.