03/20/03's illustrious band:

The Ag Channel

Brought to you by Skeeter, who just moved to Des Moines.

You know you're in Iowa, Skeeter says, when local Cable TV includes the Ag Channel. So far, he's watched a cattle auction and a national FFA (Future Farmers of America for the agriculturally impaired) competition. That's a niche market that just isn't being served here in the metro area. He's managed not to OD, though, what with the challenge of finding the grocery store, post office, video store, etc., in his new town.

Personally, I'd rather see the Editorial Channel (EdTV!), where you can watch people mark up important documents with red pens and argue over the placement of semicolons. Or the Library Channel, where people walk around quiet buildings looking at old books and magazines. During sweeps week, I bet they'd do a special on the Dewey Decimal System. Or how about the Fanfic Channel? (Fanfic is fan fiction -- stories and scripts that super-fans write for their favorite shows. There are, for instance, billions upon billions of Star Trek fanfic sites on the Internet. And every author writes herself or himself a role in the beloved cast.) Broadcasts would consist entirely of people sitting around writing scripts . . . for the Fanfic Channel.

What would you like to see on TV?

OK, that's it for me today. I'm off to not listen to war coverage on NPR; instead, I'm going to see the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with Amy 2.0. We'll catch up on the war soon enough. For tonight, I'll take those fleeting notes, those proofs of the human capacity to create beauty as well as to destroy, to heart instead.

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