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Mad Men, which just started its second season on AMC recently, is fantastic television. This is a show I wanted so much to dislike, but couldn’t. The characters are awful people; the men ogle the women, the women demur and scheme, the office is a cesspool of lies, sex, and politics.

It’s great television, in other words. You cheer as the cheating husband finds the solution to his problem, allowing millions of additional sales for a cigarette company. You sigh in defeat as the good secretary succumbs to the lying bachelor on his wedding weekend. And, most importantly, you can’t wait to watch the next episode.

As I said, season 2 just got started, but I will try my hardest to wait until the DVDs come out. I’m 3 episodes away from the end of season 1 and I can’t imagine having to wait a whole week to know what comes next.

Curmudgeon mode, Engage!

I’m a big gadget/Web/Internet/wasting time fan, but the latest waste of time just made me laugh today. It’s called firefly. Firefly (sorry, firef.ly; did no one learn from del.ici.ous, wait, deli.cio.us, damn it del.icio.us?) is a service that lets you add (sigh) live chat to your web site. Really. Live chat. You know, for all those deep, moderated discussions taking place on the Web.

Firefly runs on Flash and a Javascript library (as far as I can tell), that lets anyone on your site chat with the other people on your site. I don’t know if someone on the homepage is chatting with someone on a sub-page, but really, who cares? This only works when a couple of things are in alignment: you have sufficient traffic and people want to talk about what you’re writing about.

Those two things also basically guarentee that you will have a high Internet troll quotient. And now, he’s a real-time, unmoderated, permanently S3-stored troll. It’s also next to impossible reference another chatter to, yah know, have a conversation.

It’s a cute toy, but that’s all it will be. Om Malik is saying it’s in Alpha on HuffPo; I’d love to hear how they’re dealing with political Internet trolls over there.

This is satire. It’s also ham-fisted (thanks J–) and stupid for a cover, but satire nonetheless. If When you encounter someone who thinks it’s prescient or insightful or whatever, you have my permission to smack them upside their idiotic skull*. ‘Grats to the New Yorker for the best attention whoring of the election season so far.

* Note, my permission doesn’t mean crap in any court, workplace, or household, including my own.

Already more than halfway through this list; picked up Slaughterhouse 5 at a booksale this weekend for $.50.

32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read | How To Split An Atom

However, unlike any marriages on my list, the real, legal and actual same-sex marriages in California are in danger of being destroyed by people who aren’t actually in them. There is no initiative on the California November ballot to “protect” marriage from already-married Creed fans or Pepsi drinkers. There will be one to “protect” marriage from already-married same-sex couples.

Which is to say: Isn’t it funny how some people are going so far out of their way to destroy marriages they say they don’t believe actually exist.

Well, now, that’s an interesting little quandary. Click through to read the entire article; it’s funny and brilliant. This whole “gay marriage” thing is completely out of control; can we just, for once, let it go and let people get on with losing half their crap, no matter who they’re splitting their assets with?

Note to heteros: homosexuals entering into a legally binding contract in no way diminishes the validity or meaning of your legally binding contract. Moaning about “gay marriage” demeaning the “sanctity” of marriage as a whole is like saying that, because gays are allowed to have a mortgage, your mortgage is of less value (try and sell that one to the bank). Down with gay mortgages!

This post brought to you by a double entendre, more than a few Beavis and Butthead-style giggles, and the letter “V”. Oh, and Creed sucks ass. Oh, I almost forgot. Search Google for “gay marriage california” (or click here, yah lazy bum). Rainbow sidebars!

Also, anyone who even starts a refutation which invokes religion or wingnut rhetoric will be either a) mocked mercilessly or b) have their comment deleted; depends how frisky I’m feeling.

Whatever » Dude, I Totally Unmarried You Just Now

“I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11.

And there’s a lot more. If someone, anyone, had spoken like this when Congress bent over and gave the administration everything they wanted, maybe we’d actually be fixing some crap around here and getting the hell out of Iraq. And bravo to Senator Obama for not taking that BS 9/11 crap from some pandering Bushie.

I just HAVE to make this.

Firefox 3 drops today and Mozilla is trying to set a world record for downloads in one day. I’ve been using the release candidates for about a month now and really like some of the new features like bookmark tagging and the download manager.

Grab your copy today, but not yet (8am EDT) and get a great browser and be part of the world record attempt by clicking on the logo below.

Update: The official launch is 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern).

Thanks Google, this is a very welcome addition to Reader.

I won’t even try to summarize this, just go read the BoingBoing post or the Talking Points Memo post.

Yeah, that exactly the kind of crazy we need in the White House.