For those of you not in the San Francisco Bay Area we've recently had a big to-do with a change in NBC affiliates. Seems that they've changed their local affiliation to a San Jose based station. This means that many (including yours truly) within the full Bay Area cannot receive the signal to this now more southern station. So everyone's in a big pique. And we're receiving countless advertisements regarding the change, countless advertisements to purchase local cable in order to receive the signal, and countless advertisements disguised as news to keep us up-to-date.

I'm one of those strange hold-outs from the old days who's never had cable and never wanted it, despite the gawks and pleas of family and friends. First of all, I find something wrong with having to pay to be a couch potato. Secondly, I don't really like to watch tv anyway, so why would I want more of it. Third, I'd really rather have less options when flipping. And finally, the times that I've been at family's or friends' houses with cable and actually looked around I could never find anything worthy of my time anyway.

So now I'm without one of the big stations. I've thought about it and realized that I rarely watch the station anyway. And I don't really care about it. Now, of course, I would mind if I suddenly lost access to "Buffy" or the "Simpsons," but other than that I don't want any of it. But many in the area are screaming and I understand. If it was important to me I would be fuming as well. Anyway, to finalize this post I leave you with a particularly good quote from one of our angry locals:

"Maybe what bothers me most about this whole NBC thing is that it bothers me at all. I have visions of myself fighting the good fight for affordable housing, gay rights, municipal power and off-leash dog parks in San Francisco, and now find myself in the rather ignoble position of arguing that watching 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Dateline' and 'Weakest Link' is a right, not a privilege. 'Just Shoot Me,' indeed."