For you other commercial-watchers:

From The 5 Most Annoying Banner Ads On The Internet: 

Worse, they're targeting the most annoying demographic on the planet: the "I only watch it for the ads" vacuum-headed smirkers. This is a public service announcement: SAYING YOU DO NOT LIKE SOMETHING POPULAR DOES NOT MAKE YOU INDIVIDUAL AND EDGY. It makes you dumbass- at least the unoriginal hooting herd enjoy the damn game. You're being equally unoriginal, dumber, and deliberately spending time to point out how you don't like it. Do you think a monkey that repeatedly eats stones and complains about it is the "cool, unique" monkey in among his friends? No, he's the stupid one even in a group whose main hobbies are masturbating in public and throwing shit at each other

The article is an "Americans are dumb and this is proof" rant that I usually don't approve of, but for the past several years, excluding this one, t_h_e_m has been hosting "commercial-watching" parties during the Super Bowl, even though a lot of people really do follow the game. We then voted on te winners, and those of us who didn't follow the game at least had each other to hang out around.

But the first part of the article is right: TV ads are the part of the program we skip on our TiVo, and until digital downloads came around, they were the only way to pay for the part of the programming we care about. Ad-worship is more than a little perverse. It's like a Stockholm Syndrome for consumers. Commercials are not our friends.

Instant Review: Azumanga Daioh Episode 1 dubbed

OK, Azumanga Daioh is in miwasatoshi's top-∞, so I added it to my Netflix queue, and I watched episode 1 today.

I pressed "play" without looking and ended up playing it dubbed.  I remember hearing about the Southern Osaka Voice, but I'll get used to it.  I don't want to have to watch the whole episode again in Japanese.  More annoying is how all the English has to be un-Englished when it comes up.  So I might switch in a few episodes.

We'll see what else.