The Oil We Eat is a Harper’s article by Richard Manning based on a book he’s written, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization. Both the book and the article discuss the increasing toll modern agricultural techniques are taking on our ecosystem and on our dwindling fossil fuels. In short, it is another sign of the apocalypse—so to speak.

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I have absolutely no one to talk curling with these days, and thus I cannot bitch about how the Kelly Scott rink is doing horribly at this year’s worlds. Norway just stole four points from them. FOUR.

And none of you care because you didn’t even know there was a world championship going on, and wouldn’t watch it even if you did. I hate you all.

Update: SNAP. Canada comes back in 11 to squeak by the Norwegians. Best I’ve seen them play all week.

It occurs to me I’m the only one watching curling because I’m the only derelict human being here. Everyone else has school and jobs and lives.

My favorite thing about the New York article on 9/11 conspiracy theories currently making the rounds on Metafilter? This part:

Does it matter that the pilot for the conspiracy-themed Lone Gunmen (a short-lived Fox knockoff of The X-Files), which aired on March 4, 2001, tells the story of a U.S. government agency’s plot to crash a remote-controlled 727 into the World Trade Center as an excuse to raise the military budget and then blame the attack on a “tin-pot dictator” who was “begging to be smart-bombed”?

Really? Yes, really. What’s most amazing about this isn’t the somewhat eerie similarities between the plot of the pilot (ha ha) episode and what actually happened; what’s most amazing is that despite airing a scant six months before the actual attack, no one seems to remember this part of the episode. I remember the horrible opening of the episode, where the Lone Gunmen rant about the Octium IV; I remember the conversation about Byers’ dad being dead and believing in JFK and Camelot; I remember how apparently the only way to solve the crisis was to talk to some super-hot babe hacker with a penchant for guns. Above all else, I remember thinking how this show was going to suck, hard. But nowhere in that collection of memories do I remember a Plot To Crash Airliners Into the World Trade Center. How the hell did I miss that? And how is it that no one else jumped on this right after the attacks, even while we were finding obscure novels making reference to planes crashing into buildings and boggling at the similarities?

The answer, of course, is that the show was so bad that everyone promptly forgot it existed when it was cancelled. But man, talk about weird.

I take back what I said about the last two episodes of 24. The season finale of Battlestar Galactica was the best hour of scripted television I’ve seen so farthis year, and will almost certainly be the best scripted hour of television to air in all of 2006. A more ambitious episode I have not yet seen.

So I’m watching Prime TV at 4 in the morning. (Don’t ask.) Prime TV, for the foreigners, is a Canadian cable television station aimed at people so old that they don’t even bother to put up a decent website, since all of six or seven internet-savvy octogenarians will ever find it. Programming ranges from old episodes of M*A*S*H to new episodes of The Price Is Right to rip-offs of Antiques Roadshow. Along the way they’ll show programs about spa getaways, yoga for seniors, and—well—whatever they can buy on the cheap to fill 24 hours. The spiritual predecessor to Prime would be CKVR Barrie, whose lineup consisted almost solely of M*A*S*H and Three Stooges reruns, fishing shows and before-breakfast yoga.

So what, exactly, is on Prime at 4 a.m.? Only the least professional home improvement show I’ve ever seen. It’s basically a two-camera setup (and maybe even that’s being a bit generous), the sorts of projects on the show are simple things like “replace your doorbell” and “install a new thermostat,” and the host is an odd woman completely unlike your usual home improvement host. She’s no Ty Pennington, that’s for sure; while the male-model-turned-carpenter mugs for the camera at every opportunity and talks a million miles a minute, this woman’s hosting style is fairly unpolished, as though she were shooting the show on a whim in her living room.

She makes little self-deprecating jokes, does silly things to make a point (to demonstrate that nine volts won’t kill you, she takes a 9V battery and touches it to her tongue) and generally acts like your mother’s friend who’s good with tools. She occasionally uses ill-suited equipment (what, the show couldn’t afford a Phillips screwdriver?) and isn’t afraid to make mistakes on camera; while replacing said thermostat, she attacks a screw with a cordless screwdriver, and then decides she needs a smaller, manual screwdriver. So we watch as she dips out of frame, digs through her toolkit, finds what she needs, and returns to the thermostat. That’s a good fifteen to twenty seconds of dead air, folks. Once the thermostat is installed, she has to fiddle with it to get it working, and at one point remarks something to the effect of “…aaaand something’s wrong.” It’s a show that would’ve been a cult phenomenon on community cable; it’s vaguely embarassing at first, but as you watch the show you realize that at least a) she knows what she’s doing (sort of), b) she’s not wooden or pedestrian like so many other home improvement shows, and c) she’s not stupidly over the top and perky like the recent slate of “reality” renovation shows. She’s the kind of host you root for a little, because she seems like a real person, and thus her show will undoubtedly tank.

Except it didn’t. A Repair To Remember, the show I was watching, wasn’t on community cable; it was on the Women’s Television Network, later renamed the W Network. Despite its miniscule production budget and its cheesy cottage country look and feel, the show gained a fairly large audience and catapulted its host to bigger and better things. And here’s the weirdest part of all—the host was Mag Ruffman, and her previous gigs included roles in Anne of Green Gables telemovies and Road To Avonlea. Yeah, that’s right, Road to frickin’ Avonlea. A Repair To Remember was successful enough that Ruffman got a second home improvement show out of the deal, Anything I Can Do, which hopefully got some better graphics, a full-time editor and a second camera. Now she has a column in the Toronto Star and a book published by McClelland and Stewart.

And all she had to do was to pretend she was on CKVR.

So I learn not long ago from Calvin that the CBC show This Is Wonderland was cancelled. This is not a great surprise; in addition to being Canadian (small audience) and on the CBC (cash strapped), This Is Wonderland was a hard show to explain to anyone who had never seen it. It was a legal show unlike most other legal shows; with both dramatic and comedic elements, the obvious touchstones are Law and Order and—uh, are there any legal comedies? Oh, that’s right, Ally McBeal. So strikes one and two.

This Is Wonderland isn’t very similar to either show, however, which makes the show even harder to describe (though I’m thankful I never had to tell people, “see, it’s like Ally McBeal…”). And then CBC shifted the show’s time slot around and barely promoted it; compare the amount of advertising for This Is Wonderland versus CBC’s new show, At The Hotel. As a result, the show was always easier to admire from afar than to watch and enjoy.

Here’s my theory, though. I just saw Cara Pifko’s interview on Popcultured, the Comedy Network’s attempt to blend Entertainment Tonight with The Daily Show. As if that premise weren’t bad enough, it’s hosted by Elvira Kurt, a woman whose every joke is like a punch in the neck. Watching her interview the lovely Pifko was a horrible experience, and I’m certain this was why the show was cancelled; anyone watching the show must’ve thought, “gee, if the star of This Is Wonderland is stupid enough to talk to Elvira Kurt, then This Is Wonderland can’t be worth watching.”

And even if Kurt didn’t really have anything to do with the show’s cancellation, she’s still not funny. So screw you, Elvira Kurt.

One: 24. I’m officially revising my opinion from “guarded optimism” to “best season ever?” Very few miscues, some spectacular episodes, and yesterday’s double-episode hit was the best two hours of scripted television I’ve seen so far this year. Jack is officially BACK.

Two: Toronto Hydro has unveilled plans to blanket the downtown core with Wi-Fi access by the end of the year.