Personally, I can get neither excited nor outraged about this. DC, in response to what they have to believe to be popular demand for this, is publishing a prequel that will be subject to more scrutiny than the ‘Gone With the Wind’ sequel. They’ve lined up some pretty decent talent for this, although personally if I was any one of these writers or artists I wouldn’t take this job for love nor money. A good chunk of your potential audience has written you off as a soulless hack simply for the act of saying “yes”, especially since Moore himself has been on record for the last 27 years as saying he does not want other writers handling the characters. Even if they’re persuaded to buy the series, they’re going to be comparing you to the towering shadow that Moore and Gibbons cast over the comic-book landscape since 1985. If I thought I was good enough to write or draw something that could be favorably compared to ‘Watchmen’, you can bet I wouldn’t want to make it an actual prequel to ‘Watchmen’.

But more than that, I wonder, is there really a demand for this to begin with? Even if Moore could be persuaded to return for a prequel (which, let’s face it, was never going to happen…and frankly, I think this marks the point where DC has officially given up on seeking a rapprochement with Moore…which at least means we should finally see those comic-book based ‘Watchmen’ figures…) …even if Gibbons would return to work with Moore…is this actually necessary? Do we need (as Moore himself put it) to see a “Moby-Dick” prequel, or tales about what happened to Nick after the end of ‘The Great Gatsby’? For some reason, stories told in comics seem to have a momentum driving them to sequels that we don’t see in other media. (Arguably, movies fall victim to the same pressures, but it seems to be only the “light” films that give in. ‘Transformers’ gets a sequel, but nobody’s out there demanding we see a ‘Silent Running 2′.)

I think that to some extent, comics fans been conditioned to see comic books as a continuing story, despite decades of efforts to break away from the notion. The idea of a “final issue” is one we’ve never gotten truly used to, because the vast majority of comic book fans read comics to be immersed in a universe rather than to read a particular story. (Okay, that’s a pretty big statement to make, but I think there’s something to it. Comic book fans want to enter the Marvel or DC universe for a while, to vicariously live in a world of superheroes and excitement and strangeness, and so the individual stories aren’t as important.) As a result, when someone does put out a sequel or a prequel to a big story, the simple desire to return to that universe is enough to overcome even knowing skepticism about a story’s prospects.

Take ‘The Dark Knight Strikes Again’, probably the other best-known return to the other best-known 80s story. Miller was already beginning to be considered as “past his prime”, and many people doubted he could recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the original mini-series. The promotional artwork and story synopses sounded like fan-fiction based on a classic, and nobody really seemed to have a compelling rationale for the project beyond the simple mercenary belief that it would sell. And yet, sell it did. I personally bought the whole series. I thought the first issue was shoddy and embarrassing, and I still bought the next two. The pull of “what happens next?” was just that strong.

I think that DC believes that the same rationale will work again. They look at comics fans and see people so interested in the Watchmen universe that they don’t care about what’s going to be on those pages in particular; they just want to go back to that world for a little bit longer and live there. I don’t have any particular investment one way or another; I don’t hope they fail, but I don’t wish them success either. All I do have is two words regarding people who tried to recapture the spirit of a cult classic with different creators, hoping that people’s affection for the original would draw them back to a sequel:

“S. Darko”.

In comparison, when a kid speaks up against gay marriage, we get this:

I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender. Even though some kids feel like it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on. I don’t want any more kids to get confused about what’s right and OK. I really don’t want to grow up in a world where marriage isn’t such a special thing anymore. It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislator or the court can change the definition of any word they want. If they can change the definition of marriage, then they could change the definition of any word. People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

In order, that’s

1.) An endorsement of traditional straight marriage as “special” and “wonderful” without bothering to explain why it is special or wonderful
2.) A suggestion that homosexuality is wrong without bothering to explain why it is wrong
3.) The old saw that same-sex-marriage will make straight marriage less special, which is an argument from privilege
4.) Sky-is-falling assertions about the powers of the courts to change legal definitions (which have existed since there were courts, basically)
5.) The suggestion that homosexuality is chosen behaviour despite mountains of evidence to the contrary

On the bright side, this young woman’s career path is most likely already mapped out for her. In ten to twelve years, expect to see Sarah Crank (and oh my god is that not the most appropriate last name ever) either writing for National Review or on Fox News, depending on how conventionally pretty she is.

Which, not to belabour the point: anybody out there interested in illustrating an approximately 8-page horror comic I thought of this afternoon (in between bouts of coughing), email me.

(The story is not coughing-related.)

Let’s be clear: this regulation won’t work. It won’t work because there’s no viable enforcement mechanism, which you kind of need in order to enforce municipal regulations.² It won’t work because it’s a local regulation in an industry which is, to an extent, notoriously mobile. (Even were this regulation federal – numerous porn producers already book time in the tropics and shoot multiple features in a row there. There is no reason this practice would not continue and/or expand.) And it won’t work because the performers – both male and female – mostly don’t want to use them, because pornographic sex takes a lot longer than regular sex and, to put it bluntly, there are chafing issues when condoms are used.

But the spirit of the regulation, at least, is welcome. I don’t believe there’s another economic sector that is as large and as under-regulated as porn is, which is the product of a public that is not willing to admit they mostly use porn regularly and equally not willing to stop using it. The result is an industry whose exploitation of young just-off-the-bus girls has become a well-known joke, where worker protection is essentially nonexistent and where HIV flareups are, sadly, not uncommon.³ We should demand a healthier, safer work environment for pornographic actors, because all it will do is make the industry better. (People who worry about whether better treatment of women within the industry could result in less wild porn should consider that some of the raunchiest and craziest pornographers working today are women. I won’t link here, but Google “Burning Angel” or “Ovidie” or even Nina Hartley.)

Plus, as a bonus for pornographers, regulation carries with it official recognition as well, and in an industry where copyright violation has become so endemic that numerous films are produced simply as loss-leaders to get additional longterm money from the shrinking portion of the porn audience that is still willing to pay money for it, official recognition is worth quite a bit.

1. Memo to all writers everywhere: when you use “bratwurst” as a euphemism for “penis,” you’re writing subpar Krusty the Klown material. CUCAMONGA!
2. Presumably police will not be accidentally wandering on to porn sets on a regular basis.
3. Many porn companies will talk about their rigorous testing schedules, but the day I trust self-regulation is the day I join the GOP and start ranting about immigunts takin der jerbs.

FEBRUARY:

February is traditionally a light month for blockbusters, but the same can’t be said for mockbusters; the Asylum is releasing “Spectral Riders: Vengeful Spirit” early next month. The film focuses on a horse ranch in California that’s haunted by demonic spirits that possess their horses, turning them into “spectral riders” that hunt down the ranch hands one by one. The same month features the release of horror film “The Lady In Black”, about a wizarding school whose ghosts turn against them, and “The Chronicles”, about a secret book that can bestow superpowers and the teenage boys who go searching for it. But perhaps the most exciting news is the Asylum’s 3-D re-release of their “lost classic”, “The Phantasmal Menace”, about a secret order of alien samurai that do battle with evil kung-fu ghosts that possess corpses.

MARCH:

The month of March sees the long-anticipated sequel to their film “Princess of Mars”. “Prince of Mars” shows how John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr) returns to the world of Barsoom and rises to the position of Warlord alongside his love, Dejah Thoris (played once again by Traci Lords.) This one is rumored to have a serious budget to compete with Disney’s rip-off project, “John Carter”, possibly even as much as two million dollars! (That’s a lot of dollars.) March also sees the release of “The Starvation Games”, a gruesome horror flick about a fasting competition started by a group of anorexics, and “Fury of the Titans”, a movie about the ancient Greek gods re-emerging in modern-day Los Angeles.

APRIL:

The Asylum takes a bit of a respite in April, only coming out with one film, but it’s a doozy. “Titanic: Adventures in the Third Dimension” is the true saga of what happened to the legendary lost vessel, as it passes through a vortex contained in the heart of an iceberg (known as “The Heart of the Sea”) and two of its passengers, Jackson and Rosie, must battle the ferocious natives of the lost planet of Pandorra. But will the robotic Terminatrix be their ally…or their assassin?

MAY:

May sees an exciting twist on the “found footage” genre with “The Avenged”, about a group of everyday people trapped in Los Angeles in the middle of a vast superhero/supervillain battle. Those who’ve seen the advanced screenings have described it as “like “Cloverfield”, but with supervillains”, and some consider it the Asylum’s most ‘avant-garde’ release. Fans of military action might prefer “American Battleship”, an exciting drama about a battleship lost in the Bermuda Triangle and fighting aliens, while fans of horror will no doubt get excited about “Darkest Shadows”, the tale of an immortal vampire who has an irrational fear of darkness, but cannot survive in sunlight. Meanwhile, fans of the “weird west” genre will get their fill with “Three Men In Black”, a tale of three outlaws who ride into a town beseiged by zombies.

JUNE:

In June, the Asylum finally releases their long-anticipated “Grimm’s Snow White”, an ultra-faithful retelling of the Snow White story that returns it to its gory roots, along with “American G.I.: Retribution”, an action thriller about three soldiers trapped behind enemy lines who have to take down a secret research lab that creates vampire cyborg lizard zombie ninja pirahnas. (The zombie theme continues with “George Washington, Zombie Hunter”, which purports to tell ‘the true history of the Revolutionary War’.)

JULY:

The Asylum is officially declaring July “superhero month”, as they come out with twin action blockbusters that focus on capes and cowls. “Amazing: Rise of the Spider-King” takes the super-hero saga and inverts it, telling the tale from the point of view of a two-bit punk as he attempts to become the hero ‘Spider-King’, only to find that his past won’t let him go. At the same time, “Fall of the Darkest Knight” is a tragic tale of the last battle of New York’s legendary superhero, as he tries one last time to battle evil with a body that is finally beginning to betray him. (Rumor has it that the two films were shot simultaneously, with the Darkest Knight battling it out with Spider-King in the finale, but The Asylum will neither confirm nor deny this exciting tidbit of info!)

AUGUST-OCTOBER:

After the breakneck pace of the summer, August finally sees a slowdown to the release schedule between the end of the summer movie season and the start of the Christmas season. (After the blockbuster action we’ve already discussed, we might need to take a breath!) Only “Totally Recalled” is on the Asylum slate, scheduled for August. According to the press release, this is an experimental sci-fi film about a man who develops a memory enhancer so perfect that it actually can summon past memories into tangible existence…which becomes all too dangerous when taken by an FBI profiler trying to catch a killer.

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER:

And as we finally enter the holidays, it becomes clear that the Asylum has saved the best for last. “Broken Dawn” is the terrifying tale of a pack of vampires stalked by a relentless, obsessive romantic named Dawn; this girl’s creepy, emotionally manipulative vampire fetish even freaks out the undead! Elsewhere, “Zombie World War” is an alternate history saga of a World War II fought by Germans with access to voodoo sorcery, while “Fallen Sky” is the story of a superspy’s attempts to stop a madman from hacking into the guidance systems of the world’s satellites and turning them into orbital-strike missiles. But the film everyone’s talking about is “The Unexpected Journey of the Habit”, an urban-fantasy saga about a nun recruited by a modern-day pagan shaman to rescue a circus (the Asylum used just about every actor under four feet tall in Hollywood!) from a demonic entity in the form of a gaseous cloud. The spectacular battle between the nun and Smog supposedly took upwards of a week to render digitally!

So for those of you who want to see movies, but can’t afford to see actual movies, the Asylum has your 2012 set!

(Note: Two of the titles in this are real. Try to guess which two without looking it up.)

RESULTS: The Artist, The Descendants, Moneyball, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, The Tree of Life, The Help, War Horse and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close? The FUCK? Jesus Christ, Academy, that movie was shit and people did not like it and critics mostly didn’t either. I don’t get you, Academy.

BEST DIRECTOR: Whoever directed The Artist, because it is so precious and it is such an achievement! Alexander Payne for The Descendants, because it is honestly good and Payne deserves a nomination. Woody Allen, because it’s been a while since he got a nomination and the Academy is mostly made of old people who want things to be like they were when they were kids. Martin Scorcese for Hugo, so he can do what he typically does: not win. (And unlike many Scorcese nominations, this time the not-winning will be richly deserved. Hugo isn’t bad, but it sure isn’t the achievement people are making it out to be.) And probably Terrance Malick for The Tree of Life, because wank wank wank wank wank wank wank. David Fincher deserves a nomination for Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but that shit is not gonna happen, I don’t think.

RESULTS: The Artist guy, Payne, Allen, Scorcese, Malick. This one was easy to predict. At a certain point you get cynical and, as a result, correct about things Oscar.

BEST ACTOR: Clooney for The Descendants and Pitt for Moneyball are both locks, because they are Hollywood royalty and both nominations would be deserved. Jean Dujardin for The Artist, which I am reliably informed will make you believe in miracles again and also cure gout. Michael Fassbender for Shame in the “this is very serious and we must nominate somebody in this movie for being fierce and honest and reminding us that going to the movies should be like going to the dentist” category. That leaves one slot, and it could go to Leo for J. Edgar despite the fact that the movie was terrible and everyone agreed it was terrible, mostly because Clint Eastwood commands that kind of loyalty amongst the people who vote for awards. (Hey, remember how a perfectly average film like Invictus got multiple acting nominations?) However, I’ll bet on a longshot: Brendan Gleeson for The Guard. Because why not. (Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is also quite possible and more plausible than Gleeson, really, but fuck it.)

RESULTS: Clooney, Dujardin, Pitt, Oldman, and Demian Bichir from A Better Life, which trends off the SAGs. No Fassbender? Huh. I guess 2012 is a feely-goody year for Oscar.

BEST ACTRESS: Viola Davis for The Help, because racism is bad. Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, because everybody loves Meryl Streep (and not undeservedly), even when she is in a bad movie, and isn’t it time she had another Oscar already, even if we all missed like four or five much better oportunities to give her one (I’m looking at you, LAST YEAR WHEN SANDRA BULLOCK WON). Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs, because she dressed up like a man in a very unconvincing and boring movie, and that must have been a lot of work. Tilda Swinton for We Need To Talk About Kevin because she is this year’s female entry in the Michael Fassbender category mentioned above. Again, one slot left, and it’ll go to a young actress because look at all these acclaimed older actresses, what good are they? So either Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn (which is a bad movie, but Michelle Williams has been in so many good ones that she deserves a pass) or Rooney Mara for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but if I had to pick I’d go with Williams because Hollywood isn’t ready for edgy movies about girls with nose rings and stuff in the Academy Awards.

RESULTS: Close, Streep, Williams, Mara, Davis. My comment about Swinton being this year’s lady Fassbender was correct, but in the wrong way.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Plummer for Beginners is a lock and should win because he is old and has had a damn brilliant career, and I am rooting for my fellow Torontonian. Kenneth Branagh is widely considered to be a lock for My Week With Marilyn, as is Albert Brooks for Drive, and can you believe none of these guys has ever won an Oscar? That is crazy. Let’s see, who else? Jonah Hill for Moneyball? Could happen. And I’m gonna go into left field and predict that Ryan Gosling gets a nom here for Crazy Stupid Love, because Ryan Gosling had an incredible year but he’s not going to win anything.

RESULTS: Plummer, Branagh, Hill, Nick Nolte for Warrior (which was a good performance in a good movie, but come on) and Max von Sydow for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and all nominations of this sort should from now on be referred to as Ghost. As in “I can’t believe they nominated the shitty 9/11 movie for Best Picture, that’s so Ghost.“

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Whatsername who was in The Artist and OH GOD do I ever hate that movie so much. I want to punch everybody involved in the making of The Artist in the face. I am owed that, dammit. Also Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for The Help, because racism is bad. Shailene Woodley has some mojo for The Descendants, so why not. Finally, let’s finish with Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, who is getting a lot of praise for dressing up like a man in a boring, boring movie.

RESULTS: Berenice Bejo for The Artist, McTeer, Chastain, Spencer, and Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids, which almost but not quite makes up for all of the other shitty nominations this year.

THE ACTUAL BEST FILMS OF 2011 WERE, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: The Muppets, 50/50, Win-Win, A Better Life, Attack the Block, Crazy Stupid Love, The Guard, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Fright Night, Moneyball, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Captain America: The First Avenger, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Young Adult.
NUMBER OF NOMINATIONS IN THE “BIG SIX” CATEGORIES THOSE FILMS WILL GET: Not a lot of them

Q: How many “Let’s Just be Friends” does it take to change a light bulb?

And right here, we have the basic and fundamental problem the Nice Guy has, stated right up there at the beginning so that we can get it out of the way quickly. “Let’s Just Be Friends”, in ironic quotemarks so that we all understand that it’s obviously BS. This woman isn’t “just” a “friend”! They’re a woman, and therefore a potential sexual partner! The whole idea that a man and a woman can somehow have interactions between each other that don’t lead to sex is absurd on the face of it; relationships between members of the opposite sex can only have two phases. Courtship, and screwing. If the woman is still on speaking terms with you, they must therefore understand that you are courting them by definition; continuing to have voluntary social interaction with you is just “stringing you along.” Sure, they might say that they’re just a friend of yours; sure, they might say that the relationship is strictly platonic; sure, they might say that they’re not interested in you sexually and you are just like a brother to them! But the Nice Guy knows that this is just playing “hard-to-get”.

A: Only one, who will…

… call you up every night for three months and talk to you for hours on end, about how bad her current light bulb is, how it goes out without warning, and never provides her with the kind of light she would really love to have.

This one comes up time and time again, in every one of these Nice Guy rants. Again, do women ever really do this? Ever? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it does always seem like the sort of thing that people like this talk about as examples of how much support they provide to “women”, when it sounds more like the sort of thing that guys who’ve never actually spoken to a woman but have seen lots of Julia Roberts movies might come up with as an example. Most of the women I know wouldn’t go three months in a relationship with someone who treats them badly to the point where they call up their friends to complain about them every single night, but maybe I don’t know the right people.

Either way, though, the implication is loud and clear; because you provided this woman with emotional support, she is obliged to respond with sex in order to even the score. Setting aside the obvious problem (if you only provided them with emotional support to get some sex out of them, you’re really not much of a friend, are you? I do nice things for my friends because I like them, not because I’m banking up favors for later…) Why is it that Nice Guys assume that emotional support should always be repaid with physical affection? If she’s been calling you every night for three months to unload her troubles on you, and then blows you off when you’re feeling bad because she’s got better things to do than listen to you mope, then it’s an issue. Then the friendship is one-sided. But if you listen to them, all you can realistically expect is that they should listen to you.

… tell you what a wonderful light bulb you have, and how any woman would die to have such a light bulb.

…and it’s about here that “light bulb” formally becomes a euphemism for “penis”. Guys, I have news for you. Despite the vital evidence provided by that classic documentary series, “Sex and the City”, women do not have a grapevine of dating info that ranks men according to their penis size and prioritizes their relationships accordingly. If a woman is not into you, and you’re insecure about your penis size, these things are not necessarily related anywhere but in your own head.

Other than that, this is primarily a social skills issue; Nice Guys generally don’t interact with other people enough to know that whenever someone says, “Oh, you’re a wonderful person, I’m sure there’s someone out there for you, lots of women/men would love to have a boyfriend/girlfriend like you,” they’re just saying it to be nice and both parties know it. It may actually be true, but it’s not meant to be taken in the same way as, “The train for London leaves at 6 PM.” It is reassurance, not prediction.

… tell you it’s amazing that your light bulb has been sitting alone in it’s little corrugated cardboard tube for the last six months and even more amazing that you don’t have a dozen sockets to screw it into.

…

…..

…….um, dudes everywhere? If you’re trying to convince people that you don’t have a simmering undercurrent of misogyny beneath your attempts to laugh your frustrations about dating off with jokes, don’t refer to women as “sockets”. It’s just not going to go well. Trust me.

(Also, if you’ve been living in a corrugated cardboard tube for six months, your dating prospects will go down. Try looking into government assistance and local shelters.)

… call you up at three o’clock on a Monday morning, (destroying any chance you had of being alert, much less coherent at that crucial business meeting at 8 am) to agonize about the fight she had with her light bulb, and to tell you that she finally lost her temper with it and unscrewed the light bulb forever.

Again, note that her relying on you for emotional support is considered to be grounds for getting tail, not for getting emotional support. If you call her up at three o’clock on a Monday morning, distraught over a breakup, and her response is, “Unnnn…tell you what, why don’t you just take a couple of sleeping pills to get through the night and we’ll talk about this later, okay?” Then you have grounds to be upset. If she doesn’t promptly agree with sex to you out of a misplaced guilt reaction, you do not have grounds to be upset. See how it works?

… be shocked at your offer of a replacement bulb, and will tell you that she could never screw your light bulb into her empty socket, that doing so would ruin the light it gives out, and that it’s too good a bulb for her anyway, but that she hopes she’ll still be able to come over and talk to you about her light bulb problems.

And again, this makes perfect sense if you start from the premise that women are automatically being disengenuous when they tell you that they don’t see you as a romantic partner. If you assume that every time a woman says, “No, I see you as a friend,” they’re really just stringing you along romantically, then of course it hurts when you finally make your romantic interests known and she says that she sees you as a friend! Because you know she’s lying! Just like she’s lied every time she talked to you! The fact that she showed interest in you as a human being must mean that either she’s after sex herself, or she knows that you’re after sex and wants to get other things out of you by pandering to your interest in sex! And she turned you down for sex so SHE MUST BE A LYING TWO-FACED GOLDDIGGER OMG SHE’S JUST LIKE ALL THE REST

Let me break it to you gently but firmly, Nice Guys. If a woman tells you she sees you as a friend, and you don’t believe her, it is not her fault when you get upset. She is not lying, she is not pretending that the relationship is anything other than what it is, and she is not stringing you along. She is your friend. Everything else going on is baggage you are bringing to the friendship, and being upset at people for not living up to promises you imagined they made is the sign of a crazy person.

Or to put it another way, if you had a male friend that helped you move, that hung out with you and watched sports, that commiserated with you after break-ups and congratulated you on promotions…and they then explained a couple of years down the line that they did it all because they were gay and were really picturing their cock in your mouth the whole time…would you feel obligated to have sex with them? And if you did turn them down for sex, do you think they’d be justified in getting furiously angry with you for “stringing them along” and “using them for emotional intimacy”?

… go home, rummage through the trash can, find the defunct light bulb, lovingly clean it off, screw it back into the socket, and sit there in the dark.

… call you up every night for three months…

Because of course, the proper emotional response to a friend who’s trapped in an abusive relationship is a sense of irritation that they aren’t giving you sex! That’s how you know that you’re their friend, because your first thought when they’re in trouble is about yourself and how their problems inconvenience you.

It’s very simple. If a woman acts like they’re your friend, says they’re your friend, and behave like they’re your friend…then they’re your friend. This doesn’t mean you can’t want more, but their emotional consistency is not a personal slight against you. Suck it up, deal with it…and that doesn’t mean stop being their friend. What nine out of ten Nice Guys need is a female friend that they know they have no chance with, just so they can figure out that it’s not the end of the world if you hang out with a woman just because you enjoy each other’s company and not as some sort of secretive platonic dating gambit.* It helps you treat women like actual people instead of orifices-in-waiting, which women tend to look for in a man, and it helps your social skills, ditto, and it also helps you figure out exactly what the real signs of “I am interested in you” are, so you can pick up on a hint when a woman actually drops one. And if you can’t enjoy the company of a woman in any context other than sex, and you really don’t understand how to deal with a woman as anything other than an object to be fucked…then you’re one of the other ten percent. Get mental help. For your own sake as much as everyone else’s.

I hope this clarifies things.

*The phrase “secretive platonic dating” is copyright and trademark Melora Creager, of the band Rasputina. All rights reserved.

• Chuck Norris
• TaleSpin
• Abiogenesis
• True Story Swear to God
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Hetalia: Axis Powers
• Gorgeous George
• Ex nihilo
• Costa Concordia disaster
• List of unusual deaths (I sometimes read this when I’m bored)
• Adolfo Tapia
• List of websites participating in January 18 SOPA protests (d’oh!)
• Sliders

One clear lesson from this event is that I can kind of live without Wikipedia, which may run counter to the stated goal.

Also: If you try visiting any of Wikipedia’s pages, you’ll notice the article appears in full for about half a second before the standard blackout message appears, without redirecting to a new page.  That would suggest the blackout is being implemented with client-side scripting, and that I could probably override the whole thing with GreaseMonkey.  But that’s too much work just to check who replaced Jerry McConnell in the last season, or whether the guy on Sliders was even named  “Jerry McConnell.”