Still here

I mentioned a while back that I was starting to do a show for the local cable TV outlet. It's a weekly show consisting of a half-hour of commentary from yours truly. To give a sense of it, each week I introduce myself as "your host, ranter, and raconteur" and I have - rather flippantly - described the show as "a lefty Glenn Beck minus the chalkboard and the paranoia." (Which, Daisy reminds me here, may guarantee a small audience because the chalkboard and paranoia may be "the whole reason those looney tunes watched him in the first place.")

Anyway, I have two reasons for bringing this up again.

One is that I'm finding doing the show (I've done 20 now) is interfering with blogging because now I read the news with an eye to what would be good for the show rather than what would be interesting for the blog - the difference lying to a fair degree in the fact that I fully expect the cable TV audience to be less politically sophisticated than those who would seek out an overtly lefty blog like this one and so I feel a need to keep hammering on a few basic themes.

If anyone out there has experience with this sort of thing and has some good advice on how to not have one screw up the other, please give it!

The other is that I wanted to put up a video of one of the shows to give a sense of what it's like and how it goes - but I can't figure out how to take what's on the DVDs the station gives me (which will play in Windows Media Player) and turn it into a form I can upload.

If anyone knows how to do this or can point me to a source that can help, please tell me!

I guess there's a third thing: I haven't abandoned this thing here, although it may look like I've got one foot out the door. I just gotta make the necessary mental adjustments.

Oh, and Happy Labor Day! Even though a lot of us still have to work. And even though a lot of us who don't have to work, don't because we don't have work to do. And even thought it ain't gonna get better any time soon. Try to enjoy it anyway.