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I need a new phone. Or maybe I need a better phone. That's it. The second one. The phone I have now seems to do whatever the fuck it wants and it's driving me nuts. I've spent the last twelve minutes trying to send a text message, but since the piece of shit decides to download whenever I actually get active on my phone, my text messages won't send. But thank God Lyft, a program I've used exactly twice, has patched itself. PS--all my other apps (why don't we call them programs anymore?) updated yesterday. Why isn't it coordinated? Why isn't it programmable to download at, oh I don't know, a period of LOW activity? Like 2 am?

I'm a bit media-saturated right now. I finally watched the new Ep of Game of Thrones (more on that later), got a Hulu account and started watching 11.22.63 (more on that later), I'm on my second badge in Pokemon Ruby and now I'm watching Seinfeld while I write this. It's the pilot episode, because I haven't seen all of them and didn't really watch it when it was popular (I saw it many, many times but I didn't watch it if you know what I mean) and so I had to start at the beginning. And it's helping me realize how distracted I am. If I pause it, I wonder what happens next, if I turn it off, I lose the ability to stop and start and drift off.  The idea is to have something in the background that I can kind of ignore, roll out on to every now and again, then come back in and do what I have to do.

The other "problem" is that I'm distracted by successful shows and projects around me that seem to be compelling and not totally out of the reach of someone who can string a couple-three ideas together, but for some reason I can only watch for a few hours before I have to change the show/do something else. Game of Thrones, now almost completely out in the woods beyond the "hope-it-gets-finished-before-he-dies" George RR Martin plotlines seems to be cramming a whole bunch of stuff into the season, just like the last. I predict lots of cliffhangers and no conclusions. 11.22.63, though, when it's not cramming exposition, is pretty interesting so far. I'm not all the way through it yet, but it's pretty great so far. James Franco is kind of awesome in it--which is hard to swallow since he's such a fucking goofball whenever I see him in anything else. Every now and then he crinkles his eyes a bit like he does in The Interview and I can't help but laughing out loud. To myself. In my empty apartment. I feel like a weirdo.

The thing is too that I am watching commercials again. Between Youtube and now my Hulu free trial, I now get some of the advertisements I see on the subway--it's almost like the posters now are designed to remind you of a commercial you saw on TV. That way you get the same message twice worked into your brain. Not subliminal, mind you, more hiding in the open. Still feels pretty much like advertisers have no idea how to reach their audiences. It is weird coming back to it, though, even in the small way that I have (what, 12 commercials in an hour? Most less than 30 seconds? I just realized that it's probably more than that--by a lot--oh no) and it's so strange how easily I've come back into it when it's in small doses. The last time I left my apartment and got a real spike of television into my head-vein the commercials were more numerous than the show and four-times as loud. Here on Hulu (the one where I can't skip the commercials) if they're louder I haven't noticed, and for the most part I just do something else while they run. Sometimes I think I don't notice them, but then I start thinking about my insurance premiums or eating at Applebees while listening to Spotify.