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The Doctor has returned and, let me tell ya, he's had an interesting month. First and foremost, I relocated 'The Lab' from it's third rate dark and dank location to a more suitable (and well fortified) location. It still amazes me that I was able to get the large majority of my worldly possession to fit into a Chevy Cavalier, but I did it.

Anyway, I�ve been hearing rumors that people thought I had overdosed, obviously, this is not true. I have, in essence, been taking my good sweet time waiting for the right subject to present itself, and it finally did, and, it presented itself in the form of MTV (gee, what a shock eh?), but not entirely in the way most of you think.

As we all know, MTV has been a favorite target of my venom from the beginning (and rightfully so), but this time I�d like to applaud MTV on something they've done. That SOMETHING is MTV-X. For those of you who don't know, MTV-X is actually a kick ass Music Video channel that doesn't show commercials and shows videos (rock videos that is) that you'll never catch on the Big Brother network these days. I discovered MTV-X last week while sipping Rum and Coke with a super close friend of mine (thank GOD you had digital cable Kathryn, otherwise, I might STILL not have anything to write about..haha). In one night I saw videos by Earth Crisis, DIO, Ratt, Yes, and other interesting bands. Now, I only marginally like ONE of those bands I listed (Earth Crisis) BUT, it's a principle man! RATT!?!? DIO!?!? On a network owned by Viacom in the year 2001!?!? THIS HAS GOT TO BE TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!!! Well, sadly it is. (Here comes the big 'plot twist')I found out 3 days after my discovery of this grand channel that, in fact, MTV-X is going to be part of MTV's 'new' plan that takes affect at the end of the year. Apparently, MTV and M2 are going to COMBINE into ONE damn channel and show NOTHING but Pop and Hip Hop videos (that is, when they actually SHOW videos I suppose). Now, here's the kicker, all the 'Rock' (and, I would guess, any video that MTV doesn't deem cool enough to be shown to a bunch of 12-18 year old kids on the main network), will be shuffled over to MTV-X, which is going to be a 'pay' network. Now, I'm not crystal clear on exactly what 'pay network' means. Does it mean, 'Pay Per View' or does it mean that you pay for it year to year like you would HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc? At any rate, that part that really gets me is this; Why does MTV and Viacom deem it necessary to CHARGE for the only channel they have that's cool? And, when I say cool, I mean cool to the millions and millions of people my age and older who would actually watch their channels more regularly if they didn't gear the s*** towards some 13 year old in Tacoma Washington who's got a Palm Pilot and Daddy�s credit cards. Of course, all of it boils down to money (we all already knew that) and I'm guessing that sucking enough money to equal the GNP of Peru out of their target demographic isn't appealing enough to the 'suits' at MTV, they only want more. 

I'm fed up with all this, I�m going to go spend sometime on a beach somewhere, sipping rum and reading Hunter S Thompson books. I'm gonna try and forget all this bogus s*** that is being laid (and is about to be laid) on all of us. I'm leaving my computer, my cellphone and TV at 'The Lab' and getting away from all this s***. So, until next month...............
 

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