I've been ruminating for the last few weeks about the possibility of canceling my cable television subscription. Anyone familiar with my viewing habits will instantly recognize this as a significant moment, but this is hardly an attempt to ditch television altogether. While this decision would definitely curb my ability to channel surf or catch a movie on HBO by chance, my intent is to miss as little of my current "planned" television watching as possible. That is, I want to find alternatives to watching my favorite shows on live TV (or more accurately recorded from live TV via TiVo).

The alternative many people will immediately suggest is DVD. I know Josh routinely waits until a show is available on DVD, then puts in his Netflix queue. Sadly, I'm not quite there yet. I need the immediacy of watching a show within a few days of its original broadcast. This may be an unnecessary conceit, but I have to take baby steps, folks.

The way I see it, there are three options readily available to me: Amazon Unbox, the iTunes Music Store, and free episode streaming on the internet. For financial reasons, free streaming is the best option. After all, it would kinda defeat the purpose of this little quest if my Amazon and iTunes purchases added up to more than my cable bill. And yes, I know I can get just about any show for free via Bittorrent, but I'm keeping things legal here.

Here's a list of all the shows I watch along with their best availability from a non-cable alternative:

30 Rock
Free streaming (NBC.com)

Battlestar Galactica
Free streaming (SCI FI Rewind)

Bones
Free streaming (Fox.com)

CSI
Free streaming (CBS.com)

Family Guy
Free streaming (Fox.com)

House
Free streaming (Fox.com)

How I Met Your Mother
Free streaming (CBS.com)

Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Amazon Unbox ($1.99/episode)

Lost
Free streaming (ABC.com)

The Office
Free streaming (NBC.com)

Saturday Night Live
Some free streaming (selected skits on NBC.com)
Amazon Unbox ($1.99/episode)

Scrubs
Free streaming (NBC.com)

South Park
Free streaming (SouthParkStudios.com)

Top Chef
NONE

So "Top Chef" and "Saturday Night Live" would be the big sacrifices here. I can probably get by with the clips that SNL posts online, but I would miss "Top Chef" tremendously. Would I miss it enough to singlehandedly justify a monthly cable bill of over $50? Absolutely not. Besides, I can certainly plan one trip to the gym per week based on when I can catch "Top Chef" on the elliptical.

This analysis, of course, fails to take into account special broadcasts, like sports and award shows. Honestly, though, I rarely watch sports anymore and I just don't see spending hundreds of dollars each year just to watch an overly long Oscar broadcast.

So, this pretty much seals the deal that I'll be ditching my cable within the next couple of weeks. The only question is how much my internet bill will increase once it goes a la carte instead of being bundled with my digital cable.

Who knows? Maybe DSL will be cheaper.

UPDATE (2:50pm): Since publishing this post, I discovered that SNL is available for purchase from Amazon Unbox for $1.99, so those selected clips on NBC.com aren't the only option.

Hillary Clinton compared herself to a movie icon today:

Recalling a famous scene on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Clinton said that ending her presidential campaign now would be as if "Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough.'"

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people," Clinton said.

And just like Rocky, Sen. Clinton loses at the end of the movie.

[Yahoo! News] Clinton likens herself to 'Rocky'

As you may recall, I made a New Year's resolution to read 52 books this year. I got off to a great start, but since that first book I've found myself falling into old patterns, like watching too much TV and doing too much mindless web surfing. Since the whole point of the 52 book challenge was to change these behaviors, I'm not going to let a little early failure deter me from my quest. If I'm going to fail, I'm going to do so as publicly as possible.

With that in mind, I'm happy to report that I finished book number two last week: The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta.

The summary from the book's front flap:

The Abstinence Teacher focuses on two divorced parents who each play key roles in the lives of other people’s children: Ruth Ramsey is the human sexuality teacher at the local high school who believes that “pleasure is good, shame is bad, and knowledge is power.” Her younger daughter’s soccer coach is Tim Mason, a former stoner and rocker whose response to hitting rock bottom was to reach out and be saved. Tim is a member of The Tabernacle, the local evangelical Christian church that wants to take its message outside the doors of its own sanctuary, and sees a useful target in Ruth Ramsey. Adversaries in a small-town culture war, Ruth and Tim instinctively distrust one another. But when a controversy on the playing field forces the two of them to actually talk to each other, an uneasy friendship begins to develop.

I found myself far more interested in Tim's story. His motivations were far more developed than Ruth's and his plotline simply more interesting. Because of this, his character rose well beyond the typical evangelical stereotypes and became the more sympathetic of the two characters. Through Tim's experiences, I was able to look beyond my own biases and begin to understand why his religious beliefs were so important to him. Perrotta clearly put in a lot of research to help him understand the evangelical world, and it shows in his writing. But that doesn't mean he ignores the darker side of the born-again world, which is represented in the book by Tim's manipulative (and probably mentally ill) pastor and a few of his fellow churchgoers.

Ruth, on the other hand, was rather one dimensional, and her struggles with work and romance never really come to life. By the book's end I was only interested in her story as it related to Tim's.

Let's hope I finish book number three in less than two months.

There's an interesting discussion going on right now at Newsvine concerning the possible lack of mathematical support for the media's depiction of the Democratic presidential race as a deadlock. The author of the initial post on the topic asserts that Sen. Barack Obama needs only to win a little more than 43% of the remaining delegates to secure the party's nomination and that he's already favored to win in most of the remaining states. It follows, then, that Sen. Obama is all but certain to be the nominee.

In the comments, however, there is some debate as to whether this calculation accurately reflects the party's superdelegates and the impact they could have in swinging the vote in Sen. Hillary Clinton's favor at the convention. In recent weeks there have been reports of superdelegates defecting from Clinton to Obama, though much of this occurred before Clinton's much-hyped primary victories on Ohio and Texas. In short, the consensus of the Newsvine commenters is that while Obama seems likely to have more regular delegates, the superdelegates will determine the race's outcome.

So what happens if the superdelegates give Clinton the victory? I would expect the party to receive a lot of criticism from voters and the media for allowing high ranking party officials to hijack the primary from ordinary citizens. This kind of pressure could result in the party opting to do away with its superdelegate system by the time the 2012 election cycle rolls around.

Perhaps the best way for the party to preserve its current system is to make sure the superdelegates vote accurately reflects popular opinion, asking them to vote for the candidate who wins the most regular delegates. If that ends up being the case, however, it pretty much renders superdelgates powerless and negates any purpose the system is alleged to serve.

This analysis, however, requires the belief that if a candidate ever won the popular vote but lost the election itself based upon an arcane system of delegates, then America would be forced to change its electoral system due to overwhelming pressure from the people.

Ask Al Gore if he believes that.

Billy Bob Thornton is finally making plans to return to the director's chair soon, and one of his upcoming projects will be based on the story of well-known Kentucky caver Floyd Collins.

While searching for a new entrance to Mammoth Cave in 1925, Collins spent three weeks exploring the inside of a small cave (dubbed "Sand Cave" by the media). While trying to exit the cavern  one day, he became trapped in a small passageway near the cave's entrance, knocking out his lamp and pinning his leg under a rock in the process. He was found the next day by friends, and efforts to rescue him began. A light was passed down for warmth and light, and Collins stayed fed on hot food brought to the cave, however when the cave collapsed in two places near the entrance, rescuers lost all but voice contact with Collins. The cave ins also blocked the recovery effort and rescuers instead began digging a shaft to reach Collins from below. Rescuers reached Collins over two weeks after he became trapped, but by the time they found him, he had been dead for three days. Believing it to be too dangerous to remove Collins at the time, his body remained in the cave for two more months. The news coverage of the rescue efforts and Collins' subsequent death is considered by many to be the first worldwide media sensation of the 20th century.

In the early 1980s, WAVE 3 News in Louisville aired a series of stories telling the tale of Collins ordeal and death. I remember being riveted by the broadcasts in my young age. This fascination stayed with me for many years. In my first two summers during college, I worked as a tour guide at Squire Boone Caverns near Corydon, Indiana, and made it a point during that time to visit as many tourist caves in Kentucky and Indiana as I could. I even went on "wild" cave tours at Wyandotte and Mammoth Caves that lasted several hours each. (At Mammoth Cave I even got to experience the horrible feeling of being in trapped in a tight passage way; unlike Collins, however, I had a professional guide to help me get free.) After I left my cave guide job, I worked for a few years at WAVE television. In my first week on the job, I learned that Steve York, then the Assignment Editor in the news department, had been the reporter who told Collins' story in those broadcasts I'd enjoyed as a child. During my time at WAVE I asked Steve about that series on several occasions.

I can only hope that Thornton's take on Collins will live up to my own hopes. Based on the director's comments, he looks to be interested in setting a dark tone:

[T]he reason I want to make the movie is I want to make the movie about human nature. It's human nature to want to see other people suffer for entertainment. That's why we have reality television. That's why every time there's somebody trapped in a hole, everybody's interested.

The deal for Thornton's Floyd Collins movie is not yet finalized, so casting, filming and release details have not been determined.