Seriously, I forget how dead the week between Christmas and New Year’s can be. I’m just sitting around thinking about my best DVDs of 2006 and lining up the next Palm Springs discs, and there is absolutely nothing going on in the world. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

Thus, I offer for your consideration the worst television commercial in the world. WordPress’ Java console is being strangely cranky today — no images or hyperlinking available — so here’s the naked URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3iiaGD0koU

Burping robots. Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Probably not. But it’s awfully cool.

Glarkware, the company that produces it, makes plenty of other cool stuff, and is based right here in Toronto! Yay!

And, y’know, it’s been a while since I rewatched “Shaun of the Dead” …

(Found on Boingboing, where they appreciate a good zombie almost as much as I do.)

Went to the dentist again. This time, the freezing took, and he was able to assess my broken tooth … and it turns out to be salvageable. No crown, no root canal, and absolutely no talk of “extraction”; just a tiny little blob of something over the pulp and a conventional filling. Covered by insurance and everything.

Also: Computer replaced, after much arguing with Future Shop over exactly what that “lowest price guarantee” means. (It means, apparently, that they’d really rather not knock $250 off the price of an Averatec 2370 laptop computer at Eglinton and Laird, but for some reason they’re cool with it over at Yonge and Eglinton.)

In other words: Everything went right. This was a good day, even if I did spend half of it lurching around the city with a half-frozen jaw.

It’s been a while since I’ve had one of those. They’re nice.

For the second time in three days, my lovely new Averatec laptop has decided it can’t initialize its DVD drive, and won’t entertain any of my suggestions as to how to resolve this issue. Back in the box, you little bastard.

I, um, might be offline for a bit. In the meantime, here’s something very silly to look at, courtesy of Boingboing.

It’s a worky kind of day, so I offer up somebody else’s journalism about two of the very best shows on television.

Over at the New Yorker, Tad Friend delivers an amazing dissertation on the brilliance of “The Office”, in both its English and American incarnations.

And over at Reason Magazine, editors Jesse Walker and Nick Gillespie offer up the transcript of a panel discussion with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of “South Park” — which is, if anything, even more fearless and incisive after a decade on the air.

One of the reasons this is a worky kind of day is that I spent far too much time reading these yesterday.

I’ve recently discovered that Jonathan Coulton, who is often associated with John Hodgman but does quite a few interesting things on his own, has written the coolest song in the world.

You can find it here. Go on, I’ll wait.

If you’d like to hear more Coulton, his album “Smoking Monkey” is available on Emusic here. I particularly like “Ikea” and “First of May” — the guy knows his pop.

Once upon a time, he was but a lowly correspondent for some basic cable-comedy show. And now, not only does he have his own show on that same basic-cable network, but his vital contribution to American culture is being acknowledged as it deserves to be: Merriam-Webster has named Stephen Colbert’s “Truthiness” the Word of the Year.

They’ll be celebrating at Colbert Nation all week, I’m sure. Just as soon as they decide whether Merriam-Webster is a liberal organization.

This is fascinating: The New Haven Advocate reports that a master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University has proven, scientifically, that supporters of George W. Bush — and the Republican party in general — are, well, insane.

I wonder whether Fox News will even acknowledge the story. See, if they don’t report on it, then they’re doing that crazy thing where you deny reality … but of course, if they do report on it, then they’re acknowledging they might have a problem.

Nah, they won’t bring it up. Not while they’re fighting both the War on the War on Christmas and the War on Talking Penguins, surely …

Of course there are second acts in American lives. And third ones. And encores.

And then there’s whatever the hell O.J. Simpson is doing.

Look, I was as guilty as anyone else of prurient interest in the Simpson murder trial back in the nineties; the crime itself was spectacular, and once the trial began it was fascinating to watch justice perverted in slow motion (“sidebar, your honor”) every time I flipped to CNN.

I was also in Los Angeles for the Bronco chase, so I guess that’s something.

But now, evidently having given up scouring every golf course in America in search of the real killers, the Juice has decided to explore the crime from inside the mind of the murderer. He’s written a new book, “If I Did It” , in which he hypothetically discusses the crime as though he’d been the one holding the knife — just for shits and giggles, of course, since there’s no way this constitutes a confession.

And he’s promoting it with a two-part TV special to be broadcast — where else? — on Fox.

Oh, and Michael Jackson’s back, too.

Sorry if it’s all too much. Please accept this puppy chaser with my apologies.