Those three little words

They infuriate. They frustrate. They cause you to scream and throw things.

"To be continued" -- probably the three most irritating words in the world. We watched the final part of the first half of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica on Wednesday evening. It was tense, exciting stuff. [SPOILER ALERT!] Crazy Admiral Cain had just decided to execute two of Adama's officers, who'd killed a Cain-authorized Cylon interrogator who was about to anally rape Boomer, a Cylon carrying the human/Cylon hybrid baby of one of the officers threatened with execution (keep up at the back there; this is important stuff). In retaliation, Adama had launched a strike force against the Pegasus, so that he could "get his men back". And . . . fade to black, "to be continued". Argh! [/SPOILER ALERT]

This is why people download TV shows illegally. You're living in a country with a lousy TV broadcasting service -- 30 channels and nothing to watch, an inability to schedule programs properly or even show them in the right order -- you know the episodes you want are out there, and you're going to buy the box set when it's available but you want to see what happens on Galactica NOW so BitComet starts looking pretty damn attractive. The Internet has given us the ability to get what we want pretty much when we want it -- never mind when the network operators, distributors, and producers want you to have it. I'm still resistant to watching TV on download -- I've gotten used to seeing all our "stories" via the projector, so a laptop keyboard just doesn't cut the mustard -- but it's tempting. Very, very tempting.

To be continued . . .