The thing that got me thinking about the local news is the current run of television advertising for the Nintendo Wii.

As before, you have two people. But only one of them ever speaks. The other guy just stands there, smiling, while his traveling companion barges into someone's home and forces them to play video games, holding the Wii controller in a vice-like grip borne of pure terror. Or joy. Sometimes I just can't tell. Yeah, it's probably joy. Still, creepy.

BotCon is this weekend. And Providence isn't even that far away.

I haven't been able to watch the local news for years.

It's the two-anchor format. Sure, there's the banter and all that, but when one of the anchors was reading the news, I made the mistake of looking at the other one. The one that's just sitting there, smiling, nodding, and trying valiantly to look interested. Like an automaton. Creepy.