Why is it that so many of my favorite television shows, thriving like no others online in forums and other Internet avenues, are always given the axe? First it was Buffy and Angel, then Firefly. Next up was Veronica Mars, and now one of television’s most well-crafted dramas, Jericho. This also seems to go for my preferred political candidates, so popular in the online “cloud” yet so obscure outside of it.

From the popularity of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, to an audience for the now-cancelled CBS show Jericho, online phenomenon rarely transfers from the world of bits and bytes into the world of atoms. Because of this, being an Internet citizen can be disorienting and downright disappointing when it comes time to step away from the monitor and back into the “real world.”

When I discover my friends and family have never heard of Ron Paul or Jericho or countless other Internet fads that are destined to disappear into obscurity, I can only sigh and look forward to a time when this new online generation can start to gain some serious clout and make a dent in the mainstream media and ultimately the reality in which we all live.

Until then, I’ll just have to live with the fact that what happens on the ‘net stays on the ‘net.

As front-runner in the “who’ll get crushed by McCain unless he dies first” sweepstakes, Barack Obama doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands. But for those nights when he’s up at 3am and the phone isn’t ringing, he’s probably watching these shows on his iPod (so he doesn’t wake everybody else up).

1. Feb 24th episode of Saturday Night Live. Where Tina Fey supports Hillary. Barack loves a good laugh.

2. The Oh in Ohio - Priscilla Chase clearly a metaphorical Ms. Clinton, although I’m sure Hillary had at least one orgasm.

3. The Stupid Pastor. Just because it’s not really a movie doesn’t mean Obama’d wouldn’t want it on his iPod.

4. Family Guy episode 31. Inspiring. Even if Barack isn’t a fat, stupid white guy. I mean, if he was a stupid white guy, he could never be president, right? Right?

5. Battlestar Galactica (2003) 1st season. Despite the surrealism of a female president, still entertainment at its finest.

6. Aug 22 2007 Daily Show. He’s so vain. And waaaay overdue for another go.

7. Primary Colors (John Travolta, 1996) movie. Maybe he could learn something. But probably not.

8. Big Brother 9. Feb 26. The gang is given “news from the outside”. Political news overshadowed by Britney Spears’ loss of custody. Even Barack needs to get his mind off politics by… watching a bunch of dysfunctional adults bicker with each other in a house.

9. The Jerk (Steve Martin, 1979). A white man who thinks he’s black. If Steve really was black, he could’ve been President by now, given all the tailwind that black guys are getting these days. Chris Rock, shut UP.

and of course….

10. March 15th episode of SNL. Who doesn’t want to hear Hillary called a bitch on national TV?

You can get some of this stuff on Hulu if I haven’t provided a link. Or somewhere…

The script that normally updates content on our servers hasn’t re-activated since our outage this morning, and we may not be able to get it online until Monday morning. Be patient. Thanks.

At 10am we had a system outage, everything is running again as of 1:15pm. We had allowed the bandwidth moratorium to continue through to this morning because of the login delays some people were experiencing last night.

The freeze is now over, and thank you to everyone who’s been using the new service with 200 days of availability. Keep on enjoying Graboid Video!

Please note that requests for support can be posted or addressed in our user support forums. Do not post any specific requests for support here - they will be deleted.

We’ve doubled the amount of video accessible via Graboid Video! As of right now, when you log in you’ll be able to get videos that were posted to the internet up to 200 days ago (over 6 months). Got something you’ve been looking for? You’re almost certain to find it now, and in the language you want. Please note - searches will take longer now, but you can speed up loading by changing your preferences to show 25 titles at a time instead of 50 or 100.

The full 200 days of access is available to anyone on a current price plan (4.99 Silver, 14.99 Gold, 39.99 Platinum), and Graboid free users who’ve signed up for the Graboid Stars program. Find out more about Graboid Stars here.

And not only that, but to encourage you to sample all this extra content, we’re announcing a freeze on bandwidth tracking for 2 days. Until midnight Friday night, every single user on our system has unlimited bandwidth, and your current bandwidth utilization will be unchanged. At 12:01 am Saturday (all times Eastern Daylight Time, New York, USA for reference) bandwidth tracking will resume from where it was before the freeze. So go nuts!

Please note that requests for support can be posted or addressed in our user support forums. Do not post any specific requests for support here - they will be deleted.

To those who signed up for our dry run referral program, thanks. You’ll be getting an email asking for your thoughts on the process.

Every day a number of people post technical questions here as comments to blog entries. Such posts belong in the user support forums. They will be deleted from the blog. Especially with account-specific questions (can’t log in, bandwidth issues, forgot password…) you should email support @ graboid.com.

Thanks for your patience - the Graboid Support Forums are back in service. If you have questions or comments on Graboid, or just need something to read, the forums are the place to be.

If you’re a past user of the forums, when you get to the page you may still see the “under maintenance” message. Just refresh your browser.

Thanks for your patience.

While our support forums are being rebuilt, please note that the blog is not the best place for you to post individual problems with Graboid. Please email support at graboid.com to get a response that’s specific to your issue. Thanks.

Just an update that we’re still working on restoring the support forums, trying to get everything restored early next week (maybe sooner). Sorry for the outage. It’s a long story…