So riddle me this, fellow TV lovers. Big bad major network unceremoniously yanks your favorite comedy from the air halfway through its current season for a two month hiatus—this after spending two and half seasons basically setting it up for failure, juggling it around various nights and timeslots. Then it murders its companion show, as if to taunt it with the fate that’s in store for it all too soon. And then it condemns it, upon its imminent return, to the purgatorial death slot of Friday night, where it will serve out its remaining sentence burning off episodes two at a time, with no hope at redemption. Seems like the end for you poor, underwatched (but over-funny!) Happy Endings, right?

Dead Set. World War Z, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I Am Legend. Dead Island. Dawn of the Dead. Warm Bodies. When zombies come, they come not as single spies, but as battalions. There have been so many outbreaks of the undead over recent years that they’ve overrun the pages of fiction to shuffle grimly into the real world.

In 2011, Leicester City Council was obliged to admit that they had no fixed plans in event of a zombie uprising. The Center for Disease Control was a little more prepared. Their advice included a list of essential survival items including food, water and, touchingly, a copy of your birth certificate.

Finally, we’re living in the future. What on Earth is it doing to us?

At their recent sold-out shows at the Tate Modern in London, Kraftwerk revisited its eight studio albums in neat, chronological order. At first glance, it’s rather jarring to think of such forward-looking sounds having earned a retrospective. But then they were never really about the future, anyway. With songs like Autobahn, Pocket Calculator and Trans-Europe Express, it’s clear that Kraftwerk was actually interested in the technology that already surrounded them.

A few years ago I had the chance to be a Nielsen “family” (though I live alone) and catalog, for all posterity, a detailed record of my TV viewing habits. Eventually—I assumed— this raw data would be processed and reported to the masses, with my viewing choices powerfully impacting the national viewing audience. Tough work, but someone’s got to do it.

“If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.” That’s been the battle-cry, the perennial response to objectionable TV.  I don’t know exactly when it began: perhaps it dates back to TV’s earliest days, and the advent of the off/on switch, when someone was offended by Queen for a Day or Candid Camera. Whatever the case, it seemed to have gained its greatest traction during Tipper Gore’s lyrical examination and condemnation of rock and rap music in the ‘80s, which crossed over to the TV debate via MTV (which, by the way, was not exactly straight up censorship, though MTV, trying to cultivate a rebellious image, liked to act like it was.) Regardless of when it began,“If you don’t like it, don’t watch it,” as a supposedly viable solution to objectionable TV and its problems, is still very much with us.