As the U.S. premiere of Torchwood (for folks who, unlike me, didn’t resort to Nefarious Means to see it as it aired in the UK) grows near, I thought I’d write up a quick episode-by-episode review-ette with some of my imperssions of each show. … Read more
Okay, after Jan spent a night not sleeping because her blood pressure was all over the map, she went to the doctor this morning. Here’s the game plan:
1. Have a baby.
2. ???
3. Profit!
No, seriously, if we don’t have a baby on the ground by Monday (on the ground? okay, that’s proof right there that I’ve spent way too much time with baby horses and not enough with baby humans), then Thursday of next week will be scheduled for induction, and I only wish that meant “into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame”. We had been aiming for natural childbirth, no C-sections, etc. etc., but if I’ve learned anything, it seems to be that even attempting to aim for these things almost guarantees that they’ll never, ever happen.
So there you have it. Sometime in the next eight days, I’m going to be a daddy. Oh, and we’ll open that whole seventh seal thing around that time too. Just FYI. It’ll be a busy day.… Read more
(Sorry for the post title, I couldn’t resist.)
So here we go again – the old 40/29 vs. Cox Cable feud is coming to a head. Of course I’m rooting for my 40/29 homies, or ex-homies as the case may be, but at the same time, from the responses already posted on the unusually subdued Arkansas TV News Blog (by five responses, it’s normally a lot nastier and bitchier than that – seriously, these people waste no time, well, relatively speaking, since most of them read and respond to that blog while on the clock, but anyway…), you can already see the logic that you know has to be running through the minds of most viewers who are aware of the problem: “oh well, we’ll just watch KTUL out of Tulsa.” Bit of a double-edged sword there, that Tulsa feed. (From my understanding, the reason the KTUL feed has never been syndexed – i.e. blacked out for syndication exclusivity – is because the feed from the National Weather Service in Tulsa comes in on an audio subchannel from that feed. Whether or not that’s accurate is another matter entirely.) I’ve been known to switch over to KTUL myself on such occasions as Lost being pre-empted by an Arkansas basketball game that I wasn’t particularly interested in. You can bet that others have done the same too. Question is – how much hardball can the station really play when the end result would be everyone just shrugging and changing channels?
Good luck with that, guys. For what it’s worth, it reminds me of one time, back at our rental house, when Cox called repeatedly, insisting that we were behind on payments (we actually weren’t). My wife handed me the portable phone and said “Guess who’s calling again? It’s Cox.”
“No dear,” I replied, “it’s pricks.”… Read more
Case in point – my strange cravings tonight consisted of “Fire!” by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and “Humans Being” by Van Halen (preferably the version from the movie Twister that has that huge kick-ass orchestral intro on it). It’s an odd double case of Mystery Melody Malady. Consider it the musical equivalent of a midnight run for rocky road ice cream and pickles. I must have them.
Apologies to any and all concerned for the lack of replies to voice mail, e-mail, snail mail, grail mail (holy…) and flail mail (hey, kinky). To say that the amount of sleep I get in every night, and my mental acuity, are dwindling would be a vast understatement. Any reply from me right now is likely to be “I like mittens” or “stand back, or I shall ignite homo sapiens!” or “Doctor Chandra, will I dream?” – i.e. incoherent, and only if you’re lucky will it even be relevant.
And keep in mind, this is before the baby gets here. Shine on! Shine on! 
I know, I know, probably oughtta stop blogging before I start to sound completely ludicr…oh. Never mind.… Read more
If there’s anything more insidious than just damned spam, it’s porn spam. And even worse than that is porn spam carried over to the edge of English-as-a-fourth-language illegibility and dropped off without a care. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here’s the basic formula:
1. Word 1 = Some saucy adjective
2. Word 2 = Slang noun for a woman of loose virtue
3. Word 3 = Some racy verb
4. Word 4 = Some synonym, sometimes very distantly related, for “man”
5. Intersperse random characters through the statement resulting from the above random generation to try to get past the Bayesian filters.
My all-time favorite result of the above random generation technique arrived in my inbox this morning:
AWARD-WINNING FLOOZIE SERVICES HUMANITY
(That’s with all the random letters removed.)
Two thoughts spring immediately to mind: … Read more
Nothing new to report on the baby front. We went swimming today and we’re just generally enjoying this whole three-day weekend jazz.
We watched the Star Trek: New Voyages episode World Enough And Time today. I’ll analyze it more thoroughly in a review for the site’s fan film section at a later date, but as nicely-made as it was, it made me realize something: I’m starting to feel like the world of Trek fan films is a momentous wasted opportunity. They’re produced well (hell, some of the production values easily rival the last episodes of the last TV series), acted earnestly, and they represent a fantastic group effort of will. However, they don’t say anything to me. I have yet to see one hit on a social issue like the original Star Trek did, and that’s really bugging me. These people have even fewer levels of censorship to deal with than Gene Roddenberry ever did: it’s just them and the ‘net and the audience. That cuts out so many layers of network bullshit that it just boggles the mind. But most of what we’re getting is just stuff that connects the dots between points of Star Trek continuity, without doing the one thing that has actually kept the original series on the map all these years. I’m aware that the next New Voyages will be a restructured version of David Gerrold’s never-produced AIDS/gay-themed TNG script Blood And Fire, but that’s a 20 year old script. I’m convinced that Roddenberry would be jazzed that the fans are making Trek now, but I’m also convinced that he’d be doing 30,000 RPM in his grave to see that no one’s touching big modern issues with it.
I find the fan films entertaining, but there’s just a nagging feeling of fandom-with-its-head-up-its-own-ass here. Star Trek broke ground and made people think in the 1960s. Have the fans forgotten, or just lost their nerve?… Read more
