"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
My friend Kim just sent me a list of “You’ve lived in Pennsylvania too long when…” jokes, and while thankfully most of them don’t apply (yet), I fell over laughing at #14:
“You can recite the four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and construction.”
I think we’re getting close to almost winter. Although, here in the valley, we usually get a few surprise attacks of summer just before it starts to snow.
Wrote another little something for 600 seconds. Sometimes, despite — or because of — the time limit, everything seems to fall together. I like this one.
Stealing a page from Maximum Verbosity,
Current clothes: Pale green polo shirt, off-white Dockers, black (and very comfortable) shoes.
Current mood: A little tired, a little bored, but otherwise okay.
Current music: None right now. But most recently, Actual Miles: Henley’s Greatest Hits. It’s what’s currently in my car’s CD player anyway.
Current hair: Still brown.
Current annoyance: The cancellation of Farscape. The cancellation of Witchblade also pisses me off, but the show has its fair share of problems, and it’s not as if they were promised another season, like some people.
Current thing: I dunno. Filling this out, I guess.
Current desktop picture: At work it’s this, and at home it’s this.
Current favorite group: Musical group? Probably the White Stripes. Those punk kittens have got me hooked. Before that, it was the Flaming Lips, primarily the first track from their new album.
Current book: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. Before that, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Before that, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. All as excuse not to go back to The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein.
Current video in player: Yesterday, I watched the first few episodes “24”, which I missed during the show’s first run, but which I taped during FX’s Labor Day marathon.
Current refreshment: If you can call it that… I forgot my bottle of orange juice this morning, so I had to settle for a Pepsi from the copy room’s fridge. For awhile there, I was absolutely addicted to Yahoo, but I seem to have moved on to Kool-Aids of assorted flavors. My love affair with Gatorade (it was the only thing I could manage to drink after my week of strep throat last fall) seems to have finally come to an end.
Current worry: That I won’t be able to get episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sent to me this year. That I may have inadvertently offended some people by naming a column in this year’s Completely Different “Off My Medication”. That my boss will show up. That other people are growing bored with 600 seconds.
Current thought: Is it too soon to start whining again about the lack of comments here? 😉
I don’t get the Sci-Fi Channel with my cable package, but I’ve become a fan of the show through DVD, and this just boggles the mind: Farscape has been cancelled. Despite consistently high ratings and the written promise of a fifth season, the Sci-Fi Channel has decided to exercise a clause in their contract and drop the show after the fourth season’s cliffhanger. No resolution, no explanations, just a happy go fuck yourself to the cast, crew, and fans. Their position seems to be, basically, “the show’s been really good to us, it’s done well with viewers and critics alike, we promised everyone a fifth season, but we’re cancelling it anyway.”
An interesting interview with director/writer Menno Meyjes, actor John Cusack, producer Andras Hamori, and associate producer Sidney Blumenthal on their new, controversial film, “Max”:
Blumenthal: There is a tendency among some conservatives to talk about figures like Hitler and bin Laden as beyond human understanding, as a dark force that just sprang full-born into the world. “Max” shows that evil has nuances — it doesn’t just emerge in its full nightmarish quality instantly, it develops day by day, it has its own evolution. That makes it more horrific. Because if evil were something absolute and distinct, it could be removed from human experience. But it’s not, which means we must come to terms with how it arises.
As I say, interesting. I have to agree with Cusack, that presenting the world in terms of black and white, us versus them, good versus evil is “a great way to rally the troops, but beyond that it doesn’t get you very far.”
It would be nice if our current president could understand that.
