The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Check Out My Backyard
He had killed a baby bunny. This is a baby-bunny hole. Some mama bunny thought the middle of my damn backyard where Shadow the Dog lives would be a good place to plant the babies.
And P.S. – a cooper’s hawk lives in the neighborhood.
So we put the chair over the hole and have been walking Shadow on a leash. How long before baby bunnies leave the nest?
Talking TV
I haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy in months. Since that one that ended with McDreamy and McSteamy pummeling each other on the mezzanine. Grey’s is on while I am at the library, so I had been watching the Tivos on weekends. Except that I started choosing homework over Tivo and fell behind. I happened to tune in for the last 30 minutes of the finale – which was great – so now I am all caught up.
It’s like when I used to keep up with General Hospital by reading the recaps online.
Lost, on the other hand, I watch in real time. The season has been up and down, but the finale was pretty good. Except when Juliet punked out.
I am supposed to believe that she is going to blow up the island so that she never has to meet Sawyer so that she never has to lose him? First of all, that’s lame. Second of all:
“I saw the way you looked at her”?
Bee oh oh atche oh oh. (Is that how you spell “H”)?
As far as I can tell, the guy has been nothing but awesome to you this entire time. He has done every. single. thing. you asked of him. And even the things you just manipulated him into doing. He hasn’t gotten pissy with you once – even when you deserved it. Since the second Kate walked back into Dharmaville, Sawyer has talked about nothing but what a great life he had with you. Five seconds before decking him, Sawyer told Jack to walk over there and get Kate back. He has been the very definition of commitment.
I don’t care if he is carrying a small torch for some chick he knew for three months – three years ago. Actions speak, Lady.
(Yes. I would have gotten on the plane with Victor Laszlo.)
OK. Now I am done. Let’s talk about the important stuff:
I was thinking that John was an even bigger ass once he got back to the island. Now we know why. The best reveal for me was that Ben wasn’t all messed up about Roger Workman. He was all messed up because of Jacob.
I cheered like it was football season when I heard Vincent. Which reminds me of something funny that Maureen Ryan said at the Tribune. She was quoting the great lines in the episode and said:
Miles to all: “I’m glad you all thought this through.” Miles should go live with Rose and Bernard, honestly. And I would watch that show.
I would also watch that show.
24 is the show at which I am really rolling my eyes.
I am vaguely interested in seeing what Aaron does. Although that means watching more of Sherri Palmer jr. (who is so weepy and annoying that she doesn’t even deserve the nickname anymore – suggestions for something better?). I would also like to know what happens to Tony. Anne’s judgement is that he can live, but his girlfriend must die – she is responsible for the recycled Kim Bauer plot.
House. Um…so he didn’t detox. Or do the other stuff. So now he is going to detox. Really – I’m pretty sure we have been here before. I mean, the ride down is cool and all. But I was expecting a game-changer. I think it is too bad Kal Penn had to bolt out the door because I think they used their best material in those couple of episodes.
Now. I have tons of books to read and many movies to watch.
App-noxious?
Speaking of obnoxious things people do with their cell phones, msnbc.com ran an article called, Are you App-noxious? that listed a whole new type of offensive behavior that I didn’t even know existed:
“Three of my colleagues purchased the iPhone calorie counter app and are constantly talking about what they ate and how many calories everything is,” says Renate Raymond, a 37-year-old arts administrator from Seattle. “And now they’ve started circulating around the lunchroom analyzing the calories that everyone else is eating. You’ll be eating a burrito and they’ll sneak up and punch in ‘burrito’ and tell you that you’re eating 550 calories. They’re driving everybody nuts.”
There was a related article about the most offensive iPhone applications that makes me very glad I do not have an iPhone.
I’m just going to read a book now.
Best Movie Candy Ever
I forget why I was in Walgreens on Friday, but I decided to pick up some candy for watching Star Trek. Walgreens is bringing back some “classics” and I picked up the old “jawbusters”. The mini version of these can still be found – in little green boxes. I like how this “classic” is Gluten Free. Warning: I had to be careful to open the little wrappers during the loud parts.
Sorry about the glare.
I had my first experience with utter_scoundrel‘s pet peeve: the texting in the theater. I was sitting in the front section. There were about a dozen of us, each sitting alone at the 1:15 showing of Star Trek on Friday. There were a few dads with kids behind us. Mr. Texter was in the second row and I could swear he took bootleg video of the opening sequence.
I am not going back to the movie theater.
Murder on the Orient Express
I picked up the PC game Murder on the Orient Express at Half Price Books just before the end of the semester. I enjoyed the first Agatha Christie game and this one features Hercule Poirot. Awesome.
The PC is not Poirot, but a young lady named Antoinette that is an employee of the train line. She is a mystery fan and does the leg work for Poirot, who may or may not have sprained his ankle when the avalanche hit the train.
This was pretty basic mystery-game stuff. Question the suspects, search their rooms. There is always a weird way to take fingerprints. In this case it was taking a piece of coal from the engine car, crushing it with a hammer, putting the dust into a turkey baster found in the kitchen and then using tape.
Would not have put that together without the cheats. Or, by the way, how to use the little statue and a punch bowl filled with orange juice to fix the ham radio. Puleeze.
I liked that I was not worried about saving the game all the time. I liked that Poirot was all validating. I did not like that the game forces the PC to validate clues that we already had. For example, we interrogate the Countess and find her true identity. Then we have to research it on the ham radio. Then we are forced to confront her again before moving on. I suspect glitches like this are because there was less structure to the timeline than in many games. You’d think I’d appreciate that.
Anyway, the game did a fine job of sticking to the spirit of the novel as I remember it without the novel giving away the whole thing. For the eight dollars paid, I am happy to continue playing this series.
Did I Miss It?
Several years ago – either 2001 or 2002 – I missed the whole summer. I probably took a vacation of some sort, but somehow, when the fall came, I realized that I didn’t remember the leaves coming back to the tree in my front yard. And they were falling again. I realized that I hadn’t seen a single firefly that year. Needless to say, I’d been having a killer time of it at work.
Also needless to say, the vow was that it would never happen again.
Last week I was walking around Lake Glenview and the Canada Geese were leading the babies around the water. I had a moment of panic – was I missing it again? No, I realized. It was the first week in May. That was about when the goslings hatched and that was about when the tulips bloomed and that was about when the leaves started coming back to my tree.
(sigh)
It’s like I’m some bizarre kind of Springtime Scrooge.
That Star Trek Movie
It was really good. I didn’t watch the original series – I was a fan of The Next Generation. So I spent more time than most trying to figure out what was the original canon and what was alternate reality. (Did Little Spock really beat the crap out of a Vulcan kid in school?) But I wasn’t hung up on it.
I had a headache by the time it was over, which may have been dehydration but I am blaming on the cinematography. The reviewers are right – it is heavy on the close ups.
I am very glad that I saw that annoying preview of Kirk on the Hoth system because I knew exactly when to take a bathroom break. And it is a good thing I was quick about it, because Nimoy shows up immediately thereafter. Do not miss that part.
Dumbest Anne moment:
Watching the destruction of a planet, my first reaction was that wasn’t how Alderaan looked. I had to remind myself Alderaan exploded and this one imploded.
Anyway. I went home and told my mother about it and she had no interest until I looked up Bones on imdb and figured out how I knew him. King Eomer.
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler, was a One Book One Chicago pick last year. I find it an interesting choice, in that these book club picks generally have something to say about race relations or the immigrant experience of one culture group or another. Chandler doesn’t even write about Chicago. I can’t figure out why it was chosen other than it rocks.
So Chandler’s (anti) hero, Philip Marlowe, gets sucked into to a multi-death mystery. It was never much of a paid assignment for him, and Marlowe picks and chooses what he shares with the cops, so part of the fun is trying to figure out where his moral compass actually points. It isn’t quite Right and Wrong, but he does pursue truth. It might have just been for his own amusement, but justice is pretty well served by the time he is finished.
The other interesting question is what he actually thinks of women. Chandler spends an entire page describing sterotypes of women with blonde hair before deciding the one he was looking at was none of them. But you can’t really call him misogynist when he is just as contemptuous of so many men. This line, to the drunk writer (a suspect) is:
“Nothing to get sore about. I’m just listening to you hate yourself. It’s boring but it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”
I can appreciate that.
Compared to the Chandler novels I’ve read before, this was a rather long and complicated plot. But I certainly followed it to the end.
CBS News Reporting on Parrots
Storm Defender
I forget where I first read about The Storm Defender, but it is a special cape for dogs with a phobia of storms.
Like many dogs, Shadow’s phobia has gotten worse as he ages. When we are home with him during a storm, he sits in our laps until it is over. 60 pound dog and it could go on all freakin’ night. It is worse, of course, when we aren’t home. He has locked himself in bathrooms and chewed his way through the doorknob into the garage. We had to put a bolt on the door to the basement and remember to leave the shower curtain open in my bathtub. We are so past the point where this was funny.
The cape designed to “discharge static electricity that builds up in the fur”. The theory is that the static is what freaks out the dog, even before the noise. And because the static is often present even before the rain, the dog learns to dread the feeling and that’s why it gets worse as the dog gets older.
So for 70 bucks we are giving it a try:
He doesn’t seem to hate it. We’ll see how he gets through the week.
The Next Dark Age 