"You should tell him the truth."
"Only once I'm sure lying won't work."
--NCIS

"The impossible is possible if you're totally awesome!"
--Bolt*

National Sarcasm Association: Like We Need Your Support
--sign

I guess of a 5-day-arc this would be Hump Day. Unfortunately, nothing quite so much fun. Politics, very little screen time for my favorite players, and beans.

Beans, beans, beans.....

I guess this is meta? (Which got me wondering what happened to alpha when people beta?)

( Points of interest, in no particular order.... )I could make a drinking game from all the dialogue and shots that are going to be lost in translation between BBC and BBCA!

Stay tuned!

Before I drown myself in watching ep. 2, a few other points on last night:

( Wank away! )

Onward!

You seriously thought I was going to WAIT until BBCA got around to showing something the rest of the world (well, the parts that COUNT) were getting now?

( a plot visible from space.... )I'll be back tonight. It's Appointment Downloading!

Ever since I downloaded Explorer 8 (like I had a choice), my computer has gone crazy. It's taken 3 days to get the old one warmed up, emptied, and functioning so I could log on to search for help!

I'm sure it has nothing to do with IE, BUT:
1) the display on my monitor is now horizontal. I have to turn my laptop sideways to view the screen properly, and using the touchpad is now a lesson in reverse thinking. I have gone through all of the "display" features/properties but everything tells me it's working properly. I have no idea what I did to cause this change (I was hitting the right arrow for the cursor) and there is no "undo". (I don't want a "blow up" or "alarm" button, I want a "do over" button!)
Any ideas?

2) The reason I was hitting the right arrow was because I'd hit a delicious tag and was trying to add my own tag. For some reason ever since IE 8 went on, I can only choose the tags that are available. I'm actually unable to type in any screen or field, which is okay if I'm just hitting check marks to, say, reorder a prescription, but not useful for anything, like, say, WORK.

3) The cursor disappears on screen. It's visible on the side, and in any of the toolbars, but getting to a particular point in the text involves the touchpad and constantly hitting Ctrl to find the damn thing. Then it becomes visible when I happen to land upon the very last space of the most recent text.

Now I know all you Mackers are laughing yourself silly, but if you have any ideas, ANY at all, I'll take them. I'm about to go subject myself to the Dada-esque landscape of Microsoft Help (STOP ASKING ME why THE INFO YOU'VE GIVEN ME IS NOT HELPFUL. IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT MY PROBLEM IS, THEN HOW CAN I IDENTIFY why YOUR SOLUTION DOESN'T WORK?!?!?!?!?)

help?

*pulls a siliconivy  whimper*

When you tell her you've been laid off, she responds with:

"Did you hit someone?" and then "Should you have hit someone?"

:-)

I'm catching up on my season finales and last week I watched SVU bring this season to a slightly less than merciful close (points off for how long the season felt). While the whole Stuckey thing seemed over the top for the past few eps (rather like The Chipster in NCIS), I was glad his storyline was brought to an end.

And not because I wanted Benson and Stabler to make goo-goo eyes at each other and watch her smack him around and then deep tongue Stuckey while eyeing Stabler. That just brought my dinner to an end.

But why did they have to kill off O'Halloran? Like the sushi wasn't so obviously a lie (and I'm not referring to content but delivery). SVU had given minor lab characters interesting lives over the past, what, 9 years? First there was The Hot One who went off to set Rescue Me on fire. Then the annoying CSU girl trying to solve her father's one unsolved case. (I think Stabler's arm was in a cast that time from repeatedly putting his hand through a wall in lieu of repeatedly hitting his head; though aside from her inability to deliver a line, it was a well-plotted story.) We got the computer tech who suddenly went postal on an internet predator, the ME who could shoot her way out of med school thanks to the military and we now know she keeps her kid's school's lunch menu on her fridge. (The less said about Huang, the better.)

O'Halloran was always just a buddy, one of the guys, and at times you could see his barely-restrained eye rolls. But the producers always kept the lines clear between the officers ("You called us down here to tell us that? Next time use the phone.") and the lab/tech guys ("Shut up Stuckey.") One carries a gun, one does not. (I'm looking at you, CSIers.)

The best value of O'Halloran was knowing about the actor's previous role on Oz. Having been the stuck-up jock that Beecher traded--along with his soul--to Schillinger (former SVU shrink) so he could have smoochie time with Keller (now Stabler), just made my little world that much more circular. And appreciate the skill it's taken the writers, producers, years, and actors to let me transistion characters from evil to good and back in my mind without resistance. (See also "Terry O'Quinn: "Locke, John--Lost" vs. "The Stephfather.")

So last week I was contemplating his sad, useless demise in both shows (in Oz, he could've been around to needle Beecher's guilt much longer), and there I am, eating my Cheerios this a.m. and it turns out CNN can read my mind.

From their lead-in I was expecting a bit on a no-name background actor who played a redshirt, literally and figuratively. And then there's that smile. What a nice little piece. (And CNN didn't do too badly either. Ba-dum-bump!)

Mike Doyle--such a nice Irish boy, too.

Headlines:

Yesterday:
"David Carradine found naked hanging in closet."

Today:
"Thai police say Carradine death might be accident"
What, he was getting dressed and tripped into his belt hanger?

You've probably already heard this one, but I believe it is an instant classic (you know, like Save the Last Dance but with an uncool soundtrack...)

Craig T. Nelson: "I was on food stamps. I was on welfare. No one gave me hand-out!"

Ummmm...I do not think those words means what you think they mean....

New headline:
"Items found in ocean not from 447. Officials call it sea debris."
No, a life jacket, chunk of a plane, and a passenger seat are not just "sea debris." (To quote the end of The Hunt for Red October, you're missing another one?!) How did that conversation go? "These are not the life vests you are looking for..." So what, no one is wondering where all this OTHER crash debris came from?
(FYI: "sea debris"--driftwood and empty seashells. Everything else COUNTS!)

New headline:
"Concentration Camp connection to Obama's Family."
Seriously? Come on, give it a rest.

ALTHOUGH
Mr. Ob is NOT on my good list right now. Yes, thanks muchly for reducing the withholding and putting more in my weekly paycheck.

BUT DEDUCT SEVERAL THOUSAND GOODWILL POINTS BY NOT REDUCING THE TAX BRACKETS! Because I *want* to pay it all back to you in quarterly estimated tax payments over the next year. Because the IRS needs MORE paperwork and you know what good savers Americans have turned out to be.

G D IT!

>:(

From Shelf Awareness, a publishing industry daily newsletter:

USA Today offered an "early look" at the latest inhabitants of 221B Baker Street--Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law's Dr. Watson--in Guy Ritchie's version of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories.

"Initially, we were just infusing the dialogue with Doyle-isms," said Downey. "Now we tend to speak a little more on his behalf."

When first considering the challenge of another in the long tradition of Holmesian interpretations, Ritchie said, "I didn't really think of the downside as much as I thought about the upside. I was a Holmes fan when I was a child. They are the first stories I remember. I also liked the approach the studio was coming at. To me, it was the perfect segue from small independent films to something more ambitious and quintessentially English. So I've got my cake and I can eat it."


--Vigs reserves judgement...oh who am I kidding? When I have I ever delayed judgement (or gratification for that matter)? Speaking on behalf of Doyle? Don't lose yourself in the role, Bobby.

Please feel free to boycott Amazon either temporarily or permanently.

And if you are content to say "this doesn't affect the books I read," then remember the old saying about when they come for you (your reading material). Is free shipping worth supporting this corporation? If you are going to boycott Wal-mart or Domino's, can you add Amazon to the list, or are they so ingrained into our book and shopping habits, that it would be like boycotting groceries?

What is interesting to me is that in the new liberal era, it seems these issues haven't died away. Is it the old conservative base digging in their heels to stop what they perceive is an erosion of society? Is it that people today feel more comfortable discussing these issues (racefail!), and a renewed sense of freedom of speech? Is it an attempt to perpetuate one of the prejudices still "allowable" in our society?

Oh god, stop me before I go all Carrie Bradshaw: "In an era of censorship from the outside, when do we start to censor ourselves?"

:-)

I added an ljtag to the author quoted below:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651080.html?desc=topstory

By Rachel Deahl & Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 4/12/2009 5:49:00 PM

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove adult titles from its sales ranking. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.

For most of the weekend on Twitter, in conversations with the hash tag "#amazonfail," users were discussing the fact that the e-tailer was removing the sales rankings for books that it deemed featured "adult content." Many readers, and writers, decried the fact that Amazon appears to be removing the sales ranking for titles that feature gay and lesbian characters and/or themes.

The director of the Erotic Authors Association, who goes by the pen nameerastes, told PW that many of her members "noticed their titles had been stripped of their sales rankings" on Amazon. One, Mark Probst, contacted a customer service representative at Amazon and wrote about the exchange on his blog. Probst wrote that the Amazon rep responded to his inquiry by saying that "'adult' material" is being excluded from appearing in "some searches and best seller lists" as a "consideration of our entire customer base."

Whether a glitch or new policy, titles like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain are among the titles who have lost their ranking.

"Hello, my name is Viggofest, and I am an NCIS addict. It's been less than 24 hours since my last fix.

This week alone I have:
--considered watching an episode with Ziva
--actually wondered what happened to Jimmy's morgue double-agent friend with benefits
--rewatched Kiling Ari for what feels like the 3rd time
--noticed Harmon's little gut
--wasn't annoyed by Tony or Ducky
--found adorable chibi (?) NCIS icons on someone's LJ

And worst of all, actually changed the channel from LOST to an NCIS repeat on USA Wednesday night. (Seriously. Ben = Bad. Got it. Moving on....)

I have two tvs and a vcr, but have been unable to figure out how to watch a channel different from the one being taped. I know it can be done, but I'm experiencing logicfail! and have not yet dragged siliconivy over to sort me out."

Next?

I try to catch up on some backlog of posts and suddenly the book blogging world is insane:

DEAR AUTHOR's Jane will no longer be blogging = Boo!

She's starting a literary agency = Yay! *
* Well, okay, as much as any editor might want another literary agency around...

Her first order of business: sue Simon & Schuster = Yay!

About the SMART BITCHES WHO READ TRASHY NOVELS book! = Boo!

The Smart Bitches are mad at Jane = Please stop fighting, Mommy and Daddy! I'll be good! I promise!


OH MY GOD--I JUST GOT PUNK'D!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!!!!! DO NOT TRUST WOMEN WHO WEAR GLASSES!!!!!! WE ARE SNEAKY BITCHES WHO WILL VIOLATE EVEN THE SANCTITY OF BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Get a better erection than even your son gets!"


Seriously, what could I possibly add to this one?

"The things are really bad when your male friend is dead."

"Women don't love you for who you are...they love you for what you have."
Shhhhh! Stop telling everyone our secret!

"If your male friend had a credit card, he would order the blue pill right now."
Wait a second, I thought we were talking about a part of the anatomy. Excuse me while I go check my credit score--my hands want to order some shoes.

RL friends esmereldachubb , huzzlewhat , and siliconivy have sent me links to the animated shorts known as "Simon's Cat" for years (it seems.)

Now I learn that a major publisher has paid a 6-figure advance for a two-book deal from this guy.

Dammit. (If they are flipbooks, I may have to start killing again...)

http://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat

Also, I don't know how I missed this site, after catswholooklikehitler, but here it is:

www.petswhowanttokillthemselves.com

Nuff said.