mind numb
Currently I feel like my head is a barren wasteland of mind numbing crappy crap.
I had more written, but I bore myself with my lameness.
On a friday
Busy isn’t even an apt description for my life anymore, and I’m tired of saying it, and so I’m going to stop from this point forward, and you all can just assume that it is a constant. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but saying I miss the leisurely pace of college, et al prior to this point, is also starting to annoy me, because it’s becoming some sort of denial chant, tinged with the unspoken, but plainly obvious desire that I’d like to go back in time. Which I shouldn’t because it’s not all that bad, rather just an inconvience on getting things done at my own pace. I’m lazy and I have a huge budget of fun activity time that getting eaten too quickly. Time to adapt and no more whining. About my amount of free time in any case. Television however, that’s a different matter. Season finale time has been rough this year, Deaths and opt outs and annoying, unpredictable changes that I hadn’t pondered ahead of time. And then I wonder why Networks don’t take chances on shows.
QT’s CSI Season Finale: A little unfocused a little out of character, made it clear that the genres didn’t mix. Exploding dude good. 2nd hour much better than the first, but on the whole Average. Which has been status quo lately. C+
LOST Season Finale: Okay I will say it again here. I like Dan Roebuck, I liked his character, I think Lost defintely needs a ‘Professor’ component and Artzt could have done that well. What was his sin, huh? The neckerchief? Bah! So fine, go ahead and kill all the characters I like. See if I care! *pout* That really distracted me from the rest of the episode. I like some of the inky black effects, everyone levels out and Michael better start realizing his kid is being set up to be the antichrist in this Survival Island Supernatural Jumanji game of backgammon. Survivors = white pieces, untainted, naive, virgins to the island that they are, and The Others = black pieces, sullied, warped and Joseph Conrad-ed into villians. But Locke, yes, Locke being that great contridiction that he is, well I figure Locke for a referee, you know those striped shirts. Good stuff all around. A
NCIS Season Finale: I’m not happy. And it’s not because of the show or the writing or the acting, all of which continue to gel every week- but Don Bellasario needs to stop killing people. First Mac w/ Magnum PI, and then almost Bud on JAG, and I won’t talk about the ‘death’ of Quantum Leap; but that dude messes with my head. I liked Kate, a lot. But overall it was a great final for the season. Bringing back Ari who is a great villian, and the torture with DiNozzo last week. And it was great even if I didn’t like it. A+ *grumble*
House Season Finale:Another unsatisfactory end for me. The show’s been a bit shaky lately, I was distracted with the Cameron/House thing, and didn’t notice that I think it’s undermining House as the magnificant bastard we all know and love. So happily they put the brakes on that it seems, complicate things more with the addition of Sela Ward, who I don’t really dislike, because she’s doing a good job at being House’s weak spot. Getting him to do things I honestly believe he does not want to do. Great conflict with the Husband in that “See what I did there?” scene… I’d like to see more 1-on-1 with House and Wilson/Chase/Foreman, because I do love Foreman, but this ep copped out something big, and it was the fact that they backed away from tearing House down completely. In an early draft the final scene took place at a bar (http://www.nicollecjones.com/House_1×21_final_scene.pdf), and House was as close to the bottom of the barrel as we have ever seen him. Detox? Yeah not even close. I loved the scene, I was looking forward to it, and what do I get, but a vague, ooo look he’s taking stolen amphetamines now. Ehhhn. I mean, okay, but I didn’t even get the fact that wasn’t his normal vicodin until someone pointed it out. We’ve seen him pop pills, we know he’s an addict, it’s old ground, I like the inferrence it may be out of control- because the bottle was empty and we can’t really assume he didn’t already take all of them, but still. It really comes down to degrees of self destruction: Is putting yourself in physical danger, drinking and abusing prescription drugs and alcohol worse than abusing stolen drugs? If they’re saving it for next season, great, but if it’s just gone to random drug use, you know cocaine and heroin are visually distinct and they come with a social mythology all their own. So yeah I would have gone with the bar. And look, surprise my longest recap goes to House, B+
And because I don’t just watch TV, I have been doing some reading, and some writing, and playing some videogames, and some guitar. The reading is getting out of hand, because I am currently reading House of Leaves, Brave New World, and Order of the Phoenix between the Bob McGee theory book trying to spit polish the emotional story component of Nickle and Dime. John Rogers actually blogged something (http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/05/writing-plot-and-story.html) that really helped me because I was having a hard time getting my head around what wasn’t working, and why I was mired all up; that is specifically, I was a little preoccupied with plot and taking story for granted. Bad writer, Nicolle= bad writing. It’s just so intangible sometimes that no matter what you read in all the books and how much you do all the damn note cards or the frakking arc diagrams, it never sets in your mind. It’s just floating around, like my brain is a giant snowglobe with the pieces falling slowly downward. The obvious difference between rookie scribes like me, and well, everyone else I suppose. But anyway Rogers is damn helpful.
i have become the undead
I think at some point in the last week or so I did actually die. The mini horror fest went well Friday. We watched Re-Animator which is absolutely hysterical and features Jeffery Combs, speaking of whom, I then loaned Megan and Jeremy The Frighteners which they never have seen, so I think they’ll enjoy. Then we watched Dead Birds with Henry Thomas and Isaiah Washington, who I’ve realized is really into the horror flicks. Well not really, but Ike’s got an interesting CV. Dead Birds is great though, if a little strange- Civil War/Western/Werewolf/Zombie/Ghost flick. No kidding.
Then the guys played Mario Party for a while, I zonked out and Spent the day Sat with Cory and Mary. Caught the Aviator finally, which was just a ditto on all the sentiments out there except that whoever played Spencer Tracy looked NOTHING like Spencer Tracy. Horrible.Sunday found me waking up and popping in Below with Bruce Greenwood and a script partially handled by Darren Aronovsky. It had some excellent visual moments and the fact it’s a WWII piece engendered it to me early. On the whole less scary than Dead Birds, but just as enjoyable due to cast/location (on a Sub in the middle of the Ocean). Then I read a bit of House of Leaves which Megan loaned me- which is by far, just a huge mind-fuck. I’m loving it. It is scary. Paused to play Rogue Squadron 3 for a while, then watched Arsenic and Old Lace with the supremely lovable Cary Grant. After that it was Simpsons, Family Guy and bed.
So basically… I got nothing done this weekend. But after driving all over the place last week with work, doing webpages and getting some tiny time to write, I just wanted to zone for a weekend. I’ll start tackling stuff again tomorrow, for tonight is HOUSE and NCIS, then Thursday the Tarentino CSI- so basically season finale time, and such. Oh and Happy Belated to Cory even though he doesn’t read this webpage much. Congrats on completing year 1 of medical school. Enjoy your summer off, you smug bastard, you.
it’s democracy, yo!
The short attention span strikes back! Whipped this up this morning, needs a good caption. Post ‘em if ya got em!
results of annoyance motivation
I completed 4 of 5 tasks. Cleaning, Laundry, some Nickel and Dime pages, posting to the workshop and Medium Rare got pushed off to work on websites. I did in fact have leftover steak for dinner though, so karmically speaking, well no, not karmically speaking. I got bonus Refridgerator cleanup and minor dusting done. When I start whining about my lack of time again, I really need someone to punch me in the gut and remind me about annoyance motivation, it channels well.At dinner I watched K-19 which had been tivo’d for two months and I’d been interrupted in middle of four times. Finally made it through the radiation sickness. You know it was a pretty tragic event, and the men on board, without a doubt were heroes, but I wonder if some other beings might be somewhere looking down and musing about how silly we are for eradiating ourselves, dying horrible deaths because of what equates to nuclear armed locker room rivalry. Human behavior is just dumb. No thoughts on Ford’s Russian- I did however think how justifiably bitter some of the old Russians might be by having American Movie Star Harrison Ford telling this story. It’s not as if they don’t have actors in the former Soviet Union, rather just actors most American audiences haven’t heard of, or wouldn’t take the time to see. Which just supports the attitude that we’re a bunch of self centered asses, which to be perfectly honest doesn’t require all that much support any more.The situation in Sudan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict) is freaking me out. It’s not even that I’m all that informed- that’s kinda somewhat the issue, as it was with Rwanda. Hello, genocide? But the US’s stance on the ICC is just, giving… me… a… headache. Monkey-man and his stupid sanctions and secret club with the Sudanease Government? If he somehow turns this into yet another play for oil I’m really going to have to look into something drastic. It’s the kind of nightmare that people are just oblivious about because it doesn’t pre-empt American Idol. Which is another thing, how the hell do you make a hit show named Idol when conservatism is supposedly sweeping the nation. Idolatry you morans? Monkey-man and his band of raving lunatic monkey cabinet are forcing me to care about the rest of the world more than the Nascar rally that’s going on in Downtown Raleigh tonight. (Yes, what the HELL? A Nascar Rally?) I think that really must be his plan for spreading democracy and freedom- Just fucking abuse the hell out of the rest of the planet until they all rise up against us, and we rise up against ourselves.