the life and times of endenizen » TV

In case you missed it… HBO unveiled the first trailer for Season 3 of True Blood. Looks good.

Yeah, like underwear.

t’has been a while. Wow that contraction didn’t work at all. For more examples of strange contractions, see urban dictionary’s entry on “t’would”:

James: Wanna go hang out at the mall next week?
Jill: T’would be cool.

But I digress, it is my pledge to make a post with more substance than content. Or vice versa, whichever sounds better. Underwear aside… eh, let’s try again.

Hi, I’m Brian. This is my blog and it hasn’t seen the light of my thoughts (I’m conceited that way) in about… let’s see here… just shy of five months, all told. No doubt when I started I didn’t imagine I would suffer quite a dry spell all at once, but there you have it. I’ve gone quite inward about the whole thing. What is a blog? Why do I need to use it? Is it possible to swallow one’s pride, as it were, and still commit one’s thoughts to paper for everyone else to see? Maybe not, but I guess I don’t care anymore for I’ve given up seeking the answers to such questions.

I work for a company that recently bought another company and you can read all about that over here. I neglect the mention of specific names because that would mean SEO which gets on my nerves. I’ve been doing all sorts of neat work on new features, new designs, fixing old things, and staring out the window in anticipation of the massive crowds set to arrive on April 9th. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, let’s torch this joint!

“Olympic Torch” this joint, that is! That’s right, the torch is coming to San Francisco and I’m gonna be at ground zero when stuff happens. I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but if you’ve been watching the news recently, you know it will be worth a few photos.

Security heightened at Golden Gate Bridge
Olympic Torch Relay Descends Into Chaos
Olympic torch relay should be confined to host country says IOC official

Officials in Paris were today forced to extinguish the Olympic flame and carry it by bus when protesters against Chinese policy in Tibet tried to seize it.

Can a protest ever ‘win’? Perhaps in time, a ‘win’ can be felt. In Paris, a more immediate win was experienced when the Olympic flame, nay, spirit which travels the world for everyone to see, amidst thousands of security personnel had to be put out and confined to a bus. My friends in Paris, I say to you, “good show”. We Americans now have a protest to out-protest.

But I digress, (yes I did that twice. Don’t tempt me should you not wish a third.) there are other things on my mind as well. Doctor Who, for instance. It was recently revealed that Richard Dawkins would appear in an upcoming episode, as himself!

“People were falling at his feet,” says Davies, creator of the BBC’s flagship show. “We’ve had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.”

I guess I can’t imagine how Dawkins fits in to all of this but I hope it at least involves a turtle that can fly.

And on that note, Battlestar Galactica was good, if not a bit uneventful in light of all the promises made. I suppose that’s how they get you hooked for the entire season. Maybe I should just wait till the season is over. It’s much more fulfilling to watch a whole season over a few days than feel cheated at the end of each 40-minute segment. Though I suppose to make it a social occasion would be a good excuse to have “Friday night plans”. Oh who am I kidding, I don’t know anyone else who watches this show.

Well, back to my life, which, at this moment, includes me going to bed.

I flipped on the TV while cleaning my apartment to see if there were any good football games. Then I remembered I don’t really like football and settled for Tom and Jerry. When you think about it, the cartoon is rather profound. Both for its interesting take on the physical world, and the creative situations made up by frequent writer/producer Chuck Jones (who did the cartoon I am currently watching so my points may need to be adjusted to cover the whole of Tom and Jerry cartoons).

First and foremost, no story is necessary (as is especially apparent during the Chuck Jones era). The substance of almost every episode relies on the bitter rivalry between that darned cat Tom and his would-be lunch Jerry. While this provides quite a bit of conflict to an otherwise straightforward drama, it is presented in much the same way as comical theatre: should the villain ever catch the hero… well we don’t even want to think about that. In fact, many episodes end with Jerry coming to Tom’s rescue and asserting that he is the “better mouse”… or animal, or whatever.

A few recurring themes tend to appear:

• Any romance must be portrayed by a French-speaking animal
• Any dog which appears in the show must be angry, or stupid, or both
• When an animal moving at significant speed runs into a stationary object, it must be smashed like a pancake, an accordion-like pancake, or severed into multiple pieces (none of these will cause permanent damage)
• When high above the ground, an animal won’t fall unless it looks down, and/or is not Jerry
• Cats are hollow – an object (such as a mouse) moving fast enough can potentially enter through a cat’s mouth and proceed straight through to the tail and out (note: to prevent further injury, tying the tail below the exit point is recommended)
• Inflating something with air will result in that object becoming lighter than air
• Slowing down is not an option – when moving around a corner, the turn will be taken too quickly resulting in a skidding sound and a hopping motion (this is required, therefore, no animal can gain an advantage by attempting to circumvent this process)

And finally…

• When a foe (typically a dog) presents a threat to the well-being of either party, all inter-species conflict may be temporarily set aside until such time that said foe is “removed from the picture” either by pancaking, accordion-pancaking, or being severed into multiple pieces. At this point, chasing may resume (occasionally preceded by a handshake)

Tom and Jerry cartoons are some of the most well-known in history. They have won seven academy awards and solidly established themselves as the Saturday-morning cartoons. So the next time you feel like flipping on the game, watch Tom and Jerry instead. I did!

(and by now, unfortunately, it’s over and some “modern” cartoon is on – with more story, more characters, more colors, and much more confusion. imagine the attention span you’d need to have to watch a cartoon with so much going on… it’s more than I can handle)

Earlier this evening, there was an earthquake (a cuddly little 4.2). Blogs sprang up with news of the quake just minutes after it happened. The usgs site had the facts a little later. Thing is.. none of these people know the real story.

Janeway: You just volunteered to become a field medic. Report to sick bay as soon as we’re finished here.
Paris: But captain. (WOAH SHAKY FACES)
Janeway: Stations everyone! Report.
Some chick: We’re running into some kind of spacial distortion.
Janeway: Mr Tuvoc.
Tuvoc: The distortions are emanating from a highly localized disturbance in the space-time continuum. Distance, 20,000 kilometers off the port bow.
Janeway: All stop. On screen. Gravimetric flux density is over 2000 percent. If i’m not mistaken, we’re looking at a type 4 quantum singularity.

So you know the part where I said “WOAH SHAKY FACES”? Yeah, you know those shaky faces they do on Star Trek (and simultaneously fall all over the place, nevermind the presence of earth-like gravity and the absence of seatbelts)… Anyway, that instant, like exact moment, was the start of the earthquake (the real-life one, not the shaky-face one on tv). The only logical explanation is quantum entanglement. Particles beneath the earth were affected the same moment the quantum singularity caused a spacial distortion a bunch of years in the future (which is Star Trek). Thanks to that one chick in Star Trek, and my clever inductive reasoning, I have successfully proven that the earthquake was a result of a spacial distortion caused by a quantum singularity. Nothing to worry about.

Update: That one chick is called Seska.

The Sci-Fi Channel…

I was looking at the schedule for the UK sci-fi channel and I was like, dang that’s a lot of different shows, and there’s no crappy shows like “Ripley’s Believe it or Not”. Then I started to wonder…is our sci-fi channel also not-crappy? It used to be crappy…it used to be very crappy. I couldn’t stand it, it was so crappy. You know that feeling you get when you’ve reached the end of a tv show and it’s not that great? It’s just like “oh…i guess i just wasted 30 minutes of my life.” I used to get that feeling a lot watching the sci-fi channel. Alas, after looking up the US schedule…it’s still crappy… Here’s the two schedules for Wednesday, side by side (or…not side by side) for the UK Sci-Fi channel and the US Sci-Fi channel:

UK
6.00am – The Ray Bradbury Theatre – And the Moon Be Still as Bright
6.30am – The Ray Bradbury Theatre – The Day It Rained Forever
7.00am – Teleshopping
10.00am – Farscape – Incubator
11.00am – The Sentinel – Red Ice
12.00pm – Sliders – Please Press One
1.00pm – The Pretender – Extreme
2.00pm – The KGB Psychic Files – Part 2
3.00pm – The Chronicle – The Chronicle
4.00pm – Farscape – Meltdown
5.00pm – The Sentinel – Red Ice
6.00pm – Sliders – A Current Affair
7.00pm – The Pretender – Wild Child
8.00pm – Crusade – The Well of Forever
9.00pm – Andromeda – Conduit to Destiny
10.00pm – MOVIE: From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter
11.45pm – MOVIE: Post Impact
1.35am – MOVIE: From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter
3.20am – The Outer Limits – Human Trials
4.15am – The Pretender – Wild Child
5.10am – Millennium – Luminary

UK Summary: 12 different shows (5 repeats), 3 movies.

US
06:00 AM PAID PROGRAMMING
08:00 AM ROSWELL CRAZY
09:00 AM ROSWELL TESS, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES
10:00 AM ROSWELL FOUR SQUARE
11:00 AM ROSWELL MAD TO THE MAX
12:00 PM ROSWELL THE WHITE ROOM – PT 1
01:00 PM ROSWELL DESTINY – PT 2
02:00 PM ROSWELL SKIN & BONES
03:00 PM ROSWELL ASK NOT
04:00 PM SLIDERS SUMMER OF LOVE
05:00 PM X-FILES, THE 3
06:00 PM STARGATE SG-1 (SEASON 6) UNNATURAL SELECTION – PT 2
07:00 PM RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! (2000) EPISODE 309
08:00 PM RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! (2000) EPISODE 310
09:00 PM RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! (2000) EPISODE 311
10:00 PM RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! (2000) EPISODE 312
11:00 PM MOVIE ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
01:00 AM TWILIGHT ZONE, THE A WORLD OF HIS OWN
01:30 AM TWILIGHT ZONE, THE KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN
02:00 AM X-FILES, THE RUSH
03:00 AM MOVIE CLONED
05:00 AM PAID PROGRAMMING

US Summary: 6 different shows (12 repeats), 2 movies

8 hours of roswell? 4 hours of ripley’s believe it or not during prime night-time-tv-watching? And this is just the sci-fi channel, which has a limited audience as it is. I’m not even gonna touch those other channels, MTV,VH1,XQPL,BOLAG. What can you gain from TV shows? A good laugh? Some insight into the mystical world of politics? Maybe 5 years ago. What can you gain now? Useless trivia? Some kind of self-worth from laughing at people in awkward situations? Maybe you feel better about yourself because your waist will never be as big as some no-name celebrity trading dignity for prosperity. The world outside of our cage is what the TV tells us it is. No wonder we’re so pissed off.