wordplay | Entries tagged with television

Dear Basic Cable Programmers:

I am trying to write a paper. How is it possible that this is the only hour of the week when there is NOT a version of Law & Order on somewhere? How am I supposed to concentrate on writing about gender & SGA without a police procedural in the background?

I count on you for stuff I can follow by tuning in for 30-second increments. You're totally bumming me out.

Disappointed,
Me

Just a reminder that the television version of This American Life starts tonight on Showtime. I have no idea how this will translate to tv, but I'm really excited to see them try.

(1) So wrong, but in a really fabulous way.

(2) These thingies confused the hell out of me when I was doing the recycling this afternoon. I couldn't figure out what the hell Marc had been squirreling away in his Guinness bottles and in my experience, white things knocking around in dead empties are supposed to be cigarette butts. Weird.

(3) ~~If you've been in my car recently, have you by any chance lost a lid to a travel coffee mug? *looks at ellen_fremedon and sanj* 'Cuz I appear to have one more lid than mug.~~ Accounted for!

(4) Today I finally watched the end of Slings and Arrows and god, I really wish I hadn't. It's so gorgeous, so absolutely perfect, that I can barely stand knowing that there's not going to be any more of it.

(5) I spent a good several hours this morning trying to figure out why Google Docs hates me, but it really doesn't. It hates schizoid!me, and for some reason keeps forwarding all of my docs sent to any of my accounts to Carrie'sRealName@gmail.com. Which, I guess that's OK, but I don't remember setting it up that way and I can't figure out how to change the setting. I think it's really fantastic that Google is doing so many things, but I can't help feeling like it used to be really easy to go in and fiddle with the settings on gmail, and now between the Reader and Docs and Dodgeball, I never have any idea where to change anything. *pouts more*

(6) Today I had a few ounces of gorgeous fresh mozzarella left over from making dinner and I toasted it onto a bun with some yummy freshly shaved ham and lettuce and tomato and dude, that was so much better than my usual Lean Cuisine desk!Monday lunch. Spring Break Rulzzz. Remind me that that doesn't mean I should quit my job, OK?

ETA: Now I remember what I was going to say.
(7) Bowling. It's so COOL how many kinds of bowling there are, isn't it? Last year when we scheduled our son's 6th birthday party, we discovered duckpin bowling, which is a mid-Atlantic thing, apparently. And then today when I was watching S&A, Geoffrey and Charles were playing five-pin bowling, which reminded me of duckpin a little but is apparently a Canadian thing.

jlh tells me that she grew up in Maine seeing candlepin bowling on TV. I somehow made it to my early 30s without knowing there was anything besides 10-pin and lawn bowling like bocce and pétanque and god, just LOOK at all of it. We are a truly wonderful and bizarre people. *nods*

So, Movie Central, you've decided NOT to air the next episode of SGA tonight, have you? Nice. Thanks everso. Now that we have no promise of more John Sheppard to come soon, we might as well get real, real comfortable with Jack Harkness. After all, you've seen one dark, sexy, rakish, slightly myserious, obviously bisexual guy fighting aliens and weirdness for a secret global organization, you've seen them all, right?

Just a note, though - the DW writing team regularly spanks the SG writing team, and you have no idea how sorry I am to say that. We've just seen SG-1 cancelled, and screwing around with the SGA episode air dates, when there's another very good franchise getting its feet under it and becoming a global property, is a really risky proposition.

Had a great weekend in the mountains - very relaxing, gorgeous fall color, good hiking weather, pics to come, etc. Finished Farthing (v. well executed) and am halfway through Carter Beats the Devil (not unlike me, it's clever but could stand to be a bit tighter in the middle). Still have no real outline for NaNoWriMo, just a v. disparate and non-cohesive collection of ideas. Still have this same horrible cold and really wish I could call in but I have so much work to do. And now, coffee. *waves and zooms*

Current Mood: frustrated

...new TV boyfriend! ( Pretty man on 'Heroes' )

New (or old) TV boyfriend? Leave me a picture here in the comments. It'll be, like, our TV boyfriend scrapbook, and we can put in little heart stickers and doodle in the margins in glitter pen and it'll be so, so awesome. ♥

Current Mood: flirty

This morning I feel ranty. Um,

muffinbutt, is this what you meant when you said I had opinions and wasn't afraid to share them?

( I'm not sure why I'm on the planet, but it's damn sure I'm not here to be popular. This, oddly enough, contains small spoilers for Studio 60. Yeah, I don't know. )

Wow, I feel better. And look at that piratey eyepatch - how cute is that? I'm a humanist at heart and I have so much hope for us as a species and I even still believe in the power of America to do good in the world. Right now, though, I'm disgusted and I'm angry. And I have no idea what to do about it.

Current Mood: pissed off

New morning schedule = much, much better. Whee! Also, randomly, I am done with summer. Next, please!

---

You know those little Sharpies that fit on a keychain? Did you know that they now make ultra fine point ones? They do! I bought them in purple, teal, red and black this morning. This is made of awesome, with a side of awesome sauce. I went into Staples to buy a package of book rings for my son's teacher; $40 later I was stumbling out with all kinds of wonderful colorful things that I needed. Yay office supplies! ♥

---

They demolished the Wilson Bridge last night and it must be said - what an anticlimax. Ho-hum. The whole bit about having a contest to see who got to blow up the most hated bridge in the area WAS clever, though.

---

We've been watching old X-Files lately, and four observations:
+ I am endlessly amused at the X-Files version of Washington DC with a SkyTrain
+ I don't remember it being this high on the creepy/gross factor.
+ I just saw the episode about Ghost Festival and omg! Lucy Liu! BD Wong! Whee!
+ I didn't remember just how sexy the really early Mulder/Scully stuff was. When they're at that Arctic exploratory base and checking each other for ice-borne parasites? Damn! *fans self*

---

Finally - Dork Tower brings the intellectual property debate into tabletop gaming.

Apparently it is my job to tell you to watch documentaries this week. Tonight's recommendation: "The Hill" on the Sundance Channel. The first episode aired tonight - it's a six part series and will air every Wednesday at 9 pm until it's over. The staffers are cute and confused and fucking miserable over the war and the election (so, basically, just like everyone you know) and yes, it's worth watching, I think. The first episode will reair a few times over the weekend - catch it if you can!

Just a reminder for those of you in the US who might get HBO. Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" about NOLA and Katrina begins tonight, in about half an hour here on the East Coast and at 9 pm PDT for HBO-W. No idea how good this is going to be, but it's something we've been waiting for in our household, so just a heads up.

Wah, "What You Leave Behind" on Spike. *weeps like a little girl* Odo/Nerys is love and I will never forgive the Casablanca ending and I hate feeling left all in situ like that.

God, I'm seriously a mess here. This is what happens when you let soppy girls love science fiction. *clutches tissue box*

Current Mood: weepy

Thanks for all the congratulations and wellwishes on the job. I want to go back through and respond to each comment, and I'm still a little anxious about the whole process, but I'm excited about the opportunity. So thanks for reading all my worrying over the last few months and for cheering me on and for being happy for me. ♥

---

Watched the Firefly/Serenity fandocumentary Done the Impossible this weekend. Cute, if maybe a little self-congratulatory. There's some really clever filk on there, and I continue to be impressed by how generous Joss is with his intellectual property - he just has NO insecurity about it, does he? God, to be that confident about my ability to compete in a marketplace!

---

SG-1 Moebius, in syndication, caught from the very beginning FTW!

---

Speaking of FTW, Cora dinged 40 last night. She's a paladin, so she got a free pony. PONY! *gallops all over Stranglethorn Vale*

---

It's been cool enough here this weekend, espeically in the evenings, that I've been thinking about fall, which always makes me want to curl up with tea, apples, a cozy blanket, the 95 P&P¹, and needlework. I went through my boxes of projects and supplies and found a baby quilt that's I've spent the last 15 years handpiecing and basting in weird little fits of industry - maybe it's time to go ahead and quilt that up for one of these babies springing up all over the place. I have a ton of cross stitch and needlework patterns and so much fabric, but I'm feeling like autumn, so I went looking for new shops online. I think this site wins - I want to put the F U C K hearts on bookmarks - there's an audience there, I think. ♥

Needlearts shops to recommend? I'm a pretty advanced stitcher and have done some design and color work of my own, so no fear!

¹ Did you see there's a new set coming out? It looks like it's mostly stuff that I don't care all that much about, so I probably won't be buying it again, but if you haven't yet bought it, this might be a good thing.

Current Mood: autumnally hopeful

I woke up in a FOUL mood today, ready to lose my patience at the slightest provocation. That's no fun, is it? M. took the kids and got the hell out of the house, a wise move on his part I feel, and I've baked cookies and biscuits and may well go for bread here in a little bit - baking always helps calm me down.

Last night I went to see Wordplay with

ellen_fremedon because, as she said, this was one movie that I of all people needed to see. My favorite puzzler and yours,

jiggery_pokery, clued me in months and months ago that this was coming, but it's still been odd seeing my username-only-not pop up all over LJ and it gives me pause every time. I've only had this name since October, and it's surprising how personally identified I am with it. Anyway, I VERY much enjoyed the movie, and we agreed that in many ways it captures the feel of fandom (particularly the warmth of conspace) better than many others. She's also a fan of "Galaxy Quest", but I saw it prefandom and my memory is that it's unduly harsh on fannishness, so now that's up for reviewing in our household. And, you know, it's absolutely not coincidence that I came home and bought a subscription to the NYT crossword online - the movie is very well put together and they put a considerable amount of thought into how best to make watching people do crossword puzzles interesting. Definitely recommend, especially for fannish types. Good music, too. (And!

kaalee! There's a bit of footage of an Indigo Girls concert and Ty and Doris are playing with them and I was very OMG GIRLYMAN!!! It was such a happy surprise to see them!)

The one other little bit of news that has cheered me right up and made me feel really all warm & fuzzy inside is that someone contacted me to ask if she could do commentary for my Weir/Zelenka story for

seperis's DVD commentary challenge thingy. I have such insecurity about fanwriting (so see, I am one of those delicate flowers who would be easily crushed - in fact, I AM one of those delicate flowers who WAS crushed by H/D) and the idea that somebody liked something I wrote enough that they wanted to think about it more than once is just immensely flattering. It's doing a great job toward lifting my mood, at any rate. :D

I rented the first bit of "Slings & Arrows" and hope to watch that this weekend. I have a lot of reading to do and my family is calling a couple of times per day so I can give baby advice and I'm trying not to think about the job situation and yeah, it's all a very lowkey kind of busy. VA is having their tax-free weekend, so we may brave back to school shopping. And here's something else to think about - there's a "Superpower" challenge over at

sga_flashfic, and I'm thinking about writing from a "oh, I wish I had X superpower" perspective. The problem is that every desire to have a superpower ends up coming out a little bit creepy and I'm finding it hard to write about without feeling like, wow, Zelenka isn't really this much of a little creep, is he? And yet it doesn't FEEL creepy when we're playing "which superpower would you have" over ice cream. (Just totally geeky, which is way different. :D) Is that a matter of perspective, or do you think that wishing to have a superpower, wishing for just that much more of an unfair edge over everybody else, is always kinda creepy?