Hmmm... what to make of that? At times it felt a little too monster-of-the-week-y, and barely touched on the major “elephant in the room” (or corpses in the store room, if you like) of the main series arc. Again, the action was largely confined to the community centre, which I guess is a necessary evil of budget constraints, but it often feels as if the characters are trapped in a tiny bubble of unreality, cut-off from the wider world (like, if they ever tried to leave town, they’d just find a Silent Hill-esque wall of fog). I mean, when established parental characters aren’t seen at their own child’s funeral, then you have to wonder what’s going on. As a result the cliff-hanger left me a bit underwhelmed... but not in a bitter way. I just wish they had the money to make more episodes, on a slightly large scale, and really flesh out the world around the characters. At least we got some sort of resolution over what Nathan’s power might be, although the opening credit sequence suggests there’s still more to him than meets the eye. Thankfully there’s news on the E4 site that a second series has been commissioned, so there’s potential for growth there, fingers crossed. Meanwhile, it was weird seeing Kelly without so much make-up on... she looked so young! I was slightly disturbed to discover that the actress who plays her (Lauren Socha) is in fact only 19, so I’m almost old enough to be her father. Gah! But she’s so perfect for the lead role in the film trilogy I’ve been working on, it kills me. Will wishing hard enough make it happen? Probably not, no.
Dear U.S. Senators,
When you have allowed months of torture and rape to utterly disfigure and destroy someone, the only sensible and humane thing to do is to take that person out somewhere secluded and shoot them in the back of the head.
Since you’ve essentially allowed this healthcare bill to endure the very atrocities I’ve described, it is my sincere hope you will have enough integrity left in you to consign it to the same fate. Executions are seldom easy, but considering the jaw-dropping debauchery to which you’ve relentlessly subjected this bill, such paradoxical mercy is the only way I see for you to even look in the general direction of redemption. Poor old “Healthcare” Bill was once our friend, but now he desperately wails in anguish, pleading for final respite from the blind, relentless assault of Lieberman’s tiny but deceptively powerful political penis.
Our friend wanted to give us a Public Option so that even the poorest Americans could get necessary medical attention. You laughed in his face.
Our friend believed a Single-Payer system was another way we could get healthcare to the less fortunate and was shouted down for that, as well.
Our friend wanted to fix Medicare Part D so that drugs were acquired at a reasonable price and beneficiaries didn’t fall into the infamous, medicine-revoking “Donut Hole”. In response to that one, you simply farted (although, to your credit, you did lift your leg beforehand so the gesture wasn’t lost on anyone).
In short, our friend’s overall goal was to HELP THE AMERICAN POOR. And you had a serious problem with that.
It’s a noble goal – aiding the poor – and one that is right in line with the teachings of every major religion, including the one this country so openly embraces (despite Constitutional insistence it doesn’t). But how did you react to such Christian kindness? You got all coy and then suddenly goal-kicked poor Bill in the nuts by adding a mandate that everyone purchase healthcare from private companies.
So kill it. Kill it until it’s good and dead and literally nothing of it remains. Better to have no healthcare reform at all (for now) than to have a panty-waste bill with ruptured testicles limping through American history as a permanent false testament to how the poor and weak simply don’t deserve access to medical care.
You know what you must do. If it helps, think about it this way: if all of you vote it out, then killing our friend Bill will be more like a firing squad execution than a cold-blooded murder. And isn’t that how you politicos sleep at night – by reframing the untenable things so they can be better blamed on someone else?
Oh, and Mr. President, your recent rhetoric surrounding this bill worries me. You seem to be hedging. I have no doubt you recall making it unequivocally clear when you debated Hilary Clinton last January that you are deadset against an individual mandate, so I'm looking to you to keep your promise to veto this bill if it comes across your desk containing that clause.
Sincerely,
Kirk Starr
Your Employer
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
DG walked up to me and said he needed one of his “silly pretty pixshurs” because he wanted to “hiccup codajoe”.
“Why the sudden decision to hook up Dakota Joe with one of your celebrity pictures?” I asked.
“He sayd I wuz ‘damn’ cute. I am thinkee that is even cuter than Diblet.”
“Yeah, you know, I happen to think you’re the cutest kitteh on the planet.”
“So does codajoe, evindentedly. You gettee teh pixshur for me DG or wut?”
“Sure, but I'm guessing Dakota Joe thinks his own cat is cuter, Deej. And he just goes by DJ now. I don’t even think his name is really Joe.”
“Less talkee, more celery pity pixshur! And also a box to mail it in!”
“I’ll get you an envelope."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Taking the paper trash out to the recycling bin, a familiar something caught my eye. I didn't need to examine it further; I knew exactly what it was. I went back inside and found DG in the kitchen lounging in a flat of drinking water.
“Say, you ever mail that photo to DJ?”
The Deej blinked. “M-hm.”
“Really? How? You don’t have any stamps. You can’t reach the mailbox.”
“I fond stamps in yur bedroom – dog ones and spacee ones..." He licked his left foreleg for a few moments, then continued, "...then I dressed it and put it with teh rest of teh mails.”
It all came together. “Ha! You put it in the paper recycling, DG! I almost threw it out...”
“Well mail it alreddy wuld you? It wuz sposed to be there a week ago!!!”
*sigh* There’s just no pleasing a cat.
Very sorry for the delay, DJ. It’s on its way now...
Finally managed to catch up with the first five episodes of Misfits (hurrah for the internet!), just in time for the series finale this Thursday. The pitch used in a lot of reviews was “Heroes meets Skins”, but really it’s more like “Smallville meets Shallow Grave”. The premise of juvenile delinquents getting stuck with superpowers while serving out their “ASBO”-enforced community service is a very strong one... one I wish I’d had myself, in fact. There are plenty of great jokes (verbal and visual), mixed with some serious spills, chills, and thrills... so it’s all rollicking good fun. My one criticism, or concern, would simply be that on a British TV budget, you don’t exactly get an X-Men movie level of action and adventure. The stories, by necessity, have to be kept quite small, and focussed around the community centre where they serve out their sentences... and even then, the series is almost over before us late-comers have even started watching. Imagine the uproar if Buffy or Lost had only been on for six hours a year? Doesn’t bear thinking about. There are a few self-reflexive lines at the end of the first episode about how this sort of superhero stuff just doesn’t happen in Britain, and they’re right, of course... more’s the pity. The show also backs up my theory about “affirmative action” and genre fiction... in that a lot of superheroes gain their powers through freak events, so there’s always the potential there for minorities, or otherwise disenfranchised people, to score a major cosmic break and leap ahead of the pack (in a single bound!). It’s a shame that this potential is so rarely exploited.
The “misfits” themselves are a good mix of clashing, complex characters, and they’ve assembled a great cast of young actors to fill their orange jump-suits. Unfortunately the one I identify most with is probably Simon (Iwan Kehoah), the creepy, no-mates video-geek... although I’d like to stress than I’m not nearly as pervy or dysfunctional as he is. Robert Sheehan steals most of the scenes as angel-faced gobshite Nathan, while the mystery surrounding his past crimes and current powers really kept me hooked. I was also relieved that the writer demonstrated that there was a definite downside to being such a smart-arse. Too often the “jester” character is left free to mock everyone and everything around them, without ever experiencing any fallout... but here, his “fresh mouth” (as Judge Judy would say) is pretty much the cause of all his problems and he knows it, but he still can’t stop himself... so there’s genuine pathos there. And Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) gets possibly the greatest time-travel episode ever... well, since Desmond’s in Lost, anyway.
Still, the standout character for me was Kelly, the mind-reader who swings wildly between knee-jerk aggression, and genuine compassion. There was a sweet scene in the second episode where they’re all helping to look after a group of pensioners, and she inadvertently “hears” an old man think how thirsty he is. She immediately offers him a cup of tea... not because he’d asked her out loud, and she had an obligation to respond, but simply because she’s nice like that, bless her. She’s also the only character who actively attempts to break through Nathan’s defences, no matter how often he pushes her away, or thinks about having sex with her. At one point I thought she might even become the group’s leader, since she’s clearly the most authoritative and calm in a crisis, but sadly that didn’t come to pass. As far as I’m concerned, Socha is the star of the show, with a firm handle on the mood swings her character goes through, exposing the vulnerability and humanity beneath the explosive “chav” exterior. She is also, as one wit on the E4 website so eloquently observed, “well fit”. As far as I can tell she hasn’t had many roles before this one, so let’s hope there are plenty more entries on her IMDb page by this time next year, and that some of them are comedies... preferably written by me. Seriously, I have scripts ready and waiting... let’s do lunch!
As much as I love the instant gratification and privacy provided by my digital camera, the one thing that continues to irritate me about digital photography technology is the insane amount of time that elapses between when the shutter button is depressed and when the shutter finally decides to work its soul-stealing magic.
I’m sure you’ve all been there. You see something you desperately need to preserve in photograph form, so you whip out your digital camera, quickly frame the shot, and depress the button...
...but by the time your camera finally does its little preparation dance and captures the image, the moment you so badly wished to immortalize has passed and all you’re left with is another useless photo of a dirty restroom stall.
I'm supposed to do a lot of things today, such as go to the Gym, and go Christmas Shopping, but it's raining, and cold, and I've spent most of the day on the couch. Meh.
Anyway, I just watched a documentary on HBO called Smile Pinki about kids in India with cleft lips/pallets and a group that gives the children plastic surgeries for free. The charity that does this is called Smile Train and for $250 a child's surgery can be covered. Apparently there are over one million children with this problem. It was really a good film, and I encourage everyone to visit their website and check out the work they do (6,000 since 2004 and now 3,000 per year). It really is amazing:
You can also donate at the link.
-K.
Key to the calendar. Yellow: days when Vox worked normally. Pink: days when the compose screen took minutes or hours to load. Red: days when Vox would not allow me to compose at all.
I’m sure most of you will agree that putting up with a compose screen that will not load for hours or days since October 28 is being pretty patient.
In that time, Daisy and Six Apart have been great at trying to help me troubleshoot why this is happening. They have confirmed that there is something wrong and that, even at Six Apart HQ in California, they cannot get the compose screen to come up when logged on as me.
A number of solutions have been proposed, but despite carrying them out, the loading delay remains intolerably long.
It’s as though the Six Apart servers (after becoming self-aware!) know it’s me and fail to serve the compose page. No code is downloaded.
I remain convinced that whatever is happening to me is connected to what happened to Patricia (who has only made 50-odd posts on Vox, but has exactly the same symptoms) and Ninja (who can no longer compose with this site without switching to Internet Explorer—Vox is the only site which he has to make a browser switch for). I also believe the bug is connected to the one that locked out all the Australians I knew on this service in August 2009.
We also have the mysterious period between November 16 and 18 when the site operated normally, and the compose screen came up on demand. What happened on those three days? I had more tags in my account than when the site first blocked me from composing, and possibly more neighbours. Yet for those days, everything was normal here.
I have never suggested seriously that the block was malicious (though it was fun to entertain some outlandish theories), but it does seem to be rather coincidental that I come across bugs on Vox, Blogger, Facebook and other services continually. Many have been documented on this blog. I just never thought that among the last regular blog posts, the bugs I write about would be Vox’s.
One day I am sure they will find the error, or there will be a new version of Vox which remedies it. The underlying code is updated a lot more frequently with incremental improvements than Team Vox will have us know. Until then, I will check in here periodically—to read your posts, delete spammers, and administer the many groups that I run—but we will have to say farewell to my regular updates. I will also click on ‘Create’ from time to time to see if the bug has been fixed, and, if the site ever lets me, post the odd private neighbourhood or friends-only entry.
Finally, you could say, my disappointment outweighed my patience. As some of you read in a private post yesterday, this is a good time to move on.
Vox is, after all, still in beta, if its terms and conditions (revised a few months ago) are to be believed, so there’s no point my getting mad about this. It is what I signed up for in 2006 when I began as a Vox beta tester. Three years on, it appears I was still in the same boat, but with a less reliable site.
Thank you for all your friendships over the last three years. I have enjoyed it and everything this blog has offered. You can still find me on Facebook (a site with far worse issues than Vox ever had), Tumblr and at my main blog, where I am already ramping up the posting I do. I have a campaign site for the 2010 mayoral election here in Wellington, and will offer occasional commentary at Lucire’s web edition. If the Vox cravings get too much, I might enter the odd thing at lucire.vox.com, but even that account began to fail a few days ago.
This is not a total farewell. In the words of Gen Douglas MacArthur, ‘I shall return.’
A sunny day in Wellington, even if it took over half a day to get a compose screen on Vox. I’m already blogging more on Blogger, so I suspect these posts will become fewer (and not out of choice). This was around 5 p.m. today:
I always say God's timing is perfect. I never know when I turn on the radio what great thing I may hear on my favorite Christian talk radio station. Many times I get delayed then I turn it on and think, wow, if I had been in the car 15 minutes ago or 15 minutes later I would have missed this.
Well, today I was listening to Family Life with Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine. The neat thing is they were interviewing a woman named Sharon Jaymes and she is the author of a new parenting book a friend gave me on How to Be a Great Mom and Raise Great Kids.
A quote was shared during this broadcast that really struck me and it was about managing yourself...mind, body and spirit. Especially your spiritual life.....
Here is the quote: "Most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you're listening to yourself, instead of talking to yourself. The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself." That's ultimately what you're talking about here, is knowing how to handle yourself.
So many times people just let life happen to them without truly engaging in a relationship with God. God has really been teaching me about really listening to Him and being led in all things. I am trying to look at predictable patterns that work and do not work and how to be more effective.
In fact, my latest prayer has been, "Lord teach me a better way. How can I be a better mom, wife, friend and disciple. God show me how to be more effective in all I do." But more imporantly than that, I am just learning to trust God when I do not always see how things are going to turn out.
Also, I am really worshiping the Lord a lot. Our family listens and sings a lot of praise and worship music. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. So I am excited to see what God has in store for myself and my family. Life is full of many ups and downs and uncertainty.....but that makes the certainty of God so much sweeter.
I am so thankful for a Savior because I have needed a lot of saving :)
I always like to share a video. My daughter and I have been practicing this together for her to sing as a solo. Love this.
