Category Archives: Rant
Between the new position at The Company, the end of another disappointing baseball season for the Twins and the fun I’ve had blogging, I completely missed that the TV Fall Season had begun!
So last night I sat down to catch up on the first new season episodes of my usual programs (CSI, CSI:NY, NCIS: Los Angeles & NCIS). Those are basically listed in reverse order of my regard for them with the exception that I think NCIS: Los Angeles is a silly ass show mainly saved by the graces of Linda Hunt. I mostly started watching it because, hey, it’s an NCIS show, and I loved JAG, and I love NCIS. Now I’m a bit caught up in the characters, so it’s hard to look away.
But I gotta tell ya. If the season premiere of NCIS represents the quality of writing (as in total lack thereof) for the season, the love affair is over. And, as with any jilted, betrayed lover, I’m fucking angry!
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12 Comments | tags: bad script, CSI, CSI:NY, Elizabeth Shue, Linda Hunt, Marg Helgenberger, Mark Harmon, NCIS, NCIS:Los Angeles, Northern Exposure, Richard Schiff, Rob Morrow, Ted Danson | posted in Rant, TV
Before TV Tuesday can proceed to the television I love, I need to clear the airwaves regarding an entire genre of television I cannot stand.
I suspect I’m about to offend some people while causing others to cheer. To those who cheer, you are clearly members of a discerning, intelligent television audience. To those who are offended, your presence in the gene pool is no longer required, please hit the showers.
As you may have gathered, yep, it’s another opinionated rant. This one is about what I consider the worst thing to hit television since Manimal or The Ropers. In fact, it’s worse, far worse, than those two combined, plus Cop Rock and Mr. T. and Tina.
It’s about the form of video excrescence known as “Reality TV.” And that really does need to be in quotes, because there isn’t one thing “real” about it. Quite to the contrary, a more accurate term is “Unreality TV.”
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6 Comments | tags: reality shows, television, trash, voyeurism | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
I was on a supply run to the grocery store this morning and was stuck behind a Toyota Camry for most of the way. My trip takes place on two-lane roads that are hilly and curved enough to prohibit passing, so I was trapped. It was a mellow Sunday morning, and there’s no use (ever) letting other drivers get to you. I’m not one to play the tailgating game, but the four vehicles stuck behind me were stacked up tightly.
In fact, once I realized it was a Camry, I started laughing. For a long time now, I’ve had a perception that when you’re stuck behind a particularly bad driver — one that stands out from the usual bad drivers — there is a good chance the car is a Camry. I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one with that perception; I’ve heard others make the same rant.
But it is a fact that there are a huge number of them on the road, and they age well, so odds are high on any car in front of you being a Camry.
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4 Comments | tags: bad drivers, drivers, horrible drivers, LA Story, slow pokes, speed limit, Steve Martin, Toyota Camry | posted in Life, Rant
Let us speak now of a form of life so low and loathsome that, in comparison, the worst person you ever spent time with is a saint, a paragon of human virtue and charm. I mean the biggest waste of human flesh this world has ever seen.
I’m speaking of a form of life so useless, so revolting, that a universe in which just one of these disgusting creatures lives, albeit even on a distant planet beyond the reach of any spaceship, is worse than living in a house filled with giant, raving, rabid human-hating scorpions.
I’m speaking of a kind of human so offensive in the face of all that is good and right they should be forced to live their miserable lives wearing cactus-lined underwear while Prometheus’s Eagle takes a break from his usual duties to come to eat their livers and hearts. (Except they have no hearts.)
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16 Comments | tags: die die die spammers, die horribly spammers, die painfully spammers, die spammers, vanish from the earth spammers | posted in Rant
When I wrote the first rant about television commercials over a year ago, I promised I would return to the subject repeatedly. Better late than never, here’s another entry towards keeping that promise.
As I mentioned last time, I’m not a big fan of marketing and advertising. Of course companies need to market and advertise their products.
It’s the way they go about it that I sometimes (in all honesty, make that frequently) find repulsive.
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1 Comment | tags: Arbys, AT&T, commercials, Klondike bars, McDonalds | posted in Rant, TV
Okay, any Star Trek fan knows that Gene Roddenberry invented the transporters so he wouldn’t have to deal with the special effects necessary to show a landing every time the crew visited a planet. It also cut out any time needed to show the launch, travel time or landing, and that moves the story along. Both of those are smart and good, so let me start by saying, “Gene, that was awesome! And so is the horse you rode in on!”
There’s also the simple fact that, in science fiction, you have to grant a few “gimmes” in order to tell the story you want.
The canonical example here is warp drive. Do you want to explore strange new worlds, and seek out new life and new civilizations? Well, you’re gonna have to find a way around Mr. Einstein, who laid down the Universal Speed Limit, a little thing we like to call c.
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7 Comments | tags: Dyson sphere, Earl Gray, it's green, Picard, Realm of Fear, Relics, replicators, Scotty, Spock Must Die!, Star Trek, transporters | posted in Physics, Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
This has been a stick in my craw since the earliest days of the original Star Trek series. This one way predates my notorious Holodeck Hatred. And there is no hyperbole when I say “earliest days” because we’re talking about the third Star Trek episode ever aired, Where No Man Has Gone Before.
(While this was the third episode aired, it’s actually the second pilot, which is the one that got the show on the air. Did you know we can thank the great Lucille Ball for that? Read the linked Wiki article!)
The stuck stick is none other than the [big space voices] Barrier At The Edge Of The Galaxy (the BATEOTG, or maybe you prefer BatEotG).
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Leave a comment | tags: galactic energy barrier, Loretta Swit, Margaret Houlihan, Star Trek, The Naked Now, The Naked Time, Where No Man Has Gone Before | posted in Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
The awkward Supreme Court ruling, known as “Citizens United,” has generated a lot of discussion about corporations being people. Note that this 2010 ruling did not establish corporations as people: that’s been on the books since the early 1800s.
The Citizens United ruling allowed them to spend vast sums of money as “free speech.”
Anyone not terribly alarmed by this and what it implies for our political future isn’t paying attention.
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Leave a comment | tags: Citizens United, corporate body, corporate personhood, corporations, Information Technology, IT | posted in Life, Philosophy, Rant
Yesterday I threw down the gauntlet regarding Christopher Nolan’s new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. In fact, that article was a first entry into a discussion about how we’ve constantly upped the ante regarding violence in movies and television and modern life in general.
That larger discussion will evolve over time as I find things to say about it. In this article I want to talk specifically about the Batman movie… or rather about the “going to the Batman movie” theater experience.
When it comes to going to the movie theater to see a movie, each time I do that lately I seem to find one less reason to do that ever again. Let me count the ways:
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10 Comments | tags: AMC, movie theaters, popcorn | posted in Life, Movies, Rant
The other evening, I finally went to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. The punch line (and never was the term “punch” more appropriate) is that I have to give it a definite thumbs down. It is, without question, my least favorite Christopher Nolan movie, and that’s saying something, because (unlike some), I quite like Nolan’s work.
I’m a life-long comics fan and a life-long fan of the Batman. I’ve known the worlds of DC and Marvel for over 40 years. For me, Superman has a slight edge, but the Batman has always been a close second. Those two comprise a full quarter to one-third of my comics and gnovels (graphic novels) collection. Frank Miller‘s The Dark Knight Returns is one of two seminal works I hold in the highest esteem. (The other, of course, is Alan Moore‘s Watchmen.)
And, as I mentioned, I’m a fan of Nolan’s work, and I liked both his first two Batman movies. I fully expected to like his latest.
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Leave a comment | tags: Alan Moore, Batman, Christopher Nolan, superheroes, The Dark Knight Rises, violence, violence in movies | posted in Movies, Rant, The Interweb, TV
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