Category Archives: Rant
I see them often, headlines that blare urgently: “Fans Flip Out Over _____” On the flip side, the ones that proclaim giddily: “Fans Are Thrilled About _____” The blanks differ, week to week, but the mood is always vocal eleven; outrage or delight; thumbs up or thumbs down. (As Jerry Seinfeld put it recently, it either “Sucks!” or it’s “Great!” His genius is pointing out they can be the same thing.)
For me that level of involvement in fiction is a bit alien. Even as a young Star Trek fan, I distinguished between Trekkers (the sensible sort of fan that I was) and Trekkies (those goofballs running around with Spock ears and toy phasers). Love versus obsession; appreciation versus Let’s Pretend.
What concerns me sometimes is we’re amusing ourselves to death.
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28 Comments | tags: fanatics, fans, Koyaanisqatsi | posted in Movies, Rant, TV
I was planning on curling up on the couch with some good reading material today, but I bumped into something in my news feed this morning that raised my blood pressure and gave me the perfect excuse to get rid of another old note and vent some spleen (I like to keep it aired out).
The bitter irony is that what I see as a problem just doubled. It used to involve just one episode of a TV series I really like. Now it involves another episode of another TV series I like. Two episodes I will never, ever touch. If they were the last TV episodes in the world, I’d stop watching TV.
I’m talking about Netflix and their @#$%ing interactive videos.
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2 Comments | tags: Black Mirror, interactive video, Netflix, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt | posted in Movies, Rant, TV
One of the older notes on my idea board is a tiny Post-It™ with just a single word written on it: recrudescence. Wiktionary defines it as: “The condition or state being recrudescent; the condition of something (often undesirable) breaking out again or re-emerging after temporary abatement or suppression.”
It is primarily a medical term referring to a disease reoccurring; the second Wiktionary definition is: “The acute recurrence of a disease, or its symptoms, after a period of improvement.”
But when I encountered the word several years ago, it struck me as a very good word for this “post-factual” era: the Dark Ages rises again.
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10 Comments | tags: Bentley, Electric Dreams (TV series), Martin Freeman, Philip K. Dick, recrudescence, recrudescent, Russian Doll (TV series), Sherlock (TV series), Sherlock Holmes | posted in Life, Politics, Rant, Society
Appearing soon at my place!
Monday is laundry day — a rare bit of regularity in my retired life. Faithful readers (all three of you) will recall I had a bit of electrical excitement last fall. (That’s been fine ever since, and I’m happy to have the new smoke detectors. I had no idea they are only good for about ten years. Their tiny radioactive source wears out eventually.)
I’ve known for months I needed a new clothes washer and a new clothes dryer. For one thing, they came with the place, so they’re at least 16 years old. More to the point, the dryer was taking two hours to get clothes completely dry, and the agitator in the washing machine was broken — it only worked with extremely light loads.
Yesterday, it died a definite death.
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20 Comments | tags: Best Buy, Maytag, Not Thrilled with Best Buy, The Home Depot, washer-dryer | posted in Life, Rant
Maybe it’s expecting too much that a TV series remain in your heart for 17 seasons. I still enjoy The Simpsons (starting its 31st season) and South Park (starting its 23rd season), but both the cartoon format and the nature of those shows gives them a lot of latitude in exploring new ideas while remaining true to the show.
A drama, like NCIS, which I’ve rated as my favorite TV show for well over a decade, is more restricted. It’s harder for a drama to find new ground while remaining true to its nature. That can lead to stagnation, viewer fatigue, or, in some cases, “jumping the shark.”
Which is all to say I’m very disappointed in NCIS, season 17.
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26 Comments | tags: Jethro Gibbs, NCIS, Ziva David | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
If I went with longer titles, I might have called this post Why I’ll Never Buy Another Dell Computer! Or I could have gone for the much shorter Dell Sucks! But I can’t resist a good pun or play on wyrds, so Bummer it is.
About a year ago I replaced my aging Sony Vaio laptop with a Dell XPS 15. The Sony taught me some hard lessons about buying a laptop online, one of them being “you’ll be sorry if you buy a Sony” — it had many annoyances, not the least of which was the wireless never worked. And it had a literal bug in it! The Dell is better in many ways, but… well…
Dell, you disappoint me. Let me count the ways…
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22 Comments | tags: computer woes, Dell Computers, Dell XPS 15 | posted in Computers, Life, Rant
Trapped in the past!
I should have known better. From where I sit, Verizon has always had something of a stench I couldn’t quite identify. There was just something about that company that rubbed me the wrong way.
Now I realize it’s because they’re a bunch of fucking assholes who don’t give two shits about their customers. And, based on my horrible, terrible, very bad experience with them (never again, never again), don’t give two shits about new customers. And I’m beginning to think all technology companies, perhaps all companies, no longer even pretend to care about their customers.
This seems just one more way we’ve seriously lost our way culturally.
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12 Comments | tags: cell phones, mobile phone, Sprint, Verizon | posted in Life, Rant
I just don’t get the calculus behind the choices being made by people like AG Barr and so many others in politics and government today. Do they not understand that their legacy is likely to cast them as great Villains in American history? Could they be so stupid, so arrogant and vain, that they don’t care about history when the moment promises fame, wealth, and power?
Or do they think they can actually win, that they can remake the world in their image? That we have so lost our way morally and culturally, that they can run roughshod over us and seize the world for their own gain and purpose?
The former possibility is scary enough, but the latter is terrifying.
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6 Comments | posted in Politics, Rant, Society
I think I’ve reached the breaking point with The Orville. Watching episode five of the new season, I found myself yelling at the TV for the fifth time, because the writing seems so stupid, and the characters seem so lame. I’m angry that a show with so much potential is so infuriating and dumb. I had to turn the episode off and start this post.
When the second season started, I re-watched the entire first season as an appetizer, and my conclusion was that there were many more good episodes than bad. There’s really only one I found a stinker (and couldn’t watch all of), but overall it was positive. I was looking forward to the second season.
Sadly, I’ve really hated all five episodes so far. I’m really torn about watching the show anymore.
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20 Comments | tags: Adrianne Palicki, Seth MacFarlane, SF, The Orville | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
Star Trek wasn’t hugely popular right off the bat, or even for a long time. The first series, after all, lasted only three years and had to fight for survival for most of that time. But it did catch on hugely with us fans; many of us fell in love right away.
From an early point even within the fan community, let alone to mundanes, some of us were careful to identify as Trekkers rather than Trekkies. As I used to put it, “Trekkers are grown ups who love science fiction. Trekkies own a pair of Spock ears.”
Then, because of a little movie, named Star Wars, science fiction went mainstream. And so did the divide between two rather different kinds of fans…
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28 Comments | tags: Bill Maher, Doctor Who, Gamergate, Ghostbusters, Leslie Jones, Marvel comics, SJW, social justice warrior, Stan Lee, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Doctor | posted in Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, Society
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