Standing On Boxes

I haven’t been able to see Spirited Away yet. It appears to be playing in only one theater in NH right now… somewhere in Hanover. The only other local choice is Boston. Hopefully the T & I can catch it this weekend. Looking forward to it… it’s from the same person who did “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and “Princess Mononoke”

Other anime…. I’ve been picking up fansubbed episodes of Witch Hunter Robin (I’ve seen 14 of the 15 episodes broadcast so far.) I really need to learn Japanese. If learning a new language is even possible at my age. The chances of this making it out on a DVD in English any time soon are minimal.

Well… the world seems to be lurching ever closer to the Apocalypse. People blowing up tankers, blowing up night clubs inhabited by Australians (which makes less sense than usual. Next to Canadians, Australians are one of the least offensive groups of people out there.) and early morning reruns of “The Galloping Gourmet” on Food TV.

Let’s see…. a sniper is running around the Washington, DC area, randomly killing people; some terrorist group killed over 200 people, mostly harmless Australians in a Bali nightclub… and which of these two events got its’ own special on ABC ? Not sure what to think about that. This is America, so we do have a tendency to focus on US events. but still….

I’ve been busy… but not that busy… Hadn’t realized it had been 10 days since I last came through here. Surprising…

I don’t normally comment on shows I watch on a regular basis but today is different….

What ? You, my loyal non-readers, don’t watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer ? You’re missing a treat. Of course, if you haven’t watched the last few seasons it will seem kind of strange and won’t make much sense, so get yourself over to FX where they are currently starting to show Season 2. In fact, one of today’s FX episodes was the first Spike episode “Fool for Love”. Watch it for a few weeks and the new ones might start to make sense. Maybe.

Anyway….

Three episodes into the seventh season and while it isn’t all puppies and fluffy bunnies it at least isn’t the drawn out pain fest some parts of season 6 inflicted on its’ cultish viewers.
The episode is best described as “What if Willow came home and no one was there to meet her at the airport ? And, what if ‘the gang’ went to the airport to meet her and she didn’t get off the plane ?” And what if both were correct ? For a while there it looked like she got off at the wrong dimension… until she interacted with other characters who COULD see her and we were saved from a retread of an old Star Trek episode.

Elements that raised this above the ordinary…

• References to Season 6′s ending almost apocalypse
  • The yellow crayon sign Xander had at the airport
  • Destruction of the Magic Box
  • Dawn with a sword at the cave
  • Willow checking for the bullet hole in her room and looking at the pictures.
  • The skinned dead person and Willow having to admit it could have been something she could have done.
• Clever (but not too cute) touches
  • Dawn being Research Girl
  • Willow catching herself when talking to Anya when she almost says “Quick like a bunny”
  • Willow not being able to stay in her old room alone while she waits for her friends to show up.
  • NOT having all the characters in the same room at the same time when they COULDN’T see each other (Made it clear this wasn’t an “invisible” episode.)
  • Fully posable Dawn (And her falling over when the monster dies because of the way she was “posed”).
  • Spike’s “I’m crazy, what’s his excuse!?” at the cave.

Someone needs to invent an auto-surfing gadget for tv’s. More than just one of those channel-scanners some tvs have… time to check out TiVo ? Something that will keep a list of the shows I want to pause at for a certain percentage of time during a round of channel surfing.

Maybe someone can invent something for Congress that does the same thing… tells them which topic/bill has the highest poll rating WHILE voting for it…..

What do YOU snack on when you feel the urge to snack ? In my case it’s mostly a television phenomenon. I seem to mainly hunt out snacks when I’m practicing my couch potato skills. But it isn’t watching cooking shows that does it…

Hmmm….. snacks… I don’t keep many ‘tradition’ snack food lying around.

• pretzels
• popcorn
• peanut butter sandwiches
• oatmeal (Yum!) and other cereals in small bites
• small servings of leftovers

I’m sure there is a whole science to it.

Zaurus

Bought a Sharp Zaurus 5500 PDA right before my trip to Atlanta. It has the mini-keyboard (some call it a thumb board though my thumbs are too big to use it that way). The main attraction, other than the fire sale price at Best Buy for their display model, is that it runs Linux, is color, and has quite a bit of memory for a PDA.
I put Squeak on it yesterday (See the Squeak wiki for details) and the recommended dynapad image. Looks good so far but I haven’t done much with it yet.

I’ve started adding links to other blog people. Not many but the ones I check out more than once a week or day. I’m also checking out other Radio themes though I’m not really happy with the ones I’ve seen. So… at some point I need to really finish my own.

A slight title change to one that reflects this blog better.

Oddly enough… although I haven’t been very prolific on my blog the past few months I’ve always written a lot of e-mail all day long. Some long, some short. I also contribute to several newsgroups on a weekly basis. Must be an audience difference. In e-mail and USEnet you have some idea of audience. On a blog… the audience will be random. If you’re lucky they comment, if not, you don’t know if anyone really reads.

Spent three days in Atlanta at a company retreat, flying out of Logan 6:15am on a Sunday morning and getting back 12:30am Wednesday morning. It was, in some ways, a very long trip, and in others very energizing. (I didn’t get to stay for EDUCAUSE. Maybe next year.)

No, I didn’t get “pulled over”, when going through security at the gate in either Atlanta or Boston but I stressed about it.

Ah….. the BtVS gang seems to be doing the rounds of the talk/entertainment shows. Wonder what’s up. Alyson Hannigan was on both Carolyn Rhea’s and ‘Conan O’Brian’s show this week, she’ll be on Carson Daily’s show next week, and Sarah Michelle Gellar is hosting SNL in a week. Wonder who else is “on the road” over the next few weeks from that show… ?

Hmmm… I seem to be watching only a few shows on television this year. BtVS (no surprise), Inu-Yasha & Yu Yu Hakasho (both on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on Saturdays), CSPAN, and some of the talk shows. Other things I’ll watch if I stumble across them – Monk, Good Eats, Iron Chef.