The Times, They Are A-Changing

This blogging site is being changed to a less user-friendly format by the end of July so I may have to move to a new location. Of course, I'm becoming more and more interested in writing stories than film reviews anyway so maybe it's just as well. Even writing fanfic teaches me a lot more about how to analyse a story than most film reviews so I'll probably be concentrating more on that. Plus I find myself becoming more and more obsessed with writing down the stories that I write in my head than writing long essays about how I feel about the latest new movie.

Anyway, if this site changes unexpectedly and I'm no longer able to update it, you all will know what happened. Good luck and thank you for all the years of support.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Kerblam!”

Go, organics!

That line alone is the cleverest line that I can remember from this episode but unfortunately, the rest of the episode left much to be desired.

Part of the problem is that the show's writer took an excellent opportunity to satirize a popular corporation and how it contributed to the current trend toward dehumanization -- and then dropped the ball by bringing up yet another target whose presence, unfortunately, encouraged the audience to miss the writer's original point. I could readily understand the writer's desire to resist the temptation to write "The Robots of Death II" but unfortunately, his idea for a substitute was not much of an improvement. If anything, the writer's decision to sacrifice a sympathetic character in order to teach the bad guy a lesson made for a point point far more dubious than anything that happened in "The Robots of Death". As a result, it's hard to watch the resolution of this episde without getting a bad taste in one's mouth -- a very bad taste.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Innocence”

You say Linda Hamilton used a rocket launcher in the new Terminator movie?

Darn shame we never saw anything like that on the small screen...

TV Quote of the Week

Sir, take a look around you. The machines have already taken over the world.
--Robert Llewellyn, Red Dwarf, "Mechocracy"

Random Thoughts

1. Damned heterosexuals. Always flaunting their lifestyle in public. There ought to be a law, I say. There ought to be a law.

2. Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian" is set in 2053. So we're right on schedule with those driverless cars.

3. There is no god but Science and Darwin is his prophet.

4. I like big books and I can not lie.

5. La vida es cabaré y los cabarés, cabarés son.
(Life is a cabaret and the cabarets are cabarets.)

6. I was partial to dark comedy in my youth -- before experience taught me that life was quite darkly comic enough without my having to write about it.
--Burgess Meredith, Clash of the Titans (Alternative Universe Version) (1981)

7. Experience tends to trump ideology.

8. If they can do it to them, they can do it to you.

Movie Quote of the Week

Well, if we do get canned, we won't be the only ones to lose our jobs because of a machine.
--Joan Blondell, Desk Set (1957)

Ad of the Week

Aubrey Plaza is now selling cell phones? How the mighty have fallen!

Mixed Message?

My Laptop Is Dead

I have had it for almost ten years now so it was bound to go out eventually. It just chose today to do so and not even all the king's men -- or for that matter, the local geek squad -- could put it back together again.

Fortunately, most of my files are saved on flash drives nowadays but it's still a major inconvenience. I might have a new laptop within a few days depending on my budget. We'll see.

TV Quote of the Week

When you live forever, it's disappointing how little humans change. Technology, though, it always gets better. If I hadn't become a vampire, I would have missed out on the Internet, TIVO, World of Warcraft... and GPS.
--Alex O’Loughlin, Moonlight, “Out of the Past”

Endangered Species

Death and the Facebook Page

My mother was in the process of shifting to a new home telephone number earlier this year and as a result, she missed out on the usual midnight telephone call informing her of a loved one's death. In fact, when my father's youngest sister died in January of this year, the first news she received of it came from me -- and only because I had been fortunate enough to check my Facebook page soon after my aunt died.

After all the telephone calls I had received in the past that had informed me of the deaths of various out-of-state relatives, it seemed strange that the first notice of my aunt's death came from a notice on my Facebook page that had been posted by one of her adult children. Then again I remember being so out of sorts after the death of my father -- and then again after the death of my sister -- that I could readily understand why my aunt's children did not bother to make telephone calls to everyone who was related to her. Especially since a notice on Facebook was much easier.

Still I had badmouthed Facebook so much in the past that it seems equally strange for me to be saying anything good about it right now. After all, as much as fun as it can be on Facebook on times, I must admit that it is not really my cup of tea. If I did not have so many friends and relatives who posted on Facebook, I would have nothing to do with it -- and even then, I can't help but noticing that my older relatives post less frequently than my younger relatives. And that most of the time I have more informative conversations with the same people through e-mail than through Facebook (no doubt because there are many things one feels more comfortable talking about through E-mail than through Facebook).

Oh, well. I will probably always have issues with Facebook but I can't pretend that it can not be a positive thing at times. After all, if it were not for Facebook, my mother and my youngest brother would have missed the opportunity to attend my aunt's funeral. And while it goes without saying that I would have wished that my aunt's funeral were still a long way off in the future, I consider it much better that my mother and my brother at least had a choice as to whether or not they would attend her funeral. After all, that choice could have been very easily taken away from them by circumstances beyond their control. Thanks to Facebook, it was not.

TV Quote of the Week

It's a comfort to have a machine do our thinking for us.
--Carolyn Jones, The Addams Family, "The Addams Family Splurges"

Random Thoughts

What does it say about my life that my initial response to the first declaration of love I have received from a woman since I broke up with my former bride-to-be was to try to argue her out of it?

Do I have to vote for a presidential candidate this year?

If automation is truly putting an end to the repetitive and soul-destroying jobs of yesteryear, why do so many of the jobs available nowadays tend to be repetitive and soul-destroying?

Of course, having to continually search for work in this economic climate isn't exactly an ego-booster either.

If atheism is so fashionable nowadays, why do so many people other than me throw around words like "soul-destroying"? I thought atheists didn't recognize the existence of a soul.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Modern Family: “Game Changer”

Oh, cool. A TV episode which is also an infomercial for iPads. And when the writers of this episode can spare the time, there are also a few good jokes.

Seriously, this episode would be a lot more exasperating if it did not make fun of early adopters as often as it did late adopters. Besides, as I have noted before, I'm really beginning to warm up to the characters to the point that I'm not sure what I'll do for an entertainment fix if this show ever goes off the air. I mean, it's bad enough that they took away Buffy, Ugly Betty and Veronica Mars. Worse yet that the powers that be are fixing to put an end to Desperate Housewives and House M.D.. I don't know what I'll do if this show bites the dust as well.

Lesson of the Day

Falling temperatures and rolling brownouts make for such a fun combination. It makes me wonder why I never bothered to move back to Detroit.

TV Quote of the Week

We hate full body scans.
--Hugh Laurie, House M.D., "Black Hole"

Pop Song of the Week: “Allentown”

Today most of the forms one needs to fill out are on the Internet but apart from that, it's eerie how much of this song still rings true.

Buscando Trabajo de Nuevo: Parte XIII

It looks like I spoke too soon.

I have been training for the new position all week and doing what I thought to have been an okay job when I finally flunked a crucial test. And unfortunately, that one test was the one I should not have flunked. Ironically, it involved my physical skills more than my mental skills.

So now I am depressed and going back to a mode I had thought I would be done with for a long while. After all, I had had high hopes for this job and I had actually relished the thought of working for a company for which my late father once worked. (Not that I would have working in the same department that he did. But I would have been working for the same company that used to sign his paychecks.)

On the plus side, I learned new respect for factory workers, especially the type who work with microchips and cleanrooms. Of course, I grew up around cousins and uncles who were factory workers and my late father used to work on an assembly line before he became a computer programmer -- no, seriously, he did -- so it is not like I ever dissed blue-collar workers too much. But I did take their work for granted, and now that I had the opportunity to see for myself what they go through each day, I hope that I never get so complacent as to take it for granted again.

So I am applying online again and hoping that the same agency that gave me this opportunity calls up with another one before too long. Plus I still had a week's worth of unemployment coming to me along with my eagerly awaited tax refund check and a not so eagerly awaited rebate check.

So as much as I hate going back to square one, I am not in as bad a shape as I could be.

Edited to add:

Cool! I already have an interview for next week. I'm already crossing my fingers.

Buscando Trabajo de Nuevo: Parte VII

I just love how it seems like even the most humble employer refuses to take anything but online applications nowadays. Okay, there is one employer that still accepts them but I am almost afraid to submit an application to that one.

For that matter, I find it somewhat depressing how often you can work on an online application for more than twenty minutes and either get hung up on a last-minute glitch or else submit it in a way that seems successful -- but which produces no response via e-mail whatsoever.

Oh, well. At a time in which the biggest job opportunities seem to lie in debt collection and security work, I would like to think that there are still some things that I have too much of a conscience to consider.

And should I update my word processing system? Now is hardly the ideal time for me to be investing in new software but I recently sent a file to an online acquaintance who could not read it so I have to wonder if other people I have sent files to have had similar problems. I guess I will have to test my system with people I can be certain of getting a response from. Then again the acquaintance to which I sent that file uses a Mac and I use a PC so it just may be another part of that unending conflict between Macs and PCs. I am just so glad that modern technology is coming up with yet new ways to separate us even as it tries to bring us together.