Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Wednesday Fragments
what the heck
If you missed yesterday's explanation, I'm doing my Fragments column on Wednesday this week so I can take a mini-sabbatical from updates over the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm like Bill Watterson, except my cartoons suck and I don't have worldwide name recognition. Based on which days the holidays are going to fall on, this will be the last vacation from updates I'll be taking this year.If you aren't visiting this page with Firefox, you're missing the dancing turkey-llama in the upper left corner. Here's a video clip that will show you how much richer your life could be: 
(249KB WMV). If you don't care about turkey-llamas (which taste a lot like turduckens), here's a clip of my cats playing the tail game (731KB WMV).
The XBOX 360 was released yesterday, with a bunch of stupid clowns camping outside overnight to pay $400 for a console system that will be obsolete in a year. I'm guessing the "360" is a marketing gimmick that says "XBOX: Right back where you started" but maybe that's why I'm not an ad executive. I'll just wait another three years and get the next Nintendo console out of the Walmart bargain bin. I'm a low-maintenance console gamer -- just give me a Zelda and some bizarre Mario-themed activities (Mario Blitz 2006 or maybe Mario Curling) and I'm set for another five years.They have designed the XBOX to also play music, display photos and show DVDs. Is that really something anybody wants? I thought the whole purpose of a component-based entertainment center was that you could pick and choose your VCR and your DVD player and then mix and match all the parts for optimum performance. I don't want my toaster to also grate cheese, and I don't want to watch TV on my nonexistant cell phone.
I finished watching the second season of Arrested Development last week, which was good but not quite as good as the original. Now that the show is all but cancelled, I wonder if they'll release the incomplete third season on DVD. Probably so, since TV producers love to sell abbreviated shows for full price (see also, "The Last Episode of Friends, $9.99 on DVD"). By the way, if you like Friends, you can now buy all ten seasons for a mere $200. It's too bad I already own the first nine seasons, because that little bundle would save me about $5 total, and I am all about the big savings. Alternately, I could just watch it on TV as it airs, but the whole Monday night schedule throws me off. I haven't watched TV habitually on Monday since Boston Public went off the air (synonymous with "moved to Friday").Now that Arrested Development is done, I'm watching the 3rd and 4th seasons of Alias. The third season isn't as horrible as I remember, yet. Then again, I haven't gotten to that diarrhea of the plot that afflicted it in the last half of the season. I stopped watching Alias on TV now, because I figure it'll be just as fun to pick it up on DVD next year and experience it without commercials. I still watch Lost though, and still have no sympathy for the actress playing Ana-Lucia. I can't decide whether she's a horrible actress, the director told her to make the character completely one dimensional, or the part itself is horrible and she's doing the best that she can.If you're a LOST fan, check out the winning lotto numbers from the Irish Lotto on Saturday the 19th:. So close...
We went to see Squid and the Whale on Friday, which was an interesting indie film. It had some funny moments and some real moments, but it was one of those movies that just ends. The last scene was probably deeply symbolic, but if you're going to make a movie, you should at least tie up some loose ends for the satisfaction of the viewers, art bedamned. It's like the last scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray whispered something unknown in Scarlett's ear, or every other scene in Alias where someone gets handed a piece of paper with incriminating evidence on it and then they sack the writer before he can pursue that plotline. We want to know!I also rewatched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Anna last Thursday. It was still good, but much better on the big screen.I never quite understood what the Key Club did in high school. They're billed as a service organization, but all it really was was a bunch of rich kids who had meetings after school. Why are they key? Someone enlighten me. When I was in high school, I joined all the clubs that required no actual work or payment of dues. As soon as I had to do something, I was out the door. I wasn't even in the Music Honor Society because there were dues.When Thanksgiving rolls around, you're always supposed to devote a post to the things you're thankful for. Posts like those are generally tryptophan to visitors and Kryptonite to ratings, so I will compress it into a single inimitable fragment. In 2005, I am thankful for: having a job that I greatly enjoy which pays enough for me to comfortably fill my secondary role of sitting at home in a perfect house doing absolutely nothing, parents who are always close by for support, two superb felines who idolize me every time I feed them, having Anna as a best friend, finally getting Anna married off to some slow-proposing scalawag off the street, having readers that make daily writing worthwhile, remeeting and spending time with Kim, having a free hot chocolate machine in the lunch room at work when it's cold and rainy outside, having friends that I can lose touch with for years and still have a good time inviting them over for dinner, having hobbies like watching movies and playing games that can be done on low-key nights with friends and require only a modicum of effort to be enjoyable, lighting good-smelling candles in the house and then playing with the butane lighter to fulfill pyromaniacal urges.I'll probably think of more, but that's enough sentimentality for today. Have a good long weekend! Radish recovering after murder attempt Man sues ABC over gay Wife Swap
Whitey must die
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