The 35th Precinct

I was dismayed to discover that my Fraggle Rock S4 DVDs won't play in my Xbox DVD. Each of the discs in the series freezes before the main menu screen, at 00:36. If it were one disc, or if the discs froze at different times, I'd suspect a bad batch, but since they all freeze at the same spot, I suspect that Xbox is being temperamental. If they won't play on the Philips I've got downstairs, then I'm just going to buy another set off Amazon. I got this one at Walmart.

When the Fraggles refused to cooperate, I watched A Muppet Christmas Carol instead. What a ridiculously cute interpretation, and God bless Michael Caine for treating it with respect instead of camping it up. His willingness to take it seriously made the film. The atmosphere was a perfect blend of Dickensian drear and Muppet whimsy, with talking vegetables and tiny, supplemental creatures from throughout the Muppets universe. It was lovely and sweet, and the actor who played young Scrooge was a smoking hot British fox. Though I could've done without Miss Piggy, who sets my teeth on edge whenever she barges onto the scene, I'll be watching this often, especially during the holidays.

I haven't made much progress on the ficcing front; I've pounded out roughly eleven hundred words over the course of a week. My productivity usually slumps this time of year, but this entire year has been slow and scanty. It's not for lack of ideas--I hatch half a dozen plots a week--but a profound dearth of motivation. It doesn't help that I loathe the setup of the computer that I will always consider Roomie's even though my aunt bought it for me. I despise Works. Roomie swears it's nearly identical to Word, but I find it ugly, clunky, and intrusive. I like Google Docs a bit better, if only for the nigh-constant autosave and the ability to have a copy not attached to a hard drive, but its paragraph formatting is amateurish and maddeningly limited, and whenever I copy the finished product to Works for upload, the formatting shits the bed and fingerpaints with it, and I spend half an hour cleaning it up. It's frustrating, and I often decide I'd rather put my brain in neutral amd watch TV instead.

I suspect that I've managed about eighty thousand words of fic this year, which, when compared to the output of the average American couch troglodyte, seems positively prolific until you remember that I once averaged four hundred thousand words a year. So there's been a decided and undeniable drop in creative output. I hope this is just a temporary bout of torpor and not symptomatic of a permanent intellectual and artistic atrophy.

It is a beautiful day. The sky is a rich, vivid, robin's-egg blue, and the Rammstein in my headphones is making my heart pump. I'm feeling good, feeling froggy, as my father would have said. So, if there is a subject you'd like me to hold forth on, leave a comment, and I'll get to it. I can't promise I'll wax long on a topic, but I will say something, and given my penchant for stretching one-liners into Shakespearean soliloquies that would make Hamlet scream, "Shutteth the fuck UP, already!", you're bound to get more than you bargained for.

-I got to go to Wal-Mart yesterday, after all, and snagged most of what I needed/wanted, including Supernatural S4. I can finally watch the handful of episodes I missed when I foolishly decided to watch CSI instead. I also stocked up on soup and canned chili. Mmmm.

-As of October, I will be the owner of my neighbor's minivan. Roomie took it for a test drive yesterday as a polite formality and discovered that he liked it. Apparently, it's got fewer blind spots than my mother's, and the gear shift is more intuitive and readily accessible. He's still exceedingly leery of the winding roads, so much so that he sometimes overcompensates and hugs the far shoulder, but I'm hopeful he'll relax with time and practice. It will be nice to go to Wal-Mart or the local 'cue joint whenever the mood takes us.

-My dentist appointment is On Tuesday. On the one hand, I'm thrilled because I've been in desperate, urgent need of dental care for years, but on the other, I'm terrified. I can handle the drill and the pick and the indignity of fellating a plastic water cock, but the needle reduces me to a gibbering, blubbering, snotty, armrest-clutching wreck, and the sensation of being unable to breathe or swallow while reclining for a drill-wielding oral gynecologist plies his unseemly trade inside my helpless mouth does little to lighten the mood. And of course the spasticity native to my CP only ratchets up the anxiety. It's hard to be come when you're afraid your jaws are going to involuntary snap shut on a syringe and send its piercing tip into your gullet, from whence it can plunge into your stomach and intestines and perforate your bowels.

Sometimes having a fecund imagination is A Very Bad Thing.

-On the up side, there's new Supernatural to look forward to next week, and Rammstein is releasing a new single on the 18th. I hope it'll be streamed on KNAC, because bluegrass and gospel reign here in endstage Mayberry, and the only record store is a barn-red, tin-roofed shack that sells vintage gospel and bluegrass on the original acetate and cassette. Looks like I'll finally be getting an account with Amazon, as letting go of my commercially Luddite tendencies has suddenly become a matter of socio-cultural survival.

-Happy Easter. As is his tradition, Roomie chivvied me out of bed this morning for my in-home Easter egg hunt. This year, I searched for Cadbury mini-eggs. I've yet to eat any, however, because I'm still working my way through a four-pack of their larger forebearers. If I ever develop Type II diabetes, it will be because I cannot stop eating these chocolate and fondant sugar grenades.

-I bought Bolt, The Tale of Despereaux, and Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword recently. Bolt was your standard, formulaic Disney fare, with one scene between Bolt and Mittens lifted whole and breathing from Toy Story 2, but it was cute and fun. Rhino the fanboying hamster was a laugh riot, and I suspect it will be a comfort movie when I need a pick-me-up from the Life Sucks Blues.

I've yet to watch Scooby or Despereaux, but Scoob and Shag are nostalgic soul food, even if the formerly rapacious Shagster has been retconned into a proselytizing vegetarian to appease Casey Casem's butthurt. Hanna Barbara should've let him flounce. Some "celebrities" need to remember that the characters they portray aren't their personal avatars in a global Second Life. They're a job, and sometimes--often, really--they're different from you. Bad things happen when people forget that. We used to call people who couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality delusional nutjobs. Now we can comfortably call them actors and CSI:NY show runners. Look at Danny Goivinazzo, I mean, Carmine Mess-, I mean, Danny-oh, forget it. You get the idea.

Anyway, I miss the indiscriminately scarfing Shaggy.

-I bought a Combichrist CD from Hot Topic because I liked what I heard over the store loudspeaker. It's considered aggrotech, whatever that is, but to me, it's just more groovy dance metal to listen to while I'm ficcing.

-I want to like Bobby Flay because he looks dead handsome in a suit, but every time he opens his cakehole, my budding lust is supplanted by the urge to bludgeon him to death with the nearest rolling pin. He's so damn smug, and his constant smirk reminds me of the perverts who lurk around dubious amusement parks and boardwalk carousels and entice tween girls into rendezvous in seedy locales in exchange for a Pepsi and a Hoobastank CD. He's like a lecherous Percy Weasley.

-Paula Deen, on the other hand, is awesome. I watched Paula's Party last week, and without a trace of salacious irony, she told three strapping men that she wanted to watch them "really rub their meat." She was referring to three massive roasts, of course, but my mind immediately plunged into dirty, dirty places because it's governed by a horny underpants gnome with a terminal case of arrested development.

So, I've listened to my new Rammstein acquisitions. And now, a few thoughts:

Herzeleid: Oh, wow. Look, I know most of the songs on this record are good because they were outstanding on Live Aus Berlin. "Laichzeit" and "Ihr Wollt Das Bett Im Flammen Sehen" are standouts live, as is "Du Riechst So Gut"(and the spellchecker on my LJ client is having a psychotic break with all this German). But if Herzeleid had been the first album I had heard, I would never have become a hopeless, jonesing Rammstein fiend.

The production is awful. The vocals sound like Till Lindemann stuck his head inside a metal bucket, beat it with a hammer, and then read a script with all the verve and panache of a first-day drama student. He sounds like he's singing from the murky bottom of a Coke can. And the keyboards...

Well. They keyboards sound like the cheapest model available, one you might find at Big Lots. The display model that's fallen off the shelf eight times and been glued together with spit and baby poop. And it sounds like Flake has dragged this model deep into the cavernous bowels of a German butcher's fleshy rectum. Now just imagine the butcher's flabby butt cheeks flapping in time to "Seeman" or "Laichzeit". Go on, I dare you to conjure that mental image. Now imagine Flake's bewildered eyeball peeping warily from his beefy bumhole. There. You're welcome.

Mutter: Mutter is a much more polished album, but it's also lost a measure of its grinding guitar-driven angst. There are still thundering metal tunes that inspire the burning need to throw up the devil horns and dislocate cervical vertebrae; "Links 2 3 4", "Feuer Frei!" and "Rein Raus" are dirty, nasty riffs that make my harelipped kitty happy happy, but they're balanced by "Mutter" and "Spieluhr", which have a slick, techno flavor. I was mildly disappointed on the first listen, fearing that age had mellowed the roar of the German lion, but now I love it. Sehnsucht is still my favorite, but Mutter is a close second.


I also watched the DVD version of Volkerball and am in love with "Los"; God, what a nastyfine groove on that baby, bluesy and grungy and down by the balls. "Ohne Dich" isn't bad, either, so I suppose I'll be plunking down the cash for Reise, Reise soon. Who am I kidding? I've got Rammstein fever so bad that I'm going to buy Reise, Reise and Rosenrot the next time I leave the house. Thus, my Rammstein catalogue will be complete until the release of their new album later this year.

If any of this has piqued your curiosity, Google "Feuer Frei!", "Los", or "Sehnsucht". You won't be sorry.


( Fear Itself 105: Eater--SPOILERS )

Not long ago, I was toobing through TVLand, and when I came to a stop on that wretched, Hollywood-slurping septic tank known as the TVGuide Channel, they were pointing out that NBC was rolling out a new horror anthology show in the vein of The Twilight Zone called Fear Itself. I'm not so weaned of my lifelong horror addiction that I could let that pass without a gander, so I resolved to watch.

And then promptly forgot about it until last Monday, when NBC ran an ad for it during Nashville Star.

So, on Thursday, I settled in to watch.

( Fear Itself--SPOILERS )

Speaking of DVDs, CBS has announced that CSI:NY S4 DVDs will be released September 23rd and will retail for $70.

Excuse me? $70 You're going to charge me $35 more than I've paid for previous sets while giving me three fewer episodes and crappy extras like commentary by Anthony Zuiker? I don't think so, Scooter. Fuck you, CBS, you greedy corporate shitstains.

I've got news for you, bubba. Season 4 was terrible. Most of the time, it struggled to be worth its usual asking price of $45. Most of the time, it wasn't. Most of the time, it was an hour-long peepshow, wherein we watched Zuiker masturbate to his latest corporate Dom while telling us all that it was oh, so good, baby. I refuse to pay any money for that, much less $70.

There were 3 or 4 watchable episodes in S4, in my opinion--"You Only Die Once"(solely for Action!Flack, you understand), "Child's Play","All in the Family", and "Admissions". "Right Next Door" doesn't make my ass throb with the burning ache of plundered time I'll never get back, either, so maybe that's 5. 5 episodes out of 21. And you expect me to pay $70. In your dreams. If I jones that hard for those episodes, I'm sure I could persuade someone in LJland to burn them to DVD for me and send them in exchange for an ITunes gift card.

Ah, modern fannish commerce.

No, thanks, CBS. I'll spend that $70 on something actually entertaining, like Rammsten CDs and a copy of Volkerball on DVD so that I can watch the magnificent Till Lindemann for three hours, most of those hours spent sans shirt.

Mmmm. Now that's bang for your buck.

The best part about Eddie Cahill's commentary on "Consequences" is his laugh. It's this rich, deep belly-laugh, bright and boisterous to match his million-watt smile. He laughs all the time, not in a drunken, stoner frat boy sense, but in honest delight.

And he's articulate, as always, and quick to compliment everyone involved with the show. I agree with neither his assessment of Pam Veasey's "talent" nor his reading of the dynamics between Mac and Flack in the episode, however. Veasey's skill as a credible writer is dubious and sporadic, and the conflict between Mac and Flack smacked very much of paternalistic overtones, most notably with Mac's heaping dollop of Mactimony after Flack surrendered the memo book.

However, he was full of joie de vivre:

EC: There I am, talking about the Rangers. Love those Rangers. It's playoff time, you know.

PV: Yes, Eddie, I know. You tell me every day.

EC(laughs): Oh. (very quietly as the scene shifts) Go Rangers.

Win.

Dear People Store,

I want an Eddie Cahill.

La Guera



I think I know why I've been so reticent to get the ball rolling on Part III of Et Tu. The reason is two-fold: first, I'm loath to acknowledge that Miss Plastic Happy Tits exists. Secondly, Rebecca isn't going to look her best here.

( Some Probably Boring Meta on Flack and Rebecca )

I'm ascairt and doubting my oneness with the Eternal and Very Sekrit Order of Strunk and White.

Today, I skipped my Philosophy of Religion course and lolled in bed until 11:30 before trundling into town to buy Supernatural S2 and Fraggle Rock S3. I missed the last five episodes of SPN S2 in favor of CSI, so I'm thrilled to see them at last. S2 was inferior to S1 in terms of overall quality, IMO, but there were some fabulous episodes, like "In My Time of Dying", and "Heart". Maybe my opinion will change after I see the full season, but "Hollywood Babylon" damaged the credibility the show had tried so hard to establish. It was one long in-joke, and it was boring as hell.

While I was downtown, I ducked into Borders to avoid a downpour and snagged Best New Horror, Vol. 17. It's published annually-by Bantam, I believe-and while most of the stories fall short of the promised superlative of "Best" advertised on the cover, there are gems. I've read eight stories so far, and "The Ball Room", a collaborative effort between China Mieville, Emma Bircham, and Max Schaeffer, leads the pack. "Decorations" by Ramsey Campbell, is also a treat.

"The Cubist's Attorney" by Peter Atkins is a travesty and should never have been published in any format anywhere, much less a purported "Best of" anthology. The manuscript should've been pulped and consigned to a career as Fido's shit pit. I would've suggested Tweety's cage liner, but poor Tweety would've molted from the horror, whereas Fido has but to squat and grunt to render unto the story the steaming mocha prize it so richly deserves. Shame on you, Mr. Jones. You shouldn't edit while shit-faced.

I can only conclude that barakb25 is not a native English speaker. His latest post in lj_biz is an incomprehensible mishmash of logical fallacies and corporate butt-covering, and he readily admits that there is content that LJ/6A does not want to host. What that content is, however, he refuses to specify. He does, however, praise LJ's new "transparency" and point users to the happy, shiny permanent account sale.

I have no idea whether or not LJ is and will continue to be a safe place for my fannish activities. Most of my fics are FRM, but some venture into FRAO/NC17 territory; under the vague guidelines issued yesterday, Danse Macabre could be seen as advocating torture and vigilantism.

I and a great many other ficcers have been awaiting clarification as to what is and is not allowed on LJ, to no avail. Eloquent fandomers have posed articulate, polite questions, only to be ignored. I am not comfortable with the gross lack of response to user concerns. Thus, if clarification is not made regarding the definitions of advocacy, artistic discourse as opposed to tacit endorsement through fannish arts, "harmful to minors", or child pornography within 30 days, I will be moving my fannish endeavors-as well as RL contributions, most likely-to GreatestJournal and InsaneJournal. I neither need nor want my content legislated by the Corporate Moral Majority, nor do I want to post in fear of the "Reputation Engine" that will determine whether or not complaints lodged by some users have more merit than others. I will opt out of the crass popularity contest and Internet daycare LJ has become.

On a happier note, faylinn_drake has directed me to Forgottenthings.com, which has dozen of old and discontinued TV shows for sale on DVD. They're not official; it's a fan-run site, but I suspect they're the only place to find most of these shows, including Glory Days, Eddie Cahill's short-lived WB series.