The 35th Precinct

I pray that the cable man cometh tomorrow. The reception on my lone receivable station varies from passable to abysmal, and I want my Flack in perfect clarity. If he hasn't pounded down the door by 2pm, I suppose I'll be calling again. I can't complain about Comcast, really. They're largely reliable and have been amazingly tolerant of my chronic late payments over the years. I just wish they came a little faster when you needed to give them money.

S5 of The X-Files is... Was Chris Carter on Happy Acid? If he's not after Teh Ebil Gubmint, he's giving us farcical satires and homages to earlier works. "Post-Modern Prometheus" was a modern spoof of Frankenstein, with numerous sly asides to the book and other old horror nomenclature. Dr. Polidori, his wife, Elizabeth, the terrible genetic mutant who turns out to be gentle and intelligent, the lecture at Ingolstadt. Props to Mulder and Scully for giving "the monster" a night on the town, though, and Mulder and Scully dancing together was cute.

Am I the only one who wants to shoot Bill Scully in the face? What a sanctimonious wankwad. Not to mention his idiot wife, Tara. Her blithering ramble at the Christmas table about how having a baby had finally given their lives meaning made me want to whorf. Sure, I gave Flack and Rebecca a sprog, but they were a successful, assured, devoted couple before baby made three, and had Junior never come along, they most certainly would not have counted their lives or their marriage as "empty" or without meaning. Junior was just icing on the cake, not their reason for getting together. I will never be comfortable with the mindset that declares that life has only been lived well and successfully if you've had children.

Honestly, they need to back away from the angst machine with Mulder and Scully for a bit before it throws a rod. After her nose-bogey cancer drama, the last thing Scully needed was OMG Baby Drama. Feh. It's stupid and makes Scully, a heretofore strong, independent character, into a wishy-washy babymama milksop. Go back to pondering the question of whether Mulder is really Smoking Man, Jr. Or find Krycek and his Teflon arm specially made for dunking Tetley. Anything but the baby drama. Please.

Everything has been sorted witl AOL. To catch up with payments, they double-dipped, but at least this means my crack conduit is open. The Comcast man will no doubt turn up soon for his due, but I hope it isn't today because I am totally nekkid right now, and the Roomie has gone forth to fetch food and money. If he shows up now, all he'll get is a boob shot and a winsome smile.

I really want to thank consumedbywords for feedbacking on every chapter of Looking Glass. The first parts started out very strongly, but the last two went over like a stale turd cake, or so it seems. Thus, I spent last night convinced I was boring people out of their shorts with my angsty schmoop. Then consumedbywords and atheilen gave some drive-by love, and I felt better. Yes, I write because I like to write, but I'd be lying if I claimed other folks' opinions never mattered. They do. Writing is one of the few things I can do without anyone else's help or well-intended pity, and hey, for me, it's also a form of social currency. If it weren't for my writing, most of you wouldn't be here now.

No new Numb3rs tonight, so I'm going to drink tea, work on my spn_holidays assignment, and maybe watch more of X-Files S4. I just finished "Lenard Bettman". "El Mundo Gira" has been my favorite of this season so far despite the thudding cack-handedness of Carter's social commentary. Good Lord, but he finds himself important, doesn't he?

Three more episodes of X-Files S3 last night, none of which dealt with aliens. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "The List" were okay, but "2Shy" was my favorite. It's interesting to look at 1995 from the perspective of 2006, especially from a technological standpoint. The supposedly state-of-the-art Computer Crimes Lab at the FBI was positively archaic, with boxy, hulking desktops and 5.6 floppies, as well as 3.5s. Mulder was flummoxed by the cutting-edge tech of online chatrooms, and sending e-mail seemed so exotic.

The theme of a fat-sucking human mutant was a bit lame, but he'd be all the rage now that gastric bypass and liposuction are en vogue.

I'm working with Gavin Moran for my latest passel of crack, and he's been surprisingly talkative. I was worried he'd be truculent and slouchy, but melancholy and garrulous are better terms, and hey, he gets to play Super!Gavin, so everybody wins.


Dear Ken Jennings,

Just because you won $2.5 million on Jeopardy by demonstrating to the world the potency of your brain, it doesn't make you cool. It makes you a nerd with money, and unlike your patron saint, Bill Gates, you aren't doing anything useful with it. So sit down, shut up, and try to show a little grace, you skeevy, divot-sexed boob.

La Guera

I finished off the last two eps of X-Files S2 last night and enjoyed them both, even if "Anasazi" featured a Wal-Mart alien costume, the worst fake red rocks I've ever seen, and an improbable disappearance from an underground boxcar. It featured grave Native American wallahs and the return of Krycek, who was lurking in Papa Mulder's shower.

Note to Characters Who Are About to Confess Important and Shameful Secrets:

Confess your secret as soon as your confessor arrives. Do not offer them a drink, engage in small talk, or drop cryptic hints. Spit it out as loudly as you can. In fact, make sure the neighbors hear. Do not interrupt your confession to go to the bathroom alone. Hold it, or if you must go, take your confessor with you. Hell, maybe the stench of your Montezuma's Revenge will fend off the assassin, or if he's already lying in wait in the shower, he'll expose himself by gagging.

Also, lose the avocado tiling.

La Guera

"Our Town" was fun if you didn't think too hard. No idea why the tribal mask supposedly representative of a New Guinea cannibal tribe looked Aztec. And the "[Insert Character Here] is in mortal danger" gimmick is getting old. For crack FBI agents, Mulder and Scully get taken down by old geezers with pitchforks or wackaloons with tasers with alarming frequency.

Switching fandom gears, I'm getting tired of the Flack thread at Talk CSI. The pictures are still pretty, and there is occasional interesting character discussion, but it's largely overrun with squee and Flack/Danny shippers, and while I don't begrudge them their fun, I have no interest in it and cannot see the pairing for the life of me. Flack and Danny strike me as the type of buddies who swap pornos and annoy the shit out of each other with Dorito-breath and silent but deadly beer farts. The shippers can imagine the hot boysex all they want, but I wish they'd do it in the thread designated for that purpose.

On a happier note, I got two new friends from the CSI:NY friending frenzy! Yay! I hope I don't run goddess_loki and chipperazzi away with my random dithering, Flack!crackfic, and fluff pieces featuring Married!Flack. I promise I write canon!fic, but summer is for crack before new canon muddies the water.

No fic today because Part IV is unfinished. It does, however, stand at 4,380 words, and Flack has finally roused himself from his stupor and begun to say his piece. Two or three more days ought to do it, though Thursday and Friday might be a wash as far as writing goes because storms are expected on those days. Friday, is, of course, Pirates of the Carribean 2 day, so I might be useless for all my shameless Depp fangirling.

I watched two episodes of X-Files S2 yesterday. If I had seen S2 before S1, I would have walked away from the show. The OMG!Alien Conspiracy miasma was so pervasive as to be cloying, and while Carter's ideas clearly got bigger, the show's production budget clearly didn't. The aging makeup used on Mulder and Scully in "Ded Kalm" was dreadful. The seams were clearly visible, and Mulder resembled a talking prune with vitaligo by the end. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And where did Olafsson go by the end? Did he flush himself out the ship's ballast tank and float 800 miles back to shore?

"Humbug" was actually very good, if disgusting. Maybe it was because there were no aliens on view and very few special effects. The growling, crawling fetus was hilarious, in fact.

The brawl between Skinner and the Skulking, Hot Black dude in the elevator in "End Game" assured that I will keep watching, however. Skinner was so incredibly hot all rumpled and bloody and "I am FBI Man, hear me ROAR!" Guh.

I just watched episodes 5-8 of X-Files S2. "Duane Barry," "Ascension," and "One Breath" were good, but "3" was just a lousy excuse to get Mulder laid. For someone who purportedly trusts no one, he had no problem hopping in the sack with Miss Kilar, who for all he knew, could have been in cahoots with the Triumvirate of Ebil. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And what the hell is up with Krycek? When he clonked the lift operator over the head in "Ascension," I was sure he'd firmly enlisted in the Slimy Shitweasel Camp, but then he pulls up stakes after a conversation with Cancer Man and leaves town? Methinks he's gotten in over his head and isn't as bad as all that, or at least not completely devoid of a conscience. I'm betting he turns up again.

Agent Skinner, I'd like to have your babies(not of the mutant ass variety so often found in X-Files badfic, please), and Shifty Black Dude Skulking in the Shadows is free to watch. Mmm.

I was talking with a flister last night who shall remain nameless, and they said something rather startling. They mentioned that they had read my fic but not commented because it was so good they didn't know what to say about it.

...

You can color me flattered for such an assessment of my fic, but you can also color me more than a trifle rankled. I've never heard a lamer excuse for not leaving feedback. Are people that afraid that a ficcer is going to take umbrage with "Good job" or "I liked this?" Do they really fear that the writer getting such a review is going to tie their knickers into a Knot of Righteous Indignation and hunt them down for not leaving the Magna Ficcing Goddamn Carta? Since when has there been a talent penalty in fandom? Why are people so quick to mock and dissect and hold up flaws, yet so reluctant to give kudos, even if it's as simple as "I liked it," or "This was a good line"?

Would I like long, intensive reviews pointing out the sweet, sweet goodness and the rotten apple-core badness of my fic? Yes, sir, buddy. But I'm not going to turn up my nose at a "Well done," or a "This was great, but..." or even a "This was awful." Anything is better than apathetic silence when you put your creativity on display. Better to be mocked than utterly ignored.

That being said, I owe stellaluna_ four more versions of, "This iz Teh Gud! Joo RulZ LOL."

Better get on it.

This being the beginning of April, I hied myself unto Best Buy for more TV on DVD and absconded with X-Files Season Two and Law and Order: SVU Season Two. Yes, my obsession with Eddie Cahill is so far gone that I would buy an entire season for one episode, but it is not so far gone that I would waste money on Friends, Sex and the City, or Dawson's Creek. My dignity has its limits, after all, and watching privileged yuppies without so much as a cavity bewailing the angst of life while sipping a frappucino just steams my beans.

You know what TV bigwigs need to make? A show about life seen from the floor seats. They've got feminist shows and cop shows and minority show and gay shows, but no shows about folks who can neither reach the top nor scrape the bottom, stuck in the middle where all we can see is ass and dick. Sometimes-when Eddie Cahill or Jensen Ackles is involved, for instance-this perspective is a boon, but more often than not, you wind up with a snootful of pong while the dolt at the Medicare office refuses your appeal for them to repair your disintegrating wheelchair or cover your gynecological treatment.

It could be a comedy. Hell, it should be, because life from the floor seats is funny even when it hurts, and I don't need well-intended able-bodies playing Guess That Angst Point with the moments that have defined my life and informed who I am. I just wish that TVland would acknowledge that my world exists, and that not everyone measures their lives by their proximity to a Starbucks.

I am almost finished with the first fic in the inaugural Fic Gueraerobics Challenge. I was sure the bunny had died on me, victim of writerly constipation, and then, today, the floodgates opened, and I was off to the races. With any luck, "In His Shoes" will make its HP debut this week. I would be more specific, but Murphy's Law dictates that every time I fix a definite date in fannish affairs, the Ogres of Malicious Happenstance shamble from their caves, shaggy-headed and glowering, and lay waste to my noble intentions. It's been a while since I've delved into purely canonical HPverse, but I don't think I've mangled it too badly; if I have, please pluck the beam from my eye.

I've only got two more discs of X-Files Season One to watch. For the most part, I've enjoyed it, though the episodes that deal exclusively with aliens hold far less interest for me than do those of a more supernatural bent. "Beyond the Sea," "Gender Bender," "Eve," and "Ghosts in the Machine" are my favorites to this point. Brad Dourif is a grossly underrated actor if his performance in "Beyond the Sea" was any indication, and it's a shame he's not more respected.

Coincidentally, "Beyond the Sea" was the first episode that softened Scully for me, and while she's still too stubborn for her own good in many cases, the homicidal urges that once consumed me at the mere sight of her have temporarily subsided.

And apropos of nothing, I love Krycek.

Mulder: They can't do that.

Krycek: They can do whatever they want.