M. Giant's
Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks


Wednesday, October 06, 2004  

Humpblog (10/6/04)

My friends and I watched a two-hour TV pilot. It was about a ragtag group of plane crash survivors. The ensemble cast included, among others, a teen idol and an actor with a certain degree of geek cred. As they explored what at first seemed like a tropical paradise, it became apparent that something paranormal and unexplained was afoot on this mysterious landmass.

And it sucked.

I’m talking, of course, about a cheap-ass TV movie called The Presence, starring Gary Graham from the Alien Nation series and Kathy Ireland. We saw it in the video store when we were looking for terrible horror movies to watch one weekend afternoon several years ago.

See, the way Kraftmatik and The Krank watch bad horror movies is they pick who’s going to die next. I watched Phantoms and Bats with them, and they have a great record. But they were constantly stymied by The Presence because everyone in that piece of crap refused to die.

We sensed something was up when we realized that the screen was fading to black every twenty minutes or so, meaning that this really wasn’t something that was going to get all that gory. But we held out hope until the very end, when these thin, hateful characters started talking about what they would do next. It was then that we realized we were watching a pilot for some network series that never got on the schedule, but they’d gone ahead and released it to home video in an apparent bid to recoup some of the hundreds of dollars they’d sunk into it. Did I mention this movie sucked, and that any series spawned by it must have sucked so bad that somebody may well have gone back in time to make sure it never aired?

Which is why I rolled my eyes the first time I heard the premise for Lost. Oh, great, here we go again, I thought.

And yet now I’m seriously irritated that our local ABC affiliate preempted tonight’s episode for a Twins game. The first two episodes hooked me that much. Damn you, J. J. Abrams! Damn you to hell!

By the way, that same afternoon we were also really disappointed in The Faculty, because it didn’t suck enough.

* * *

The house next door to us is on the market. Not my bandmates’ house; the one on the other side. When that house sold two and a half years ago, I claimed the sellers were asking five times what we paid for ours. I was exaggerating. If I said that now, I wouldn’t be.

We’re going to have rich neighbors. That is, if they can get past the Kerry/Edwards lawn signs on the next three houses down. I have a feeling the sellers are more likely to get their asking price after the election.

* * *

Seen on a bumper sticker earlier today:

“MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM.”

* * *

I’m writing this in a study that is gradually morphing into a nursery. We’ve shipped most of the bookcases and books into the room that was my study when we moved in, and soon will be again. The bookcases that remain in here hold books for children and babies (including the ones that you, incredible and kind readers, have sent us). There’s a rocking chair in the corner and the dresser my parents gave us is at the end of the room, ready to hold (more) baby clothes and the baby himself during changings. More gifts from y’all are around and about in here. Once I get my computer and desk out of the space where the crib is going to be and move them down the hall, the biggest part of getting the house ready for M. Tiny will be complete.

Which leaves getting ourselves ready. We’ve been stressing primarily about the room-swapping aspect, but now that that’s nearly finished, something tells me it’s going to be the easy part.

* * *

Today’s best search phrase: “When breeding red claw use bottle.” Hey, I’ll take parenting tips wherever I find them.

posted by M. Giant 9:37 PM 10 comments

10 Comments:

I thought the Twins game was cable only! And here I listened to it on the radio like a chump. Way to be informative after the fact.

-DragonAttack

By Anonymous Anonymous, at October 7, 2004 at 3:37 AM  

I think they moved all the channel 5 shows to 45 last night.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at October 7, 2004 at 5:56 AM  

Hey, you said "y'all." Is there a new grammatical trend going on up North?

By Blogger a Carrie, at October 7, 2004 at 6:20 AM  

Up here in the Northland(tm), we are nothing if not inclusive and sensible. At least intellectually. Most of the time. And since English lacks for a "vous"-style pronoun for the plural "you," we're not above stealing from our neighbors in the American South. I love using "y'all" in conversation and writing, and I'm getting fewer weird looks all the time.

By Blogger Febrifuge, at October 7, 2004 at 8:13 AM  

"Y'all" is a really useful word. French and Spanish have second-person-multiple pronouns; why shouldn't English? We're not so uptight here in the frozen wastelands that we can't adopt a sensible rule.

...or, as Gilbert and Sullivan might say,

We have no pronoun like the "vous" that's used for Francophonical
Communication verbal (and in papers, books, and chronicles),
And while the North is cautious about taking on new words and all,
But we no problem with adopting of the Southern word "y'-all."

By Blogger Febrifuge, at October 8, 2004 at 6:23 AM  

Okay, dammit. I waited 22 hours, thinking my first post was not accepted by the Blogger server, before posting another one in its place. And now, they're both there.

Holy crap -- this is another one! Aaaaaaa!

By Blogger Febrifuge, at October 8, 2004 at 6:25 AM  

Crap! So all the hours I set the VCR to record on channel 5 recorded the TWINS game instead? Crap!

Amy@http://sunflowery.diaryland.com

By Anonymous Anonymous, at October 8, 2004 at 10:33 AM  

I started using "y'all" after working for a little over a year doing tech support for southern Americans.

Since then I have been advised that "y'all" is actually singular and that the plural is really "all y'all".

(I still just use y'all, though)

By Blogger CanadaDave, at October 8, 2004 at 12:05 PM  

Wait.. doesn't *everyone* try to figure out who dies next in really bad horror flicks? I thought it was a rule. Seriously.

(I used to have a good track record until "Deep Blue Sea" in which I got the two survivors right, but the order of the deaths kept mocking me.)

By Blogger A Peach, at October 8, 2004 at 1:02 PM  

I, personally, haven't heard a Southerner use y'all in the singular. We do pluralize y'all sometimes -- "all uh y'all," as in, "Why don't all uh y'all come down for some football this Saturday."

Seriously, y'all come on down; Auburn is playing Arkansas.

By Blogger a Carrie, at October 12, 2004 at 7:59 PM  

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