Flippy - I Rant, You Read

Saturday, June 06, 2009

evening

Our birds live in an analog world

Our birds watch PBS daily, but they watch it off an antenna.  On June 12, our tvs are going digital and our birds are getting the family dvd player, I guess.  I just applied for converter coupons today, as we’ve really had other things on our minds - our coupons won’t be mailed until June 12, so it looks like we’ll be experimenting with the dvd player in the bird room.  Gee, I hope the birds like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Sports Night”, and various Xmas cartoons until we get them a converter.  If you’ve procrastinated and haven’t ordered a $40 digital converter coupon or two, go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ and order them now.  The converter boxes are supposed to be $40 - $70.

Update 6/13/08:  We got our converter box coupons in the mail already, and we’ve found a place that sells them for a penny less than the amount that the coupon covers, so the birds will be watching their PBS shows again very soon.  The birds are very happy - I was happy to get a brief respite from “Dragon Tales, Dragon Tales, stupid effin’ dragon tales, let’s eat them all up, yum!” Some of those lyrics may not be absolutely accurate, but perhaps they were just burned into my skull incorrectly.  The birds and I will both be happy for them to get their Sesame Street shows back.

Friday, February 20, 2009

early afternoon

American Idol (I need to blog more, darnit!)

Ugh, I cannot STAND Danny Gokey.  It’s sad that his wife died, but that doesn’t make him a better singer.  The good thing is, it’ll be three weeks until we have to hear him sing again…and see a picture of his wife.  I’m sure she would hate being used as a pity “back story/backstory/back-story (no one seems to agree on how to spell it)” on American Idol - I know that I would.

I have more to write, but it’s late, late, late.  Or early, early, early, depending on how you look at it.  I want to write about the Tatiana crazy, the blind guy’s terrible hair, the disappointment in Rose Flack not making it, the icky Bikini Girl, the disappointment in Jackie Tohn’s performance (I thought she was going to be good), crazy gay boy Nathaniel, crazy Normund/Nick, etc.  There’s so much.  Are you watching?  Who do you like?  Hate?  (please hate Danny with me, please?)  Do you see Adam Lambert, if he performs like he can, blowing away everyone?

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

late morning

The Death of “The Return of Jezebel James”

I missed the first episode (I figured I’d download it later and I knew it wouldn’t matter since they changed a bunch of stuff going into the second epi), but caught the second one…and just absolutely LOATHED it. I thought it was terrible. It was like AS-P only had GG in her and she was going to try to force it on two actresses who just weren’t right doing it. Every time Parker Posey said, “Coco” with that weird pronunciation of hers, I wanted to scream. It sounded pretentious and forced.  “Lorelai” would said “Coco” in that forced way only to make fun of her mother’s friends in the DAR.

I don’t know who to blame the failure on, except that Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose have been good in everything else they’ve done. In fact, Lauren Ambrose was even okay in this, considering what she had to work with.  Do we blame the Gilmore Girls’ rapid-fire chatter that should only be done by Lauren Graham and to a lesser extent, Alexis Bledel?  The horrendous laugh track?  The farfetched storyline?  The laugh track has worked on other good shows and there have been more farfetched storylines, so it must be the GG chatter.

I was actually embarrassed for Amy Sherman Palladino, the show was that bad. I’m relieved that the show was put out of its misery, so I didn’t have to watch it out of a sense of loyalty, because I truly hated it.  Leigh-Ann hated it, too. We could both tell that we would hate it from the moment Parker Posey started talking in Gilmore-speak, which was from the first sentence out of her mouth. Since the review mentioned that the second show fixed some things that were wrong with the first, I can’t even imagine how much I would’ve hated the first. It’s hard to imagine it could’ve been worse.

So, now that you know that I hated it. How did you feel?

Sunday, December 09, 2007

lunch time

Some questions, a little American Idol talk, some dog food tips and the always enjoyable coprophagia

When you’re getting your paycheck, do you like to know the exact date you’ll be getting it or is okay with you if it’s any time within a seven day period?  Am I the odd duck who likes to know exactly what day the direct deposit or wire will show up?  And, if you don’t care, does that mean that you won the lottery or you got Andruw Jones contract with the Dodgers of $36.2 million over two years.  I think that if I got paid $1,000,000 a month or say, got direct deposit of $500k every two weeks, I’d probably have enough savings that if a couple of payments were later than usual, it wouldn’t matter.  Well, unless my house payment was $500k and due 10 days after the last game of the pay period and all of my savings had been donated to a variety of people & businesses…and I was starting my rainy day savings account again from scratch.  So then, I suppose I’d need to know exactly when that $500k was going to be in my bank account, so the down payment check I wrote for my first house payment (you should see the cool house you can get with a $500k down payment) didn’t bounce, right? 

I haven’t purchased an album since the last P!nk cd that was released last April.  But yesterday, I was feeling wild and reckless, so I bought the Blake Lewis “Audio Day Dream” album directly from my iPod.  If I still cared about music like I did when I was a youngster, buying Mp3s online would be way too easy and tempting.  But, I don’t, so that’s good.  I like music, but I like Rhapsody, which lets me listen to any album or song, but I don’t own anything.  It just saves me having another thing to gather dust. 

So yeah, Blake’s album is pretty catchy, wholly unlike Jordin Sparks’ extremely boring album.  She has a decent voice, but the songs are snoozers.  I was going to say that generally I don’t like the American Idol contestant albums, but I have Kelly Clarkson’s two cds and Kimberley Locke’s cd (zzzz, and religious, so extra zzzzzz - I think it was like half price or something, and had one good catchy song…the one I’d heard before I bought the cd), and I listen to Carrie Underwood’s music all the time.  I also like the Daughtry album.  But Ruben, Clay, Fantasia (though I thought she was fabulous on the show), Bo, Taylor, Katherine (I expected to like it, but thought it was rather average), Elliott, and all of the other top tenners who tried to capitalize on the show…did nothing for me.

Anyway, if you liked Blake on AI, you’ll really like his album.  If you have no idea who he is, click on his fancy schmancy picture up there and listen to some song snippets.  If you like any of what you hear, I promise that you’ll like the whole album.  Plus, it has lotsa songs - kind of like getting a book that has lotsa pages.  You feel like you got a better deal.

Cricket is still feeling kind of lousy - I can tell that she’s in pain.  She has almost all the signs of pancreatitis.  The special fancy prescription food we had to get for her is Eukanuba low-residue food and is filled with crap.  I can’t believe how much they charge for it, when they use meat by-products and corn grits.  So, not only does it cost as much as the really excellent human grade ingredients of foods like Merrick & Fromm, but I can’t let Phoenix lick Cricket’s bowl when she’s done (which Phoenix enjoys very much, even when there’s nothing left in the bowl), because she’s allergic to corn.  These aren’t the exact ingredients on Cricket’s cans, but this answer at Yahoo Answers does a really terrific job of describing the veterinary prescription diets.  I’m only whining about six cans of food though - if Cricket needs to stay on a low-residue diet, we’ll find a new food for her.  The big problem is that when the food isn’t the raw food that she & Phoenix have been doing so well on for the past six months or so, or a food that looks like people food (chunks of meat, chunks of vegetables, visible other ingredients like blueberries, apples, carrots, and peas), like the Merrick & Dick Van Patten (giggle) Eatables, she eats her own poop.  So, we can’t feed her anything that looks like paste or mush or anything that you wouldn’t look at and think, “Hmmm, that looks & smells really good, I wonder how it tastes?”, because we all suffer in various ways from that final result.  Blech.  So, if your dog is eating its own poop, try changing its diet to better food.  Their bodies use up all the nutrients, so there’s nothing tasty left in their poop, so they leave it alone.  None of the other stuff worked for Cricket - not Forbid, not hot sauce, not meat tenderizer, and not gagging, begging, and pleading for her to stop it, stop it right now.

Friday, November 30, 2007

evening

Someone is too big to share cat tree cubicles

But, I won’t mention any names, Scampi.  Carlo looks a tad alarmed, like Scampi is sucking all the oxygen out of the cube in the tree.  I can’t remember the last time we had a fully grown cat attempting to share the cube with anyone.  Not to mention, Carlo is no tiny kitty anymore.  We thought he would grow up to be the size of a Guinea Pig, and except him not being healthy, I was okay with a teeny tiny cat.  Alas, the Wild Kitty Cat Food (you do NOT want to type in plain ol’ Wild Kitty DOT com, unless you like popups of an adult nature), not only fixed Carlo’s poopy problems (cramps, diarrhea, not making it to the litterbox, etc.), it’s turned him into gigantor kitten.  He’s a big soft fluffy cuddly kitten, who kneads on you like he really really really means it.  He concentrates so hard.  We’ll have to get video of it sometime.

So, have you finished up all your shopping yet?  Have you started?  Have you no time for anything other than NaBloPoMo and work?  Not me, just work and sleep.  And more sleep, and some vet visits.  By the way, Bunny is doing really well on her meds, and except for being extra cuddly (she’s a tad confused by all the attention, I think), she looks completely normal on the outside.  She has an echocardiogram scheduled for Monday morning, so we’ll find out how her insides are doing.  If you know of any super wealthy people who love cats and can’t figure out who to donate to this holiday season, might I suggest a cat rescue near and dear to my…er, house, Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary.  This absolutely does not mean anyone we know - we don’t know any millionaires, so this is only if you might happen to know Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Stephen Spielberg or Oprah - hell, we’d even take money from Ellen.  She has some amends to make over that overwrought weeping Izzy ordeal.  Rescues generally aren’t overflowing with cash, so when you (meaning Ellen) make life miserable for a rescue (death threats…because a puppy didn’t go where you wanted it to go?  Seriously???), all you’re doing is hurting animals who need help. 

And to end on a good happy final note - “Chuck” was picked up for a full season.  If you’re not watching “Chuck”, you’re missing some terrific tv.

No, wait, more good news - the Leafs won a game.  They finally didn’t choke in the last period.  I’m sorry that it was at the expensive of Helly’s Thrashers.  And for local good hockey news - the Las Vegas Wranglers are 14-2, with a ten game winning streak.  We may only be ECHL, but we (almost) always have a great team, and we have a great little arena.  Mmm, I miss my hot pretzels & cheese.  This is the first season since the Wranglers have existed that we haven’t been to at least one game by now.  We attended every other opening home game.  Maybe we’ll get some tickets for Leigh-Ann’s birthday.