So I finally got my computer playing videos again (Puck’s tip was the winner), so I’ve been watching some Olympics coverage on CBC.  And I must say, the coverage is SUCKING hard.  It’s about 75% lame emotional-manipulation interviews, ads, montages, and other such nonsense, with just a hint of the actual competitions here and there. I want to watch the actual races, not just the final ten seconds of each race spliced in with a bunch of boring news-anchor chit chat.

Where can I watch Olympic coverage online that doesn’t totally suck?

Husband thinks I’m ridiculous for deciding to do the discretionary eating challenge for August.  We had this conversation in the bathroom, where I was soaking in the tub and he was eating dinner.  I don’t think anyone who eats in the bathroom is in any position to judge what I do, but that’s another issue.  I was telling him about it and the discussions that had gone on around it - sustainability, ecology, nutrition, mindfulness, and so on.  And he pretty much poo-pooed it.  In part because we already live pretty close to the goals (pop excepted), so in that sense it won’t be much of a challenge, and in part because something very important is about to happen:

Football season is starting.

Holy cats!  I sat up in the tub with alarm!

We don’t have TV any more.  This means we have to go out to watch a game, and the only place “out” where games exist is pubs.  Pubs don’t like it when you show up and don’t order food and drink.  But I can’t miss games!  What’s the point of having time off school if I can’t waste it watching football?  My two football instructors are potentials here, since both have enormous TV’s and cable - though Esan has a proper job and a new bride, which probably makes Monday night football at his house a no-go.  Z is the other choice, but he doesn’t like to let me come over lest I be shocked at his bachelorly housekeeping standards.  I keep telling him about my colony of pink mold in the bathroom but it doesn’t change his mind.

Still, it’s only one month.  This is not a forever change - surely at some point I will go back to restaurants.  (Though as I have said, it is a disturbing trend that whenever we’ve eaten at a vegetarian restaurant the food is inferior to that which I make at home.  This was never a problem when I ate meat.  Just sayin’.)

We just got home from Cirque du Soleil, and I just have to say, it was probably the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.  It was so much more amazing than I expected.  At times I could hardly believe what I was seeing - how can people do all those things? It was utterly delightful.  My cheeks are sore from all the spontaneous smiling!  Just… wow!

If you ever get the chance, you owe it to yourself to check out this show.

“What is the evidence that photographs have a diminishing impact, that our culture of spectatorship neutralizes the moral force of photographs of atrocities?

The question turns on a view of the principal medium of the news, television. An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen. Images shown on television are by definition images of which, sooner or later, one tires. What looks like callousness has ts origin in the instability of attention that television is organized to arouse and to satiate by its surfeit of images. Image-glut keeps attention light, mobile, relatively indifferent to content. Image-flow precludes a privileged image. The whole point of television is that one can switch channels, that it is normal to switch channels, to become restless, bored. Consumers droop. They need to be stimulated, jump-started, again and again. Content is no more than one of these stimulants. A more reflective engagement with content would require a certain intensity of awareness - just what is weakened by the expectations brought to images disseminated by the media, whose leaching out of content contributes most to the deadening of feeling.”

Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others, Picador: New York.

Saw the new Indiana Jones movie tonight.  I give it a “meh.”  It was exciting enough, I suppose, but absolutely and one hundred percent predictable.  This movie has no brain.  For my money, I like a little cleverness.  I like a surprise or two.  I was pretty bored with it and mainly stayed to watch the effects.

Husband, on the other hand, loved it.  He says it’s a perfect complement to the earlier films, which means I have lost whatever urge I had to watch those earlier Jones movies (which I have not seen).  If they’re anything like this one, I have better things to do.  Booooring!

In furtherance of our no satellite policy (I mean really, isn’t TV watching just about 80% time wasting?) Husband and I are doing some strategic downloading of TV shows that don’t suck for the occasional viewing.  I know, that’s still kind of watching TV - only with the element of “gee now that it’s on I guess I’ll sit here for five hours” removed.  And commercials removed too.  Okay.  So I am appealing to you for advice on good shows to acquire.  Because I’m really not up on pop culture and don’t know what the good series are.

Basically, I enjoy a good mystery or crime drama or just about anything as long as it is NOTHING like CSI.  Holy crap, how can anyone watch that?  Seriously.  I cannot handle an hour of nothing but wise cracking smart assery and dominance plays- it’s like a fourteen year old jock’s idea of what adults might be like: angry, petty, hostile, and immature.  People just don’t interact like that and, while I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, this just pushes it all way too far.  End rant.

Shows I have enjoyed include Deadwood, Cracker, Dexter, Wire in the Blood, and I’m just starting to watch The Shield but it hasn’t fully passed its “not like CSI” test so I may not finish the first season.  This is also why I deleted The Wire after watching only the first episode.  Hostile cops who just shout at each other is so over done.  Please, can we watch shows about people, not stereotypes?  (I do have some rumbling Wire guilt since everyone seems to love it but I dunno… if it’s all like that first episode I’ll hate it.)

What would you recommend?  What have you loved?  What should I spend my precious bandwidth on acquiring?  It doesn’t have to be new, just good. And by good I mean NOTHING LIKE CSI.

kthxbai!

You can tell because I never update my blog. I’ve been too busy being consumed with jealousy that SOME people get to have dogs but I DO NOT. I have friends who have this zany little Boston Terrier, which I would slice up, dip into ice cream, and eat if I weren’t a vegetarian, because he’s too cute for words. Even though he has serious bug eyes and a partially missing penis sheath, which means you can often see and/or feel his actual weiner. Okay. Why do these people deserve a dog more than I do? How can I persuade my landlord to let me get a dog? Preferable a big one… with lots of hair for trapping dirt and water from outside… yes, I begin to see why my efforts at persuasion have failed so far.

So, other than obsessively researching dog breeds (even though I generally as a rule disapprove of breed-ism for the ill health effects and would probably buy a mutt), I’ve been doing some school stuff… but only a little. I registered for next term today and, by the end of the summer? All my classes will be DONE. HOLY FUCKING CRAP. Then it’ll just be eight months of practicum and an exam and I’ll officially be a Master, which is how you can all address me at that time.

I’ve been doing next to no cooking, mainly because it’s hard to get motivated to shop when I’ll be in Chilliwack half the week and I never know if Husband will eat at home or out in my absence.  Tonight though I’m making a cauliflower and lentil curry, as well as asparagus and artichoke pasta for dinner.  Yum!

The house is a shambles and though it is sort of tidy, it is grimy and dirty underneath all that tidiness. Kudos here to Husband, who has been noting my despair at the mess and has been doing dishes for me unasked. It makes all the difference sometimes to just have at least one room that isn’t gross.

Speaking of Chilliwack, one of the great things about scoring the fall practicum is I can end my current Chilliwack practicum early. It’s a good site and I’m learning just butt-loads of stuff there, but it’s kind of crappy doing the commute. It’s strange because I like all parts of the process: the quiet early morning drive, the practicum itself, the time to visit with my family, the opportunity to miss my husband and enjoy our reunions. But somehow all those nice things combine to produce stress and discomfort and I will miss it, but not miss it at all. The Chilliwack stuff ends at the end of May.

I’ve been doing a little reading, in particular a work of moral philosophy about animal rights. Say what you will about animals, those philosophers can sure construct an argument! I’m loving the careful, logical, comprehensive way the author does it. One gets the impression that very few stones have been left unturned, and those that are are plainly identified. It’s honourable arguing. This is my first foray into philosophy (undergrad logic classes aside) and I am very impressed.

I’m also rewatching one of my favourite crime drama series, The Wire in the Blood. It’s about a psychologist and his involvement with an English police department. Unlike most portrayals of psychologists/psychiatrists in media, this one does not make me and Husband immediately vomit over the gross inaccuracies (another reasonable one is Dr Wong on Law & Order SVU). And it’s quite grisly, which I always enjoy. I have to get my gristle somewhere now that I don’t eat meat. And speaking of psychologists, I’m also rewatching Cracker, which I deeply love. Shows like these give me hope in this day and era where you can see that paltry excuse for crime drama CSI on TV at any hour.

And finally, this coming Thursday I get to go for the first of my nerve problem tests, a sleep deprived EEG.  I’m not really sure what is involved except the instructions I got were at great pains to reinforce that must have clean hair.  Apparently they’ll be attaching things to my scalp and measuring… something.  “Brain waves” let’s call them.  Anyway, I’m supposed to get no more than four hours sleep the night before, but since I’m an overachiever I’ll try to stay up all night.  Anyone want to come over and watch movies and help keep me up?  I’m total suck at that, and usually hit the sack by 11.  It takes hard work and dedication to stay up all night.  I’m not sure I can go it alone.

You know how Johnny Cash did a cover of Trent Reznor’s song Hurt, and it’s basically no longer a Nine Inch Nails song because Johnny now owns that motherfucker?  He owns it! (Note to Esan: not literally.)  Well, tonight I discovered (while cruising Youtube for more fodder for the newly acquired Nick Cave obsession) that Metallica did a cover of Loverman.  I can see why they chose it - it’s a bad ass song about fucking, or, more precisely, the agony leading up to the fucking.  I will hereby confess a girlish crush on young Mr Cave because despite being scrawny and none too pretty (and a heroin addict I believe), he manages to become a sex god in the video for that song.  I know, I know - it’s got its cheesy points.  But taken as a whole?  Some throw-back, non-feminist dinosaur-brain part of me is just slain by raw lust.  Loverman is about raw lust.

So maybe if you’re feeling lusty, you could check it out.  Maybe it only works with women.  Maybe it only works with me?  Your mileage may vary… but I think it’s very hot.

People who live in Vancouver: check out this link!  Watch the video!  The blog entry it’s part of has something to do with some Americans doing something American… voting or some such nonsense… but the far more important part is the revelation about the true zombie nature of those RELENTLESS, RELENTLESS pandhandlers!

see the awful truth here

Have you seen this yet?  Go see it!  Shit, man!

This was an absolutely mind blowing movie (now I’ve just gone and ruined it for some of you, who will have overly-hyped up expectations.  Or is that possible?  This is a great movie!).  It’s a slow boil, reaching a crazy intense ending.  It was like being slapped in the face with an angry electric eel.  Husband didn’t like it as much as I did basically because of the eel - he said he left the movie feeling yucky and bad inside.  So did I, but I’m more masochistic than he is.  There is no denying this movie!  Daniel Day Lewis is masterful.  The story is interesting and psychologically complex.  And I think it’s better than No Country for Old Men, which is a damn fine movie.

So there.  Go see this fill-um.