It's Red!

I was driving down the street, approaching a red light, when a homeless couple began crossing the road. The man reached out and grabbed the woman's hood and yoked the hell out of her, while yelling at her and pointing at my stationary vehicle. She looked at me, looked up at the very red light, and began yelling back at him, "It's RED!" They continued to walk and argue about this the rest of the way across the street and until my light turned green.

Would You Like Bottled Water, Instead?

I know it's a difficult concept, but I'll be glad when restaurant/fast food staff realize that the time to tell me you're out of something is BEFORE you charge me for it! )(*^$#!@#$

Once, again, it's the customer service, not the unhealthy menu, that keeps me out of places like McDonald's.

Cruise sunset

No One is Safe

Below is a post I wrote up in a conversation about the comic book version of the television series, "The Walking Dead." But it serves as a general guide to how I feel about long-running series in horror genres or sub-genres. It also may appears to contradict my often-ranted opinion that no character should ever appear to be "safe" from threats that effect other characters in the story or series. For these reasons, I thought it'd be worth sharing here.

My apologies for any formatting snafus. The iPad browser doesn't work perfectly with Blogger's "Compose" tab and I'm not as adept as I ought to be with the "Edit Html" options.

I don't think this will change any minds, but it may clarify the ish a bit:

In real life, saying that someone died "too soon," means "before their time" or that that person had goals that they wanted to achieve, kids to raise, promotions to attain, or relationships to repair...before kicking the bucket.

When we say that a character in a comic book, movie or television show died "too soon," We don't just mean "before their time." We mean "before OUR time."

The character exists to contribute to tapestry of a tale, which exists to entertain us. When that character dies too soon, that character has fallen short of the entertainment value they had.

There's certainly some existentialist crap in there, precariously suspended by disbelief, when we begin to think of the characters as real people with real lives that ended too soon. And saying they died "too soon" certainly can mean that. For instance, I don't want Carl dead for at least two reasons. One is that I see a character with many stories yet to tell, to keep me entertained. The other, I will admit, is that he is depicted as a child and I don't want to see a child live horribly (i.e. being raped by those bastards who attacked him) or die too soon. I've seen Carl go through some crap, but to feel that there's reason for hope, I need some good things to happen or certain bad things not to happen.

Without that hope, this series can be tossed on the pile of torture porn that's already worn out its welcome with me.

If this weren't a series, but a one-shot, I could watch every character meet a gruesome end, as long as they entertained me doing it. In a series, I need a reason to keep coming back to the same characters I've grown attached to over the *years* of constant stories. And, for those like me, watching them get developed better for the *purpose* of killing them off, just is not that reason.

But hey, if Kirkman introduced and developed Carl just to give him a "Rexplode"-styled premature ending, that's a valid and intensely testicular creative choice. But that death may also kill the reason for some to invest in the character.

The rest of you may be more invested in the genre than the characters (which is not to say that you're not also invested in the characters) so you may have a more mature perspective on how these things "ought" to go.

Cutting the Cable?

I keep fighting the urge to start this off by asking, "Do you know about Xfinity?"

But that comes across like religious recruitment, when I really just want to do what I always do - complain when something rubs me the wrong way and rave when it rubs me right.

Xfinity is Comcast's attempt at rebranding itself. I might guess that some of their raggedy reputation has driven them to change their name but it doesn't seem to be quite that simple. Regardless, I've had enough negative interaction with the company to lift an eyebrow in their general direction at the drop of a hat, yet this Xfinity thing is working for me.

Why?

Because they have an app on the iPad (and iPhone 4) as well as a website accessible for any old Mac or pc, that lets their subscribers - at no extra cost - access much of the content available through their cable service.

For example, tonight, I watched (with no shame) Sex and the City 2 on the iPad. I did this using Comcast's Xfinity app, which was free, and our subscriber i.d. So, you just sign in, it looks up your account and knows that you have, let's say, HBO, but not Showtime, then lets you have access to most if not all of the HBO movies and television shows, whenever you want.

Go to the website and you can do the same on your home computer or laptop. Again, this costs no more than whatever you're currently paying for your home cable subscription.

I've come to realize that I much prefer watching movies and tv shows on my own timetable, instead of adjusting my schedule to fit the programming schedule of the cable company. DVR's and PVR's are fantastic, but this is even better. I don't have to tell it to record anything. I just notice that my lady isn't leaving Forever 21 any time soon and decide that I'd better find a way to make the minutes pass more quickly.

Next thing you know, I'm sitting down outside the store watching Fast and Furious. Earlier, I was watching reruns of The Ricky Gervais Show. A few weeks, ago, I finally watched The Wolfman.

I'd seriously considered cancelling the cable tv subscription because we just don't watch it that much, but this convenience makes me want to add channels, believe it or not.

Now, I should mention that the iPad app, specifically, requires you to be on wifi, not 3G, to access the content...unless your device is jailbroken.

:-D

Otherwise, there's not much not to like. You could hook your computer up to your television if you just HAVE to see it on a bigger screen (or your projector, if I've already converted you to the dark side).

I've even noticed that many of the shows available through Xfinity are NOT available On Demand. How weird is that?

I can't explain it, but I hope they maintain it.

Other cable companies are coming up with similar services. Keep your eyes open so you can get the most out of your overpriced cable subscription.

Magical?

TiPb.com has a post up about why the iPad models *are* magical. I think he's got a point if you're considering "stills" of the experience instead of the whole "movie."

A commenter said the following:

One of my favorite things about iOS devices is you can take it out of the box, turn it on and it tells you how to set it up. Once the device has been synced, you literally pick it up and your good to go from the moment you turn it on. The buttons are easy enough to figure out that I knew what every single one did as soon as I got my first iPod Touch (I even figured out the double tap function for the home button)

So, here was my response to the writer and commenters:

It's odd that turning the device on and being told that you can't use it until you hook it up to a real computer, with the latest version of iTunes, is a virtue of the experience. For me, it was a giant let-down.

It has a graphic that neither grandma nor the two-year-old is likely to be able to decipher. They will need familial "tech support" for that.

With regard to their not needing tech support beyond initial set-up, that suggests that they're not doing very advanced things on the iPad. These things would be similarly simple on a pc and would not require any or much input from the family tech.

Have them start putting pictures and songs and videos and documents on the iPad. That's when the calls start coming in - when they have to add things to the pc... to add them to iTunes... to add them to the iPad.

There's something inaccurate or disingenuous about calling a device "magical" (as compared to pc's) when it's very setup and even mildly advanced features REQUIRE the use of that big, scary pc.

MegaCON 2011 Flickr pix

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15933825@N07/sets/72157626277072993/

Enjoy!

Impulse at MegaCON

MegaCON 2011

I only attended MegaCON on Saturday, this year, and I was working more than playing, but I still got a few decent pictures. Here's one - an interesting play on the V For Vendetta main character: