Last night I watched the series pilot for Sci-Fi channel's new show: Painkiller Jane. It wasn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't good either. I'm not familiar with the comic book, but the world-building seemed shallow to me - all "Neuros" (the mutants of the show) were up to no good. There was some technobabble about how this was because the mutation affected the brain's ability to tell right from wrong, but that's weak sauce and it justifies the overly simplistic black/white division into secret government organization (the good guys) fighting the mutants (the bad guys).

Throw in Kristanna Loken's wooden delivery and it's not a winner (in Terminator 3 her delivery made sense - she's a terminator. When she's a (presumably human) DEA agent it's less believable). The worst part of it the only time she showed any plausible emotion is when she was in pain - but wait, I thought she was immune to pain? Throw in the terrible writing of the voiceovers  and it's not a winner - the line where she says "I didn't just overcome pain - I murdered it." was especially awful but not unique. It took me a couple of episodes of Dresden Files to decide it wasn't going to get better, but I'm ready to give up on this one after the pilot.

But hey, Eureka comes back in July, and Heroes finally resumes next week (yay!). So the short-term prognosis for televised sci-fi ain't that bad!

technorati tags:SciFi, Television, PainkillerJane

Blogged with Flock

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Karin got this box of cookies from a student, which is actually a pretty decent from-the-kid present. Beats last year when a kid gave her a box of "Chicken in a Biskit" crackers and a strawberry flavored wine cooler. :-)

We had actually eaten several before I read the text. I guess I need to "polish my eyes" more. If you have trouble reading it in this picture it says:

No more hurry, no more busy, just take it easy. You can feel the taste if you stand quite still usually. Polish your eyes, open your mind, enjoy relish of free in the sky, release your heart and fly. Now follow your feeling. The flavor is so delicate that you can find.

Come on guys, let's enjoy relish of free in the sky!

technorati tags:cookies, Engrish, humor

Blogged with Flock

So another SuperBowl came and went. I didn't bother to watch this one, but y'know what is really starting to bug me? The whole "Superbowl ads as cultural events" concept. I mean for days before the paper (and the internet, so don't get all 21st century smug on me) were hyping the commercials - and assessing the consumer reaction is a major news story today. I have a lot more understanding of somebody who watched the SuperBowl for y'know the football game, than somebody who watched for the ads.

The only real counterargument I can see is that the ads are actually *art*, which I can see I guess. But I don't really buy it. First off, what percentage of TV ads have any lasting cultural impact? Yes, fine the 1984 Macintosh commercial. Then there's . . . I'm sure there's a few more, but it's a tiny, tiny percent. Ads may be a necessary evil of the broadcasting system, but that doesn't mean we should celebrate them, or treat them as news.

So you want to be Mr. Snooty "I'm too good to watch football"? Good on you. But don't go to YouTube and watch the SuperBowl ads later. That's just ridiculous.

On a similar note today at lunch I was reading the latest Wired magazine, and it had an article about Yahoo "lost" the "search battle" to Google. It was an OK article, but something occurred to me that I think is significant and Wired didn't touch on it at all. If you go to Google's homepage you get a clean elegant page. Their logo is colorful, and even playful, but the overall impression is "quiet competence". Go to Yahoo's homepage. It's cluttered. I just looked: it has what I would describe as "Fisher Price My FIrst Icons" all over the place, ads, and a bunch of stupid crap. The overall impression is somewhere between "ad executive on the loose with FrontPage" and MySpace.

Setting up the new computer I set up Flock on two different OSes. Flock defaults search to Yahoo and I realized I considered that almost broken. It's not so much that I think Yahoo's search results are inferior - truth is I've never compared the two. It's that going to a Google page makes me feel like a professional and going to a Yahoo (or is it Yahoo! ? A telling question.) page makes me feel like I need a new set of Crayolas.

In conclusion, Stay off my yard! (shakes walking stick) Darn kids!

technorati tags:SuperBowl, advertising, Yahoo, Google

Blogged with Flock

The problem with Gamefly is that games don't work the same way as movies, so they don't have some of the same luxuries that Netflix does. Which is to say that I have a deep Netflix queue and it's all stuff I want to watch. Even if something has been on my queue for a long time, I probably still want to watch it.

At the moment I have two games I really want to try out (Saints Row and Dead Rising), and one game that I'm so-so on checking out (Enchanted Arms). Also a couple of releasing soon games in the queue, but I can't blame them for not shipping those.

I've sent three games back now, hoping to get Dead Rising, and for two of those returns I would have very happy with Saints Row instead. But instead I received Gun, and then Prey. Those were OK selections so I only grumbled a bit inside my head. But they just sent me a note saying that they sent me Rub Rabbits for the DS. Which is pretty much down in the swampy morass of "well, maybe I'd try that someday if there was nothing better to play" at the bottom of my queue.

Dead Rising in particular has basically never been available since release, several weeks ago. Hey Gamefly, maybe you should buy another couple of copies of that?

Anybody else using Gamefly? Getting the titles you want? I've had the occasional problem with not getting the top game on my list, but this is the first time I've ever had a particular title persist in being unreachable over several weeks. It's also the first time they've passed up SEVERAL titles in my list for something lower down.

I think I'm going to delete out the rubbishy things at the bottom of my list. I'd honestly rather they waited a day or two to get something better than sent me something that I'm likely to send back after a day or two.

technorati tags:Gamefly, gaming

Blogged with Flock

"Hey," the Internal Critic said, "don't cockblock me, man. I'll tell you when it's working and when it isn't."

WWdN: In Exile: Real Love / It's Only Life I've had a bit of a frustrating day, creatively - and the astute will notice I've missed a post for the impulsive Captain Arcolier. Tuesday was a holiday, and Karin was leaving town, and the cats hate fireworks, and blah, blah, blah. Point is I'm off-balance domestically and that means I don't work smoothly. I spentwasted a large chunk of the day surfing ye old Internets, and the only thing that got a real chuckle today was the Internal Critic saying "don't cockblock me, man." Anyone who has ever attempted anything creative has to appreciate that. Everyone knows I'm not the "hey let's have kids" guy, but this spoke to me. Not the having kids part but the whole sort of "recognize where you are, and recognize that you're there because that is where you wanted to be be you lucky son-of-a-bitch" thing, that resonates. Amen, brother Wheaton! I never really was a fan of Wil-Wheaton-the-actor*, but Wil-Wheaton-the-blogger is very insightful. One day I'll get around to reading his books and then give you an opinion of Wil-Wheaton-the-author. Remind me. *Not that I dislike him, just was never that into either Stand By Me or ST:TNG. (I wrote this in Flock, but it refused to post properly to my blog. I copied and pasted and fiddled and ultimately it would have been easier to write this in TextMate like normal. Frowny face, but that's not really the point now is it?)