Woot! Got my Kindred: the Embraced dvds! (Amazon link)

New Buffy game out in August! Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds. You can play as Buffy, Faith, Willow, Xander, Spike and Sid the Dummy(!), but no Giles.

The game's storyline seems topical, if you take Pure Evil as First Evil (if they are two different things, do they get along, or do they fight over who gets to destroy the world?): "Developed as a "lost episode" from season five of the television show, Chaos Bleeds involves an unraveling tale in which a dimensional bleed has been enabled by Pure Evil to consume humanity once and for all."

A good weekend for me:

Saw X2. Gah! If you haven't, GO SEE IT!

I received my Dazzler: the Movie.

Bought Fray #7, though I'll have to reread before commenting too much. It's like a companion piece to the current Buffy arc.

Bought the Star Trek: the Next Generation - The Complete Seventh Season. I was going to buy the second season, but then I had this wacky notion that I didn't have to buy them in order! After that, it was tough to choose between the fifth (which I missed most of) or the seventh (which had so many episodes that I liked).

Jason bought me this.

For Jason, I bought Xena: Season One (though for much less than the website's price). Best thing about it is that everytime you open up the little foldy box thing, it says "Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!" (ok, not really, but it'd be fun if it did).

Saw Equilibrium. It's 1984 with many gun battles, some martial arts and a sword. Also Christian Bale and Taye Diggs. This and The Transporter are now on my Must Have list.

A map of the orignal area code boundaries established in 1947. I'm enough of a goob to have pulled up a current map to switch back-and-forth between the two ("They've added one there... and there... and there....").

Management here at TV Gourd has their collective heads up their ass. Or their heads up their collective ass. I'm not sure which.

We're working on a huge project (one of those "We know this isn't really what your group does, but we could really use the help because, instead of using the last 6 months to work on it, we put it off until the last minute!" -type things^†).

Problems include:
• Forcing us to use proprietary programs that we've never used or been trained on, and no, they're not going to train us to use them.
• Those same programs actually being of no use to us.
• The one program that is useful (and almost necessary) is one that can't be installed on our group's computers because our software is out-of-date.
• The single, most useful database resource available to us (as in, 80% of the information we need is there) is also a single user resource. Only one person at a time can be logged in to it!
• The reports from which we're working: There are two different versions of the first half of the first report, no one seems to know what happened to the second half, while the second report is being given to more and more people who all try to start on the first page. When it is divided, it's by "I'll take the third page!" instead of dividing it up by subcatagory, so we'll have multiple people working on the same subcatagory.
• No standardized method of keeping track of our progress. I was the first to begin working on the report and I use a apparently complex system involving colored highlighters and a pen. When the others were brought on, Dumbass_Manager_01 asked me to explain my system, then suggested the others use whatever will work for them. Which, of course, will be great fun when all the reports are given to one person to be compiled.

^† Even better is when they say "If you do well on this, maybe they'll keep you around instead of laying you off!" when we've already been told by several management-types several months ago (including the one who said that) that the layoff dates were finalized and that there is nothing, short of a Jedi mind trick and the blessing of an Incan mummy girl, that will alter the fact that we're being laid off.


edited, because it's harmonious when your corresponding nouns and verbs agree in number.

Odd Place Names: Meat Camp, NC

An interesting site that I've missed until today: EyeWitness, "history through the eyes of those who lived it." I haven't had a lot of time to explore it yet and only read of a few events in which I have a particular interest: The San Francisco Earthquake, 1906, The British Burn Washington, DC, 1814, The Destruction of Pompeii, 79 AD, and Doomed Expedition to the South Pole, 1912.

At the bottom of this page is an audio clip of a very cranky Orson Welles during a voiceover recording session that wasn't going well.

He doesn't sound much like The Brain (except for that "Yes!" part about one minute in). Compare to The Brain's voiceover in his commercial for his new fragrance, Subjugation.

Oh, and wasn't last night's Angel great? I LOVED it! The season is building up a lot of excitement and tension, and now I can hardly wait for Wednesdays.

Is Wes getting hotter with each episode?

One episode from each Joss series nominated for a Hugo in the same category (plus two Enterprise eps I'm not concerned with):

Nominations for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Category:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Conversations With Dead People"
Firefly, "Serenity"
Angel, "Waiting in the Wings"


Do they ever have three-way ties, 'cause I can't pick just one (though I am leaning toward "Serenity," but I think that has more to do with everything that happened to the series and the general feeling of FOX FUCKING SUCKS that I still have).

Some people need to be thoroughly flogged.

Clock spider.

Spiders don't really bother me, but if I saw this one, I'd probably freak and wet myself.

"I've been moved to tears on Buffy before but I've never been so truly upset."

That's about all I can say about "Dirty Girls."

It's difficult to believe that a New-Buffy- Tuesday could get much better without more Buffy news, but mine got a little better outside new-Scoobiness: I paid off my car today. Yay!

So, between this and my not-quite-three-weeks-old computer, I remember the reason I took up that weekend video store job, and maybe I'll whine a little less about never having a day off.

New Buffy tonight! Yay!

Last night, I saw the trailer/commercial for the second X-Men movie for the first time. I nearly wet myself with Fanboy Awe.

Some stills. Siryn? Look at her clothes! I'm liking this Jubilee better than the Generation X tv movie one (though I like that one too, and the whole movie). Yum!

Gotta stop looking. I'm starting to get all spazzy.

Small things make me happy: a transcript for Clue

WADSWORTH
Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry,
specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics
suffering from delusions of grandeur.

PLUM
Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.

WADSWORTH
So your work has not changed.

The April 12 issue of TV Guide has an article about John Walsh. The really "Ah-ha!" part: In 1996, FOX "dropped [America's Most Wanted] due to declining ratings. Fifty-five members of Congress lobbied for its return, and 38 governors signed a letter in support of the show. Fox reversed its decision."

So there it is. Folks, start writing you Congresscritters now and call your governor to get them signed on. We can still save Firefly!

I left my apartment after lunch yesterday, got to the bottom of the stairs on the second floor (I live on the third) and there's a squirrel sitting in front of my downstairs neighbor's door. Being of the "Aww, a cute little squirrel!" type, I stopped to watch him do his little squirrel thing, expecting him to freak out and run away. Instead, he puffed his little tail and started shaking it at me. After another "Aww, how cute!" moment, I stepped slowly toward him (had to round the corner to go down the next flight of stairs). He turned like he was going to run, but then he turned back, puffed and twitched his tail again, and took a hop toward me and snorted. Again I thought it was cute, and fascinating. Here's this liiiitle fuzzball threatening me and letting me know that he means business.

I took another step to go around the corner, and again, he hopped and snorted at me. Then again. And again. And once more. At this point, I'm starting to get a little freaked, wondering if this squirrel could be rabid and carnivorous. I stepped again, and this time, the little guy turns, runs a foot or so, turns back, and repeats the hop-snort process until he's close enought that I could have reached down and picked him up. That was a little too close for me, so I hurried around the corner, with the squirrel turning away, hopping back, turning away, hopping back, and snorting at me the whole time. I turned to go down the next set of stairs, which double back and would have forced me to go by the squirrel again. The space between the bars on the railing is way more than enough for a rabies-crazed squirrel to leap through and eat out my eyes once my head was level with him. I didn't want that to happen, 'cause I like my eyes. Instead, I backed up, walked through the breezeway to the back of the building, took the rear stairs, and walked around the building to my car.

A vicious, diseased-brained, possibly flesh-eating squirrel has taken over the front side of the second floor of my apartment building.

Update: Went home for lunch today and thought I'd check up on the squirrel. He was still there.

Upcoming Buffy eps:

• Tonight: all new "Lies My Parents Told Me"
  
• April 1: "Sleeper" (repeat)
  
• April 8: "Never Leave Me" (repeat)
  
• April 15: all new "Dirty Girls".

Upcoming Angel eps:

• Tomorrow: all new! "Players"
  
• April 2: all new! "Inside Out"
  
• April 9: all new! "Shiny, Happy People"
  
• April 16: all new! "The Magic Bullet"