The New Musings of a Quiet Geek

The whole Donald Sterling controversy is surely blazing inferno in our society and I must put my thoughts down for posterity. Conservatives pounced when the NBA cracked down on it.  "We're allowed to be assholes!" a friend commented on Facebook. Like fuck you are! In this particular case, as owner, Sterling was the face of a NBA franchise which, theoretically, should be a family friendly thing.    "If you don't agree with his policies, just boycott." Yes, you could, still, for that matter, but the NBA still did the right thing for removing the reason for doing so. I have never been to LA so I couldn't tell you how far apart where the Clippers play from where the Lakers play but let's assume the NBA aren't just money grubbing whores and LA needs both teams for the greater good. "But he's been a racist since he bought the team back in the '80's." We didn't have the internet so info didn't travel as quickly.  The Cl...

I recently finished binge-watching the first season of Young Justice on Netflix. What an awesome show! Fans of Greg Weisman's other stuff ( Gargoyles, Spectacular Spider-man) know that he perhaps overcompensates for the lack of continuity found in many cartoons of my '80's childhood by have continuous threads throughout the show that you'd find in dramas like LOST or Once Upon a Time which is kinda awesome but I can see how that choice could play into why the shows don't last beyond 2 seasons. I'd love to know what age group he was targeting.  The plots were very complex for a show where the main cast was teenagers. What was also fascinating about the season was it guest-starred heroes that figured prominently in Batman: The Brave and The Bold (which was the previous DC cartoon on the air) such as Green Arrow, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, Red Tornado, Aquaman and of course Batman; not to mention villains such as The Brain and Monsieur Mallah. (Actually, th...

I was looking forward to the new Captain America  sequel coming out this weekend.  I discover it wasn't listed on the website  of my local theater or their phone listing.  This has been happening more and more lately.  Neither Green Lantern nor The Wolverine were shown.  ( Man of Steel  must have been and I wasn't in town for  Ironman 3 or Thor: The Dark World .) For years now, they've been the "art house" theater of the Portland area. (Which I think is stupid but whatever...)  Currently, they're showing the Grand Budapest Hotel on 2 screens (TWO screens!) and will be showing 2 parts of  Nymphomaniac.  Who the hell wants to watch a sex movie with Shia Lebouf?  What kills me is this theater is situated between 2 comicbook shops! (TWO!) Because I don't drive, and because the theater in Falmouth which was directly on the busline is no more, the best option is to take the bus to So. Portland, get off at the grocery store and then ...

I actually wrote this blog post in my head months, or maybe years ago, but decided not to share the thoughts with you all.  But, now with the seizure meds or whatever, the filters for what I think you want to read and what I want to talk about are gone so... A review I read of the How I Met Your Mother finale mentioned in passing that his friends hung out in a bar like on this show and not in a coffee house like on Friends . I would say, given the choice, my friends are more likely to go to a coffeehouse. (Strictly speaking, it might be accurate to say a 70/30 split...) This comment mad me think of other TV shows and why or why not I liked them. Judging by what's popular in specifically the sitcom genre these days, my family life was/is completely different than everyone else's.  My family is more like the Huxtables or the Keatons than the family on Raising Hope for instance.  (Yes, we all have at least one advanced degree and watch PBS...).  As I know I've men...

Television shows, movies and comic books often use fictional countries to set their stories in. DC Comics even goes a step further and creates fictional cities. (Question: Why did Arrow writers change Star City to Starling City? They kept Central City, which is a lamer name if you ask me, as is...) I presume they do this because they don't want to cause an international incident. It would drive me insane while watching the '60's  Mission: Impossible series and they'd be in Kuala Rokat or somewhere and I'd be like, "Where the fudge is that?" The '80's series and the movies came up with a better solution: go to a real country and take down an arms dealer or something just hiding out there, which if you watch the news, really happens. Novels in the political thriller genre, such as my own, at least try to go this root.  (At least ones I've read in the last 30 or so years.  But what if you don't have the rights to use the fictional country? I...

This morning, I read this article on the internet and it greatly upset me for several reasons. One, of course 2 Broke Girls is "shallow." It's a sitcom for God sakes!  Two, in what universe is  How I Met Your Mother any where near as good a show let alone better then Big Bang Theory ? The premise is ludicrous.  It would not take more than 6 episodes to tell you how my father met my mother and that would be if I included the courtship, wedding AND honeymoon where my father fell asleep and my mother ate 5 tuna fish sandwiches. All 3 of which I will point out HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THEY MET as they would have already done so at that point. Also, unless the father has dementia, or is just demented, why the hell would he start his story years earlier than he needed to? My father's first marriage isn't important to their story and dates he went on in-between have never been brought up... Now, if they call the show Bunch of Friends Who Frequent A Bar ... Oh, wait...

I could tell you where I've been but I assume many of you are friends of mine on Facebook and already know. Besides, I'm done talking about it. I could tell you about "the war" between Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and DC's Arrow . Right, speaking as a fan boy, the latter show, in it's second season, is showing the rookie how it's done.  To be fair, however, I'm going to wait to see if the ABC series picks up the pace in the second half... No, today, I want give my thoughts on the new CBS series Intelligence. Earlier this century, NBC tried to reboot The Bionic Woman . Her name was Jamie Sommers and she had the same abilities as Lindsay Wagner but that's where the similarities ended. The show bombed.  I remember pointing out at the time, the lead actress, Michelle Ryan was better at the role when she didn't have to hide her British accent so that didn't help... Anyway, this season CBS decided to not reboot the concept just blatantly ...

Recently, in movie news it was announced the Marvel speedster Quicksilver would appear in both Avengers 2 (with his sister Scarlet Witch) and in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past .  (Then Warner Brothers announced a Flash movie would happen but more on that in a minute...) As many geeks, but maybe not average moviegoers, know, Marvel Studios does not own the live-action "X-Universe"; Fox does. However, some characters, like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch can be used by both with a few provisos.  Marvel can't mention that they are mutants, meaning some other reason they have powers will probably have to addressed, and that their father is Magneto.  Since Wanda is not appearing in X-Men ,  Fox may not have to gloss over much.  Maybe the fact Quicksilver was married to the Inhuman, Crystal? That's not likely to come up in conversation... Anyway, DC Comics had a superhero with super speed first. There have been three Flashes in the comics.  All, impor...

Man, I'm unproductive today.  I'm also somewhat annoyed. As some of you may have noticed on Facebook yesterday, I related the story on how I got a call from my doctor's office that I still hadn't gone for lab work that had been ordered 2 weeks ago.  One, I don't remember hearing this before. Two, it wasn't mentioned last week when the pain in my side was determined to just be a, really bad,  muscle pull.  If such an order existed wouldn't it be cancelled after the ultrasound found nothing? Anyway, my second clue that this  clue this wouldn't end well: the lab test was set up at not my usual hospital but the other one.  Say what?  So I went that afternoon.  They had no record of the order.  They called my doctor and I waited though when she go an answering machine, I knew the damn office was closed. I waited anyway about 2 hours.  My entertainment was druggies and Fox News... I was going to review The Wolverine here but it's not pla...

Saw RED 2 yesterday. Just to get it out there, I fall into the "Better than Original" camp.  Mary Louise Parker was funnier than I remember her being in the first.  Perhaps her funniest role, if not best, since Boys on the Side .  John Malkovitch and Helen Mirren kick ass both in the comedy and action departments. Catherine Zeta Jones and Anthony Hopkins and even Byun-hun Lee were more than adequate replacements for Morgan Freeman and the late Ernest Borgnine. As much as I love nitpicking, I really have none... 

So I'm back in Portland. Still not 100% but I have the energy to do what I need to do.  (Isn't that the slogan for "Powdermilk Biscuits?") I have nothing more to add to that. Questions? Fingers crossed that I get back on the hospital's free care program because this upcoming bill (Still paying off the April fun...) will be horrible even after my insurance pays their part... Oh, Amos' self-cleaning litterbox finally bit the dust after the rake kept getting stuck and made noises like an MRI machine. (Machine gun for the non-medical among us).  Guess who, while recovering from neurosurgery, had to take the outercasing off to convert it to a normal box? Man of Steel devolved into non-stop action towards the end of the movie but I really can't say any of the action scenes were completely unnecessary. They made logical sense. They were just too long.  Readers of fanboy rants know the issues they had with all the previous movies.  Too much Luthor and not enou...

1. So for those of you not Facebook friends with me, the shunt malfunctioned again.  The day before my scheduled follow-up with the neurosurgeon,  the incision in my head started to leak cerebral fluid.  The cause was either an infection in my abdomen or the scar tissue build-up had formed  a "reservoir" or "swimming pool" and the system simply backed-up and out my head.  After being the hospital for about 10 days,  I am now back at my parents and feeling pretty well.   2. A couple weeks ago, my parents and  I went to see Paul McCartney's son, James, in Portland. In addition to many of his songs reminding me of his father,  my mother  and I were surprised that many songs sounded a lot like John Lennon including the song "Bluebell" which James wrote about his mother.  I had a good time.   The opening act was Jon Sandler and he was pretty good as well...   3. Star Trek Into Darkness was an awesome movi...

So to update everyone on my post-surgery recovery: I have returned to Portland and gone back to work. Still on painkillers and not at 100% energy-wise but I'm feeling well enough for my non-high energy life so woo hoo? Amos the cat is still making me pay for leaving him. Complicating matters, I don't have the energy to fight with him.  He could be pretty fat when all is and and done.  Anyway, he got up on the cabinets again after a catnip fix but got down before I could snap a picture. Oh well... News on the new fall season are emerging.  Really, the only two shows I care about given the axe were Body of Proof  and Vegas so that's nice .  Honestly, after their cast shake-up, Body of Proof 's writing went down hill. The first 3 or 4 episodes seemed derivative of Castle and this season mind you!  I think they hit their stride after that though. This week's episode was probably the best of the season. When the period drama Vegas was announced with it's ...

As many of you know, it turns out the flu I thought I had was actually classic shunt malfunction symptoms (horrible headaches and chills) that was always told to look for.  In 35 years, I had never experienced them and really am not looking forward to ever experiencing them again!  Again, this discovery came from going to a different doctor.  This time, instead of my eye doctor, it was my primary care physician.  According to this blog's archives, I was apparently irked, the first time I went to see her after moving to Portland,  she wanted me to touch base with the neurosurgery office.  My shunt has now malfunctioned twice since.  [Insert morbid laugh here].  The medical opinion is that this malfunction occurred because 35 years worth of scar tissue was impeding the flow of cerebral fluid into my abdomen.   Overall, I really don't feel as bad as the incident last summer.  My aunt says I'm an "old pro."  Luc...

Several topics have been ruminating in my head for days and I need to unpack them. Some are extremely trivial; especially compared to some of the other things I want to discuss, vent or whatever about but if you can't do that on your own blog, what is the point of having a blog? 1.  The Red Sox have been awesome and impressive this season.  What a turnaround.  I'm sure Juan Nieves  does the bulk of the work with the pitching staff . The improvement of the bullpen could be all him for all I know but Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz have definitely benefited from the return of John Farrell.       Pitching and defense may win games but the offense has not disappointed. Whenever the team is able to play again, Ortiz will be back.  Sure he's not going to hit 50 homers but we'll probably get 20-30 added to the mix which would be awesome! 2.  The search for the second fugitive has cancelled not only the game (despite all the talk yesterday from pl...

Maybe you wish I had...  Busy week. Probably mentioned a choral group that has rehearsed at my church before to some but may not have blogged about it.  Anyway, this year in addition to 6 Sunday afternoons in a row, this year, they used the church for a week as well. Longer days.  Much extra money for me. Yay!  I know I blogged about the prima donna pianist that accompanied the string quartet years ago. Well, this group had a harpist. (Or a "harpie" as I came to refer to her. )  Anyway, long story short, she got me in trouble with the sexton and managed to piss off the director himself with her antics.  Did I mention the extra money was good? Speaking of money, I officially sold another copy of my first novella, Winter Storm . You can't buy a candy bar (at the "high school price" for that matter) with the amount of money I made but how many books have you published?  So the health drama continues.  Clearly, mid-next month is longer than thre...

For reasons that are not really important for complete strangers that stumble upon this blog to know, I discovered that even though my health insurance's billing department has been here in Maine for years, and I've paid for 2 appointments with my PCP and 2 eye appointments (the last of which discovered my recent shunt malfunction incidentally) and a neurosurgeon office with no problems, it's now become a problem I have a Connecticut-based policy.  The problem here is if I need to see a specialist, I can't find out if one is covered by my insurance because the website search engine doesn't accept my Maine zip code. So I requested paperwork to transfer over to a Maine policy.  It seemed like forever for it to come so I called them back to see what's up.  Aside from being a huge corporation (Is it any wonder why I'm anti-Big Business?), I'm pretty sure their phone system was having problems.  Anyway, long story shorter, I get a hold of the right operator a...

On Monday, the holiday, the internet crapped out.  Calling my internet service provider to see if there was some kind of outage, it turned out to be my equipment that malfunctioned.  The woman at Tech Support seemed to think that given that I had an older model it had died of old age and to replace the cables etc. as well.  On Wednesday, the new modem arrived and I was back in business thought it was hideously sluggish.  Under normal circumstances with a DSL modem, when this happens you reboot it. Doing so killed it again.  Thursday, I realized I had switched out the Ethernet cable   (Firefox wants to capitalize it. Who am I to argue?) but I had left the original phone cord in place so I switched it out.  Nothing happened. Talked to my father on the phone and made lunch and then it worked.  Better than it had since last weekend. I spent an entire post on Mission: Impossible last time and that had low readership but I want to discuss another spy...

Finding movies (or sitcoms for that matter but that's better left for another post) on Netflix that look interesting but haven't already seen has been Mission: Impossible lately. Case in point, I re-watched Mission: Impossible III last night. The most recent installment, Ghost Protocol is even more Mission: Imnpossible -y and therefore even better but III is a nice first step. One of the little things I liked about Ghost Protocol was use of the Alias codename "Outrigger." In my third viewing of III , I finally noticed the use of the codename "Phoenix." Also, having watched Maggie Q, who played the "femme fatale" here, in her current role of Nikita , I found myself comparing the two roles. My cousin and I have contended for years the franchise can work again on TV. It was established in the '80's that there was more than one team simultaneously so the movies would not be affected. Also, it wouldn't have any of the issues othe...

I'm back! I guess. We'll see how long it is before I don't want to do this any more and take another long hiatus... I could have just scrapped this blog and started afresh but then I would have had to change the signature thing in my e-mail and who's that ambitious? Though, my life is somewhat different now as my cousin now lives in Alaska which he had a blog about but I can't remember the address so you'll just have to take my word for it... I have a new roommate now who's a student at the seminary I work at... Oh, and the seminary finally hired me after 5+ years as Assistant Librarian. They're effectively going out of business as a seminary in June and becoming a continuing ed/support system for "ministry in the 21st century." It's really hard to describe. "You'd have to be there" is is an overused, and possibly too inaccurate, a phrase but but we'll go with that... Anyway, this new identity won't include a lib...