Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

It Started So Well…

I stumbled upon this via Amazon Prime. The first season did a good job of putting a new spin on this well-worn story. Engaging characters, lush sets and cinematography, beaucoup interpersonal and familial drama (some with a oversize “ick” factor), some decent eye candy (who unfortunately seem to get killed off all too often), and aliens who were decidedly not what you normally encounter in this kind of story.

Boston Dynamics at work.

When I was finished with that first season, I was disappointed that the second and third seasons were not available via Amazon; that I’d have to subscribe to EpixNOW to see how the story played out. I was engaged, so I laid out $15 for a six-month subscription.

And then…Season Two happened.

Dude, that was my reaction too.

[Spoilers ahead, not that I’m sure any of you care.]

So the aliens presented in Season One weren’t actually the aliens. They were just the aliens’ tools. And the real aliens? As revealed in the final episode of Season One, uniformly Caucasian, English-speaking humans…who (revealed in Season Two) share DNA with several earthly humans in the story. How could this be?!

“For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!”

Sorry, wrong fandom.

Early into the second season, it’s determined that the attacking humans are indeed human, albeit with a plethora of genetic defects. (This explains why the alien robo-dogs were abducting babies and cutting fetuses out of pregnant women – it was for the stem cells.) In the blink of an eye, all the sick aliens are back to full health but still on the offensive, killing as many of the remaining human residents of planet earth as possible. Because reasons.

I made it about halfway through the second season before I hit the internet and got the whole story (at least through where we currently are in the third season) and gave up actually watching any more of it.

Time travel, parallel universes…and pretty much every worn out sci-fi trope out there.

Le sigh. And it had such promise.

Maybe there’s something else on EpixNOW I can watch. If not, $15 is less than the cost of three coffees, so it’s not like I threw away a lot of money.

1 comments

Posted on

Just a Little Reality Check

From Reluctant Rebel:

David Frum:

But if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a “both sides” affair in 2020s America. You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House. No Democratic equivalent exists of Donald Trump, who regularly praises and encourages violence as a normal tool of politics, most recently against his own party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. As the formerly Trump-leaning Wall Street Journal editorialized on October 2: “It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell. Many supporters took Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Penceall too seriously on Jan. 6.”

0 comments

Posted on

Only the GOP Celebrates Political Violence

David Frum:

But if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a “both sides” affair in 2020s America.

You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House. No Democratic equivalent exists of Donald Trump, who regularly praises and encourages violence as a normal tool of politics, most recently against his own party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. As the formerly Trump-leaning Wall Street Journal editorialized on October 2: “It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell. Many supporters took Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Penceall too seriously on Jan. 6.”

Republicans categorically need to lose definitively and unquestionably on November 8th.

0 comments

Posted on

Oh Madge…

This has got to be fake, right? I mean those tiddies…they look more like a drag queen appliance than even a boob job gone horribly wrong.

I knew this bitch wasn’t going to grow old gracefully, but…this?!

Madge and I are only three months apart in age and I am embarrassed for everyone born in 1958 upon seeing this.

0 comments

Posted on

Motive is a Mystery

From Greg Fallis:

News Media: Bizarre hammer assault on Speaker Pelosi’s husband.
Suspect: I was after Nancy.
News Media: Law enforcement has offered no motive for the attack.
Suspect: I wanted to kill Nancy.
News Media: Police silent on Pelosi attacker’s intentions.
Suspect: Really, I just wanted to kill Nancy. I guess she wasn’t there.
News Media: Did divisive political rhetoric play a part in attack?
Suspect: Everybody on FOX says Nancy is a monster, so I wanted to kill her. You know…with a hammer.
News Media: Pelosi needed brain surgery after hammer attack.
GOP: CA should relax gun laws so Pelosi could have defended himself from hammer-wielding attacker. Dems not tough on crime.
Suspect: I would have used a gun, but this is California and I can’t buy one.
FOX News: Lots of people injured in hammer attacks in CA. Why lib media focused on this one minor assault? Pelosi didn’t even die.
News Media: Unconfirmed report: Pelosi attacker said to be dressed in his underwear.
Suspect: I’m a hammer killer, not a pervert. Fully dressed. In camo.
Elon Musk: An obscure news source that once claimed Hilary Clinton was dead and replaced by a body double says the attack MAY have some kinky gay thing going on.
GOP: After recent DUI arrest, Paul Pelosi engaged in extramarital gay hammer sex party.
News Media: Uh, well, okay, maybe?
Suspect: Look, all I wanted to do was kill Nancy then go monitor voting drop boxes like any other normal patriotic American. I’m a victim of cancel culture.

News Media: Sources say Pelosi lured hammer suspect with offers of twisted gay sex.
Suspect: Wait, what? No.
News Media: GOP claims prosecution of Pelosi hammer attacker is politically motivated.
Suspect: I’m announcing my candidacy for Gov. of Cali, which I’ll win unless the votes are tampered with.
GOP: Vote for us, we’ll hammer Biden and his gay socialist agenda!

0 comments

Posted on

I Did a Thing Today

I’ve wanted the LED Union Jack tail lights since I first saw them. Obviously these aren’t OEM (since MINI doesn’t make them for my model year), but they’re still damn good and they fit well. The driver side went in easily; the passenger side not so much. The hardest part was getting the old units out because of the layout of the retaining screws. I may need to redo the passenger side once I have the proper tools to loosen and tighten the nearly-inaccessible screws that hold them in place.

Also, the backup lights are confusing. The passenger side is white; the driver side is red. At first I suspected that something was wrong, but going back to this—and similar—sellers’ pages for the most part they’re all showing this same configuration. (I think it’s designed to be used as a reverse fog light, even though the car had no rear fogs.) Still, after everything was back together I wrote the seller to verify this was indeed the case and that I didn’t get an incorrectly wired unit.

Adding to the ease of installation, the lights needed no re-coding of the onboard computer, something I had been worrying about. They really were plug and play.

 

1 comments

Posted on

Reminds Me…

…of the toilets south of the polo field in Golden Gate Park. Although that place was much skeevier. Or so I’d heard. ? (At the time I was living in the Avenues, only a short distance from the place. And Taraval. And Wawona. And the end of Judah Street. But those are stories for a another time.)

And looking over my journals from 1997, apparently I heard quite a bit.

Allegedly.

0 comments