A hundred years ago the diamond industry was dying in the great depression so they said "If you're getting married and the ring isn't a diamond you're low class and not impressive". To this day people still blindly follow this idea as if it's law and not just a commercial for useless shiny rocks.
At least I now know where those screen caps came from.
I watched the first four episodes of Now Apocalypse on STARZ last night. It's good. It's very good. It's fresh, it's timely, and it's very, very sexy. Gay sex, straight sex, bi sex, solo sex…it doesn't matter, and it's front and center in these ongoing stories of a group of 20-somethings making their way through life in L.A.
Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people." ~ Harry Truman, 1952
Me: Picks up my phone to call a longtime friend. Punches in the number and presses the call button.
Popup on Phone: We're sorry. It seems Michael Xavier at 555-1212 is not an Apple customer and not in our database. Would you like to allow us to add him?
Me: WTF? Presses NO.
Popup on Phone: We're sorry. We cannot complete the call as dialed. Please check the number or allow Apple to add Michael to our customer database before proceeding.
Counterpart is a show I stumbled upon last year and immediately fell in love with. Set primarily in Berlin, this modern day (sci-fi?) spy thriller tells the story of what happens when a door opens between parallel dimensions and it's existence is kept secret from everyone except for a very select group. For every person on one side, there exists a doppelgänger on the other.
It's not one of those shows you can have on as background noise while you're doing something else or whiling away your evening online. It demands your full attention or you'll soon be lost.
Last year, coming in from the beginning it was relatively easy to follow along. Determining which side of the doorway you were on was a simple matter. The wife of the main character was hospitalized in a coma after being struck by a car on our side, but perfectly healthy and active in the other. The two Berlins were similar, although some very funky architecture existed on the other side that was easily recognizable even for someone who knew nothing about the city. The other side had tech we lack, but for some reason never developed cell phones.
It's been a while since Season One ended, so my memory is a little hazy on the espionage aspect and interwoven storylines, but that being said, I'm two episodes in this year and I'm totally lost. The wife who was hospitalized is now back home and the main character and his double both find themselves trapped on the wrong side the portal after a terror attack shut down diplomatic relations between the two worlds and closed the crossing.
European architecture has become so outré lately that city skylines alone no longer tell me which side the story is happening on.
I hope at some point the writers explain the who what when why how of the crossing. There's nothing special-effects heavy about it; it resembles an underground brick-walled corridor. You go in one end on our side and emerge on the other in their world.
I was drawn into Counterpoint because of its more than passing passing similarity to Fringe, a favorite series from years gone by.
At this point I'm so frustrated I'm thinking I need to go back and binge Season One this weekend just to get reoriented…
I suppose that when David Karp sold tumblr he was obligated to sign an "in perpetuity" non-compete agreement that would prevent him—even if he wanted to in light of recent events—from ever launching another tumblr-like site…
Pity. I wonder how he feels about what the Asshats at Verizon are doing to his creation.
There is a tranquility there, a peacefulness that is sadly absent from the frenetic pace of life in Phoenix, especially on grey, rainy days like yesterday when the smell of wet creosote permeated the air and the sound of gently falling rain drowned out all outside sounds. Perhaps it's the smaller population, or the slightly higher altitude, or maybe it's simply because the desert hasn't been bulldozed and paved over the way it has been in Phoenix.
Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people." ~ Harry Truman, 1952
