q q/

-Double quote: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd... The odds are bad, but the goods are worse," woman and man, in technical circles-

Nothing frightfully interesting this week, except the dream where I was controlling the man-eating plant. Too bad insectivorous plants are incapable of digesting flesh in real life, and will get sick if you try to feed them meat (as many people will recommend doing -- perish the thought!).

I am not typically much of a television person. There are several reasons for this:

1. I enjoy long, overarching storylines but am too busy/scatterbrained to catch every episode. I cannot stand seeing a recap that would spoil a previous episode, so once I miss one episode, that series is toast.

2. Books and television share a similarity: most of the work out there is hopeless formulaic yam-trappery averageness that people will buy every week, like eggs. The difference with books is that one can select the quality product (or not, in the case of the general book-reading, TV-watching public) to be consumed, then consume it at a convenient time -- even for free at a public library! Television, on the other hand, is doled out in specific time slots, and it is not until much, much later along the spectrum of production that a DVD or similar may be purchased or checked out or rented for convenient consumption.

Much of television watching is "What's on right now?", with purchasing only happening if the series is especially good. We let ourselves get stuck into ruts of mediocre series just because they're on at the time that we decide to gel, and that is that.

Which brings me to internet television. I have essentially given up on "traditional television" at this point, but I can see that internet TV, while impressive, is still not quite where it could be. Networks still want their main business to be on traditional sets because presumably this can net more advertising money -- people are more patient with commercial breaks when they're watching on a television set, for one.

Yet, to keep people coming back to the traditional mode, their strategy seems to be to offer online content, but cripple it a little (in the grand scheme of internet media). Rather than taking advantage of the medium, the infinite time slots, they choose to offer 5 episodes. One season. Rolling coverage, come back next month for the rest.

Reminds me of the graphics card processing at a certain company. Rather than have, say, 3 different production lines for 3 models of the product, the cards are all produced to the highest specifications. Then, to provide lower-tier models of the card for different markets, some of the high-quality cards are set aside and "fixed" -- parts of the circuitry fused so the performance is slashed.

There's a visceral discomfort to that. But TV execs, graphics cards manufacturers, perhaps they are simply acting in the most profitable way they can.

Reality check. Part of my frustration comes from a show that I enjoy watching online, but that only offers season 1 at this point. The thing that really gets me is that the show was CANCELED on traditional television after the second season, so how exactly would showing it online hurt the network??

-T-shirt quote: "D.A.R.E. to resist drugs and violence"-

Had a dream about a water shortage. Whoop-dee-doo. All the places I've lived in my life (most recently the Great Domesticated Desert of Doom^TM and Colorado) have those for real, so why the heek do I need to dream about it?

I think we need to develop a different word for "communism." Problem is, people nowadays (and for the past couple decades) use that label to refer to what is really "socialism." In my opinion, socialism is fundamentally different from communism due to the government mediation involved -- someone still has the power, and far too much of it if real-life examples of socialism are examined.

But I'm not averse to seeing the English language evolve. What I am averse to is that now we really have no word for that idealistic state where everyone contributes, without government getting its grubby paws into the job, to the greater good.

Oh wait, we do. The internet.

Reality check. For further reading: Looking Backward.

fjf 7t 7t

-Emerson Cod quote: "Truth ain't like puppies."-

Most unique dream of the week: I was in a monochromatic shoebox diorama (the kind that kids do for school projects, except with better build quality and less color). It looked a lot like this:
which is, yes, the title animation for the Cyan Worlds logo. However, this is the color and sort of bloopy shape-ness that also appeared in the diorama. In this instance, though, it was a small family home that was cast in blue-green low-poly 3D. An interesting color switch from the prominent reds that are typical of my dreams.

The sky looks- hum, hard to describe. It looks... gauzy? Not cloudy because there aren't definable clouds, just that sort of diffuse brightness that happens when there's a film of moisture held stretched against the sun. Judging by the heat today and the past few days, which has been definitely present though not extreme, my guess is that there may be a thunderstorm approaching. Or there may not -- it could just be the sky dreaming of clouds.

That's how faint the cloud outlines are. Now that I look again, there are some boundaries, but the whiteness colors so much of the sky that the blue patches look more suited to being called clouds. Clearly, the mist and the air have colluded together to flip the heavens inside-out.

Reality check. I wonder if we're to expect drops of sun and rays of water?

nnq d

-Title quote (translated): "Time of flight"-

I dreamt of playing the piano last night. Or rather, I was considering playing it; I took 8 years of lessons as a child but have since then been well out of practice, something my dream-self, muddled as it was, did remember. The piece I was considering was Rondo Alla Turca.

Happy Independence Day! I would certainly have no excuse for forgetting this, as my neighbors seem to have commenced firework launching at EIGHT IN THE MORNING (a very pointless time to set them off, if you ask me -- sunlight being, after all, still in force).

The newspaper of course had a large spread of the Declaration of Independence printed on one of its pages, but this turned out to be part of an ad, which was slightly off-putting.

Reality check. One way I would not recommend celebrating is by watching Omega Glory. Don't say I didn't warn you. [grin]