New Releases to Get a Bit Stale?

Entertainment juggernaut Netflix has apparently been in talks with the major studios in the movie biz to get better prices on their DVD purchases (or so I read). Makes sense, and I can't imagine any one buyer right now in a better position to get their suppliers to capitulate. But here's the rub, the studios want Netflix to delay access (rental, streaming) for a month in return, an effort to help slumping sales.

More power to 'em both, I say. Especially if Netflix passes along the savings to their customers. I can wait another month for a new release...it may, may make it more likely that I'll purchase a movie--but probably not. I really don't see the downside here--if anything my desire to see the DVD when Netflix can release it will be a little greater.

There Ought To Be A Law...

No time for a real post today, between mourning the passing of Dollhouse and trying to dig myself out of a plot complication (namely, I have no idea what the core conflict of this 50K word beast needs to be and I'm almost 40% done), so instead, allow me to recommend the following post from Wire'd Geek Dad blog:
10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don’t, a list of things like Newton’s (a different one) laws of motion, Boyle’s Law, and Godwin’s Law that should be axioms by now. Numbers 1, 3, 8 and 9 are particularly good, and I just have to quote 7.
7. Starbucks’ and Peet’s Law: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.

How Long 'Til This Hits Our Shores?

Someone posted this article to one of the email lists I'm on last week--the article's dated Oct. 29, so it's possible that sanity has returned, but I'm not betting on it.

From the Daily Mail:

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.

Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.

Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Basically, until proven innocent, parents are assumed to be perverts and are being prevented from playing with their kids. So who will monitor the kids (other than from behind the fences)? Government employees, of course.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Insane. Utterly insane.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223528/Parents-banned-supervising-children-playgrounds--case-paedophiles.html#ixzz0WUoZQDVJ

Health Care Debacle

Lots of great articles on the Health Care mess over the last week or so--too many to cope with.

One I appreciated was "Tom Mullen's The Democrats Are Privatizing Wealth Redistribution"

The price of this corporate welfare, of course, is that any remaining vestiges of voluntary contracts between insurer and insured that health insurance still retained has been eliminated. Insurers are no longer allowed to determine rates demographically and based upon a real risk model. They are no longer allowed to offer diverse coverage packages to compete with one another for different customer groups. They now must offer low rates and uniform benefits to everyone as entitlements. Like individual welfare recipients, they have surrendered all of their liberty and property rights in return for other people's money. They are now just one more arm of the state bureaucracy.

The worst aspect of this great fraud is the implications it has for the liberty of every American. The closest parallel to this heretofore has been automobile insurance. Americans have been forced to buy auto insurance directly from an auto insurer in order to exercise the "privilege" of driving on the government's roads. This was of course enacted for the public good, to ensure that poor drivers could not bankrupt the innocent by demolishing their cars or saddling them with exorbitant hospital bills. However, as hostile to liberty as these laws are, they still leave the driver a choice. He can choose not to drive, however impractical or unrealistic that choice might be.

However, with this new bill, even that smattering of liberty is ripped away. Americans are now forced to purchase insurance from a government-protected and subsidized health insurance company merely because they are alive. Worse yet, they are not merely forced to make a single payment of tribute to satisfy their "individual responsibility." They must go on paying, year in and year out, for as long as they live. They cannot decline. They cannot conscientiously object. There is no escape from this tyranny save one: death. For those individuals that can demonstrate that they are completely incapable of paying, someone else will be forced to pay for them. No matter what, the government's corporation will be paid. Even life is no longer a right, but a privilege that the government extends to its subjects for a fee.

.

There's still time to stop this--call and write your Senators. Tell your friends and neighbors to do the same. Maybe even talk to all of the above about The Health Freedom Plan: H.R. 1495, H.R. 2629, and H.R. 3217

Coming Up with Something to Say

So, I've got my minimum (and a little change) words for NaNoWriMo done, and thankfully, I've been able to recover from a couple of off days towards the end of last week (it's sooo much easier to just churn out the minimum than to recover from a hole like I put myself into last year). So now it's time to turn to keeping my streak going for NaBloPoMo--or just pride. For reasons I can't comprehend, I feel much better about myself when I have something posted here daily. Even more so, if it's something more than a video link :)

Many days, I know exactly what I want to talk about--I'll read a story on a news site, or another blog that'll get me going. Or I'll see a TV show/movie/read a book that I really want to talk about. Or my kids will be involved with something.

But then there are days like today where I don't have anything at all. So what do I do? I check news sites and places like HotAir, Campaign for Liberty, TreasuredValley, and Huckleberries Online, actively seeking inspiration. This rarely works, sometimes it generates a post, but not often--less often one I'm crazy about.

Sometimes, I'll ask someone I'm chatting online with (if I'm chatting...which I'm doing far less of lately)--and frequently that helps a lot.

And then there are days I just ramble and come up with a post that reminds me of that Monty Python album (one of my favorites, actually--good assortment of skits, liked the flow, a friend had it in high school and we listened to it about 35 million times.)

Thought for the Lord's Day - #48

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eye-strings break in death
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
- Augustus M. Toplady

NaNoWriMo 2009 Word Counts

The computer guys at NaNoWriMo have conquered the opening week bugs (and I can only imagine how many there are) and have got the fun stuff like web badges (see far right and down below the Facebook badge) and word count widgets up.

So now you can track our progress and harangue us when we need it :)

The Police Blotter Shakespeare

One of the best uses of my time recently has been following Roger Ebert's twitter feed (except when he gets political)...he posts the best links, I don't know how he gets anything done. One of the latest gems is "The Police Blotter Shakespeare" by Burke Hilsabeck, what would The Bard's (or whoever's) plays look like if they were on a police report?

Great fodder for procrastination.

The Category "Dramedy" Eschewed

If I was a smarter person, this is the kind of thing I'd like to write. Even if I differ on specifics, Myles McNutt's blog post "Screw Dramedy: How We Distinguish Between Comic and Dramatic Television" is thoughtful, thought provoking, and entertaining.

A Couple of Class Acts

Finally, after an unimaginably long drought (well, to Yankee fans) the New York Yankees have once again won the World Series. There's really nothing I can add to all the blogs/news stories about The Core Four and their "one for the thumb", CC, Mariano (how can he still be doing what he's doing?), Tex...so on and so on. But I had to say a couple of things about a couple of real class acts both on and off the field.

I was really torn last night between my desire to watch Game 6, especially if it turned out to be the last game, and my need to get some sleep before work. It would've been an easier choice if Pettitte hadn't been doing such a great job (and honestly, I think Pedro was doing pretty good, too. He'd have been doing great if he'd had his fastball). But it wasn't until Matsui hit that two-run single in the third that I felt confident enough in the Yankee's fate to drift off. One of the last things I remember hearing was Tim McCarver correcting Joe Buck's recap of the score "Yankees 4, Phillies 1" with "Matsui 4, Phillies 1." And if it hadn't been for Tex's RBI, it'd have ended up being Matusi 6, Phillies 1.

Godzilla's been a consistent, dependable player since he came to the States, and it's great to watch him get the recognition he deserves--especially after such a performance. The fact that this was very likely his last year with the team (man, I hope not--and have been hoping not all season), made the whole thing all the more bittersweet.


And then there's the NYPD's (and formerly Baltimore PD's) Det. John Munch Yankee Manager Joe Girardi (third Yankee to win a championship with the Yankees as both a player and a manager), who followed his team's win with dose of Good Samaritanship, stopping to help someone who'd had a car accident.

According to Lohud.com:

The crash happened at 2:25 a.m. today in the eastbound lanes along a long blind curve where the Cross County meets the Hutchinson River Parkway near the New Rochelle Road exit, police said.

Police were conducting a nearby sobriety checkpoint on the parkway. In fact, about 15 minutes earlier, Girardi had passed through the checkpoint.

Cristiano, who was working the checkpoint, congratulated him on his first win as a manager and waved him through. He hadn't been the only Yankee to pass by the checkpoint. Pitcher Andy Pettitte, who lives in Harrison, also passed through earlier.

"He came through with a smile," Cristiano said.

Cristiano, a self-described huge Yankees fan, said she hadn't expected to see either one of them again. But, then, a 911 call came through about a car accident a short distance away, and he cops suspended the checkpoint to respond to the crash. As she came upon the accident scene, in an area where the parkway's two lanes turn into three and cars speed by the curve that takes them to the Hutch, Cristiano spotted Girardi.

"He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down," she said. "You don't expect him standing by a car accident, trying to help."

Cristiano said that, by the time she arrived, Henry was able to get out of the crashed vehicle and declined to be taken to the hospital.

Girardi, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, then told them he "had to get going."

Cristiano and Henry both thanked him and watched as he ran across traffic again to reach his car.

"The driver didn't know it was him until after I told her," Cristiano said.

Sh*tty First Drafts

I don't know what it is, but most of the books/essays/talks about writing that I've found most helpful to me are by people whose prose I really don't care for in the slightest. An excellent example of this is Anne Lamott, her Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life is helping me a lot yet again. Here's a sample:

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do--you can either type or kill yourself." We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not coming pouring out like ticker tape most of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning--sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really sh*tty first drafts.

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, "Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?," you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you you might go--but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.

NaNoWriMo is all about sh*tty first drafts, in fact, it's what's really helped me get to the point that I can produce them.

I'm so glad I have that freedom. Yesterday's output was truly dreadful--one chapter of nothing but exposition, a lot of telling, practically no showing. It was so bad that Dan Brown would take a look at it and say, "Dude." And it's going to be torturous to go back and edit it come December. However, it really enabled me to work out most of the rationale and mechanics of the science and technology that form the basis of my novel. My vague idea is a lot more concrete now. Sure it's an ugly, misshapen, pile of concrete that no one (not even a Modern Art Museum) would want to display--but it's something I can build on.

How's that for a mixed metaphor? Clearly I haven't rewritten anything in this post (aside from fixing a typo or seven in the Lamott quotation)...just another in a series of sh*tty first drafts.

Break Out the Yoplait...

Michael, Fi and Sam (plus Chuck Finley) are coming back:

Yeah, That Sounds Like Me...

Read an interesting article on Advertising Age's site yesterday (I was hotlinked to it, this is not normal reading material for me, as interesting as a lot of it seems).

It started off by saying something that beer snobs (like lit snobs, theology snobs, coffee snobs, music snobs...well, you get the idea) already knew:

Your choice of beer can be as telling about your personality as what kind of clothing you wear or the car that you drive. And if you don't drink suds at all, or change brands depending on your mood -- well, that says something too.

The concept of beer-as-window-to-the-soul comes from Mindset Media, the market researcher specializing in psychographics. The company started out with a theory that with so many opinions and brand loyalty around beer, the choice people make must be connected to personality.

Decent theory. Actually seems sorts self-evident when you think about it (something I noticed a lot in my undergrad days when doing psych research, the trick is coming up with the self-evident theory). I thought the findings were quite interesting... Naturally, Mindset Media's really not looking to find out interesting things about beer drinker's personalities, but are looking to find out new and more effective ways to get people to drink particular beers.

The article as a whole is worth the read, but the things I focused on included:

• BUDWEISER
  True to form, Bud drinkers are sensible, grounded and practical. They are the polar opposite of daydreamers and don't easily get carried away. These beer drinkers also don't like authority—can anyone say union?—and are emotionally steady people who live in the here and now. ... Budweiser drinkers are 42% more likely to drive a truck than the average person [duh]
  
• BUD LIGHT
  Are Bud Light drinkers just Bud guzzlers on a diet? Not a chance. Bud Light personalities actually skew quite different from their more-caloric sibling. Keep in mind, this was the beer choice for President Barack Obama during his so-called "Beer Summit" this summer when he invited police officer James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Gates over to the White House for a beer and a make-up chat. (The cop chose Blue Moon and the professor selected Red Stripe.)
  
  Bud Light drinkers profile as lacking in carefulness. They are grounded like their Bud brethren, but respect authority. Bud Lighters can also have frat boy-like personalities, particularly when it comes to personal risk-taking. In regard to others, these good-time guys and gals are accepting of most everyone and generally easy to get along with. [I won't say anything about anyone in particular here, but I'm related to a lot of Bud Light drinkers and found great amusement in reading this]
  
• CORONA
  "Where's the party?" is probably an oft-asked question by Corona and Corona Light drinkers. They are busy and energetic people who are also extremely extroverted. They're people persons who seek out the company of others whether in a group or just one-to-one. Corona drinkers do more and see more people in one day than most people see in a week. But the life-of-the-party Corona drinkers also have an altruistic side; they care deeply about other people and see themselves as giving and warm. [I've gotta say, this one comes closer to describing the Corona drinker's I know/have known than any of the rest of the brand specific findings they listed.]
  
• HEINEKEN
  There's a slang term that could sum up Heineken drinkers: posers. [BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!] These self-assured people believe they are exceptional, get low scores on modesty and high scores on self-esteem. They love their brand badges—a role the distinctive green glass bottle may play—and in fact, this group is attracted to luxury products in general. They are also energetic and dynamic and enjoy being both the center of attention and in the middle of the action. [Okay, this might be a tad more accurate than the Corona stuff, and it has the added bonus of being really funny. I'd say no offense to Heineken readers among my readership, but I'm pretty sure I don't have any]
  
• CRAFT BEERS
  These specialty made beers get lumped into one category both because there are fewer fans (and thus less statistically significant data) of them, but also because the personalities of one type fairly well describe another. This group is more likely to spend time thinking about beer rather than work. [Ayyyymen!] They are more open-minded than most people, seek out interesting and varied experiences and are intellectually curious. Craft-beer drinkers also skew as having a lower sense of responsibility—they don't stress about missed deadlines and tend to be happy-go-lucky about life. [TLoML and I had another in a long series of conversations about my attitude towards deadlines this morning, so I found this one particularly interesting.]
  

(h/t: Treasured Valley)

Oooooh! Tennant's Next Project

Sure, it's on NBC, so it'll stink--or get cancelled quickly. But, you gotta love the idea of David Tennant returning to TV.

David Tennant, best known for playing the title role in the BBC's long-running sci-fi series "Doctor Who," is set to make his American television debut as the title character in NBC's hourlong pilot "Rex Is Not Your Lawyer."

Written by Andrew Leeds and David Lampson, "Rex" centers on Rex Alexander (Tennant), a top Chicago litigator who begins suffering panic attacks and takes up coaching clients to represent themselves in court.

NaNoWriMo 2009

Well, it's November, so the Princess, Samwise, Frodo and I have said good bye to the rest of the family and have devoted our free time for the next 29 days to writing our novels. (confused? See this post from last year)

The kids are all off to great starts, each of them already passing the 5% mark (I'm at 4.7% right now). And based off this admittedly small sample, their work has matured in the last 12 months. Don't get me wrong, they've all got a long way to go--I'm not about to start pimping them as the next Christopher Paolini or anything. Still, I was impressed with their output thus far.

There's a little part of me that's worried about The Princess growing up a bit too quickly, here's a snippet from her first chapter.

It was Emma's cousin Abby and Emma's boyfriend Harry. Harry and Emma kissed! They both are 20, so don't blame them!

Interesting note on the behavior of twentysomethings, I wish I had a clue where she got it.

Anyhow, I'll be sure to keep you updated, and hopefully will get the graphics and counters and stuff from last year back up in a day or two. But for now, I've got 1K words to crank out before I crash.

Thought for the Lord's Day - #47

Much of Protestantism remembers yesterday as Reformation Day, many of those even have a clue what the Reformation was about... One of those who noted that day was Wes Bredenhof, of the Canadian Reformed Church. Yesterday, he blogged part of a conversation between Guy de Bres (author of the Belgic Confession) and a Roman Catholic bishop, just nine days before de Bres went to the scaffold. The whole thing is well worth the read, but for today's post, I just posted this snippet.

As I've said before and say it again, I have never been stubborn and close-minded against clear thinking and reason. But if anyone can show me from the Word of God that I have been in error, I am completely ready to give up. Up to the present there has been nothing of all that I have heard that would make me leave the certain for the uncertain. I still hold the same position that I did at the time when by quick testimony from the Word of God, you made me appear to be contrary. As I have said, I am not stubborn, and do not prefer my judgment to the judgment of the Church. But I do certainly prefer with clear thinking and just cause the ancient and early Church in which the Apostles set up all things according to the ordinance of Christ. I prefer that to the church of our time which is loaded with a vast number of human traditions, and which has degenerated itself in a remarkable way from the early Church. With good reason, I say, I hold to that which the Apostles first received. For Jesus Christ, in Revelation 2, says to those in Thyatira that they should beware of the profound trickeries of Satan, to beware of false doctrine. He says, "I will put on you no other burden, only that which you have already, hold fast to this until I come."

- Guy de Bres

I'm Crazy __________, Gimme Some CANDY!

We're back from plundering our subdivision...and plunder we did. Our estimate is 6 gallons. And dentists all over the Treasure Valley are punching the air...

Enough of that, on to the pictures...(most of which were taken by my mother, who's a better shot than I am)

My daughter's feminist commentary on marriage. At first, she was just going to make a cute bride (no, not the Uma kind, alas). But then she and her mom got talking...blood, gore, monster masks were considered, but in the end, they went with this. We really should've got some black roses to go with it, dontcha think?

TLomL's getting pretty good at this skeleton-face makeup...maybe the Insane Clown Posse could hire her.

Took us about 14 seconds of shopping before Arnold found this. If only they were all so easy.

The number of kids we passed shouting "Mario!" last night (most of the older boys doing a spot-on impression), I'm surprised our subdivision wasn't invaded by Nintendo copyright lawyers.

Samwise had come up with this idea of a Grim Reaper with glowing eyes before we went shopping for costumes, and had settled on something else after not finding the pieces he wanted to assemble it. Naturally, as soon as we purchased something else, he stumbled on to it in a pre-assembled kit. And then when we found that scythe? Such joy. It's like I'm raising 'Chainsaw' Gremp. Oh, don't call him a Jawa Reaper, he doesn't like it. Even if that's what this totally looks like.

The eyes on that fade in and out...making the whole picture taking experience so much fun.

Frodo's costume's label called this a Gatekeeper, but he looks nothing like Sigourney Weaver if you ask me (even without the mask). So I asked myself, what would Giles or Wesley call this, and decided he needed to call himself a K'col'Yek monster.

No, that isn't the Eye of Thundara in the hilt there (I checked)

I've mentioned before how difficult it is to get a picture of WonderMutt. This is the best I could do thanks to some creative cropping.

My wife, ladies and gentlemen... (it'll help to read that in Peter Bishop's sardonic drawl)

Our Haul. 14 lbs. 14 oz. (and they probably ate a bit more than 2 oz. before it was weighed it.) This is truly embarrassing...when I was a kid, my mom'd have made us quit if we came close to filling up one of these containers. And this is just from strolling around the neighborhood...no real effort.

Me? Oh, I went as an Adam Sandler song.

Too Much to Say

no real post today, just some blather about my process...not that anyone cares.

I have seven or so posts in the draft stage, and I can't decide which one to finish--every time I pick one to work on, all I can think of is the others. So I move on to one of them, and the cycle starts again.

On the other hand, I'm biting my tongue and not publishing a bombastic rant about media coverage, apparently deliberate attempts to misunderstand what others are saying, and other sorts of biases hurting a start-up group I care deeply about. The plan is to tone it down, make it less bombastic, and try to sound sane. Not fun, but probably more productive. But I'm not in the place to do that now.

or I could blather on about NaNoWriMo, but I have all of November to do that, why start early?

To make up for wasting your time, I'll just say that while The Swell Season's Strict Joy album appears achingly beautiful, the best album I've bought in months has to be Phineas and Ferb (Songs from the TV Series). That probably says a lot about me.

Oh, found a new webcomic last night (thanks to Jon Rogers) and spent a fun hour or two plundering the archives of 2009...a couple of must-reads are: http://hijinksensue.com/2009/05/13/a-severe-case-of-scullyosis/, Rebuffed, and The Glee Agenda (which could so totally be about me).

GO YANKEES!

Arnold Kidney Update

Had our regular checkup with Arnold's nephrologist today, on the whole, things are very positive, and look good for now. He's recovered from his recent hospitalization, and bout of Swine Flu well. Everything's about where it should be.

I did learn a couple of things, both about the future and about kidney treatments in general. First of all, the doc reported that his hemoglobin was good. Am pretty sure this is the first time he's bothered to mention that--maybe he's muttered something mostly to himself about it a time or two. He went on to inform me that when his kidney function worsens (about 25% efficiency or so), he'll need a weekly injection to boost that. I'm getting it on the record now that I hereby volunteer TLoML to give that, assuming it's not something a professional has to administer.

His growth rate is slowing, and assuming it continues the way it is, within a year or two we're going to have to talk about growth hormone. Apparently, and this was news to me, it's not that kidney patients don't produce the normal amount of growth hormones themselves. Rather, there's something also produces that blocks the hormone. So, (assuming he gets the hormone) he'll be given a dose equivalent to that given to someone who doesn't produce the hormone on his own, which will be enough to overcome the block. This will come in the form of daily injections. Please see the previous paragraph for my stance on the administration thereof.

His kidney function had been thrown off by the infections/dehydration that were behind his recent hospitalization, but the lab results show that they're back to where they were before. In the past, the doc's been able to do a quick and dirty calculation to estimate kidney function based on those results. But thanks to that pediatric study we've talked about before (here and here, for example), that calculation has been thrown out. The doc was sorta grumbling about that (a diagnostic tool he's used his entire career has been tossed) and sorta informing me about the use of that study. Apparently, they've been able to adapt the calculation to come up with a way to estimate function for girls, but they're still working on it for boys, so his usual rough guess is rougher than normal. We're at 35%-ish. He didn't tell me what the range on that is, but in the past it's been +/- 15%.

The last thing I wanted to mention has nothing to do with Arnold's condition, but when we talked about the hospital stay, I mentioned that the insurance company was hassling us about paying for it. He was incredulous about that and volunteered to help with the appeal. Then he said something about at least when dealing with an insurance company there's a person you can talk to and "if it gets to the point it's the government deciding these things, it'll be a wall." I see him briefly catch himself before finishing his thought after saying the word "government", but then he must've decided he didn't care about opening a potential can of worms and spoke his mind. I know there are exceptions, but I've yet to find a medical professional in favor of the legislation before Congress.

Syfy Plans International Vandalism

Note to the Reader: I do have non-TV/non-Entertainment posts in the works, but sadly, I can't seem to get them to the publish point. Really don't just want to harp on TV stuff...but, c'est la vie, it'll have to do for now.

The Powers That Be over at Syfy are still carrying a grudge over that whole era characterized by The Stamp Act, Taxation Without Representation, Lexington/Concord, etc. (only explanation I can think of, anyway) and have decided to wreak havoc in the fashion of the Boston Tea Pary, but with a Urban Fantasy twist. According to SciFiWire:

The BBC's clever 20-something show Being Human, about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who end up as roommates, is the latest British series to get an Americanized version. Syfy has ordered 13 episodes of the new series, which it plans to launch in the summer or fall or 2010 as a companion to its show Sanctuary (which also features a vampire and a werewolf).

Being Human debuted on the digital network BBC Three with six episodes and was popular enough that it got moved up to the larger BBC One. A second season of eight episodes is planned for early next year in Britain, and the show also airs in the U.S. on BBC America.

"It turned out great, as we can now do an American version," Syfy president Dave Howe told The Hollywood Reporter. "We've always been keen on vampires and werewolves, and we loved the originality of Being Human, the fact that the fantastical creatures in it are very young, accessible and charming."

Howe said the Syfy version will not just "slavishly replicate the British version."

"We loved the originality..." so, we decided to rip it off...well, that's Hollywood for ya, guess I can't knock that. But then to go on to say they're not just going to "slavishly replicate"? Dude. The only prayer this thing has of being decent is to slavishly replicate...

Syfy would do the show, Syfy's audience, and company's budget a huge favor and take all the money they're planning on spending on the remake and just buy the rights to air the original. A truly great show, with a nigh unto perfect cast. Anything else is just criminal.