Oh yeah, why isn't Electric Dreams on DVD?

Susan showed me her new Bluetooth headset she got for $12.99 on eBay, which strikes me as quite an improvement (aesthetically, as well as functionally) over all the other Borg attachment-like jobs on the market:I must like it because the cord+wireless combo reminds me of the Wii.

Stephanie Miller was pitching LegalZoom or something on the radio and I started wondering if radio personalities like her wrote their own scripts for these ads and if they did, whether they ever considered relieving themselves of their corporate guilt by hiding messages in them, perhaps acrostic-style? Shouldn't be too difficult; first words of each sentence or fragment could form one of their own, with verbs like "says" and "isn't" (as Stephanie/says/LegalZoom/isn't/worth/it) strategically used in questions. But only a genius might do this on the fly. Which brought to mind Lewis Carroll's, and what a remarkable period of creative energy must have allowed such output—how that time for me must surely be passed.

I mean, look at her; she's like some fucking perfect goddess.With this last week of Samsoon on AZN, Monday night's digital cable lineup that placed it after an Emma Peel Avengers and Life on Mars (surely to be as long-lived, as novel as the concept may be) was the trifecta to die for.

The world is for the most part a real stinker, as I often go on about, though once in a while I come across something that I can't help but applaud:
This four-pack of single-use Krazy Glue tubes might cost a dollar more than the regular ones, but you ever go through the whole thing before it dries up? Plus, look at the case; reminds me of Tretonin injections Jaffa carry to be free from their symbiote dependency. Man, I miss Stargate already.

…But do I really want a multimedia extravaganza that I'll do little with and watch be made obsolete within a matter of months? I'm already buried in relics like that.

Panda Express: "Your luck will soon be at a high point." If you don't count the anti-troughs from avoiding the worst misfortunes and allow us to go on obliviously without, say, being crushed by orbital debris, then my peak was probably winning the $100 Super Bowl pool a few years back. So no, I ain't holding my breath.

DNS down. Or not. I think maybe it's because the crappy DSL here skipped a byte and the record went to John's name server, whose IP comes up when I ping anything but the TDL. My fault for leaving it as a backup.

I used to go through this every few years, but thanks to my first (and last) experience with Motorola, mobile replacement has become an annual ordeal. Actually, what I'd really like is this Nokia with its optical zoom—I'm more convinced of a phone-camera convergence than draining batteries with games, music or video—but with asking prices more than half of what the MacBook cost, I think I'll try my luck haggling with some toothless street vendor in Hong Kong next month.

SG-1 has been cancelled, strike three if you include Angel & Justice League. I never got into Lost, I buy Family Guy and Robot Chicken on DVD, and the best clips of the Daily Show and Colbert are put up on sites such as Crooks and Liars, anyway, so doing away with cable altogether (and replacing the high-speed with a static-IP DSL line) is looking more like a plan.

Amazingly both the Boot Camp install and Qube3 setup went without a hitch (if the latter still fails to appear that way, it's only because I forgot about the CSS file for the Blogger template), but what do you know, technology's not infallible: my RAZR's power jack finally gave out after months of flaky performance, returning my SIM card to the Ericsson T610—itself plagued by an input delay that reminds me of dial-up pcAnywhere—I had been using as an alarm. Honestly, the Motorola was a piece of shit and I'm glad to be rid of it. Flat-press buttons Braille readers would have a hard time distinguishing, much less freeway drivers, and a GUI that even sight doesn't do much to help with. So what if I could use MP3's as ringtones or animated GIF's as screensavers; cellphones seem to be getting worse with each passing "generation" and shorter-lived. I liked my auto-sliding Nokia 7190 the best.

I'm grateful to an all-but ignored Slashdot reply (only scored a 2, wtf) to a post about the mob mentality among Korea's online communities for quoting Edgar Allen Poe's "Some Words with a Mummy" (the "Count"):

We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the advantages we enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused. When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.

I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.

I've been wanting to Buck Rogers outta here for the longest time, too.

That last one was my 200th post using Blogger. Segue to some TV bits: Friday night, the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1. Monday's Life on Mars had an awesome scene where Sam spaces out to Hawkwind's "Silver Machine." Let's see; AZN's airing of 내이름은김삼순 is actually my second go-around (probably the third that's aired here, since the last time I saw it was already subtitled—which is a shame, as colorful as the main character's language is to even handicapped Koreans like myself), so maybe this time I'll see the ending that like half of Korea did. Ooh, and more TRICK on the 27th.

BST70 now, and it pains me not to have Fraps'd my multi-level outings with the spiders in the desert, leeches against the gobs on that hump in Gustav Tunnel, bats in the sewers and rabbits on the snowy Uleguerand Range. Weeks of playing this MMORPG as if it were all to myself, spewing scorn for those occasional trespassers who dared invade my camp on their way to some group activity, no doubt. But what an achievement, for antisocial behavior like this online, to become the game's preeminent soloist.Pity the overdue entry has my character looking his worst. Nothing can be done about the Optical Hat, but I've since macro'd in the Ogre gloves, too, and gone with Attack+6 Tracker's Kecks to cover up those ridiculous boots; last time the HQ JSE chaps went up on AH, wouldn't you know it, was over that 123° weekend in Vegas. Surely all the shrimp was worth it.

Couldn't sleep Saturday night, so I made this big push towards Lv.70 while letting the TV run. Sometime around 3 I caught the opening credits of Red Dragon, that most recent film in the (Anthony Hopkins) Hannibal Lecter trilogy. You know, the one that remade Michael Mann's Manhunter from sixteen years earlier for no apparent reason than to make a far inferior movie. There's a brilliant scene in the original where Dolarhyde imagines his girl with another man that reveals so much more about the warped mind than any faithful literary detail into his obsession with the Blake.

And speaking of obsessive minds, this Sunday lugubriously wrapped up the Winter Sonata marathon on AZN Television's "Summer of Hallyu" (韓流, for those of us who can pronounce the extra n). I must've missed something in the epilogue, because one moment the lead is happily married, and the next, she's back in her lover's arms. Regardless, I think I may have a handle on the whole phenomenom—who wrote that drivel, a high-school student—and it has to do more with sex than love, or the lack thereof. This star-crossed cast is only as messed up as they are because their parents fucked around so much! Hormones flow or tears do, and maybe audiences realize, too, that when it's the former, any chance for the feelings that led there are over.

…But after years of qualifying statements to the effect with "sooner or later", I seriously have to do something about my fucked-up teeth. The Yellowing, which I attributed to months of morning tea earlier this year, isn't subsiding in the least (which I attribute to the subsequent months of morning am/pm Mountain Dew), and today the rear view mirror at 70mph revealed a large chip in the enamel up towards the gum on my other front tooth.

Sometime recently in my life I've developed a terrible dentophobia; less anti-dentite specifically, but more of an anti-oral fixation. I would explain, anything that goes in my mouth stays there. No ribs, cherries, or even gum for me. Could it be some manifestation of latent homosexuality? Or a condition exacerbated by my ordeal with that peritonsilar abcess a while back? (On the subject of the latter, I had this to say at the time:

:-(}) becomes :-(o). You'd think the viruses and bacteria of the world had better things to do, like changing the course of evolution or staving off alien invasions, than making it ever so difficult for a lone diner at Burger King to put down every bite of his Whopper. Each swallow was an ordeal, like passing a kidney stone must be. Speech could only bubble up from under the rising saliva, or be helped over the top by my nose. Turns out my uvula, that thing in your mouth hanging over the opening to the throat you only see when people scream in cartoons, was swollen to four times its usual size. You know you have a special condition when the ENT doctor calls in a few of his colleagues to take a look. (Either that, or he needed their assistance to restrain my gag reflexes.) And there, in the car mirror outside Rite-Aid while my prescriptions for antibiotics and steroids and painkillers were being filled, resting on my tongue was a drool-coated mass of flesh the size and shape, for lack of another anatomical analogue, of a testicle--and that coming from either my encounter with the edible kind or equally unforgettable photos of lymphatic filariasis. It was back to normal a day later, but I wasn't, as I fell victim first to an allergic reaction to Augmentin (otherwise the tastiest liquid medication, reminding me of Calpis), then to a follow-up ER diagnosis of a peritonsilar abcess (as unsightly as it may be, I prefer my pus on the outside of my face), if not to all those managed heatlth care co-pay fees in general.

Pre-blog era.) I have a gag reflex that I was afraid might've killed that poor little Jewish ENT doctor who had the arduous task of lancing it. Then there's that recurring dream of biting into something I shouldn't and losing all my teeth. Let's just hope the PPO covers the therapy for all these issues, too.

Cross Joementum off the list. Good riddance, fucking warmonger.

I haven't been able to watch UFO since Au Pair Girls, but it nevertheless came as somewhat of a disappointment to learn that the Gerry Anderson fan club soundtrack has sold out, despite my lack of interest in it while unemployed. Ah, to be young again and dream of a future working for a super-secret organization that fights aliens and employs the finest chicks. Aren't I at the age now where I can spend hundreds of thousands on hookers to cosplay for me and make at least that part of the fantasy come true?

POLICE SQUAD! on DVD! Why, God, why won't you let me die?

I kinda regretted taking off to run a half-hour into this "I Love Beijing" film on AZN, about this cab driver that went from one surprisingly attractive girl to another amidst the squalor of the city, which is probably why I've sat the rest of the day in front of the digital cable. (The exception was a trip to Fry's to get a Samurai Champloo DVD after the Adult Swim on Demand teased me with only the first of the three-part finale. Happy ending for the heroes felt a little forced after Cowboy Bebop, no?) And now I'm suffering through a Winter Sonata (겨울연가) marathon still trying to understand the dynamics of the Korean drama wave. Or all the appeal of 배용준, who reminds me of James Spader in Stargate. This is maybe the third of fourth series whose story I've followed, and it's the third or fourth where a main character is hit by a car—I guess when shows go on this long, it's just bound to happen?

79¢ at Orangethorpe & Walker. Pretty young Asian thang working there, too. Nice tight White T-shirt. Wow, that had "subpoena" written all over it.

Refills at the am/pm on Artesia@Vermont: $0.79. As good an indication as any of the priorities in my life at the moment, but I've noticed the price varies by location and wanted to keep a record how much and where.