12:12 – We just finished cutting up branches that had fallen during the ice storm the other day from a large pine in our backyard. While doing that, I noticed that our Sven saw needs a new blade. Fortunately, Barbara had two 24″ bow saws, which worked fine.
Barbara will work on labeling and filling containers this afternoon while she watches her shows (the ones I can’t stand, such as Private Practice–and anything else from Shonda Rhimes– Flashpoint, and so on. I’ve noticed that all of them have a lot of shouting to make up for the fact that the scripts suck). And I just noticed something about the medical drama series Off the Map. I expected to like it because it starred Caroline Dhavernas, another Canadian actress whom I adore, and who starred in the short-lived series Wonderfalls. Unfortunately, Off the Map was simply terrible. There aren’t words to convey how bad it was. And I just noticed that you-know-who was involved in it. Shonda Rhimes. Everything she touches turns to shit.
Shonda Rhimes. Can that be her real name? or could it be Rhonda Shimes?
Wicked peedja says she grew up in Chicago, which was the best TV market in the US in that era, so she certainly had good role models.
All I can say is that the best and brightest people I worked with, began leaving the industry (and not to retire) by the mid-’80’s. What is left working in the industry is a much lower common denominator.
You cannot ‘fine-tune’ programs with ratings info; that is a job for focus testing. But I am the only one I was ever around who used focus testing for anything but providing a rigged confirmation that they were doing a good job. One of the reasons music on radio stinks sooo badly, is that in focus testing, people are presented with 3 or 4 choices and told to choose the best. The ones not chosen are then banned forever as ‘losers’, even though with a different combination of choices, they might have won. That’s why there are only about 200 songs in the Classic Rock radio repertoire. If you played no commercials, that is only 16 hours of programming; add commercials and you still do not even have a day’s worth of music. Which is why you hear the same songs over, and over, and over. Sad, really. I have over 50,000 different songs that all reached the Billboard Hot 100 top 30 from the ’50’s through the ’80’s. So there is plenty of material available.
Siskel and Ebert maintained that movie scripts were ruined by a guy who, for many decades, conducted writing workshops for people who aspired to be screenwriters. He had done some research and claimed that there were 14 plots that were the ones that always got funded and given a go for production. Over the course of the decades that guy conducted those classes, it became accepted that only those 14 plots should be turned into screenplays. By the ’90’s, and even now, only those 14 ever see the light of day.
Reducing consumer choices is the prime watchword of big business. That is obvious in every avenue of life these days.
Oh, come now, Robert. Surely even you must recognize the power, talent, and moral example of Shonda Rhimes. She’s one of the 100 people who shape the world, so your statements are clearly nothing more than sour grapes.
BTW, aside from this site being super-slow today, it never stops loading pages in my Firefox, but keeps the rotating ‘loading’ circle going eternally.
Same in fiction, at least going through agents and the big
sevensixhowever many major US publishers, with the agents not wanting to talk to a new author if his plot wasn’t on the blessed list.Similar with length – the big publishers weren’t printing novellas, so the agents refused to submit novellas to the editors (one told me she didn’t want to ruin her credibility), which led to the publishers not having any novellas to print.
I’m having no site problems, either speed or completed loading.
Firefox 20.0 on Linux, running NoScript and a handful of other privacy plugins, but allowing all scripting from this site.
One of my favorite new maps, “Texas, Not Texas”:
http://www.theredheadriter.com/2013/03/chuckle-of-the-day-texas-smile-cupid-laugh/
Wish that we could get Remington to move down here to the Great State of Texas (instead of Alabama):
http://www.gunsandammo.com/2014/03/03/gun-companies-moving/
Thought you all might like to see an image I did recently. She is our current exchange student from Norway.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Special/Malika_2.jpg
Use the URL exactly as shown as it is case sensitive.
I always agree with Chuck ….. well, mostly.
When I read it 30+ years ago, it was 12 screenplays that the screen writer had on his mantel. For example: the search with Jack Palance looking for the chalice, John Wayne looking for a kidnapped child, …. searching for the ark of the covenant, WDC searching for Assange …….
One image per personality, Ray? Or is she an elite athlete, able to sprint from pose to pose to pose, all in 1/60 of a second?
Bob and anyone else, have you tried “Sherlock” yet? English production, so no car chases just very compelling murder mysteries, and well acted as most English productions are. Available on Showcase, I don’t know about Netflix or others. I recommend searching for the first two seasons as a torrent before watching the third season.
Another one I’ve started to watch is “Vikings”, filmed in Ireland using Irish and various Scandinavian actors. The star of the show is Ragnar Lodbrok, a probably mythical Norse who is attributed with the first raids to England and France. Very well done, with excellent battle scenes.
Or is she an elite athlete, able to sprint from pose to pose to pose, all in 1/60 of a second?
Faster than that. I was using 1/250 for the shutter. I can lie like the government.
Actually, and as you probably guessed, it is three images superimposed. I line up the critical parts on the image on a base image. I then erase most of the top layer basically leaving the person. The image indicated is three layers.
Mythical? Hell, he’s my 43-times-great uncle on my mother’s side.
Barbara and I watched series one of Vikings, which was decent entertainment and not too jarring unless you know a fair amount about Viking history. I almost gagged at them presenting Viking society of the time as feudal, when in fact it was pretty much anarchistic.
Friggin daylight savings time. It’s not enough that it screws up sleep schedules, confuses people who are arranging to meet at some time and place, and all of the other annoyances DST carries with it like a cloud of flatulence. No, now it had to mess up my cooking: I’d missed changing one of our clocks this morning, which resulted in me cooking a ham an hour longer than I’d planned. I’d plant a steel-toed boot right in the ass of whoever came up with this stupid idea, but there’s no room for a boot because his head is taking up all the space.
Watched the new “Sherlock” episodes from before but I found them a tad precious and prefer the older PBS series with Jeremy Brett. Also the first season of “Vikings” which was just OK, in my book. Murderous raping piratical looters, the bunch of them. Swing them all from gibbets, I say.
Er, wait. How did we change from talking about vikings to talking about our current crop of politicians?
Friggin daylight savings time. It’s not enough that it screws up sleep schedules, confuses people who are arranging to meet at some time and place, and all of the other annoyances DST carries with it like a cloud of flatulence. No, now it had to mess up my cooking: I’d missed changing one of our clocks this morning, which resulted in me cooking a ham an hour longer than I’d planned. I’d plant a steel-toed boot right in the ass of whoever came up with this stupid idea, but there’s no room for a boot because his head is taking up all the space.
+1,000,000
Some days I wish I lived in Arizona. Or wait, let’s bring Arizona to Texas!
I saw a funny quote the other day. It was attributed to some Native American and it was his response to the concept of Daylight Saving Time. It went something like, “Only a White Man would think you could cut a foot off of the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket.” I have no idea how authentic that quote was, but I got a chuckle out of it.
‘Daylight savings time’ is a hoax. It has been demonstrated that the change causes harm to many people’s systems — including mine. Right after we moved to Germany, I got a lot of well-paying contract work in the US, so I was going back and forth regularly. After 6 years or so, that gig ended and I told Jeri after my folks passed (and before we knew she had lymphoma) that I would not be accompanying her back to the US anymore to see her parents yearly. It took me months, literally, to adjust to the time difference.
Far northern areas are the only ones who benefit from time changes. But even so, in Berlin, we already had dark until 08:00 in winter and pitch black by 16:30. Changing time meant altering that one way or the other by one hour. Whoop-tee-doo. We only had 4 hours of semi-twilight for darkness in summer — from 23:30 to 03:30. Changing that by one hour makes a real difference? Birds started chirping loudly at 03:30, so summer was never welcome in my book. Everyone left some windows open all summer long, so it was impossible to get away from the bird-squawking.
Until recently, Indiana was one of the states that never changed time, but with 99% of the rest of the world changing time, it was a pain for people both inside the state and outside. I never could remember from Berlin, how many hours difference there was at different times of the year. Then Shrub comes along and fixes it so we and Europe do not change on the same weekends. Gawd he was a pitifully awful and stupid President. If he were mean, he would have been another Hitler. Born again, my ass.
We ALL need to stop changing time.
Then Shrub comes along and fixes it so we and Europe do not change on the same weekends.
Really? Really? You are blaming the DST activation / deactivation date change up on George W. Bush? Do you have documentation that he asked for this from Congress?
Here’s the game:
A: List everything bad that has ever happened in human history.
B: Blame it on Bush.
Before that it was the legendary “Twelve Years of Reagan-Bush.”
I don’t really care; I just find it funny. In my view, they all suck. Last half-decent president we had was Cleveland.
Last half-decent Congressman was Ron Paul, and before him, Sam Ervin.
Those days are gone forever; we’re in for a world of pain now, and most of it will have little or nothing to do with DST.
Wow, I hardly notice time change, and never was much bothered by jet lag – or was it jet lead?
Seriously, I am sympathetic, and wish we didn’t tinker with time. Just change everything else.
Really? Really? You are blaming the DST activation / deactivation date change up on George W. Bush? Do you have documentation that he asked for this from Congress?
Yeah, I’ll let you do the research, because there is plenty of it. It was part of Bush’s activity to make it look like he was doing something in light of 9-11. Bush announced in speeches of that time they were his ideas.
I blame everything on stupid Presidents, and Bush takes the cake in my lifetime. Were there a Hell, I would wish for him to roast in it. Iraq alone has caused enough misery and death that it makes his ‘born again’ claims clear lies. He gladly stomped on our treaties with Europe regarding the time change. Bush makes even Jimmy Carter look good. And let’s face it, there has been no Republican president or candidate since Barry Goldwater that has had an ounce of sense, and that includes Ron Reagan. Reagan failed to deliver on his economic promises regarding our currency, and proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that ‘trickle down’ was actually ‘trickle up’. What a hoax!
I don’t really care; I just find it funny. In my view, they all suck. Last half-decent president we had was Cleveland.
I am gaining more and more respect for Richard Nixon everyday. He was the last President trying to rein in the civilian and military bureaucracies.
I saw a funny quote the other day. It was attributed to some Native American and it was his response to the concept of Daylight Saving Time. It went something like, “Only a White Man would think you could cut a foot off of the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket.” I have no idea how authentic that quote was, but I got a chuckle out of it.
Just saw that on Jeff Foxworthy also.
And another from Foxworthy, “If you didn’t have to update your clock this weekend because you didn’t change it in the fall…” (yes, you are a redneck):
https://www.facebook.com/iamJeffFoxworthy/posts/635364613185256?stream_ref=10