Entries Tagged 'TV' ↓

Dear Xbox Recommendation Algorithm,

Remember when you told me I’d love Legend of Korra based on my love of Adventure Time, and how I’d really dig Sengoku Basara and I was all “Dude, you know it”? I really loved you, and how you dug deep to find stuff most people wouldn’t even know about. I remembered working for Hollywood Video and how the algorithm then, Zoltar, just didn’t get it. He was all “Hey you like Snakes on a Plane and Big Trouble in Little China? You should watch The Notebook and Dragon Wars!”

You were different. You understood.

But today, I see a note from you that says I should watch The High Fructose Adventures of the Annoying Orange.

I don’t know if you’re cheating on me and left that note for someone else, got sick of me and didn’t know how to say it, or just don’t get me anymore. But I’m dumping you. I can forgive Cat Planet Cuties and Squid Girl, but Annoying Orange?

Sorry. It’s over.

The Big Bang Theory should end with Leonard marrying Priya and Penny realizing that she’s been in love with Raj the whole time. She dated Leonard as an attempt to break her cycle of dating pushy alpha male types while desiring a gentle, quiet partner who would listen to her for once, but Leonard wasn’t a viable option. The meek Raj allows her to take control and have no concerns over infidelity as with past partners, at least when sober. To ensure that he never regains his drunken confidence, the two convert to Mormonism at their wedding.

I think I really like My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic. It has a surprising amount of amusement quality and adorability, without being a girl-show. Lauren Faust, who worked on Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends is behind this show, explaining a TON about the quality of the content.

But all this means now I have to confess to not only totally loving Lady Gaga and Fashion Police, but My Little Pony. I know the American male is supposed to have a very fragile concept of his own gender and sexuality, especially if you ask women. But damn it, this show is great. Yes, it’s My Little Pony. But it also had a motherfucking MANTICORE show up.

This show needs watched more often. By everyone. It’s so good it had to be banned from 4chan and SomethingAwful’s discussion, lest it take over again. That’s all the endorsement I needed!

I’m talking to you, MSNBC. It’s not a “special New Years Eve marathon of Lockup” when New Years Eve is on a Friday. The same day you always run Lockup for hours upon hours. Just like you have for some inexplicable reason this whole damn week, rather than rebroadcasting anything like you normally would. What airtight contract exactly did the production company get that makes you run the entire series at least twice a month? And if there isn’t one, what the fuck are you airing this for still, along with the rest of the terrible weekend programming?

In the “this is not news” category, local Fox affiliate is doing a recap of their favorite videos of the year. Oh, and it’s with awful clown car music. Nope. Nothing annoying here. No need for the original sound or context of the video at all, let’s just play some awful circus music and run the videos at double speed instead. And they did for several minutes. I don’t know who just put together the video recap footage that aired at 9:45 pm tonight, but I hope they didn’t get paid for it.

Running all the footage at 2x+ speed is annoying enough, playing awful clown car music just turned it from a bad waste of airtime into the desire to shove pencils in my ears to provide some relief.

Instead, I turned the channel and wrote a complaint letter; I’m not sure I’ll ever turn back to the local Fox news, for fear of someone deciding to go for a sequel.

If you have a monopoly, what’s the best way to make more money? Why, to try to compete with another monopoly’s product by changing your own, of course!

That’s how TV executives think. CBS, for example, owns Monday Night. Great for them, stick with it, keep the ratings, right? Oh. No? Take your best show and move it to the spot with the most competition on Thursday night, and add one of the anticipated shows to that same timeframe, ensuring both get lower ratings and less revenue than they would have where they started? That makes perfect sense!

Idiots.

People cannot watch two things at once. Granted, they can generally record two things, but when you move to say, Thursday, you’re going up against three things as is. Two shows are NOT getting watched. At most, you’re going to have an equal amount of viewers to what you had on the previous night, more likely you have less. Less viewers, less ad revenue. What’s the point of this gamble, again? You won’t come out ahead, you’ll likely come out as a loss. It might feel nice to take away viewers from the competition, but they’re doing the exact same to you, and now you’re potentially giving up the night you own, at least that slow. Lost viewers there, less profits for you.

A lot more piracy, though. If you can’t just record the show you want, afterall, and it’s not on DVD, why not just download it? Do consider that one, networks executives.

Not according to the jingle. Those folks forgot the last “s.” Really. They sing “one eight-hundred em ay tee tee arr-eee esssss” repeatedly.

You’d think a jingle writer would get it right. I mean, the company name is right in front of him isn’t it? On his desk, with the proposal and what the company wants.

“1-800-Mattress wants their phone number included three times, and the company name twice”, for example. But nope. He was clueless, and the end result is a commercial with the misspelled jingle and a note below the phone number.

“Drop the last S for savings.”

I can’t make this shit up.

It turns out the hardest part of not having a television (due to the sound outputs failing) isn’t not watching TV. Nor is it inconsistent access to one’s console video games, though that too perturbs when the Ace Combat bug bites.

Rather, it’s the silence. Even when I’m playing games on PC I tend to have the TV tuned into MSNBC during the non-Lockup hours, or Cartoon Network/Comedy Central late at night, when a man gets his Futurama/Daily Show/Venture fix. I absolutely Ozymandias when I’m working, and while I can set something playing via Hulu or Netflix instant queue, it’s just not the same. For one, the speakers are a shared resource. For two, I don’t have speakers. Well, I do now, rather had to get them as falling asleep whilst wearing headphones in bed just doesn’t end well. But that means two active sound devices, splitting audio sources, etc. Pain in the ass.

I also keep thinking “It’s too quiet. I’ll turn on the TV”, or I glance over and notice the darkness in the entertainment center, indicating a lack of powered televisions. Then I notice I can see into the entertainment center, indicating there IS no TV, after I reach for the damned remote which isn’t there anymore.

I’m annoyed by a lack of constant news input, but looking for streaming options. I’m more annoyed by the overall silence, which my brain actively protests by constantly reminding me “It’s too quiet. It’s too quiet. It’s too quiet” as I try to work.

I need to lighten the picture unfortunately, of all the pics I took, the clearest was the darkest for some reason, and you can’t see the grey/awesome Jeffersonish sideburn curve even. But for that I have to spend 4 hours reinstalling CS4.

Until then, this is good enough!

I totally need to Photoshop in a blood eye, too.

I never thought I’d really learn anything from MSNBC’s weekend programming that would be of use. You know how it is, right? Lots of sensationalist fluff pieces about various kidnappings and murders combined with 12 straight hours of Lockdown a day. Okay, aside from some prison terminology and culture, and the “holy shit, prisons in the rest of the world treat you like a human being because they’re not for profit” realization of the international episodes, you don’t pick much up.

Turns out, though, that sometimes things you didn’t expect to need in your life are useful. Today, I had to take a birdbath.

A birdbath, in prison, is where you don’t want to use the communal showers, so you use your sink, usually with some tubing if you’ve got it to direct water onto you. If not, a cup, some rags, whatever you’ve got does the job. I had some washrags and some towels, which I set on the floor beside my shower.

Why, you ask? Because somewhere in the last day, a clog went vesuvian. I can tell by the lint and hair that stuck on the bodywash scrubber thing, which is about a meter off the surface of the tub, and these were on the upper half. The rest of the tub was laden with stubble that had made it down a sink drain, and hair that had made it down…well, I guess any drain. So, “YUCK” is the keyword here, and as much as I wanted to clean it, I had class in an hour. No time to properly clean a tub that bad. Not to mention the potential a clog still lurked, waiting to come up any of three possible exits in the house, or to simply not let the shower drain properly, thus submerging my feet in nastywater.

Oops.

So today, I took a birdbath. Getting the soap and water on is pretty easy, frankly. Getting the soap off, that’s the part that takes time. You don’t really feel particularly cleaned, but hey, next time I’ll get a stool and go full Japanese bathhouse on it. Today I made due, and I did pretty well.

Tomorrow, though, I’m going to scrub like I’ve never scrubbed before. After drain snaking the shower, of course, to remove what clog may be left. Ick.