Living In the World, Not on It

First, let me thank those who played last week and who took The Patrck’s Place Survey . I appreciate your input. If you haven’t taken it, please do so: it’s a short survey and it will help me continue to improve the blog and make sure it’s delivering what you want. The big news late this week that ABC is killing two of the few remaining soap operas on the air is inspiring this week’s set of questions. You don’t have to be a soap fan to play along, because the general theme is television rather than, specifically, soap operas! So grab your remotes and get ready to answer six quick questions! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a...

I love watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation . It's a great show, lots of interesting story lines, and it has gotten to have a lighter side. However, the latest show, which aired on 11/04, was really quite disturbing. Someone was cheerfully chopping up vegetables, a credit card and put an ear - a human ear - into the New England clam chowder. Umm... eeeiiiuuwwww? Seriously? Really? And - as if all of this wasn't gross enough - the cheerful chopper then feeds it to someone who is bound, missing his ear, and has his mouth clamped open to ingest his ear, credit card and... New England clam chowder. Where do they find this gem? In a huge container, you know, a truck container that contained a ton of shredded person along with garbage. Yum... So my question is, what came first? Did someone go traipsing through the gazillions of case files that police deal with to find this delightful little tale? Or did someone on the television writing crew come up with this? I think I'd feel...

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Probably the only animated movie I don't want to buy. We got it from NetFlix and I managed to sit through it but this was not my kind of movie. It started out sort of okay and went (surprisingly) downhill from a rather inauspicious beginning. It got dopier. I normally love animated movies but this one was more for kids than adults. Shrek was brilliant - kids could sit through it but this was definitely great for adults, too. The snide commentary fit in and wasn't obvious to children but allowed all age groups to find it entertaining. Certainly Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles and Cars fit into this category. In fact, most animated movies are geared to be appealing to all ages. This movie did not make it into this category, at least not for me. Bolt started out kind of boring, but once he arrived in New York City and met up with Mittens, the smart-ass street cat, it improved considerably and I will at some point own it. I will never own Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ...

I was enthralled by CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which has exceeded all of my expectations. I was not a huge fan of Lawrence Fishbourne (not his acting ability as much as the genre of characters and movies; he played angry people or just plain scary ones) and while a show should be good enough on its own merits to survive a major character change, very often it doesn't work out. In this case, though, parting with Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle), Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) was good for the show and I was tired of the drama in the characters, the loss of William Peterson as Gil Grissom was really a rather unpleasant surprise. I really was not sure how it would work out. As it happens it has worked out beautifully. Yes, I do miss the humour of Gil Grissom; but the producers did not replace William Peterson with another William Peterson or another Gil Grissom and this often is where shows fatally stumble. Instead, Lawrence Fishbourne brings his own wonderful quirks to the character and has...

Week Number 155 1) What is the cause that you believe is the most worthy of all? World peace? Oh, wait, wrong thing... I don't know. Many of them are very worthy, and who am I to say that one is more so over another? 2) How would you change the way you were disciplined as a child? I wouldn't. My parents never struck me and I didn't grow up to knock over a bank or pick up a drug habit. I also was never told, "If you do this, you will have to leave" or anything like that. My parents also told me that when I was ready to have sex to bring the man home, so that things could not get out of hand, I could just yell for them. I tell you now I had the best parents I could ask for. 3) What is your greatest virtue? Vice? I am not sure that I have any... certainly not patience... Um, honesty. I may keep to myself what I need to but I never sugarcoat or lie to the employees, the patients, my family and/or friends. I think being up front is a good quality. Vice... whew. How muc...

I've done nothing of any real value today, but some days are like that. I'm starting think I lead a boring life. Maybe I do... I suppose it has its dull moments. I watched a couple of things, but I'm back to watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , the original show. I enjoy Gil Grissom, played by William Peterson, who has left the show. I also like Cameron Dye, who was in one episode, from the third season, called Jackpot . I decided to watch it, although I did begin the first episode on Disc Two of Season Three called Fur and Loathing . That was amusing enough to watch again. I actually was delighted when this episode aired and I saw the name of Cameron Dye in the opening credits. I remember him from a favourite movies in the 80s called Valley Girl . Cameron Dye played Nicholas cage's sidekick in this movie and he was just adorable, so I was dying to see him around 20 years later. Maybe more. He is still good looking and plays an interesting character, the Sheriff of...

...do I live under? It seems that of late I have had too much drama of the bad kind in my life. (I wonder if that is proper English usage... is all drama inherently bad or is it just serious, but can be good? I don't know. Stuff like this prays on my mind.) Anyhoo... too much bad drama. It isn't necessarily my own drama, it is a lot of things: 1. One parent has had a second hip replacement (ultimately a good thing, but still worrying and stressful while in progress) 2. One parent has had multiple strokes and is in the acute-care facility still (and not happy about it) 3. One parent has had to put one of his two cats to sleep and is wrecked by it (keep in mind I've two fathers) 4. I had to put my second cat to sleep exactly three and a half months after putting the first one to sleep 5. I'm a little on the broke side 6. Now I've been sick (I will live; something I've ingested pissed off my stomach enough that I have vomited and the diarrhea has been appalling. I...

This was a good weekend! Yesterday I was up around 0630, really got out of bed closer to 0800, had breakfast, then got in the shower, dressed and picked up my mother around 1230 to visit Ray. I had his shirts and had stopped at the store to get him some crackers the previous night. We left ten minutes later and got to the rehab place around 1245. We took Ollie and went outside to a small area that they had for the "inmates", and Ma and I sat in the plastic chairs, and Ray sat on the wall. The chairs were too low - when one has hip surgery, one is supposed to sit higher than the level of their knees, but not lower. The chairs would be okay for someone 5'10" but not 6'4" with long legs, like Ray. He's not disproportionate like some men, with a long torso and not so long legs. Luis is a little more like that. Some guys have very long torsos, a look I don't like. Longer legs look better. Anyway, we had a nice time sitting outside and talking and then at ...

The writers' strike has created an interesting issue. They strike, production stops, and we the viewers get the short end of the stick. The writers' strike ended in mid- to late February, production began again, but most shows did not air until the end of March or mid-April. That is about four months without new viewing except for those few shows willing to air then - maybe second stringers who did not make the cut for the last season initially. Eli Stone might be one of those shows. So now as we come into the mid-May time, season finales are beginning to air. Season finales? After leaving us high and dry from our favourite shows for three to four months they still get to go off the air in May? Oh, no, no, no, I don't agree with that at all. I think we are getting the shaft for something that is not our fault. How is that fair? It isn't. I'm re-watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation now from Thursday, and it's great! In the opening scene, Grissom and David ar...

When shows air, everyone wants to see them. When shows end and show the credits, everyone wants to leave. Especially when they go to see movies. I insist on sitting through the credits. Granted, I have extra incentive now, as they list HR people at the end (or near the end, anyway) and they also list "film babies" - all the children born during the making of the movie. Now, when I watch CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on Spike, the next episode starts while the credits play from the previous episode played. What is up with that? People other than actors and writers work very hard to make these shows happen. Electricians, sound people, stage hands, you name it. These are all major components of making any show, whether it is telly, movies, an advert (gods help me for saying that , you know how I feel about adverts...), whatever. The people behind the scenes make that as much possible as the front line staff. Not reading the credits is just wrong. And besides, they have Human Re...

I'm actually watching 60 Minutes . The show, the story part, not just Andrew Rooney. I'm crazy about him and the more I read his book, the more I like him and find him enjoyable. He looks at life a lot like I do. But back to this. On this 60 Minutes , they are discussing the DNA process. Apparently, too many people come up with partial matches. So many alleles in common, and it is not a direct match, but it indicates a direct relationship. Twenty alleles out of 26 in common is a first line relative - parent, sibling, child. Some of the problem is "genetic surveillance" - if you get a close partial match, then the whole family will be scrutinised. Now, take the DNA database... most of the people in it are criminals. Let's face it, it makes sense that the citizenry most likely to be in the AFIS and DNA databases are people who have been through the criminal system. If you look at the largest group in prisons, it is African Americans. If this DNA thing gets out and p...

Everybody learns from science; it's what you do with it that counts. Gil Grissom said that at the end of last season's episode "I Like To Watch", a very good episode (then again, last season was one of their best seasons). And it's true. I don't know if criminals learn things that aren't meant to be life lessons from watching forensics shows. I feel that I learn a lot, but more about the inner workings of the lab, how detail-oriented the work is and how a killer's mind may work. But someone who is a serial rapist/killer doesn't think along the same lines as most people. Very often there is a history of some kind of abuse - maybe not physical but psychological or learning abnormal behaviour or thinking from someone like a parent or guardian. The wiring and the history combined may develop a person with weird fetishes - almost everyone has something a little odd or unusual that might "get them off" - or it may become a latent problem... Mo...

Well, let's have your thoughts on my 2/19/2006 entitled "Thinking About Gender": "Interesting sight.........here's a thought on your gender posting.........what is it about men and women, aside from the obvious physical things. That makes someone want to change from one gender to another? Are we really that different of creatures? I'm not attempting to answer this; just raising more questions. Are we really that different? Or is it a learned trait that we are different? Is somebody in our lives teaching us to act differently and talk differently and think differently? Couldn't most of this be psychological or sociological influences teaching us that were different (again besides the obvious physical) and there fore making us want to be somebody else? To change genders? Just a thought................." And those thoughts are what make doing this so worthwhile. I want other people to throw in their two-cents worth and argue the points with me! So let...