Wednesday, September 09, 2009

And Then There's This.

Current clothes: Blue t-shirt with a vaguely tie-dye-ish sort of pattern. Blue jeans. White socks. Gray sneakers.

Current mood: A little "aargh, I've got stuff to do today and I'm not actually getting up and doing it!" Must rectify that as soon as I'm finished here.

Current music: Not much lately. I was listening to stuff from The Darwin Song Project on YouTube last night.

Current annoyance: Oh, there are so many small but annoying things... Like, I broke the carafe to my coffee machine yesterday, and apparently it's impossible to just buy one to replace it. I had to make do with a "universal" carafe that's got a huge attachment that screws onto the lid to make the automatic stop thingy work, but the damned thing cost half as much as the machine, and it's horrible. I spilled water all over the counter this morning. Clearly, I'm going to have to buy a new coffeepot. (And, yes, I'm definitely going to go with a brand that offers more replacement parts. And hopefully also has a more accurate clock. Seriously, how hard is it to put a decent clock on something in the 21st century?) This bothers me not just because it's costing me attention and money, but also because the obvious end result of this kind of thing is that America will eventually become one giant landfill full of perfectly functional coffeemakers.

Current thing: My current "thing" is supposed to be taking action on all kinds of stuff -- mostly home improvement and health-related -- that I've been putting off forever. But it's going pretty slowly. It is going, though. Today, I've got plumbers coming in to replace the bathroom and kitchen faucets, since the former is all corroded and the latter is a bit leaky. I'm also going to put together the new cat tree thingy I just got. It took the cats about four years to destroy the old one. I'm kind of hoping this one lasts longer.

Current desktop picture: An artist's rendering of wall-to-wall bookshelves that a co-worker stumbled across and immediately passed on to me. Again, I have no idea why he thought of me. Heh. It's really cool, but I don't know where he got it from, so I can't link to it.

Current book: Alien Hand Syndrome and Other Too-Weird-Not-to-Be-True Stories by Alan Bellows. I got this for free from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. It's basically a collection of strange and interesting stuff: medical oddities, freakish disasters (natural and man-made), historical curiosities, etc. I have to say, it's one of the best examples of this sort of thing that I've read, on or off the internet. I'm enjoying it.

Current song in head: "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" by The Killers.

Current DVD in player: Disc 3 of season one of Burn Notice. This is one of those shows that I always kind of meant to tune in for and never really got around to, but I've finally started watching it on DVD. I pretty much fell in love with it right from the very first line of narration in the very first episode, and am now devouring episodes as if they were M&Ms.

Current refreshment: Nothing. I should go make some tea to fortify myself for assembling cat furniture.

Current worry: Eh, all the usual crap.

Current thought: But there's a cat on my lap! I can't get up and do stuff if there's a cat on my lap!

6 comments:

  1. Burn Notice keeps getting better, imo. This past season (or season half, or whatever: cable is weird), I liked how they even referenced back to Gabrielle Anwar's disappeared Irish accent.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I mentioned to someone yesterday that I thought Burn Notice was not very deep, but a heck of a lot of fun, and was told that it does get a bit deeper,or at least a bit darker and more complex, later on. So that'll be something to look forward to!

    And that accent thing is just odd. The one she's using now sometimes sounds extremely American, and sometimes sounds like a weird mish-mash of I don't know what. I strongly suspect that someone behind the scenes watched the pilot episode and said, "Oh, god, that accent is way too distracting! Better lose it." But at least it does make perfect sense in character terms for her accent to change at will. And it's nice to know that that won't be forgotten about. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, Anwar is British, so both accents were put-ons, but do I think her Irish had just a wee bit too much Lucky Charms about it. Certainly, though, I think it was a network decision to drop it and then never again (until just recently) make reference to it. (That Fiona learned her bomb-making skills in the IRA doesn't get a lot of play, in general.) Then again, if you hadn't seen the pilot, I don't know if her American accent would sound anything other than ordinary.

    I do like how, still, both clips of Fiona speaking in the opening credits are her speaking from that first episode.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm very sensitive to accents, in general, so I'm pretty sure I would have noticed something odd about hers even if she'd had it from the beginning. I've actually been wondering whether Anwar's deliberately layering in a tiny hint of Irish under the American; it sort of sounds like it to me. And likely her own accent is subtly creeping in now and again to confuse matters.

    So far in season 1, by the way, they have referenced her IRA background a number of times.

    All that having been said, though, I don't in fact disagree that the original Irish accent was a bit... much. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. May I suggest a cuisinart coffee amker with a metal caraffe? It costs more, but the caraffe is meproof and you can get a replacement one if somehow you manage to damage it. Plus it stays warm in teh caraffe and doesn't get all bitter from heat warming on the element.
    I heart my coffee maker...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well, I just went out and bought a Mr. Coffee, because those seem pretty easy to find replacement carafes for. But, y'know, a metal one doesn't sound like a bad idea. We used to have one of those at the office. Well, maybe next time. Because I'm sure, eventually, there will be a next time.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.