Barkerburgh

Spielberg, Lucas, CGI-porn dumbasses (including Spielberg and Lucas, fer Christ’s sake), take a lesson, fer Christ’s sake. Yeah, there was CGI, but CGI in service to the story, not instead of a story, and it was a buddy-movie, it was a love story, and it, without pissing on them, referenced films like 2001 and Silent Running, and I don’t remember what. Pardon my Klatchian.

FACT! The two main characters of ‘Fringe’ are Americans played by Australian actors!

FACT! The title character of ‘The Mentalist’ is an American played by an Australian actor!

FACT! The main character of ‘The Glades’ is an American played by an Australian actor!

FACT! Two of the main characters of ‘Without a Trace’ are Americans played by Australian actors!
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There are strange parallels to the clever plot detailed in this documentary!

The commercial window shattering anarchists at Toronto’s G20 were in fact in the pay of an international cabal of glaziers. No other explanation, because nobody could be that fucking stupid for real.

Finally saw Indiana Jones and the KIngdom of the Crystal Skull. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, sit on your hands. Now. No new movies until you come up with an original idea. New characters, new plots, new scenes that aren’t ripped-off pseudo-homages to our own works or others’. Certainly it’s true that in the great wide world of all kinds of SF&F, it’s all been done, but if it’s not what you do anymore, in any subgenre, for any age group, in any style, it is certainly how you do it. Do better. Or do nothing.

Cool terms I stumbled across in Wikipedia; lazarus taxon, zombie taxon, Elvis taxon, and the always fun Signor-Lipps Effect. All of which q.v.

Just call me

This was around 5:00pm yesterday. I had left Peter and Leslie’s and was about ten houses south of their home, when I saw a young woman looking up at a porch just as I heard an elderly female’s voice saying “I need help! There’s two sick people in this house.” She was quite elderly, frail, and as it turned out, and not surprisingly, very hard of hearing. One eye was bloodshot and wider than the other one. Standing out on the porch, she was wearing only a light shirt and thin pants on a chilly damp day.

I asked the expected, usual questions. She eventually told me that her husband was upstairs, sick, and asleep.

I asked her if I could come in and she said yes. The house was clean and smelled fine, although all the lights were off. (She wasn’t wearing glasses, but didn’t seem to have any vision difficulties.)

Not wanting to take any chances, I called 911 on my cell. The operator asked what service I required, I said ambulance (thinking paramedics, but I was nervous as hell) and I was transferred to a very competent, helpful, and reassuring woman.

The house is small, compact, and the only stairs were actually off the kitchen, which is somewhat unusual. It took me a minute to find. I was worried about her husband. Even though I was trying my best to help, I really felt that I was invading her privacy. I felt like I was snooping.

The operator told me that an ambulance had been dispatched and could I stay around to wait and fill them in. I know bastards who would run. (True story.) I’m not a bastard. (True story.)

The operator was asking me questions to ask the elderly lady, and the lady was asking maundering, meandering questions. I was worried about her state-of-mind, her husband, and what state he might be in to have triggered her anxiety.

I got upstairs and found two bedrooms. Both, spartanly furnished, were empty of any husband. I told this to the operator who asked me to double check, so I did. Definitely no sick husband. The elderly lady was concerned and dismayed that there was nobody up there. But there was a kind of unsettling disingenuousness to her reaction, like she was remembering she already knew that, but didn’t want to admit it.

I have more than a little experience with different forms of dementia, ranging from three grandparents whose decay I either witnessed or was victim of, through a dear friend with glioma, and another dear friend’s swift sharp mental decay due to cancer painkillers– he wasn’t there at the end, he just wasn’t. Yet another dear friend is dealing with her own father’s decline. But her mother’s still a spitfire.

We went back downstairs because I wanted to meet the paramedics and explain the situation.

He (one guy with a truck full of really cool shit; sorry) arrived promptly and I gave the situation over to him, because, let’s face it, he knew what he was doing.

He told me it was okay to go. I dithered a moment, feeling somewhat responsible, but basically he was in charge, so I left.

Having got up yesterday morning at 7:30 to go babysitting, I didn’t get to sleep again until well after 5:00am today. Does anyone know if there’s a way to follow up these sorts of things?

There’s another story about me recently helping an elderly person, but I’m still writing it up.

so for Kirk Cameron.