Month: April 2009

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Sarah Conner Chronicles fans can be strange and creepy

I admit that in some rare cases I can lose rationality when trying to be a fan of whatever I am a fan of. Be it football, a film, TV show, or music, I can sometimes seem stupid. That’s what I faced when reading the official show blog of one of my current favs – Terminator – The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Reading some of the comments from the past few episodes left me gob smacked and I hope if I ever act that way, that someone slap me upside the head. Some fans are strange and creepy.

In case you don’t know Terminator – The Sarah Conner Chronicles (aka TTSCC) is part of the Terminator movie franchise started by James Cameron with his movie Terminator in 1984. Basically humans build a defense computer called Skynet that becomes self aware and attempts to destroy humanity. It sends a Terminator (a human like cyborg) back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance. Her name is Sarah Conner. The Terminator was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

What I liked about the story was the future war and John Conner. The films showed a bit of that war and glimpes of John Conner. The TV show follows Sarah and John roughly in the time period between the 2nd and 3rd film although in the first episode they threw in a time shift to 2008, so it is on its own time line.

There are two other supporting characters. One is Cameron – a reprogrammed female Terminator sent back to protect the teen aged John Conner. The other was Derrick Reese – brother of Kyle, John’s father.

Since the story is so layered and complex I sometimes check out the show’s official website. I read the producers notes and on occasion read the blog for each episode.

Although sometimes the comments from other fans bother me.

There are different views of the show and that is okay.

You have some who want more action and less talking. There are some who want more talking and less action. There are some fans who complain about logical holes in the plot – like how did one of the Terminators make it through the time displacement without being covered with living tissue.

Then some of the fans either tick me off or creep me out.

The actress who plays Cameron – Summer Glau – has her own fan base from her previous role in the TV show Firefly and those fan think that TTSCC should focus more on Cameron. They complain if she isn’t doing anything in scenes or doesn’t have a chance to beat someone up. They seem to forget it is called The Sarah Conner Chronicles so it should focus on Sarah and John with Cameron being a supporting character.

The creepy fans are the ones who crave a relationship between John Conner and Cameron. They think the human and robot should hook up. They also complain when John and Cameron aren’t in the scene. One fan even asked when they would be kissing. Ewwwww…..

I like the show and hope it gets a 3rd season but I have to remind myself not to visit the fan site too often.

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Weekend Ear Candy: Cell Block Tango from “Chicago”

I love musicals. As a kid in school I participated in them when I could. I couldn’t sing or dance but to be around them during productions was fun. The only professional musical I’ve seen in person was “Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto 10 years ago. My favorites are “Guys and Dolls” and “Chicago”.

I liked “Chicago” because of the 1920’s vibe and and the music was great.

For this weekend’s ear candy selection I picked the song “Cell Block Tango” from the movie version. It blew me away when I saw it on the big screen.

“Cell Block Tango” from the musical Chicago

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Don’t they know what it means to Tea Bag someone?

There is this “movement” going around by rich white guys who hate change and drawing on their peons of bigots, religious zealots, and freaky militia types to protest “high taxes” and “run away” spending by the current administration of President Obama. They will be holding tea parties across the country and asking people to “tea bag” Congress – by sending them a tea bag – to harken back to the Boston Tea Party during the American Revolution. Besides being a silly protest, not to mention the funny of using “tea bagging”, it shows how inept the conservatives are and how they can’t even come up with any new ideas.

Fox News – you know the guys who are looking out for the common man – is hyping the tax protests to take place on April 15th.

Today, in our time, we need to make a similar point in the face of arrogant power. And you can, too, on April 15, when millions of Americans will gather in peaceful protest across the country, protesting against the evils of over-taxation and its wicked handmaidens, over-spending and over-regulation.

If you visit the Web site of Tax Day Tea Party, you will find plenty of information on how and where to get connected to a tea party–or how to start your own tea party.

Plenty of big names will be involved, ranging across the country. Glenn Beck will be in Texas and Newt Gingrich will be in New York City. Sean Hannity will be in Atlanta. Neal Cavuto will be in Sacramento. And many, many more–FOX News and FOX Nation folks will be providing full coverage.

Tea Parties: A Great Part of American History–And America’s Future

Of course it is a silly protest.

It is protesting the rise in taxes of those who make more than $250,000 a year. Under Obama’s plan, that segment is the only one who will see their taxes go up. But don’t let the facts get in the way of the thick heads at Fox and their peon fans.

They still think it is cool to claim that there are high taxes or run away spending but I wonder where they were when Bush demolished a budget surplus he got in 2001 and ran up a huge deficit.

Also the people at Fox and their fans still haven’t offered any evidence that “we” pay too much in taxes or that spending is running away. They just don’t like Obama and his plan. It is a simple protest against a Democrat.

What does this say about conservatives when they lose at the ballot box and they talk about “revolution”, “tea parties”, “taking the country back”, “gun ban”, and on and on and on – instead of figuring out why their message failed to gain them votes in 2008. It is a bit childish to me.

No one has proven that taxes are too high, have never offered any comparison, or why anyone should care.

I also like how people’s brains turn off when they think “tax cuts” will solve the economic crisis we are in when they didn’t help in the first place and may have actually led to the crisis in the first place.

They need to grow up and take some ownership of the problem and work on REAL solutions and stop crying in their pillows.

These “protesters” also have a problem with talking about tea bags:

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President Obama wants to continue warrantless wiretaps

In a court brief, the Justice Department called for the dismissal of a lawsuit over the wiretaps that were not only illegal but may not have even gained any unusable intelligence. This is not change I was looking for when I voted for Obama. Pundit Keith Olbermann and others on the progressive side have called the President out on this stupid action to continue President Bush’s stupid policy. In fact it seems the Obama administration wants to go further. This is disappointing.

Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com noted:

But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government’s first response to EFF’s lawsuit, the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush’s NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced even by the Bush administration — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications.

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned.

New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ

Blogger TocqueDeville has a diary over on DailyKos with video of comments from Keith Olbermann on his show Countdown on Tuesday night. TocqueDeville also notes:

I never thought I would see it, but this move led Keith Olbermann to excoriate Obama on television. You may remember that, after Obama’s complete flip flop on FISA, Olbermann, who had previously likened the proposed FISA law immunizing the telecoms to “the bureaucrats of the Third Reich”, softened his tone dramatically to accommodate the then Democratic candidate for president.

There were no such accommodations tonight

Olbermann Smacks Down Obama’s Loss of Credibility

This is pretty much like seeing your favorite hero acting like an ass in public. It hurts a bit.

The Obama administration has some explaining to do on this issue but I have my doubts it ever will.

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Advertising Unknown Outcomes

Recently I have seen commercials on TV from a particular cancer treatment center. I have no particular view point on advertising medical treatment because I see it all the time – from Doctors, Hospitals, drug companies, and other medical items. But the commercials from this treatment center just seem a bit off to me because it seems to imply they can do something that may not be possible – curing you of cancer.

The commercial starts with a woman telling her experience at a hospital and finding out they had cancer. In the two I’ve seen the women basically say “The Doctor comes in says you have cancer and leaves…” and they tell how bad they feel and how they want to do whatever it takes to beat the cancer. The implied message is the hospital or doctor they get the news from doesn’t want to help.

The first commercial I saw had the woman continue with her story by say she went to the treatment center and was given all kinds of tests and exams and she asked her new doctor how long did she have to live. She tells the camera that the doctor said she had no expiration date and he couldn’t tell just by looking at her.

Here is the text of the story that is on their website (I redacted the name of the patient, doctor, and hospital):

In July 2001, Peggy was told she had stage IV pancreatic cancer and to go home and get her affairs in order. In this video, Peggy talks about how she found hope and healing at treatment center

“After three days of testing, I looked at [the Doctor] and I said “How long do I have?” And he looked at me and said “Peggy, we did a lot of tests on you and I never saw one thing stamped on the bottom of your foot that said you were going to die in two months. You have no expiration date. That is in hands way above mine.”

It’s really unbelievable how one doctor can tell me I have two months to live, and then I got to [the center] and they offered hope.

This treatment center is making an implied promise to “cure” people of cancer.

I know that sometimes compassion is missing or in low supply in the medical field but I find it hard to take a medical facility telling a patient that if you use us you have a better chance to not dying from cancer.

I just don’t think more compassion or telling patients what they want to hear – rather than the truth – is good business especially for someone with cancer. I also don’t think any hospital or Doctor would not do everything to treat cancer if they can. If they didn’t then one could claim malpractice.

Cancer isn’t some monolith disease where one fix takes care of it – if it were then there might not be any cancer in the world. Sometimes treatment works, sometimes it works for awhile, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. The outcome is based on the cancer, the person, and how soon it is discovered.

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