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coffee and tv
Feb. 11th, 2003 01:18 pmWell, that was a craptastic weekend. Partially self inflicted, though mostly not, I spent three days feeling like I was been beaten up by three burly men (and I know of what I speak) and the fourth day was just spent whimpering. Today I'm in green-skinned zombie mode, enlivened only by sudden dashes to the loo and swearing at my PC, so well behaved this morning but now co-workers are in, so not. Suspect networking problem and not my incompetence to blame for constant PC failures, as generally thought, as I have observed this behaviour everyday for months now.
So, anyways, Thursday, me staying back to upload stuff late into the night, as instructed. Me surfing web inbetween uploads as am not being paid overtime or time in lieu, but web is v.slow and am far too cranky to write, though I write some. Mostly Chris and Ezra, sorry. But hey, it was working for me. As I've missed all of my fave programs and it's still light, I decide to walk home. Alas I'd sprayed my feet thoroughly that morning as all these route marches having been taking their toll, only I forgot and as I slipped and slid in my shoes over the first two hills I knew I was in trouble. Five clicks later and I staggered home squishing in my own blood. An emergency bath in salt water and being bound up entirely unlike, but it sure felt like it, a Chinese noblewoman of the 19thC I hobbled to my cell. No matter, I'd also started violent cramps so I was going to be bedridden for two days at least anyway. And what a fun turn it was. Some pass in ways I can manage, like last month. Yes, I relied on the chocolate of friends and made my hotel bed look like a crime scene, to my total embarressment, but at least I was up and halfway functional.
Not this time. This was the crawl into bed and hold on to the sides tightly and just pray for it to be over mode. Cramps bad enough to throw me about - from getting too dehydrated while walking no doubt. The usual exorist deal, projectile vomiting, foul temper and a headache that made just resting on the pillow an agony to scream about, never mind opening the eyes, turning the head or responding to questions - but I stoically didn't scream, just told people to Get. Out.
I had to get up on Sunday, all green skinned and sweating, because a friend was in town for one day only, so it was off for coffee. Fortunately she was bubbly enough to hold the conversation on her own, with me grunting occassionally, though I really tried hard to be human. Crawled into a taxi after waving goodbye, made it as far as the couch and collapsed there for a few hours as a staging base before heaving off to my bed. Monday and today much the same, though I am heroically at work, looking ill enough for people to insist I go home. Always satisfying to show up looking really ill so there's no doubt that I wasn't off having fun somewhere (wish Sunday had been more fun, technically it was, but I was so bloody unwell I barely remember it). Unfortunately three days off means medical certificate and given a choice between work and the local Dr's office, work wins, everytime.
TV viewing: there was some, in between passing out.
Friday: Stargate and Homicide. Stargate was Bane, the dumb bug one with the kid who becomes the annoying version of Cassandra. Jack and Harry actually have a stand of, rather than flirting - thankyou. Teal'c ends up covered in cotton wool and this episode was apparently brought to you by the makers of super soaker tm. Homicide, I can't really remember the episode, I think it was about a well connected suspect using all her cards to get off the hook. I'm sure I enjoyed it, I always do.
Saturday: Slept through Dark Angel and Angel. Woke up for Andromeda (something about Rommie and Byers running down tunnels) then slept again until I was shaken awake by another cramp, but just in time to watch Stargate again, this time it's Enigma, the first episode with the snooty Tollan (heh, Karma) and Daniel acting like a snotty little brother as far as scotching any chance of Sam getting some goes. Hmmm...could Serial Killer Danny be behind The Carter Curse? Things that make you go hmmm. I mean, it's not like Daniel or even Jack are immune, afterall. Could Daniel's temporary state of incoporality be evidence of...ew, no, squick. Consider me OTP but Sam/Daniel is just too much like incest, to my mind. They're way too sibling-like for any off screen hanky panky, real or imagined.
Sunday: Hornblower and the death of Archie in a scene so close to my infamous death fic that some friends accused me of giving TPTB ideas. Well, heh, I do love a romantic self sacrificing death scene. How very pre-raphaelite of the little bugger.
After that I caught the last hour of Zulu, which I haven't seen for years but which I'd wanted to see because I'd seen the painting in the art gallery again and it was so obviously an influence in Two Towers. And Sharpe, too, I noted, somewhat bemused. Great movie. PC freaks can howl, but for once I'll say history be damned, it's a cracking good movie.
Actually I'm really enjoying my new movie package, especially access to the classics. All through the late 80s and early 90s I was working all day and attending uni all night and writing essays all weekend. I used to keep the tv on for background noise, as no one ever respected my need for quiet (so I can't work now without a radio secreted upon my person) and occasionally I'd allow myself the one single pleasure of putting aside my books and papers and watching a movie for an hour or two, and as I had no money to see anything recent, not even to rent, I made do with old old movies from 1920-1970, which was all they showed. So I love old movies and I have this weird thing where I'm very well versed in old movies but draw a blank on stuff from the 80s and 90s, unless it pops up on cable, now. This is why my dvd collection overflows with cheap $5-10 dvds: Audrey, Cary, Fred, et al. It's all good.
Then it was Queen of Swords which featured Pete being very, very Methos and oooh, didn't the muses just rise up and whisper in my ear. Too bad I fell asleep (sheepish grin).
Monday and I was ill, ill...Illya. By uncanny coincidence, TCM are showing not one but two U.N.C.L.E. movies: The Spy With My Face and Helicopter Spies. No great shakes in either plots or acting, and wherever those globetropping UNCLE boys go (much like the hugely over-rated Alias), it always looks like Los Angeles, especially the barely disguised Griffith Observatory, giving me my first certified UNCLE 'been there' as I'd walked exactly where Napoleon was hiding from the THRUSH baddies. Note that in the 60s there weren't big houses all the way up to the door of the GO. Never mind the cheap sets (to be seen later that night in Roswell and Buffy), it's Illya and Napoleon and I'm in heaven.
Krycek was in the X Files again - he's always in the X Files when I'm off sick, by happy fluke, then I slept until Buffy and the most impressive storm I've seen in a while. It certainly had the birds in a panic (all the cockatoos drop by now, this is what I get for having a friendly chat with one of the ex-pet members of their tribe). I paused to watch it as I slammed down all the windows and the lightning was just marching up towards the house like something out of a Big Movie. Hundreds of groundstrikes, yikes. Lost reception halfway through Buffy, but I know the episode off by heart (Angelus is raising demons) so no biggie.
Then it was some reading, Roswell (six degrees of Roswell and Grange Hill with the introduction of Brody) with dear Buddha Boy, then...
24! 24! 24! 24! It's back and any gleeful attempts to spoil it for me this time around will be met with MA rated violence, I promise you. Jack's back, all moddy and dangerous. Yay. I'm so glad. I was missing Kiefer so bad I sat through several good, bad and indifferent movies over the weekend, being to ill to bother with a vcr or dvd. Cowboy Up I liked, weirdly, and Pete Postlethwaite was in it (he was also in the Duellists, which I watched again). Not a bad film, the Kiefer one, pretty standard Hallmarky-fare, but I liked it. Anyways, 24, yes, good. Kim is still an idiot trouble magnet - blondes, I swear, what are you gonna do? - and Dennis is back as The President. This being fantasy, he's an American President who can lay claim to at least half a brain cell :p.
There was supposed to be something shocking in the first episode, I'll assume that was Jack shooting the witness at point blank range and fetching up with his head in lieu of choccies and flowers to get in sweet with the local ne'er do wells. Well, first up, who cares about the civil rights of Americans when they don't care about the rights of anybody else (excuse me while I rant bastard bastard bastard over the US Ambassador who dares to tell the Labor party not to speak against the war. It's called freedom of speech and democracy you shit, and stop interfering in my government. Aw hell, they make me so mad, but I digress). Miranda this, you arsehole. So, Americans violating civil rights, oh, wow, never seen that before. As for Jack being ruthless and violent, yay, bring it on. Kiefer does it so well and he's supposed to be a samurai like character, anyways. Does this mean I can go back to having my characters nicely vicious and ultraviolent? Cause I'm tired of being told I'm too intense and I have problems. Just because my main experience with men involves being dragged into back alleys and beaten, and not fluffy white carpets in big houses with spa baths, this somehow makes my work, what? I just write what I know, honey, and I don't know these milksop 'men' you write of. The men I know are mean and brutish, just for the heck of it, sometimes. That's not to say they can't be sweet and concerned too, at times, but it's a yin yang thing, part and parcel of the package. They are men. Men like to hit things, that's how they reason. I think Kiefer embodies this perfectly as Jack Bauer and I'd like to use this as tacit permission to write my men rough n tough again. Hell, you might even get another Sharpe out of me.
After that, the first episode of season seven for Buffy. Again, any deliberate attempt to spoiler me, other than those I fall across myself, will be met with a lot of glaring and pouting. So, a new school, a new principal and a Scrappy gang for Dawn. Sigh. Retro or retread, I've yet to decide. At least I've spoilt myself enough to know where the teaser set in Instanbul (was Constantinople..) is going. Mad, pitiful Spike I like, I like lots. James draws upon his theatre background to chew the scenery nicely, mercifully pulling back from going too over the top. What is it with Joss and mad, mumbling characters? There's a thesis there, but maybe later. Throw in a few Shakespearean archetypes and you get the idea. The shape shifting villain revealed at the end, while showy, was a crowd pleaser nevertheless as we count backwards through the lesser big bads of recent years to the earlier evil doers who totally rocked: The Mayor, The Master, the guys who got the best lines if nothing else. I'm wondering if this shapeshifting ancient evil is the same shapeshifting force that so haunted and tormented Angel in A Very Buffy Christmas? Are we revisting that dangling plotline at last or are we just having a recycled bad guy? No, don't tell me, but I do wonder, as it allegedly brought Angel back for the apocalypse of the week, supposedly happening over on Angel (I was just looking for Wes pics, honest). Now don't tell me, I'm just wondering out loud. It was amusing though to hear Buffy speak of her first slaying though, having seen that scene that very afternoon. And again that night. What can I say, I was up all night being sick and I might as well watch repeats of Angel and Krycek while I'm being miserable as not.
Bauer, Spike and Larabee. Do I see a pattern here? Maybe I'd have more of a chance of experiencing fluffy white carpets and men who wait on you hand and foot if I was less attracted to, um, intense guys. Still, this thing for moody, selfish guys, it's in the genes. I was, afterall, born two days early because Dad sent Mum down to the pub for another slab of beer in the blistering heat. Mum has never forgiven me.
