Thursday night was an interesting night at work. We had numerous very close calls with tornadoes forming and never quite touching down in Fort Smith and the surrounding areas. At one point, I was asked to ditch what I was doing and go outside with a camera on my shoulder to see if I could catch some of this action. Unless a flash of lightning helped, I wasn’t going to see crap with that camera, but what the hell, it’s a bit of excitement. So I stood outside, rolled the tape, and aimed at the sky.

A little side note about tornadoes: I’m scared to death of them. Really. My real life up-close-and-personal experiences with them have only cemented that, from my very earliest tornado experiences to the “big one” in 1996. I’m fascinated by them, I’ve tried to educate myself on how and why they happen to try to get rid of some of that fear, and it hasn’t really helped, because all I’ve learned is that they’re an unavoidable, unstoppable force of nature that’ll kill you mighty dead if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and probably destroy you home and everything in it too. It’s rather difficult not to fear that. Continue Reading »

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Not that there isn’t much to report tonight, but there’s a lot of nasty weather going on right now - tornadoes all over the place. Obviously, I’ll get back to you later; I’m in the studio shooting stuff for the inevitable “we done good!” promo.

EDIT @ 9pm: Actually caught a funnel cloud forming in the air tonight - sadly, I got inside with the tape from my camera and found that it was just too dark to pick out. We’ll still under the gun - the worst is yet to come!

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Now if this isn’t the coolest damn idea anyone ever had for a photo - today’s total solar eclipse of large swaths of the eastern hemisphere…as seen from the International Space Station. Beware, below the “more” click lies a 260K flash video clip.

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News flash - I fit into my good jeans again. I haven’t really been actively dieting of late, but I have been trying to work on finding alternatives to some of the stuff that I do habitually eat and drink (seen in this previous entry) so that I’m not shoveling gobs of sugar and other crap by the ton. Today, I got a premature wake-up call to report to the farm (still no foals yet, though), which meant wearing the only pair of sweats that wasn’t still sitting, soaking wet, in the washing machine. Which meant I might not have clean clothes in time for work this afternoon if I didn’t get home in time to put the wash in the dryer. Which is exactly what happened. Out of sheer desperation, I tried on my “good pair” of jeans to see if they might fit now, and they did. Bit of a tight fit still, but it’s better than a few weeks ago when I couldn’t zip them up. This is a big deal for me - I’ve been wearing sweats just about all the time for the better part of four months now, because that was what happened to fit. So I’m pleased with this development. Continue Reading »

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Not much exciting to report from this weekend, just a mish-mash of fairly tame news.

Okay, not necessarily our pregnant mare. But one of the other horses at my in-laws’ farm is just gigantically, that-can’t-be-comfortable pregnant. Even her ankles are just gargantuan. We spent all weekend on “baby watch” and nothing happened. Well, I suppose they say a watched horse never boils…or something like that. Poor thing. As for our mare, she’s bagging up and making milk, so we’re mere weeks away. Hopefully she has a better time than this poor quarterhorse.

We’re expecting what’s starting to look like a doozy of a bad weather event this Thursday; considering all the nasty crap that has come at us from the sky in the past month before it was spring (when the conditions for bad weather are supposedly even more abundant), the next couple of months have me a bit worried. To put it mildly. I think I worry about these things more now that I’m a homeowner, which really, if I think about it, doesn’t make much sense - rented home, my home, doesn’t matter, if either one gets blown away then I’m screwed.

I did something stupid today and followed a link to ThinkGeek.com (there, you can share in my misery), a site which is loaded with tons of delicious gadgetry that I’d love to festoon my house with. Well, okay, I’d love to festoon my house with these things if not for the fact that my wife would then have to put up with them, and would probably cease putting up with me shortly thereafter. So I do a lot of browsing, a lot of drooling, and a lot of not buying. (I originally went looking to see if they had any of these.) Some of the items (an LED scrolling text message belt buckle or name tag, an ant farm made out of NASA’s malleable aerogel material) I can live without, but some of the other goodies - goodies, it must be said, of roughly equal usefulness to society - I drool over. I think my current favorite is the “Tix” digital clock. I think that would look mighty fine and BBC-budget-futuristic sitting next to my HAL 9000 faceplate. Yes, I’ve got a HAL-9000 prop at my desk at home. That’s about as much of a concession I’ll ever make in the direction of transforming my game room into a replica of the Enterprise bridge or any other fictional setting. But a similarly-shaped item with random patterns of blinky lights that also serve as a clock? Yes! Must have. (And this little baby is drool-worthy too.) But alas, they’ll have to wait until the budget allows for such things.

That’s really all I can think of at the moment; I’d tell you about my weekend gaming, but I’m sure you’ve heard enough about Dune 2000 in the past month.

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I actually did take a few minutes, earlier tonight, to write a big blog entry about problems at work and why it’s time for me to go. Then I decided that this was, perhaps, not the smartest thing to do without an escape route, as such routes have caved in recently just as I was about to set foot on them.

Then I got a phone call out of the blue from someone tipping me off to a very good gig, a local one no less, that would get me firmly out of the broadcast biz, but not necessarily so far out of the media sphere as to completely waste my broadcast experience. In fact, it would be a nice middle ground between what I do now and what I’d like to do more of in the future. Funny how these things work. And yeah, perhaps I shouldn’t be blogging about that either, but as Julian Lennon once sang, I’ve got a good feeling and it’s coming from the sun.

But more than that I shall not say, given my record with escape routes lately. Stay tuned.

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It’s been hard to escape the news that Isaac Hayes quit South Park in the wake of last fall’s controversial episode lampooning Scientology, or that in the wake of that news, how Comedy Central scheduled and then suddenly pulled a repeat of said episode. Tonight, on the show’s season premiere, Matt and Trey struck back with both a brilliant white-hot anger and compassion, attempting to draw fire away from Hayes and toward Scientology itself instead. Throughout the episode, Chef spoke in disjointed, cut-and-pasted phrases pieced together from the nine years worth of dialogue he has recorded for previous episodes, leading the boys to realize - gasp! - Chef has been brainwashed by that “fruity little club.” Their attempts to rescue him only lead to tragedy for Chef himself, though he is resurrected at the end of the episode in a less-than-subtle (and yet knee-slappingly funny) homage to the closing scenes of Star Wars Episode III. At several points during the episode, the folks responsible for brainwashing Chef threaten to take drastic action - namely, asking Kyle, Stan, Cartman and Kenny to leave - a clear indication that it’s not over by a long shot, and Matt and Trey don’t intend to let this drop.

Again, not South Park’s finest hour, but one of its most heartfelt. I almost hope we get a running thread about this throughout the season. Heck, I even hope that Isaac Hayes might come around and show up to redeem Chef again (and that way, we can get a Return Of The Jedi spoof outta the deal too!).

In other news, I’m still almost speechless about the phrase that’s been running through my head all day: “Doctor Who has been nominated for multiple Hugo Awards.” I’ll be quite honest, I’ve loved the show for most of my life, and I never envisioned it being nominated for a Hugo Award either on TV or in print. The episodes Dalek, Father’s Day, and the combined two-parter of The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances were all nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), up against a Galactica episode (Pegasus), a Pixar short, and one or two other things I don’t recall haven’t heard of before. I’m torn between wanting Dalek and Father’s Day to win - from my own fleeting correspondences with them, writers Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell, respectively, are just damned nice guys. However, I’ve got to root for Cornell’s script hear; Dalek was a watered-down version of Shearman’s 2003 Doctor Who audio story Jubilee, but Father’s Day was pure Cornell, thought-provoking and heart-tuggingly emotional. My best wishes go to all the nominees - because from the ones I have seen, they’re all A-list stuff. (Truthfully, I’m surprised that [A] more Galactica episodes weren’t nominated, and [B] that Pegasus was the one that did get the nod; it’s worth remembering that multiple episodes of Babylon 5 were on the ballot for the ‘96 Hugos, but JMS asked to have all but The Coming Of Shadows removed from consideration so there wouldn’t be a split of votes that would actually keep B5 from winning at all.)

As much as I love Doctor Who, I’m still reeling at the thought that it might soon share the same Hugo-winning stratosphere as some of the finest episodes of Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. Wow. Promote the hell out of that, Sci-Fi. You’re showing two Hugo-nominated shows. (Granted, Galactica’s already a Hugo winner, but still…)

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I saw a sign on the way back home from the farm the other day:

PIGS FOR SALE

‘Nuff said. I didn’t stop to inquire about pricing or payment plans. Sounded like a pork barrel project to me.

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