Barnaby Jones Doesn’t Smoke

I like my voice remote. To get to Netflix, I just press the voice-command button and say, “Netflix.” You know, instead of opening the menu, scrolling over to Apps, opening THAT menu, scrolling over to the Netflix icon and selecting it. Like an animal! No, the voice remote is a wondrous innovation.

Sometimes, though, I wonder about it. Like, when I say “Netflix,” and I get the message, “To get to a show faster, say something like ‘“Quincy” on Netflix.’”

[DIGRESSION: And if you’re not impressed by those embedded quotation marks, you are just NOT paying attention! EOD]

“Quincy”? 

I mean, I’m currently bouncing between “Supernatural” and “Penny Dreadful.” I’ve recently watched things like “The Queen’s Gambit” and “Community.” What kind of f—ed up algorithm looks at that and says, “Yup, ‘Quincy’ it is!”?

[DIGRESSION: Seriously, are you not impressed with my punctuation game today? EOD]

Speaking of “Penny Dreadful” and “Supernatural” (and any number of other shows): When I start an episode, I get the standard “rating message,” warning me of all the moral and psychological depravity to which the show might expose me. Standard warning for “Penny Dreadful”: Violence, sex, nudity, gore, smoking.

I know smoking is bad and all, but does it really require a trigger warning?

We Got Nothin'

Every once in a while, you've just got NOTHING to talk about.  The problem here is that this blog is more than a forum for pointless meanderings; it's a discipline.  The Solipsist has resolved to write every day, and he fears that even one missed day will lead him down the slippery slope of inertia.  Is that an oxymoron?  Would inertia's slope be slippery?  Probably quite friction laden.  Who knows?

So, rather than follow Lincoln's ultimately sound advice, YNSHC will not remain silent.  Should you consider him a fool, here he will remove all doubt.

The thing that's upsetting is we actually HAD something all queued up to blog about.  We were going to tell the seemingly odd story of "Harper's Island" and Netflix.  See, WOS has been watching "Harper's Island" via Netflix's streaming video service.

(Digression: WHY she's watching, we have no idea, as we are in agreement that it's a thoroughly dreary program: a wannabe "Twin Peaks" with the self-deprecating sense of humor of a doorknob.  It's a poorly acted and worsely (worsely?) written you-should-excuse-the-expression "thriller" about a bunch of "good-looking" (in a bland, catalog-model sort of way) young folks who gather at a remote Pacific Northwestern island for a big society wedding.  In every episode at least one person is gruesomely killed, and despite the fact that there's a total of, like, 30 people on the whole island, it takes about five episodes for people even to realize that anything's wrong.  To give you an idea of the quality of the dialogue, in one episode, a real tough, tattooed, biker-type actually purports to insult someone by calling him "daft."  Daft!  Who writes this stuff?  A Bronte Sister?  Virginia Woolf? "Friday the 13th: Part 97: Butchery in Bloomsbury"? EOD.)

Anyway, we were confused by the fact that, even though it's supposedly, "The Complete Series," it only went up to 8 episodes (of 8) and then ended with no resolution.  We just assumed that the show was mercifully canceled, and we decided to just say, "We think the groom did it."  That was our story, and we were sticking to it.  And then, suddenly, ANOTHER episode showed up.  Also without resolution, but suggesting the Sheriff did it!  Our story.  Sticking to it.  And then a TENTH episode showed up.

We had this vision of frustrated producers churning out episodes just for the sake of WOS, hoping that she would finally give up and accept that she really didn't CARE whodunit.  Those producers should know better.  WOS is very persistent.

Anyway, we were going to write about that, but then we actually went to look at Netflix and discovered that the show is, in fact, still going on.  That each week a new episode will be added, until we get to episode 13 in which all will be resolved.

That was anticlimactic.

So, you see, we have nothing to write about!  We're very disappointed in ourselves.

(Image from Wikipedia)