Smoking!

I realized Thursday night during "Haven" that I am fed up with TV programs that show "smoke" pouring out of a character's mouth--or into--to indicate the movement of an evil creature.

"Supernatural" does it all the time. There were a couple of other shows in that week that did it, too.

Which is why I got fed up. Honestly, producers, let your writers imagine something new.

That would mean, however, that the producers and the "suits" would have to trust the writers and respect the audience. Not gonna happen.

I am grateful they use smoke moving via mouth. There were other choices.

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Old times, bad times

Today's the 52nd anniversary of the murder of JFK.

How old am I? I remember the look on the face of the schoolmate who dashed into the classroom and said the president was shot.

I remember that weekend when there was nothing on Reno's three television channels except JFK. I remember playing board games with my father while the TV droned on.

I was not old enough to understand.

As with the murder of John Lennon, it was the lost potential that harmed us most.

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Viewer in the 'Darkness'

I'm easily confused, but I'm fairly certain that the movie listed by Charter/Spectrum's on-screen guide for the Showtime Women channel, "Angels of Darkness," 1954, starring Linda Darnell and Anthony Quinn (IMDB),  is not the movie being shown. The story of the religious crisis experienced by a prostitute in Rome doesn't match what I've seen.

It looks more like "Styria," 2014, aka "Angels of Darkness" (IMDB), starring Eleanor Tomlinson and Stephen Rea. "Psychological thriller about a woman and her estranged father who go behind the Iron Curtain to a small Hungarian town plagued by strange events," says the Showtime online sked.

Ah, the pitfall of re-used titles.

It's on again Nov. 28; I might tune in for the whole show.

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How to ruin a day

For two straight days, I woke up to the sound of a smoke alarm beeping. No smoke, just slow, steady beeping. Loud. First morning, I got six hours of sleep before it started. Today, I got four and a half.

Apartment maintenance man replaced a 9V battery while I was out. I hope he got the right one; there are three in the apartment. Guess I'll know in the morning.

To complete the day's SNAFU, while I was donating platelets at UBS, the g-d machine crashed.

Would not reboot. Blue screen of death.

On the plus side, while they got about half of the usual draw, I got to leave a half-hour early.

I immediately downed a Vicodin. Sleep deprivation, sinus ...

Come to think about it, things started sliding sideways Sunday night while I watched John Oliver. HBO went off. All the HBO channels. About half of Cinemax and half of Showtime.

Today, AT&T's computer called, three times. First call came when I was almost back to sleep amid the beeping. Ignored it (gotta love caller ID). Second came while I was hooked up to the failing blood-sucker. Third time, I answered. The computer was doing a survey, wanted to know about how my recent dealings with AT&T went. Fine, I guess; I don't remember any AT&T dealings.

Computer gave me the option of hanging up. Guess what I did?

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Ben's life in fantasy

Of course, Ben Carson told "fibs" in his autobiography ... the man lives in a fantasy world of cult Christianity. He's got no way--and no reason--to separate wishes, dreams, and what people without fantasy-prone personalities call reality.

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Do they chafe?

When Zygons "normalize," where do their clothes go?

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The Texas two-step, aka backstroke

Parts of Texas are taking turns being underwater, starting last spring. You'd think somebody would learn about the wrong things to do during a flood.

Not in Texas.

On Nov. 1, a Houston official said there had been 130 water rescues over the weekend; they were still counting, but as many as 6 people died in the flooding.

Trump supporters have fallen in love with the "make America great again" bullshit he shovels out.

Could they please start in Texas?

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Your 'Star Trek' cliche here

Brief sweep around the IntNet shows that I'm not the only one with reservations about CBS's new "Star Trek" for 2017, on its digital subscription service, of which I've not heard until today.

Hooray?

Alex Kurtzman will be exec producer, which means it will be in the pathetic, brainless reboot universe. Thanks be to the Great Bird of the Galaxy that Nimoy's gone, so they can't drag out ancient Spock again. Unless they do ... digitally.

I saw Kurtzman and Roberto Orci at a convention many years ago, and they were such jackasses. Their work shows little maturity in the passing years.

But, 2017 is a long ways away, and I might be dead and gone and miss the whole thing.

Simon Pegg's one of the writers on next summer's movie, so there's some light at the end of the Jefferies tube.

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