More DirecTV mistakes

 

Cast & Crew entries on DirecTV's on-screen guide:

Paul McGillion, Scottish actor, paired with photo of Karl Urban, New Zealand.

 McGillion's has numerous TV guest shots as well as "Stargate Atlantis."

 Urban's in just about everything.

Two unrelated Reillys:

John Reilly's 1974 "Gunsmoke" credit is paired with a photo of John C. Reilly. 

John Henry Matthew Reilly, 1934-2021, started in the mid-1960s with roles in TV Westerns, appeared in several soap operas including "General Hospital," "As the World Turns," "Dallas," "General Hospital," and numerous guest shots.

The actor-singer-comedian John C. Reilly's first film was 1989. 

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Just how stupid are Americans?

 

Weather forecasts said there was a big storm coming this week. Over two weeks, it warned and warned.

Dumb Americans got in cars in blizzards and drove into the storms. Dumber Americans lined up at airports where, according to the weather forecast, flying would be impossible for days and days.

Christmas 2022 will go down in their memories as the worst ever. They could have stayed home. But, no, Americans are entitled to go where they want, when they want, by any means they want. And relatives feel entitled to spread guilt over everybody who shows any smarts.

Will their children remember parents' choices? Ask for different choices next time? Hell, no. Next stormy Christmas will see stupid and stupider people huddled on the floor in airport terminals bewailing the injustice.

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Last weekend, a FedEx delivery truck sank up to the front axle in mud near my home. It was great. 

Maybe the driver needed to check their phone or some such, failing to look at the empty field they drove into. Failed to remember the 2 inches of snow that fell a couple days earlier. Failed to think about where the snow went.

It was greater still when I returned from the grocery store after 1.5 hours to discover the truck gone.

My best friend got stuck in the same place 10 years ago. Took a lot longer to get her little truck free, but she rocked and rocked and rocked until Little Red rolled free.

Not-so-high desert hides many, many things beneath the dirt, rocks, and sand.

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Embrace the stupidity

 

Rolling: TV news video included a Tesla on a street in Humboldt County, Calif., after the big earthquake cut off electricity to 70,000 people. Battery charged enough to make it outside the blackout zone?

Dear Alton Brown: About pitching those brain pills. You're a cook, not a chemist. Look up the recipe for double-blind drug tests, and get back to me. Hope you got paid lots of dough.

Betraying the sisterhood: Women pitching creams and other crap to women, telling them their body's private parts stink. Late last century, it was men gaslighting women about private parts. All for money, still and forever.

Hey, Jim at the Bronx Zoo: Update your TV show's intro about asking kids to draw a zoo and them drawing animals behind bars. Nobody visiting your zoo in the 21st century, or the final 20 years of the 20th, ever saw a zoo with animals in cages.

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Graphically speaking

 

Dear WaPo: Thanks so much for another “animation “ on a subject that interested me. However, as with most every animation/illustration of your stories, I didn’t scroll/read to the end because I want information, not goddamn cartoons.

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The little things still count

 

Changed furnace filters today, a chore about 2 months late of when it was needed. Successful in that I didn't scrape any fingers, so didn't shed blood, unlike last time.

HBO cancelled "Westworld." Damn. I hoped that season 5 might explain what the hell happened in seasons 4 and 3.

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What did I do wrong?

 

Nothing. Same process as yesterday and 4,000 days before.

Today, up comes this:

 

The only difference the wetware saw: no captcha screen at sign-in.

Started on Firefox, got same response on Safari.

Skipping threat about going off my meds and finding this fucking computer.

Off my meds, I don't give a damn.

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Front-lawn grass, to go

Three wild horses treat Rainbow Bend as a fast-food restaurant so frequently that they now have names.

Mobley, wife Elsie, daughter Abby.

Less horse-ish names than Trigger or Champion, I guess.

During their eat-by Monday, my camera was at the far end of the house, so no photos.

Maybe next meal time.

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All in the timing

 

On Sept. 19, USA Today Travel published a special section:

Florida & Southeast

Go Escape

Explore Georgia, Kentucky, Carolinas, Gulf Coast, Tennessee & More

They got the escape part right. The rest, not so much.

Oops.

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Purely stupid behavior

 

This pops up a couple times a month. Never is my browser or ad block changed before it arrives. If I give up and go away and return in a few minutes, the sign-in goes through.

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Emergent behavior?

 

All I wanted was to cancel a streaming-TV service that's raising its price.

Log-in function was beyond slow. On third try, got the message that my log-in was "blocked."

Clicked on "forgot password." Message said info would come through email. That's normal.

Went to email, which I read this morning with no problem.

Up came this:

Started with Firefox; got same thing on Chrome and Safari, on two different gmail addresses.

Skipping telling of the cursing, the burning silence, and the need to punch something.

Restarted the laptop. Next gmail try went straight through.

Finished the password reset, canceled the streamer.

An act so simple should not be this hard.

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Goodnight, Sandman

 

Gave up watching “The Sandman” on whatever streaming service. I'm too stupid to understand it.

I liked it a lot for the first four episodes, but it turned strange. Stranger. Whenever a character demands that nobody tell lies, bloodshed follows. 

It didn’t help that I fell asleep a couple times. I skipped to the 10th episode and fell asleep twice. Sandman, indeed.

Suddenly: animated cats. I like cats but then somebody took kittens to kill and that’s where I quit.

I'm struggling with "House of the Dragon" and "Rings of Power," too.

Last "House" episode I watched, I paused the TV at the 20-minute mark, just to check. 20 minutes and no dragon. False advertising!

"Rings" is likeable, except for the editorial choice to skip from story to story to story to story ... a desperate technique to keep the viewer tuned in, but for Frodo's sake take a pill and focus!

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The Queen's dead. Long live the ... who, now?

 

The King of Woo Woo!

Purveyor of quack medicine, plus pseudoscientific lies crafted to separate people from their money, and bass-ackward views on ecology, climate change, and all other factors destroying the planet.

My ancestors fought in a couple of wars, refusing to bend the knee to her ancestors. I won't insult their courage by mourning the death of a billionaire who had a stunning jewelry collection.

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Buh bye, Burners

 

Needed gas in my old car, so I filled up at the usual place, but left without the very much needed run through the car wash. Out of order, it was.

Guess who broke it.

Yesterday, we had a 10-minute cloudburst, so the car's cleaner, free.

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Oh damn, Burners are back

 

Burning up the road:

An SUV and box van loading up boxes of food and bottles of water on the south side of the Sparks Safeway.

A converted school bus with elaborate modifications eastbound on I-80. Biggest dang orange-yellow bus I ever saw. Metal grids welded to the rear projected a "hijacked prison bus" vibe.

A heavy-duty pickup truck, turn signal stuck on, towing a flat-bed trailer, aboard which rode a golden dragon, in sections, head facing into the wind.

Burners! Agh!

May the desert heat be with them.

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Caring, kind Nichelle Nichols

 

Late 1990s, Pasadena, California.

"Star Trek" and general SciFi fan Linda takes a cigarette break from a Grand Slam convention.

She returns, laughing, and reports:

I finished the smoke and stayed on the bench to watch a dozen industrious ants on the walkway. Bent over to get a close look. After a bit, a familiar voice said (paraphrasing) "Pardon me, but are you OK?"

I looked up to see the concerned face of Nichelle Nichols. I did look weird bent over like that.

I pointed at the ants and said I was watching them.

She bent down for a close look, and said (still paraphrasing), "Aren't they interesting? (pause) More interesting than this convention!"

Big smile as she joined Walter Koenig in walking toward the hotel.

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Inflation? What's that?

 

Lunch at midday today: $30 including tip and a "round up" for a local boys-girls club. And, of course,  chocolate cream pie.

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Speckles, the 16-year-old white Manx, went to oblivion last week, but he deserved much more because he was one great animal. Specialized in being a pain in the neck or wherever he caught with his claws, and never walked across the living room in a straight line. Slalom surfer all the way.

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Moving target

 

Last Friday morning, Amtrak chugged past, westbound. Two Amtrak pass by each day, west in the morning, east in the evening.

This train was spectacular: 

An extra locomotive, red over silver and a big logo on the flank

Standard baggage and passenger cars

Two Southern Pacific observation cars, dark green over light green

An old-fashioned passenger car, silver with a rounded stern, bringing up the rear

It's hard to see details when the train's moving at top speed.

Earlier this month, westbound Amtrak hauled a car behind the baggage car, black over dark red, labeled Federal Railroad Administration in gold. It looked like a classic, but the FRA still exists, so maybe it was recent vintage.

That also might have been the train with a wide red stripe on the side of the lead locomotive. Again, moving at speed.

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Aggravated Are Us. A newspaper website that I first subscribed to around 2013 now puts up Captcha boxes, enamored of stop lights, crosswalks, and street lights. For crying out loud.

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High art

 

Saw an interview with a Sheriff, maybe in Nevada, who sat at a desk with books shelved behind him. First in the stack was "The Art of War," by Sun Tzu. I hope he's too busy to read.

Not sure why I started to watch "The King's Man," but it took two tries to get through. What a stupid mess.  I liked the first two, even with the comic book origin. They made sense of a comic-book sort.

A couple days ago, I stumbled across a marathon of "Breaking Bad," first-season episodes I had not seen. Multi-layered characters, motivations, desperation. Plus Skyler, her son, and her sister. What a trio worthy of never-ending hate.

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Keep scrolling, kid

Somebody in the crew that posts data for DirecTV's program guide has a bad habit: Grabbing the first entry from an Internet search.

The tyros confused living men with dead men. Same names, but yikes, DirecTV, hire a proof-reader.

Evidence:

"Some Like It Hot," made in 1959, lists Dave Barry among the cast. With data on the humorist Dave Barry, including photo. He was 12 when the movie was made.

The elder Dave Barry, 1918-2001, who played the manager of the all-girl band, was a comedian and actor in in radio, stage, movies, TV and voice-over. He was the opening act for stars such as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Liberace, and Wayne Newton during a 50-year run in Las Vegas. If you don't know who they were, look them up, youngster.

Evidence:

Will Rogers, 1879-1935, is listed in a 2009 episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," with picture.

Numerous credits of the actual actor, Will Rogers, include "Bridge of Spies," "Bull," and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."

The elder Rogers was a vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He made 48 silent movies and, after sound arrived in 1929, 21 feature films.

One of his most famous sayings: "I never met a man I didn't like."

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