I don't remember anything you said before "rectum"

Watching: Family Guy in the gym, but I wasn't really paying attention to it so I missed the punchlines, apart from the one that was basically "look, a black person." That's narrowing it down for you, I imagine.
Terra Nova - one season, ends on a cliffhanger. May as well call that right now.
The latest from technobabble enthusiast Brannon "I fixed Trek, fixed it like a kipper" Braga, Terra Nova is basically a US take on 2000ad's Flesh, with time-travelers from Earth's poisoned future seeking refuge in its past. It's not great sci-fi because it quickly abandons the more interesting concepts and setting for fit people in a lush setting being very middle class and this did not work out well for the BBC with Outcasts - a television series so derivative and dumb that its season cliffhanger was the arrival of Thunderbird 2 - and works even less for American television because it already has all of the components seen here in various places already and I don't just mean in reruns of Earth 2 or aforementioned Outcasts, Dinotopia, etc, but in stuff like Lost, or any number of other tv shows full of pretty young people moping about not getting on well with daddy, which is not euphemism on my part but literally the second half of the episode. While this also marks the second time in the last couple of months I've seen a sci-fi slant on the Jew Hunter from Inglorious Basterds, Terra Nova's problem is less being derivative and more being predictable. There is nothing in the plot you don't see coming and the FX aren't quite up to scratch, but with the obligatory pilot out of the way, it might get better. Well... it can scarcely get that much worse, anyway.

The blog that instills no anger, only disappointment.

Catching up with Doctor Who via the BBC iPlayer, I can see why it's fallen from favor in recent months: it's become less trashy.
I do not mean 'trashy' in any mean or derogatory sense, I simply suggest this as an appropriate label for something devoid of ambition and constructed merely to be consumed. I like trash. Trash makes up the vast majority of our entertainment and its existence and popularity allows our favorite forms of entertainment to continue because if people won't go see a piece of trash like Scary Movie when it's made just for them, what's the point of taking a chance on a new Scorcese or Mamet flick? Actually, that's misleading on my part - I don't accept that trash is something we must simply endure for the sake of art because I love trash and pretending I can be a snob the day after lamenting the passing of Drop Dead Diva would be a fool's errand. The highlight of my viewing week is probably Hawaii Five-0 and sitting here and writing as such I cannot summon to mind a single virtue in its favor beyond that I like it, but luckily that is all it needs. *
Anyway, trash... the RTD era of Doctor Who was trash, RTD said as much himself when he said that a mere 10 percent of the audience were tuning in every week and the rest were casual viewers and he was unashamed that he was making the telly equivalent of tomorrow's fishwrappers and more power to him, he seems to have done well by it and so has UK sci-fi television. The current era of Who, however, has decided to reward those who watch each week. Surprisingly, people don't seem to like this turn of events where they're assumed to have attention spans and are asked to employ them and have turned on the show like they've actually been personally affronted by basic storytelling practice.
I'm loving it so far, myself. For some reason I seem to have taken a time to say so, but that's pretty much it.
Enjoyed it.

*Actually, tell a lie, it's devoid of misanthropy in a way it's peers like NCIS and Law And Order: Los Angeles are not.

You may inform the cosmetic surgeon that I'm ready for my vagina now

Oh colouring with a 'u', even though I don't know what the hell I'm doing you never fail to calm me down after a hard day of committed failure.
Watched the season finale for Drop Dead Diva and thoroughly enjoyed it. During this season I did have qualms about the moral tone of the episode where a student claims to have been raped and the denouement is not that her lawyer proves where her college is criminally liable for covering up evidence of this but when the student is awarded a large sum of money for her pain, but that aside it was the kind of stuff I like to watch in the gym, like Outsourced, which I liked and thus was probably doomed to cancellation for that reason alone. I guess that means Diva is probably cancelled, too.

Bah! The gifts your countries sent me will not win any favors!

I am flummoxed by the new Charlie's Angels show. A quick perusal of my post history will reveal that I am not averse to trash television, but I think this one is going about 3 things all wrong:
1 - the characters suck. This kind of ephemeral television doesn't actually require much from its characters beyond that they deliver their soundbites in good time and aren't actively unlikeable - unless they are actually meant to be unlikeable bitches or jerks But With A Heart Of Gold so their redemption is something in which the viewer can invest - but CA has dirty cops and rich thieves as its protagonists and that's a tough starting point before you get to the only reason that they're 'good' now is because they are pretty by the standards of multi-ethnic televisual casting. Seriously - that's all you get. While I am inclined to not get het up about there being so many remakes and reboots as other people might, this is because I accept that rebooting or remaking an old show has certain advantages like brand recognition, but right away these aren't new takes on characters from the tv show or movies, they're new characters created for the show, so the branding is eroded almost immediately. Bosley is also now a buff hacker and pussy hound - more erosion. Eventually you have something that doesn't resemble what it's supposed to be remaking and while this might work with something like the third season of BattleStar Galactica where it all became about how women ruin everything even if they aren't killer sex robots, with the very first episode of a new series this is not a route you want to explore, you want your audience onside right away and you want them rooting for the main cast rather than hoping there's three car bombs in the immediate future and that Bosley is impaled by shrapnel from one of them. I found myself in the latter camp about three minutes in.
These people are dicks and I hate them - and that's coming from someone who watches CSI.

2 - Charlie's Angels assumes a male paradigm for 'toughness' as how you measure a woman's 'toughness', but this kind of tit-for-tat reasoning isn't a good idea because last I checked no dude has ever shit out a baby. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against kick-ass women as I lived and breathed Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Khan movies in my mis-spent youth (which also gave me an appreciation of well-filmed action scenes, which Charlie's Angels does not have), but those were dedicated kung-fu films and the gender of their protagonist was irrelevant because men (or boys) were the primary audience, while Charlie's Angels is aimed at a wider audience, yet does nothing to show that its female characters have traits that women admire in the same way we men admire their ability to kick someone in the head or murder a child molester, such as ambition or a talent for nonviolent conflict resolution because these are pussy traits and real tuff grrls kick arse. GRRR. Then they get saved by Bosley (a computer programmer) because they can't take one random dude in a straight fight even though as we have already seen quite clearly this female character is a decorated police officer. The approach is wrong-headed in theory, but also uncommitted in practice. These women have no drive, no goals, no longer game, they pretty much just do what they're told, and the only one who goes against this policy, the entire pilot is dedicated to showing how she is wrong and must ultimately tow the line. These women are weak.

3 - it is made by the guys who made Smallville. For some reason, I just find this hilarious.

You're only on television because God hates Michael J Fox

I'm not a very good hypochondriac, it must be said. I tend to Google symptoms very easily and then dismiss them once I read a few web pages about what those symptoms might likely be rather than fretting over wost case scenarios, so the recent chest pains I put down to the excessive grumbling from my stomach and a spot of heartburn, but lo - apparently my cholesterol is through the roof. I'm losing weight, have a diet consisting of fruit, Wheetabix and soup, but... what? Cholesterol? Are you shitting me? How does that happen?
Then I remember how much I drink. Feh.

Watching: Damages, a pretty good legal drama with the always-watchable Glenn Close in fine form as manipulative litigator Patty Hewes. Don't know how this one slipped by me as there's been four years of it and it's cracking stuff if this first season is anything to go by even if the initial 'twists' in the early episodes are a bit signposted, though it soon gets past trying to be that kind of show and settles into being a straightforward drama with some strong characters to the point that when it tried to be all twisty-turny near the end with a gay reveal for one of the characters I just went "tch."
Also starring Damages' Ted Danson is CSI, which this season replaces Morpheus with Sam Malone and for the life of me I couldn't stop finding it utterly hilarious to behold. They seem to be trying to throw some dramatic wrangling between characters into the mix this time and it's largely unconvincing because SAM FLIPPIN' MALONE FROM CHEERS is right there in all these scenes. I did not know they'd ditched Larry Fishburne, though I guess his character had really gone as far as he needed to, but yeah, this was a fun season opener, if for the wrong reasons.
Hawaii Five-0 returns and it's one really fucking dumb show. I love it.
I watched my first ever episode of Two and a Half Men after it returned from the sacking of its main draw out of curiosity to see how producer/writer Chuck Lorre manages to be the better man and wins that race to the moral high ground with violent drug addict and wife beater Charlie Sheen - but daaaaamn if that is some spectacular snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory on Lorre's part with some mean-spirited and unfunny swipes at Sheen's being sacked from the show after a public fallout with Lorre that in the words Seth McFarlane (a man not unfamiliar with mean-spirited and unfunny comedy) "tells you all you need to know about Hollywood - you can abuse drugs, you can abuse your spouse, you can trash hotel rooms, you can solicit prostitutes, but don't you ever, ever, call a Jewish guy by his actual Jewish name." Seriously, how do you come second in a competition with Charlie Sheen to not look like a dick? The guy's lost his kids, beaten his wives and girlfriends, drove cars off his face, assaulted hookers, and yet all I can think is "does this show always suck this much?"

I didn't come all this way to spit on a CLOSED coffin

Getting near to the halfway mark for the last chapter on the book and all I can think is that it would be great to be faster. And better, obviously.

Apart from that, it's just great to (attempt to) get back into some sort of regular routine after one of the stomach bugs doing the rounds mugged me for a few days. Cramps, wind, weak as a kitten - the only consolation is that somehow I managed to lose 12-odd pounds, though I put this down to my typical luck seeing as one of my New Year's Resolution was to gain weight. This New Year's, I am absolutely making a resolution to get less sex and lose money.

only they who love without desire shall have power granted them in their darkest hour

Watching: Strike Back, which was a pleasantly thick-headed series once, before they went and revamped it as a juvenile misogynist fantasy. Love the Irish accents, though!
Star Trek - because somehow I have never seen the entirety of Spock's Brain, widely regarded as one of the worst episodes of sci-fi television ever made and yet clearly nothing of the sort.
Don't get me wrong, it is not good, but then again it's not that episode of Voyager where Tom Paris drives his space car really fast and then turns into a manatee, either - which is literally what happens in the episode, prompting the actor who played Paris to go on record as saying "When I first read that script, I couldn't believe they were going to shoot it." and this was coming from a guy who starred in the Masters of the Universe movie and regrets nothing. Nor is it that episode of Deep Space Nine where they do the traditional (and slightly creepy) sci-fi story about a young female character being artificially aged into a buxon type, and instead of thinking up a technobabble reason for such a thing to happen the writers just have her fall into a magic tree. Nor is it that episode of Flash Gordon where... well, it's not an episode of Flash Gordon. Anyhoo, I enjoyed it, especially the remote controlled Spock and the kinky caveman "they bring pain... AND DELIGHT."