Haven't done much blogging the last few days. The usual reasons. Nothing much to say. Plus, with my wrist beginning to feel somewhat better, I have become keenly aware of just how much effort is required to punch the keys on this laptop's keyboard. It's very likely that this is the reason for the aching wrist in the first place. I've done a lot of typing practice on this VAIO. The keys and the "sharp" edges to either side of the touch pad have made me regret buying this model. I like almost everything else about it, even the Vista Home Premium OS it came with (which makes me a rare bird, I know). I have always been satisfied with SONY products, but I won't buy another VAIO. The only thing about the main part of the computer (ie. everything but the monitor) that I would absolutely want to keep in a new laptop would be the touch pad itself, which has a very nice surface that I prefer to the more slick ones I've seen on other computers.
But I didn't come here to bitch about wrists and computers. I figured I should give an update on the "health issues" I'd wanted to chronicle since the ER visit about a month ago.
All in all it's been pretty good since I last posted about it. I had a couple of instances where I was seized by uncontrollable muscle spasms like the one that followed the chest pains. They lasted for a couple of minutes each. It felt like I was very cold, shivering. It was kind of scary because I had absolutely no control over it. I tried to breath in and out very slowly, to relax, but that didn't seem to do any good, other than maybe ease the panic a little bit.
Other than that I seem to be in quite excellent health (relatively, of course). The non-fat diet has been a drag. I haven't stepped on the scales, but I'm positive I've lost a few pounds. I respect anyone who can do a non-fat diet without absolutely HAVING TO for health reasons. You just have to give up so much of the really GOOD food...and if you're on a reduced sodium diet it is even worse. You would be surprised at how much sodium is in practically everything you eat. It's not just a matter of "cutting back on your salt intake"...I miss salt like you wouldn't believe, but I'm surprised that, with the amount of salt I ate in the past, I didn't have serious hypertension already. Ah well...I have come to the decision that I will try as hard as I can to reduce my sodium intake, but I'm not going to put a number on it. I will try to regulate it, but only in the sense that I don't go overboard.
Otherwise, I've spent a whole lot of time watching Netflix's streaming content. I probably mentioned it the other day, but I finally figured out how to run the computer into the television...actually I had some problems initially and I feared that I might have screwed up the computer. I don't think that happened, or at least I haven't noticed much more than starting and shutting down seem to take a lot longer than they should. If anything is messed up I'm sure it has to do with plugging the RGB cable in with the computer power on. After checking out the Vista website I found out that the computer power should have been shut off before connecting anything. Everything worked fine when I did this. The only problem I've had since then is directly related to our ISP...it kind of irks me, in that we didn't have so many drop-outs until we upgraded to 12 megs a few days ago. If it weren't for the Netflix movies I would cut it back to 6. The faster connection speed seems to be vital to the picture quality and a couple of other issues. I do plan on utilizing the service extensively, and the drop-outs, so far, have not been very long in duration.
We've been watching "The Legend of the Seeker" television series. My wife is a huge fan of Terry Goodkind, and I enjoyed the first few books of "The Sword of Truth" myself. We didn't watch it while it was on TV because, well, we just don't watch a whole lot of commercial television. Plus, it just didn't look to be as faithful to the books as we may have liked...but then again, how many adaptations of novels, especially in the fantasy genre, are worth a damn? We decided to give it another chance...maybe it would be easier to digest without commercial breaks. And it's not too bad, actually. Little gripes, of course...the wife bristles when Kahlan's name is pronounced "Kay-lin" and I think the guy who plays Zedd (the Wizard) looks absolutely nothing like the image I have in my mind of Zedd. Small issues, to be sure, and not enough to keep us from watching. The story line seemed to go in a different direction than the book by the time the 2nd episode was over.
I've never subscribed to Showtime, so I was happy to find that the first couple seasons of "Weeds" was available. What a great concept. Upper class suburbanite pot-dealing mother...what's not to love? Even had I never seen an episode I would still know it was classic.
On a lark I played the early 70's blaxploitation classic "Coffy". What a hilarious movie...I don't know just how "humorous" the producers were when they made this, and it's certainly not a "so bad it's good" affair. But the stereotypes are so over-the-top you can't help but be amused. The storyline may as well have come straight from one of the ABC Movies of the Week that were on TV back when this movie was made. The nudity and violence, though, make it clear that this is no television fare. We haven't watched it all, because we don't want our son to walk in when something inappropriate is taking place...for instance, there is one scene where two guys are having a discussion, apparently in a go-go club, and between them, on a small stage and apropos of nothing, there is a butt naked girl dancing. Suffice to say I have absolutely no recollection of what the gentlemen were talking about or how important it may have been to the story. I've got a couple more blaxploitation films in the queue, so I'm hoping that they will be as entertaining as "Coffy".
I've got several Alfred Hitchcock films in the queue...Stacie has never really been exposed to Hitchcock, so I decided to pick one out for us to watch together. One that I hadn't seen. Unfortunately, the one I chose, "Torn Curtain", was not exactly representative of the great director's craft. Much too long...Flat out boring. Even with a star of such magnitude as Paul Newman, it failed to generate any interest whatsoever. Even the plot line was mundane. I apologized to the wife and plan on picking a better one soon. Probably "Vertigo", though I have seen that one before. The plan is to instill an appreciation in my wife for Alfred Hitchcock. I can only hope that "Torn Curtain" didn't spoil any chances for success in that endeavour.
Watched an old Robert Duvall movie last night, "Tender Mercies". I hadn't seen that one in YEARS, but I remembered it being very, very good. It's hard to go wrong with Robert Duvall, and this is one of his best roled, IMO. I'm pretty sure Stacie liked it (couldn't get Bryan to watch ANYTHING...he's got the teenage attitude going and doesn't want to do much at all with his mom and dad).
I've been watching the British series "Waiting for God" and I like it a lot. We gave "Red Dwarf", another British series, a chance, but hated it. I had put like 8 seasons in the queue because it looked like it might be really good. I was sorely disappointed and had to remove them all. It looked like the "special effects" might be pretty cool, and the story idea in the one we watched seemed interesting...but the actors delivery and the script were just so bad we couldn't make it to the end of the first episode.
I'd already seen the documentary "Hell House", or at least part of it, but it's so fascinating I had to watch again. It's about a church who put on an elaborate "Haunted House" each Halloween. It's not your typical haunted house, though. It's supposed to have some kind of evangelical message, and the tour through the building is filled with scenes about drug abuse, suicide, domestic abuse, AIDS (tied in, of course, with the homosexual lifestyle), promiscuous sex, and, most importantly, dying without having accepted Jesus Christ as "personal Lord and Saviour"...nothing you'd find in a "normal" haunted house. There is a scene that's stolen straight from the Pearl Jam song "Jeremy". So much so that the kid with the gun is actually called Jeremy. Another in which a young man lies in a hospital bed, dying of AIDS, while some girl (a relative?) tries very hard to get him to renounce the lifestyle that has, apparently, brought him to this end. He doesn't do it, though, and so he winds up in the final scene, in which Satan drags him, and every other "non-believer" straight to hell with him. TOTALLY ABSURD. Almost surreal, even. And these church folks take it SO seriously, from the audtion process to the actual process, you can tell it's something they wait all year for. And the event brings in thousands of people and has since it was first started several years back. No doubt many of those who pay to go through see it for the joke it is (not saying it's meant as a joke...in fact, these church folks are very serious about it...but come on...people are smarter than that, I hope). The best scene is when a small group of teens chastise the preacher of the church for what they feel are unsympathetic and/or inaccurate portrayals of the issues the spectacle exploits. It's so cool to see a kid, probably no older than 18 or 19, wearing a Fear Factory t-shirt, just lambasting this middle age hypocrite. The righteous indignation of this young unbeliever was so overpowering that the preacher seemed dumbstruck. Anything he had to offer in response was so "rehearsed" and typical (a witnesse's sound byte, I call it) that he was easilly railroaded by the TRUTH. The kind loses his temper once, shooting the bird at him and saying "fuck you", but his friends restrain him. He cools down quickly and the only admirable thing the preacher does in the whole exchange is keep his cool. But even that came off as some weird lesson in "turning the other cheek". The kids walked away and left the guy with egg on his face, even though, I'm almost positive, he felt like he'd done the Lord's work in dealing with them in the way he had...anyway, like I said, it's a great film.
I suppose I've written about as much...no, more, than I originally planned.
No comments:
Post a Comment