Carol the Dabbler

I am so glad that none of the places I've worked required a doctor's note for absence. Of course we're allowed only a certain number of "sick days," and after that we either lose our pay or go on longterm disability. But in general all we have to do is phone our employer and let them know we're sick. Also glad that I don't have your doctor. It takes me a couple of weeks to get over a cold, and if I try to tough it out and keep working (the way some idiots do, thereby spreading their germs), I simply don't get any better until I take time off.

Just ran across a YouTube video called "Why Modern Movies [Stink]-- They're Written By Children." It illustrates its case with scenes from TOS and TNG versus the reboot movies, Discovery, etc. I do not disagree.

That sort of thing gets to just about everyone eventually, I think. I went with some friends to a street carnival. She didn't want to go on any of the rides. He wanted to go on all of them, but wanted some company. So we compromised and went on only the rides that I (thought I was) comfortable with. One of them was the Tilt-A-Whirl, where you're in a three-or-four-person seat that tilts and whirls as it moves around the center of the ride. I had always thought of it as a reasonably tame ride -- but was not aware that the lap bar was also a control mechanism. My friend wanted to whirl faster, so he kept pulling on the bar, and I was getting dizzy but I toughed it out. When we got back to their apartment, he excused himself and headed for the bathroom. She and I talked for a while, then got to wondering what was taking him so long. She went to check, then reported that he was in there throwing up. We were not overly sympathetic.

Which may explain why your screen name is SherlockandKey, rather than WatsonandKey?

Don't congratulate yourself just yet. I'm starting to think that either a] they may have run out of good plots over the first six seasons, so that b] they've given up on keeping the plots manageable, and/or c] the casting people have run out of actors with distinguishing characteristics. Things do still come together in the end, but meanwhile I sometimes find myself watching the set decoration instead of the show.

I used to love ferris wheels, until one time at a street carnival I noticed how much the thing was creaking and moaning. And it occurred to me that they had to disassemble it every time they left a town, then re-assemble it at the next place. And what if they lost a few bolts in the process? Or simply forgot to install some pieces?

Well, you've finally done it Arcadia -- you've permanently warped my perceptions of the filmed media! We've been watching our DVD set of Murder, She Wrote, and during the first episode of season 7, I said, "Hey, the cinematography's different!" Nothing bizarre, you understand, maybe a touch more artistic. A few episodes later, it still seems a bit more imaginative than I recall from prior seasons, so I checked IMDb -- and sure enough, they just got a new DoP, Peter Salim. What ever happened to the Good Old Days, when I could just watch a show???

Thanks. Maybe there isn't a logical connection, just one of those silly things that becomes a fad. But I guess that amounts to the same thing you said.

Nor do some of them seem to realize that other people may also have problems, which is the part that eventually gets to me. I don't mind lending a sympathetic ear to someone who's willing to return the favor once in a while.

So that makes three of us. I suspect this is part of the whole "young people are immortal" thing. Even though most people in, say, their twenties are intellectually aware that bad things can happen, they don't *feel* that way. So they can watch a scary / violent films as entertainment, in the same category as riding a roller coaster. But once they have a few more decades under their belt, it hits closer to home, and it's not fun anymore. (I'm not so keen on roller coasters any more, either.)

You might want to skip Bambi, though. And Dumbo.

I wish I had some advice for you! I had a friend who was fun in person. But on the phone she was sort of like that, only instead of the leaves are falling, I got to listen to her ongoing tale of woe. She had actual problems and certainly wasn't bitching about minutia, but it went on for hours. One day I felt a desire to tell a friendly ear about a significant problem in my life, and I figured she owed me, so I called her -- and after listening to her woes for several hours, I finally gave up. Other than maybe a time or two in person, I haven't talked to her since. So you have my sympathy, if that's any consolation.

Thank you for asking -- I sort of assumed everyone knew about it but me.

Yes, review, please!

Used to be, I'd go see all the "big" films as soon as they hit the theaters. But then I went through a trying time and found that I had lost my tolerance for an awful lot of what was passing for "entertainment" then. Even now there are a lot of things I don't enjoy watching, and if I don't enjoy it, then what's the point of watching? Funny thing is, I can watch murder mysteries just fine (as long as the murder itself isn't supposed to be the attraction), but I refuse to watch anything where cruelty to animals is supposed to be funny. Thank goodness for DVDs, because I'm no longer limited to the current crop.