kapgar

You've got to humanize yourself...

I'm going to hit you with a Snippet Thursday: The Reckoning with a theme today. It's going to be all about the show True Blood and my current disappointment in season 2.

Yes, you read that correctly. I loved season 1, but, seven episodes into season 2, I'm left with a pretty hollow feeling so far. Maybe the final five episodes will right that, but I just don't know.

Oh, and if you haven't watched season 2 yet and plan to, you might want to skip this post. It will be full of spoilers. So consider that your **SPOILER ALERT**

Bill
I'll be honest with you, Bill Compton is really starting to wear on me. He's become very whiny lately always bitching about Jessica or his relationship with Sookie, or the fact that Eric is "using" Sookie "inappropriately." Dude, you're a vampire... stop that now. You're becoming worse for the image of vampires than Edward from Twilight.

Sucky
Speaking of Sookie, another thing that annoys me to tears is Bill's constant hissing of her name and making it sound like "Sssuckeeee." Dude, I get it, you're a Brit playing a southern gentleman. But take a cue from Sam Trammell who plays Sam Merlotte. He's a native N'awlins boy and, when he says her name, it sounds like "Sookie" with a twang, the way it should be.

It has actually become a bit of a joke between Katie and me and anytime we hear Bill say her name, we bust out in a chorus of the "Suck It" product jingle that David Wallace and his son wrote in The Office. One of us will say "Sssuckeee" and the other chimes in with "Yeah!"

This was all Katie's idea.

Sex
Speaking of Sucky, I get that Bill and Sookie are enjoying the sexual aspect of their relationship. Very much, apparently. And I hate to sound like a prude when I say this, but do we have to see it all the time? And all these freaking orgies that Maryann keeps holding in the woods near Bon Temps? Really? I'm not easily offended, but I'm getting a little tired of this. It's like they're doing it just because they can and they need something to fill the 54 minutes in each episode. Also, as a heterosexual male, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm really getting sick of seeing Anna Paquin's boobs in nearly every episode. I'm guessing the embarrassment comes more from the fact that I so highly hyped this series to my wife and now here we are watching this and she's clearly uncomfortable so, by association, I am too.

Grams
I think what this show is desperately lacking right now is a moral center. In the first season, this role was assumed by Sookie and Jason's grandmother. As anyone who watched season 1 knows, she's dead now. And Katie and I both miss her terribly. When Andy Bellefleur is the closest thing you have to a moral compass in Bon Temps in season 2, you know something's wrong.

Jessica
This is one area where I have actually shifted my view. When Bill created her last season and when she returned to live with Bill initially this season, I couldn't stand Jessica. Just a bratty teen. However, once she was introduced to Hoyt and the two of them started seeing each other, I really began to like her. In fact, the burgeoning love story with Jessica and Hoyt is one of the best things going in the season, IMHO. I really want those two crazy kids to work out. Something tells me they won't, but a guy can hope!

Jason
Just when I was beginning to enjoy the story with Jason and the Light of Day Institute, they had to go and discover who his sister was, didn't they? Man! And Sarah shoots him in this last episode we just finished watching? Even I know it was the paint gun that Jason and Steve were using for target practice on the course a few episodes before. Did the writers really think I'd forget that soon? That is what happens, right? Well, I guess we do get a bit of a change of pace for once... instead of a woman that Jason messes around with being found dead as per season 1, this time she at least gets to think she killed him.

Godric
I get that Godric is a 2,000-year-old vampire and the creator of Eric and I understand why saving him is important, but this hunt and the trip to Dallas and all that jazz has been just completely underwhelming in terms of excitement level. I enjoyed seeing the history sequences between Eric and Godric, but even that isn't making up for my overall boredom with the storyline. Tell me it gets better.

Funny thing I'm noticing, I seem to prefer vampire stories that explain how certain vampires are created more than the rest of the story being told. I like the creation sequences in the Twilight books, particularly Jasper and Rosalie. I liked the creation of Louis by Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. And I liked the creations of Eric and Bill in this series. But anything that happens after that kinda pales by comparison. Am I weird in that regard? Anyone? Anyone?

Good?
Not all of this season is entirely bad. As I said, I like where the Jessica storyline is going, so long as it doesn't take a 180-degree turn.

I was briefly enjoying the Daphne and Sam bit. Until she was revealed to be a Maryann minion. Very disappointing.

I really like Terry Bellefleur and am happy he's playing a much larger part this season even if it involves dating Arlene. But the scene where he defended Lafayette against Andy was great and has quickly become one of my favorite scenes of the series.

And I still get to see where the Jason vs. LODI storyline will go. I'm looking forward to that quite a bit. I wanna see Stackhouse go postal on a bunch of born-again Christians.

Tell me it's worth it. That I won't be regretting seeing this season through to the end. Is season 3 better?

Despicable me, I’m having a bad bad day...

Just a quick one today.

Katie decided to have some fun and made me into a Minion.

Of course I had to have a little return fun.

That is all.

Make your own.

Cocked your head to the side and said I'm angry...

It's been a week and a half since I last blogged.

Wow. I'm pretty sure that's the longest I've been neglectful around these parts.

You know it's bad when both your wife and your mom have taken notice of the fact that you haven't blogged in a long time and are actually a little mournful about it.

I know it's a very off-day, but I hope you don't mind some snippets. Given I've missed the last two Snippet Wednesdays -- and even the last two potential Snippet Thursday: The Reckonings -- I don't see it being a big deal that I do it now, right?

Rest
And on the 14th day, they rested.

This past Sunday marked 13 consecutive days of exercise for Katie and me. As you know, we've been working out weekday mornings for quite some time. Well, a couple weekends ago, we started exercising on weekends as well. Two really long walks in a row now that the heat has calmed down a bit and a 20-mile bike ride this past Saturday. That one caused us to be a bit sore, so we took Sunday off. And we're back at it again this week. All five weekdays so far. Not sure what will happen this weekend. We'll have to wait and see.

Camera
I guess it was a good thing I distracted myself with exercise this past weekend. I was feeling a bit naked without my trusty Sony D-SLR. My friend Eric was shooting a wedding and asked if he could borrow it. This is the first time my Sony has not been with me or at least somewhere I knew he should be. I felt a bit "off," if you get my meaning. Nothing was quite right until Monday when I got my camera back -- in perfect working order -- from Eric. Gah!

Beans
But not having my Sony around gave me time to play a bit more with the camera in my new iPhone 4. It's a nice camera. Not perfect by any stretch, but nice... and far more portable. And what's really nice is the automatic geotagging I get in my iPhone photos when they're uploaded to Flickr.

Of course, even this isn't perfect as the geotag of this Jelly Bean photo would indicate. Apparently, I found myself some jelly beans to photograph in "a mysterious place with no name" in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean near the western coast of Africa.

Guess it's a good thing my passport finally came in the mail, eh?

Bloody
Katie and I are tearing through True Blood seasons 1 and 2 on DVD right now. We got free video-on-demand of all episodes of season 1 from Amazon and season 2 came in from the library but is due back soon. Funny thing was a conversation between Katie and I as Bill and Sookie were having sex and he bit her, drawing blood down her neck...

Katie: [jokingly] "Edward would never do that to Bella!"

Me: "That's because Edward is not a real vampire. He has no fangs. He couldn't if he tried."

Heh.

Chiro
Speaking of conversations, this happened at the chiropractor's office the other day. We finally discovered how old he was.

Me: "You're not even in your thirties!?!?"

Him: "You were born in the Seventies!?!?"

I get it, I'm old.

Lamb
The other day, a coworker and I were coming in to work together and she told me about a book she just started reading. She wasn't sure if I'd ever heard of it because it was, to her, a pretty unknown author. Turns out it was Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Only like my favorite book of all time. It took some work to not hug her right on the spot.

Hunger
Speaking of books, on the very strong recommendation of @DownWithPants and @Amanda234, I began reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's the first in a three-book series and, so far, it reminds me a lot of Takami's Battle Royale (loved the book, hated the movie) and Bachman/King's The Running Man (loved the movie, haven't read the story). And I don't have to wait between books as the final book in the series (Mockingjay) came out this week. I hate waiting. I'm not a patient person at all.

Okay, I'm outta here. Have a great weekend!

All I've got is this touch-tone phone...

This is officially the first post I've written using the Typepad app on my new iPhone.

Yes, I bit the bullet and finally upgraded from my Blackberry. But before anybody freaks out about the $200 price tag, it's best if I admit now that I only spent $25 on it.

How?

Over the weekend, Katie came up with the brilliant idea of asking if the Apple Store would accept gift certificates from the local Chamber of Commerce. I doubted it, but we asked and they said yes. I'd been collecting those things for a couple years now and had amassed quite a few of them. Enough to make my iPhone pretty close to free anyway.

So now I'm working at learning a whole new way to use a phone and it's not bad, but definitely different. In a good way.

Apps rock. The camera rocks. The system speed rocks.

I'm still getting used to the lack of a tactile keyboard and that's not easy. And I have to work with Apple tonight to get the iTunes software on Katie's laptop to work with all the profiles and saved data that is in the iMac version.

Why? Seems iPhone 4s don't work with the old copy of Mac OSX on the iMac. So no syncing just yet. Wish me luck on that one. Gonna need it. It would suck to have to set everything back up from scratch.

More of a review to come after I've played with it a while longer.

Walk like an Egyptian...

Katie and I have been noticing some weird little things regarding nature lately.

For one, there has been a marked increase in the number of dragonflies this year. Evinrude is everywhere! Usually you see a few once in a while around these parts. But, lately, it's hundreds per day. And they're sex starved! You know what I mean. You've seen the "double dragonfly" in flight, haven't you? Horny little buggers. [thanks to the Governor of Maryland for the shot at right]

Crickets have also proven very numerous this summer. Katie says she sees them in some odd places, too. Hopping all over the inside of where she works and the like. She's been working at her current job for eight years and she's never seen it like this. Sure, they can just come in the door when a customer does, but they don't usually do it. Now? Oh yeah, brazen as all get out.

And, finally, there's frogs. I've seen a frog in our front walkway probably one out of every five times I go out there in the last few months. And I don't even use our front walkway that often. So imagine what it might be if I paid regular attention. The other night, Katie and I went for a 45-minute walk and, as we were walking, seven different frogs hopped out of our path. After a while, since the sun was setting, Katie and I were placing bets as to whether or not particular lumps on the ground in front of us would turn out to be frogs.

Something about this feels like it should be the onset of the apocalypse. Dunno why. Just does.

Oh, and I came across a locust carcass yesterday. Coincidence? I think not.

I took a lot of photos this weekend.

Way too many, in fact.

On Saturday, I went with my mom and her group of photographers to the Egyptian Theatre and an old train depot in my former college town of DeKalb. It was a lot of fun, despite being hotter than Hades. And I did manage to nab some shots. Some? More like 250 of them. I have pared it down a bit, but not by much. Here you go...

And, yesterday, Katie and I went with some of my coworkers to the Kane County Cougars (Class A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics) game against the Peoria Chiefs. Sure, the home team Cougars lost 8-4, but it was fun and offered up a few photo ops. Again, here you go...

Off to the gym. Adios.