My TV is Free and It's HD

AT&T (NYSE: T) is trying its best to get me to spend an extra $60 minimum a month to buy their television and home phone service, but it's just not making sense yet. And here's why.
I used to buy the cheapest cable package from Time Warner (NYSE: TW), but one day it went out and the local customer service said it would be a week before anyone could come out and fix it. I hooked up an antenna, put it on my highest shelf, and lo and behold, I watched television. All six major networks: NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, FOX, and CW. Quick call to the cable company and I was free at least.
Later, I had to replace my DVD player, and I did so with a DVD recorder. Much to my surprise, I found I could receive the local digital channels through that recorder. Now I had five channels of PBS and two flavors of all the rest. So I went from six channels to 15, and all but two of those in HD clarity, even on my analog TV.
So I looked even better off compared to any deal involving cables, satellite dishes, or fiber optics. After all, I have enough to do without the need to decide which one of 101 channels I want to watch today. Unless they want to give it to me for a lot less forever. Because right now, my TV is free and it's HD.

I prefer my fertilizer from the bag

Don't you just love how people let their dogs walk them around, especially when they stop in front of your house to defecate, urinate, and dig around?

Have a clue, dog people! That's nasty.

I used to have a dog, and when I walked her in public, I walked her, not the other way around. I didn't stop in front of somebody's house and say, come on, Fido, crap in this stranger's yard. No, I took the dog to a common area, a walking area, away from where kids might play, and that's where the dog was trained to go.

Even if you clean up the poop, the germs are still on the ground, don't you think? I have yet to see anyone with a spray bottle, spraying down the affected area and drying it nice and fresh.

One thing you never see in the grassy area outside my window: Kids playing. I do not wonder why.

Why is the grass turning yellow?

Two more days to dust off some piece of writing to give to my crit group.

I'm reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Or something like that. Was that Einstein?

Star Trek IV: still the one

I got to see the new Star Trek movie a couple of weeks ago, and it was okay. Way too much CGI-wowness and far too little story, imo, but at least it made money so they'll continue to spew them out and might even get better at it at some point.

I begin to exhibit traits of the purist, though, feeling that without the originals in the mix somehow, that it's not real Star Trek. In the original, Spock would never have kissed Uhuru. What that had to do with building the story is beyond me. Just another case of selling a minimal story with maximal sex. Got no story? Throw in some love-making. That's what the great masses of world want. Can't get enough in their lives, so shove it at them in their books, TVs, and movies.

Can't even recall what the heck the story was in the new Star Trek without thinking very hard. That wasn't the way in the older movies, even the ones I didn't like so much. Nor in the series--at least till Enterprise. TNG, Deep Space 9, and even the marginally interesting (to me) Voyager all had storylines that they followed from beginning to end. Not in the way of a Babylon 5 epic, but very close.

My favorite Star Trek is still IV, subtitled the Journey Home, or something like that. And here are the reasons I like it:

>>The story is not dependent on superwowie special effects, but the effects used stand up to today's standards.

>>Even though the time is 1984, the movie doesn't date itself because the crew has gone back in time. This also saved them lots of money in creating sets of the past. The "past" represented in the movie was the present of 1984.

>>It stars a young Catherine Hicks, the mom on Seventh Heaven. She is hot.

>>The one thing I don't like on it: Lots of mild cursing, one not so mild. Nothing you don't hear on family hour television, but nothing you want to hear your four-year-old copying.

>>Anomaly: Hicks's character is a kind of tree-hugger, earth lover, but she drives a 1960s looking pickup that has to spit out more toxic material than any decent Honda of the era.

>>Odd:
The communicators of the 23rd century are bigger than cell phones of
the late 1990s. Plus, they make the same sound as Nextel's (now
Sprint's) push-to-talk devices.

A writing note: You have four or five distinct stories in this one movie. The 23rd century tale of mass destruction leads into the time travel to the 20th century, where three groups of two actors lead the viewer on three unique adventures that all come together in the end.

As a viewer, I'm helped to like the characters by having known them in the previous three movies and three years of television episodes. That's why I'm a little bit taken aback by changes to that original background in the new movie.

But as I've said ever since Voyager: Any Star Trek is better than no Star Trek.

Slow this contraption down!

One thing I am not liking about blogs is that when I look at the date I last wrote, I realize it's been X amount of time since then, yet it feels like only yesterday I was talking about whatever it was.

Wish I had something deep and controversially provocative to add, but that's it.