Bastet

Yes, I like that one a lot. Why would anyone fault them??

Plenty of actors have been pregnant without their characters also being knocked up; it's a choice to write it in, not a requirement. Audiences are savvy enough to just go with all the old tricks to make the expanding belly less obvious. But this show loved unintended pregnancies for its characters, so I'm sure once Kingston was pregnant they never even though of Elizabeth not also being pregnant.

I don't know that Anthony Edwards specifically pushed Mark/Lizzie, just that he wanted a high-profile relationship by teaming his character with another main character (which kind of became Elizabeth by default) and I've never heard that Eriq LaSalle pushed Peter/Cleo; the latter just rightly said screw this noise to playing one of the few black main characters on prime time and having his only positive romantic relationship be with a white woman. ELS not wanting to use his rare status to perpetuate a negative stereotype is not responsible for the chemistry deprivation of the intra-racial relationship that followed. If either actor was approached by the EP saying, "We've heard your request, but the particular relationship we've directed the writers to create in response isn't working, so we're going to try something else that will still alleviate/fulfill your concerns but generate more spark" and the actors dug in their heels, I'll line up to criticize. But I've never heard a whiff of that.

I don't care if he wanted Mark to have a serious relationship, or really even that he asked for a relationship between Mark and a main character. But that last one is more about ego than character, so I do mind that once it was clear Mark and Elizabeth were utterly devoid of chemistry, they didn't back out of it rather than doubling down with pregnancy and marriage so that interesting Lizzie was stuck with his boring ass.

If that turns up on Netflix or TV, I'll watch it; I have something of a thing for 9/11 documentaries (well, I love documentaries in general). Not the conspiracy theory shitfests, or anything glorifying/excusing our government's actions afterward, but those that simply tell the stories of the day -- people who lived, people who died, people who witnessed any of the four incidents from close by, journalists who covered it, the fighter pilots scrambled and faced with the possibility of shooting down a civilian aircraft, etc. And one of my clearest memories of early news footage was a woman on the street interview, when in the middle of it something caught her eye, and after a beat her entire face transformed and she gasped, "Oh my god, they're jumping." The camera was on her the whole time, so I "saw" the jumpers through her eyes before I saw actual footage of the falling bodies, and I can still remember the realization in her face and voice as she grasped what she was seeing, that in some of those offices, conditions were so horrific falling 95 floors was the better end. My friend and I looked at each other as if for confirmation, and then were just very quiet for a while after that.

Few things make me as instantly happy as seeing inter-species snuggling.

I like Rosanne Cash, too, but I love the Dixie Chicks. They are one of my favorite bands across all genres (one of the rare times where I not only like almost every song on every album, I love most of them) and I've seen them in concert several times. I also liked the Shut Up and Sing documentary. I'm glad to see them ranked so highly, although I'd have been even happier with top ten; as the list is revealed, we'll see if there's anyone I think they should have been ahead of.

I hated that one when I first started hearing/seeing it, but I, too, have come to appreciate the "I can't with this" or "I just cannot with this" idiom.

I was lucky in that I was a few days into a week-long hiking trip (hiking all day, but back in civilization each night). By the time we woke up and turned on the news while getting ready that morning, everything had already happened (we were in the Mountain time zone). Which was shocking - it really took several minutes of staring at the screen and staring at each other to comprehend this was real - but we hadn't sat watching everything play out in real time. Of course we read the paper each morning and watched the news each night as usual as that week went on, but during the day we were out in beautiful nature, and it really helped. The wife of an executive where I worked at the time died on one of the flights, and when I came back to work I had this shell-shocked man in my office wanting to change all his beneficiary paperwork so that if something happened to him, her kids would get it all with no hassle. This guy was a total asshole at work, and she was nice, smart, had her own career, had raised two daughters (whom he adored), etc. She was his "human credential" -- there had to be something more to him than what we all saw at work if he'd managed to score and maintain this great little family. I left the company the next spring, and left the industry entirely, so I never heard about him anymore and don't know how much he changed after her death. But I'll never forget the way he looked in my office.

As do I. The taste, the smell -- I do not want them anywhere near me. Imagine my displeasure when my mom, just starting to have the tiniest bit of an appetite when she was so sick this spring, asked me to make banana bread out of the nasty-ass bananas on the counter. Like the green ones don't stink enough, now I've got to mash up these over-ripe things? (I'd have made my dad do it, but I inherited my banana hatred from him, and he'd have probably puked.)

I think many of them are befuddled by numbers, couldn't calculate change if the computer died, and don't think of the money the computer tells them is due back to the customer in the big picture terms that would let them easily do the "here's 3, 4, and 5" routine. Look how many have to stop and visibly think about what series of bills/coins make up the amount on the screen in order to hand back the change, and how many stare blankly - or try to hand you money back! - when you hand over bills plus some coins in order to get a nice even amount back. My change-giving peeve, and I believe someone raised this issue before, is handing me my change with the coins on top of the bills. No. Other way around. And the absence of counting out the change plays into this, because if they did that, they'd hand over the coins that got them to the first dollar amount, and then the bills (in order) to get them up to the amount given. I put almost everything on my credit card (for convenience; it's fast at the point of sale, and then I just check the statement and write one big check each month), so I don't even deal with change very often. If I did, I'd have one more reason to be perpetually annoyed.

Reynolds said he never watched the film in its entirety. As for Anderson, Reynolds thought he was an arrogant young punk who wasn't giving him due respect. He was also reportedly uncomfortable with the subject matter and explicit nature of the film. There's a lot of information in this oral history of making the film, none from Reynolds, but a fair bit about him.

Holy shit, this game.

Peter was not deprived of his rights. And the only "paternity is presumptive, and that's it" scenario is with married couples, so that doesn't apply to Peter.

Biological ties are privileged, yes, but neither party had that in this case (remember, they retconned Carla into a lying skank); the only known bio parent was Carla, and she was dead, so now it was between two non-bio dads, where the child has an existing relationship with both (and is used to living primarily with one, Roger). The standard is "best interests of the child," so Peter was never, ever going to get his way yanking that child out his home. Roger was asking for exactly what fit the standard, and had Peter just agreed to that reasonable request, they'd have never needed to go through the court process for the judge to order what Roger had asked for to begin with.

That was adorable! As was the screaming Louie, who successfully got the Pol staff to take him out of his cage and let him hang out with them in order to shut him up. They never said why he was there or - as I recall - how long he'd been there, so hopefully he was just a neuter or something. The little calf with a polar vest on was also quite cute. They deal with so many breeders on this show, and I cannot with those people. "Golly gee, the only reason I can think of for my dogs attacking each other is hormones; I had one with puppies and one pregnant with access to each other, and, boom - fight." Screw you; fix your damn dogs and make money another way. I want to hope she's the same great dane breeder we saw a couple of episodes ago (whose face I can't properly call up in my memory), continuing to piss me off, rather than another great dane breeder, meaning there's even more of them in the area.

If it's a string of "spot the reference" shots that don't add up on their own to a cohesive, scary story, it's going to suck and the whole "this film posits the sequels didn't happen, but is littered with allusions to them" will just be one big "you can't have it both ways" failed ploy. If it manages to be its own film, while providing the audience well versed in the franchise with the bonus of well-placed allusions (e.g. the Psych episodes that work for a general audience and also provide moments of glee to those readily familiar with the source material being referenced), it will be brilliant. I have no idea which one it will be, but if it's the latter, I'll be thrilled. Like with Scream, which turned out to simultaneously be a good slasher film and a brilliant parody of slasher films, when from previews I wasn't sure it was going to pull either one off.

The writing, yes, with the icky Lucy/Carter thing they insisted on setting up for a while, but it's also the acting, at least for me; Kellie Martin has bugged me in every production in which I've sat through her performance. I could not have been more surprised that I was just as invested in Lucy's final hours as I was Carter's, and I will always give props to Martin for the look on her face when she mouths, "PE?," perfectly conveying Lucy's knowledge that she has a pulmonary embolism and her survival may well be short-lived.

It was particularly appalling, given the dismissive attitude toward ADD/ADHD so prevalent in society at that time, for a top-rated prime time show to present a doctor - and not the asshole doctor secondary character, the perhaps most-loved primary character - as taking that stance about Ritalin.

Or It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

She was the star of Alias, which I didn't watch, but it was on for about five years so I read about it/saw promos; being the star, that's what I associate her with even though I didn't watch it. I think the only thing I've ever seen her in (other than the commercials) is Juno - oh, and Draft Day, but that was a shitty role so I forgot it initially, but here's her list of credits (via IMDb).

Excellent! The sudden uptick in his kidney values may very well have been "acute on chronic" -- where yes, he has CKD, but the increase wasn't due to a rapid progression of the disease, but a secondary effect of his other problem. So now that surgery has removed that problem, the kidney values may very well resettle, just like the red blood cell values. I had a cat who lived her final seven years with CKD, and when she had pancreatitis, the kidney values (especially the BUN, which is affected by numerous things other than kidney problems) shot up. But then they settled back down once she got through that bout of pancreatitis, and in fact she died (of liver disease, with pancreatitis) with normal kidney values (after diagnosis, thanks to a low-phosphorus [but NOT low-protein] diet, they fluctuated over those seven years between normal, stage one, and occasionally just into stage two). Continued good thoughts to you and your little grump. My condolences on the loss of Jagermeister. It's always terrible, but there's something extra about losing the one who was your first pet.

One of the great things about being a TV character is that if you need to dig up a grave, buried treasure, or what have you, not only can you do it quickly and without breaking a sweat, you are so skilled you will dig out a perfect square or rectangle, with perfect edges even. And, even if a grave, you'll only have a small mound of removed dirt to deal with.

Riley (my cat) and I just toasted to Elliot, @CrazyDog. I've put a cat with kidney disease under anesthesia because the benefits outweighed the risks, and, using the renal-specific protocols and extra careful monitoring, she came through just fine. Fingers and paws crossed for you!

Which doesn't work on me, because I hardly buy anything in the aisles anyway (mostly meat, produce, and deli, all of which are on the sides and in the back), and when I'm annoyed because the few things I want from there aren't where they used to be, I become hyper-focused looking for them and really don't even register the other stuff I'm looking at/past as I stop at the end of each aisle to look at the overhead signs and scan down the aisle. (All while making sure I'm not preventing someone from entering/exiting the aisle, because I hate when people get lost in thought with their damn cart in the way.) But I'm sure for those who shop by going up and down most of the aisles, it can be an effective strategy. Seems like a lot of work for whatever reward it yields, though.