Bastet

Season eight is about to start - yay, because at least that means we get to see Carter's parents. I love Mary McDonnell. Time got away from me and I forgot to turn the TV on until now. I wanted to see this one again, because I remember Greene killing a patient, and wanted to watch the circumstances in their entirety again to see if there's any way in which that's not horrible.

Only the episode's actors, director, writer, and exec producers sit at the table; network execs, other producers, etc. watching the table read sit in those chairs you see. If Galecki was there not as an actor appearing in the episode, but as a "friend of the show" invited to drop by and observe the first episode's table read, that's where he'd be sitting.

Why is that hybrid-killing stiletto thing so important? Cancerman is sitting around waiting for it so he can kill Jeremiah Smith, X wants his hands on it so he's ready when colonization begins, etc. But couldn't these folks just open their kitchen drawers and get an ice pick? You have to kill the hybrids by piercing the skull at the base of the neck. Okay, so anything pointy and sharp enough will do, right? (Plus, this fancy tool isn't all that great, obviously, since it didn't even kill the Alien Bounty Hunter even though Mulder stabbed him in the right spot.) And why is the green blood suddenly not toxic? It used to instantly zap anyone nearby, but Mulder stabs ABH and everyone's fine despite the bubbling green goo. Are they both already immune? And, jeez, that ditch in Herrenvolk! It was the only thing I'd remembered about the episode, because the white hot rage was seared into my brain. And his phone call the next morning is basically, "And, Scully, thankfully the most-important thing is true: I'm fine." Well, goody for you, Special Agent Jackass, but she's spent the night with a special order ice pick stuck to her head by some mutant thing that previously tossed her through a glass table, because you took off on a boat and ignored her. Y'all, Teliko is worse than any of us remembered. All I remembered was Scully looking really hot while crawling through duct work to reach incapacitated, drooling Mulder. (I'd even forgotten Carl Lumbly - Petrie from Cagney & Lacey - was in it!) So I'd always figured I hated it because it was a snooze-fest. And it is, but it's also actively awful. It opens with "ethnic" music as the score (at one point the music sounds very much like what was used in Fresh Bones, and why not - Haiti, Burkina Faso, same thing) and a plane full of people in garb to match the music, and I said to my cat, "Oh gods, it's going to be one of those." Whenever one of these white dudes writing for the show picks a folk tale from anywhere outside Western European culture, it's a mess. Beyond the "I couldn't identify the country I'm writing crap about on a map" ignorance and boredom, it has two major flaws: - They get this case because Scully is requested; it's believed to be a public health issue, and they want her medical expertise in determining what's killing these men so they can stop it before it spreads further. And instead of Mulder just toddling along - like Scully does every time they get a case because of his expertise - and then as things progress, coming up with an alternate theory, he just stands there on minute one and, based on nothing, scoffs that this must be something else. Why? What? He doesn't know, but certainly it can't be legitimate that original investigators believed what at first looked like kidnapping was actually a contagion of some sort and thus they asked for Scully. - I don't think they ever explain how Aboah is able to fit himself into tiny places. He's not Tooms, yo - if he can fit inside the drawer of a food cart, you kind of need to mention why that is. Hell, they don't even bother to get specific on how killing these people the way he does allows him to drain their hormones. Awful episode. Moving on, Home originally opened with the baby crying through the whole burial. It is pretty horrible to listen to, and I'm not surprised that's one of the changes the network required. And Unruhe originally opened with Mulder hanging up with his mom's doctor, and telling Scully they're going to continue to keep her, but she's improving. I always thought it was funny that Herrenvolk ended with the ABH healing her on Cancerman's orders, and then we never heard anything more about whether she was affected by the stroke or whether he was able to put her back to normal. Apparently, three episodes later, someone thought they should mention that, and then it got deleted.

I remember having a Bugs Bunny doll that could talk, and probably had other toys with strings sticking out of their backs, and understand any of those would become annoying with only a little repetition. But that Elmo laugh is enough to send someone screaming into the woods upon hearing it just once! I truly do not understand how this became a fad.

Yes. Daily, if you wish. Because fuck that. I'm watching The Golden Girls tonight, as I do, and at the top of every episode is a banner about "Countdown to Christmas," and a crawl saying "The Golden Girls are going on Christmas vacation, but will be back in January." No one leaves for Christmas vacation in October, you fuckwits. Those movies they air in place of regular programming are horrible, so it was bad enough when they started up after Thanksgiving. Anything beyond the 24th and 25th of December would be annoying. But in October?!

Holy shit. The Tickle Me Elmo commercial is inherently annoying because the product being advertised is annoying, but I somehow managed to avoid ever hearing this awful toy when it was a craze. Now that it's being brought back, I keep being subjected to the commercial for it, and I have to lunge for the remote when the damn thing starts laughing. That noise! I can't believe there are parents who allow it into their home. Did it sound like that the first time around? If so, I'm stunned it sold five units, let alone a million.

All five minutes of it? I think it was good casting, in that most people love Leslie Nielsen, to try to make this out-of-nowhere, joke turned reality marriage make some semblance of sense since the audience knew something had to happen in order to wind up this series and start the new one that wouldn't include Dorothy, but I'm one who just can't go with it. When I see those two episodes on my program guide, all I do is get excited that the series is about to start over. I almost always hate "I can't stand you - wait, actually, I'm crazy for you" relationships, but they had great chemistry together and I, too, would have liked to see them date for a while. I love Robert Culp, and thus would have adored seeing his character in more than just the one episode (he's the one Blanche is dating when she has to get a pacemaker and is scared to have sex afterward).

I finished season three last night, and watching so many episodes in a row reminded me why I never actually liked Mulder when I watched the show. Loved Scully, liked many aspects of their dynamic, liked a lot of the storylines (at least at this point in the series), liked some of the things Mulder said or did, but in general? It wasn't until IWTB that I said, "Hey, I kind of like this guy," and then I liked him in season ten. I used to get pretty pissed off when Scully was referred to in entertainment media as Mulder's "sidekick" rather than his partner, but it's no wonder when he's constantly telling her what to do. An hour-long, two-person show is just never going to get filmed in time if the duo do everything together, but the divide and conquer investigative strategy is virtually never something they decide on together; almost every.single.episode thus far includes a scene like this: Mulder: Why don't you go [do something, and the majority of the time it's not even an autopsy, which obviously only she can do] Scully: While you do what? Mulder: [Either silence or a sarcastic answer as he walks away] No wonder when she's exposed to the mind control in Wetwired, her personal paranoia is that Mulder is lying to her. I somehow never noticed before that Wetwired was written by Mat Beck, the special effects guy. I love that episode, and am really impressed it came from a non-writer. I think most of the special features on the Blu-Ray discs are just carried over from what was on the DVDs, but I'd never watched them before. It was funny to hear WOTC discussed, because no two people said "coprophages" the same way. Apparently, it was CC's idea to add the domestic killer kitties to Teso Dos Bichos; Shiban had just written about the jaguar spirit. Way to go, Chris - only you could make a John Shiban script even worse. After listening to Darin Morgan and Rob Bowman's commentary on JCFOS, I am even more impressed - which I wouldn't have thought possible - by the many layers of brilliance in that episode. Such tremendous thought went into how the different versions of events work together.

Ainsley and Sam Charlie and Toby - I don't think Charlie is friends with anyone on senior staff, so if I had three votes Charlie and Josh would be the third

@riley702, thanks to Chit Chat, I saw a picture of you in the midst of cancer treatment. You did not look ugly then. And if you don't look ugly when your body is under that kind of stress, you're not ugly looking - by whatever parameters one is using to define that - under normal circumstances. In fact, you looked radiant; that picture has stuck with me. Look, yes - beauty is subjective, but there are some features on which a majority of people agree as attractive versus not. By those standards, not everyone is attractive. But "ugly" is something that seeps out from the inside. Even setting that aside, and just going by "attractive" versus "unfortunate, given society's standard" you do not fit into the latter!

I'm not sure what you're arguing, or even if you're arguing, because having risk factors and being able to undergo a colonoscopy means you are not the person the fecal test is designed for/being marketed to (or the people being discussed in saying there are valid reasons, not just "eek, get away from my ass," to forgo a colonoscopy). Nor is my mom, who is in remission from metastatic breast cancer; of course she and her doctors are going to assume the risk to go hunting, given her risk factor. But my dad, who has no risk factors, no symptoms, nor any other reason to think he may have colon cancer, is recommended to, and agrees it's best to, have annual fecal tests and only move to colonoscopy if a changed situation warrants (and insurance would cover a colonoscopy at any point, so for once in this crazy healthcare system of ours, that's not it). So if you mean in your circumstances, it would be foolish to go for this test instead of a colonoscopy, I agree (presumably as does even the advertising team because they're not marketing it as a universal preliminary step/replacement) . If you mean under any circumstances, at least for someone of a certain age, this test shouldn't be used rather than going right to a screening colonoscopy, that's when I - and many doctors - would disagree with you. At any rate, congratulations on beating two forms of cancer! I wish you good health for many years to come.

Which is why no doctor in her or his right mind would suggest you do the fecal test instead of a colonoscopy (unless there was some medical reason prohibiting the procedure). For those who do not have that history, symptoms that may indicate colon cancer, or any other reason to suspect it as a possibility, it's a different story, and a colonoscopy may not be warranted. In those cases, it's a different situation - in terms of what the procedure entails and its risks, the general incidence (meaning accounting for risk factors) of the disease, and the growth and mortality rate of the disease - from saying, for example, "of course every woman over a certain age should have a mammogram; do you want to get breast cancer?" Because of their differences in risk factors, my mom has had two (this year's is the last one she'll ever have to have, to her relief) while my dad has had none. She loathes the prep (it's not fun for a sigmoidoscopy, either, and my dad has had that), but in her particular case the procedure kind of sucks, too, because of the (congenital and harmless) "extra kinks" she has in her intestines; they always apologize to her. In general, though, yeah - the worst part is the clearing yourself out in preparation for the test.

Re. the "make America sober again" ad, I can't see it well enough on my computer screen to verify, but I saw it last night on my TV and think the fine print at the end says it's from the Addiction Network folks. So they already have their "regular" ads, and then made this second one to appeal to a certain segment of society. Gross.

Ha! Usually quite true; in the most general terms, you tend to hear comments criticizing women they don't know and have no chance of ever sleeping with, but when it comes time to actually have sex with a woman, they're pretty happy one has gotten naked with them. The worst example of one-on-one assholery about a woman's "imperfect" body I ever heard was a co-worker whose husband (who, thankfully, became her ex-husband) made comments about how "ugly" and "distracting" her c-section scar was. Seriously?! Those scars are small, and pretty much obscured by hair (on those who keep their pubic hair, anyway). But even if it was up high, big, and otherwise noticeable -- she got that giving birth to their child!

I don't care that we didn't see the ceremony; it's a wedding - sickness, health, death, part, I do, you do, blah blah blah. It's what you sit through to get to the reception, so TV ceremonies are usually very brief unless someone's going to object, leave their partner at the altar, etc. So it's fine with me they decided to do a "get me to the church on time" storyline, but it wasn't a very good one. I liked Kerry telling the nurse calling in sick (Connie, I think), "If you're in any of the wedding pictures, you're fired." And the moment between Romano and Corday - or Robert and Lizzie - was very nice. But Mark's parts of the episode sucked. Also, at least Cleo came to her senses, but getting pissy about going to the wedding because Peter and Elizabeth used to date was so petty and dumb. I love that Peter didn't abide it, just said, "Oh, come on."

It's horrible what we're conditioned to think of/do to ourselves. Similar to your example, I have a friend who's told me she won't take her shirt off during sex because she's embarrassed of her small breasts. I told her big ones slide halfway down into your armpits when you lie on your back and bounce all over the place during sex. It is what it is. But it can be very hard to accept that when bombarded with messages about how awful and shameful it is if our bodies don't meet some narrow standard that's pervasive in media but uncommon in "real" life.

That's about what I expected. Poor pits and pit mixes, especially; their shelter survival rates are dismal nationwide, so I wish every state had a place like Villalobos (the rescue featured on Pit Bulls & Parolees). But I'm glad your save rate is better than many. And hooray for Shay (heh; rhyme unintended) getting a home. I can only imagine how good that feels for you, having been the one to go pick her up. It tugs at my heart every time I see video of rescuers coming upon a dog in horrible condition like that, only to have her or him find the energy to eke out a tail wag.

What a wonderful story! Do you guys usually have success finding a rescue to take animals in need of intensive and/or long-term veterinary care like that? (I'm just assuming, based on how it is in the few areas with which I'm familiar with Animal Control/municipal shelters, that your shelter does not have the resources for extensive veterinary care and must partner with rescue organizations in order to avoid putting such animals to sleep.)

Is Notre Dame playing USC or the Keystone Cops? Because at this point I'm amazed the Trojans managed to find their way from the locker room to the field.

I probably post this every time the episode is discussed, but my favorite quote from that one comes when D.J. explains he went to church because he had questions about "god and stuff," and Roseanne tells him he should have come to Dan and her, since there's no one better to answer his questions: D.J.: Okay. What religion are we? Roseanne: I have no idea. Dan? Dan: Well, my family is Pentecostal on my mom's side and Baptist on my dad's. Your Mom's mom is Lutheran and her dad was Jewish. D.J.: So what do we believe? Roseanne: Well, we believe in, uh, being good. So, basically, we're Good People. Dan: Yeah, but we're not practicing.

Some people can't have colonoscopies, and many doctors are moving away from recommending them as a routine screening procedure for those with no symptoms of/risk factors for colo-rectal cancer, feeling the risks of the procedure are not justified in someone who there's no reason to suspect has the disease. Now, why the fecal test is being advertised to consumers rather than recommended to them by their doctors is the same question we ask of drug ads, but "why wouldn't you just have a colonoscopy?" has several different potential answers other than "because I don't want something shoved up my ass."

I hate when a message, alma mater logo, etc. t-shirt I want isn't available as a tank top -- the regular t-shirts are too thick and boxy (and are often crew neck instead of v-neck, which I cannot stand), the "women's cut" tees have those goddamned cap sleeves (and are too much of a slim fit), so the tank top is my only option.

I don't like most fermented foods, other than pickles and beer -- most vinegars, yogurt, sour cream, sauerkraut, and many others are on my "no thanks" list -- but I do like kimchi, so go figure. @Mellowyellow, I hate cream cheese - and thus cheesecake - too. I also hate a lot of blue cheeses. I lump them in with yogurt and sour cream as dairy gone bad.

Yep, and she was also in a very funny episode of Major Crimes this past season, so I like her, too. Plus, "Millennials, am I right?" makes me laugh regardless.

Boo; I like Amy and Abby and Abby and Leo. Charlie and C.J. Ainsley and Sam Charlie and Mrs. Landingham - If we're voting on these relationships as friendships, which is what I'm doing, this doesn't qualify, so I'm voting for this now even though I like their interaction because most of the rest I like as friendships (which is why Leo and Margaret are next on my list).