You are what you eat

It's almost Saturday again, and I'm trying to think of something to post other than that nothing much has changed since the last time I posted. I've made incremental progress on a lot of things. I've been researching video games (no, really) for another article pitch, and brainstorming adventure ideas. Plugging away at Nenle and Death. At least some parts of it have gotten to where I want them.

One disappointment is that the whole 72-hour response thing I expected from Paizo turns out to be a very old estimate. Like other venues, the normal wait can apparently get into months. So, I am still waiting, and coming up with other ideas mainly as a change of pace from other sorts of writing.

I've wanted to take a page from Alexandra Duncan's book (her metaphorical one, not her real one) and make a list of my media intake over the year. Where it seems to get tricky is that I haven't finished anything since the beginning of the year. Should I add something to the list when I start it, or when I finish it? What if I stop? Also, what if people who give me presents read my blog? What if I don't get around to reading or watching or playing everything I have? That's not really a what-if at all. I think I will always have a backlog of media, as I find things interesting at a significantly faster rate than I take them in.

On further thought, I figure I might as well try it. I can always take it down if I decide it's too much trouble. So, the guideline I'm using is that if I go to it twice, or finish it, it's on the list. This is to keep things off that I pick up once and never go back to. Things (like League of Legends) that I only do once but am pretty certain I'll go back to make the list too, though I'm more lenient about video games than books or television, and if I don't get back to the media in question in a reasonable amount of time I'll take it off the list. Anyway, I'm not going to claim to be reading Pope's translation of The Odyssey because I'm far from sure I'll pick it up again. Not to speak ill of Mr. Pope, of course, but in this day and age a little bit of that sort of thing goes a long way.

Lately I've been watching The X-Files. Almost at the end of season one. Skipped the episode about the Jersey Devil because of some sort of technical issue, or possibly boredom. Girlfriend and I came to the show as a compromise. We were looking at Netflix. I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she wanted Law and Order. I think we found a pretty satisfying middle ground.

I remember coming to that show very late (it premiered when I was eight). I think David Duchovny was gone already at that point. I liked it then, so I'm generally liking the older stuff a lot. Not that it's all good. There was the bit with the sentient computer that communicated entirely in sinister computer puns. And I think that "Born Again" and "Roland" may in fact have been the same script used two weeks in a row.

I was singularly impressed with "Beyond the Sea," which, as the 13th episode, I believe would have been the series finale if things hadn't taken off. It would have been a good one if that were the case. For one thing, it turns out that I really like Brad Dourif (and by "really like" I mean that when he wants to, he terrifies me). Mostly, or largely, though, it was a meditation on evil and skepticism and desperation that completely ruined my mood in the way that good art sometimes should.

I  haven't spent nearly as much time as I've wanted to playing Skyrim, which is almost certainly a good thing. My opinion, on the whole, has been going up. Just after I started complaining that the world was too safe, I started hitting monsters that scared me, and even ran away from the end of one boss fight to come back to it in a few levels. I still don't much care for anyone I've met yet though.