Mahatma or Manotma

[vovat]

Mother's Day, eh? I called my mom last night to wish her a happy one, but she never returned my call. I really should visit her at some point, since it's been a while and it's not like she lives that far away. I am bothered that bethje doesn't want to go with me, though. Today, we went out to Applebee's with Beth's mom. I think we had the same waitress we did last time we went there, but Beth denies it, even though she said she remembered us. (Beth's mom wasn't there the last time, but she, Uncle John, and I were.) Whether it was the same person or not, though, I thought she was cute. I guess it's possible that Applebee's has two cute waitresses, though, right?

As for TV, I think The Simpsons is at its best nowadays when they try something kind of different with an episode, and this one actually did a good job with an unusual arrangement. I guess the flashbacks to recent times were sort of like "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind," but adding in Moe as the omniscient narrator was a clever touch. I also enjoyed how they were able to come up with a story involving characters who don't interact all that much in most episodes. Also nice to see the Parson again, and get a brief appearance by Jessica Lovejoy. I do have to wonder whether this was originally intended as a Mother's Day episode, or they just stuck in some extra voiceover from Moe and the montage of pictures at the end upon learning that it was going to air today.

Family Guy was pretty interesting, in that we actually got a bit of character development and family history. I do kind of agree with a comment Beth made, however, about how TV characters are always so freaked out about discovering someone is gay. I think we might be the unusual ones in this case, though. And with American Dad, while I'm somewhat squeamish when it comes to poop-related humor, I thought Stan becoming a laughing stock and moving to increasingly ridiculous places made for a good plot. Of course, it turned out to be a fantasy sequence, even though he's done equally absurd things in other episodes. I did start to suspect something like that once Klaus died, however.

Finally, I know when I mentioned the possibility of switching over to a different blogging site, there were some people who didn't care for the idea. If you're one of these people, which entries do you usually read? I've been thinking I should use my WordPress blog for topic-specific posts and this for more personal matters, but would that mean some of you are missing out on stuff you might want to see?

Comments

[chu_hi.livejournal.com]

I read all of your posts. Your blog is so awesome.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[burningofroissy.livejournal.com]

For myself, I don't miss anything as long as you export your WP posts to FB. This is pretty terrible, but I've gotten out of the habit of making a whole bunch of detours outside of FB and LJ unless someone links to something. I actually have a few friends who blog elsewhere, but I forget about it because there is so much content on FB and LJ. Maybe I should make a bookmark folder for all the blogs I want to remember to check and then just do "open all in tabs" every couple days...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

A Google Reader account might also help.

[arfies.livejournal.com]

With RSS, it's so easy to cross-post things everywhere. For example, this Twitter post I did:

"It worked! Now I can post to Blogspot which posts to Feedburner to TwitterFeed to Twitter to Loudtwitter to Livejournal and Facebook! HaHA!"

So as long as there's some way to cross-post links, it should work with two blogs.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Do you know how to set up an RSS feed that works in LJ?

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I of course am a big fan of your mythology posts and book reviews. But it's a moot point, because what you really need to do is just cross-post your Wordpress stuff directly into your livejournal. I know there's a way to do that, because several of the blogs I follow do (cynleitichsmith has for a long time, and thru_the_booth just started-- you might want to drop a note and ask how, they're very nice people). I will protest that I will NOT see your posts if you at least post them to Facebook, because I have been very bad at checking Facebook lately. I have decided that Facebook must be the realm of people with Internet-equipped phones anymore. Likewise Twitter. I'm sure there are people who wonder why everybody reads blogs and what ever happened to good old-fashioned listservs, too, so I protest that I am not as old-fashioned as I could be.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely try to do the cross-post thing, although it won't be immediate.

I really do miss e-mail discussion lists, which always seemed more convenient than Facebook and such. Not as good for graphics and sound, though, of course. I've never fully understood why new networking sites tend to make the old ones obsolete even when they don't really fulfill the same purpose. Like, I can see how Facebook would make MySpace obsolete, but not so much with blogs compared to listservs.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I suspect that for a lot of the personal friends who got me into lj in the first place, they were just really WAITING for something like Facebook to come along, and did this sort of journaling thing in the meantime. Then they were like, "Short conversations from your phone! Much more my thing!" and left. Whereas I have always preferred the longer form because it has more substance and makes it seem more worth my time.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not so great at short posts, and when I do have something quick to say I find Twitter easier than Facebook.

[kevenn.livejournal.com]

I try to read most of the entries, but my favorite stuff to read here are the entries about you and your life. :)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to try to keep most of those on LJ.

[revme.livejournal.com]

I definitely vote for cross-posting, but I think you're doing that anyway! I read alla em.

I didn't like the Family Guy much at all last night. I was really bothered by how mean-spirited it was towards Ida. Just.... yeah. It's weird -- the show seems to have gotten meaner, and while sometimes it can work (I was initially amused at how Lois was basically GET THE FUCK OUT to Brian at the beginning of the ep), this time was just really, really ugly. I was hoping the Brian/Ida thing would end up redeeming the show, since he's about the most sympathetic character, but... yeah, 30 second puke scene. Fegh.

SImpsons wasn't bad -- although I am much on the record on my Manjula hate, and... yeah. I just don't get why Apu doesn't divorce her ass, since she's SUCH a bitch to him, to the point where it's not even remotely funny. I should become Simpsons show runner, because that'd be one of the first episodes of the season. Manjula like, gets hit by a train. And the octuplets grow up and move out in one episode. Seriously, that was such a terrible addition to the show.

Cleveland was actually pretty decent, which surprised me. I still wouldn't go out of my way to watch it or anythig, but if it stays like the last episode, it'll be a decent enough time killer between Simpsons and FG. (Though if FG keeps up like last episode.....)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I was hoping the Brian/Ida thing would end up redeeming the show, since he's about the most sympathetic character, but... yeah, 30 second puke scene. Fegh.

There wasn't even any actual resolution, was there? I'm also not sure why NOBODY sympathized with Ida. It's one thing to make some characters intolerant, but shouldn't there be some balance?

[revme.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Brian came close when he was talking about what a great, smart person she was... but that was before he found out she was trans. Which,y'know, puke.

Closest that was there was Quagmire at the end, but it wasn't so much of "I accept you" as "You're my dad and I guess I'll be there for you, and I'll just stop thinking about how creepy weird this is. Now I'll go beat the shit out of Brian."

I admit that "I fucked your dad." is a great final line, it wasn't a great final line for that episode -- it just, like a lot of FG episodes seem to, just stopped. Without any real ENDING. That episode was just a cavalcade of cruelty for no real reason or payoff. It's the same reason why republican comedians rarely are funny -- it's not fun to beat up on the little guy.