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Syfy does sound a bit like a new slang term for someone with an STD.

ireactions-

Understanding me is simple. I don't believe in politicians or officials, I believe in specific points of view on specific issues. Therefore, I might think that Sarah Palin is right about some stuff, but that she is a total moron when it comes to other stuff. I might like someone like Ted Cruz now, but that wouldn't stop me from not liking him when what he says no longer represents what I believe.

Also, I might like someone as a person, but not like their political positions. And I won't jump on some factually untrue comedy train, targeting someone I don't like, just because I don't like them. I don't like Donald Trump. That doesn't make everything said about him true. He did not grab any woman by her p***y, so calling him a rapist or guilty of sexual assault is factually untrue. Just like it would be untrue to say that Barack Obama is the new Hitler, or Hillary Clinton is... wait... no... everything about her is true.

When it comes to black kids getting shot, I'm fine with throwing a cop in prison and throwing away the key if what they did is unjustified. However, I will not lump all of those cases together, and I do not believe that the overall "systemic racism" narrative holds water. Again, it's case by case and issue by issue. Fact by fact.

The VA is a government run healthcare system. Anyone who has ever been exposed to it will be able to tell you what a mess it is, and it's not just a matter of that particular system being run poorly. These types of systems do not work, and the world is our proof. I generally believe in less government, because people are more capable of taking care of themselves than the government is capable of taking care of the masses. When personal health issues become an issue of millions of faceless names on a piece of paper, people will die. Again, the world proves this to be true. Socialized healthcare results in more death. If we took the VA funds and gave those soldiers health insurance that would allow them to go to a normal hospital of their choosing, we wouldn't see the same number of untreated veterans in this country. If we made health insurance a competitive industry, rather than a federal mandate, we would see more people being able to afford the healthcare that they need. It's fun to say that healthcare is a right, but that's a slogan, not a reality. Which is why the public has mostly opposed the plan, and those elected officials who voted for it didn't even bother to read what was in it before they passed it.

The public school system is another perfect example of this. It's a disaster, and I don't think anyone can reasonably argue with that. We have inner city kids being forced to go to schools that do nothing for them, because this is all they can afford. The schools have no reason to get better, because it's not like they're going to shut down the public school system the same way that a failing business would close. Results don't matter. It's next to impossible to fire a bad teacher, because of their union. However, if those kids were given vouchers that would allow them to take the tax dollars that are set aside for their education and shop for a school that could do better for them, we would have more students getting better education, and more schools feeling a need to actually teach them something. Competition makes people better, not slogans and good intentions.

I have emotions, but my emotions aren't my political arguments. When it comes to political arguments, I rely on facts. You just broadly referred to all black kids being shot by cops as though you can possibly put all of those situations under the same blanket. You can't. You talk about how Donald Trump referred to his executive order, and not the executive order itself, which is the document that actually matters. You refer to the doctor in the case that I served jury duty on as half-assed, but his treatment met the medical standards of care.

If you want to understand me, stop looking at memes and emotional outbursts. Start looking at the facts and logic. That's why I love a good debate. If there are facts that are worth considering, I want to know about them, but I'm not really interested in catchphrases and "the science is settled" BS.

Grizzlor-

Look... I think George W. Bush is probably a great guy, and he'd probably be the most fun living President to hang around with. I believe that he has morals and cares about people, though I disagree with a lot of what he did and what he believes in. However, I can't say the same thing about Obama. He was absolutely full of himself. He absolutely pushed for violence and anger in this country. And he absolutely lied to us on a regular basis. He was a smug bastard, but the press agreed with him, so that's not how they painted him. The level of anger and vitriol in this country is the direct result of Obama, not Trump. Trump is the result of that anger and vitriol.

We have more democrats saying that we should lock up climate change deniers than we have conservatives saying that we should lock up abortion doctors. We have more violent acts being committed against conservative speakers than we have toward liberals. If Donald Trump is the threat to this country, then why aren't we seeing his followers acting so outrageously? Why don't we see his people presenting ideas to silence free speech, the way we have actually seen democrat politicians speaking?

You say that this is about laws and the Constitution. Okay. So tell me what laws were broken, and where the Constitution was violated.

I agree with you that Trump is crazy. I think that he is a liar. I think that he is an idiot who possibly has some good ideas, but is incapable of presenting them in a normal, mature way. At the same time, I think that a lot of what we see in the press is BS, because when you actually look into a lot of those stories, the facts don't support the narrative.

Just for some perspective, most of what you just said is what the republicans were saying under Obama... and probably with more evidence to back it up.

But the world still turns. The sky isn't on fire. Nobody is being disappeared in the middle of the night. I think this mindset that we're on the verge of some Nazi Germany scenario is doing more harm than Trump. People need to step back, gain some perspective, accept the reality of the situation (Trump is President. For four years.), and start having rational conversations about the issues, and stop trying to one-up each other on "Trump is evil" statements.

One of the main problems under both Trump and Obama is that every comment is a meme, not an opinion. Everyone is looking at every issue as good vs. evil, and they will cheer for their team, even as they drive of a cliff. (I mixed way too many metaphors there).

Trump isn't the problem. He's just one symptom of many.

There was no Muslim ban.

I was obviously distracted during this week's Flash... Did they say that the time remnants are exact copies, or would he have become a sort of mirror image?

Yeah, I think it would have had more weight to it if this were the consequence of something that our Barry did, but they might have wanted to keep him from having that guilt. The thing is, if they kill Savitar, or stop him in some other way, does their whole world change? If they stop Savitar, does Wally stop being Kid Flash? Does Julian go back to not working with Team Flash?

Wait... did I miss something?

Thanks for the support. Right now, I keep going back and forth between feeling numb and feeling like a part of me was amputated. I have another dog who is older than Boo was, and he has been close to death twice before. It's horrible to say it like this, but most people were expecting him to be next, and for Boo to be around for a year or two more. Losing him is just shocking and painful. I have so many regrets about leaving him at the vet's office, even knowing that I'd be feeling the same way if I'd brought him home. It's just a horrible, sick feeling.

We still don't know what happened. The vet theorized that it could have been a blood clot, but we really don't know. I guess we never will. The best I can do is hope that my dog didn't think that I was one of those d-bags who abandons their dog just because they got older or sicker. I never planned to leave him there alone.

So... Anyone happen to know a veterinarian neurologist who would be willing to consult on a mysterious spinal issue for a charitably low price?

One of my dogs went to the vet a little over a week ago. Aside from a skin infection, for which he was given antibiotics, he was fine. He got a normal vaccination and we went home.

Within a couple of days, he was having some trouble standing up on his own. Soon, he couldn't stand or walk at all, without help. He simply has no strength in his hind legs. He isn't totally paralyzed or anything, just... Weak, I guess.
He had been at the vet's office since yesterday. Blood work initially showed some elevated liver numbers of some kind, but they were normal today. An x-ray shows what I've had described to me as either inflammation or collapse of a disk... But my vet really doesn't know what's going on or why. He made some calls, but the better specialists are out of their offices until Monday. Another vet suggested degenerative myleopathy, which I think I've seen in another dog, but that doesn't explain such a sudden onset.

So now he is at the vet for a second night, getting anti-inflammatory medication that doesn't seem to be working. We may have to go to a neurology specialist who can do more scans and possibly surgery, but that will cost a lot of money.

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information, but this dog has gotten me through some very bad times. I need to fight for him... If someone could just point me in the right direction.

Is it me, or did Felicity immediately go back to using cry voice as soon as the topic of their relationship came up? I don't know... I actually didn't mind them getting drunk and having a moment. They were actually smiling! And for a legitimate reason, not some sappy shipper moment. But yeah, it was heavy-handed on the relationship drama, and seemed to open up a door that I want welded shut forever.

This is the part where I should say things like "Why is Felicity paralyzed?! They never showed that in the first two seasons, but here in season three, she is paralyzed!" but I won't do that.

When the couldn't get out of the lair and everyone else was trying to get in, my first thought was "Think like a bad guy." They could have gotten out of there without any trouble!

And Cisco is so not the person to turn to if you want a secret lair that nobody can get into.

When Diggle was giving Lyla a hard time for taking Curtis' tech, I had to wonder if his reaction would be the same if Cisco did the same thing. I mean, he does do the same thing all the time, doesn't he? He takes someone's gadget, breaks it down, rebuilds it with new features, and gives it back. Nobody ever seems to mind.

Where is Thea!?!

And why did Felicity never stop to think that maybe the people who gave her the USB drive that she plugged into her computer seconds before an EMP went off could be responsible for that attack?

Why? During the Clinton administration, the show involved massive government conspiracies, yet never pointed a finger at Clinton. Clinton, who was insanely corrupt. The show didn't take jabs at Obama last season, when he was in office. Obama, who loved to seize as much control for himself as possible.

And I'm fine with that stuff, because it doesn't really belong in the story. When they panned over to the picture of Bush in the last movie, it was awkward, childish, and a horrible decision. So, why go after Trump? It's just part of this hysteria that is going around, which is making rabid Trump haters look even more crazy than Trump... which is saying something.

These people are more outraged by Trump than they are ISIS, and I'm not even exaggerating. There is absolutely no sense of perspective, or measured thinking. It's getting old.

I don't know. I do think people are looking for things to criticize. I've seen product tie-ins for the movies for a while now. The only things that I haven't really seen are internet ads and TV commercials. I have to wonder how useful those things would be two months before the movie is released. Now that we are a month out, I would expect to start seeing things.

But I really have no idea when those ads usually start. When it comes to TV ads,  after a while, you kinda forget about the movie, because it seems like it should have been released already.

Unless Savitar is Caitlin's mother!

I'm not watching AoS, but on this topic, I think it's at its worst when the writers want to keep the character around and they want to keep him as he was when he was the most fun, so it's like there's a bungee tied to his character arcs, and he keeps snapping back to his original setting.

When Crowley went through that ritual that partially cleansed him and almost purified him, I was intrigued. It was movement of some sort. But then it was back to normal, in that stupid dungeon. What happened to his mansion from season 5?

I hated Rowena with a passion. Then she met God and the character suddenly shifted into someone not quite good, but not quite bad. Now I don't find her nearly as irritating, because she's not just twirling her mustache (so to speak).

It depends on the character. Some characters are designed to serve a specific arc, and keeping them around for longer than that arc means that you are sacrificing the original intent of the story, and the foundation of the character. Yes, they can be kept around, but it is usually a matter of whether they *should* be kept around.

On Supernatural, Crowley is a neutered joke of a character. He has had many chances to kill the Winchesters and they have had many chances to kill him, but they never do. It is even a joke within the show, but they never justify it. He is evil. Why don't they kill him?! And because these characters can't move in any direction, they become useless and boring. Crowley spends most of his time in a dungeon-looking place, talking about how bad he is while never contributing to the story.

On the other hand, Bobby Singer was meant to be in one episode, but stayed for many seasons, and he contributed a ton. But his character was never written into a box that depended on him either killing the good guys or being killed by the good guys.

The longer a villain stays on a show, the more pathetic both the villain and the hero begin to look. Imagine if Buffy were still fighting the Master in season 7.

Wait, that might have actually been better.

From what I watched of the series, Ward suffered from the same issue as Sylar, Spike (from Buffy), Crowley and Castiel (Supernatural) and many others. It isn't about the character vs the writing. They're the same things. Usually, the writers get attached to the actor and they don't want to lose them. This selfish writing results in sweet fruit staying on the tree for too long. What was cool at one point eventually starts to rot.

These characters aren't meant to last. Villains (which most of these are) need to either kill the good guys and end the show, or they need to die. If you just have the characters circle each other for five years, with everyone having various chances to end the war but somehow never doing it, you end up in a situation where the heroes and villains both look incompetent.

With Ward, I always had the sense that the writers didn't want to let the actor go (not sure why, since he wasn't anything super special) and they kept making excuses to try to keep him around. It wasn't natural or logical. When the wants of the writer start to become more visible than the needs of the story, everything breaks down.

Agreed. They should have used his anger issues and vigilante angle. Lance lost both daughters, Oliver lost his mother and best friend, Felicity lost her generic brand boyfriend, Dinah lost her partner/boyfriend, Rory lost his entire town... Maybe Rene could just see the pattern here and want to keep his daughter safe.

Yup, it was public. Barry also owns the building that they all assembled in for the crossover this year.

I guess he is rich, but they really never mention it or play that card. He's just TV rich, where he miraculously had money for whatever he needs, despite having a pretty low paying job.

HR uses an illusion to make everyone outside of Team Flash see him as his business partner from his world. I'm assuming that they set him up with an ID and all of that, but off camera.

Eobard left Star Labs to Barry, so he owns the whole operation. I assume that there was some money involved too.

Felicity was booted from Palmer Tech, but I am assuming that she still has stock or had a huge salary while she was there. She and Thea are the only ones with money now, I think.

I think I'm physically incapable of starting to watch a show from the middle, even if it doesn't matter. I even needed to watch Black Mirror from the beginning.

I might need mental help for this condition.

I want a Galaxy S8+, but I don't have $850 of bonus money to throw around without a care. So... I may have gone about doing something that some people on the internet find distasteful (not porn), but with relatively little time invested, I've solved the money issue.

Now I'm thinking that maybe I should hold off and see what they do with the Note 8. If the S8+ is about as big as a typical Note 8, they can't just slap an S-Pen on it and call it innovation, right? There's a voice in my head that's telling me that they're going to want to do something big and impressive with this thing.

Or I could end up spending several months yelling at my quickly-dwindling S4, only to find out that the Note 8 is just an S8+ with an S-Pen.

Ugh. Another company that expects me to pay a monthly fee for relatively little content. I am interested in their shows, but I think that a partnership with Amazon could have worked better. Amazon does books as well as video already.

This might be another situation where I either go in for the free trial, or just pay for one month and binge on everything I can in that time frame.

I would do the same. I think it's a mistake to have this hanging over their heads for a couple more years.

Actually, if she and Luke died together, that would be kinda poetic. Twins and all that.

I'm not sure that's necessarily true. From December 2015 to April 2016, Gillian was filming The Fall (a series that she had a prior commitment to). Then she was signed onto American God, which started filming around the time that The Fall was finishing. I don't know how involved she is with American Gods, but her being committed at all would make it hard for them to schedule The X-Files.

So she has really been busy since they filmed the original revival, and since they didn't sign her or David to multi-year contracts right away, she really had no choice but to pursue other work while others worked out the X-Files details. I'm sure that she was negotiating for more money as well, but that goes hand in hand with her being a steadily-working actress.

If anyone had any sense at all, they would have been thinking about stories and scripts before the details were hammered out. Fox always wanted more. We all knew there would be more.

But really, they start filming this summer, when all of the other shows start filming. It isn't really rushed, it is just standard TV scheduling.

It would be nice if they aired it in the fall. It is a good Halloween type show. I just want Chris Carter to observe the writing from a safe distance. Bring back some old writers, but also add some all-star newbies. Bryan Fuller, Eric Kripke, and people like that. Some new writers who grew up with the show would be cool.

And I want mostly stand alone episodes!

It would be cool to see Tom Welling show up on a DC show. Not as Clark (though he could be Earth 2 Clark... that'd be interesting), but as someone.

I've also always thought it'd be cool if he showed up on Supernatural, as a hunter.

New Krypton series, on SyFy!

https://vimeo.com/213799000

The series obviously takes a lot of its design elements from Man of Steel, which is cool. I prefer it to the floating mystical crystal thing that people have been doing with Krypton for a long time. In terms of story, it reminds me a lot of Caprica. That's not a bad thing. I liked Caprica. I just hope that this is good. Syfy hasn't been knocking it out of the park since their rebranding.

I finally finished Iron Fist the other day. It took me a while, because life got in the way, but I finally got through it.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I think it's easily better than Luke Cage or Jessica Jones, but not up to Daredevil level. I'm a little over this whole trope of the evil corporations, etc., but I still enjoyed the story.

Danny is an interesting character. I don't know the comic book character, so I can only speak about the TV version, but I think it's interesting how he is highly skilled and trained in some ways, but completely developmentally stunted in other ways. He suffered a horrible trauma as a child and was immediately told to repress any and all feelings about that trauma. He was forced to live in a place that he was never meant to live in, and physically abused until he became what they wanted him to become. So it's not surprising that he has anger issues and that his walls start to crumble when he is reintroduced to the normal world. He interacts with it in the only way he knows how, which is as a child. At times it seems silly, but when you stop to think of someone who has essentially been held captive and brainwashed for a decade and a half, it's not really unthinkable.

Do I think it was a little heavy-handed at times? Yeah. But it was still interesting.

The corporate stuff... it is what it is. Yeah, Danny has been trained to fight the Hand, but he doesn't know how to fight someone like Harold, who is a master at controlling people and situations. He used Danny and the Hand against each other, not unlike Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman. I think they could have played him with a little bit more subtlety toward the end, but I do understand why they went with him. The Hand, I imaging, will be an issue to be dealt with in The Defenders, so they couldn't just resolve it here.

I had a hard time getting a feel for Joy in this series. She was a poorly defined character whose reactions and motives seemed to change from episode to episode. Did she love Danny like a brother? She seems to be a lifeline in the first episode or two, but then whatever bond they might have had is sidelined. I think that perhaps Claire didn't need to be as prominent as she was in this series, because she took over some of what Joy could have been doing.

Iron Fist wasn't the best series I've ever seen in my life. And at times, I felt like the OA was going to step out of the shadows and start doing her five movements as he did his tai chi, but that's just my wacky imagination.

I do think that the series was ridiculously over-slammed by critics. Especially after they praised Luke Cage, which was painful to get through.

There's no good way to deal with it. There's no good way to play it in the story, where it will be perfectly seamless. Unless her death was already a part of the next movie, it's just a hole in the Star Wars world, and there is no way to fill that hole.

Just like any future Star Trek movie is going to have an obvious and distracting hole where Anton Yelchin should be.

I haven't tried Colony yet. I will probably get around to it eventually though.

I've been watching Thirteen Reasons Why, on Netflix. It is a compelling series, but it is emotionally draining... and I'm only on episode 4. A lot of people don't like stories that are dark or depressing, but I'm fine with it as long as they're done well. An emotional reaction is good. And saying that every story should be happy and fun in some way is just silly. The show is well acted and well made. Good on them! That said, I feel like curling up in bed with the covers pulled over my head after every episode.