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Sep. 25th, 2016 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBeautiful day, sunny, crystal blue sky, mild temperatures...had a lovely walk down to a street fair on Courteylou Road, which was approximately 3 miles. And later to the fruit and veggie store on Church and Beverly in Kensington, Brooklyn. Tried to go church up in Brooklyn Heights, but after the subway platform added yet another row of people, to the extent there was barely any place to move, I bailed and walked to the street fair instead. There's no train service south of Church Avenue, so everyone is taking shuttles to Church, add to that, they have less trains on the weekends.
Picked up a couple of gluten-free baked goods, cinnamon buns, cupcakes, brownie, chocolate nutty bar, and apple-raspberry tart. (I really shouldn't have -- since you know, sugar. And sugar is a bit addictive. But alas..I did. At least I didn't binge eat all in one day. So progress.) Also goat cheese (again shouldn't, but goat cheese so not too bad), yellow beans, red onion, and raddishes - which were good ideas.
Came home, ate lunch, and proceeded to watch two things on the telly.
1. Wreck-it Like Ralph - charming in places, but mostly irritating and I had mixed feelings regarding the message. So, it's all well and good to want to rebel against your programming and do a different job, a new job, but at the end of the day -- that's the job you were meant to do, you stick with it, and just finds things you love about it. Like I said, mixed feelings. Yes, you should find ways to like what you do and your life, but I'm not sure "settling" makes sense, and we should have the ability to choose our lives to some extent.
After seeing these things, I'm happy that I do not have children.
2. Van Helsing -- felt a bit like the Strain meets The Walking Dead. I liked it better than both, which surprised me. There's three interesting characters in the middle of it - a female African-American Doctor, who got bitten and turned into a vampire, a super-powered young woman who can fight and potentially cure vampires, and a military guy sent to guard both of them - but not clear on why. Add to that a bunch of survivors. All hold up in medical facility in a post-apocalyptic world.
What happened? A couple of presumed inactive volcanoes in Wyoming, erupted, along with a few nuclear warheads, and dropped toxic black ash on everything and blocked out the sun. Vampires, long hidden underground, rose because there is no sunlight.
The story starts with Vanessa Van Helsing waking up from an apparent coma and fighting off a bunch of vampires. Flashbacks tell us what happened to bring this all about. The show jumps back and forth in time, which could be a bit jarring but wasn't, surprisingly enough. It's possible that I'm just used to it -- so many television series like this narrative trick.
It held my interest at any rate, and wasn't too scary, so I'm sticking with it. I couldn't watch The Strain and The Walking Dead -- too violent and too scary for my taste. So keep that in mind - in regards to whether you'll like Van Helsing.
[As an aside, the Nielsen ratings company has chosen my parents as a ratings household. My mother is rather amused by this turn of events. She's in her 70s. When she loved television and watched a ton of it, the Nielsen's ignored her. Now that she could care less about it and rarely watches, they select her as a Nielsen's household. See this is why I think the Nielsen's are bogus and television market research is idiotic. My grandmother had also been selected once as a household, along with a friend of mine...which is how I know what is involved. They basically keep a journal or in some cases give them a box that records what they watch. ]
Picked up a couple of gluten-free baked goods, cinnamon buns, cupcakes, brownie, chocolate nutty bar, and apple-raspberry tart. (I really shouldn't have -- since you know, sugar. And sugar is a bit addictive. But alas..I did. At least I didn't binge eat all in one day. So progress.) Also goat cheese (again shouldn't, but goat cheese so not too bad), yellow beans, red onion, and raddishes - which were good ideas.
Came home, ate lunch, and proceeded to watch two things on the telly.
1. Wreck-it Like Ralph - charming in places, but mostly irritating and I had mixed feelings regarding the message. So, it's all well and good to want to rebel against your programming and do a different job, a new job, but at the end of the day -- that's the job you were meant to do, you stick with it, and just finds things you love about it. Like I said, mixed feelings. Yes, you should find ways to like what you do and your life, but I'm not sure "settling" makes sense, and we should have the ability to choose our lives to some extent.
After seeing these things, I'm happy that I do not have children.
2. Van Helsing -- felt a bit like the Strain meets The Walking Dead. I liked it better than both, which surprised me. There's three interesting characters in the middle of it - a female African-American Doctor, who got bitten and turned into a vampire, a super-powered young woman who can fight and potentially cure vampires, and a military guy sent to guard both of them - but not clear on why. Add to that a bunch of survivors. All hold up in medical facility in a post-apocalyptic world.
What happened? A couple of presumed inactive volcanoes in Wyoming, erupted, along with a few nuclear warheads, and dropped toxic black ash on everything and blocked out the sun. Vampires, long hidden underground, rose because there is no sunlight.
The story starts with Vanessa Van Helsing waking up from an apparent coma and fighting off a bunch of vampires. Flashbacks tell us what happened to bring this all about. The show jumps back and forth in time, which could be a bit jarring but wasn't, surprisingly enough. It's possible that I'm just used to it -- so many television series like this narrative trick.
It held my interest at any rate, and wasn't too scary, so I'm sticking with it. I couldn't watch The Strain and The Walking Dead -- too violent and too scary for my taste. So keep that in mind - in regards to whether you'll like Van Helsing.
[As an aside, the Nielsen ratings company has chosen my parents as a ratings household. My mother is rather amused by this turn of events. She's in her 70s. When she loved television and watched a ton of it, the Nielsen's ignored her. Now that she could care less about it and rarely watches, they select her as a Nielsen's household. See this is why I think the Nielsen's are bogus and television market research is idiotic. My grandmother had also been selected once as a household, along with a friend of mine...which is how I know what is involved. They basically keep a journal or in some cases give them a box that records what they watch. ]
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Date: 2016-09-26 03:16 pm (UTC)I think the thing about the Nielsens is that historically their sample size was tiny. They could have had ten or a hundred times as many 'families,' back in the early days and people would have been happy to do it. They started out with TV metering boxes only in a small area in Pennsylvania. Obviously they've moved beyond that. I think they do both diaries and electronic meters these days. I don't know how many people they have reporting any more. I don't know how many folks even know about the Nielsens compared to what it used to be.
I was chosen to be ratings sample person for local radio, when I was in grad school. I don't think I helped them much. In those days I was only listening to the university's FM station, which didn't have commercials.