Shiny, Happy Blogging

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."
The Dread Pirate Roberts

Welcome to The Corner, dear Readers. This blog has been quite the repository of doom and gloom of late, and not without reason. The world has been quite the sucky place for a while now, but today I have decided to accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative by regaling you all with some of the things that bring me pleasure...things that you too may enjoy.

TELEVISION

The world of Science Fiction television has been spotty at best. During the 60's there was great Science Fiction television(The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek), and not so great Science Fiction television(Lost In Space). After Star Trek repaved the way for quality SF viewing there were various attempts to emulate Roddenberry's success. There was the cheesy UFO, the over dramatic Space:1999, the terrible Quark, but one show managed to walk the very fine line between cheese and melodrama to become a classic of 70's television: Battlestar Galactica. Now you can say what you want about the hokey storylines, or that annoying robot dog-thing, but Galactica insinuated itself into our culture to the point that few people of my generation had not heard of it. Last year the SciFi channel began a new Battlestar Galactica series. I was skeptical, since most of SciFi's original programming is, to be generous, weak. (Mansquito, anyone?) But I watched, and I watched, and I watched, and now I'm hooked. It is very different from its ancestor, with no robot dogs or precocious children. What it does have is drama, and despair, and heroism, and a gritty reality that grabs you by the throat and makes you care. It isn't always easy to watch, but once you stop trying to find Galactica past in it, Galactica present is a great show. It's on Friday nights on SciFi after two other fun shows, Stargate SG1, and Stargate Atlantis.

The other show I love to watch these days is Mythbusters, on the Discovery channel. If you haven't seen this show yet, it consists of two special effects technicians, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, who set out to prove or disprove urban myths. And usually something gets blown up in the process. With a few notable exceptions, like the time they sealed two dead pigs in a Corvette for two months to see if a dead body would really stink up a car so badly that it couldn't be cleaned enough to sell, these guys have the best job in the world. They have done everything from exploding toilets to blowing up an entire cement mixer. They even turned a huge cherry picker into a modern trebuchet in an attempts to hurl their crash test dummy, Buster, across an abandoned landing strip. Wednesday nights at 9 is when you'll find this one, or Sunday afternoons.

Spirits

Ok, I'm no connoisseur, but I likes my wine. I used to hate the stuff, being a devout worshipper of the fermenters of hopps and barley, but a little over a decade ago a friend convinced me to try some cabernet sauvignon, and the rest is history. It is possible to go broke buying wine, but as you might have gathered if you are a regular visitor to my little spot here on the web I ain't exactly swimming in ducats. I have tried many different varieties of inexpensive wines, and finally hit upon two that totally rock. I prefer merlot, and the best ones I have found, and I thank my dear friend Tammy for introducing them to me, are Yellow Tail and Little Penguin. I was once told to stick with French wines, but these both come from Down Under, and have a remarkable consistency of flavor. I don't know squat about 'bouquet', or 'nose', or any of that other pretentious wine crap, I just know that I can spend 6 to 8 bucks for a bottle of Yellow Tail (kangaroo on the label) or Little Penguin (guess what's on that label) and it will always taste good. I have also, though usually not on purpose, polished off an entire bottle of each of these in one night, and not been hating life the next morning.

Food

During our Louisianian exile we dearly missed two restaurants: Boston Market, and Pollo Tropical. We don't have a Pollo here in Tampa, but boy are there Boston Markets. Oddly enough it's not their entrees that I missed, but their side dishes. They have a sweet potato casserole that's to die for, and their macaroni and cheese, while pure polyester, is heavenly. But there is one comestible that I didn't realize how much I missed it until I had it again. Publix supermarkets all have a deli where they make subs. And I used to live on Publix turkey subs. Their bread will rip your teeth out if you're not careful, but I just love that sub.

Ok, these are a few things that I look forward to, that make me smile. Other good things in my life, like my wife and kid, are just for me, but these are things I can share with you. I know that in light of what's going on around us these are trivial, but life is a series of tiny, trivial things all woven together to make a tapestry of existence, and it's ok if some of the threads are sillier than others.

Peace out, my friends.
Marius