Thursday Night TV

Yeah I'm two days late (but can you really be two days late when this will be a new weekly feature?). Since it's my blog and my rules, I say, no, you can't. These won't be recaps, just me gushing about how much I love love love these shows and the characters and the drama - OH THE DRAMA!

So Thursday night is slightly ahead in Asolang's Favorite Night of TV race. All the other nights are so jealous! But really, how can it not be winning when there's The Office, Grey's Anatomy, ER (yes I still watch it!) and much much more!

Let's begin, shall we?

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The Office

Oh how I love me some Dundler-Mifflan. I have a confession to make - I've never seen the original BBC series. I know, I know....I deserve to be scolded for that. But I get some points back for being head over heels in love with this version though, right? The writing is beyond smart and the cast does BEYOND fantastic each and every week. Rain Wilson/Emmy Snub. That's all I'll say about that.

Anyway, this season's episodes.

This may seem odd after the above gushies about the show, but is it just me or is this season almost a little...sad? Not pathetic sad, but tug-at-your-heartstrings-sad? Is it the lack of Pam/Jim interaction? The lack of Jim/Dwight shenanigans? Or is something else missing? Maybe that's the intent - to keep us yearning so badly to get the band back together and have things the way they were. This episode seemed heavy into laying the groundwork for future episodes, moving the plot along type things. Which is fine, that's necessary from time to time. Perhaps laying the ground work for an eventual merger between the two branches? I'm not sure how that would play out, as I love the Office how it is, but a little shakeup with the "employees" probably couldn't hurt.

Speaking of sad things - poor Michael and his lack-o-party. Sitting in the room with the techno and blacklights.

And was it just me or was there a "p--" after Jim walked into Dwight's room and said "I gotta call p--someone." I didn't record the episode to go back and watch it again but I thought it was there. Any thoughts?

Highlights -

"Oh please let it be urine."

Fun jeans.
How much do I love the 'extra' cast members? "You're gonna have to put out." "Yeah, you're gonna have to put out."

Here's what I love about this show - even when it feels a little bit off, it's still one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. How can you not love a show that includes "Ain't no party like a Scranton party..." ??? LOVE IT!

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Grey's Anatomy

Oh Seattle Grace. Here's my thing with this show. I love the show, I love the storylines, love the heart and the drama and the comedic bits. Love it.

Not a fan of Meredith.

I heart McDreamy. Who doesn't have a crush on George? And Finn? And Bailey!

I know I'm not necessarily alone in that so I won't go into it. But let's move on....

George, I love ya, but what world do you live in to think that Meredith "I need to eat a cheeseburger" Grey's panties would fit Doctor "I'm a real woman!" Callie? The jealousy was cute though.

And Callie? How much do I love her? Seriously. I hope the writers let the George/Callie relationship go on for awhile. It's fun to watch and it's a nice parallel to Meredith and her non-relationships with Derek and Finn.

Sara Ramirez? She rocks. Fearlessly dancing in her underwear on a show with millions of viewers? That takes a lot.

Speaking of Derek....the non-kiss in the stairwell made my stomach knot in that good way.

Addison - I thought she was great and realistic this episode - finally coming to terms with her marriage and trying to drown it in anything she could get her hands on - but the freaking hat was driving me INSANE! I couldn't get around it and found myself all distracted during her scenes. Well...all but one scene that is....

If you had to judge strictly from that cap, it's like McDreamy and McSteamy had a McMoment.

I'm hoping Eric Dane (McSteamy) is around for at least a few more episodes. He heightens the drama and....really.... clothing shouldn't be an option for the man.

Oh, and this picture -

Totally makes me want Izzy/McDreamy to happen, or least flirt with the idea, down the line.

Highlights:

McSteamy literally surrounded by steam half-wearing a towel.
Derek's non-reaction reaction to the above.

I heart it all!

Bear Determined to Deficate in the Woods

The Daily Show on the NIE.

Watch.


And on the Clinton interview.

Watch.



Good times. You gotta love this show.

Operation: Love from Home

Don't forget that Operation: Love from Home officially kicks off today. Send in your cards and letters for our troops away from home for the holidays.

Scratches all down my back

As much as I tried to avoid it, I can't help but love Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch".

So Masculine...

Michael Scofield and Jazz Hands....who'da thunk?





(via bestweekever.tv)

Catcalls!

This is awesome.

On Notice....

The Post is the only place I've seen this, and yeah it's Page Six and all, but assuming it is true...

Disgusting.

Whether you love, hate or even if you don't know who he is (which really is a shame, see some of the posts below), the fact that a writer from the New York Post - where you may recall in 2001 lost some of it's own employees due to actual anthrax through the mail - makes light of a situation like this is simply disgusting. Whatever issues Paula Froehlic may or may not have with Olbermann and his political views and commentary does not - DOES NOT - give her or anyone the right to laugh at a situation such as this.

Whether they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn't known.


Hilarious. Yes, her sarcasm just makes me giggle. Afterall, federal crimes are pure comedy gold! In case Ms. Froehlic needs a reminder - making threats through the mail is a federal crime. Not to mention the fact that anthrax letters - real or fake - are commonly recognized as a form of terrorism.

I won't even take issue with the fact she refers to his show as on-air schtik, we can agree to disagree on that. But let's put this is all into perspective.

This is a federal crime. There is no two ways about it. To make light of it in anyway or to poke fun at Olbermann's completely understandable and realistic reaction, there is no excuse for that.

Olbermann hits it dead on. Again.

Read it. Then read it again. Put your political feelings aside for the shortest of moments and read it as someone with no agenda in either direction. Then watch it.


Watch it here . (via freakgirl)

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.


"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this President.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.



But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except… for this:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11."

Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… "All Monica All The Time"?

Who… distracted whom?

This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.

Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

"We must disenthrall ourselves."

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.

"We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country."

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.

—

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

I’m K.O., good night, and good luck

That's What She Said...

The Office starts anew tomorrow night. Happy dance!!

Officially moved...

So I've been extra quiet around here lately. I moved into a new place this weekend and am still sorting through everything. Still getting settled in and searching for through boxes for things I need but other than that, it wasn't too bad of a move. No arguing, limited stress (as limited as moving can be, that is) and I didn't get any paint on the new carpet!

No one has any idea how big of a victory that last one is for me!

My New Boyfriend

I've made it a point to stay away from the political side of ...well, everything here and in other places surrounding my Soldiers' Angels activities. Mainly because there are A LOT of people involved that love Bush and think everything his administration is done is right and well...


I don't.

Keith Olbermann has said it better than I ever could. Read this. I played the video as I read along and found myself wanting to marry Keith Olbermann by the time he was through.

(Link via Freakgirl)

When I tell people that I'm involved in Soldiers Angels, they usually assume (most incorrectly) that I'm a big republican supporter or lean toward the right, etc.

Again I'll say, I don't.

I can do both. I can disagree with SO SO MUCH of the actions and words of our government while sending out care packages and writing letters to deployed troops. I can do both and know that I'm not being hypocritical or playing both sides or any of the other nonsense that I've heard.

I can do both. And I do both proudly.

See we get to live in a place where it's ok to disagree with your government. It's ok to voice your opinion in opposition and it's ok to yell it from the mountaintops if you want.

That's the beauty of it all.

I'm going to stop before a full on political rant comes pouring out now. Like I said above, I've tried to stay away from that aspect of things and I won't start now, but I had to share this video.

Today....

I'm not going to do a big post about today, what it means to me, how I feel a bout it, the effect it's had on the world, on my world....

There's plenty of people that have said anything that I would say in far more poetic and moving ways.

Besides...there's not enough words in the world. Not enough.

Talk about having a good attitude...

It's nice to see that there are still people out there today that aren't willing to sit in the corner and sulk and feel endlessly sorry for themselves when something bad happens.

Jilted Bride Turns Reception into Charity Event.

Kudos to her.

Eleven in years in the making...

Tuesday. New Bob Seger Album.

This is me, ecstatic!

785th MP Batallion

I never got around to posting this last month, but I guess it's better late than never...especially considering it's about some of our boys (and girls!) returning home after 14 months! The 785th MP batallion returned home to their Reserve Center in Fraser, Michigan.

(I stole this pic from the local paper)


It's always wonderful to hear about our soldiers returning home to their families, and it's sweeter when you know their 'local boys' too. Working for the city I had the honor of having two of the 785th come into my work about a week after they got home to pick up the support banner we've had up since the day they left, and I was such an honor to be able to personally thank them, face to face, for their service. We chatted about how I accidently stumbled upon one of the officers on anysoldier.com, not realizing that he was from Fraser's 785th until we had written a few times. I mentioned that I'd sent a couple boxes of goodies and some local items (local newspapers, postcards of Michigan sporting stuff, Superbowl memoribilia, etc.) and they both got all excited and gave me a big "THAT WAS YOU?!? I couldn't believe that out of all them, these two standing on the other side of my counter had actually saw what I'd sent, much less remembered it. When they started mentioning specifics (including the picture of their support banner we had hanging outside, with a ton of snow under it and they talked about how they all agreed it was the one thing they didn't miss while being there - shoveling show) that I got all geeked out and realized how much it really does make a difference to send just a few small cards and letters. From my little mail box to Iraq and back again...

Crazy, huh?

Macomb Daily Return Story"

I knew this would happen!

I said from the beginning I'd be really really bad at updating and sure enough, here I am writing the obligatory "hey...sorry about disappearing for months" post.

Sorry about all that, and whatnot.

Life's been hectic lately, to put it mildly and this area of my life (that being the computer/online aspect of it) got pushed to the back burner. Basically off the stove.

But I'm going to make a true attempt to get better at updating regularly - boring you all to tears with the mundane stories of my life. But don't worry! I'll be sure to sprinkle in some of the tales of my awesome AWESOME experiences through Soldier's Angels and the great people I've met through that. You'll be bored to tears by the time I'm done with you. Promise!