There's "In a Rut", and Then There's This

Man, am I in a slump lately... Yeah, with regards to this blog, sure, but personally, too. I feel like my life of late has been a test pattern interrupted only occasionally by infomercials for obscure and mundane products. And not the cool infomercials either... Remember back in the late 80's and early 90's when they weren't even full-motion commercials, more like slideshows of real commercials? And the "slides" updated based on a set interval, so you didn't always get great shots... If it refreshed during a part of the infomercial where there was lots of motion, all you got to see for 5 seconds was a frozen blur.

That's me lately: Boring, blurry, and hard to watch.

I doesn't help that everything around me is conspiring to ensure I remain as unexcited as possible, either. Take TV, for example... This is one of the longest dry spells for entertainment that I can recall. Sure, lots of stuff to see, but very little of it worth the time. I don't care to watch celebrities dance or figure skate... Whether or not somebody can be the best singer out of 8 or 10 other people and still not make anything of themselves doesn't interest me in the least... And how many police/crime/trauma shows do we need to have on the air before we consider it "enough"?

Even the programs that show promise are ending up as disappointments... "Lost"? Great idea, but milking the suspense ever-so-slowly over the weeks gets too tedious to bother with. "Arrested Development"? Classic example of, "Smart, witty, and entertaining... Let's cancel it." (Anybody else having "Dead Like Me" flashbacks?) Even my personal favorite, the one shining star in the darkness that is network television, "Scrubs" got held back for half a season to allow room for crappier, destined-to-fail shows in the Fall Schedule. And now that it's back (Hooray!), what do they do? Constantly put it up against specials and award shows so it can't help but fail in the Nielsen ratings. Brilliant.

Big Screen Hollywood hasn't been much better, either. I don't think there have been more than a couple movies worth spending the $12 per ticket to see (not to mention the $30 for popcorn and soda). And believe me, I've tried! Although, "King Kong" was awesome, I could have waited for "Fun with Dick and Jane" to hit Blockbuster, and "Munich" was simply 3 tedious hours of predictability and repetitiveness that I'll never get back. Maybe there was a deeper political or social agenda at play there, but you need a more recent event and a lot more action if you want to flog it over 180 minutes (Take note, Spielberg).

What's left, then, to keep me from nodding off and drooling on my chest? It's winter in Canada, the sun goes down by 4:30 in the freaking afternoon, and I work until 5! And don't even get me started about the weekends... Winter in Calgary means one of two things: Bone-chilling cold, or howling wind, both of which drive me nuts. I could do without ever seeing snow again in my lifetime, and the migraine headaches brought on by the infamous chinook winds are no picnic, let me tell you. So, I either get to wander the malls that are 90% women's clothing stores, full of people who are oblivious to the fact that you exist or that they have just cut you off in their determination to get to that prized sweater that's just gone on sale, or I can sit in my home, staring at the walls until I'm ready to climb them.

I'm telling you, summer better get here quick or you might end up reading "Cuppojoe's Psychotic Mind"...