Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Tonight I think I shall take the opportunity to catch up on season 3 of House in Miss Furtle's absence. Not that she doesn't like House you understand, but she only saw the odd episode from season 2 and we have only just started watching the DVDs. It will be some weeks before she is ready for season 3 and I will be quite happy to watch them again.

Of course, I could just watch them on my lappie; romney dropped several episodes onto a disk in .avi format, but I doubt colonel_maxim will forgive me if he doesn't get to see them too, so I have to copy the files to my lappie and then burn a disc in VCD format for the telly. Hopefully that won't take too long (famous last words).

Thank God for bit torrents and such like, say I. Terrestrial TV seems to have forgotten how to broadcast anything of merit most of the time. This is hardly news, but right now the choice is even more limited if one doesn't like soaps &c.

I have some of this Studio 60 to watch, too. Written by Aaron Sorkin, the creator and initial writer of The West Wing. I hear good things about it.

The title only has the feeblest of connections with the post, but it's a pun and it demanded to be written down.

It being a Sunday afternoon with precious little on telly, and having little inclination do do anything else, Beastie and I decided it was time to wade back into the House DVDs kindly loaned to us by itsjustaname. With the possibility of an episode later in the season that we forgot to tape, and which we will have to sort through the episode recaps for, I think we are now caught up. So time to get on with the much-delayed torrenting of season 2, I guess.

One of the catch-up episodes we watched involved a woman who appeared to be schizophrenic, but who in the end was diagnosed with, and treated for some unpronounceably rare condition involving copper. And she wasn't even a Vulcan, but she was an alcoholic (maybe she'd been eating the ring pulls or something).

As the treatment took hold, she stopped hearing the voices and having the visual hallucinations that had convinced everyone (pace Dr House, of course) that she was a schizophrenic. This led us to wonder whether different changes in symptoms might also indicate that treatment was slowly taking effect. Take Harvey, the eponymous giant, invisible rabbit that haunted and spoke to Jimmy Stewart's alcoholic Elwood P Dowd in the movie.

Could Elwood be said to be in recovery if Harvey had stopped talking to him, and started signing?

Ah, yes. It's 1.15 in the morning, and I really should have gone to bed, I guess. Naughty me. Slapped wrist.

We've just watched the season 1 finale of House and the pilot episode of same which we missed when it was first broadcast. This courtesy of the region 1 DVDs kindly lent by itsjustaname. There are a couple other episodes we missed, and probably these will get watched tomorrow evening. Then I guess I hit the torrents, because Heaven forbid we wait for season 2 to air over here.

The DVDs themselves are a bit of a challenge as they are double-sided, and the episode details are written on the groove around the centre hole of the DVD. Happily my microscopic vision, whilst intermittent, is not yet completely defunct provided I hold the DVDs at least a foot from my eyes; time, I think, for that much delayed eye test. The long vision is becoming noticeable; I may be sporting spectacles next time you see me. The curse of long vision is that you can see your enemies coming from a distance, but once they've caught up with you, you can't see if they've gone so you have to be polite just in case.

A little piece of the universe was made plain to me this weekend, through close observation of the weather. Saturday, being 5 November was of course, Guy Fawkes night with fireworks and bonfires aplenty. The weather had been windy and wet for about ten days , but on Friday night it cleared to fresh and crisp with barely a breeze. I took this to be a sign that God is a protestant, who dislikes 17th century Catholics with treasonous tendencies. Of course, it pissed down with howling gales on Guy Fawkes night itself. The Friday weather proving to be a case of false hope.

This was proof that I was wrong, and God is in fact a Catholic with a sense of humour.

Good night.

It has just occurred to me that there are two ways of reading that title.... Be clear, kids: I mean television.

The distress in this particular case is the discovery that there are only two more episodes of House season 1 to be broadcast on Channel 5. Season 2 is not very far advanced in the US, and that means that very soon, with or without torrents, I shall run out of yet another piece of TV. There's only a few I watch and they are all ending, or have ended at about the same time.

Feast or famine indeed.

To add to the misery, I missed the first four or five episodes of House season 1, and am unable to find a torrent healthy enough to make an attempted download worth the effort.

What to do?