Maybe this is common for people who live closer to Golden Gate Park, but it’s still a novelty to me: just now a family of racoons (I assumed they were a family; I didn’t do any blood tests, but then again, isn’t family about more than just blood?) came trotting down the street in front of my apartment. Like the last stragglers of a parade. Albeit a very quiet parade, that concentrated on trash cans and reeled back in horror if they noticed any onlookers. So maybe a parade in support of abuse victims.

Seeing as how it’s 2am and I’m paying the same every month for this website whether I have something interesting to say or not, I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to make a list. A list of Things I Have Seen On Or Around My Front Steps:

• Racoons (x3)
• Sandwich with two bites taken out, in ziploc bag (x2)
• Single-serving pudding container, half full
• Man in underwear, wielding baseball bat
• Dog poo
• Dog (?) urine
• Klingon (drunk)
• Obese lesbian with scalp tattoo smoking and talking on cell phone (regular appearances)
• Desk lamp (broken)
• Shoes (various)
• Teddy bear
• Dot matrix printer
• Man playing digeridoo
• Woman playing digeridoo
• Man with ten-foot long piece of molding, hitting every post, tree, and sign with it as he walks by, saying, “What up, G?” when he saw me
• Two children, one of whom asked me “How’s it goin’, bitch?” and the other one running back to apologize profusely to me
• Old woman walking her very old chow dog (both wear matching yellow raincoats when it rains)
• Restaurant delivery menus (various)
• Half-eaten rack of ribs (presumably pork)

The most mysterious thing is that none of the stuff stays there for more than an hour. (Except for the obese lesbian*, and possibly the pudding container. Coincidence?!?) I’m actually less curious about who’s leaving the stuff there than who’s taking it away. Note to self: inquire city services about C.H.U.D.s.

*Before anyone takes offense that I’m being too hard on someone for being either overweight or homosexual or a woman or whatever, I should probably point out that she leaves her cigarette butts all over the steps and when I try to walk around her to get up to my apartment, she acts all offended like I’m putting her out.

I finally broke through the blockage in my Netflix queue and watched the two movies that I’ve had for over a month now: Dude, Where’s My Car? and Team America: World Police. Considering the Netflix fees and how long I had them out, I figure they cost me about $12 each.

Which makes me a lot less charitable of them than I probably would be normally. Both were in the “no really, they’re better than they look” category, based on what I’d heard from reviewers and friends. So I had low expectations but was willing to be pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t.

Dude, Where’s My Car? I moved up in the queue because it has Jennifer Garner in it, but she’s no reason to see it, even if you’re not already bored with “Alias.” I’m fine with stoner movies; in fact, I liked Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and I actually bought Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. But I thought the whole point of stoner movies was to make something that you react to basically like you would to a stoner person — they’re harmless and mildly entertaining normally, and really hilarious if you’re high. Considering that this one wasn’t harmless and mildly entertaining when I saw it, I’m not all that inclined to try it again the second way. I’d been expecting it to be gleefully absurd and dumb, but it was just dumb and kind of sad.

And I say we all start a fund, where we each contribute $1 a month, and all the money goes to Andy Dick. The stipulation is that he can never work again.

Team America was just bullshit. It seems like they’re just not aware they’ve obsoleted themselves. They’re stuck in the same thing that was subversive back when they did the first “South Park” short, even though the rest of us have all moved on. (And we moved on partly because “South Park” is so ubiquitous).

Violently cutting up puppets and making them have sex and make dick jokes just isn’t at all subversive anymore. And Parker and Stone just aren’t all that subversive anymore — they make the big joke about pretentious Hollywood needing to be put in its place, without seeming to realize that they’re pretentious Hollywood now. Yeah, there are plenty of pompous blowhards who have no business sticking their noses and money into politics, but at least they’re saying something. It’s easy just to say nothing more than “you’re stupid!”

The only reason I didn’t completely dismiss it is the same reason I can’t completely dismiss “South Park.” When they drop the BS about being adolescent and edgy and just let themselves get absurd, they’re actually funny. There were occasional bits in Team America that are funny just for the sake of being funny, because the characters are puppets. Like the panther attack that’s actually just a couple of house cats with sound effects. And the special emergency signal Gary has to make when he’s undercover. And any of the fist-fight scenes where it’s just two puppets flailing at each other.

They should just learn to drop the pretense of how they’re not pretentious, and just make something funny. Every once in a while, “South Park” manages to actually have a message that makes sense, and while those aren’t the episodes that sell T-shirts and catch phrases, those are the ones that actually work.

A couple months ago I had to spend a week in Burbank for work. I was neither sleeping nor eating right, and I was preoccupied with work and stressed out about the whole NaNoWriMo thing (that was back when I still thought I’d be able to finish it). So I found myself outside the hotel at 6:30 AM simultaneously trying to find a place to eat breakfast and come up with a good story idea.

All I could think about was if Galactus, the planet-devouring villain from Marvel Comics, came to Earth and stayed in a hotel and ordered the Continental Breakfast.

Anyone who still thinks they want to read my “novel” should keep in mind that that was one of my better ideas.

That last post turned out to be all about “Arrested Development,” so I guess this is the one that’s posting just for the sake of posting.

I made a post at SFist yesterday about all the rumors around a Google PC. The story itself is kind of lame — even the rumor sites were saying that it was unlikely, and by the time I got home to write the post, the rumor had already been officially denied.

But what was more interesting to me was the whole “meta-story,” how the thing got so wide-spread so quickly, even though there was really nothing to it. As far as tech rumors go, it was actually kind of approaching compelling. It was a wacky idea (not only a line of cheap PCs, but they’d be writing their own operating system!) that had a little bit of validity because it was printed in the LA Times. And it had the whole “black fiber” angle that I still don’t quite understand but puts an X-Files spin on the whole thing. It’s just amazing to me what a phenomenon the company’s become; Google is building a public perception kind of like NASA’s during the space race. Or seeing as how it’s trading at over $400 a share these days, maybe it’s more like the Tyrell Corporation or SKYNet or Arvin Sloane’s OmniFam.

So I keep hearing stuff coming out of CES, but none of it’s really sticking as particularly interesting. I’m curious to see how Windows Vista looks; I keep seeing articles mentioning that MS is demoing it at the show, but nothing with real details. This eBook reader mentioned on Gizmodo looks pretty cool, and I’ve always liked the idea but don’t think I’d want to be an early adopter of the technology unless it gets a lot cheaper; both for the device itself and the content. Especially since the thing doesn’t have a backlight; what’s the point of an electronic book that you can’t read in bed?

Next week I’m going to be at the MacWorld Expo for at least one day. Maybe that’ll get me all geared up to be Geek Republican again, spending way too much money on disposable electronics and consumerism. At the moment, I’m worried that something’s wrong with me — I’ve got gift certificates for the Best Buy but when I went to the store Tuesday there was nothing I wanted!

This is what we in the blogosphere like to call “posting just for the sake of posting.” Not sure how that’s distinguishable from everything else on here, but still thought it’d be a good idea to acknowledge that.

Because the “Arrested Development” fans don’t hate me enough: I’ve got to say I didn’t like Monday’s episode. I think I got it, what with the references to Oscar-winning actresses as stunt-casting and having it be mostly about Andy Richter who also had a critically-acclaimed show cancelled, but it just crossed some line for me. It just seemed more desperate and blatant than funny, even though they did come right out and say they were being desperate and blatant.

I did like Michael’s line about “we’ve been given plenty of chances, maybe we’re just not worth saving,” and the frequent mentions of the characters not being “relatable.” Not even because I agree, but because it was a sign that they’re aware of what went on with the show and how it’s perceived, and aren’t just doing the predictable response of saying “corporate entertainment sux!” and “Middle America is stupid!” and “we’re too smart for all these stunts!” A lot of that is true, but it was good that they acknowledged some accountability. They’ve shown that they can make a pointed comment and retain some subtlety at the same time; I wish they’d done more of that instead of going for the obvious “Not HBO, but show time” stuff.

I think that the thing that bugged me the most about it: “Arrested Development” is now going to join “Firefly” and “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” as a show that’s remembered more for being cancelled than it is for being good. And that’s a shame, because there’s more to it than just “a genius show that most people are too dumb to understand.”

And the gags I did like: the newspaper headline from the title, when Tobias calls it “the OC Disorder” and Michael responds with his usual “don’t call it that,” and George Michael’s response when Michael says he expresses himself just fine: “Yeah. Fine. What? Whatever, I don’t care. It’s dumb.” I still say Michael Cera’s the best actor on the show.

Today I got caught up on the remaining “Lost” episodes. It left me feeling sad, intrigued, and wary.

Sad because you-know-what happened to you-know-who, because I was just starting to like her. I realize that was the point, because even though it’d already been spoiled for me, I could tell as soon as they started making her sympathetic that bad things were on the horizon. It just seemed inevitable.

Intrigued because like it or not, these guys do know how to handle cliff-hangers and doling out information. Like I said about “Alias,” they’re pretty good about giving you a pay-off when they set something up. If they show you a piece of film, they’re going to show you what’s on the piece of film, instead of making you wait a month or longer. And intrigued about how much speculation on the internets is going on, including the teaser sites complete with Disney terms of use. And the total geekitude that reveals stuff I never would’ve figured out, like that the numbers in the code all add up to 108, which is the number of minutes on the countdown timer.

Wary because I don’t know how they’re going to get a whole nother season out of it without running out of big revelations. I don’t know about the rest of the fans, but I’m getting a little tired of the flashbacks. They’ve been building up to Kate’s backstory since early on, and it just struck me as kind of “meh.” The only really engaging part of all that was trying to place where I’d seen her mom before (she was one of the aunts on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”). The only thing left for a flashback to reveal, as far as I’m concerned, is what happened to Jack’s wife, and I can’t say I’m all that interested.

Before I sound too critical, though, I should say that I’m still impressed with how the show manages to maintain a tone instead of just getting mired in its own gimmicks and plot twists. It’s consistently about morality and fate, which makes me hopeful that they’ll manage to pull it all together into a meaningful story instead of just a series of cliff-hangers and internet mysteries. (And which makes the whole “They’re in Purgatory!” theory more convincing and makes me wonder why people were so quick to dismiss it).

Whatever the case, I’m now in the same boat as everyone else, and I have to wait until January 11th for the next reveal just like the commoners. Episodic television was not designed for people with my attention span.

Only five more years until VH-1’s “I Love the 00’s”! I can’t wait to hear what wacky things the irrepressible Hal Sparks and Michael Ian Black have to say about iPods!

I spent New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas! For a couple of hours, on a layover from my flight. But that’s still cool! And my luggage is still enjoying Vegas, because it didn’t make it to San Francisco! Totally awesome! Damn I’ll be happy when I never have to fly again!

Other than that, New Year’s was fairly low-key but fun. Mac and I were playing Trivial Pursuit with a bunch of his friends, and we were of course failing to get any of the answers in the sports and games questions. Until the crucial moment when we needed the final Sports category piece, and the question was to identify a 20-sided die. If that’s not an omen of good luck in the coming year, I don’t know what is.

I made out pretty good with the Christmas loot, too: a Wallace and Gromit art book, a MST3K DVD collection (times two), Serenity, “The Clone Wars” on DVD, a book and CD on how to play the banjo, and gift certificates to iTunes and Best Buy. I also got some martini glasses from Club 33, and a Voice-Activated R2-D2 robot to fight it out against the Roomba. And when my luggage finally gets delivered, and my repaired hard drive comes back in the mail, it’ll be like Christmas all over again!

I think I’m supposed to put New Year’s Resolutions here or something, but I’ve already smoked half a pack of cigarettes, ate about a pound of brownies, and slept in until 2pm on January 1st, so they’re pretty much all broken.