Happy Give In To Despair Day!

The one thing worse than watching a really bad movie is watching most of a really bad movie and then not getting to see how it ends.
After all, while you really have no reason to care – because it’s awful – you can’t help but feel like you’ve been cheated.
(Even more than you’ve already been cheated by the lousy story, horrible acting, and sub-BBC science fiction TV show from the 70s special effects.)
Such was the case for me today with the movie Alien Abduction.
Among the channels I get that are in HD is Universal HD, a channel that’s a hodgepodge of HD programming such as old TV shows that have been upconverted to HD, concerts by bands like Poison (seriously), and movies that are either 10+ years old, which were never exactly blockbusters to begin with, or are of the direct-to-video variety.
Because it’s nearly Halloween, for the past week or so they’ve been airing a lot of low-budget horror movies.
Like Alien Abduction.
While flipping through the channels last night I encountered Alien Abduction already well underway. I could tell right away that it was really bad, but the protagonist was a chick who was cute, in a low-budget crappy horror movie kind of way, and seemed to spend most of her time wandering around in an extremely short hospital gown.
The shortness of the gown piqued my interest, as this seemed like the sort of movie in which the female protagonist would spend some amount of time wearing even less than that (FYI, my suspicions in this regard were correct), so I checked the guide to see if it was going to be on again. It was, at 3 AM, so I set the DVR to record it.
Today, after it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to motivate myself to do anything productive, I decided to watch it.
And it was just as bad – possibly worse – as I thought it would be.
However, due to some sort of glitch – which I think I’ve figured out the cause of – the recording cut off at about 60 minutes into the 90 minute runtime.
So I was robbed of the “thrilling conclusion.”
Granted, all I really wanted from it was some T&A, which I got, but I can’t help but feel the need to see how it ends.
Luckily it’s on again tonight, so I’ve set it to record once more.
Then I’ll be able to watch the ending, at which point I will, no doubt, wonder why I bothered.
As for the “glitch,” I think this is what happened.
Earlier today, before I started watching the recording, I found that the movie was on yet again, and was at about the hour mark.
When I went to the list of recordings to select the movie, it presented me with option of “Resume Play,” rather than just “Play.” When I did that, it started playing from the point that I’d just seen it at while flipping through the channels, so I hit “Stop.” I went back in and hit “Play.” I think that somehow screwed up the recording, causing it to delete everything after the point at which I’d hit “Stop.”
That’s my theory, anyway. We’ll see what happens with tonight’s recording, which should run uninterrupted.
As mentioned, I didn’t do much that was productive today. I decided to declare this “Give In To Despair Day” and just forget about even trying to accomplish anything.
Tomorrow will, of course, be “New Comics Day.”
Thursday will just be Thursday, because giving each day of the week some kind of special name would just be stupid.
(Though technically Thursday is also “Job Fair Day.”)
I have no idea if I’m going to get trick or treaters tomorrow night, but I bought some candy just in case.
The only time in my adult life that I’ve actually gotten trick or treaters was when I lived in Minnesota.
It was a Sunday, and my roommates and I had just gotten back from a trip up to the cities where we’d attended a Halloween party and gotten suitably trashed.
We’d gotten back to Red Wing late in the afternoon and were all sitting around feeling like we’d been up all night drinking (imagine that), and as it was starting to get dark, a thought occurred to me and I said, “Crap! It’s Halloween!”
I made a quick run to the store and bought some candy, and got back just in time for the parade of costumed kids.
I left one little girl paralyzed with indecision by responding, to her “Twick or tweat” with “Hmm, okay…trick!”
She stared up at me in helpless panic until I said, “I’m only teasing,” and then gave her extra candy to alleviate her trauma.
While I was writing this, Kathleen called, offering to stop by quickly to give me some feedback on my new résumé. Actually, she called before I started writing this, but I was downstairs and the cell phone was up here, so I had no idea until she called again.
I got three e-mails from three different recruiters, each one trying to fill the exact same job.
Unfortunately, it’s that same contract job that I was contacted about the day after the layoff.
And that’s pretty much been my day. I didn’t totally give in to despair, as I did update the résumé with some of Kathleen’s suggestions, and I did at least shower and get dressed, and even go for a walk, but overall, I wasn’t terribly productive and didn’t see the point in even trying to be productive.
We’ll see what tomorrow brings.