Ya Gotta Love Thelma Ritter

    Just a few loose notes here as I down my morning coffee and brace myself for another exciting day:

• A friend recently suggested--- half-jesting, half-not--- that the NSG Doc should consider a career in film criticism.  This is a bit ironic, considering that it was in reviewing movies that I first started writing for (albeit very limited) public consumption, way, way, waaaaaaaay back when I was in high school and dinosaurs began turning into oil.  Having been as long as I can remember something of a film savant, it'd be a great gig if I could get it, but those gigs are few and far between.  It'd be a natural fit, save for two things: having to review gore-fests I can no longer stomach and my own capacity for becoming the Dennis Miller of flick-crit, casually tossing around names as familiar for me as they would be arcane for everyone else.  The other day the CBC was re-airing Hitchcock's Rear Window, and after watching a scene I caught myself saying, "Ya gotta love Thelma Ritter."  Oh, the perpetual danger of being, or merely seeming, too esoteric by half.  Then again, these days one can be chided for mentioning Shakespeare in an English class, so stupefyingly pricklish have some become to any sort of demonstration of knowledge.  (Invoking Massinger would probably be grounds for scouring and crucifixion.)  No wonder I'm cynical, as references beyond the purview of The Family Guy are stridently derided as obscure and ergo obscurantist. 

  So, note to self:  Don't mention Thelma Ritter.  Lindsay Lohan, okay-- but not, definitely not, Thelma Ritter.   
  

• There's much ado these days about the releases of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0, and though I can't pretend to be any sort of expert on the browser debate, the NSG Doc had previously, and typically, gone a third way with Opera.  For my money, absolutely none of it, Opera's better than either, especially for the "Block Content" function which allows users to ban certain advertising from web pages.  Smooth, stable, and almost entirely forgotten in the fracas, Opera is worth checking out if you haven't already.  If, like me, you're trying to get away from Microsoft as much as possible, I'd also recommend OpenOffice, which is free and every bit as functional as Office. 
  
  
• I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to keep blogging anymore.  Can't say it offers me much anymore, or if this blog offers much to anyone else either.  I dunno.  Thoughts?  If I do keep this thing going, I'll almost certainly be chucking Enetation as my comment handler.  It gets less and less reliable by the week, today marking every comment I made as spam before it eventually published it as spam.  Oy vey.  The only question then becomes whether or not I can be bothered to do all the recoding with Blogger.  Same goes for ImageShack, BTW, which has inexplicably taken to revamping its image locations.  This is why the image of Alec Guinness won't load up anymore--- and why this blog won't seem to load completely when you visit it.  Arrrrgh. 

Alas, nothing exciting to report here, much less thoughtful or significant.  Meh.  Another mawkish Monday awaits. 

    Follow-Up:  And Blogger is screwing up today, too.  Again.  Once more, this time feeling:  Aaaaaargh!!!!

    Follow-Up Part Deux:  Playing around with Firefox, I'm impressed with the quality of some of the add-ons.  In fact, this addendum is done using the "Performancing" blog editor.  Not bad, not bad at all, and Firefox is brutal with advertisements, even removing Google text ads.  Impressive.