word of the week, etc.

im a bit obsessed with the word 'gratuitous'.
gratuitous (according to google, who never lie):
without cause; "a gratuitous insult"
complimentary: costing nothing; "complimentary tickets"; "free admission"
unnecessary and unwarranted; "a strikers' tent camp...was burned with needless loss of life"
i much prefer my dad's old australian heinemann dictionary (1976 edition for those playing at home), that he stole from his melbourne highschool and passed on to me. where other normal people pass on jewellery or long strips of red cloth, my family's heirloom is a stolen dictionary. sigh.

speaking of family and stuff like that, i just wanna ask you peoples at the board of studies one thing. i wouldnt make you sit for an hsc exam (the exam that defines the rest of your life, if you have asian parents) on christmas or easter. its damn annoying that i have to do my 3 hour modern exam on the very day of eid. speaking of which, so you know how many days ive skipped fasting cos my mum wouldnt let me on the days of my exams? really, its the studying that you need the food for, not the actual writing in the hall. geez.

now lets see. what tv did i watch last night, while trying to escape from studying...?
oh yeah, the finale of csi:ny. right now let me say this first. i like the original series quite a lot. i liked grissom the nerd and the rest of the socially dysfunctional lot of them. oh - and greg. who apparently is some kind of sucessful entrepreneur in the 'real world'.
but when miami came out i wanted to gag. its just so...bad. and cliched and horrible. horatio is some kind of uber-cool criminal genius and the master of all TV forensic psychology (which is not true, because that title belongs to a dr tony hill), that woman with the blonde hair she never ties up is whiny and the rest of them look like they should be running down a beach in their underthings in slo-mo.
now my first impressions of ny were pretty dodgy. the whole 'mac taylors wife died in sept 11' is a bit of stretch (no offence, but to someone who comes from sydney, it seems a little implausible). but the show has grown on me. hill harper is especially cool, like a much more 'real' version of the crazy m.e. woman in miami (and not just cos theyre both black). the woman who plays stella is quite good, and i like danny and aiden as well. not to mention that those accents really rock my socks, although sometimes it feels like they get carried away.
mac makes mistakes, stella doesnt know everything (although that ep where she got a little clucky freaked me out), and danny and aiden bicker much more than their perfect-looking counterparts on miami or even the original show ever did. the greg substitute on the show has so much opportunity to be really funny and/or snarky, but the writers havent deigned to notice him that much yet, which is the one of the things that i reckon they could do next year.
anywhos. i like ny, and at the moment i reckon i like it more than csi:lv (although that may partly be because of the way the nine network have decided to make sunday night their csi new eps night). im gonna go into withdrawal without it. i wonder what theyre gonna put on instead.

channel 9 by the way, is pissing me off because of their funky new '50 years of oztv' promos. they put all the shows they ever owned the rights to into the 5 minute ad, but where are the shows they commissioned? alright ill just come out and say it: where is farscape? the show is probably the only one that is recognised outside of this country that was made by the network, its won international awards and nominations, and the directors, writers and producers of the thing now represent a very large slice of the australian scene at the moment. rowan woods 'little fish' with cate blanchett and hugo weaving is up for about half of the AFIs this year, justin monjo's series just wrapped up on ...channel 9, ben browder is on stargate, claudia black's got a new movie out soon. kate beahan is some kind of hollywood star now, and the rest of the guest cast reads like a whos who of the aussie tv/film industry. the effects guys just did star wars, and the henson co. are still doing harry potter. geez, you would think the guys up top would realise that this is the kind of thing the industry should be doing, not hiding it in a musty cupboard and pretending it never happened.

wakes.