My computer makes that Mr. Yuck face

Currently it looks like anti-virus is making my computer sick. *headdesk*

"system" is using as much memory as browser with several flash games loaded up. Research (via phone, because many of the places which identify malware are themselves malware purveyors) suggests that AVG updates cause this.

Zone Alarm doesn't get along with my video card. Nor does it get along with AVG. It got along so badly with Ad-Aware that I had to uninstall it.

I'm about ready to get a new computer. But that would require me to clear off my desk, a task so daunting as to make dealing with memory leaks seem feasible.

movie: Poirot: The Third Girl

I don't know what happened to the writers. Maybe the original text was this bad and there's a reason they didn't make these texts into movies/episodes earlier.

This episode has Madame Oliver in it. Supposedly, according to the Alan Cumming intro, she's Agatha Christie's tongue-in-cheek self-portrayal. I loathe Madame Oliver. It reminds me of the worst parts of those prissy-pants mysteries like Gaudy Night. ( commentary on Gaudy Night )

The whole title of this was harped upon by the Oliver woman, and it was some shit she made up and pretended was a common phrase. The Oliver woman was completely idiotic and damn near got herself killed for no reason.

The victim/suspect in this is the same actress who did Lost In Austen. She's got these ENORMOUS lips. One wonders whether she needs a straw to consume liquids because her bulbous labia prevent getting the brim near her mouth. And that was what I was thinking about whenever she was on the screen, so I found her appearance a tremendous distraction from whatever professional attempts she was making. Her character does some stupid stunts that rival Mme Oliver's, but one cannot blame the actress for the role.

Poirot, however, is equally stupid. He never considers that someone in hiding would be freaked when the police show up at his door on an unrelated matter. Poirot says no one knows where the hiding person is, right before the butler comes in. Poirot used to do all his own cooking and did not appear to have servants of any kind, back when he was working with Captain Hastings and Miss Lemon. But regardless, the Poirot of earlier would never have attempted to tell someone that a servant is not a person or that their presence does not matter. Poirot was never dismissive of the servant class before. This Poirot was rudely dismissive.

Poirot doesn't go on about his Catholicism in this episode. That was a plus except it highlighted how ridiculous that was in the Murder On The Orient Express remake.

Whoever they have doing the video editing is one of those cracked up sugar-monkeys who do the music videos and Harry Potter movies and that Sherlock Holmes movie. It's extremely dimly lit. The scenes are cropped just a hair too short. The scenes jump around from one thought to the next without any sense of coherence. It's very difficult to see, very difficult to understand, and constantly makes me feel rushed about. I'm not that old, certainly younger than Poirot, and this made me feel like I was 90 and tottering about trying to understand a cocktail party without my hearing aid.

I'm honestly not all that interested in watching any more of these.