December 28: Five-Minute Breaking Bad

[Zeke]

Merry Christmas! And welcome back, so to speak. You've probably been wondering where I disappeared to when our tenth-anniversary celebration seemed to be going so well. And indeed, it was. I was having a great time with the event, and I was determined not to go MIA for once unless something truly huge came up.

Well, as it turned out, something did. I got accepted to the PhD program in pure math at my alma mater, Carleton University. I'm absolutely thrilled to be back in academia -- but when you've been away for a couple of years, transferring all your mental energy from potential to kinetic is hard work. And while I wanted to get the site back on track, getting my career back on track was a much higher priority. I was even too busy to update on my birthday, which I really like doing. (I'll have to settle for today being the 28th, which is the age I turned. Sigh.)

Don't get the wrong idea -- I'm not quitting 5M.net. RL just had to come first for a while. And if it has to do so again, it will. That's the deal. But right now, I'm finally in a position to ease the site back into my regimen.

XAW will resume next update. Before that, though, I've got something special for you. Not only is this a fiver for a show we've never so much as mentioned here, it's also written in a way I've never tried before. It is...

Five-Minute Breaking Bad (the pilot episode)

I decided to check out the show recently since I'd heard good things about it (suspiciously good things; it was setting off my overhype alarms). By the third scene or so, I was getting so many fiver ideas I had to start writing them down. And I wound up going through the whole episode this way, watching a few scenes at a time and then fiving them. It's the first fiver I've ever written completely blind -- not just unfamilar with the show, but unaware even what would happen next.

It's an experiment. For a show about chemistry, I figure that's appropriate. You'll probably get more out of it if you've seen the episode, but what else is new? Enjoy!