Ouch. Sorry to hear it, mang; best of luck.
I actually started doing this over the past few weeks, after getting out of the hospital, starting with the Tom Baker ones. They're charming, but they aren't really... anywhere near engaging to justify their length (i.e. Terror of the Zygons, The Brain of Morbius, Seeds of Doom). I guess they're just sort of predictable, is what I'm finding. I worry that the more I watch these, the less I'm going to like the franchise as a whole.
I did sort of like the Ark in Space, though! Something about the setting.
I've got an entire thread's worth of suggestions on my favorite serials, but my all-time favorite is City of Death, co-written by Douglas Adams. Watch that one if you haven't. There's a lot there that he reused in Dirk Gently, but it's still pretty neat.
(The BBC site also has a limited-animation Flash adaptation of his unfinished serial Shada, which he also cannibalized for Dirk. That's bound to take a bit more patience but I remember enjoying it when I watched it all in one sitting when I stayed home from work with a migraine.)
I recommend NOT binging on a show. It only hurts.
I'm inclined to agree but the anthology-style shows we've been talking about in the Twilight Zone thread might be an exception. The episodes are self-contained and tend to be pretty diverse, though they DO suffer from often-predictable twist endings.
Have someone run out to a book store and spend $8 on a book for you called "The Atrocity Archives" by Charles Stross. It's like 300 pages long, and you can knock it out in a couple days. If you like it, go on and pick up 'The Jennifer Morgue".
Seconded. I love me some Bob Howard.
This author is also working on a book called 'Rule 34', a government agency whose job is to identify trends on the internet and determine if they're harmless fantasy or masking criminal motive.
Rule 34 is the sequel to Halting State. Probably best to read Halting State first.
I think it's quite good as a work of speculative fiction (whereas the Laundry series is straight-up fantasy/satire) and I also like the presentation, though the plot falls apart a bit at the end.
And some people like watching shows straight through.
Anyway. Witcher 2's pretty neat but, as Nor put it, "runs like letterboxed butt" unless you've paid upwards of two Franklins on a video card within the past year. Course, if you haven't played the first one yet, it's $10 on GOG and has much more modest sysreqs, and is quite a long and engrossing game. There's also all that stuff I mentioned in the
Old PC Games thread when I was unemployed and had a bunch of free time but no money.
Don't know if you've got old game consoles set up but I recently hooked up my NES and Genesis to an old CRT; I've just ordered Battle Kid and the Fortress of Peril (haven't gotten it in the mail yet but I hear good things) and the Sega CD plays burned discs.
And since the PSP's on its way out there are a lot of good deals in that space. Think I'll probably get me one of those and a handful of games as my next $200 game purchase, but seeing as I just spent $300 on a graphics card that's not going to happen right away.
Comics: can't remember which of Sandman, Y: The Last Man, Fables, Scott Pilgrim, Hellboy, or Bone you've read, but going through the full run of any of those will kill some time. And since you didn't recognize the "L&R" acronym when I used it the other week, I'm assuming you haven't read those either; I'd recommend picking up a copy of Heartbreak Soup and going from there. Robot 6 has a pretty good
Comics 101 on it.
Oh also I just read Zot! and really need to do a writeup on it in the Comics for People Who Don't Read Comics thread, because it is wonderful.
And there's a lot of great public-domain shit at
Digital Comic Museum. Maybe give a look at Police Comics as it has The Spirit and Plastic Man.
And speaking of public domain books, Project Gutenberg, MobileRead, and ManyBooks are all pretty massive libraries.
