Yes, I see.

I was thinking about the oddball things the Aussies say, which I’ve picked up from watching “McLeod’s Daughters.” Some of it is well-known Australian slang, but there are other locutions that make me wonder.

One is sort or sort out, as in “I’ll sort something out,” or “You’d better get that sorted.” The same way we would say figure out or straighten out. But -- is that typical Aussie-speak, or is it the person who wrote the script?

Writers do that. Sue Grafton (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc.) uses “at this point” and “at some point” a lot.

If it was just her main character, you would credit her with giving Kinsey a distinct manner of speech, but when every character says it, then you know it’s Sue who uses that expression a lot.

On my all-time favorite TV show, “Upstairs Downstairs,” somebody is always saying, “Yes, I see.” It happens so often that one can only conclude that it is something the writer says all the time, or else the writer isn’t clever enough to come up with a different line. Maybe “Okay, I get it,” isn’t idiomatic British for 1910, but still, there must be some other way to say it.

Perhaps I’ll get this sorted at some point.

How could you?

So, Netflix has this deal where you can stream movies right to your television through the miracle of a wireless router and your Wii game.  You can place videos in your streaming queue just like you do for your regular one where they mail you one or more DVDs at a time.  You can only stream the ones Netflix has marked as streamable, but they are plainly marked -- they're the same ones that you can watch instantly on your PC.

Taking advantage of the available streamabilities, we have been watching an Australian television show called "McLeod's Daughters" that first aired Down Under in 2001.  It's all about these people who live and work on cattle and sheep ranches, which they call farms -- all very western, except that instead of the west USA it's South Australia.  But they ride horses and wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots and have rodeos and do line dancing at the pub, and if it weren't for the horrendous accents with which they speak English and the fact that it apparently never snows there, you'd think it was Wyoming.

This show was a number-one ranked hit in Australia for at least the first six of its eight years on the tube.  Each season comprises 32 episodes which, commercial-free, are 42 minutes long, but if you whack the closing credits, you're down to about 40 minutes each.

We have slugged our way through these episodes, sometimes three or four at a sitting, until last Tuesday when we finished Episode 8 of Season 7.  We tuned in Wednesday night to see Episode 9, and lo and behold, it isn't there any more.

Netflix, apparently the sole arbiter of what can and cannot be streamed, has removed it from the instant-playability list. 

I hope Netflix rots in jingle-bell hell forever.