Random wibblings of an insane science fiction fan

 
I am back! Turkey was eaten, and it was good. And the internet was working when I returned. Yay!

(Now I am way tireder than I have any right to be at 6:30 PM, though. I have no idea why driving takes it out of me so much.)

Hope all the rest of you have had a great day, whatever you've spent it doing!

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 6:19 PM [2 comments]

 
My internet connection at home suddenly stopped working, for some reason, so I had to pop into work briefly before leaving for Albuquerque and turkey to check my e-mail. If anybody out there is expecting to hear from me this weekend and (mostly) doesn't, you can probably take that as a sign that whatever the heck the problem is hasn't been fixed. Because, of course, crap always has to happen on holidays.

Never mind. Happy Thanksgiving to all out there who celebrate! And, what the heck, a temporary lack of internet just makes me realize how very grateful I am to have it at all.

Labels: bits of my life, whining

posted by Betty at 11:22 AM [1 comments]

 

Labels: stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 3:05 PM [8 comments]

 
Happy 45th birthday, Doctor Who!

In celebration, I offer up yet another random Who-related link: Can you name the companions from Doctor Who? More importantly, can you name all of them in eight minutes? One could have some serious debate as to whether all the people on the list count -- I personally maintain that at least one of them is utterly wrong and three others at most have "honorary" status -- but if you're an obsessive enough fan, it's quite possible to figure out everybody they're looking for. For the record, it took me four minutes. It wouldn't have been that long, but I had a massive brain fart for a while and somehow forgot a character who was not at all unmemorable.

Labels: doctor who

posted by Betty at 9:10 AM [2 comments]

 
Whoo-hoo! I knew there was a reason why I voted for this guy!

Labels: current events

posted by Betty at 4:03 PM [5 comments]

 
So, the BBC has just released a bunch of documents from the very beginning of Doctor Who, including notes on the series' original conception. Here's a pretty good article on the subject, and the documents themselves can be found here. It's interesting stuff. The Doctor apparently was originally imagined as a much more sinister sort of character than he turned out to be, and the characters who evolved into Barbara and Ian read like painfully bad stereotypes, so perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that not everything went according to plan. Particularly amusing to me are the quickly-discarded insistence that the show have no "bug-eyed monsters"; the speculation that perhaps the Doctor might have been Merlin, a concept that finally made it to the screen 26 years later; and the fact that the Doctor was intended to be amnesiac, which inevitably makes me think of fans' tendency to mock the Eighth Doctor for losing his memory in every medium he appeared in.

Labels: doctor who

posted by Betty at 7:30 PM [2 comments]

 
Tonight's DVD viewing was I Am Legend, which I quite liked, although I remember just enough about the book version to be pretty sure that I preferred the original's ending.

What kind of got me about the movie, though, is that I spent much of the first half hour or so thinking, "Dude, the only good thing about the 'last person on Earth' scenario is that there aren't any damned people! I used to have guilty fantasies about that sort of thing! But... Oh. Oh, you poor, poor extrovert." I have to say, it's rather nice to know that in one significant respect I'm more psychologically equipped to deal with the apocalypse than a guy played by Will Smith. Of course, my complete lack of survival skills or physical fortitude would doubtless ensure that I didn't last more than a day and a half, anyway. But, still.

Labels: inside my brain, movies

posted by Betty at 7:14 PM [8 comments]

 
Last week's cold has now thoroughly settled into my lungs and turned itself into a nice little bout of bronchitis. Sigh. And here I was doing so well lately, too. I don't think I've come down with a case for a couple of years now, which is probably some kind of record for me.

I feel like I ought to set up a betting pool as to how long it'll last this time. I'm gonna be semi-optimistic and say a month and a half.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 6:10 PM [4 comments]

 
So, the latest trailer for the new Star Trek movie is now available online. General consensus seems to be that it looks really cool, but... Aargh, it makes me wince. I can't help it.

To begin with, the gratuitous, testosterone-soaked car chase scene and the Heroes-esque talk of Destiny really aren't doing much for me, although maybe those say more about the editing of the trailer than they do about the movie itself. But mostly, it's the Star Trek purist in me that's flailing about and shouting things like, "No, Enterprise proved that prequels are a bad idea!" and "There is no way this fits into established continuity!" and, most of all, "These are NOT the Star Trek characters, goddamn it!" And, yeah, yeah, I know that characters are played by different actors all the time. More than that, it's the characters who are the most iconic, the most embedded in the popular consciousness who are most likely to be re-visited and re-interpreted and to outlive those who first brought them to life, and it was probably inevitable that it would happen with Star Trek eventually. But, as I put it to someone recently: I imprinted on these characters when I was ten. Seeing them played by new people is a bit like having members of your family show up with new faces, voices, and mannerisms. And since my parents don't happen to be Time Lords, it's just... weird. Uncomfortable and wrong and weird.

Although, OK, I will say... Zachary Quinto as Spock? Actually seems to work for me. I think I might be able to look at him and just see Spock for an entire movie. Kirk on the other hand? Just... no. And I love Simon Pegg, I really do, but he is not Scotty.

I'm gonna have to go and see this thing, anyway, though. I'm just going to have to. I think I'm going to pretend to myself that its actual role in the Star Trek universe is as a piece of historical fiction filmed sometime in the 25th century. That sort of thing has worked reasonably well for me before...

Labels: movies, tv shows, whining

posted by Betty at 11:15 AM [12 comments]

 
Shiba Inu Puppy Cam: Live puppy webcam! With live puppies! Too, too cute.

Nikon Small World - Gallery: Beautiful photos of really, really tiny things.

What Can Our Next President Learn From His Sci Fi Counterparts?: If our leaders do not learn from the movies, we will be doomed to horrible death by asteroid. Or something.

How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You: Amusing companion page to Friday's stupid internet quiz.

Huge Exoplanet New Items: Pictures!!!: I imagine most people have heard this very cool news about direct sightings of extraterrestrial planets already, but I just love the Bad Astronomer's enthusiasm...

Labels: random links

posted by Betty at 5:08 PM [1 comments]

 


Between the bite that got infected and the permanent maiming of my left cornea, I think he's making progress.

Labels: cats, stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 8:29 AM [0 comments]

 
So, thanks to this e-mail time capsule thing that I'd nearly forgotten about, I just got a message from myself of three years ago. Apparently Past Me chose to nag Future (now Present) Me about various household projects she thought I was likely to put off indefinitely. Well, ha! I did re-tile the bathroom sink, after all! Take that, Past Me! I, uh, never did get around to fixing that thing with the kitchen sink, though.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 4:37 PM [2 comments]

 

Labels: stupid internet quiz

posted by Betty at 9:53 AM [0 comments]

 
So, while I've spent the last three days lying around on the sofa trying to fight off this stupid cold (and failing miserably), I've at least gotten a lot of DVDs and stuff watched. Which, admittedly, is sort of what I'd intended to do with my time off this week, anyway, but somehow it's less fun when you're doing it mostly because you don't have the energy to do anything else.

The final tally:

Watched off the TiVo: Heroes, House, The Mentalist, and last night's episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert.

Procured by undisclosed means: An episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Watched on DVD: Some classic Who, four episodes of Stargate SG-1, and Bender's Game (the latest Futurama movie).

I actually found that last kind of disappointing, by the way. Some very funny moments, yes, but overall it left me kind of "meh." Definitely not Futurama at its best -- and I say that as someone who loves geeky gamer humor and has seen Lord of the Rings something like five times. Eh, maybe if I'd been in a more receptive mood for comedy...

What's kind of sad is that, even after all that, I'm still backed up on DVDs, and that's without counting my completely full Netflix queue. How is a person supposed to keep up with pop culture these days?! There's too damned much of it!

Anyway. That's enough sofa-lying for me. I'm still not feeling great, but I'm definitely going in to work in the morning. I'm starting to get desperate to feel like I've accomplished something this week that doesn't involve a box of kleenex or a remote control.

Labels: bits of my life, tv shows

posted by Betty at 7:13 PM [0 comments]

 
Dear War-on-Drugs-obsessed US legislators,

Fuck you.

Fuck you up the nostrils with a snot-covered, germ-infected chainsaw.

Absolutely zero love,

Me

Labels: whining

posted by Betty at 1:00 PM [0 comments]

 
Yep. Very definitely sick. Stupid immune system. You attack the most innocuous stuff, but you let crap like this get through?! What the heck am I paying you for?

Labels: whining

posted by Betty at 5:53 AM [8 comments]

 
Oh, man. Sore throat. Not a good sign.

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 3:14 PM [2 comments]

 
Current clothes: Black sweatpants. A white t-shirt with a picture of a distraught Homer Simpson screaming, "Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain!" (Sadly, this sentiment seems to be as true for me as it is for the unfortunate and mentally challenged Mr. Simpson.) A gray zip-up hoodie. White socks. Eeyore slippers.

Current mood: Quite good, actually. Relaxed and fairly happy. I think part of that is lingering relief that the election is finally over and that the outcome was one I regard as favorable, and part of it is that I've been off work for a couple of days, without anything particularly pressing to do.

Current music: Most recently, Jonathan Coulton's Smoking Monkey.

Current annoyance: A few months' worth of repeatedly succumbing to the lure of chocolate and cheeseburgers have put me right back into my fat jeans again. Sigh. I have thus re-launched my "eat less and eat lighter" campaign, but the world is full of food, and it keeps somehow accidentally ending up in my mouth.

Current thing: Oh, gawd. So, recently, certain people browbeat talked me into checking out The Pretender, a mid-to-late-90s TV show that for some reason I never got around to watching when it was on the air. And at this point, I don't know whether to thank them or curse their names, because, gosh, another full-blown TV obsession! It's just what I needed! I got so sucked into this damned thing that I've had to take a break after season one and go back to watching Stargate just to keep my brain from overheating.

Current desktop picture: Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula. So pretty!

Current book: Heroes and Horrors, a collection of short stories by Fritz Leiber.

Current song in head: It appears to be "I'm Looking Through You" by the Beatles. I have no idea why.

Current DVD in player: Disc 2 of season 9 of Stargate SG-1. I have mixed feelings about this season so far. The new story arc just isn't interesting me, and the sudden cast changes are disconcerting, even if I do really like the new actors. Claudia Black's character alone would be enough to keep me watching, though. She completely cracks me up.

Current refreshment: Pomegranate raspberry green tea. Yum!

Current worry: After several months of being absolutely fine, Vir's started doing his Darth Vader impression again. I'm really hoping I'm not going to have to haul him back into the vet and get tubes stuck up his nose.

Current thought: Aww, here comes Happiness, wanting to be petted! *skritches kitty*

Labels: currently, meme

posted by Betty at 5:50 PM [7 comments]

 
Is it over yet?

I want it to be over.

Labels: current events

posted by Betty at 5:49 PM [4 comments]

 
According to LibraryThing's statistics, I have just welcomed the 3,000th book into my home! Lucky number 3,000 is Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher, which came in the mail today while I was at work. I feel like I should throw it a party or something.

I am highly amused, by the way, to be calling attention to this particular book, as I remember a discussion recently (not on this blog) in which I affectionately referred to a couple of fictional characters as "dorks" for couching a discussion on romance in terms of body chemicals. All I can say is, when it comes to dorkiness, I know whereof I speak.

Labels: books

posted by Betty at 3:45 PM [2 comments]

 
I got one batch of trick-or-treaters last night. One. I also picked entirely the wrong time to suddenly go on something resembling a diet.

Anybody want some candy?

Labels: bits of my life

posted by Betty at 6:55 AM [7 comments]