This Again

Current clothes: Gray sweatpants. White socks. A black t-shirt that says "Irreversibly Contaminated," which I bought as part of a "Save Farscape" fundraising thing. (Hey, don't knock it. It worked! Sort of.)

Current mood: Pretty good. Relaxed and mellow. Hungry.

Current music: It's been Radio Betty again lately (i.e. the result of hitting random shuffle on my iPod). Radio Betty seems to have been in kind of a prog rock mood the last time I listened to it, but, really, the odds of that being the case are not exactly what I'd call low.

Current annoyance: I'm still living in the Land of Dialup. Sigh.

Current thing: Groovin' on the Doctor Who love again.

Current desktop picture: This picture of Saturn's moon Rhea, seen from just below the rings. I've been meaning to change it for a while though. It's a striking picture, but it's a bit too minimalist to make good wallpaper, really.

Current song in head: "Coming Back to Life" by Pink Floyd. I'm not sure why.

Current book: Mammoth by John Varley.

Current video in player: Most recently, a couple of episodes of Lexx.

Current DVD in player: My Neighbor Totoro. Cutest movie ever. It's also very possibly the only kids' movie I've ever seen in which the characters actually act like real kids.

Current refreshment: I had some tea a little while ago.

Current worry: I've been trying not to worry about the possibility of my house cracking in two. I think I'm kinda-sorta succeeding.

Current thought: The cornish game hen I have cooking in the oven smells really, really good. Damn, I'm hungry. Hurry up, hen!

Me, Encoded

I don't know if this tells you anything especially interesting about me, even after you go to the website and decode it, but here I am, apparently:

---------------------- OmniCode 0.1.6 -----------------------
sxx cm165 kg72 skd08c75 ha150c0d.with_random_flecks_of_gray ey324aca esO sp= Ag1971 anE hdd Lo34,3N-106,53W Rl! Kd! PeC.three_of_them MBINTx.evenly_split_on_J/P IN12 AdC
----------- Omnicode http://www.gadgeteer.net/omnicode/ -----------

(Except, hmm, the skin color that shows up when you do the decoding thing looks considerably darker than what I thought I was picking. Well, maybe if it's the end of August and I've got a really intense tan...)

What a Nifty World We Live In.

Giant mechanical elephant wandering around London = Coolest thing ever.

Living in the Land of Dialup

Well, my wireless connection really does seem to be truly fubared. It's sort of working, slowly and intermittently, but basically if I want any real odds of staying up for more than a minute or so at a time, I need to resort to dialup. Which isn't actually all that bad. At least my 56k dialup here actually is 56k, as opposed to when I lived in the trailer, where it'd be any random number between about 20 and 45. So it's inconvenient and mildly annoying, but unless I want to download any huge files, it's workable. (Fortunately, I have an alternate source for my Doctor Who.)

I really need to get a hold of my ISP again. I sent them an e-mail a couple of weeks ago, but never got an answer, so I need to call 'em. Which I've been putting off for various stupid reasons. And now I'm about to switch over onto night shift, which means I'll pretty much be asleep during normal business hours for the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, it looks like I'm in the Land of Dialup for a while.

What this means is that the, what, two of you out there who might have reason to call me on the phone are likely to get a busy signal if you try. Send me an e-mail instead. And for those of you I normally hang out with online, well, don't expect me to be connected during every waking hour the way I normally am.

No Bitching Today. Have Some Random Links Instead.

If all stories were written like science fiction stories: a far-too-accurate send-up of SF's frequent tendency towards implausible exposition.

And, from the same site: Why the classic SF future was called off. Very funny list of reasons why life never got around to imitating The Jetsons.

Here's a cartoon that's very funny if you're a fan of the new Battlestar Galactica (but will probably go right over your head if you haven't seen it).

What If...: The BBC presents you with a list of highly contrived but fairly interesting moral dilemmas and lets you vote on the answers.

One of Those Days

I dropped a full cup of coffee onto the carpet in my hallway practically first thing this morning. I made toast, burned the first attempt, and dropped half of the second batch butter-down on the floor, at which point I was out of bread. I got into work to be told that everything was going extremely smoothly, and twenty minutes later, gosh, there were the errors that had been absent all night. Then I discovered that the podcasts I downloaded yesterday to listen to at work weren't actually complete, due to the fact that my internet connection continues getting worse and worse and worse despite having supposedly been fixed. Also, my eyeglasses seem to be slightly out of alignment again, just enough to drive me crazy but not so much that I don't feel like an over-complaining jerk if I go back and ask to have them adjusted again.

Can I just go home and crawl under the covers? Please?

(And now Blogger's crapping out on me. Of course. Sigh.)

Ummm...

Yes, I do remember that I have a blog. It's just it seems like, lately, every time I think about updating my internet connection goes out or I get distracted by something shiny, or...

Oooh! I just got e-mail!

Free Offer! Act Now! Or Don't, Whatever.

I vaguely recall, uh, someone I know mentioning they were thinking about getting a subscription to Netflix, though I can't for the life of me remember who. I may actually be imagining it. Anyway, they sent me this coupon for a one month free trial and invited me to send it to people. (Their usual free trial period is two weeks.) I'm not going to randomly spam people with Netflix coupons, but if anybody actually wants in on this offer, let me know, either by e-mail at happynova at gmail dot com, or by leaving a comment here with your e-mail address, and I'll forward it to ya.

Here's the fine print:

Quantities of this special offer are limited. Free trial valid in the 50 United States and its territories and possessions only. This limited introductory free trial offer expires 5/09/2006 subject to continued availability and cannot be combined with any other offer. Limit one per household. First-time customers only. Internet access and valid payment method required to redeem offer. Netflix will begin to bill your chosen method of payment for the plan selected at sign-up at the completion of the free trial unless you cancel prior to the end of the free trial. DVDs out-at-a-time vary by plan. Our most popular plan, 3 DVDs out-at-a-time, is $17.99 plus any applicable tax. Your Netflix subscription is a month-to-month subscription cancelable at anytime. Click the "Your Account" button for cancellation instructions. No refunds or credits for partial monthly subscription periods. Delivery claim based on nearly 90% of our subscribers being within one-day postal delivery zones. Please visit www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse for complete terms and conditions. Netflix reserves the right to change terms and conditions at any time.

I So Do Not Think So.

Which MASH Character are you?

You are Charles Emerson Winchester, III!
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Testing...

Dammit, Blogger, publish already!

I Think They Found "Reverse."

So, I know many of the people who actually read this blog have probably seen this bit of news about a proposed new Star Trek movie already, but:

J.J. Abrams is becoming the next Gene Roddenberry.

Paramount is breathing life into its "Star Trek" franchise by setting "Mission: Impossible III" helmer J.J. Abrams to produce and direct the 11th "Trek" feature, aiming for a 2008 release.

Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk, Abrams' producing team from "Lost," also will produce the yet-to-be-titled feature.

Project, to be penned by Abrams and "MI3" scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, will center on the early days of seminal "Trek" characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer space mission.

Man, every time someone thinks about doing a new Trek project, they haul out this Starfleet Academy idea again, and it never becomes any less of a bad idea. In fact, it seems to me that it's only become more obviously a bad idea. I can just imagine someone saying, "Hey, I know! Let's do the Starfleet Academy thing! Being a prequel, it'll have all the continuity disadvantages of Enterprise, with the added bonus of recasting beloved characters who have become inextricably linked with the actors who originally played them!" Except, of course, what they're probably actually thinking is, "American movie-goers only want movies about sexy young people, so for Star Trek we need sexy young people... in SPACE!" Sigh.

Personally, I want a Deep Space 9 movie, if we have to keep flogging this poor dead franchise at all. But I've long since become resigned to the fact that that's never gonna happen.

Blowin' in the Wind

Aargh. I forgot to close the window in my computer room when I left for work today, and when I got home my entire computer desk was covered in grit. Sometimes I hate New Mexico.

Another Open Letter to Vir-Kitty

Dear Mr. Catto,

Please stop biting through the wires on my headphones. This is really the last pair I wish to buy for quite some time. Also, every time I plug the damn things in and fail to get any sound out of them because you've been masticating on them, I instantly assume my iPod is broken and panic. I do not enjoy this at all.

With love and annoyance,
Your long-suffering human

I Can See Clearly Now...

OK, so, I went back to the optician and got my eyeglass frames adjusted again, and I think they're actually feeling pretty comfortable now. Hooray! That's one item from the "bad" list crossed off. I hope.

The Good, The Bad, And The Whiney

Once again, time passes and I find myself neglecting to update this thing for a few days. Well, let's see... There've been good things and bad things.


Good Things:

I went up to Albuquerque on Sunday and visited a couple of different friends and their families. Had some scrumptious Easter dinner, saw some people I hadn't seen in a very long time, and afterwards went to see V for Vendetta, which was pretty good.

New Doctor Who episode in the UK! And, yes, I got my hands on it, though it took a bit of doing this time. Kind of a dumb plot, but loads of fun anyway, and, man am I looking forward to the rest of season 2 (or 28, whichever).

I've been very productive lately. Got a whole bunch of stuff crossed off my to-do list this morning.

The Sopranos disks from Netflix that I thought were lost in the mail came today after all. Which means that I now have Sopranos episodes to tide me over until I get my next batch of Lost. Yay!


Bad things:

Meeting people I hadn't seen for years only serves to remind me of the fact that we're all getting older and some of us (aka "me") haven't actually done much of anything with our lives. Which leads to mild existential angst.

My wireless internet connection keeps flaking out on me. I had somebody out last week to adjust the antenna -- for which they're going to charge me at least forty bucks -- and it seemed much better, but it must not be secured properly or something, because every time the wind blows my connection starts doing the hokey pokey; it's in and out and all over the frelling place. Per Murphy's law, of course, it seems to reliably get windy whenever I have something important to do online, or am attempting to download a large file. (Ahem.)

Part of the reason I have so much time to be productive in is that I keep waking up too damned early. Which means I start craving a nap right about the time I have to be off to work. Sigh.

My new eyeglasses are still driving me crazy. I've had the frames adjusted like five times now, and there isn't anything obviously wrong with them, but no matter how I try to position them, they're either uncomfortable on my nose, or making the muscles in my eyes and face ache, or seem just plain undefinably wrong somehow. At this point I'm kind of hoping that if I keep 'em in the nose-comfy but face-achy spot the muscles'll eventually give up fighting it and I'll be OK. I can't figure out if I'm tensing up because I'm subconsciously afraid they'll slip down my nose or what.

And now I feel like I'm coming down with the tiniest beginnings of a scratchy throat, and I do not need to be sick. So, uh, wish my immune system luck, will ya?

Oh, Look. It's Yet Another Stupid Quiz. Yay.

Who is Your Alter Poet?

Your alter poet is Thomas Stearns Eliot. For you, life rocks pretty hard!
Take this quiz!





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OK, That's Not What I Would Have Expected At All...

You scored as 3rd doctor. 3rd doctor 75% 4th Doctor 42% 9th Doctor 33% 2nd doctor 33% 1st Doctor 25% 5th Doctor 25% 7th Doctor 25% Davros 17% 6th doctor 8% 10th Doctor 8% 8th Doctor 0% a Dalek 0% What Doctor Who character are You? created with QuizFarm.com

It's Random Linkage Time!

Tardisodes: These are little preview snippets the BBC is putting up for each of the new Doctor Who episodes this season. The one that's there now is for the season opener, which is airing in the UK this Saturday. Pretty cool.

Also for the Who fans, there's Dead Ringers' "Christmas Day at Doctor Who's", which is easily the cleverest and funniest Who parody I've seen in a visual medium since "The Curse of Fatal Death". (This does, I suppose, have a potential spoiler for US viewers still watching the first season of the new series, but only if you've been living in a cave as far as production news goes.)

Here's a good article on the experience of watching TV shows for the first time on DVD. Personally, I find said experience about a thousand times better than watching on TV, but I totally feel the writer's pain when it comes to the "loss of social currency" issue. I'm really wishing the rest of the world had, like me, only seen the first four episodes of Lost so far, because, dammit, I want to theorize madly about what's going on without people giving me those annoying "Ha! I know things you don't know!" looks.

Online Etymology Dictionary: An interesting reference site explaining the origins of words. Because some of us like that kind of thing.

Apparently I'm Some Kind of Vulcan Angel.


Find your CelestialChoir

This Again? Boy, Time Flies...

Current clothes: I'm still sitting around in my Pink Floyd lounge pants and my big black pocket t-shirt and my Homer Simpson slippers, sipping my morning coffee. Ah, life is good.

Current mood: Pretty relaxed.

Current music: Most recently, Gift Wrapped: The Best of the Arrogant Worms.

Current annoyance: It's taken me the better part of two weeks to get to the point where these new eyeglasses don't bother me much any more, and they still feel a little strange.

Current thing: Attempting to shake off a moderate case of laziness and inertia.

Current desktop picture: Meercats! (At least, I think those are meercats.)

Current song in head: None at the moment, but I've had The Talking Heads' "Lifetime Piling Up" running in and out of my head for over a week.

Current book: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Oooh, I'm getting all political in my old age. I blame George W. Bush and one too many episodes of The West Wing.

Current video in player: Most recently, the Doctor Who episode "The Deadly Assassin". Which is a good episode, despite the strangely redundant title.

Current DVD in player: Disc one of season 1 of Lost. I was intending to wait until I finished season 4 of The Sopranos before I started on this show, but Netflix is sending me things in strange orders again, so I guess I'm watching them both at once. I've only seen the pilot episode of Lost so far, but it was enough to definitely make me want to watch more. It's very well made, with an excellent premise, a good set of characters, and a lot of elements that really hold my attention and make me want to stay tuned to see how they play out. I do have to say, though, that as far as the characters go, I'm having a little trouble keeping them straight as of yet. I've had to give them all descriptive nicknames, as I slowly figure out what they're actually called. I'm pretty solid on things like Competent Doctor Guy = Jack and Large Likeable Guy = Hurley, but I have no idea whether people like Asshole Guy and Woman Who Needed CPR have even been introduced by name.

Current refreshment: Coffee! Ah, the sweet, sweet water of life! *slurp*

Current worry: That engineer guy was wrong. There are cracks in my floor. You can now see that there are, because there are places where the tile is also cracking, and one spot in particular where a bit of tile has chipped off to reveal a smallish but very definite fissure. Aaargh. I'm still pretty sure the house is in no serious structural danger, and I can think of a whole host of reasons why it's entirely possible that the patterns of soil movement under my house might have suddenly changed in the last year or so (including an extended period of drought), so I hold out some hope that perhaps things will settle down (er, so to speak) and the damage won't get much worse, and I can sort of ignore it for a while. One way or another, though, this is going to mean some expensive repair bills somewhere down the road, especially if I ever want to sell the place. Which is, indeed, worrying.

Current thought: I keep forgetting to point out that Maximum Verbosity passed its 4th anniversary last week. And I didn't even send the poor blog a card. Tsk.

It's a Good Thing I Moved to a Bigger House, Because I Have to Keep Putting in More Bookshelves.

Today marked one of my favorite annual events, the local Friends of the Library book sale. This year's haul:

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Dead Zone by Stephen King (thus fulfilling the unwritten rule that I have to end up with at least one King novel per book sale)
On the Road with Charles Kuralt (which I initially grabbed thinking it was Kerouac instead of Kuralt, but that's an embarrassing enough blunder that I decide to adopt some kind of "no, really, I meant to do that" attitude about it)
The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough

You see, I was good and limited myself to only six books! I actually am doing a pretty good job of sticking to my self-imposed book-buying quota, and I believe that massive To-Read Pile of mine is shrinking, albeit very slowly. And since, this being the exciting event for me that it is, I've made a habit of blogging my purchases, I thought I'd take a look back and see what I actually have and haven't read from previous years. So...

2002:

Bought: 13, Read so far: 6

2003:

Bought: 16, Read: 9

I seem to have missed 2004, or else maybe I just didn't blog about it. I think I was working nights and slept through it or something.

2005:

Bought: 6, Read: 5

So, hmm, that's... 20 out of 35. Any bets on how long it's going to take me to read all of the current batch?

Hellblazer Dude

So, I finally got around to renting Constantine. It actually wasn't bad, all things considered. Decent-ish story (although I think that's mostly to be credited to the original comic), excellent FX, a lot of random cool moments... But, I'm sorry, no matter how hard the movie tries to convince me -- and it does try -- my suspension of disbelief is in no way elastic enough to stretch so far as to accept Keanu Reeves as John Constantine. Just... no.

At one point, very early on, I found myself muttering, "Geez, he couldn't at least attempt to do the accent?" Which was immediately followed by me answering myself with, "We should all be very, very grateful" and suppressing a shudder. Oh, and Keanu? For gods' sakes, speak up! Stop frelling mumbling! If I turned the volume up high enough that I can actually hear what you're saying, everybody else is too damned loud! Sheesh.

While I'm Waiting for My Laundry, A Couple of Memes

	Thee	Summer Day	Score
Name	Betty (72)	Sunday 2nd April (97)	0 : 1
Loveliness	Lovely	Lovelier	0 : 2
Temperature	98.6° F	60° F	1 : 2
Lease	34.76 years	0.59 years	2 : 2
Complexion			3 : 2
Betty is more lovely, and probably more temperate, than a summers day
Compare Me To A Summers Day

And, speaking of summer's days:

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (e.g. 12th May). Post three events, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

Three Events:

1772 - HMS Resolution, under the command of Captain James Cook, set sail from Plymouth, England.

1923 - The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywoodland " but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.

1977 - The New York City Blackout of 1977 lasts for 25 hours and results in looting and other disorder.

Two Births:

1940 - Patrick Stewart, English actor

1942 - Harrison Ford, American actor

And One Death:

1974 - Patrick Blackett, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1897)

What the Kids Are Listening to These Days

I've been listening to the Dandy Warhols' Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, which I just got yesterday, and while I haven't listened to the entire album yet, so far it really kinda kicks ass.

Which leads me to thinking... I think this may be the first time in my life when I've actually liked music that was cool and popular while it was actually still cool and popular. (The Dandy Warhols are cool and popular, right? I certainly keep hearing about them everywhere.)

See, I spent my teenage years mostly listening to bagpipe music and the Wrath of Khan soundtrack on continuous loop, because I wouldn't be caught dead being shallow and ordinary enough to listen to the kind of music the popular kids listened to. When I started college, thank goodness, I finally got over myself and discovered a heartfelt liking for the music of the 80's just in time for it to start giving way to the music of the 90's. I didn't care much for the whole grunge thing and still honestly do not understand the appeal of Nirvana, but I was finally starting to relax and sort of accept the whole 90's sensibility just about the time it, too, was on its way out. But the music of the 00's, as a whole, is actually proving strangely agreeable to me. To be honest, I'm not sure quite how I feel about that. I've never been accused of having cool tastes in music before, at least not for any mainstream definition of "cool."

Also, bizarrely, I find that the older I get, the more acceptable I find Heavy Metal. Is it just me, or is that completely backwards?

Thinking Perky

Aaargh, I managed to get about two whole hours of sleep today. Right. I am going to pretend that simply didn't happen, and force myself to feel rested via the power of auto-suggestion. Also coffee. Wish me luck.

Kitty Pics!

Several people have asked for more recent pictures of li'l Vir-kitty. Well, just for you, guys, I finally got that roll of film developed! So here we go...

This is Vir at about six months:



Here is is poking his little face out from under my recliner. Awww!:





Vir and Nova are buddies, and enjoy freestyle Kitty Wrestling:

I'm a Travellin' Gal. Slightly.

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (57%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the Western United States (32%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Canada (20%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Southern United States (8%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Western Europe (7%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%)

You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Southern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Midwestern United States (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the United Kingdom (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

I could have had a slightly higher score, I think, if I'd been willing to count cities I'd only driven through without stopping. But I figured that probably shouldn't, under the same general principle of having only been in the airport.

I Am a Master of Space and Time!

I wasn't feeling very well for much of the weekend. I had another attack of that whatever-it-is that seems to hit me every so often, where I'll maybe get a scratchy throat and some stuffiness (OK, more stuffiness than usual -- damned allergies), but mostly just feel completely drained of energy and vaguely sick-ish for a day or two before it's pretty much gone. I tend to imagine it's my immune system successfully beating off a full-blown cold, for which I'm grateful, but it's still annoying. And one of the annoying parts of it was that after I called in sick to my night shift on Thursday, I proceeded to fall asleep on the couch around midnight. Which threw my sleep schedule off completely, as I'm still on graveyards this week.

So last night, I'm sitting in front of the TV -- Apparently Farscape is on at, like, 1:00 in the morning on WGN. Who knew? -- trying desperately to stay awake and not succeeding very well. "Oh, come on," I told myself. "Just another hour or so. Make it until 3:00 and you can sleep." So I got up, sat down in front of the computer to check my e-mail, and suddenly realized the clock on the computer said 3:00. I tell you, it was like magic. It was like I'd developed some wonderful ability to alter the flow of time. It was cool! It was, of course, the change to Daylight Savings Time, which I had completely spaced on.

Personally, I loathe the whole concept of Daylight Savings Time. The life of a shiftworker is hard enough without the clocks in the external world changing on you, too. But for once, it seems it's actually worked in my favor. Whoo-hoo!

And it's now 1:00 PM, and I only have to be awake for another 19 hours or so. I can do that.

Well, The Coffee Part's Accurate.

Your Monster Profile

Evil Troll You Feast On: Coffee You Lurk Around In: Roller Rinks You Especially Like to Torment: Dentists

What's Your Monster Name?

I Have Discovered the Secret of How to Increase the Size of Your Monitor Without Buying a New One.

I am never, never, never waiting four years plus to get new glasses again. Adjusting to a new pair is always difficult, but these ones are really doing a number on my brain. I finally reached a point at the very end of yesterday where I seemed, at least to a limited extent, to be able to shift the focal length of my eyes without feeling vaguely sick to my stomach, but turning my head too quickly still does it, and my eyes still feel like they're fighting hard just to sit there and do nothing.

Even if I can't really enjoy the view yet, though, it is much clearer than it was. Wow. I can look hundreds of feet down the street and see amazing levels of detail. I have to keep moving my chair back from the computer screen, instead of doing that thing I used to do where my nose would creep slowly closer and closer to the monitor until I suddenly realized where I was. And everything looks huge. I went to the grocery store shortly after I got the glasses yesterday and was momentarily puzzled as to why I could only find Campell's tomato soup in an extra-large can. Why had they changed it? Why didn't they advertise it? Where were the normal cans? It actually took me a couple of minutes and a side-by-side comparison test to convince myself that, no, all the cans were the same size they'd always been and it was just me. And I didn't realize until I was eating one, much later, that the massive! jumbo! oranges! I'd put in my basket when I first walked into the store were in fact normal sized. It was very disappointing.

Anyway. If they ever stop messing with my poor eyes and brain, I think I'm going to be very happy with these glasses. Man, technology has come a long way since I got my first pair at the age of six. These things are wafer-thin compared to the coke bottles I had as a kid, they weigh next to nothing, and they're made of cool bendy metal. I remember when the cool bendy metal frames first came out. A proud optician demonstrated them for me with breathless enthusiasm. Man!, I thought. Those are cool. Then I asked how much they cost, and rapidly concluded that I'd never be wearing those in my lifetime. (I was also told that my lenses were probably too thick to fit easily into wire frames, anyway. Which at that time, I guess they were. It's amazing that, as my eyes have gotten worse, my lenses have still gotten thinner.) But the Flexon frames have come down in price amazingly since then. So now I can walk into walls as often as I want, and my glasses can handle it. Yay! Although hopefully they'll help keep me from walking into walls, that being part of their job.

Random Complaint #6,008

New eyeglasses always make me feel slightly sick to my stomach, damn it.

(But, whoa, the computer screen looks... bigger.)

Um, OK, Have Some More Links

Intellectual Property Run Amok: A list of some of the more egregious (and in several cases, awfully amusing) examples of copyright and trademark zealotry in action.

Pandora: Asks you for the name of a band you like and plays other stuff it thinks you'll like based on your choice. I haven't had the chance to play around with it much yet, but it seems to have pretty good judgment and to be a nice way to find music you've never heard of but that there's a good chance you'll enjoy.

Chocolate Dalek: Make your own chocolate Dalek cake! It's a vegetarian recipe, even, for those of you opposed to extermination.

How Fast Do You Read?: Test your reading speed. (For the record, I scored in the 450-500 range while reading normally, 700-750 while making an effort at speed-reading.)

Darth Vader on Wheel of Fortune: Well, it made me laugh.

Wow, I Didn't Mean to Neglect the Blog for Most of the Week. Uh, Have Some More Random Links.

Big Dead Place: A largely tongue-in-cheek website maintained by people in Antarctica. Contains articles, blogs, an "Ask an Antarctican" feature, and a section that's nothing but reviews of John Carpenter's The Thing. This captured my interest mostly because I'd recently read Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica. I must say, judging by this site, it looks like he did get a lot of the details right, including the fact that it really does help to be crazy to work there.

A short US newspaper article on the new Doctor Who: Don't forget, by the way, that there's another episode on tonight!

The Simpsons opening sequence performed by live people: OK, everybody and their dog has linked to this already, but what the heck. It's cool.

The Word Nerds: I downloaded a bunch of episodes of these guys' podcast to while away some of the more boring hours at work recently. Linguaphile high school teachers talk about words and play some pretty good indie music. Definitely worth a listen if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Life Is Just a Song

Here's yet another version of that iPod fortunetelling meme, just because I find these things so very entertaining. (Note: for entertainment purposes only.)

Put on your playlist to random, concentrate on a question, and then hit play/next.

1. How does the world see you? "Hey You" - The String Quartet Tribute to Pink Floyd.

Huh. I'm not sure if I'm more or less disturbed that it picked a version without the lyrics.

2. Will I have a happy life? "Predictable" - Pete Townshend.

Er... Is that a yes or a no?

3. What do my friends really think of me? "Yoda" - Weird Al Yankovic.

The think I'm extremely wise, or that I'm a great big geek? Wait, don't answer that.

4. Do people secretly lust after me? "A Pirate Looks at Forty" - Jimmy Buffett.

A forty-year-old, washed-up, wannabe-pirate is secretly lusting after me?

5. How can I make myself happy? "Canon in D" - Pachelbel.

Well, yes, that piece of music does make me happy. Though I was hoping for something a little more far-reaching than that, in terms of advice.

6. What should I do with my life? "Goodbye (PK Tech Girl)" - Sub Vision.

I should spend it watching Farscape. Cool. Got it covered.

7. What is some good advice for me? "Merry Christmas, Alabama" - Jimmy Buffett .

But I don't want to go to Alabama for Christmas!

8. How will I be remembered? "The Martians Aren't Coming" - Lungbutter.

I'll be remembered, apparently, as dreamer who spent her life waiting for science fictiony things that never happened. That's just... sad. And possibly far too accurate.

9. What is my signature dancing song? "For What It's Worth" - Buffalo Springfield.

I'm not sure you can really dance to that, but given that I can't dance at all, it's kind of moot.

10. What do I think my current theme song is? "Magical Mystery Tour" - The Beatles.

Heh. Well, I do go lots of exciting places inside my own head.

11. What does everyone else think my current theme song is? "Who Is the Doctor" - Jon Pertwee.

Ha! Given how much I've been talking about that show lately, it's probably true.

12. What song will play at my funeral? "Christmas" - The Who.

You know, even if I happen to die on Christmas, that's just bizarre.

13. What type of men/women do you like? "Dance Me to the End of Love" - Leonard Cohen.

So, the kind of person whose idea of romance is something long-term, loyal, steady and yet still deeply romantic, as opposed to all that "I'm so crazy for you, I'm burning with passion!" stuff. Yep. I'll go with that.

14. What is my day going to be like? "In a Little While" - U2.

I am going to be starting my day in a little while, yes.

Freaky Event for the Day

So, I'm having this dream where I'm talking to a guy. I think he's showing me around somewhere. I ask him a question about something-or-other, and he tells me that he'd love to explain it to me, but he'll have to do it sometime when I have a longer period of unbroken sleep. And just then, my alarm goes off.

Stupid Brain!

I've come up with a mildly distressing and all-too-plausible theory as to why I seem to keep waking up in the middle of the night. When I first moved in here, as those of you who've been paying slavish devotion to this blog and memorizing its every word -- I'm sure there are thousands of you -- may remember, I spent a couple of weeks obsessively cleaning, unpacking and setting up, and developed this pattern of waking up at something like 4:30 in the morning and being so eager to get back at it that I'd just get up, make a pot of coffee, and start hammering together bookshelves or something. It occurs to me now, nearly a year later, that some deep part of my brain may have been conditioned by that to believe that, in this particular environment, waking up at 4:30 (or after about four or five hours, whichever is applicable) and being active is the Appropriate Thing to Do.

The sad thing is, even if this insight is correct, I'm not at all sure what to do about it, short of moving again. And that's sure as hell not going to happen.

Sigh.

But It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

I have such a love-hate relationship with the Sci-Fi Channel. They'll do something that really pisses me off, then they'll do something else that wins back a lot of points from me, and then they'll piss me off again. I still haven't forgiven them for cancelling Farscape, even if the miniseries mollified me quite a bit. But they've really done right by Battlestar Galactica: promoting it well, using the web to excellent effect, giving it a 90-minute slot for this year's season finale (which I really don't think would have worked if reduced down to an hour). But then there's their highly problematic scheduling, with the awkward mid-season hiatuses and the incredibly long waits between the end of one season and the start of the next, which both annoys regular viewers and gives casual ones far too much opportunity to simply forget about the show and stop watching. Grrr.

I was, for a while, deeply annoyed that they'd declined to pick up the new Doctor Who. Then I was greatly pleased to hear they were finally going to be showing it after all. Then I was mildly unhappy with the promos they were doing for it, which I don't think actually represent the show's sensibilities very well. And then I was pleased again to hear that when it airs tonight, they're going to be showing the first two episodes back to back, as I think that's likely to be a much better hook for new viewers than the first episode alone would be.

I'm now feeling very, very nervous about what they're going to mess up next.

(What can I say? I love Doctor Who with a scary sort of love, and when you love something, you want to see it do well, especially in your own home country.)

He's At That Certain Age...

It's hard to believe he's grown up this fast, but today my little baby became a man. Or, uh, was prevented from becoming one. Yes, that's right. I had little Vir-kitty neutered.

I just got him back from the vet, and he seems to be doing fine. He's got an unfortunate tendency to want to lick the area, but I think he's mostly concerned with putting his poor mussed-up fur back in order. Actually, he seems more unhappy with his current lack of food and water than with his lack of, well, anything else. (He's not supposed to have anything until tomorrow morning, except maybe for an ice cube in a couple of hours.) I caught him a minute ago drinking water out of a dirty coffee mug that was sitting in the sink. I suppose the fact that he was able to jump up onto the sink is a sign that he's doing OK, too, though it might just be that he's too hyped up on pain medication to realize that it ought to hurt.

I think the hard part now is going to be keeping Nova from trying to roughhouse with him for a few days.

Why I Hate Day Shift, #908

Not being awake enough when I get in the shower to remember (or even be able to figure out) which tap is the hot water and which is the cold.

Sweet, Sweet Internet! How I've Missed You!

Due to problems at my ISP, I was without internet access at home for the past couple of days. It was, of course, horrible.

In that amount of time, I am quite sure I came up with any number of thoughtful, insightful, witty things I could have posted here, but, alas, I have now entirely forgotten all of them. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Ia! Ia!

Just got back from the Cthulhu-themed baby shower. I didn't know a lot of the people there, but they were all geeks, so it was cool. Party entertainments included: making a mobile of yarn Cthulhus, watching Dagon[*], making a tentacled monster out of balloons and practicing diapering on it, and playing Pin the Shoggoth on the Roof. Also a really great spread of food and a lot of talking. (I don't remember what most of it was about... I do remember having a conversation about John Barrowman's butt at one point.[**] Dunno why that stuck in my head.)

And, man, I really do need to make a point of getting out of the house and actually having face-to-face interactions with people more often. It's a good and healthy thing. I've been far too inclined of late to sit in front of a computer for eight hours at work and then get off work and come home and sit in front of a computer for another eight hours, like the lazy-ass nerd that I am.


[*] It was observed that, "Wait until after they pull off his face" (in response a question of whether the presents should be opened now) is very likely a phrase that has never before been uttered at a baby shower in the entire history of baby showers.

[**] I should mention that this was a mixed-gender shower. Which is as it should be, dammit. Why is it that women perpetuate this idea that babies are a "girl thing" by excluding men from this kind of thing, and then get all mystified when the guys don't feel like it's their job to help take care of the sprog when it comes?

Apparently I Am Neither Nutritious Nor Delicious.

Your Nutritional Information: Servings Per Container: 1 x % Daily Value Sweetness: 50 g 100% Bitterness: 463 mg 42% Power: 6 g 17% Healthful: 127 mg 51% Excitement: 188 mg 17% x Deliciousness: 9% 'What is your nutritional value?' at QuizGalaxy.com

This May Be Disturbingly Accurate.


Well wonders never cease. You're not even an actual
character... you're The Guide itself! You're
what others would call a
"know-it-all", the type of person
who likes to talk to hear their voice. You
like to inform people of any and all
information, though you make many omissions
and much of it is apocryphal. To be perfectly
blunt, you might want to try shutting up
every now and then; other people like to talk
too.

The Legitimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla

Currently, on Maximum Verbosity...

Has it been a month already? I suppose it has, more or less. So it's time for this monthly meme, which, while some might find it tediously repetitious, inexplicably holds considerable fascination for me. Thus:

Current clothes: Jeans. Off-white t-shirt that says "sentenced to life on planet Earth." Blue short-sleeved denim shirt unbuttoned over it. Black belt. White tube socks. Black sneakers.

Current mood: Good. Much better than I've felt in days, in fact. I've been unpleasantly mood-swingy lately, mainly due to the fact that I'm once again doing that thing where I'll wake up after four or five hours of sleep and I'll either get up and spend all day feeling brain-fried and cranky, or I'll get back to sleep, massively over-sleep, and spend all day feeling groggy and lethargic. Today I actually got a nice, appropriate amount of sleep and the world seems like a much more pleasant place.

Current music: They Might Be Giants' Dial-a-Song.

Current annoyance: Marie Callendar's makes this frozen sweet-and-sour chicken entree that I absolutely love. It's got this wonderful fresh-tasting sauce, with exactly the right amount of sweetness and tang, better than what the local Chinese restaurants have. The supermarket doesn't carry it often, so when they do I sometimes buy three or four boxes as a treat. It's the sort of thing I'm happy to break my I'm-going-to-eat-better resolutions over. Or at least, it was. Because they've gone and changed it on me. It used to have a separate packet of sauce you sat on top of the main meal tray to cook, and then you poured the sauce over the chicken before you ate it. Now it comes with the sauce already mixed in, doubtless in the name of increased ease and decreased messiness. (The sauce packet did tend to spill when you poured it.) Unfortunately, it now also tastes a lot less fresh and yummy and good. *sniff* Anytime I find a product I really like, they go and "improve" it on me until I don't like it any more.

Current thing: Due to aforementioned mood-swingy blahs, I haven't had a great deal of enthusiasm for much of anything lately. Hopefully this will change.

Current desktop picture: This picture of the Pleiades star cluster.

Current song in head: There doesn't seem to be one at the moment. Wow, that's surprising. It was all noisy in here earlier.

Current book: I've finished Finding Serenity (which I do recommend to Firefly fans) and am about to start The Little Country by Charles deLint.

Current video in player: Most recently, Cracker: To Be a Somebody, which someone lent me mainly because Christopher Eccleston is in it.

Current DVD in player: Disc 1 of season three of The West Wing. I just watched their post-9/11 episode, which I thought was handled very well.

Current refreshment: Water.

Current worry: Aaargh, I still have to do my taxes! I've always filed the EZ form, because I can and because I've kind of figured that whatever little I'd save by actually deducting stuff isn't worth the hassle to me of dealing with the longer form. But I own a house now, and I gather that can make a fairly large difference. So I have to fill out the 1040 form, and I'm afraid of it.

Current thought: Oh, wait, now I have "Dead" by They Might Be Giants in my head. But only faintly.

You Can't Take the Sexist Idiocy from Me

Now I'm reading Finding Serenity, a collection of essays about the Firefly TV series. (It was a Christmas present from my sister, by the way. I don't know why it's taken me this long to get around to it, but thanks, sis!) I'm enjoying it considerably; there are some very perceptive and interesting essays. In fact, I hate to say it, but I think it's on the whole considerably better than the similar Farscape-related book I read a couple of months ago.

There are, however, a couple of pieces that would annoy the hell out of me if the way they're presented back-to-back didn't somehow make them incredibly amusing, instead.

The first one suggests that Joss Whedon made a mistake in marrying his science fiction show to a western if he wanted to be true to his feminist sensibilities. Because, apparently, the nature of westerns is such that women simply aren't allowed to be strong, independent characters in them. So, no matter how competent and powerful the women on Firefly may seem, in actuality they must be weak and submissive Tools of the Patriarchy. Because, you know, they're women in a western. (Actually, I must admit, when you reduce it to those terms, this thesis is rather amusing even on its own. Because I'm imagining Zoe kicking the author's ass for calling her "submissive," and it's vastly entertaining.)

The second one suggests that Joss had a problem when he married his western to a science fiction show, because the nature of westerns is such that they're supposed to be about Heroic Manly Men who follow a code of chivalry and protect weak and helpless women and children. And apparently the women of Firefly, because they think they're living in a science fiction show instead of a western, are making the men look all unheroic and unmanly by being strong, intelligent, powerful, smart, and generally not in any need of male protection. Which ruins everything, of course. But the author "charitably" suggests that, well, maybe Joss wanted to have his female characters barefoot and pregnant, but couldn't because modern audiences have trouble accepting that kind of thing. Which is also funny in its own right. Giggling-out-loud funny, in fact. Has this guy ever seen one of Joss Whedon's shows? Heard the man talk? Heard anything about him, even? I mean, yeesh. (Similarly, I wonder if the author of the first article and I are even watching the same show, or if she got some bizarre Mirror Universe version. The bits of dialog she quotes are recognizable, but, hey, maybe there's something in the acting or the directing or the context of the Bizarro World footage that suggests that what they're saying actually means something entirely different.)

Personally, I think both of these people are sexist idiots, but, hey, at least they get points for being entertaining, and for riling me up and making me think.

Look Out! The Geeks Are Breeding!

I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine saying she's having a baby shower soon. The theme is "Cthulhu."

I love my friends.

Collecting for Charity

My friend Jeannine is doing the MS Walk in Albuquerque next month, and asked me to pass on the link to her pledge page for anyone who might be interested in making a donation. It's a worthy cause. I know two people with Multiple Sclerosis personally, and anything that helps people deal with the disease or contributes towards finding a cure is most definitely a good thing.

This Post Is Rubbish

I'm reading this book called Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte, in which the author goes about investigating what exactly happens to our garbage after the magical garbage fairies conveniently remove it from our curbsides. It's a pretty interesting book, especially considering that it's about, you know, garbage.

Anyway, as part of her examination of the topic, Royte went through her own kitchen garbage every day, sorted through and cataloged its contents, and weighed it. She found the results a little depressing and it's made me wonder a bit about what my own refuse output looks like. So I decided to find out. Now, there's no way I'm going to go picking through trash, even my own, given that I'm not getting a book deal out of it. But as a sort of experiment, for 24 hours I wrote down everything that I threw into the kitchen trash can. (And, yeah, it's not exactly good scientific methodology, given that the fact that I was thinking about what I was throwing into the trash was bound to bias my results. But I at least tried to keep to my normal patterns.) Like Royte, I stuck to the kitchen garbage, rather than paying attention to the little stuff I threw in various wastebaskets around the house, meaning I missed some papers, a bunch of kleenex, and, I dunno, dental floss and stuff. Also the scoopings from the cat box, which went into a separate bag and right into the outside bin, because, yuck, cat poop. Also not included is anything I threw away at work, where I regularly eat at least one meal.

And -- drumroll please! -- here are the ever-so-fascinating results.

WHAT I THREW IN THE KITCHEN TRASH CAN ON MARCH 1ST, 2006:

- a tiny piece of unidentified plastic wrapper I found on the floor
- a few pieces of Kitten Chow that either the cats or I spilled on the floor
- four used kleenex
- seven foil tea bag wrappers
- three tea bags (the other four went elsewhere)
- two paper flaps off of Netflix envelopes
- some fluff that detached from a scratching post
- two paper towels
- several of pages of newsprint (the cut-down, two-page free version of a local paper plus several more pages of ads)
- pull-tab from an orange juice carton
- banana peel
- three pieces of junk mail
- three old issues of TV Guide
- an empty box of chocolate Malt-o-Meal, plus about a tablespoon and a half of the Malt-o-Meal powder itself (which wasn't enough to make an actual meal out of)
- instant oatmeal packet
- plastic band that held the lid on a plastic bowl of fruit
- paper napkin
- empty ice cream carton

They say what you throw away potentially says a lot about you. I don't know that this reveals anything particularly interesting about me, other than the fact that I drink absurd amounts of tea (especially when I've had four hours of sleep and desperately need to keep the caffeine flowing) and that I didn't get my first choice of breakfast this morning.

There's also a disturbing amount of paper in there, I admit, which I really ought to be recycling. Sadly, there is no curbside recycling where I live, and it has occurred to me to wonder if the gas I'd burn to take the stuff to somewhere I could recycle it wouldn't damage the environment more than the recycling would help.

What I found really interesting is how often I found myself opening that trash can, and how automatic it was. Indeed, I got home from work last night and was walking around the house doing various little things and thinking about how, yes, I really was going to try writing down everything I tossed out for the next 24 hours, and suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen when I realized that, while I was thinking this, I had picked up the piece of plastic wrapper, opened the trash can, and dropped it in, apparently without even noticing I was doing it. I'm sure that's got to be a profound metaphor for something.

Go Away, Daleks, or I Shall Taunt You a Second Time!

I finished the Doctor Who commentaries today, while I was sitting around being mostly brain-dead from lack of sleep. (Waking up after four hours with a head full of mucus sucks, for the record.) And John Barrowman still cracks me up. Apparently he talks to characters on the TV in much the same way as I do. He was taunting the Daleks. I mean, on the commentary track, not as his character. Somehow, I just don't expect people who are actually in the show to do that...

Another Crop of Random Interesting Links

The Worst Jobs in Science: It's hard to choose between "orangutan urine collector" and "Kansas high school biology teacher."

Chihuahua word game: An addictive word puzzle game.

The REAL Myers-Briggs personality types: You know those tests that claim to sum up your entire personality and tell you whether you're suitable for a career in bean-counting or psychotherapy, right? Here's what they're really telling you. Are you Evil Overlord material or a National Enquirer headline in the making?

Enough About Me. Let's Talk About Who.

I'm about two-thirds of the way through the commentaries on the new Doctor Who DVDs, and, while a less dedicated fan might question whether they're actually worth paying something like $75 for them and importing them from Canada, I've definitely been enjoying them. The director of "The Long Game" tends a bit towards the unfortunate habit of narrating each scene as if we weren't capable of watching the episode for ourselves and knowing what's going on, but otherwise these people all seem to know how to do DVD commentaries and make them interesting. (I can't help but contrast it with the commentary tracks on the 1st season Blake's 7 DVDs I ordered from England a while back, which consist mostly of the actors going, "I don't remember this," and long periods of awkward silence.)

The commentaries on "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" are particularly entertaining, due in part to the fact that that 2-parter is just a damned good story to begin with, but also due to Steven Moffat (the writer), John Barrowman (Captain Jack) and Dave Houghton (the FX guy) being so clearly enthusiastic about the show and the commentary and Doctor Who in general. It's always fun when the people making a show are such fanboys themselves, and listening to these guys talk about how Who made them frightened to death of shop-window dummies and blue cheese when they were kids, there's no question that fanboys is exactly what they are.

And it makes me chuckle rather a lot when they get to talking about the characters' sex lives:

MOFFAT: "Put a short enough skirt on a Dalek, and Jack'll go for her."
BARROWMAN: "...or a big enough plunger."

[Rose tries to get the Doctor to dance with her. He looks kind of freaked out.]
MOFFAT: "Doctor, you sad old virgin."

(Yeah, OK, I'm easily amused by sex jokes. So I'm twelve.)

Anyway, I've been hurrying through these commentaries at a furious pace, and it's making me sad to think I've only got one more disc left to go. I need new episodes of this show, now! Does anybody know when, exactly, the new season starts up in the UK? All I've heard is "spring," which is pretty vague.

Speaking of which, for the Americans in the audience, you'll be able to see this show on Sci-Fi starting March 17th. Trust me, you don't want to miss Jack! Or the scary gas mask kid. Or the Daleks, the Bad Wolf, the game show parody, the jokes, the action, the aliens... the Doctor...

Yeah, I Might Have A Shot At That One.

Betty Gold Medal Winner in... Who can fit the most amount of logos on their suit 'What rejected olympic sport would you win gold in?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Random Thought #6,007

Can you claim to be a member of the Mile-High Club if you've had sex in Denver?

Today's Moment of Geekitude

I keep getting spam e-mails with the sender listed as "doctor." They're all trying to sell me viagra or something, of course, but every time one comes in, my heart does this weird little skip because it looks like the Doctor is sending me e-mail! And for one split second, some tiny portion of my brain thinks I might actually have an invitation to run away in the TARDIS.

If only...

Huh?

I have to wonder whether there's a reason Netflix skipped six West Wing discs and a Babylon 5 movie to reach deep down into my queue and send me some Simpsons instead. I mean, I don't really mind. I could go for some Simpsons, when I've finished watching the Doctor Who discs (thank you, Canada!). But I am confused.

Yet Another Post of Random Linkage

Tom Baker Says: Apparently, if you send a text message via British Telecom, it's read in Tom Baker's voice. Naturally, people have taken advantage of this to make him say naughty words, tell bad jokes, deliver movie quotes... even "sing." You must hear him "sing."

The Ten Best Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed: I don't agree with all of the opinions here -- in particular, I think the craptacular acting from normally competent actors that you see in the Star Wars prequels has very little to do with green screens and a great deal to do with the fact that no actor on Earth could make some of that dialog work -- but it's an entertaining article. (Me, I still wanna see Harlan Ellison's version of I, Robot.)

Battlestar Galactica Survivor Count: Of course there are people out there keeping careful track of that number of Laura Roslin's whiteboard and posting their analysis on the web. And here they are.

Getting Literary

OK, let's talk about books again... Right now I'm reading a collection of stories by Franz Kafka. Man, I feel all pretentious just saying that. Hey, look, I'm reading Kafka! But then, a couple of weeks ago I was talking about reading Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos, so maybe it all evens out. Anyway, so, yeah, I'm reading this book mostly because after encountering a reference to something for the seventeen zillionth time I start thinking I ought to go and read the original if I'm going to pretend to any semblance of cultural literacy, and "The Metamorphosis" is one of those kinds of thing. Also, I was deeply, deeply traumatized by reading "In the Penal Colony" in high school, and I believe in facing up to one's literary fears or something. Or possibly I'm just a glutton for punishment. (Although, I must say, William Sleator's House of Stairs which freaked me out even more comprehensively at a much younger age is still sitting on the To-Read Pile, mocking me. It's been sitting there for years and I'm still afraid to re-read it, though whether because I'm afraid it'll freak me out again or that it won't, I couldn't really say.)

Anyway. Kafka. What a bizarre guy. And the really strange thing about these stories is that, after you've finished reading one, your conscious mind is going, "Well, that was kind of pointless" and your subconscious is going, "Aiiiieeeee! There are bugs crawling on me!" Or at least mine are. It's the damnedest thing. I have no idea how it works, but if you could bottle it, you'd make a fortune.

Sci-Fi Friday: Because It's Not Like Anybody Expects This Particular Demographic To Be Out On Dates

Ah, there's the high-quality Battlestar Galactica I'd been missing for the last few weeks!

It's Good to Be a Nerd.

Ooh! I just got an e-mail from Amazon.ca saying they've shipped my Doctor Who DVDs. Yay! If anybody needs me, I'll be sitting out by the mailbox...

Also, Netflix is sending me Quantum Leap, because it's been too long since I've seen Quantum Leap, and I need to remember why I used to really like Scott Bakula.

Calling Thog...

Current reading: a "thriller" so bad that I'm frequently distracted by images of smartassed robots silhouetted in front of the page. Best line yet: "During the hours that Webster slept like the dead, he woke twice." Can't. Stop. Giggling.

Sad News

RIP, Andreas Katsulas. You were one of the very best things about Babylon 5.

Bowl Call

I just got a phone call from my mother saying that my sister had somehow managed to flush her cell phone down a toilet. Not just drop it into the toilet, mind you, but actually flush it, which, personally, I find to be a rather impressive feat. (And she's probably going to kill me for talking about it here, but, honestly, I think this is the sort of thing about which one almost has an obligation to mock one's family members in public.) Mom seemed rather worried about this because, for some complicated bureaucratic reasons that are way too boring to get into, they can't just indefinitely suspend the account on that phone, and, since Mom's the one who pays the bill, she's worried about somebody getting their hands on the phone and making zillions of calls. To which I responded, "Don't worry, Mom. I really doubt the sewer-dwelling mutants can get a signal down there."

Sometimes I feel sorry for my mother, being saddled with the klutz and the smartass for kids. Mostly I'm just amused.

The Curse of the Corpse Sopranos

All right, all right, it really is time for some actual content. How about the ever-popular "what I've been watching on DVD lately" post?

I have now finished season 3 of The Sopranos, a show I've been intermittently binging on an entire season at a time. And I seem to keep having more or less the same reaction each time: I'll start out interested but perhaps slightly more critical than involved, thinking things like, "Aren't there a lot of dangling story threads here? Is there really any point to this plot development? Man, that character's annoying..." But by about mid-season, I'm completely sucked in and have become absorbed by even the most trivial details of these characters' lives. Season three was particularly interesting in that respect, because I started out feeling that it was perhaps the weakest of what I'd seen so far, and came out of it feeling that it might be the strongest. Certainly there were some extremely well-written individual episodes. My personal favorite was the one in which Christopher and Paulie get lost in the Pine Barrens, which contained some black comedy of the finest order. Best line:

PAULIE: How can we be lost? We're in fucking New Jersey.
CHRISTOPHER: South Jersey.

OK, possibly that's only funny if you're actually from South Jersey, but it had me giggling hysterically.

Then, having finished the current batch of Sopranos, I watched The Corpse Bride last night. Which delighted me right from the very beginning, although, for no reason I can quite put my finger, on the delight faded to mere enjoyment as the movie went on. I still definitely recommend it, though, if you have any taste at all for the stylishly macabre.

Next up: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Yet Again Still More Random Links

This counts as blog content. Shut up. It does.

Star Wars Valentines: These range from the kind of lame to the hysterically funny to the just plain disturbing.

Seremuppety: Serenity enacted by the Muppets. I found Fozzie's Wash especially amusing.

JesusPets: A call for heathen animal lovers to volunteer to care for pets left behind by Christians after the Rapture. (Yes, it's a joke. At least, I'm pretty sure it's a joke. But it's a damned funny one. Uh, no pun intended.)

The Elements of Spam: Learn to spam grammatically and with style!

The Cat Came Back

For everyone who expressed disappointment that the Garfield link I posted a couple of days ago was down: it's working now.

I Love That Movie.

You scored as Forbidden Planet. You are the film score to Forbidden Planet. You accompany the story of the human discovery of the ruins of a powerful alien race that lost control of its own evil desires: the monsters from the id! The composers of your "electronic tonalities" never received proper credit for their innovative work. Forbidden Planet 54% 2001: A Space Odyssey 42% Star Wars: A New Hope 38% Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow 29% Beneath the Planet of the Apes 25% Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine 21% What Sci-Fi Film Score Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Yes, It's the Lazy Person's Way of Blogging

Still more random interesting links, stumbled across here and there on the net:

American Book Review's "100 Best First Lines from Novels": I don't agree with all these choices, by a long shot, but there certainly are some intriguing opening lines here.

Brokeback to the Future: I will never, ever look at the Back to the Future movies in quite the same way again.

Ask a Stupid Question: You think you have to deal with idiots in your job? Try manning the phones in an emergency room.

Romance Covers Gone Wild!: Much amusing mocking of romance novel covers. I might have linked to this site before; I can't quite remember if it was this one or a similar one. In any case, there's certainly a lot of stuff there I know I hadn't seen before.

Garfield, Minus the Talking Animals: Take the animal dialog out of a "Garfield" comic strip, and, bizarrely, it mutates into something sad, profound, and not entirely without artistic merit.

Doctor Who Fan Podcasts from Tachyon TV: I haven't listened to the "Five Doctors" one yet, but I did download and play the "Christmas Invasion" commentary, in which the episode is heartily mocked in ways I alternately found mildly annoying and hysterically funny.

A Family Matter

So, as previously mentioned, I've been watching The Sopranos, and it occurs to me to wonder if perhaps someone out there can answer a question that has been driving me absolutely crazy about this show. Namely: How is Tony related to Christopher? I know Chris is his nephew, but he certainly doesn't seem to be either of his sisters' kid, and I can't remember that Carmella even has any siblings. Anyone? I could try googling, but a) I'm not entirely sure what to search for, and b) I'm only in the middle of season 3, and would prefer to avoid stumbling across spoilers by accident. But, honestly, this is the sort of thing that I lie awake at night and wonder about.

Monthly Update Meme

Because I know you're all just dying to know this stuff...

Current clothes: Blue hoodie with the Blogger logo on the front. Black t-shirt from Mt. St. Helens under it. Tan jeans. Black belt. White crew socks. Black sneakers.

Current mood: Pretty good. The upside to working a bunch of overtime (aside from the money, of course) is that it makes you appreciate every moment of free time. Just not being at work is enough to make me feel happy right now.

Current music: Pachelbel's Greatest Hit: Canon in D, my guaranteed never-fail Serious Stress Reduction Music. I played it at work earlier, then when it finished, I turned the volume up and started playing it again. Which tells you something about what work was like today.

Current annoyance: I still have a big old icky snot-glob hanging out in the back of my throat. And, yes, that's disgusting to hear about, I know, but, trust me, it's even more disgusting to have.

Current thing: Waiting for this week to be over so I can be off the day shift.

Current desktop picture: This Astronomy Picture of the Day photo of Earthrise on the moon.

Current song in head: "Sometimes a Fantasy" by Billy Joel. Who I am kind of starting to wish would keep his fantasies to himself.

Current book: Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos. Not one of the show's most interesting or exciting (or, for that matter, scientifically plausible) episodes. But the writing, at least in places, actually seems rather better than Terrance Dicks' usual for these novelizations. There are some nice moments of humor.

Current video in player: Nothing since the last episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Current DVD in player: Disc 1 of Season 3 of The Sopranos.

Current refreshment: Moroccan Mint tea. That's mint-flavored green tea. Excellent stuff.

Current worry: The cracks in my walls are expanding again. I suspect part of the reason is that it's been dry as a bone here for months, which leads to soil shrinkage. But I don't like it at all, and I'm particularly worried about damage to my new stucco.

Current thought: It's nice to have a cat on my lap who actually sits still, rather than jumping up and down onto my keyboard and bouncing all over the place. Good Nova! Of course, being that Vir isn't in the room, I'm now wondering what trouble he's getting into elsewhere in the house...

Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me

Oh, wow. Insomnia. I haven't had that since I first moved in here and kept waking up at 4 AM to hammer shelves together.

I don't actually think I slept last night at all, but, then, I read a study once that said people who lie in bed all night and get up convinced they never slept often did sleep for many hours, and the time between when I looked at the clock at 3:30 and again at 6:00 did seem to pass surprisingly fast, so maybe I'm better off than I think. Still, I'm pretty sure that if I ever wake up enough to tell, I'm going to feel like crap. And not just from lack of sleep, either: I seem to have been (mostly successfully) fighting off some kind of infection for the last week, but it's made my tonsils feel a bit tender and left big gobs of viscous nastiness sitting in the back of my throat. I finally gave in and took a decongestant last night, and while the throat-glob appears to have decreased in size, the inside of my mouth now feels like... Hell, I don't know. Whatever your mouth feels like when it's all dried out. I'm all sleep-deprived; my brain can't handle metaphors.

Bah. I'd think about calling in sick, if it wouldn't make all that overtime I worked this weekend to help us get caught up kind of pointless.

Baby Boom

I'd like to offer hearty congratulations to my blogger buddy Peter Chattaway and his wife, Deanna, on the birth of beautiful twin babies! Even if it is extremely freaky to me, for some reason, that so many people I know are having babies. (A cousin of mine gave birth last month, f'rinstance, and a friend of mine should be due pretty soon now.) I think part of it is that it makes me feel old... Surely people my age (or younger!) aren't ready to be the generation of parents? Never mind the fact that when my mother was my age, I was nearly ready to start high school. And part of it is that babies just seem to me like deeply strange things for anybody to want. Although I can't help but look at Peter's pictures of tiny beautiful helpless things and sort of see the attraction. Still, getting up for 2 AM feedings with the kitten was more than enough for me...

Whoo-Who!

I just pre-ordered the new Doctor Who boxed set from Canada. Because I've waited long enough, damn it!

Of course, for those of my fellow Americans who are, um, a bit less obsessive than I am, I remind you that you'll be able to catch the show when it comes to the Sci Fi Channel in March. Which, you know, you should absolutely do.

Another Open Letter to a Kitten

Dear Vir,

Please stop attempting to eat my unabridged dictionary. It will not make you smarter, if that's what you're thinking. In fact, it may very possibly make you dumber, if I give in to my growing desire to smack you in the head.

Love,
your annoyed human

Because I Can Never Resist a Music Meme...


Open ITunes, or whatever you happen to use, and answer the following questions:

Number of songs: 5126

Sort by song:

First Song: "'Cause Cheap Is How I Feel" by the Cowboy Junkies.

Last Song: "Zorak's Horrorscopes: Scorpio" from Space Ghost's Surf & Turf. Which isn't technically a song, so if we're rejecting it on those grounds, the last song is "Zorak's Blues," in which the bug actually sings. Sort of.

Sort by time:

Shortest song: Well, the shortest track is called "Mutant Enemy Closing" (aka "Grr, Aargh!") and is all of three seconds long. The shortest actual song (which I had to skip through a whole bunch of dialog snippets and stuff to find) appears to be "Miracle Cure" by The Who, from Tommy, clocking in at 12 whole seconds.

Longest song: The longest track is "The Original, Uncut Dramatization of The War of the Worlds." The longest musical track is "La Zebramix Special John Lennon," an interesting remix-mashup thing featuring a bunch of Lennon tunes. It's a smidge over 29 minutes long. If we disqualify that as counting as more than one "song," then the crown is instead held by Pink Floyd's "Echoes," at 23:28.

Sort by artist:

First Artist: The 5.6.7.8's ("Whoo Hoo")

Last Artist: Zolar X ("Silver Shapes") (That's ignoring the tracks that don't have an artist listed.)

Sort by album:

First Album: 20 Years of Jethro Tull

Last Album: Zooropa by U2. Again, ignoring the tracks with no album title listed.

Top Five Most Played Songs: Well, here they are, but bear in mind that I've only had the iPod for a few weeks so, statistically, these mean nothing:

1) "Clocks" by Coldplay
2) "Cartoon Heroes" by Aqua
3) "eBay" by Weird Al Yankovic
4) "Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Remix)" by Alabama 3
5) "Time" by the Alan Parsons Project

Though, actually, only the first three have been played more than twice.

Search:

"Sex": How many songs come up? Only two, which kind of surprises me. "All He Wants Is Sex" from one of the Lexx soundtracks, and "Sex Farm" by Spinal Tap.

"Death": How Many Songs come up? Six.

"Love": How many songs come up? Two hundred and thirty-two! Wow, you'd think that was a popular emotion or something.

"You": How many songs come up? 372. Of course, that includes "your" and "you're" and "yourself" as well. Also "youth," "young" and other such things. If there's a way to search iTunes for "you" as a standalone word, I don't know what it is.

Cue the Slow, Sarcastic Applause.

All right, how's this for irony? I had a hankering for some new music to listen to at work tomorrow. And there's several new (well, new to me) bands whose stuff I really wanted to pick up more of, having been given a random track or two by various people. (Yes, given! For free! Over the internet! Gasp!) However, I've reluctantly come to the decision that I simply can't buy from iTunes, because stuff you get from them won't run on any player but an iPod, and I both object to that in principle and realize that it could seriously screw me a few years down the road. But tracks from Napster come with this DRM stuff that makes it impossible to get them onto the iPod without jumping through all kinds of annoying hoops that I really just don't feel up to bothering with right now. So in the end I said "screw it" and bought nothing.

Congratulations, music industry! Good job protecting your sales figures from evil music pirates! Congratulations Apple! Good job protecting that monopoly!

What's especially amusing is that, hey, I probably would have bought the albums the downloaded tracks were from.

The Nicest Thing Anybody's Said to Me All Week

A friend of mine, on having located the relevant anthology and discovered that I had, in fact, correctly identified the author of a science fiction story he'd mentioned in passing to me months ago: "You're a scary, scary nerd."

What especially pleases me about this is the fact that I live in a world where people say things like that to each other and mean it as a compliment.