Another Month, Another Meme

Current clothes: A blue t-shirt with... I dunno, it's not exactly a tie-dye pattern, as there are none of those big circles, but it's something similar. Blue jeans. White tube socks. Black belt. Black sneakers.

Current mood: It wasn't too bad until the "current annoyance" thing popped up a few minutes ago. Now I'm, well, annoyed. But I'm sure I'll get over it soon.

Current music: I haven't actually been listening to much music lately... Mostly my auditory input has been podcasts. Most recently played: Escape Pod, Planetary Radio, Penn Jillette's radio show, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica commentary, and The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Current annoyance: I just got this long, incoherent political screed in my inbox, sent to me as a private message from someone I don't know via a non-politically-oriented website I have an account with. I immediately reported their ass to the admins. Now I feel kind of guilty, as it was probably just some stupid kid who felt passionately about sharing that message with people. And I feel really annoyed with myself for feeling guilty, as spamming is never an acceptable option for sending any message, and people who do it ought to be discouraged thoroughly and immediately. Damn it.

Current thing: Turning into a crotchety old netizen, apparently.

Current desktop picture: This depiction of "Supernova 1993J and its fourier transform," which received an Honorable Mention in NRAO's recent astronomical image contest. Not only is it a cool picture, but I feel a certain connection with it, since my job, basically, is to turn one of these images into the other. (Well, OK, my job is more like operating the machine that does the first step in that process, but close enough.) Also, I recall being really, really annoyed by how difficult that particular project was to do, and how many times it had to be done over due to various problems, and saying something along the lines of, "This had better be the most interesting damned supernova remnant in the history of astronomy!" Well, it may or may not be, but at least I have this pretty picture to show for all my grief and hair-tearing.

Current song in head: David Bowie's "Life on Mars." See "current DVD in player" for the reason.

Current book: The Book of the Still, a Doctor Who novel by Paul Ebbs. I am very, very slowly working my way through these Eighth Doctor books, and I think I'm finally getting close to the end of the series. I've only read the first chapter in this one, but it looks like it's going to be really interesting.

Current DVD in player: Most recently watched was Daria: Is It College Yet? I never could stand Beavis & Butthead, but the spinoff was much more appealing, mainly because its protagonist actually had functioning brain cells. Also sitting in a player is a disc with a couple of episodes of the British show Life on Mars, about which I'm sure I will have some things to say when I'm finished watching it (other than the fact that it's resulted in the Bowie song being stuck in my head).

Current refreshment: I finished my morning coffee a little while ago, and am thinking that I really ought to scare up some food.

Current worry: We're going through some reorganization at work which basically requires me to learn an entirely new skillset on top of the old one. I won't say I'm actually worried about this, as I'm sure I'll pick it all up. But I think the transition is of necessity going to be messy.

Current thought: I am hungry. I want a nice, big breakfast, with bacon and eggs and hash browns and juice. Which I probably won't actually have...

After The Politics, It's Time For Religion.

I've just finished Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It's kind of an odd book, and I wasn't terribly impressed with it at first... He spends 40 or 50 pages talking about why he considers it a legitimate exercise to write the book before he actually gets around to, y'know, writing the book, and then another 150 or so giving me a strong impression of talking a great deal without actually saying very much. But around the 200-page mark either I woke up or he suddenly started being a lot more coherent and interesting, and I enjoyed reading the rest of it.

Anyway, there's a passage (at about page 300), that I wanted to quote, mostly for my own benefit, because I really, really like it and want to look at it more:

In the course of my research on this book, I found one opinion expressed in slightly different ways by people across the spectrum of religious views: "man" has a "deep need" for "spirituality," a need that is fulfilled for some by traditional organized religion, for others by New Age cults or movements or hobbies, and for still others by the intense pursuit of art or music, pottery or environmental activism -- or football! What fascinates me about this delightfully versatile craving for "spirituality" is that people think they know what they are talking about, even though -- or perhaps because -- nobody bothers to explain just what they mean. It is supposed to be obvious, I guess. But it really isn't. When I've asked people to explain themselves, they typically beg off, along the lines of Louis Armstrong's oft-quoted reply when asked what jazz was: "If you gotta ask, you ain't never gonna get to know." This will not do. To see for yourself how hard it is to say what spirituality is, take a stab at improving on this parody, boiled down from many frustrating encounters: "Spirituality is, you know, like, it's like paying attention to your soul or having deep thoughts that really move you, and not just thinking about who's got nicer clothes and whether to buy a new car and what's for dinner and stuff like that. Spirituality is really caring and not being just, you know, materialistic." Along with this common and unreflective view of spirituality goes a stereotype of the atheist: atheists lack "values"; they are careless, self-centered, shallow, overconfident. They think they know it all, and yet they completely miss out on the spirit. (You really can't be a good person unless you have a spiritual life.)

Now let me try to put better words in their mouths. What these people have realized is one of the best secrets of life: let your self go. If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the great scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person. That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul, or in anything supernatural.

Honestly, I think the whole book may have been worth reading just for that bit.

Next Time, I'm Writing In "Batman."

No post-election commentary from me (although I will confess myself pleased with the results), but I did want to share this great bit of timely humor: Election Day 2006 - Whose Side Is Your Favorite Superhero On? I'm not even that big a fan of either politics or superhero comics, but this cracked me up completely.

I Talk To Myself Often, Just Usually Not By E-Mail.

I received a really bizarre e-mail today, which I am quoting with permission of the author. The subject line was "Ah, there I am! I mean, there you are," because it's from the kind of person who uses Doctor Who quotes as the subject of e-mails. It was kind of surreal to read, although I suspect the effect would have been better if I hadn't encountered it while half-asleep:

Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved for a year in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit http://www.forbes.com/capsule

Here is the text of your message:

Hello, me from a year in the future! Hope this e-mail finds you well, yadda, yadda, yadda. This is probably pointless as a time capsule, because you can just look back at the blog archives if you ever happen to be wondering, gosh, what was I doing in November, 2005?, but what the heck. I'll send 'em to later yous (uh, mes), too. If I remember.

So right now, well, little Vir the kitten is seven weeks old and cute as a fuzzy little bug. Did you manage to teach him not to bite? 'Cause I can imagine that being a problem, now that he's adult-sized. Not that you can answer that question, of course, lacking a functional time machine. Well, I guess you *can* answer it, just, you know, a year later. And by this time you already know the answer, of course, so it's kind of pointless.

Yeah, I'm rambling. You used to do that, remember? And, a year later, I'm sure you still do.

OK, I need to get back to not-working now. (Nov. 7th, 2005: Dayshift. No queue. Dull.)

Have a good day. Go do something fun that'll be worth telling yourself about a year later.

Love,

you

I vaguely remember doing this now (and apparently I did mention it here), but I have absolutely no idea what it is I said in any of the other e-mails. So I guess it'll be a surprise!

For the record, Vir Catto no longer bites the way he did at seven weeks. He actually grew out of that pretty quickly. And it is a good thing because, yeah, I think that'd hurt a lot, as big as he is now. Of course, he's still a pain in the ass in a lot of other ways. But he's still kind of fuzzy and cute, if no longer to quite the same bug-like degree.

Alas, I fear I shall fail to follow my younger self's instructions about going out and doing something memorable, as my plan for today is basically: chug down enough coffee to offset the fact that I only got about six hours of sleep, watch a couple of things on DVD, go to work. I'm sorry for failing you, younger self! But that's almost an inevitable part of life, really, isn't it?

Today's Random TV-Related Thought

Watching British cop shows is weird. I keep finding myself thinking, wait a minute, why on Earth don't they just draw their guns-- Oh.

I suspect that, no matter how many British cop shows I watch, this is always going to be the case. Which certainly says something about either about the US or the UK. Or possibly just about me.

Mmmm, Cheesesteak...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Northeast
The Midland
The South
The Inland North
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have?

I suppose it's nice to know that, after spending pretty much my entire adult life in New Mexico, I still haven't lost the old South Jersey accent. Even though no one here has told me I talk funny in years.

Plus, Even Pictures Of This Guy Fully Clothed Probably Violate The Sexual Harassment Policy.

Hmm. Possibly putting a picture of Jack Harkness up as wallpaper on my work PC is not the very best idea if I, like, actually want to get any work done.

But, gosh, that is pretty.

Falling Back

Dear Self,

You know that trying to take a nap only makes you groggier. Stop it.

No love,
Me

Pretty Much All My Culture Is Pop Culture.

I'm finding myself extremely tempted to actually go to the symphony next week...

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? Does Anybody Really Care Whether I Can Post About It?

After a nice, long period of stability, it now seems like every time I try to post here, Blogger's broken in one fashion or another. I've been trying to publish that last links post since yesterday. Sigh. I really do sometimes think that the internet just hates me, but I'm sure it's entirely coincidence that this sort of thing starts happening right about the time I start thinking, "Hey, I have better net access now and will post more often!"

In other things-that-annoy-me news, I know I've ranted about this before, but what the hell: I hate daylight savings time. I hate changing on to it, I hate changing off of it, and I hate everyone who decided it would be a good idea to force the rest of us to arbitrarily mess with our clocks. I suspect them all of being evil morning people -- morning people quietly rule the world, the bastards -- and it's quite clear none of them ever did shiftwork in their lives. Dudes, my body clock gets screwed with enough without the government coming in and deliberately fucking with it twice a year. This time, I get the fun experience of having to stay up for an extra hour at the end of my tiring night shift before I can finally go to bed at a brighter, sunnier hour. Joy. At least I'm not on a schedule now where I ever have to work on Saturday nights. I've also had the fun experiences of being required to work an hour-longer shift and of trying to figure out how not to lose an hour's pay on a shorter one because I was on duty when the time changed.

Also, it seems that half the clocks I own automatically reset themselves during the shift and half of them don't. And since I don't actually know which are which, I can never be entirely sure when looking at a clock today whether it's lying to me or not.

Linkitty, Linkitty!

Yes, it's once again time for me to dump a bunch of random links I've found while surfing about the net on you poor, unsuspecting readers. Thus:

SongTapper: Tap out a tune on your space bar, and a computer attempts to identify it for you. I don't know how good it is, generally, but it guessed my rendition of TMBG's "Theme from Flood" with impressive ease.

Dr. DeBunko: A comics series about a guy who goes around applying reason and common sense to things like, oh, the existence of corpse-eating werewolves. Some nice bits of humor.

Six word stories: I think this has been linked to from pretty much everywhere on the net, but what the heck. There's some wonderful six-word gems here, from some highly talented authors.

Ducktor Who: I totally, totally need one of these for my bathtub.

The book with the funniest Amazon reviews ever: The book is exactly what the title says it is. The reviews are gloriously tongue-in-cheek.

I Know Jack

So, I've seen the first two episodes of the new Doctor Who spinoff series, Torchwood. (Don't ask me how. *cough*) I thought I'd say a word or two about it here, for those who haven't already heard me rambling incoherently on the subject.

This show's been described as "a British X-Files," but the setup is much more Men in Black (albeit played much less tongue-in-cheek), and the vibes I'm getting off of it remind me of nothing so much as Angel. In fact, they remind me a lot of Angel.

Anyway, I liked the first episode quite a lot. The second one, not nearly as much so, in large part because it felt far too much like the writers were going, "Ooh, we're on later at night now! We can write sex! Whoo-hoo! Watch us go!" Which, really, is seldom a recipe for genuinely adult storytelling.

Still, I'm finding it highly interesting, and I think it's got a great deal of promise, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of it. Plus, like half the universe, I seem to have developed a slightly embarrassing crush on Captain Jack Harkness. And an even bigger one on Jack's really cool coat. *swoon*

It's The End, But The Moment Has Not Been Prepared For.

I just got the last Lemony Snicket novel, and I've found myself weirdly reluctant to start it, because I know it'll go very fast, and then I'll have no more of the series left to read, and that seems like such a disappointing thought. I gather this isn't exactly an uncommon type of reaction, but it's not one that I'm particularly prone to experiencing. I find it interesting and kind of amusing that, of all the books and series of books I've read, it's this goofy little kids' story that gets that response from me.

Hero-Ism

Now that I have nice, reliable internet access again, you may once more have to listen to me wibbling on regularly and at length about gripping subjects such as whatever TV shows I happen to be watching. I'm sure you're all very excited.

I'll start with Heroes, because it's one of the two new shows I've been following this season (and I don't actually have a whole lot to say about Studio 60). I'm having some interesting mixed reactions to Heroes... I find most of the characters and the ongoing, interwoven storylines interesting but not deeply engaging, and there seems to come a point somewhere in the middle of every episode where I starting thinking that, gosh, I'm really not sure how much longer I'm going to bother sticking with this show. And then, in the last few minutes of the episode, they invariably pull out some incredibly cool and surprising cliffhanger that instantly makes me all eager to see the next one. That's some clever-bastard writing, right there.

So I probably will be watching the show for at least the rest of the season, although it doesn't seem like it's ever going to be one of those programs that turns me into a raving fangirl. (Which is probably just as well, really. I've got enough of those as it is.) I think part of what keeps it from getting anywhere near crossing that line is that, for the most part, it lacks any real sense of warmth or humor. I don't know what it is, whether it's the acting or the visual style or just the fact that we spend so little time per episode with each character that it's hard to get really invested in any of them, but I do feel oddly distanced from what's going on most of the time. The single exception is Hiro, the adorably dorky Japanese guy with the ability to bend spacetime, who lights up the show like a ray of sunshine every time he walks on-screen. I'll tell ya, if they dumped the rest of the characters and turned this thing into The Adventures of Super-Hiro, it'd stay on my TiVo's season pass list as long as they wanted to keep running it. Sadly, I'm sure that will never happen. If people listened to me on this particular topic, Voyager would have killed off most of the cast and become a show about the holo-doctor and possibly Seven of Nine.

Anyway. The other thing that bugs me about Heroes -- though I suppose it's really just another aspect of the same thing -- is its tendency to get all pretentious and take itself way too seriously. Which isn't to say that I don't think a show about super-powers can't or shouldn't take a serious tone. In fact, I think that's a really interesting thing to do. But I'll be very, very happy if I never have to sit through another ponderous, buzzword-filled lecture about Destiny and Specialness and the Next Step in Human Evolution. The self-important tone is bad enough, but it wouldn't bother me nearly so much if the content weren't complete and utter bullshit. Evolution does not work the way the show describes it. It just doesn't. Period. And, y'know, I can accept some bullshit premise for the sake of a cool story about superheroes, but, dudes, the more you dwell on the bullshit, the harder it is for me to keep the ol' disbelief in suspension.

But all of that sounds way more negative than I really want to, because it's much easier to put my finger on things that don't work than on things that do. I am enjoying it, on the whole, and am hoping to enjoy it more as the various storylines develop and converge. I think it has the potential to be something very cool and interesting. I'm just hoping it lives up to it.

My Triumphant Return to the Internet

I've been having really annoying problems with my wireless internet off and on since I moved. My antenna's been adjusted a couple of times, and it's seemed to help a little, but never for very long, and over the last few weeks, things had deteriorated to the point where if I wanted any kind of reliable connection at all, I had to dial in. Which sucked pretty badly, especially when you consider that, normally, I live about three-quarters of my life online. I was so cut off! *sniffle*

I was on the verge of giving up entirely and just switching to DSL (which is available in my area now, but wasn't when I first got broadband), but the folks at my ISP said to hold on and they'd see what they could do with the wireless. The problem, apparently, was that there are trees between me and the transmitter that were getting in the way. In fact, there are trees between me and every transmitter in town, and while I have a nice, clear view of the mountain, they thought I might be too far south to get a good angle on the one up there. But they tried it anyway, and lo and behold, I have signal! I have good signal: the little status indicator icon in my taskbar is green for what I think is the first time ever.

Hooray! I feel somehow complete again.

The Dominar Has Arrived!

My plush Rygel came! And, man, he's way more cuddly than anything that looks like Rygel has any right to be.

The cats seem extremely interested in him. Of course, he loftily informed them that he was far too important to be bothered talking to them, and then when they came sniffing around him again, he inquired as to what use they were and whether they might be edible. I think possibly Vir-kitty was wondering much the same thing about him.

(Why, no, I never do plan on growing up. Why do you ask?)

Get Yer Random Links Here!

Updates on this blog have been a smidge sporadic of late, I know. Partly it's due to some problems I've been having with my internet connection, which I'm really hoping will be sorted out by this time tomorrow, and part of it's been due to a lack of time and energy, which should hopefully be less of an issue once I get off the freakin' morning shift again.

Anyway, have some random links:

Mathematics Genius: Amusing student answers to mathematical test questions.

New York Magazine profile of Stephen Colbert: I'm watching Colbert's show a lot more often now that I have the TiVo and don't actually have to remember when it's on, and I think the guy is utterly brilliant. It's not easy to pull off that particular kind of satire that well.

Official Torchwood Website: The BBC's new website for the Doctor Who spinoff series. A lot of the content's inaccessible if you live outside the UK, though, which is incredibly lame.

So Many Books...

Today was one of my favorite events: the local Friends of the Library book sale. I am pleased to report that not only did I not exceed my book-buying quota, I also did not buy any of the yummy, fatty baked goods they had for sale, either. In other words, I have been very good, and I deserve a gold star.

Actually, limiting the book-buying wasn't nearly as hard as it often has been in the past, as the whole experience kept conspiring to remind me of how many still-unread books I already have. I'd keep stumbling across things and going, "Ooh, that's interesting! I want to read that! I-- Oh, wait. I already have that one." There seemed to be one of those in damned near every box.

In any case, I walked out with six books:

The BFG by Roald Dahl
Longitude by Dava Sobel
Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy by Barbara Paul
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage
On Language by William Safire.

Looking back to the last book sale, six months ago, I see that I bought exactly six books then, too. I've read exactly one of them since. Sigh.

I did finish a book on the way back from the sale, though, so I suppose that's some kind of progress. Although it's still looking likely that I'm going to die with several hundred unread books.

Yotza!

I told myself I did not need a plush Rygel. I told myself that it was a useless and pointless thing upon which to spend money that I ought to be saving. But the longer I looked at him -- that paragon of greed for shiny things you don't actually need, that exemplar of the unashamed adoration of Rygel XVI -- the less I felt able to resist.

Stupid bad-role-model doll. Ah, well. He can hang out with my Vulcan teddy bear. That could be kind of interesting...

The Current Meme of Mostly-Bitchiness

Current clothes: I'm wearing my lounging-around-in pajamas -- large black pocket t-shirt, Pink Floyd PJ bottoms and Homer Simpson slippers -- because my clothes got all soaked while I was out walking in the rain earlier. (Sadly, that was more or less the high point of my day, too.)

Current mood: It's been one of those days where I pretty much want to crawl into bed, curl up into a ball, and whimper about how much it sucks to be a responsible adult. Well, OK, maybe it hasn't been quite that bad, but that's been a tempting thought, anyway. Although right now, I mainly just feel tired.

Current music: I just got a couple of new albums I've been playing: Weird Al Yankovic's Straight Outta Lynwood (as previously mentioned) and Love, Hope, Loss, Repeat by Carbon Leaf.

Current annoyance: Well, the biggest one is that my roof is leaking again. Aargh. It's been over a year since I last had a problem with it, and a damned rainy year at that, so I thought it was fixed for good, but apparently not. I called the roofers this morning from work... It's still under warranty, and they said they'd come out and look at it, but they never called me back, and when I got home it was still leaking, so if they fixed it, they didn't do a very complete job of it. It's maybe only leaking in one place now instead of two, but somehow that's really not very comforting. (Other annoyances, while I'm at it: my lungs are still full of goo, the same thunderstorm that apparently re-broke my roof also kept me up half the night; my internet connection's still flaky and my ISP never returns my phone calls; my gastrointestinal system is having a bad day, the details of which I won't go into; I just started on day shift, which I never enjoy; and lately I'm tending to feel surrounded by way too much contagious negativity for my own good.)

Current thing: Drinking cough syrup like it was Kool Aid in an attempt to keep from hacking my lungs out.

Current desktop picture: A gorgeous photograph of the Milky Way, taken in Capital Reef National Park in Utah.

Current song in head: Weird Al's "White and Nerdy." Which might as well be my theme song, really.

Current book: Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. The author disguised herself as a man -- quite effectively, apparently -- and set about joining a men's bowling team, making dates with women through singles' sites, visting strip clubs, and even spending time in a monastery, all for the purposes of the book. The result is way more absorbing, engaging, and insightful than I would ever have expected.

Current DVD in player: Disc 4 of Brisco County, Jr.. And, man, Bruce Campbell really can be astonishingly charming when he has a role that lets him be.

Current refreshment: Lemon-ginger tea. It comforts me in my time of ookiness.

Current worry: The damned roof, I guess, and whether it's going to get fixed and stay fixed.

Current thought: I shouldn't have eaten that fried chicken. I don't know what I was thinking, other than, "Hey, comfort food!" Ugh.

I'm Walking on Solar Radiation!

I am in an unreasonably good mood today. Which is nice, because I've had far too many irritable, unproductive moods going for far too long.

While the real reason probably has to do with some strange quirk of my brain chemistry combined with what I've eaten, the amount of sleep I've had, and what's in that cough syrup I've been drinking, I am nevertheless inclined to credit it to the cool new Doctor Who t-shirt I'm wearing and the fact that I just got the new Weird Al Yankovic album.

It's the small, nerdy things in life that give me pleasure.

Welcome to the Latest Installment Of "What Betty's Watching."

Thanks to the acquisition of the TiVo, my DVD-watching rate has dropped off enough I can practically hear the folks at Netflix breathing a sigh of relief.

But I'm still making progress through the DVD queue, even if it's happening much more slowly. Currently, I'm working my way through The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., which just came out on disc a little while back. For some reason I never really followed this show when it was on the air, even though all my friends did. Which, I can see now, was stupid of me. It's a delightful series, and it deserves a lot better than the cult-show obscurity it got. I mean, I'm watching it, of course, because I'm a geek. Hey, it's got Bruce Campell and random science-fiction elements and pulpy adventures that remind me of my old role-playing days! But what gets me is that I keep thinking, man, I bet my mother would like this show. Heck, my grandmother might even like it, and it's extremely difficult to find something all three of us can sit in a room and enjoy. (I think the only thing we're usually able to settle on happily is CSI, and then probably only if they're not investigating a sex crime.) It's sorta sad that something with the the pontial for that kind of wide appeal didn't last longer than one season.

The Bowling Balls Seem Believable, But I Really Don't Know About The Name...

Fire Crotch People Iced: Forty One Car Bombs Planted: Nineteen Favorite Weapon Bowling Balls Arms Broken: Thirty Two Eyes Gouged: Twenty Nine Tongues Cut Off: Two Biggest Enemy: Cross-Eyed Chris Get Your HITMAN Name AWSOME-GAME

I'm Sorry, But Internal Organs Should Not Itch.

We have now reached the point where my allergies have been making a hell out of my upper respiratory system for long enough that the lungs have gotten jealous and decided they're not going to be left out any more. Sigh. Once this starts happening, it usually settles in for months. I feel like I should open up a betting pool on how long I'm likely to be coughing and horking up phlegm this time.

I hate my body.

Out of the House

Damn it, I was just starting to really get into the current season of House, and now apparently it's going on hiatus for a while. I love how the network doesn't even bother telling us what date it'll be back on, just that it will return "after the World Series." Like I'm supposed to know when that is.

I ask myself, as I frequently do, why it is that the whole world seems geared to cater towards sports fans but not fans of, you know, interesting stuff. When I am Emperor of the World, I am going to act like I assume that everybody knows when, say, the anniversary of Star Trek is, and there will be extensive coverage of it on the major networks, pre-empting any sporting events that might otherwise be scheduled.

The TARDIS Is Landing!

Just a reminder for those Americans who are interested: Doctor Who is starting up again on the Sci Fi channel this Friday. They're going to be showing the 90-minute -- well, 90-minute when you add the commercials -- Christmas special at 8 PM Eastern, followed by the first regular-length episode of season 2 (or, if you're a diehard traditionalist, season 28).

Also, it's recently been announced that the season is slated for DVD release in the US on January 16. I'll be saving up my pennies!

Well, At Least I Tried...

	Betty points gun at George W.
	George W. freaked and had his bodyguards beat up Betty
'What will your Headline be?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Your Irregularly Scheduled Post O' Random Links

A bunch of these come courtesy of various friends this time. Thanks, friends!

"Don't Download This Song" by Weird Al Yankovic: Go on, download the song. You know you want to.

Mike Nelson's RiffTrax: MST3K veteran Mike Nelson provides downloadable snarky DVD commentaries for sale at a few bucks apiece. The sample clip from Star Trek V is well worth watching.

Airport Security Game: Can you keep up with the ever-changing arbitrary rules and confiscate the correct items from hapless airline passengers? There's more fun in the satiric concept than in the actual game play, but it's still amusing. (Note: You'll have to sit through a commercial before you get to play the game.)

Metal and Magic: Very cool and imaginative fantasy artwork with a playful sensibility. Be sure to read the artist's comments under the pictures; they're often as much fun as the pictures themselves.

House In My Home

Thanks to several days of spending way too much time watching DVDs, coupled with three weeks' worth of TiVoing, I am now at last all caught up on House. Which honestly feels like some kind of major accomplishment. Hey, I'm watching a show while it's still on the air! Go, me!

What's really strange about this is that House totally does not seem like the sort of series I ought to like at all, and certainly not the kind that'd prompt high levels of enthusiasm from me. I've never cared much for medical shows, and I find procedurals of any sort at best only casually interesting. But there's just something about the character of House that gives this show a weirdly addictive quality. Like crack. Or, perhaps more appropriately, Vicodin.

I will say that, while it's the characters I'm watching for, the medical mystery stuff is kind of cool, too, even if it does tend to be formulaic enough that you can practically set your watch by the plot points. And I'm feeling all big-headed and full of myself right now because I figured out what was up with that kid from last week way before any of the characters did. Boo-yah! My knowledge of weird scientific trivia pays off! That by far beat my previous (and only) record of figuring the disease out about two seconds before House announced it, too. Usually, all I know is that it ain't vasculitis. Mind you, I don't actually know exactly what vasculitis is. But I do know that's never it.

My Pretty Kitty

OK, because several people have asked me elsewhere why there were no pictures of birthday boy Vir (and didn't seem to be too impressed by "because I don't have a camera" as an answer), I broke down and took a shot of him with the camera on my phone. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate mobile phones and their clunky interfaces and the way they insist on having so many bells and whistles (like, say, cameras) that they're hard to use for their intended purpose as a phone? Well, I guess I have now. And, as your reward for reading through that mini-rant, you get cat pictures!

Here's the one I took today. Apologies for the quality. You know... phone.



For comparison's sake, here he is at two and a half weeks:



And at about six weeks:



And at about six months:



Isn't cell division amazing?

He's An Adult Now! I Feel Like I Ought To Take Him Out Drinking.

Happy first birthday to Vir-the-no-longer-a-kitten! Actually, his birthday is either today or yesterday, depending on exactly how long he was out there lying in my driveway before I found him a year ago at half past midnight, but I think we can call it today.

I find it almost impossible to believe that that tiny, two-ounce scrap of nearly-unidentifiable lifeform I once held in the palm of my hand with room to spare has grown into a strapping and definitively feline cat, but he has. For those of you who know my cats, I think he's actually a little bit bigger than Nova. Or probably quite a lot bigger than Nova, if you take off Nova's hair, which makes up a good percentage of Nova's bulk. He's about thirteen pounds, I think, and pretty solidly built.

And, while he's frequently an ornery pain in the ass, as pretty much all cats are, he's also the single cuddliest, purringest cat I've ever met, so at least I got a return on my investment for all those nights of broken sleep when I was nursing him. (To be honest, I'm still kind of surprised that he lived. But I'll happily take the credit.)

What I find really interesting about Vir isn't that he's so friendly and affectionate to people. You'd probably expect that, given that he was raised by a human and handled a lot from the time he was born. It's that he's so completely catlike, despite the fact that he never even saw another cat until he was six weeks old, when he was finally allowed out of bathroom quarantine to interact with my other cats. By that time, he was already grooming himself, using a litterbox, stalking and pouncing, and basically doing all the things cats normally do. It's an amazing testament to how much pre-programmed behavior animals usually come with.

Anyway, happy birthday, Vir! I'm afraid you're not getting any presents, though. I think you've already been spoiled enough for one year.

Ouch.

Aargh, I feel like crap today. Stuffy nose, stuffy sinuses, headache... It's probably just allergies and lack of sleep (again), but I've had this sore throat that's been bothering me off and on for nearly a week, so I dunno, maybe I'm actually sick on top of it all.

And, note to self: while lying on the sofa watching TV is a reasonable activity when you're not feeling well, watching The Daily Show is severely contraindicated when laughing too hard makes your head throb. Damn you, Jon Stewart! Damn you and your painful, painful funniness!

If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to crawl into bed with a book now. A non-humorous book.

It's Random Linky Time! It's Random Linky Time!

Genre-commentary.com: News, reviews and fascinating analytical articles on "sci-fi, fantasy, and cult media for the discerning geek."

Pseudopod: This is the recently-established sister podcast to Escape Pod, featuring audio horror fiction to complement Escape Pod's science fiction offerings. I've listened to a couple so far, and they've been high-quality stuff.

Supervillain motivational posters: We may reach a time when the "humorous motivational poster" thing has run its course and ceased to be fresh and funny, but, for my money, that time is most decidedly not yet. I'd probably have gotten more out of these if I were a bigger comics geek, but some of 'em made me laugh out loud, anyway.

Social Security Denies Gregor Samsa's Disability Claim: Funnier than anything derived from a Kafka story really has any right to be.

Wait, Who Am I? Where Am I? What Time Is It?

In eleven years of working rotating shifts, I have never lost track of which shift I was supposed to be on and showed up at the wrong time. Until now.

Um... oops.

Man, it's going to be a very long night.

No Longer A Jungle Out There

I'm pleased to report that the Grass Hog weed trimmer, helpfully recommended to me by my dad, turned out to be exactly what I needed. Thanks again, Dad! I was finally able to hack down the jungle in my front yard yesterday, and the machine did an extremely good job on some pretty nasty vegetation. I gotta say, the wholesale weed-destruction was kind of fun, too, especially given the element of revenge for what the little green bastards have been doing to my sinuses.

Man, am I paying for it today, though. The muscles in my arms feel as if I've spent the weekend weight-lifting elephants. It's not even that the machine was terribly heavy; I'm just that wimpified and out of shape. And I've still got the backyard to do, too. Sigh. I think that's going to have to wait until I can lift my coffee cup to my lips again without it quivering.

Has It Been A Month Since I Did This? What The Heck Happened To August?!

Current clothes: Light gray sweats. My Skeptics' Society t-shirt. (Black, with "SKEPTICS SOCIETY" and "Skeptic.com" on the left breast and "SCIENCE RULES" in big letters on the back.) White tube socks. No shoes; I just took 'em off.

Current mood: Eh, I dunno. I was feeling pretty good this morning. Thanks to a bit of rain, I think the pollen count's down. I'm feeling much less crappy than a few days ago, and I've actually managed to get useful things done today. On the other hand, I woke up far too early for some reason, and it's really starting to catch up with me now. I'm feeling tiny stirrings of crankiness, like a toddler who's up past naptime.

Current music: More random songs on the iPod. A few minutes ago it was "5:15" by the Who. The last actual album I listened to was Smoking Monkey by Jonathan Coulton.

Current annoyance: My decrepit damned body. Even if the allergies are slacking off, the inside of my mouth still itches, and I have this lovely post-nasal thing going on. I think I pulled something during the oh-so-arduous process of pulling my TiVo out of the box, and there's been this really unhappy pain in my back for days. My mousing wrist aches a little, despite the fact that I think I've been spending less time than usual on the computer lately, and I must've done something to one of my fingers somewhere, because when I bump it the wrong way or put too much pressure in the wrong spot, it hurts. And, oh, yeah, my eye's bothering me again, probably because all the decongestants and antihistamines are drying it out. Sigh.

Current thing: Playing around with the TiVo and procrastinating on all the things I really, really ought to be doing.

Current desktop picture: This entertaining offering from the Star Trek inspirational posters page.

Current song in head: It's been varying a bit over the last few days, but it keeps coming back to the theme song from The Greatest American Hero. I think that song was stuck in my head for most of the 80's, too.

Current book: Four Frontiers, by Robert Heinlein, an omnibus volume containing four of his early books aimed at younger readers: Rocketship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet, and Farmer in the Sky. I'm most of the way through Red Planet, which I like rather better than the first two, mainly by virtue of the fact that less than two thirds of the book goes by before it develops a plot.

Current video in player: Hmm, the answer to that is very likely to be "none" most of the time now, since I'll be TiVoing stuff rather than taping it. I may eliminate this question, or maybe replace it with something else.

Current DVD in player: It was The Greatest American Hero season 2, disc 4. (Hence the reason for the theme song being stuck in my head.) Man, that was a fun show. Goofy as hell, but fun. It's always nice to go back to a show you enjoyed as a kid and discover that it still entertains you. Next up is disc 2 of season 2 of House, since Netflix sent me that before disc 5 of GAH.

Current refreshment: Lemon-ginger herbal tea from Stash. Which is very possibly the single tastiest beverage known to humanity.

Current worry: All the stuff I'm procrastinating on needs to get done some time.

Current thought: It'd be nice if the weather would dry up. I just got my weed-wackin' machine in the mail, and one of the many things that needs to be done is hacking down weeds. I can probably at least start on that today if the rain backs off. Eh... Screw it. I'm gonna go watch House.

Life With TiVo

OK, it's Day Three of living with TiVo, and already I'm feeling pretty glad that I bought the thing. It seemed like it'd be really useful to help make sure I don't miss the shows I'm heavily invested in, but I'm starting to realize that it's almost more useful for catching shows I enjoy but don't want to go out of my way to watch. It's nice to have stuff like that saved up for when I want to watch something, but there's nothing on and I'm out of DVDs. This came in especially handy yesterday when I came home sick after deciding that, for that day, at least, the allergies had won and I needed to put in some good, quality lying-on-the-couch time. Man, oh, man, I hadn't watched The Daily Show in forever, and that is just a shame.

It's started making suggestions for me, too, some of which are... interesting. The first two shows it recorded for me all on its own initiative were Jaws and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. For no reason I can put my finger on, this amuses me immensely. But, y'know, that's not at all bad for a first-guess approximation of my tastes.

I only wish there was some way to tell it things like, "I love this show, so do use it for making recommendations, but I have it all on DVD so there's no point in recording it" or "I am interested in that show, but since I missed the first few eps, I'm waiting for the marathon to catch up, so don't bother until then." I have the feeling it's likely to become a bit annoying to keep weeding out shows that fall under those kinds of categories.

Ah, well. That may be pretty minor. And the gadget does get about a thousand brownie points for the fact that it jumps back a few seconds when you go from "fast forward" to "play," thus accounting for fallible human reaction time. I like that feature.

In Which I Join the Digital Age

My TiVo came! My TiVo came!

Admittedly, I was pretty worried for a while there, because UPS's tracking system had it listed as having been delivered, and yet when I got home there was no package and no note. Eep! When I called UPS for information, I was told that the driver said that he'd given it to a woman, but that they didn't have any information on what address he actually gave it to a woman at, and wouldn't until tomorrow. This was highly alarming, indeed, seeing as there was no one at my house today at all. Mercifully, it turned out the neighbors had it, and they turned it over without even having to be threatened or anything.

Thus, I now have a TiVo! Hooray! I can record the current episodes of House to watch when I'm finished with last season's discs!

So far, it certainly seems to live up to its easy-to-use reputation. The setup was dead simple, and the interface seems pretty intuitive. We'll see how I feel when I've had more of a chance to try it out, but for the moment it looks good!

Oracular

As stupid internet quizzes go, actually, this one wasn't too bad.

The Oracle 0% Extroversion, 100% Intuition, 27% Emotiveness, 71% Perceptiveness

Heuristic, detached, and analytical to a fualt, you are most like The Oracle. You are able to tackle any subject with a fine toothed comb, and you possess an ability to pinpoint nuances and shades of meaning that other people do not have and cannot understand. Accomplishment and realization of ideas are, for you, secondary to the rigorous exploration of ideas and questions -- you are, first and foremost, a theorist. You hate authority, convention, tradition, and under no circumstances do you accept a leadership role (although, you will gladly advise leadership when they're going astray, whether they want you to or not). Abstraction and generalities are your interests, details and particulars are usually inconsequential and uninteresting. You excel at language, mathematics and philosophy. You are typically easy-going and non-confrontational until someone violates one of the very few principles that you deem sacred, at which point you can fly into a rage. Although you possess a much greater understanding of process and systems than the people around you, you are always conscious of the possibility that you've missed something or made a mistake. You don't tend to become attached to particular theories, and will immediately discard mistaken notions once they're revealed to be incorrect (but you don't tolerate iconoclasts who try to discredit validated theories through the use of fallacies and bad data). Despite being outwardly humble, you probably think of yourself as being smarter than most other people. That's because you are. In fact, in your dealings with people your understanding of their motives is so expansive that you know what they're going to say before they say it, and in world affairs, you usually know what is going to take place before it actually does. This ability would make you unbeatable in debates if only you were a little less pensive about your own conclusions, and a little more outgoing. Famous people like you: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, John McWhorter, Ramanujan, Marie Curie, Kurt Godel Stay clear of: Apollo, Icarus, Hermes, Aphrodite Seek out: Atlas, Prometheus, Daedalus

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Extroversion You scored higher than 99% on Intuition You scored higher than 99% on Emotiveness You scored higher than 99% on Perceptiveness

Link: The Greek Mythology Personality Test written by Aleph_Nine on OkCupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

This quiz is far too kind, though, I'm afraid. It's describing the person I'd like to be, rather than the person I am. (Of course, I suppose I would say that, being all "outwardly humble.")

Mmm, Ice Cream and Brain Surgery!

Note to self: eating while watching House is always a bad idea. You'd think I'd have learned this sort of thing by now.

Both the Federal Government And The Entire Plant Kingdom Are Now My Enemies.

So, as you may have gathered from the post about plants trying to have sex in my nose, my allergies are killing me at the moment. We've had astonishing, almost freakish amounts of rain this year, and the local plant life is flourishing like crazy. Desert plants are opportunistic bastards; when they're actually getting moisture, they damned well take advantage of it. It's pretty much the Day of the Triffids out there right now.

I've found that the only way I have even a remote hope of managing to get any sleep is to take my heavy-duty prescription allergy pill and then add a decongestant on top of it. Last night, I took the last decongestant in the box, so today I went out to the supermarket to get some more... Whereupon I discovered that if I want to purchase this perfectly legal over-the-counter drug, I can no longer simply take some off the shelf and put it into my shopping basket. I now have to fill out a huge-ass form asking me for all kinds of personal data and get a pharmacist to hand the package to me personally. I'm just glad there wasn't much of a line at the pharmacy window; if I'd had to wait for twenty minutes like I did the last time I went to that pharmacy, I'm pretty sure there would have been some kind of a rampage.

At least the pharmacist was apologetic about it, and took all my ranting and bitching sympathetically. "Now," she said, "I'm required by a new federal law to have you fill out this form..."

"Oh," I said, "It is a federal law? Not just some stupid new store rule?" Damn. There went my brilliant plan to take my business elsewhere in future.

"Yeah. You know why they're doing this right?"

"Yeah, they think I'm cooking up meth in my house."

"They don't think you are," she said placatingly. "But some people do, and the bad apples spoil things for the rest of us."

Actually, I don't agree with her there. The government clearly does think it's a possibility that I'm doing exactly that. After all, they're treating every single person buying a package of Sudafed as a potential criminal, and that most certainly includes me. Instead, I brought up a more practical point. "This is stupid. It's not going to stop people who really want to make drugs. All it does is make things more annoying for the rest of us."

Indeed, while I am hardly a criminal genius, it's pathetically easy for me to see how anyone who really wanted to get their hands on a big stash of pseudoephedrin could. How about getting a bunch of friends to go to a bunch of different pharmacies? And it seems like it'd be perfectly easy to give a fake name. They didn't check my ID or anything. The pharmacist did scan my supermarket card, though I think that was just because she was going to check me out (upon which I asked if I could pay for it with my other groceries instead, which I could). Maybe that was meant to be some sort of ID check, in which case it's a pretty useless one. There's no photo on that card, and I don't think you need a picture ID to apply for one, either. And, hey, worst comes to worst, you can always steal some cards. Or get a fake ID, for that matter. Way to go, Federal Government! You've made some illegal drug-producers' lives marginally more inconvenient at the expense of making millions of innocent citizens' lives more difficult too, not to mention compromising everyone's privacy and perhaps even driving the actual criminals into even more criminal behaviors to get around your rules. But, of, course, it makes it look like you're doing something about drugs, and that's the important thing, right? I'll give them this: at least they're consistent. They're using the exact same strategy on both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror: making the security measures as intrusive as possible in hopes of fooling people into thinking they're actually accomplishing something.

Anyway, the pharmacist gently tried to offer up some alternatives. "There's some decongestants over there that don't have pseudoephedrine."

"Yeah, I looked at those. They're all four-hour pills. That's not enough to let me sleep through the night."

"Oh. Well, there's Claritin."

"I tried that. It does nothing for me." In fact, I attempted to switch to that stuff (or the generic equivalent thereof) for a while, and it was next to useless compared to the Allegra.

She gave up and handed me the form. "I'm not happy about it, either. If it were up to me..."

"Yeah, I know, it's not your fault. I'm sorry for bitching at you."

"That's OK. Really, I understand. I agree with you."

And then she told me that some people did get upset and take it out on her, and that she had one guy get really pissed off and throw his driver's license at her. Which made me feel kind of bad, because it immediately gave me flashbacks to the days when I worked in the campus library, and people would occasionally give me abuse because their professor hadn't put the stuff on reserve he'd said he was going to, so that I didn't have it to give to them. Which clearly must be all my fault.

"Maybe I should write my congressman," I said.

"That's a good idea!" She sounded like she really meant it, too.

So, maybe I will, not that I'd expect it to do any good. But, first, I will bitch about it on the internet, because that, after all, is what I do.

I'll tell ya, though, it's enough to make me want to open a meth lab. At least then I'd be making some good drug money in return for all the hassle.

Comedy Gold

There is very little in this world more intrinsically funny than a cat who's got his head stuck in a box of kleenex.

I let him flail around with it over his face for a while before I helped him, too. Maybe it'll be a learning experience. Although, realistically, I doubt it.

And Here Not All That Long Ago I Was Thinking Of Cancelling My Cable.

I, um, appear to have bought a TiVo. I didn't exactly plan to... I was just thinking about the fact that there are actually a number of current and upcoming shows that I kind of want to watch without waiting for them to come out on DVD. And about how hard I find it to actually remember when shows are on and whether I ought to set the VCR, never mind keeping track of reruns and hiatuses and changes in timeslot. And about how much I hate commercials, and not being able to pause or rewind stuff I'm watching, and the way the VCR loses several seconds of dialog every time you pause and unpause it.

And, really, there's one obvious solution to all those complaints, isn't there? So I went online just to price the things, and they didn't seem too terribly expensive, and the next thing I knew, I was ordering one.

Everybody says TiVos are the best things ever and that they'll change how you watch TV and they're the sort of thing that, once you have one, you can't imagine ever doing without it. I just hope they're right, seeing as I've bought a year-long contract...


(Huh. Blogger's spellchecker knows "TiVo" and insists that I use that (rather dumb) capitilization, but it doesn't know "VCR." Blogger's spellchecker is crap. And is possibly in the TiVo company's pocket.)

It Is Not A Beautiful Thing When The Desert Blooms.

I really wish plants would stop trying to have sex inside my nose.

The World Is Mine.

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OK, I'm going to stop updating today, really. I'm mostly just procrastinating on all the things I really ought to be doing.

Whack My Weeds!

OK, since you guys were so incredibly helpful when I was stressing over curtains -- and I did eventually find some acceptable ones, by the way -- I thought I'd once again ask for some household advice, this time involving lawn care. I know there's at least one Loyal Reader out there who's a gardening god, and probably 99% of you know more about the subject than I do. I don't think I've ever even used a lawnmower.

I have two problems/questions:

1) I went from living in a trailer surrounded by dirt and gravel to having an actual yard, but the lawn was pretty much dead last year when I moved in. It didn't seem inclined to grow much grass this year, either, but with the insane amount of rain we've had lately, it's erupted into a frightening jungle of weeds. I need some equipment to hack these evil plants down with. I used to have this tiny electric weed-trimmer, but it was a piece of crap: very low-powered, and it was near-impossible to keep the string from tangling. Anybody have any advice on something I can use on a large-ish area full of tough weeds, but that won't cost me an arm and a leg?

2) There were some rosebushes out front when I moved in. But first the structural engineer told me it was probably better if I didn't have plants right around the outside of the house, then guys who were doing my stucco complained they were in the way, so I hacked the poor things down and removed their trellises. The thing is, they keep trying to grow back. I had no idea roses were so hearty! How in the world do I get rid of these things? Or if they're too hard to remove completely, what do I do for them?

Man, I so want to xeriscape my yard with some gravel and a few cacti and have done with it. But there's no way I have the money for that in the foreseeable future. Sigh.

Television Addendum

I just realized that I forgot Venture Bros., about which I can only say that it's the most brilliant and funny thing on television, and that it's worthwhile viewing for anyone who ever watched stuff like Johnny Quest as a kid and absolute must-see viewing for anyone who still watches stuff like Johnny Quest as an adult.

"That Remote In Your Hand Is A Crack Pipe!" (Or, What I've Been Watching Lately, Pt. 2: Television)

Psych: I like the premise for this -- about a guy with amazing crime-solving powers of observation who tells people he's psychic to get them to take his deductions seriously -- a lot, if only because it appeals to my hardcore-skeptic sensibilities in ways that no TV show[*] has done since Scooby Doo[**]. The execution doesn't quite live up to the promise, I think, mainly because the main character's a bit too consistently goofy for it to seem plausible that anybody ever believes him at all. "Real" psychics manage by being charming and convincing as well as observant, and I think that faux-psychic Shawn would be a much more interesting character if, say, he could switch back and forth between something like that and his (admittedly entertaining) habitual goofball mode. The other characters are a bit two-dimensional, too. The detective who doesn't believe in Shawn's abilities would be more interesting if he were a bit more sympathetic, given that, after all, he's right. And the sidekick (played by Dule Hill, who I quite liked on The West Wing) seems to have a personality that's almost completely defined by contrast to Shawn's, like he's some kind of a photographic negative of the guy. I've watched all of it now, though, thanks to USA handily running it as a marathon, and the episodes do seem to get better as they go along, so I think it's got potential to evolve in good directions. The mystery plots, while not exactly Agatha Christie, are fun, and at least tend to take place in interesting and unusual settings. I may tune in for this one when it comes back in January, as it does seem that I'm starting to reverse my DVD-watching-only habits a bit, but it won't break my heart if I manage to forget.

The 4400: I wasn't quite as drawn into this show this season. I'm not sure if that's mainly due to the fact that this is the first season I've watched as it was aired, rather than on DVD, but I do the week's separation between episodes makes some kind of a difference. It may also have to do with the way they kept writing out characters, then writing in new ones, then writing them out, then writing them back in... Whatever. I can't seem to find it in myself to get particularly excited about this show, but I'm still finding it interesting enough that I will almost certainly be tuning in next season. Erm, there will be a next season, right? I got a little nervous a couple of weeks ago when USA kept advertising that there were "only two episodes of The 4400 left!" but I assume they meant "left in this season." Although it would be absolutely typical for something to get cancelled just when I've started tuning in.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: This is a show that's premiering on NBC in the fall, but Netflix subscribers can get a sneak peak at it on DVD if they so choose. I so chose, partly because I really liked Aaron Sorkin's work on The West Wing and was curious to see what he was doing with his new show, and partly because I like to encourage TV networks make us of new technologies like DVD and the internet, rather than clinging to the same old "it's our job to put stuff on your TVs and your job to shut up and watch the commercials" model. It's interesting that they chose this particular show to explore this new marketing possibility, because the show itself is all about television and its current (rather sorry) state. Even before the opening credits roll, we're treated to a long, scathing, and utterly brilliant diatribe about how television these days is complete crap and we shouldn't be watching it. Yowza! My initial reaction to that was, "Whoa, and they're going to show this? Wow, what a display of guts!" My immediate reaction after that was, "Well, come on, the network is going to have no problem whatsoever with airing a show that tells you television is crap and you shouldn't watch, as long as they think you still are going to watch anyway. I'm sure they're perfectly happy with self-denunciation, as long as it's making them money." Given this cynical attitude, all I can say is, Mr. Sorkin has his work cut out for him. Sure, he was able to make me believe in magic fairy leprechauns honest, competent, idealistic politicians, but an honest, competent, idealistic network executive is another matter entirely. Still, I'll be interested to see if he can pull it off, and his dialog is always a joy to listen to, so I probably will be catching this one when it airs.

Kidnapped: The pilot episode for this was on the same disc with Studio 60, so I gave it a shot. By which I mean, I watched about the first ten minutes. It was very stylishly produced, but the dialog sucked. It is possible that eventually the plot would have been engaging enough to make up for this defect, but I wasn't interested enough to stick around and find out. I'm gonna skip this one. If it turns out to be wildly successful, and people whose tastes I respect tell me that I'm seriously missing out and the rest of the series is nothing like the first ten minutes, I'll catch it on DVD.


[*] Well, fictional show. I mean, I gotta give props to things like Penn & Teller's Bullshit.

[**] Hey, the ghosts always turned out to be Old Man Witherspoon. And Velma was an infinitely better skeptical thinker than Scully.

Do We Trust A British Study On This Topic To Be Unbiased, Though?

This just in: drinking lots of tea is good for you. Whoo-hoo! I'm gonna live forever!

What I've Been Watching Lately, Part 1: Movies

I think it's time for another exciting "what I've been watching lately" post. Or at least half of one. I'll do movies now, and TV shows sometime later.

So, thumbnail reviews of couple of movies I've seen recently on DVD:

Madagascar: Cute, entertaining, and in places very funny. It may not exactly be the Shakespeare of talking-animal movies, but it's a pleasant way to kill an hour and a half, whatever your age. And I like the fact that it's a talking-animal movie that doesn't ignore the fact that some of these happy, best-buddy animals are, in the natural course of things, going to instinctively regard others as lunch. It probably sounds stupid to say that acknowledging that helps me suspend my disbelief, but, hey, it does.

The Brothers Grimm: This movie has a lot of things going for it: an interesting premise (hey, I love stories that play around with fairy tale motifs), very well-done visuals, some funny, clever dialog... And yet, it really just completely fails to work for me. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but I think the problem is that it's simply trying to be too many things at once. It doesn't know whether it's a subtle comedy, a broad over-the-top comedy, a moving drama about brotherly love or a lush, sense-of-wonder-inducing fantasy. As a result, I felt weirdly off-balance through the whole movie, never reacting to any individual moment quite the way it wanted me to. When it wanted me to be moved, my head was still in a comedy space, and when it wanted me to laugh, I was taking it too seriously. I almost wonder if this might have been a lot more successful if it had had much lower production values... There's dialog and story elements here that -- unsurprisingly, given that it comes from Terry Gilliam -- would have worked beautifully in a Monty Python movie, but there's something about the whole visual language of the film that leads you to approach it very, very differently from the way you'd approach a Python flick. Or at least, that's how it was for me. The result was like some kind of massive exercise in psychic dissonance. And not in a cool way.

I'm Just Gonna Go Fetch My Walker And My Hearing Aid Now.

There is nothing like Beloit College's mindset list to make those of us who are no longer college freshmen feel unbelievably old. If you haven't seen this thing before, it's released every year and aims to give us fuddy-duddies a sense of what kind of world the year's incoming college freshmen grew up in. The ones that really get me from the Class of 2010 list: "'Google' has always been a verb." and "Reality shows have always been on television." Ye gods. Well, at least a couple of these items refer to things that were also before my time, which makes me feel a little less superannuated. But just a little.

And Speaking of Stargate...

Apparently SG-1's just been cancelled. Is it horrible of me that my immediate reaction was something like, "Oh, cool, that'll mean I actually will be able to catch up on all of it on DVD"? It is, isn't it? I'm going to the Fannish Hell now and spend eternity with the NBC execs who put Star Trek in the Friday night timeslot.

Would You Pay Money To See This Movie?

This seems like an amusing meme:

Open up your music player and set it to shuffle. For each line/question hit the next/forward button. Say what song is playing for each line. Don't cheat either, just put the song that comes up.

I don't know whether this is meant to be a movie of my life, or what... I assume it is, though it's clearly a highly fictionalized version if it has fight scenes, as I haven't been in a fight since the 9th grade. (Where, for"been in a fight" read: A tough girl grabbed my shirt to push me out of her way or something, I freaked out and flailed at her, and she knocked my glasses off. And all the adults thought it was so great that I had "been in a fight," because they had been despairing of me and my pansy-ass pacifistic ways.)

In any case, I present to you the Soundtrack to My Movie:

Opening Credits: "Sweet Home Alabama" - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Something of an odd choice, seeing as I've never been to Alabama in my life and have no affinity whatsoever for the South.

Waking Up: "Window to the World" - Geddy Lee

Um, that works as well as anything, I guess.

Falling in Love: "Crazy Lovesick Fool" - the Great Luke Ski

Bwah! This is a couple of guys doing an incredibly goofy song in the voices of Brak and Zorak from Space Ghost. It is the most unbelievably dorky thing you could possibly imagine. Which I guess makes it just about perfect.

Fight scene: "Echoes" - The String Quartet Tribute to Pink Floyd

Most surreal fight scene ever. Or possibly it's a very slow, very artistically composed undersea battle. That'd be really cool.

Breaking up: "Silent Bob" - The Great Luke Ski

A tribute to the work of Kevin Smith, set to the tune of "Silent Night." Well, at least it makes an appropriately dorky bookend with the "falling in love" song. Although it does apparently indicate that I'm breaking up in a 7-11. On Christmas. While smoking weed.

Looking Back On Your Life: "The Eccentric Doctor Who" - Malcolm Lockyer Orchestra

Again I say: bwah! Clearly the "looking back on my life" scene features a montage of me watching various bits of Doctor Who, with the action on my TV screen synched up with this incredibly cheesy music. Actually, that'd be an entirely accurate retrospective on my life.

Getting back together: "Opus 4. Fantasy (Film Noir)" - Billy Joel

This is from Billy Joel's brief, brief career as a classical pianist. And it is pretty noir-ish, at least at the beginning. I suppose it's appropriate if I'm getting back together beneath a smoky streetlight on a rain-drenched street while wearing a trenchcoat and a fedora... Oh, hang on! I get it! This is one of those movies that's 90% fantasy sequences, isn't it? Well, I suppose it would be. And that'd explain the submarines.

Secret Love: "Yer So Bad" - Tom Petty

At least my secret love seems like a happy and healthy affair. Although I feel compelled to to categorically deny all of the slanderous things this song says about my sister.

Life's okay: "A Floydian Slip" - The String Quartet Tribute to Pink Floyd

Because nothing says "life's okay" like imitation Pink Floyd?

Mental breakdown: "The Pony Man" - Gordon Lightfoot

Hee! This is a happy little folksong depicting sweet childhood fantasy, starting with an ordinary pony ride and ending up with pirate ships and other improbable things... Clearly this is a mental breakdown that involves hallucinations.

Partying: "I'm a Believer (Reprise)" - Eddie Murphy, on the Shrek soundtrack

Sure, that works for a party.

Long night alone: "Sanitarium (Welcome Home)" - Apocalyptica

I don't know about a "long night alone," but that'd be kickass fight scene music. And may I just say that I love this whole rock-gone-classical theme my movie seems to have going, along with all the other dorktasticness. If a movie is ever made of my life, I hereby declare that the soundtrack should consist entirely of rock songs done on classical strings.

Final Battle: "Consider Me Gone" - Sting

Hmm... I suspect this is a metaphorical battle. Or else this one should really be switched with the previous one.

Death Scene: "Opus 3. Reverie (Villa D'Este)" - Billy Joel

I guess that works for a death scene. Although it's either going to be schmaltzy or melodramatic. I vote for melodramatic.

Ending Credits: "So Long Again" - Daniel Amos

I guess that's appropriate, if you ignore the blatant religious content.


Man. I want to see this movie now.

In More Cheerful, Much Geekier News...

I don't really watch Stargate SG-1, but I am so taping it tonight.

It's Curtains.

So, the curtains I ordered came today. They are the right size, a good color, a pleasantly simple design, machine washable... and even more entirely transparent than the bamboo shade.

If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go and hang myself from a curtain rod now.

Anything Smaller Than A Gas Giant Is A Trivial Space Rock, Anyway.

So, Loyal Reader Magnus dropped a comment on the last post asking me what I thought of this article about the International Astronomical Union's proposed redefinition of the word "planet." I suspect I'm the last person with a blog and an interest in space science to talk about this issue, but I honestly can't seem to get especially worked up about it. It's a question of terminology rather than one of science... Ceres isn't going to change if we start calling it a planet instead of an asteroid, and Charon isn't going to suffer an identity crisis if it's suddenly reclassified as half of a double planet instead of as a moon. And, hey, the proposed definitions seem reasonable to me, in that they're trying to be as non-arbitrary as possible.

I get the impression that a lot of people are sort of bothered by the whole thing, or are viscerally resistant to the idea of reclassifying. And I do understand that. As kids, one of the first things we learn about the universe beyond Earth is that we're part of a solar system with nine planets orbiting the sun. It's learned so early and taught with such confidence that it feels like a fundamental fact, not like an artifact of language. And it seems to form part of our basic sense of identity as a planet, if there is such a thing. The plaques on the Voyager probes show a diagram of one large circle and nine smaller circles, with the probe flying away from the third one to show any randomly encountered aliens where it came from. And it's easy to imagine ourselves in some Star Trek-ish future, chatting with an alien, going, "My solar system? Yeah, we've got nine planets..." It just seems like part of what defines this place. I remember as a kid reading occasional SF novels in which a tenth planet was discovered, and that always seemed like some kind of symbol of expanding human knowledge, of our growth as a species out into the universe. "Look, we found another planet out there! There's more to our solar system than we thought! We're expanding our horizons, and our solar system literally gets bigger as our knowledge grows! Ain't that something? Humans rock!"

Reality, of course, is always much messier. Hey, look, there are rocks out beyond Pluto! But they're dinky, and somehow the thought of letting them into the planetary club triggers less of a "Whoo, we have more planets!" response and more of a "Well, if those guys count, the whole concept of a 'planet' seems diminished somehow." The truth is, we like things tidy. We like for things to fit into neat categories and we like for the categories we grew up with not to change. I think most people would like to be able to name nine objects and feel like, if they know those nine things, they've got a handle on the solar system. It's much less simple and satisfying to view it as a huge swarm of bodies ranging from a dust speck to a gas giant, made of rock or gas or ice or various combinations thereof, orbiting the sun, orbiting other bodies, orbiting one another, here, there and everywhere, with no clear cutoff point where you can say, "This rock is a place, but that one is just a rock."

Like I said, I think scientifically the terminology doesn't really matter all that much, and part of me find the idea that there's controversy over it just kind of silly. But, y'know, if the debate gets ordinary people to start thinking about this stuff, to shake themselves out of the oversimplified "nine planets and some rocks and snowballs" model we all learned in elementary school and to understand the solar system a bit better as the gloriously messy thing it is, that seems like a good thing to me.

So there ya go. My two cents on planetary classification. Sorry you asked, Magnus?

Curtain Follow-Up and Random Links

First of all, let me say thanks for everybody's help and suggestions on my window covering dilemma. Man, I don't think I've ever gotten that large a volume of useful responses on anything before. I don't know whether it's that lots of people feel they have something to contribute on the subject of curtains, or whether it's just that I seemed that utterly pitiful and in need of help, but either way it was appreciated. I think I've responded to everybody on the comments for that post, by the way, in case you left a comment and haven't checked back. I did eventually order some simple tab-top curtains from Home Depot, and am hoping they'll do the trick.

With all of that out of the way, here's your regularly scheduled random linkage:

Godchecker: Your encyclopedic guide to "more gods than you can shake a stick at."

An enlightening but infuriating article describing the RIAA's tactics for suing people and explaining why they're getting away with it.

Star Trek motivational posters: You can probably judge just how big a nerd you are by how hard you laugh at these. Me, I was pretty much rolling on the floor.

In Which I Reveal That One Of My X-Chromosomes Is Clearly Defective

It's a bizarre and possibly somewhat disturbing thing, but, out of all the things in life that frustrate and fluster me, the one that seems to do so most consistently and profoundly is... window coverings. Yes, curtains.

I mean, god damn it. All I want is something to put over my windows so that my neighbors cannot look in and see me when I'm walking around the house naked. (Come on, tell me I'm not the only one who occasionally experiences an urgent, burning need to check her e-mail while in the middle of getting dressed?)

It appears that this is not what anybody else on Earth wants, however. I am not sure what they want out of window coverings. It appears to have something to do with "decoration" or "looking pretty," but since having garish flowery patterns and all kinds of weird dust-catching pieces of cloth draped around your windows is, to me at least, not at all attractive, perhaps there's something else to it that I'm just not seeing.

I like blinds. Blinds are good. Nice and adjustable, depending on how much sun you want, and they keep out prying eyeballs. Sadly, though, it seems I just can't have blinds on my utility-room windows. The cats like to jump up onto the windowsills, they bend the slats when they do so, the slats break off, and eventually there's a big slatless hole through which sunlight and the neighbors' line of sight can pass unencumbered. I've already replaced them twice, and it's a losing battle. I can't keep the damned cats off.

The thing is, my utility-room windows are 58" wide x 48" tall. As far as I can tell, curtains don't come in that size. Or if they do, they probably have some fancy French name and are intended to drape artfully around a doorway or some crap. I don't know what half these things they sell in the curtain department actually are or do, so it's entirely possible.

What ever happened to window shades? Don't people use those any more? Why can I not find them anywhere? Damn it, this is yet another example of how the world is run by day people and nobody thinks about us shift workers, isn't it? If everybody worked my schedule, the stores would be full of items specifically and carefully designed to block out light. (Also, real estate agents would stop prattling about east-facing bedroom windows as if they were a selling point, but that's a tangent.)

I did find a bamboo shade that was at least the right width. It looked like a pretty good bet: not as easy for the cats to destroy, nice and simple with no "decorative" crap. The store only had one, but I figured I'd try it out, and if I liked it I'd see about ordering one for the other window. And, man, I'm glad I didn't buy two. Because it's a really nice shade, except for one teensy little fact: you can see right through it. I mean, honestly, what is the freaking point?

Suggestions for where the heck to find inexpensive coverings to block photons from passing through my windows will be gratefully accepted, but anybody who tries to get all Martha Stewart on me is gonna get strangled with a pull-cord.

And nothing that involves words like "transverse rod," either, OK? It should not require that much hardware to do something that can be easily achieved with a couple of thumbtacks and a bedsheet. (Hell, I'd consider doing that, but, y'know, I'm trying to be a grownup.)

The Doctor Is In!

Here's some news I know several of my Loyal Readers are likely to be pleased by: The newest season of Doctor Who is coming to the Sci Fi Channel starting in September. I'll be interested to see what those of you who are more or less new to the show think of it...

It's Easy! Just Change The Gravitational Constant Of The Universe!

You ever have one of those days where it feels like someone's turned up the gravity, and it's just too much of an effort to drag your ass around, or possibly even to hold up your head?

Ugh. I want to go home and sleep until somebody's fixed the planet.

It's That Meme Thing Again

Current clothes: Blue jeans. A white t-shirt with a picture of Brak from Space Ghost. A light blue short-sleeved denim shirt unbuttoned over that. White socks. No shoes.

Current mood: Eh, I seem to be having odd mood swings today. Right this moment, I'm a little edgy in a weird sort of way. Presumably it will pass shortly.

Current music: Nothing in particular. Still listening to random playlists and sundry podcasts, mostly.

Current annoyance: This weird psychological thing I seem to have going on lately, where certain people expressing negative opinions of things I like (or, odder still, positive opinions of things I don't do) makes me feel all personally criticized and inadequate. It's stupid, and it's something that pisses me off when other people do it, so I'd really like it to stop now.

Current thing: Periodically behaving like those people in prescription drug commercials who romp through fields going, "Thanks to Panacea, I have my life back!" Because, yay, my eye no longer hurts (much), and I can concentrate on living my life without a constant voice in the back of my head going, "Ow, myeyemyeyemyeye."

Current desktop picture: This beautiful picture of a moonrise.

Current song in head: Nothing at the moment, but for the last couple of days, off and on, it's been "Should I Call You Jesus?" by Billie Meyers. I'm not entirely clear on the song's theology, but it's damned catchy.

Current book: The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. It's kind of hard to believe that I hadn't read this book before now, actually. But I am enjoying it.

Current video in player: Another tape with last night's 4400 and Venture Bros. Although the latter might have been a rerun again.

Current DVD in player: It was disk one of season 6 of The West Wing, but I finished that and mailed it back to Netflix. I might start in on disk 2 tonight if I have time before work.

Current refreshment: Mango-passionfruit tea. Mmmm!

Current worry: That one day I'm going to wake up screaming in unbelievable pain because half my cornea's peeled off. I am trying to remind myself that the people who post their medical horror stories on internet fora are generally self-selected for being the most extreme cases, as people with mild problems are unlikely to bother. Google, she is sometimes not our friend.

Current thought: Aargh, I should finish this up quickly, answer the e-mail currently demanding my attention, go watch The West Wing, and get ready for work.

OK, I Lied. One More Eyeball Update.

Liberal and frequent use of eye drops = blessed, blessed relief.

I am currently filled with love for the entire optometric profession.