And to Top It All Off...

...I'm now out of Buffy again. It's my fault; I just blazed through those videos like the pathetic addict I am. Man, am I loving this stuff. The humor. The angst. The humorous angst. The angsty humor. The plotty stuff. The characters. The... well, the pretty much everything. But now I have no more episodes to watch, and I'm going to have to wait for the next batch to find out what happens next with Faith and the Mayor and that new Watcher dude and so on and so forth. (No, don't tell me!)

Sniffle.

Oh, wait, I do still have those Manchild episodes to watch... That cheers me up a bit! With any luck, maybe that'll be almost as good as having Giles on my TV. (By the way, have I mentioned lately that Giles is cool? 'Cause I swear, he just gets cooler every episode.)

H20 Update

Well, no plumbers on Saturday, big frelling surprise. So I am forced to face a long holiday weekend with no water. Three days of sponge baths, of having to pay eighty cents a gallon for bottled water just to flush the toilet, of dirty dishes sitting in the sink, of not being able to run the swamp cooler. Oh, yeah, baby, this is the life.

Thank goodness for blogs, at least. What would I do if I couldn't log on here and bitch and whine about things? I'd have to actually find someone to bitch and whine to in person...

Water, Water, Everywhere...

It rained again today. Hard. And my roof is still leaking, but, you know, I've kind of stopped being upset over that. I just stuck a bucket under it, cleaned up what spilled, and gave myself a sharp mental reminder to get the damned thing fixed ASAP.

The universe, however, does not appreciate my laid-back attitude, and is always out to smack my complacency out from under me. Thus it was that, shortly after the rain slacked off, I went to wash my hands after using the bathroom and found myself thinking, "Hmm, that's odd. Why is the water pressure so low?" I went and checked another faucet, and, yup, low water pressure.

So I put on my waterproof boots and traipsed outside. Gee, lots of water in the yard. OK, that happens when it rains, but... oh, god, we've been through this before, haven't we?

And, yup, I get 'round the back of the trailer, and, lo and behold, there's a pipe spewing out water.

So, now, I've got water dripping through my ceiling, I've got water lying in puddles on my kitchen floor, I've got water up to my ankles in my muddy mess of a front yard, but I have no water with which to take a shower.

I'm just really, really hoping I can get the plumbers out here tomorrow. Why do these kinds of things always pick Friday evening on a long holiday weekend to happen? And why the hell did I let my mother talk me into buying this trailer?

More Places to Waste Time

Here's something I found while surfing around last night that's more fun than it really ought to be: internet guessing games. Let the computer attempt to guess your person, object, animal, TV show, or movie, or (and this is a nifty twist) have it "think" of one and give you clues to guess at. The guesser AI learns as it goes, and it's actually pretty darned good. It knows lots of obscure TV shows, too. (Though I had to teach it Alien Nation.)

Speaking of AIs, if you want to speak to an AI, here's one I had a little conversation with last night: Jabberwacky. As it holds conversations, it's supposedly learning what the most appropriate responses are to various statements, and there were brief -- admittedly, very brief -- periods when it was almost good enough to pass the Turing test. (Especially when it went into "sullen teenager" mode on me and proceeded to start answering my (admittedly rather dumb) statements with responses like "Whatever.")

Wandering the Blogosphere

Alas, the aforementioned slim chance did not pan out, and I am stuck at work for a full shift tonight, anyway. On four hours of sleep, and with nothing particularly interesting that needs doing. My joy is boundless.

Anyway, so, I've been randomly surfing blog sites. Ones that particularly catch my interest, for whatever reason, I'm sticking up links to on the little sidebar thingy here. Note that the only theme to these is "blogs that appeal to me when I'm half-asleep and bored out of my mind," and that if you go looking for rhyme or reason, you'll end up as nutsy as I am. And you certainly don't want that.

Since I Did Last Week's Friday Five Late, Here's This Week's, A Tiny Bit Early

1. What's your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own? Um, I don't know that I have one, really. I mean, in the past I've had favorite shirts, but I wore the last one out, and it hasn't really been replaced in my affections... I am very fond of my official Indiana Jones fedora, but I don't wear it much any more. It's gotten pretty badly faded. Why didn't Indy ever have that problem?

2. What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire? To be disturbingly honest? Some bras that fit properly. Some hiking boots that fit properly would be nice, too. Apparently much of my anatomy is just difficult to clothe...

3. What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why? Actually, I'm really bad about throwing anything out. I've got all kinds of clothes that no longer fit, or have holes in them, or that I've finally realized are hideously ugly, or that I just never seem to wear. And yet, it all just hangs there in my closet/sits there in my drawers. Forever.

4. What piece of clothing do you look your best in? I rather like the way I look in denim shirts, but then, I have no sense of style whatsoever, so you shouldn't take my word for it.

5. What has been your biggest fashion accident? Hey, my entire wardrobe probably constitutes a fashion accident to people who actually have a sense of fashion. But I appear to have been born without that gene. I just don't pay much attention to clothes, really. I mean, geez, you should see what I'm wearing right now... But, let's see, if I had to pick a single "oh my god, I don't believe I actually wore that" item... Uh, I did used to have this black polyester vest -- a hand-me-down from one of my mother's friends, yet -- with a really big collar, and big pockets on which I'd sewed[*] Star Trek patches. I think one of them showed a hand doing the Vulcan salute and said "Live long and prosper," and the other had a picture of the Enterprise and said "Keep On Trekkin'." It was an unbelievably dorky garment, even by the standards of the dorkiest period of my teenage years. The scary thing is, given that I never throw anything out, I'm pretty sure I probably still have it around somewhere.

[*] OK, gotten my mother to sew. I can't so much as thread a needle.

Still More DVDs

I got a couple more DVDs in the mail today. Urg. I still haven't had time to watch most of the Wrath of Khan extras. Somebody stop me!

Anyway, I got the 10th Anniversary release of Reservoir Dogs, which I think I've mentioned in here before. (I got the Mr. White edition, for the record.) I don't know what it is about that movie... Well, OK, yes I do. For some unfathomable reason, I'm just a complete sucker for any story that ends with bodies all over the floor. Reservoir Dogs, Blake's 7, Hamlet... There just ain't nothin' like a good tragedy.

I also got the second batch of Farscape Season Two episodes. I'm glad they've gone to releasing them four episodes at a time, instead of two epsiodes/one disc like they did for last season, but I really wish they'd do more commentary tracks and maybe throw on a few more extras. Ah, well. This particular set has three so-so episodes (translation: not standout Farscape, but still better than 99.9% of the crap on TV), but the fourth is the incredible "The Way We Weren't." This episode had me wiping frantically at my eyes and -- half-embarrassed, half-awed, and entirely moved -- wailing, "They made me cry! That god-damned Muppet made me cry!" (Admittedly, said Muppet had a great deal of help from Claudia Black. If you ask me, they both should have won an Emmy.) I think it was at this point that I realized there was no turning back for me, that I was hooked on this show for life.

Hmm, come to think of it, that's probably one good thing about not being able to sleep... It just gives me more time to watch videos and DVDs, right? And I definitely need to go and watch some more Buffy...

Sleep is for Tortises

Woke up at 12:30 this afternoon and could not get back to sleep... Which isn't such a good thing when you only got to bed around 8:30 AM. If I don't get some nappy time in later (unlikely, as I'm pretty bad at naps), tonight's shift is probably really going to suck.

Then again, there is a slim chance that there might not be enough work to do tonight, and I'll get to go home early... Come on, slim chance!

Still More Quizzy Stuff

You are 49% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Hey, you know, I think maybe I should consider that as a career choice!

Apparently All of the Books in Existence Still Aren't Enough for Me...

Here's a really cool website I've just come across: it's a catalog of books that don't exist. Or rather, that exist only in other books. For some reason, I find this idea deeply, endlessly fascinating. And I want a copy of the Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. Also Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them. And Universes, Parauniverses, and Planes - Assembly and Maintenance: A Creator's Manual.

Hangin' with the Buffster

Well, as predicted, over the last couple of days I'm mostly blown off all the stuff I should be doing and instead spent large chunks of my free time watching Buffy. I've now made my way up through the episode "Band Candy," which was actually one of the very few third season episodes I'd already seen, but is definitely one that's worth watching again. And again. And occasionally freeze-framing.

Um. Where was I?

Yeah, well, anyway, I could go on about how great this show is, how clever the writing is, how sharp the dialog, how excellent the acting, and so on and so on, but I'd really only be repeating myself, so I won't.

I will say that, paradoxically, I actually find myself looking forward to getting the third season DVDs now more than ever. I'm deeply grateful for the loan of the tapes, but of course, they're taped off the TV, so the quality isn't always that great, and the editing is kind of glitchy. I want this entire series in beautiful, crisp, DVD quality! And I want it now!

Of course, once I get to thinking along those lines, I always start thinking about how I really need a better TV to do justice to that nice crisp DVD quality, which gets me to thinking that I also really need a decent sound system to go with the better TV, and the next thing you know, in my imagination, I've already spent a couple of thousand dollars... Stupid imagination.

I'm Sure There's Something I Should Be Doing Besides Taking Stupid Quizzes...

you are a book called



what dr. seuss book warped you?

Oddly enough, I think that's one of the few Seuss books I haven't read... Guess we'll have to blame my warpage on something else...

i am



what
microsoft OS are you?

Well, I'm frightened, anyway...

Better Late Than Never: The Friday Five

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not? You know, it's really, really hard to describe in simple terms just what my job is... I work for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, as part of the Very Long Baseline Array project. We have radio telescope dishes all over the US (including Hawaii and the US Virgin Islands), and we take observations with them and record the data on big magnetic tapes. Then the tapes are shipped here, to Socorro, NM, and are procesessed by a computer that reads all the data off the big tapes, performs mathematical operations on it, and reduces it all to one much smaller tape. That's my job. The computer is called the "correlator," and I'm a "correlator operator." I hang all the tapes, operate the correlator computer, troubleshoot the data playback, and make copies of the resulting tapes. Eventually, after a couple more steps in the processing, that data is used to make an image of a distant galaxy or other interesting astronomical object. Combining the data from ten different antennas spread out over such a large area gives us a picture that's just as good as if we had one giant dish the size of the entire continent, which is really pretty damned cool.

As for whether this is what I chose to be doing... Well, in a way I kind of fell into it. I graduated from New Mexico Tech, here in Socorro, with a Bachelor's degree in astrophysics. There's not much you're qualified to do with a B.S. in astrophysics, really, but I was pretty burnt out on the subject and just didn't have enough drive or enough interest in the subject to want to keep on going through grad school. And at the time when I graduated, I was living with a guy who was still a student at Tech, so I wanted to stay in Socorro. So I took this job. I still have very little desire to go on to grad school, and I've long since broken up with the guy, but, I dunno, I'm content enough in this job, and there really isn't anything else that I feel I'd rather be doing.

2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be? I've been saying lately that what I really want is to quit my job and be a professional science fiction fan. If you know anybody who'd actually be willing to pay me for that, let me know!

3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices? My mother's done a lot of things. Currently, she's working as a "vendor/stocker" for the commissaries on various military bases in California. Basically, what that means is that she puts groceries on shelves! My dad sorts mail for the post office, and has done that job for many, many years. I don't know that my parents' occupations had anything to do with my choice of anything, except that I do remember thinking that I wanted to do something more meaningful than I saw their jobs as being. I think I had in mind Uncovering the Secrets of the Universe as a career choice, but I've been reasonably comfortable settling for Making a Tiny Contribution to the Progress of Science instead.

4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family? Nope. I'm not terribly interested in either!

5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why? That's a highly relative thing, isn't it? I mean, how hard or easy a job is is going to depend a great deal on your own personal suitability for it. The easiest job in the world for me would be Sitting Around on My Butt Watching TV While People Give Me Money for No Actual Reason, I'm afraid.

Wow!

I just noticed that my Site Meter counter just hit 1,000. Wow. I can't believe that that many people have actually been reading this thing. (OK, OK, I know it's mostly the same few repeat visitors, but still...)

I just really wish the comments system was working so you legions of faithful readers could, you know, comment. According to their website, enetation probably isn't going to be back online until next week. Sigh. You'll all come and talk to me when it's back up, though, right?

And Tonight's Featured Quiz Result Is...





Which Blake's 7 rebel are you?

this quiz was made by Auntie Krizu(:>)

Hmm, I dunno, I always saw myself as more of a Vila... I must say, this quiz is something of a work of art in itself, though be warned that a) it's a bit naughty, and b) it doesn't seem to work properly in Netscape.

Now that Farscape Is on Hiatus, I Turn to My Other Current TV Obsession...

I got just a big old box of stuff in the mail from my friend and fellow neophyte Buffy fan, Greta. She's lent me a bunch of Season Three episodes, a tape featuring Anthony Steward Head's other series, Manchild, and no fewer than five Buffy novels. There goes absolutely any chance I might have had of getting anything productive done this week!

Although the books are going to have to wait a little while, until I've finished reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which another friend has been bugging me to read, because he's almost finished with it and apparently wants to discuss it with me or something.

You know, you people should really stop encouraging me...

The Ballad of Betty's Brain Exploding

What's more disturbing than listening to Leonard Nimoy singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins"? Watching the video! You didn't know there was a video? Well, neither did I, but apparently blissful ignorance cannot last forever... An obviously sadistic friend of mine sent me the URL for this, and I am now feeling deeply traumatized, and, worse than that, I can't get the damned song out of my head! So I figured I'd spread the joy. You have to see this. Really. You do.

Needless to Say, I Watched It at the First Possible Opportunity... (WARNING: SPOILERS for Farscape episode 4.11, "Unrealized Reality.")

Well, it was certainly an interesting episode... Very layered. Lots of very subtle stuff going on, lots and lots and lots of resonances back to earlier episodes (and not just in the obvious, flashback-y bits, either). Which is very cool, and is something that holds a great deal of appeal for me. Other aspects of it, though, were just... strange. And don't necessarily make a great deal of sense. If the alien brought John there to kill him, why did he change his mind? What was with all the talking heads? And what, exactly, were we supposed to take from some of those really out-there "realities"?

It did, at least, finally answer one of the Great Unanswered Questions of this season: who sucked Moya through the wormhole, and why? And, as far as it goes, it was a perfectly believable and satisfying answer. I'm not sure that it goes quite far enough, though. We still don't know exactly what they did to Pilot and Moya. They obviously didn't just scan them; they must have done something to keep them from talking about the experience, if nothing else. And a zillon other loose ends are still out there, dangling.

I was getting a very 2001-ish feel even before John got sucked into the wormhole -- something about the compostion of that scene with him floating in space -- and, needless to say, that just got stronger as the episode went on. And John, of course, got exactly the same vibe ("Long as this whole deal doesn't end up with me as an old man"). Some time back, I made a long, rambling post in here about how much of a difference it makes that John is a much of a science fiction buff as anybody in the audience and that he, like the audience, is going to think of the weird stuff he experiences in terms of the books and movies and TV shows he knows from Earth. It really does make him easier to identify with, because he's thinking exactly the same things that I'd be thinking in his place. It's often been said that Star Trek -- at least, these days -- requires a major dollop of suspension of disbelief if you stop to think about it, because you have to accept that the Star Trek universe is a universe in which Star Trek as a TV show never existed, and thus is very different from ours. (This is particularly noticable when they do time travel episodes.) But Farscape doesn't require us as an audience or John as a character to pretend that we've never seen anything like it before... Which somehow makes it feel more real, at least to me.

Speaking of which, John's line, "I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash, or Arthur frelling Dent. I am Dorothy Gale from Kansas," could make a great tag line for the entire show. Another part of Crichton's appeal, in my opinion, is that he's very much not any of the heroic figures he's named. Nor is he as hapless as Dent, although I do believe there are a few passing similarities (like chronic bad luck, for one). No, John is just one of us: a guy who likes pizza and football, who saw Star Wars as a kid and dreamed of going into space, who can quote The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and who -- while intelligent, adaptable, and overall a really decent guy -- is still a flawed human being who is quite capable of screwing up very badly.

It's interesting to note, by the way, that The Wizard of Oz does, indeed, seem to be his favorite metaphor for his situation. It's one he's used many times before. I'm tempted to go off into a long, thoughtful ramble about how the stories we're familiar with shape our perceptions, our expectations, our self-images, and how the stories that John brings with him from his own (in other words, our) cultural background determine how he responds and reacts to the situations he finds himself in, but a) this is going to be a long enough post as it is, and b) that particular thought is still only half-formed in my head. So I won't, at least not now. It is an interesting topic to think about, though.

And while we're bringing up complex philosophical topics in order to ignore them, it occurs to me that all this stuff about "unrealized realities" and there being one John Crichton with millions of potential realities and so on and so forth doubtless has some kind of implications for all that relgious/mystical stuff I was musing about at length a couple of weeks ago. I honestly have no idea what those implications are, though. I just keep wanting to match the idea of different wormhole destinations up with Stark's "different destinations" somehow...

All that stuff about wormholes enabling time travel and John talking about Einstein and relativity and so on, by the way, actually made perfect sense and was pretty much physically accurate (in an admittedly vague sort of way). Which impresses me. Some of the other aspects of the whole thing, though, I'm less sure about. Being able to pop through the wormhole system into different realities is a familiar and easily grasped concept, sure. But the nature of those realities is something that, I have to say, I'm rather less clear on. I'm inclined to think of them as alternate possibilities, realities in which things went differently at some point or another than they did in John's reality. Both "...Different Destinations" and "The Locket" would seem to support that, and what the alien says would, too, I think. But some of those universes -- hell, most of those universes -- were so bizarre that it's nearly impossible to imgaine how they could ever have come about.

Otherwise, it does seem to fit fairly nicely with what little has been established about time travel/alternate universes in this show before. Interestingly, in addition to the aforementioned episodes, I was also strongly reminded of "Through the Looking Glass," and it occurs to me to wonder if the being Crichton encountered in that episode was one of these same people. She(?) certainly did seem to have very similar concerns.

Some random, unconnected thoughts:

Aeryn is apparently making a serious attempt to learn English, which is very interesting. It would seem to indicate that she has her mind set on going back to Earth with John... And of course, where he would have been utterly delighted by that thought once, he now seems hardly able to bear being on Moya with her. It shows tremendous optimism on her part, that's all I can say. I do also wonder how she's learning English, as John's hardly going to be teaching it to her. I suppose Sikozu might be teaching her. And what's that book she's reading? Is it one of John's notebooks? Some sort of primer made up for her by Talyn-John? Something else?

So, someone's finally noticed John's drug habit! And if he's having to double the dosage, things are clearly getting worse. Increased tolerance levels, check. Psychological addiction, check. Physical addiction, quite probably...

Scorpy and Sikozu, sittin' in a tree... I wonder if he's really interested in her at all, or is just leading her on because she's useful to him? Scorpy is defintely the kind of guy who will use every weapon in his arsenal, and while, with a face like that, I doubt sex is usually one of them, if it works, it works. Poor girl still obviously has no idea who she's dealing with. I wonder exactly what kind of an alliance he was proposing to her? (Well, you know, besides that...)

I don't know why, but I found myself really, really happy to see DK again, if only as a weird, alien-generated talking head. This is a guy who has clearly been very important in Crichton's life, and I've always thought there should be more references to him. Why wasn't he in the wedding visions in "Dog with Two Bones?"

Like the weird alien dude, I, too, have been wondering just why "Jack" gave John the wormhole knowledge in the first place. The only thing I've been able to figure is that he felt bad for putting John through all that stuff on the fake Earth and wanted to give him a little present to make up for it. Which, if true, is deepy, richly, ironic. And also rather naive and stupid of him...

Raelee Hill does an amazingly good Stark. If they ever lose Paul Goddard permanently, maybe they can get her to switch roles and be Stark for us! Actually, everybody does an amazing job at... uh, at whatever the hell it is that they're doing. But Hill gets an extra gold star for managing to capture Stark in both manic and soulful modes.

When John started shouting "Harvey knew!," I must admit, my immediate response was to scream back, "See! You shouldn't have killed him, you jerk! He could be helping you out right now!" Heh. I knew that was going to come back to bite him on the butt. (Of course, how Harvey knew is an interesting question... Gee, if he was still around, maybe John could have asked him.)

Cliffhangers that end with John floating in space somewhere are starting to become routine. Or at least, to become a repeated motif. We had him and D'Argo floating above the destroyed Gammak base at the end of "Family Ties," him floating alone in his module at the end of "Dog with Two Bones," and now him floating alone above Earth... Seems to me that his chances of rescue are a hell of a lot slimmer this time, though. And, of course, the big question is: has he arrived earlier, or later? But we're going to have to wait until January to find out. Aaaargh.

Don't Panic on My Account, I've Only Gone and Gotten a Life...

Just wanted to let you know that if you don't see the usual babbling about the latest Farscape episode tonight, it doesn't mean I've been hit by a bus or something. (Which, face it, would probably be the most logical conclusion given my obsessive consistency in this matter.) I'm getting together with some friends for a barbeque tonight and quite possibly won't get to see this week's episode until tomorrow. And, believe me, I did have internal conflict over this. The sensible part of my brain which tells me "Get out from in front of the TV and have a social life, dammit!" was briefly at war with the obsessive-fan part, which is also quite paranoidly convinced that, if I'm not home to make sure, my cable will doubtless go out, and my VCR will mess up, and I'll probably miss the one episode that'd actually make this entire season make sense. But one of aforementioned friends has a satellite dish and a Tivo, and assures me that even if that happened, he'd be able to put it on a tape for me, so I gave in and said I'd go...

A Correction

I just got an e-mail from my sister in response to Tuesday's post with all the questions about games and toys. She says that my story about how she dissected her Ken doll makes her look disturbed, and that it was so because she wanted to see how it worked ("well, a little bit"). So I stand corrected. And I should point out that she is in fact far more mentally balanced than I am!