poukledden

...a new post at skin hunger: Of Battlestars and Presumptious Deities, with Eczema Prelude.

Gregory did indeed watch the Battlestar Galactica finale, and found it fun and rewarding and deeply disappointing, all at the same time. Which has often been the way with this series and me.

I'm almost embarassed to say that I spent most of yesterday watching TV, what with Battlestar, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse (DUDE that episode rocked) and then 2 DVDs of Stargate SG-1. Total loser boy yesterday. It was grand.

I love the Rachel Maddow Show. And I just love the clever little setup Kent Jones sneaks into his segment for the joke at the end. BADABOOM!

Click here to see what I mean. Sorry, MSNBC videos apparently don't embed.

I also love how internet memes have reached that critical point where they can become parts of the general popular culture.

In other news...

I missed All Soul's this year, due to being asleep at the time after several miserable nights of barely sleeping. I sat down on my bed around 4, and then it was...8. Fugh.

I also had a mother of a headache this week, which didn't help. I rather suspect that I have been Less Than Good on the nutrition front, which is at least making headaches more likely. Must crack down on that, because this week was a whole lot of suck, and I'd rather not go through it again. I did manage to get out running tonight. That's another thing I've been sucking at, and will undoubtedly help with the ick feeling. The run sucked, in an absolute sense, but it was so nice out, and I was so jazzed to be doing it, sore head and all, that I came back feeling like it had been a Very Good Run after all.

Silly human behavior observation: last week I got a new keyboard and mouse, a Logictech wireless duo, 30 bucks grand total. My old mouse was dying, and repeated attempts to fix it had failed. And the old keyboard was getting dodgy, so what the hell, right? So. Gregory is all happy with his purchase. One nice bit for me, since I use my computer to wach DVDs (and Hulu and other video stuff, too, all pumped from the computer to my TV), is that since the keyboard is wireless I can have it with me on my futon so I can pause or whatever with ease. Here's the funny thing -- I pick the keyboard up and aim it at the TV when I do it, like it's an actual TV remote. Heck, yesterday I was watching the Daily Show on Hulu and went to pause it. The keyboard was on the desk, actually, and I --

Picked it up, and aimed it at the TV. I think that deserves a *facepalm*.

The ninth season MST3K episode "Werewolf"?

My new fav episode. EVAH. I so needed this tonight. I can't believe I had never seen this one.

Gregory is:

- currently reading the collected ghost stories of Edith Wharton

- so ready for November 4th to be over and done with

- headachy

- currently, and absurdly, addicted to a silly little Super Mario knockoff called Super Tux 2. Open Source games can be fun, yo. And cute as the dickens. I mean, a little penguin running around stomping on fluffy monsters? Priceless.

- enjoying the new Sarah Jane Adventures series. Even if they did the unforgivable and went for the tired old Evil Clown cliche.

- falling in love with Hannah Fury's music. I have her album The Thing That Feels. "The Vampire Waltz" destroys me every time I hear it.

In other news:

The Hunter's Moon seemed to bring out weirdness and other fun at my apartment complex, with odd conversations drifting through the night air, a shouting match somewhere in the complex, and at least one person having, apparently, a Very Good Time, if you know what I mean. In several bursts throughout the night, the last being somewhere around 5 am.  I say one person because either 1)the woman in question was really into self-love that night, or 2)her partner didn't make concrete penetrating sounds.

I'd never really noticed before, but it can actually be a bit depressing hearing other people have a Very Good Time. It is, however, a good sport to try to guess who it was. This apartment building is rather odd, sound wise, and there are ways that sound can travel through it -- largely, I think, because of the ventilation in the bathrooms.

Otherwise, moody. More soon, when certain parts of my head settle a bit. Peace, y'all.

This week, having completed The What Hulu Has of Buffy Marathon, I'm finally watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Hoping to get the 9 eps of season 1 watched this week so I can watch the first episode of season 2 and then be in the groove.

I'm liking it very much. And not just because of all the Summer Glau Hot Spooky Chickness going on.

Of course, I was a tad disappointed to see an episode called "Dungeons and Dragons" that didn't feature a single twenty-sided die. Not a one.

In other news, I spent a good chunk of the day off reading -- a combination of Jung (The Undiscovered Self) and Caitlin Kiernan (Murder of Angels). Murder of Angels is beautiful. And disturbing and creepy and complex and odd and wonderful. And Jung has me thinky thinky.

And just to end on a TV note, I also watched, courtesy of Netflix, the Doctor Who story The Remembrance of the Daleks, from the Sylvester McCoy era. It was amusing fun, but mostly reminded me that: 1)Sylvester McCoy was a great Doctor; 2)Ace was kickass; and 3)sadly, they had almost nothing to work with, script wise. There are 7th Doctor stories that amuse me -- Pecs lives! -- but the stories, really, are pale echoes of earlier years. This last appearance of the Daleks is kind of sad, with rickety Daleks that look like they are going to Jeep Samurai at any moment, fighting their way through a plot with more holes than a whiffle ball. The special effects, at this point, were getting desperate. Not only were the Daleks some of the most badly constructed ever, but we also get treated to a static lightning ball being used as a prop (it's a time travel controller!), the revelation that fairy lights figure prominently in Dalek machinery, and a Dalek spaceship that is apparently several crates stuck together.

Ah well, it was still fun. But I really wish we had gotten to see a really solid McCoy Doctor story. It would have been grand.

Ya know, I might come to regret that the Flash 10 beta seems to mostly fix some stupid bugs in Linuxland. Now I can watch Flash movies fullscreen, which means hulu.com, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and lots of other cool stuff).

I've been a complete wastoid this week.

Waste. Oid.

Discuss amongst yourselves: Spike and Drusilla have the healthiest relationship of any couple on the show.

The bad news -- I couldn't go running tonight.

The good news -- because after I got home from work the heavens they did open, and there be a deluge.

Or, should I say, the storm was very thunder and lightning oh my and then it started to rain and it was glorious, and has now been raining for about 2 and a half hours, pretty much nonstop.

Sweet.

So, instead, I curled up with Fingersmith, which I had been wanting to watch for a while (having loved the earlier Tipping the Velvet). Which reminded me once again that I really have to actually *read* Sarah Waters sometime, instead of just watching the BBC dramatizations of her books.

Anyway, it was delicious fun, very different from Tipping the Velvet, and has me thinking thinky thoughts, which is always a good thing. I keep finding myself drawn to this whole issue about how power corrupts human relationships, and I get deeply embedded in stories that deal with that issue. It might be bloggy material sometime, either here or on Atheist A Go-Go!.

...to take all the tropes of a good, old fashioned melodrama, turn them on their head (the "bad" guy wears white and is the good guy! the "good" guy wears black -- well, darkish gray -- and is the bad guy!), ply us with great songs and funny jokes, and then, at the moment of geeky wonder story orgasm...

...bury the knife deep.

Ouch. But, you know, one should remember -- as I reminded outraged people when Certain People died in Serenity -- that one of Whedon's primary Storytelling Rules is Not Everybody Gets Out Alive. Let's face it, the only reason Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanz had job security was because the shows were named after their characters.

The ending also reminded me of a Russell T. Davies statement in the Confidential Episode for the penultimate episode of Doctor Who this year. Every great love scene, he said, should have one of the lovers be shot down by a Dalek.

And now the wait begins, for Dollhouse. Is it really a new Fox, and a new, happy, holding hands and dancing Whedon/Fox relationship? Or will we be Firefly-ed? (and yes, I'm Whedon fanboy enough that I just assume that the show will be great)

(And yes, in case you're wondering, I will so buy the Dr. Horrible DVD when it comes out)

Joss Whedon's new show comes out in January. Which gives us plenty of time to get out in anticipation, and plenty of time to theorize how Fox will screw it up this time.

Yeah, I'm still bitter.

Today was one of those days that was just good, for no particular reason, just good. Like a trickster came through and said, hey, what the heck, here's some pixie dust, I'll screw with you later.