here comes superman from never-neverland

[walkingshadow]

so i was in boston for a little while there and then i wasn't anymore. that is, i finally, finally, FINALLY got my sorry self on a plane¹ and went to visit silentfire, where for a week and a half i co-opted her floor, swelled cambridge's already-swollen student-age population, and watched, by our very exacting calculations, forty billions hours of episodic television^{2, 3}:

1. SG-1 episodes 101-106: in which we discover that SG-1 is pure emotional pornography, i keep calling the first episode children of a lesser god, jack and teal'c are married—no, really—and we're pretty sure teal'c wins at life; for sure he wins at deadpan. what is an oprah?


2. SGA episodes 216-220: in which, frankly, everyone is STUPID, jesus christ. um, more on that later.


3. SGA episode commentaries from season one, including "the storm/the eye", "the siege" part 1 (but hilarious!), "rising", and "hide and seek" (jinto! come! *clap clap*)


4. miscellaneous episodes of CSI: NY: in which danny is hot. the end.


5. miscellaneous episodes of due south: in which ray and fraser are hot and also married.


6. the entire run to date of criminal minds which, i don't watch every show on television? but it could seriously be the best show on television right now. i feel the same way about it that i did about the west wing in its first two seasons⁴: i am completely in love with every single character and completely fulfilled by the show. i have zero desire to seek out fannish supplements, i just want more source.


7. as much NCIS as we could get the internets to cough up; this was before we found ncisepisodes. turns out that along with sweaters and plenty of socks and hortense-the-shiny-blue-ipod, i also remembered to pack my PIMP HAT. my love for this show and every character on it is boundless and true—BOUNDLESS AND TRUE, OKAY?—and silentfire was amenable to pimping, and pimping was DONE, \o/. and the best part about pimping at close range (see: stargate atlantis) is the reciprocal squee, the way the love just washes back and forth between us and the source until we're flailing messes. but i've been trying to post for the last eight days, so i'll squee about them later.


8. when we weren't watching fannish television we were watching songvids based on fannish television, some of the funniest, awesomest songvids EVER:
   
   
   • copa cabana (SG-1) don't be a hater!
   • the star wars stargate cantina (SG-1) two great tastes that taste great together!
   • fancy (SG-1) what barkley calls a Lord King Bad Vid, but it is SO RIGHT
   • cartoon heroes (SG-1/SGA) which is just awesome, joyful fun
   • making love out of nothing at all (SG-1) see above re: Lord King Bad Vids; see also: the marriage of jack and teal'c

and when we weren't watching anything at all (or waiting impatiently for it all to download) we occasionally ventured out into the cold open air, for food of every ethnicity, for ice cream, for comic books and groceries, for tea and coffee and hot chocolate, for adventures in public transportation⁵ and the support of local businesses. also i ended up shuttling back and forth to and from the airport four times, because gjstruthseeker wrenched herself away from lakeland for a spur-of-the-moment weekend getaway to join in the wacky fannish hijinks, walk in the snow, and eat italian food and drink beer.

and when we weren't fannishly engaged OR eating⁶, silentfire did manage to pick, you know, classes for the new semester, and i got to go along and shop them with her. they might be discontinuing the moral reasoning core requirement in the future, but her class on the public vs. private seems really interesting⁷ and the professor entertaining. and i got a kick out of a class called "the human mind" when we walked into the lecture hall and i immediately recognized steven pinker's hair: "hey, that looks like steven pinker," i thought. and then i remembered where i was and realized it probably was steven pinker. it seems like a fun hybrid class, and between the sensory processes, psychology, and linguistics classes i've taken he didn't actually tell me anything i didn't know, but he's an entertaining lecturer and i told silentfire that if she didn't take the class, i would cry. luckily, she did not need convincing.

that was how i spent my boston vacation! i miss her floor already. *pines* and i've been trying to post ever since i got home last tuesday. i would tell you all about what i've been doing since then, but basically i haven't been doing anything but working hard at wasting my potential—and succeeding! i've been reading as much NCIS fic as i can get my hands on (i've run out of recs and am fearful of the archives; send help); i'm hopelessly behind on the SGA fic that's been posted since i left. i saw munich⁸ with my father and transamerica⁹ with malelia_honu. i signed up for naljwrimo2006—i don't know why! if there's anything you'd like to see me ramble on about, i'd be happy to oblige.

you, livejournal, have been up to things in the past few weeks. johari swept like the plague through my flist, and i succumbed too, but i was immediately struck by 1. how limited the selection was, and 2. the fact that all the adjectives are POSITIVE ones. they don't even list the obvious antonyms—e.g. organized vs. disorganized, patient vs. impatient, giving vs. selfish. i suppose people are more likely to play if they have only positive things to choose from (alternatively: given the chance, people are more likely to be self-deprecating and choose negative aspects, rather than very positive ones); and friends and colleagues are probably reluctant to tell anyone they're incompetent or unhappy or callous. and strange. plus there's the simple fact that these *are* friends (for the most part) filling these out, and we're unlikely to be friends with people we would call cruel or vulgar or irresponsible. at least—not where our friends can hear us. it would probably be more successful if contributions were blind. but obviously i wasn't the first or the only one to think of this, and along came nohari to counter; here's mine.¹⁰ the selection's still pretty limited, but it's a whole lot more balanced this way.

yesterday was valentine's day; it started with my getting woken up by the doorbell at 9:30 a.m., but i managed to get back to sleep in the end, and later there were roses, filing, thai food, ice cream, and house¹¹. i don't know who it was yesterday who urged us to make it a day of self-indulgence, but in my world, EVERY day is a monument to self-indulgence, so let's try this instead:

1. pick a number between 1 and 4,943 4,953 and i will send you the corresponding song from my itunes library. i made a new playlist and shuffled it all up, it's pure grab-bag. it could be the shins, it could be destroyer, it could be barry manilow! don't be a hater!

and

2. i haven't made icons in a long, long time. comment and tell me what you'd like and i'll make you one. or don't tell me anything and i'll make something based on one or more of your interests.

oh, and my dad and i are going to atlanta on friday. i keep forgetting about this. *makes note to self*

---

footnotes gone WILD:

1. i flew jet blue and i heartily recommend them. if you buy in advance and online you can get cheap, cheap fares (i mean, depending on what day you're flying and what time of day and year, etc.), they've got an easy points-based frequent-flyer program, the planes are clean and shiny and brand-new, the seats are leather and as roomy as they promise, the staff are friendly, and the flights are on time—or early. if there are timing or other problems, they're apologetic in both mien and material value (according to my uncle, who's flown with them many times and has only positive things to say). okay, this concludes my bizarre descent into enthusiastic sales pitch.


2. that said, the only thing we watched on an actual television set was the men's final of the australian open, sunday from four to six-thirty a.m., live from melbourne fourteen time zones away. in conclusion: baghdatis is a good-looking cyprian kid who will be doing great things in the sport and i can't wait to see more of him, BUT FEDERER PWNS YOU ALL, OKAY? OKAY. and i'm so freaking glad i didn't remember the women's final in time to coax silentfire into staying up with me to watch it the day before, because what a fucking waste of time THAT would have been.


3. not counting the television i watched on the plane. with thirty-six channels of direct tv available to me (available for free to all jet blue patrons! no, seriously, what is up with the cheerleading?) i settled on TLC's what not to wear, since there's basically nothing to watch between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a weekday. that said, i think i love stacy and clinton omg. plz give me five thousand dollars and help me shop for clothes kthx. oh, and on the way home on tuesday i caught the middle of a BSG marathon on sci-fi. conclusion: i have no idea wtf is going on, except that i kind of DO, through the process of flist osmosis. mostly i watched with the sound off and listened to aqua and carbon leaf on hortense-the-shiny-blue-ipod. if this trip has taught me nothing else, it's that jesus there are an awful lot of obscenely attractive people on television. is there some kind of culling beam that picks them out of the general population and deposits them in hollywood and british columbia? is it that all the obscenely attractive people are on television, or that obscenely attractive people are the only people on television? is this like rectangles and squares all over again?


4. technically i didn't discover fandom in the real sense (or slash in any sense) until the end of my freshman year (i.e. spring 2002), and i hadn't been watching the third season at all during that time; but i spent that whole summer camped out on the floor of my room reading deep into the archives of smallville and sports night, and i tried west wing fic—slash, het, gen, everything—but it always felt cold or superfluous or both.


5. seriously, i got tom lehrer's the subway song in my head every single time we got on the T. awesome.


6. which we often did simultaneously! there were (among many other things) drinking-game formulations over hot chocolate at burdick's, songvid storyboarding over sandwiches at simon's, and hours of meta over tea and cheesecake at algier's where we covered john and rodney characterization, jenn's shed your skin, del.icio.us (and nutritious!) bookmarks, reading styles (abstract vs. aural/visual), jack o'neill vs. john sheppard, and SG-1 vs. atlantis.


7. once i got past the fact that it's PHILOSOPHY and you're still treating old dead white men as the keepers of the keys to truth and justice and you're judging the entire world based on a narrow western philosophical tradition.


8. spoilers for munich: i would say that it was a successful movie, in that i think steven spielberg wanted me to realize that all these people are people and people make mistakes and have families and only want the best for their people and their families, and his movie conveyed that; it's just that i knew that already steven, kthx. so i went away thinking "that eric bana certainly is a good-looking lad and i would go over to his house for dinner ANY DAY OF THE WEEK." i was struck by the violence—i didn't realize how much damage those automatic weapons do—and how unused to the violence everyone seemed to be—that is, how amateurish they all were. i don't know if that's a function of 1. spielberg making a "realistic" movie vs. a slick action-adventure, 2. the sensibilities and experience of secret agents in the '70s vs. today, or 3. spielberg making his characters (again, ALL of his characters) as human and unsure as possible (or a combination of two or more of the above). all i could do was picture ziva watching the movie and cursing at them for being idiots.


9. spoilers for transamerica: good but not great. felicity huffman was fantastic and she deserves all the kudos she's getting, but the story itself wasn't particularly fresh; plus it set off my embarrassment squick more than once. actually, i see now what thisisfurious was talking about here:
   

   i saw Transamerica last week and decided about twenty minutes before the end that i will interpret the film as a metaphor for the transsexual experience in general as well as a story about a particular transgendered person.
   
   just as transsexuals are sometimes required (by the doctors whose permission they have to recieve to go through with the surgery, for example) to adopt very 'traditional' identities for the gender of their choice (eg hetero marriage, children, etc) this film chose to dress its potentially radical topic in the clothes of an exceedingly formulaic and conventional road movie narrative, complete with wacky parents as comic relief and soap-opera plot elements. is this what it takes to get the world to pay attention? it does seem to be working, i guess.



10. the things is, i don't know where i see myself in ten years, or what my favorite movie is, or who my heroes are, but if anyone ever wants me to describe myself in five words, i'm ready to go: lazy, curious, bright, jealous, self-destructive. in social psych we learned that people tend to descibe themselves as belonging to classes of people (the class of professors, nurses, atheists, women, etc.), but those five adjectives are who i am. if anybody asks.


11. spoilers for house 2x12: i haven't seen the last few episodes, so i apparently missed the whole stacy thing, but okay. one of the things i like most about this show is that house is the most consistent character on television, which is impressive because he's such an abrasive, audacious character, and the writers have stuck to their guns. on one of the season one DVD extras hugh laurie says house absolutely doesn't care what people think about him—and that he doesn't care about being seen doing good things as much as he doesn't care about the bad or petty ones. he might hide a lot, but he also doesn't hide a lot. he's so complex and he's played with so much confidence by the actor, i just want to unravel him, the yards and yards of him, and see what's inside. after this exchange: House: "The universe always settles the score." Cuddy: "Does it?" House: "No. But it should." i immediately inserted "and that's where you come in." things that don't balance are going to niggle at him the way things do when they don't make sense. i'm fascinated by the idea of his moral code; i'd love to know the shape of it. i'd love to know the story behind the cheating incident. in re: next week's show, i don't know about this junkie thing. this show has ZERO credit when it comes to drugs, so i shudder to think what they're going to do with this plotline. also it's way too early in the series for a rock bottom. shrift's recap is my favorite. see also this tiny little conversation that is EXACTLY the way it would go down.

Comments

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

icon? icon! ♥


also, 2,745 & 68 if possible. *hearts*

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

icon! <3!

tyler durden + poe (text says "not the only one who runs on instincts." i don't know your position on tiny text! if you don't like it, say the word and i'll remove it)



and music!

#68: better than ezra - king of new orleans (http://s53.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=23Q50MI2SJQDW1LOSU1MA6HWBO)

#2,745: snow patrol - how to be dead (http://s53.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=146F1FP2P2PAM3FHHFE5RMKRBN)

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

beeeee, the icon isn't showing up. :( [and i am fond of tinytext, just so's you know.]



OMG. I HAVE BEEN NEEDING THAT SONG. *is delighted*

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

okay, that was me being stupid stupid. try now?

(yay! i am glad you are delighted, whichever song it was!)

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

o! bee, i LOVE IT.


(also, king of new orleans. i'd forgotten who sang it, and i used to love that song. any time you wanna upload more better than ezra? i'm totally good with that idea. ;D)

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

also, i have just realized that i have to give you mad props for knowing which poe i was talking about.


*grin* most people assume that i'm talking about the one who died drunk in a gutter.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

ahaha! yeah, i considered the dead epileptic romanticist, and then discarded him in favor of modern rock. glad to know my instincts were right on that one. and whoo! i am even gladder that you like the icon! one day (and hopefully one day SOON) when there's high-speed internet in this house, i'll upload all the better than ezra i have for you.

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

omg. bee, i like. i bless the day that i friended you, because you rock so very very very much.


*twirls you* why don't we talk more? i like you!


(also, you should be aware that i just finished a nine and a half hour work day, and am a bit delerious etc. just so you don't, you know, get freaked out by the WHEE! tone of the above and run for the hills. *shifty eyes*)