Living in the host country has its perks

If you know me--and let's face it, if you don't, I'm a little confused as to why you're here, but hey, whatever--you know that I live in England. You also know that I don't exactly love living here. Well, that's changed, at least for the duration of the Olympics (never mind the weather. The athletes probably won't drown. Probably.).

You also may or may not know about the weird institution in the UK known as the TV Licensing Agency. If you don't know about this archaic beast, so far as I can tell it's their job to send out letters demanding money that range from vaguely annoying to definite harassment to flat-out threatening. If you pay them, they stop for a year or so. The TV license fee is charged to households/private rooms,* and the revenue is used to fund the BBC, keeping it advert free.** The Boy and I don't pay a TV license, not because we're cheap or morally opposed to it or anything, but because we don't watch TV as it broadcasts.*** I finally got them to stop sending us letters by telling them we didn't need one. Been over a year and no one has come out to confirm this (surprise surprise) and no more letters. Go me.

But I digress. Since we moved and changed ISPs to non-sucky Virgin, our connection has improved immensely, although streaming is still dodgy, so I doubt live-streaming is possible. But that's ok. Because the BBC claims to be broadcasting the entirety of the Olympics. As in every event in every sport and every match, not just the semi/quarter/finals. They've put something like 20 additional stations on for the duration of the Olympics, and are broadcasting 15 hours a day. And though The Boy and I can't watch it here, we did download the BBC iPlayer Wii app. This means about 24 hours after broadcast we can watch events and coverage. Granted it's not live, but I don't care if I know who wins prior to seeing the event (which I will unless I stay completely off the internet). And it's also probably be broadcast before NBC decides to show it in the US--if they show it at all. If you've been following the Twitter hashtag #NBCfail (which is absolutely hilarious, by the way) you'll know that NBC is outdated and behind the times. They don't care about what their viewers want, and to make it even better, an exec in charge of their digital media posted this (she's since taken it down)

Classy. Real classy, and a great way to piss off your viewers even more. It's also interesting to note that someone who is supposed to be social media savvy marked it "+1" which is not a Twitter thing, but rather a Google+ approval. Not at all savvy.

The whole point of this post is simple. I don't love living in the UK most of the time, but at least we get our Olympics coverage properly. Yes, a lot of people think it's because we're the host country, but we also think that the success that the coverage is having will encourage the BBC to do this for all the future Olympics. I certainly hope so.

And for those people struggling in the US to get live coverage, or at least complete coverage, there are ways to access the BBC online (the proper BBC, not BBC America or BBC International) to get your fix, either live or at least complete events. Or events that NBC doesn't want to broadcast. If you wish to take that route, there are plenty of directions telling you how online (it's in a legal gray area, but not explicitly illegal), or you can drop me a message and I can try to help you. In the meantime, enjoy your shitty NBC coverage while I watch the (mostly ok****) BBC coverage, which includes commentators like John McEnroe, Michael Johnson, and Dame Kelly Holmes. You know, real athletes.

*For example, each dorm room would have to pay for a license because the individual rooms are separately keyed, but a house only needs one license to cover all the TVs in it.

**By advert free I mean free of advertising for car insurance and such. There's plenty of advertising for other BBC shows and channels. And I do mean plenty.

***Any live signal, regardless of how you watch it--live internet feed, mobile phone, cable/satellite/freeview box--makes you subject to needing a license. This isn't a problem for us because our phones suck, as does our internet connection. Besides, I don't know where to find live streams of most things on the web, for I've never bothered to refine that part of my web ninja-fu.

****During the early Beach Volleyball games on Saturday, the camera was showing player signs to the viewers. This would have been fine and interesting, except there are giant viewscreens in the Horseguards arena, so in effect the opposing team could "steal signs." Oops. At least they fixed that really fast.

Frustrations

So I'm not eligible for citizenship this year, it seems.  I'm less than thrilled about this; I swear they changed the rules on me, but I can't find any proof of that being the case.  As they post all immigration rule changes on the Home Office website, and I've read through all of them back to 2009, I'm thinking maybe I misunderstood.  Either way, I'm still angry because instead of being able to apply for citizenship and be done with this malarkey, I have to spend another £550 for another visa (settlement/indefinite leave to remain) and I still have to take the stupid "Life in the UK" test, which is another £50, plus £10 for the book.  Like the US citizenship test, no citizen of the country could actually pass it.  Argh.

In addition, I'm still angry at the various neighbors and the noises they produce, but despite that, Adam and I will be signing our Lewisham Road lease for another year.  Our landlord was over today, repainting part of the bathroom for us since we have mildew in places, and it was missing paint over the shower.  I don't think the color matches, but honestly, I really don't care right now.  It still looks better.

Also, our TV is half broken.  Last we looked the picture was ok, but it makes a horrific static/buzzing/hissing sound.  It's not easily described, but it's quite loud, doesn't seem to be coming from the speakers, and we're worried it will burn the house down (some of the possible problems do include fire, according to the ever-trustworthy internet).  So the search for a TV repairman continues, as the number Adam was given is disconnected, and the other number is missing a digit.  Luckily, our aforementioned landlord's father-in-law is a TV repairman, so hopefully Landlord will text me his phone number this evening (it wasn't in his phone).  This is doubly sad because while I was able to finish the first series of Downton Abbey (which is completely awesome, by the way), I just got all seven seasons of Deep Space 9, and without a functioning TV I can't watch them, unless I either a) use Adam's computer or b) grab the little TV from the bedroom and hook it up.  It's a good little TV for a bedroom (except we can't plug it in because there are no outlets on that side of the room), but it's not real good for DVDs or gaming--or really anything that decides to letterbox the screen.  I watched Lord of the Rings on it, and--I kid you not--the picture was only about 3 inches tall.  Also, it hated my PS2 cable, and when we played Lego Star Wars on it, the picture was green.  So all in all it was a very good day when Steve of Titanic Mill gave us his old TV, and then apologized to us that it was so crap.  We love it, and think/hope it just needs to be cleaned to be as good as new.

Otherwise, writing went really well yesterday.  The plot is spinning off in a direction I didn't anticipate, which is ok, since I was hoping something would develop in the way of a plot, but now I have to figure out this particular direction.  I created a "bad guy" with a more-than-usual nefarious plan, that the hero feels obligated to stop, but I don't know what said bad guy's nefarious plan is.  Still, any semblance of a plotline is good because even a vague idea is something I can flesh out, and more than I had before.  So that's finally starting to chug along.  Which is extra good, since the deadline is March.

I'm also going to a conference in York at the end of February, which will hopefully be interesting and very good for both Girl Museum and me professionally.  If all goes well, I'll be presenting with another Girl Museum intern, and she seems extra nice because apparently I can crash at her place instead of shelling out for a room.  Adam thinks I should still get a hotel room, but since he's not coming with me, I'd rather not spend the money since I'm not making any of it.  Besides, it's only for one night, so it's unlikely to be too horrific.  And if it is, well, it's only for one night, and I lived with my freshman roomate for a year at PLU (trust me, it was tough, and not just because I'm a bitch who can't share).  Perhaps someday I should share those stories.  I probably won't, since they're not flattering at all to someone who had pretty severe mental and emotional (and physical) issues, but some are probably funny in hindsight.  About 13 years on, I don't find most of them particularly funny, just sad and hurtful.

Men are Men, but Women are Girls

I first posted this at Girl Museum's blog.  Too nice a day to write two separate posts, and I fear that work must come before play.

The Golden Girls. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/15/the-golden-girls-box-set

Language is a funny thing.  Words often carry connotations and subtle meanings we don't think about on a daily basis, but can greatly affect our language choices and how we interpret things.  These subtle clues and changes in definition may prompt you to think "that's why we have thesauruses" (thesaurusi?), but sometimes the societal overlays cannot be captured strictly by a thesaurus.

Take the word "woman" for example.  Woman, as defined by a dictionary--the one built into my computer's operating system, in this case--means "an adult human female."  Simple and to the point, no?  It does go on to expand the definition in a variety of ways (employment, role, duties, etc.), but in it's essence, a woman is an adult human female.

On the other hand, "girl" has two definitions.  First is "a female child."  Second is where our potential confusion enters: "a young or relatively young woman."

What's wrong with "woman?"  Or "young woman?"  Well, I can't speak for everyone, but connotations have been formed, and, according to Carolyn Bronstein, the author of Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976-1986, "Girls are young and sexual and pretty and focused on their bodies and focused on attracting people of the opposite sex. A girl doesn't have to take things so seriously."  On the other hand, Bronstein adds, "Woman carries the image of an older, strident, militant kind of feminist presence that is, in popular culture today, frowned upon."  In short: "Woman just weighs heavily, and girl is light."  Additionally, every time I've heard the phrase "young woman" used, it's generally condescending.

Hollywood has certainly picked up on this trend.  There were the Designing Women, but mostly we've seen the girls of Sex and the City.  Once upon a time there were Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place (eventually losing the pizza place); the mother-daughter duo of the Gilmore Girls; Gossip Girl is still talking about Manhattan's elite; and reality show The Bad Girls Club is still running.  And who can forget about The Golden Girls?  Those four feisty women showed that, at least once upon a time, being over the age of 50 and widowed or divorced was not all bad.  This fall, all those girls will be joined by New Girl, 2 Broke Girls, and on HBO, plain ol' Girls.

Now, I haven't seen these shows, and all I know about them is what I've read (which honestly, isn't much).  But before I saw anything about these shows beyond their titles, I could have told you that they are all about women in their twenties, who are attractive, and primarily in-and-out of relationships (with equally attractive twentysomething men).  Why?  Because they are about "girls," "not women."  And apparently, women aren't fun-loving, attractive, or interesting.

To be fair, I don't know how accurate my interpretation is, but since "friends" isn't a practical name for a sitcom, something else had to be used.  So why girl?  Because it's marketable.  Most females in the demographics that networks are aiming for seem to refer to themselves as girls (or are at least assumed to).  I know I'm guilty of that, and I know I'm not alone.  I don't inherently see anything wrong with choosing to be labeled a girl over a woman, but I am sad that the word "woman" seems to carry a stigma.

"Men" and "man" don't face the same issues, though "boy" can range from mildly insulting to extremely offensive, depending on the circumstances.  But men are lucky.  They not only can be "manly" or "a man's man," but they can also be a "guy" or "one of the guys."  Women don't have such a luxury, or a surfeit of terms.  As "Grammar Girl" Mignon Fogarty says, "It would be nice to have a female equivalent of 'guy,' [...] I suppose it would be 'gal,' but that sounds quite antiquated."

On Storytelling

In case you somehow missed it, I love to read.  I love stories.  I love the way a good author can craft a tale in a way that will draw me in and compel me to continue reading, either because the quest is interesting (usually not, actually, if you want to closely examine pretty much any story), or more likely because of the impact the journey has on the protagonist.  The best stories are about characters and how they react to events and grow throughout the quest.  Essentially, everything else is a MacGuffin.  Now I'm not saying that the quest/journey/plot isn't interesting and important, because it is, but it's how it affects the character that is most interesting.  A well-crafted mystery can achieve both; you want to know how and why _____ happened, and there should be some sort of impact on the characters.  A less-well crafted mystery will have you less interested in the characters, but still curious about the how and why (pulp fiction is a good example--hard-boiled dicks are all basically the same, but the mystery might still be good).  And conversely, a mystery that's purely character driven can be a bit dull as well; you did want a mystery to puzzle over, didn't you?  Even so, if only half of a mystery novel is well-crafted, then it's still a fun read.

A prime example of a rather crappy plot but a character that grows is actually the rather trashy Anita Blake series.  The plots are all really quite similar, and fairly forgettable, but the characters grow over time.  Anita, especially, but all the characters exhibit change in relation to their surroundings and events.  Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are interesting in the fact that the world itself is effectively a character.  It grows and changes in response to the characters who populate it, and it's one of the few constants throughout his novels--yes, Death appears in every Discworld novel, and the Night Watch, Witches, Lord Ventinari, and others appear regularly, but the true star of the novels is the world itself.  I don't like some of the plots or their main characters (Thief of Time), but I love the effect that the characters have on the world; Going Postal, for example, introduced a mail system, and The Colour of Magic introduced the concept of insurance (and the idea of burning down your building for money).  These ideas grow throughout the novels they're introduced in, as well as subsequent novels.  Pratchett's world is anything but static, and it's the most fascinating part of his novels.

But still, it all comes down to characters.  And that, my friends, is why I think the medium of TV is wonderfully suited for storytelling.  Mom and Dad don't watch a lot of TV, unless you count baseball in the summer and football in the fall/winter, but they do tend to watch shows on USA Network.  Conveniently, USA's slogan is "Characters Welcome."  And if you look at every single show they put out, they are character driven.  Monk.  Yes, there are weekly mysteries, and many of them were excellent (and a few were crap, but for 8 seasons, there was probably less than a full season total of bad, or even mediocre episodes).  But the real reason to watch Monk was to watch Adrian Monk cope--or not--with the loss of Trudy, with the loss of his badge, and with his crippling OCD and 312 different phobias.  Monk could have been designed as a novel or series of novels (and there are spin-off novels), but to truly bring Monk to life, to be successful in making him believable, Monk needed Tony Shaloub.  Tony Shaloub managed to make Monk human.  Seriously flawed, and with comedic touches, but human.  Monk is believable as a human being.  I think the real humanity would be hard to portray in a novel.  The expressions that flash across his face, and the struggle he goes through to touch or try to not touch things would be far too wordy in a novel, but necessary to humanize him.  Without them, Monk is a caricature; but with them, in written form, the reader will be continuously yanked out of the story by the details of Monk's compulsions.  With an actor behind the OCD and the phobias, however, Monk was praised by people who suffer from excessive OCD as being real, as being an example of what they actually suffer through, while still being funny at times, but not mocking or hurtful.

USA has done something else with their characters now.  I didn't think about it this way until Mom said it, but on Suits, they've created a character who I viewed as the lead (even though he gets second billing), but Mom views as the MacGuffin.  Mike is someone we actually care about, someone who reacts to, and grows and changes in response to external stimuli.  But I think Mom is right; Mike's job is to act as a MacGuffin for Harvey.  Now, I think you could argue that many characters serve as MacGuffin's for many other characters: in Burn Notice, the burn notice itself is a MacGuffin, but this season so was Max--or at least his death.  In literature, Lord Voldemort is far more MacGuffin than character.  In the Harry Potter books, he rarely ever acts as a character, even when he's there (and mostly he's not--he's discussed and feared, but rarely do we see him in person).  He is the reason for the quest.  He also happens to be a character, and not even a completely one-dimensional one, but mostly, he's the MacGuffin.

But why do I think TV is such a great medium for storytelling?  Well, in a good, scripted TV show (not "reality," which is also scripted, and certainly not real, but isn't designed to tell a story), you have the same necessary elements as you have for a book.  You're writing a story, so you need the same things.  You need a plot/journey/quest/raison d'être, you need a protagonist and usually some other characters, and you need the characters to emotionally grow and change in response to the quest that's been put upon them (theoretically, this is optional, but trust me, it's not).  But once you put the words into the mouths of actors, you get something else--real depth of humanity.  People you really care about.

I care about Anita Blake, and I care about Harry Potter, but Monk was real to me.  Alicia on The Good Wife is absolutely real to me.  She would be an excellent character in a novel, but Julianna Margulies adds life to Alicia, by being able to show all those little things that can be hard to put into words.  Conversely, it can be hard to translate some things to screen--the depth and richness of Tolkien's world is one, though Peter Jackson did a credible job overall, and I have no notion how you could reasonably translate the magic of Cooper's King of Shadows to the screen.  But where TV has, at least in my mind, the advantage over movies, is that it's serialized.  It's broken down into chapters.  We may satisfactorily wrap up one week, and another week we may be left with a cliffhanger (Lost, it got old after a time).  But you always know there's more.  In a movie, theoretically, that's it.  In reality, there will probably be at least one sequel, and probably more, but it's supposed to be done, finis.  Like a novel, you may want to visit it again, but TV, like a novel, keeps you driving forward because there's always a next chapter.  Until there's not, but networks have started to not do that to fans as often now, in part to avoid another "Nuts" incident, I would bet.  TV is an extended novel, one that has convenient stopping points, but another chapter if you want there to be.  And if not, you can stop at any point.

The most haunting thing I've seen in a while

If you don't watch House this clip may not seem as awesome, but I watched this episode (Season 7, Episode 15: Bombshells) yesterday afternoon, and this clip has been haunting me ever since.  Everything about it is amazing to me: the costumes, the coreography, the singing (but then I've always been slightly in love with Hugh Laurie--and Stephen Fry, to be fair, since I've always thought of them as a pair), the way the sequence related to the rest of the espisode, and so on.  If anyone truly cared, I could analyze it in depth for ages, but that's the sort of thing best done with friends and beer.  Or wine, I suppose.  Regardless, I thought Bombshells was the best episode of House this season, and if not in the last two seasons, it's certainly a contender.

EDIT:  NBC Universal sucks, and "blocked this video on the grounds of copyright."  I can get you the audio of Hugh Laurie and crew singing, but no longer the haunting video, so that's lame.  While I understand and mostly agree with copyright, I'm not sure I can see how having this single, totally awesome clip hurts NBC in any way.  Entire episode?  Definitely remove it.  One clip?  Why bother?

Obligatory Posting

Though I don't post as often as some would like, not having my own computer certainly lessens it.  Since I had to login anyway to add to my reading list, I figured I'd do my blogger duty and actually write and post something else.  So here goes random thoughts and updates.

1.  I think I am in love with Adam Baldwin.  He is the greatest Baldwin brother of all, perhaps because he isn't a Baldwin brother at all (no relation to those idiots).   You may know him from such shows as Chuck (John Casey), Serenity/Firefly (Jayne), and Independence Day (Major Mitchell).  He's also been in about a gazillion other things, and he seems to rock every role he's in.  I dearly love him.  My Adam is less pleased about that.

2.  Carmel is back from her holiday tomorrow.  It should be...interesting.  She told/warned me that she's a royal bitch when she gets back from Crete because she loves it there and never wants to leave.  I told her she could be a bitch until Monday, when I wouldn't put up with it anymore.  I've had no word from or about Karen.  I hope she's doing as well as she can be.  Sarah was nice and very helpful/hardworking.

3.  The trafficking of girls is a horrible, grim thing.  I encourage awareness of this worldwide phenomenon (yes, it's all over the States and UK as well, and includes domestic girls from both countries, and well as foreign nationals/illegal immigrants), but would not suggest immersing yourself in the topic as full as I have done over the last week or so.  Girl Museum research, FYI.  Also, Girl Museum has a new exhibition that I forgot to mention earlier: Hina Matsuri: Celebrating Girls' Day in Japan.  Go check it out!!

4.  Beer Festival this weekend.  Two, as a matter of fact, but Adam and I are skipping the one here in Huddersfield (it was only "enh" last year, even with Matthew the freakishly bearded with us) and heading down to Nottingham to what looks like will a totally awesome, rocking, drunken good time.  They have over 700 real ales and ciders/perries down there, and it's in the Castle grounds, behind Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem (the oldest pub in England, and it has good food and damn fine beer itself).  Plus Matthew (of the freakish beard--he grew it at some point in the like 3 years we hadn't seen him before last year.  Mountain man meets Wandering Jew) and his awesome woman Ami will be meeting us there, as well as Claire and her Matt.  Claire, Matthew, and Adam all were in the physics department at Leicester, and Matthew is one of our favorite drinking buddies (Gareth is another, but he sucks and won't come visit), and Claire is just a blast.  Plus, both of their partners are fun, smart, people, so it should be a good time.  No word on Ms. Claudia's attendance at this point, but she may also make a part of the drunken festivities.  Sadly, we're heading down early on Saturday, and back on Sunday, so we'll probably be tired for a good chunk of Saturday, and, shall we say, delicate?, on Sunday.  Still, the things we endure to experience good beer!

5.  Brewing.  We bottled our fourth batch weekend before last (I think).  Very dark, chocolaty.  First proper tasting should happen this weekend, but it won't be truly ready for consumption for a couple more (or longer) weeks.  Tony is taking me to pick up ingredients for our next batch and the one after it tomorrow.  My recipe is the next one to go into the fermenter; I'm hoping to make a sweetish, darker ale with a smoky aroma and flavor.  We'll see how it turns out.  The batch after that has already been named: The Bastard Brew.  It will be made from all our leftover grains, bulked out with some basic malt, and some random hops that Adam decided on.  My batch will probably hit the fermenter weekend after the beer festival, and we'll bottle it right before we fly out to the States for Thanksgiving.  The Bastard Brew will, if Adam gets his way (and we have time), be made between our returning in the beginning of December and the New Year.

I'm going to lay down and read for a while.  There is probably more to say, but I feel I've covered at least my basic blogging obligation at this point.

I'm still Lost

Seriously.  What the hell was that?!  I was told that the writers had a full storyline, that the plot twists and turns for the entire series were planned out from the very beginning.  If they were, then it's just pathetic, and if they weren't, well, it was still a crap ending.  Adam and I watched it, and neither of us is sure about what happened, but we both know it was lame.  It might have been good, if it hadn't been so abrupt and random.  I mean, up until Christian Shepherd showed up at the church, I was ok with everything.  And now...they're dead?  But they weren't in purgatory and dead from the beginning?  Really, I shouldn't have to do research on a TV show that's ended to find out what happened!

What about Aaron?  Why was it so damned important that Claire be the one who raise him?  Why was Walt special?  And what the fuck were the numbers?!  Plenty of other questions, but I can live without most of them.  Those though, were pretty damned important, and they were just totally ignored.

Ugh.  The last 10 or so minutes were a total letdown, and have managed to ruin the rest of what was, overall, a pretty intriguing show.  I honestly feel like six seasons (well, about 5, parts of the second and third season sucked) were flushed down the toilet there.

Plus, my mad internetz research skillz tell me that FlashForward, a show that I've only seen the pilot of but thought was fabulous, has been cancelled, whilst V, a show that's been done and redone several times, and was quite yawn-worthy the 4 episodes I saw, is back for next season.  At least Castle was picked up for a third season (as was Glee, and the second season of Glee hasn't even aired yet).  And House was renewed--somewhat surprisingly, the way Fox dicked it around this season--as was Desperate Housewives.  And as long as USA network keeps all their original programming going, I'll still be a (mostly) happy camper.

I really need a life.

Guilty Pleasures

I have many, many guilty pleasures.  Cadbury Creme Eggs almost daily until August.  Staying in bed half the morning while Adam is a good boy and gets up.  But one of my biggest is my TV fixes.  At the moment, Glee is probably my guiltiest pleasure (minus the Creme Eggs--also, if you can get a Mars Egg, they are wonderful.  If you can't, let me know soon, and I'll get you one or two and post them).  I don't think the show itself is particularly fabulous, but I'm not really sure, because I'm one of those people who think that the planet should spontaneously burst into song to declare it's feelings.  Glee started off just singing when it was appropriate: during rehearsals, performances, that sort of thing.  It's now slowly starting to move into the musical realm, and it makes me squee a small bit.  They did the Charlie Chaplin version of "Smile" one day and I damn near cried.  They did "Don't Rain on My Parade" and I wanted to cheer (actually, I wanted to sing along, but I'm more in the contralto range, not soprano, so mostly it just sounds like I'm trying to strangle a chicken on the higher notes.  Well, and I don't know all the words.  That doesn't help so much.).  They did a fabulous duet of "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, and in fact I did cry, (in part) because the male soprano hit the notes clean (except for where he threw it intentionally).  That was the first episode I saw, and I was hooked and had to go back to the beginning.  So I was thrilled when they started airing more new episodes.  I really don't think it's probably a very good show, but it's highly addictive, and if you like performance choir type things, it's great for that.  Plus, Jane Lynch is just hilarious.  But I think she's great in everything I've seen her do, and I really want to watch more of her stuff.

My other slightly less guilty pleasure, since so, SO many people are hooked on it, is Lost.  I'm psyched it's the final season and we're really starting to get answers, but I'm also sad that it's nearly over.  I think, however, that getting Answers (after six seasons, it deserves the capital A) trumps more episodes.  And besides, I just watched the first episode of FlashForward, and I really enjoyed it, so assuming it lasts, I think it might replace Lost for me.

Castle is my other current guilty pleasure, though I have no guilt over it whatsoever (nor over Lost when it gets right down to it, or Desperate Housewives or House).  I love Nathan Fillion with every fibre of my being, and the show just makes me laugh and almost cry.  Witty and smart and sarcastic and sweet, with the trademark Nathan Fillion comedic delivery.  Love it!  Plus, for an added bonus, the show decided to release a Richard Castle novel (ghost-written, of course, and the real author's identity has been a well-kept secret).  Yeah, I really want the book, which is absolutely a guilty pleasure.

Guilty pleasures also include blogging instead of trying to figure out stuff for the grant the Girl Museum received (no, I didn't write/apply for this grant).  It's crazy complicated for something so simple.  After we get it all finalized, I'll talk about it more (maybe).  We have to get all the stuff submitted by late May to actually get the grant/take advantage of it.  Eek!  But Ashley, if you're reading this, I promise I'll get stuff to you by Saturday!

Crap, I published without a title

I figured I'd treat myself this evening (which, for some reason beyond my comprehension, includings blogging).  There's a few reasons for this.  First, Mom and Dad are in Seattle, so I have the house to myself and can thus get rat-assed (or shit-faced, take your pick) in peace and not feel like a twat/loser/15 year old/bad daughter.  Second, the last two days have been a pain.  Yesterday, I had to clean out the junk/gadget drawer in the kitchen because it was filled with ants.  Oh, and the dog barfed at some point--don't know when--and I had to clean it up.  I don't cope well with slimy bodily excretionsToday, I walked into the main bathroom (which I rarely use, particularly when I'm alone and don't feel a particularly pressing urge to bathe) only to find the sink and counter, AND part of the wall black with ants.  Also today, I went to a pilates class.  Very little mat work, but plenty of leg work (and core--probably more if I'd chosen to, you know, actually engage my core) and so now my calves feel like, well, like they do when I jog.  If you care--which you don't--I don't get shin splints from jogging because I run on the balls of my feet.  Instead, it affects my soleus muscle (one of two? muscles in the back of the calf).  It's less painful by a long shot, but possibly slightly more annoying.

And now I have to interrupt my drunken blogging (hey, I could be calling you, don't complain) to say that LOST is wrong.  Well, it's not, because the writers have had this planned out from day frickin' one, but if Jack is on the plane--Oceanic flight whatever that crashed on the island--Desmond can't be on it, since he was on the island pressing a button--or not--when the flight crashed.  And oh fucking god the island is Atlantis.

And now I'll stop my drunken probably not because they're probably very wrong spoilers, but will say: Adam, if you don't like it, don't read it (I love you honey :) ).

So yes, go back two paragraphs--wow, didn't know Steve Martin could tap dance (seriously, I shouldn't blog and watch TV at the same time)--between all of that, writing more thank you notes for wedding gifts since I haven't written any for probably two weeks, and well, I dunno, I wanted some champers.

Specifically, I'm drinking the final bottle of Domaine Meriwether's Brut Discovery Cuvée.  This is also know as "the sparkling wine you drank if you came to our wedding reception."  

Can a jumpsuit be slimming if you're above a specific size?  Or has Jorge Garcia lost weight?

(Fucking simultaneous timelines)

For those who are curious, according to Lisa at Territorial, most private parties average about 3 drinks a person.  We averaged about 4 drinks a person, though to be fair, I don't remember if Lisa averaged in the case (12 bottles) of sparkling (that which I am drinking now).

(I think we're up to 4 different timelines now, but maybe only 3.  To be fair, I doubt sobriety would help)

Part of this is because Kellie, Dylan, and a couple of other people I don't remember kicked our average WAY the hell up.  Very few people drank beer (Carol, Adam, and myself are the only people I know for certain had a beer or two), and we were under our initial price limit.  For those who don't understand--which would include me, had I not set this up with Lisa's help--we rented the winery (shockingly cheap), and then told Lisa how much we wanted to spend.  She also offered a figure, to be fair, but we stayed under it.  Also note that that figure did not include the sparkling wine.  We had three bottles of that left, and now we have none.

And in a roundabout way, this is why I shouldn't blog while drinking.

And and randomly, Adam said the last post sounded like bragging, so I'd like to point out that I'm reading Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone instead of EVERYTHING back on the side of my bed.  Yeah, I'm lame and tired of reading new things.  I'm also tired of Faith kicking me in the middle of the night.  Her nails/clawns are sharp and pokey, and have a lot of dirt on them to boot.  Man, I remember when our backyard used to be green.

Dude, back to LOST.  And if you care there are 4.5 champagne flutes worth of champers in a standard 750 ML bottle of sparkling/champagne.

EDIT:  It's not Jacob and Esau, it's Ram Dass and Timothy Leary.  Whatever the fuck that means.  For all my love of this show, I really, REALLY hate it.  Gah.

Also, Morgan Freeman narrates everything these days (minus CNN; James Earl Jones isn't dead yet) since Walter Kronkite died.

Sunday Review #6: Jericho

Right, this week's review is of the now cancelled TV show Jericho. I hadn't seen it before, but I'd heard bits and pieces about it; primarily, that it was so popular, that when it got cancelled (because we all know that popularity means nothing to network execs) there was such an outcry from fans that it was brought back to wrap up the basic storyline.

I'm not yet done with the show yet: it's 29 episodes (about 1.5 US TV seasons), and we've seen 16 episodes. I like it, overall. I find it predictable, which isn't totally a bad things. It's predictable because the characters are stock characters and they do what their respective stock characters do. I like some variance to my character arcs, but that said, at least they wrote and used the stock characters well.

If you don't know what Jericho is about, think Alas, Babylon. If you haven't read Alas, Babylon, go pick up the book from you local library. Or a bookstore. If it's still in print. Both are about the "end of the world." Nuclear holocaust. Death, destruction, rebuilding, etc. I think Alas, Babylon is better, but then it's also much more original at this point. Jericho is good, and perhaps topical, though not as much so as Alas, Babylon was when it came out in 1959.

Reading a quick synopsis of the novel (hey, it's been a few years, though I'll read it when I get back to Eugene in a few weeks) makes me believe that the show's creators were HEAVILY influenced by Alas, Babylon. Without getting into details, they solve problems in a similar manner, face some of the same deus ex machina situations (Jericho has a salt mine, Alas, Babylon has an island down the river that's covered in salt), and have the same vaguely angsty protagonists who find purpose when it's thrust upon them/there's no one else to lead.

It's a good show, and one I would recommend, but it's not exceptional. Part of what keeps it interesting for me is the obligatory "mystery" about some of the characters. If you watch Lost, you know what I mean. Trying to figure out the motives of some characters is interesting, but even so, I think this show could have been successful without that element. Simply focusing on survival and rebuilding after the nuclear holocaust could, if it were done well, be enough for the plot.

But then, my guess is that's part of why the show got cancelled.*

*Remember, I haven't finished it yet, but I get the feeling that a lot of the mysteries will be solved by the end of the first season. If not, well...I was wrong. I've been told that that can happen, from time to time.

Weekly reviews

I've decided to start a new project for myself. As part of an effort to hone my storytelling skills I've decided to do a weekly "reviews" post. I feel that by evaluating and critiquing other storylines I can perhaps better grasp what needs to happen in my own. And if not, it's still probably worth doing for some reason or another that I can't come up with right now. I'll probably focus primarily on the multitude of books I read (new and previously read) and movies (ditto), but I'm quite sure that TV shows/episodes will be included, as well as meals that I make. So it should be varied. There will also be spoilers, and I'm not going to try and see if I can tag them, so if you don't want to be surprised, don't read the reviews that I (hopefully remember) to mark at the top as "spoilers". Normally I'll be writing these on Sunday, but I wanted to touch on these two right now

House (Spoilers if you haven't watched through Season 5, Episode 20)

Although I'm planning on doing my reviews once a week on Sundays, I'm currently trying to get caught up on my backlog of House episodes. I haven't watched it in a few weeks, so imagine my surprise when Kutner (that's "Kumar" to my father) committed suicide. I watched Episode 18 a few weeks ago, and today decided to watch 19 and 20, and possibly 21 (haven't watched that yet). Episode 19 was good, standard House. The nice thing about House is that it can be different every week, yet the show still follows a fairly standard formula. This doesn't bother me much, and actually, when they tried to break away from the formula I got irritated--this specifically bothered me when they dealt with House's ex and their past, and again when they had the police officer trying to get House arrested. For those not familiar with the episode formula, it pretty closely follows this:

1. Show weekly patient in personal life

2. Show weekly patient falling suddenly ill

3. Have case somehow presented to House and team

4. Light touch on personal life of {fill in the blank}

5. Diagnose and treat multiple times, discovering that the diagnosis is wrong.

6. During #5, continuing second, minor story arc on {same as #4}

7. Eventually discover correct diagnosis (probably not lupus)

8. Weekly patient either lives (usually) or dies (rarely, and this is more likely if it's a recurring character).

Because people like routine, this works out really well; viewers get new, interesting plots on a weekly basis, in a format they are comfortable and happy with. Periodically the writers try to shake things up (giving House a new team, fixing his leg--or not, putting him in treatment, etc.) but mostly they stick with this format, and everyone is more or less happy. Medical drama--always popular--takes center stage, with enough "personal life" plot notes to help us know and/or care about the recurring characters. On a sidenote, Yahoo! reports that people really hate Thirteen, but I like her well enough, so whatever.

But I digress. Kutner committed suicide in episode 20. Where this worked is also where it failed for me. Ahh...dichotomy. It failed because neither the writers nor Kal Penn, the actor, gave any indication in the leadups that he was suicidal. That said, that's why the episode worked. They did a good job dealing with the possibilities for why he killed himself, and gave House a mystery to solve beyond the weekly patient. The plot formula actually reversed a bit this week, making the personal lives the main story arc, and the weekly patient the secondary (which was all to the good since it was a lame medical issue). The subplot usually has some echoing or similarities to the main plot, and this week was no exception to that rule, but it also isn't realy important to my point. No one could see why Kutner would want to kill himself, and so House, who prides himself on seeing everything and solving mysteries, wants to know both why Kutner did it, and how he (House) missed the signs. As always, it is all about House.

I think what I liked best about this episode was the inclusion of a suicide hotline number at the end of the episode. It was an ok send-off for a main character (I though Amber's was much, much better), but because I watched this one back-to-back with the previous episode, it worked for me better. Kutner was the star in the previous episode, solving the vast majority of the case and having the best ideas, and House even offered a bit of praise. I felt like suddenly (and perhaps a bit abruptly) Kutner grew into his own.

While I'm a bit sad Kutner is gone, I'm pleased to find out why Kal Penn left the show. It turns out that he asked to be released from the show so as to "go work for the Barack Obama Administration as the Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Liaison" (I quote from his bio on IMDb. Wicked. I also found out his real name and his issues with his role on 24 which shows him in a totally different light than the slight goobery character he is in House. It also casts his roles as "Kumar" in a slightly different light (note, I have not seen any of the "Harold and Kumar" movies). His bio can be found here.

And a short review on Desperate Housewives (Spoilers if you haven't watched through Season 5, Episode 19)

This is, to be fair, less of a review and more of a thank you to Marc Cherry and the other writers for giving Edie a proper sendoff. While I wasn't thrilled that they decided to eliminate her character (they were forced by the studio to cut a cast member for budgetary reasons), she was the most logical of the highest-paid cast members to axe. Additionally, I imagine they'll be able to cut at least one other cast member by the end of this season because of her death (granted, the plotline of her husband Dave will most likely end this season anyway).

What was so nice about this particular episode was--again--that it was moderately formulaic. But as I said, people do crave consistancy and routine most of the time--it's comforting. But when it's well done, it really is nice. In her final (I presume, haven't seen episode 20 yet) episode, Nicollette Sheridan narrated instead of the usual Brenda Strong, and we got to see Edie in some new lights. She was still the moderately bitchy, selfish woman she always was, but we could also see the other sides of her, through flashbacks. Each of the main "housewives" (except for Katherine) and Mrs. McCluskey went on a roadtrip with Edie's ashes to present her to her son (and tell him she died...this wasn't well thought out, minus the mention of why her ex-husband didn't know, but enh). On the trip, they decided to tell stories about Edie. This is a well-used plot device in some form or another, but it worked well. They kept Edie's character balanced between how we usually saw her, and some acts of kindess she committed--if in her own, slightly brutal, way. And the final story, told by Mrs. McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten, whom I dearly love as an actress--she was on The West Wing as well), explained part of Edie's past and her reasoning with effectively abandoning her son.

So to sum up, it wasn't the best episode of anything I've ever seen. But that said, it was really well done. I know that Nicollette Sheridan was angry with the decision to cut her from the show, and I would be too. But at least they gave her character a nice send-off, and I do hope she appreciates that. I also hope she lands something really big and can thumb her nose at the studio for it.

Slight Stumble

So I did achieve two days of research and writing after my last post.  It fell apart last night, not out of desire, but out of having too much shit to do and needing to go to bed early.  I failed on the early bedtime miserably, but had I stayed up to write anything I would have failed even more dramatically.

What was I doing, you ask?  (Ok, maybe you don't ask, but as this is my blog, I shall tell you whether you wish to hear it or not)  Because we celebrate both Xmas Eve and Xmas Day (I don't go in for the whole Christ bit, sorry), I needed to get some presents sorted.  This meant cooking, and I didn't have a chance to get into the kitchen until after supper last night.  As Adam and Ms. Luther and her husband will tell you, suppers at my house are a long, involved, and drawn-out affair.  So about 8pm I finally was able to start making reheatable lasangas and other casseroles for my grandparents.  Both my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandparents are in the mid-to-late eighties, so they neither need nor want much of anything.  However, they do still need to eat, and age makes it difficult for them to cook.  So I make nice tasty reheatable foods for them on a semi-regular basis.  That took me up until about 10pm, when I then had to take a shower.

As for why I had to get to sleep early?  Well, I had to get up early.  If you don't already know why I have to get up at 5:30am on Tuesdays, check this out.  Faith is my personal favorite (she's mine! and there was an outbreak of kennel cough that week), but Noah was also fantastic.  And Abby.  But I like pitbulls :)