Dr. Horrible

Just paid $4 for a "season pass" to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along, Joss Whedon's latest project. What a bargain!

FYI, I also paid $5 to This American Life, as I listen to their podcast all the time.

I can't wait till I can just pay for the media I like rather than paying $60 a month for a bazillion cable channels I don't watch. If I have to pay $60 I would rather it all went to support quality programming.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Return of Gaming and Sci-fi to Breena's mind

Since turning in my thesis and moving, I have had a chance to relax a little and catch up on some of my other interests. The kitties and I are settling in with the roommates and dog at "yoga house." I have been running into many old friends from college and high school on facebook. I'm looking forward to watching movies and reading novels all summer. Yoga House now has high-speed internet so I can download all the podcasts I want! The first one on my list is The Guild. If you have ever played online games

Read More...

Summary only...

Reading

A while back Wil asked how I was liking Foucault's Pendulum. The truth is I started and then couldn't concentrate on it. I had too much grading and work and worrying to do. My father got it for me for Christmas. On the 23rd of December he called me to ask what I wanted for Christmas. I referred to my Amazon wishlist. I don't actually order from Amazon, but it's an easy way to keep a list of books I want.

He also bought me the Island of the Day Before. I read to page 150 and still couldn't get into the story. The imagery was amazing, but a guy mysteriously stuck on a sailboat with no one else around, doesn't keep the pages turning. It felt like he was doing some kind of writing exercise, to see if he could weave the stories together, make it interesting.

I returned to Foucault's Pendulum, since I had only read a few pages. Now that I have had more time to avoid writing by reading, I'm enjoying it. It's taking much more concentration than the rest of my recent reads. I recently joined BookMooch, which has allowed me to mooch books I would never buy for myself. For example, Jane Goodall's autobiography, Reason for Hope was nice and had some interesting points, but was written for a popular audience. I haven't read anything non-fiction quite so fluffy in quite a while. Jan Goodall is one of my favorite famous women scientists, along with Rosalind Franklin, the discoverer of DNA. A third awesome woman scientist is Dr. Lynn Margulis, who despite seeming to get no credit, is the person who actually provided evidence to support the Gaia Hypothesis. Margulis is the scientist who worked out Endosymbiotic theory, the theory that we are actually symbiotic organisms, the mitochondria in our cells were at one time separate organisms. I also read Neil Gaiman's book, American Gods. Neil Gaiman is my new favorite author.

Now that I have gotten into it, I'm really enjoying Foucault's Pendulum. It's my only distraction from the hell that is my thesis. Until my thesis is done I'm not allowing myself to work on any other projects. No working on my dissertation proposal, no starting fun projects, no, no, no. Must motivate to write the damn thing. I'm terrified to give it to my committee. I'm being silly because my committee members are both awesome, but I'm frightened.

Read More...

Summary only...

Random bullets

• My neck has been hurting since Saturday. You know, like I slept wrong. It hurts to tilt my head to one side.
• I have been feeling nauseous and achey, also since Saturday, especially in the morning. No, I'm not pregnant and I don't have a fever, so I don't know what that is about.
• I finally got my haircut today, which I haven't done since August. I'm letting it grow out, but I still need bangs to hide my gigantic forehead. (Bonus weird fact about me: I have a huge forehead which kind of makes it look like my hair is receding, but it's been like that my whole life.)
• I waited on hold for a half an hour this afternoon just to hear from the advice nurse that I should use Advil and hot and cold packs for my neck. REALLY? I know she is used to dealing with 19 year old undergrads but she has my file right in front of her on the computer screen. If she was paying attention she could have figured out that I'm 34. She kept on asking me if I needed a note for my classes.
• I wish my problems could be solved by a note from the school nurse.
• My new haircut looks a little like Eve Myles from Torchwood, only my hair isn't as long as hers.
• I'm spending some time at work learning web design. It's actually kind of fun. My fabulous boss suggested I could take a class (offered next quarter) in video production and then work on creating videos and other multimedia stuff to put up on the web for his office.
  
• If this whole academia thing doesn't work out maybe I'll be able to find a job in "new media."
• Beorn and I are now firmly involved in the grad school application process and both having small panic attacks about it. I mean we are talking about uprooting our entire lives here and moving across country and this all depends on the stupid, arbitrariness of the admissions committees, and we are too old for this crap, and we need to have kids soon, and and and...
• I really like trees and being outside. I miss having a job that involved moving around and being outside. Sitting at a desk for 12+ hours a day leads to mental and physical health problems.
• I'm considering taking up folk dancing 0r some similar activities. My favorite exercises are hiking and swimming in a lake or the ocean. Swimming pools and walking around town are just not the same.

Read More...

Summary only...

Joss Whedon, a Writer Before His Time

Beorn and I have been watching lots of Sci-Fi since we no longer have cable. Giving up on broadcast TV (including cable) is a relief. I know lots of people enjoy their TiVo, but that's one area in which I don't feel the need to be surveilled. Now I'm watching the occasional new episode online and mainly relying on our extensive video collection. Recently we re-watched the entire FireFly series and Serenity. When FireFly was first broadcast in 2002 I wasn't a big fan, but after five years the series has grown on me.

In 2002 FireFly's western setting appeared strange, in my mind consigning it to B-movie land. For whatever reason I couldn't get past the mixture of space travel and the wild west. Fast forward to 2007 and the mixture doesn't seem so strange. Considering the recent surge in science fiction and fantasy TV series, Firefly's eccentricity seems less geeky and more visionary.

Once you get past the strangeness of the western costuming (I used to be a costumer for a community theater company, so costumes are important to me.) the characters are just as challenging and fascinating as those from the more widely appreciated Buffy. Like the new BattleStar, Firefly deals with challenging, relevent themes, like what happens to veterans after the war is over and the freedom to be unhappy.

The special effects rather than distracting from the story, either through their showiness or amateurishness, are almost invisible, a natural part of the world. Characteristic of Joss's world, the female characters break out of stale stereotypes. Kaylee, the ship's mechanic, manages to be girly, sexy, and a mechanical genius all at once. The character isn't tough or boyish because she has mechanical abilities and although she sometimes displays little-girl characteristics, she's not asexual as female geeks are frequently portrayed.

If there is anything to find fault with in either the series or the movie, it's that the male characters are less interesting than the females. At times the men seem flat and predictable in comparison. (Also the naming of the series, which rightly should be called, like the movie, Serenity.)

If you haven't watched these sci-fi classics, or were turned off five years ago, I highly recommend you take a second look now.

Read More...

Summary only...

Trying to be thankful

I know that Yoda says "there is no try," but I think trying and imagining a different state of mind comes before attaining that state. Tonight I'm imagining a mental place in which I wouldn't be focused on how messed up my family is and pitying myself for being born into this dysfunctional mess. Instead I would be grateful for all of my supportive friends, my health, my wonderful partner, and having the luxury of pursuing a career that I'm passionate about.

Ever since we moved into my grandmother's house I have been profoundly uncomfortable. I just haven't felt like myself. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I have felt like I don't know who I am anymore. It's a feeling that emerges from deep within my childhood, a feeling of being invisible.

Last night Beorn and I watched Denzel in "Deja Vu." Denzel, in a classic sci-fi plot, travels back in time to change the sequence of events that leads to a disaster. It's eery for him to interact, in the past, with people he knows are dead. My life seems to have taken a similar sort of Twilight Zone feel to it. As if I had woken up one day and my normal life had been replaced by some nightmare.

Another sci-fi example? (Sorry folks who aren't sci-fi fans.) "Frame of Mind," The episode of Star Trek TNG in which Riker starts hallucinating that he is in an asylum. His consciousness keeps switching back and forth between the reality of the ship and the reality of the hospital. While he's in the hospital the doctors and attendants insist on telling him that there is no ship, that he isn't who he thinks he is. My family is like that. They can look at me and completely miss who I am. It's like they are talking to someone else. I can try to talk to them, but they only hear what they want to hear.

If I spend enough time around them I start to think that I am the person that they say I am, that the world is the way they say it is.

Read More...

Summary only...

Starbuck is.....

I'm mentally jumping up and down, doing the "I told you so dance."

Ok, so I'm taking down this post because Trillwing pointed out that it was a big spoiler. :( But really, I was just too excited!!!

Also, I know people set up their blogs to only show part of a post and then you have to click to see the rest, but I can't figure out how to do that. Suggestions?

Read More...

Summary only...