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Nov. 30th, 2012 09:10 pm1. Finally hit the proverbial wall work-wise. I can't think anymore. Want brain candy. The more mindless the better. No more analysis. No more writing technical/financial reports.
Although it's worth mentioning that they call it work for a reason. And yes, work is a four-letter-word, much like fuck, yet not as much fun...well depending on one's point of view and the partner.
2. EW has managed to turn me off of several things. They've hyped it so much, I don't want to watch or read it. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl - I'm avoiding like the plague, along with JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy and anything by Stephanie Meyer, James Patterson, and Lee Childs. I actually hated 50 Shades of Grey for a bit...until I tried a sample and found it to a be a hilarious send-up of every erotica novel that I've read. Granted I appear to be the only one who read it as a satire. But that's okay. EW is also beginning to make me dislike Joss Whedon, who is becoming alarmingly mainstream - go back to your cult roots! Don't become like the Star Wars prequels and Star Trek Enterprise TV show...noooo. When cult becomes mainstream it sucks. I don't know why this is so...but there it is. And for a bit, made me despise Breaking Bad - took a co-worker to talk me into trying that series. If it gets hyped by EW, I start to wonder about it. LOL!
Methinks I should drop the subscription. But I like the fluffy mindless mag that shamelessly spotlights coming attractions...even if it turns me off some of them, okay many of them, and oddly on to others.
At any rate? I'll never read Gone Girl, it may be great, but I don't care!! EW made me hate the writer. Yes it did! Who was a former television critic (she slammed The Dresden Files TV series, not that it was the greatest series ever...but still) and comes across as a spoiled entitled brat with no soul. From the reviews I've read on my flist of her novels...my guess is her characters and writing sort of come across the same way about nasty people who hurt each other...and people like this crap??? Alrighty then. Life is tough enough, I'll avoid. In 10 years, no one will have a clue who she is. Trust me. That's one of the fun things about the information age - we all have incredibly short attention spans.
Not a writer whose work I want to support. There's a few writers and entertainers that I refuse to watch or read for similar reasons - I don't like them. I'm not going to tell other people to boycott them, because that would be wrong and against my principals. But...suffice it to say, there are a few I won't read or watch or pay money for. At least not any more.
For the curious? Here's the list:
( people I deliberately ignore )
Apologies if anyone's favorites pop up on the list above. Mileage it varies...
3. On a more positive front...still enjoying The Immortal Life of Henrietta Laks by Rebecca Skloot - it's a well-written and engrossing non-fiction novel about a poor black woman from Baltimore whose cervical cancer cells went on to save millions of lives, while her family was never compensated or even knew about it. This is a woman whose body...was her legacy. No one is more surprised than me that I am enjoying this book. Non-fiction usually puts me to sleep and I read a lot of it at work, also write a lot of it. Not a fan. It's work, not fun. But this book is engrossing and fun. The writer is an excellent story-teller.
Here's a synopsis from NY Times Book Review:
From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. Even before killing Lacks herself in 1951, they took on a life of their own. Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins — the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world. Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African-American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospital’s “colored” ward.
After Henrietta Lacks’s death, HeLa went viral, so to speak, becoming the godmother of virology and then biotech, benefiting practically anyone who’s ever taken a pill stronger than aspirin. Scientists have grown some 50 million metric tons of her cells, and you can get some for yourself simply by calling an 800 number. HeLa has helped build thousands of careers, not to mention more than 60,000 scientific studies, with nearly 10 more being published every day, revealing the secrets of everything from aging and cancer to mosquito mating and the cellular effects of working in sewers.
HeLa is so outrageously robust that if one cell lands in a petri dish, it proceeds to take over. And so, like any good celebrity, HeLa had a scandal: In 1966 it became clear that HeLa had contaminated hundreds of cell lines, destroying research as far away as Russia. By 1973, when Lacks’s children were shocked to learn that their mother’s cells were still alive, HeLa had already been to outer space.
During the eight months that Lacks herself was dying of cancer, the HeLa cells so thoroughly eclipsed her that a lab assistant at her autopsy glanced at her painted red toes and thought: “Oh jeez, she’s a real person. . . . I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we’d been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I’d never thought of it that way.”
In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the “real live woman,” the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.
True. I'm enjoying it more than the noble prize winning Emperor of All Maladies...which is oddly also about cancer.
4. Dull throbbing ache in the head...plus one in middle finger of right hand, left knee and ankle.
It's going to rain. I can always tell.
5. Still enjoying Grey's Anatomy...or I'm basically enjoying Cristina Yang's story. Which makes me want to do a meme...the best character arcs on tv or something.
* Best Female Character Arc - Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy, also by far most believable. This character subtly changes over time and the changes make sense and aren't cliche or motivated by stupid and obvious plot twists and maneuverings (such as character deaths).
* Best Male Character Arc - John Crichton on Farscape. (And you thought I was going to say Spike, didn't you? As much as I love that character...his arc was very soapy and contrived at times. Too many obvious plot pulls that did not arise organically from the characters and required a lot and I do mean a lot of fanwanking. Whedon fans are expert fanwankers...I know, I was one and no one can fanwank like I can. We made that show better than it actually was. ) Crichton on Farscape on the other hand subtly changes over time and his changes are organic. He's a scientist and that over time becomes both a strength and his greatest flaw. It's the war between the logical scientist and the emotional human that we see played out in John Crichton. Browder's acting choices are brave, if seemingly over-the-top at times. He takes the character to the abyss, stares over the edge, and leaps back.
* Best Villain arc on a series...ah, hard. And yes, you probably think I'll go for Spike again, and it is admittedly tempting because I loved that character like whoa. But this is best villain...thinking, ah, Walter White on Breaking Bad. Hands down. Possibly the most complex villain/anti-hero on screen. Close second was Scorpius from Farscape. But Walt White is achingly real. Up until the 5 season...his arc is contained, not too over the top, with just the right
splash of pathos.
* Best Hero on a series or Heroic Arc? I'm going with Buffy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although I did find Aeryn Sun's arc on Farscape in some respects similarily heroic. Buffy just felt real to me. A true hero's journey, with all the pitfalls intact.
Now...naming best five female character arcs on tv:
* Buffy - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
* Aeryn Sun - Farscape
* Cristina Yang - Grey's Anatomy
* Starbuck - BattleStar Galatica
* Debra Morgan - Dexter
Those are the only one's I could think off...and I'm on the fence about Starbuck and Debra Morgan.
Considering River Song, but she's not around enough to count. Perhaps you can come up with better or more convincing ones? The Good Wife - tempted to go with Diane or Alicia...but neither has changed that much, they've changed...but their arcs don't leap out at me. Thought about Major Kira on DS9, but don't like DS9 outside Major Kira and Julian Bashir. Veronica Mars? Not on long enough.
Willow? Too contrived and wonky...didn't work for me ultimately, felt too soap operaish. Cordelia (see Willow). Fred ( see Cordelia). Eh...my head hurts, I should stop before I hurt myself.
If you want to play, go ahead...;-)
If it rains tomorrow, I may go see Skyfall, my father assures me that it is mindless enough and works very well on a big screen and should be seen on a big screen. The Popster is a Bond fan, it's his Ian Flemming books that I read as a kid.
Although it's worth mentioning that they call it work for a reason. And yes, work is a four-letter-word, much like fuck, yet not as much fun...well depending on one's point of view and the partner.
2. EW has managed to turn me off of several things. They've hyped it so much, I don't want to watch or read it. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl - I'm avoiding like the plague, along with JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy and anything by Stephanie Meyer, James Patterson, and Lee Childs. I actually hated 50 Shades of Grey for a bit...until I tried a sample and found it to a be a hilarious send-up of every erotica novel that I've read. Granted I appear to be the only one who read it as a satire. But that's okay. EW is also beginning to make me dislike Joss Whedon, who is becoming alarmingly mainstream - go back to your cult roots! Don't become like the Star Wars prequels and Star Trek Enterprise TV show...noooo. When cult becomes mainstream it sucks. I don't know why this is so...but there it is. And for a bit, made me despise Breaking Bad - took a co-worker to talk me into trying that series. If it gets hyped by EW, I start to wonder about it. LOL!
Methinks I should drop the subscription. But I like the fluffy mindless mag that shamelessly spotlights coming attractions...even if it turns me off some of them, okay many of them, and oddly on to others.
At any rate? I'll never read Gone Girl, it may be great, but I don't care!! EW made me hate the writer. Yes it did! Who was a former television critic (she slammed The Dresden Files TV series, not that it was the greatest series ever...but still) and comes across as a spoiled entitled brat with no soul. From the reviews I've read on my flist of her novels...my guess is her characters and writing sort of come across the same way about nasty people who hurt each other...and people like this crap??? Alrighty then. Life is tough enough, I'll avoid. In 10 years, no one will have a clue who she is. Trust me. That's one of the fun things about the information age - we all have incredibly short attention spans.
Not a writer whose work I want to support. There's a few writers and entertainers that I refuse to watch or read for similar reasons - I don't like them. I'm not going to tell other people to boycott them, because that would be wrong and against my principals. But...suffice it to say, there are a few I won't read or watch or pay money for. At least not any more.
For the curious? Here's the list:
( people I deliberately ignore )
Apologies if anyone's favorites pop up on the list above. Mileage it varies...
3. On a more positive front...still enjoying The Immortal Life of Henrietta Laks by Rebecca Skloot - it's a well-written and engrossing non-fiction novel about a poor black woman from Baltimore whose cervical cancer cells went on to save millions of lives, while her family was never compensated or even knew about it. This is a woman whose body...was her legacy. No one is more surprised than me that I am enjoying this book. Non-fiction usually puts me to sleep and I read a lot of it at work, also write a lot of it. Not a fan. It's work, not fun. But this book is engrossing and fun. The writer is an excellent story-teller.
Here's a synopsis from NY Times Book Review:
From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. Even before killing Lacks herself in 1951, they took on a life of their own. Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins — the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world. Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African-American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospital’s “colored” ward.
After Henrietta Lacks’s death, HeLa went viral, so to speak, becoming the godmother of virology and then biotech, benefiting practically anyone who’s ever taken a pill stronger than aspirin. Scientists have grown some 50 million metric tons of her cells, and you can get some for yourself simply by calling an 800 number. HeLa has helped build thousands of careers, not to mention more than 60,000 scientific studies, with nearly 10 more being published every day, revealing the secrets of everything from aging and cancer to mosquito mating and the cellular effects of working in sewers.
HeLa is so outrageously robust that if one cell lands in a petri dish, it proceeds to take over. And so, like any good celebrity, HeLa had a scandal: In 1966 it became clear that HeLa had contaminated hundreds of cell lines, destroying research as far away as Russia. By 1973, when Lacks’s children were shocked to learn that their mother’s cells were still alive, HeLa had already been to outer space.
During the eight months that Lacks herself was dying of cancer, the HeLa cells so thoroughly eclipsed her that a lab assistant at her autopsy glanced at her painted red toes and thought: “Oh jeez, she’s a real person. . . . I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we’d been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I’d never thought of it that way.”
In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the “real live woman,” the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.
True. I'm enjoying it more than the noble prize winning Emperor of All Maladies...which is oddly also about cancer.
4. Dull throbbing ache in the head...plus one in middle finger of right hand, left knee and ankle.
It's going to rain. I can always tell.
5. Still enjoying Grey's Anatomy...or I'm basically enjoying Cristina Yang's story. Which makes me want to do a meme...the best character arcs on tv or something.
* Best Female Character Arc - Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy, also by far most believable. This character subtly changes over time and the changes make sense and aren't cliche or motivated by stupid and obvious plot twists and maneuverings (such as character deaths).
* Best Male Character Arc - John Crichton on Farscape. (And you thought I was going to say Spike, didn't you? As much as I love that character...his arc was very soapy and contrived at times. Too many obvious plot pulls that did not arise organically from the characters and required a lot and I do mean a lot of fanwanking. Whedon fans are expert fanwankers...I know, I was one and no one can fanwank like I can. We made that show better than it actually was. ) Crichton on Farscape on the other hand subtly changes over time and his changes are organic. He's a scientist and that over time becomes both a strength and his greatest flaw. It's the war between the logical scientist and the emotional human that we see played out in John Crichton. Browder's acting choices are brave, if seemingly over-the-top at times. He takes the character to the abyss, stares over the edge, and leaps back.
* Best Villain arc on a series...ah, hard. And yes, you probably think I'll go for Spike again, and it is admittedly tempting because I loved that character like whoa. But this is best villain...thinking, ah, Walter White on Breaking Bad. Hands down. Possibly the most complex villain/anti-hero on screen. Close second was Scorpius from Farscape. But Walt White is achingly real. Up until the 5 season...his arc is contained, not too over the top, with just the right
splash of pathos.
* Best Hero on a series or Heroic Arc? I'm going with Buffy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although I did find Aeryn Sun's arc on Farscape in some respects similarily heroic. Buffy just felt real to me. A true hero's journey, with all the pitfalls intact.
Now...naming best five female character arcs on tv:
* Buffy - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
* Aeryn Sun - Farscape
* Cristina Yang - Grey's Anatomy
* Starbuck - BattleStar Galatica
* Debra Morgan - Dexter
Those are the only one's I could think off...and I'm on the fence about Starbuck and Debra Morgan.
Considering River Song, but she's not around enough to count. Perhaps you can come up with better or more convincing ones? The Good Wife - tempted to go with Diane or Alicia...but neither has changed that much, they've changed...but their arcs don't leap out at me. Thought about Major Kira on DS9, but don't like DS9 outside Major Kira and Julian Bashir. Veronica Mars? Not on long enough.
Willow? Too contrived and wonky...didn't work for me ultimately, felt too soap operaish. Cordelia (see Willow). Fred ( see Cordelia). Eh...my head hurts, I should stop before I hurt myself.
If you want to play, go ahead...;-)
If it rains tomorrow, I may go see Skyfall, my father assures me that it is mindless enough and works very well on a big screen and should be seen on a big screen. The Popster is a Bond fan, it's his Ian Flemming books that I read as a kid.