(no subject)
Apr. 19th, 2008 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJoined Facebook, but have no idea what to do with it, any more than I have any idea what to do with MySpace. No one I know is actually on these things apparently.
Also watching the Obama/Clinton debate which I taped. It's annoying me. I may have to switch it off soon. They are focusing far too much attention on silly and rather human mistakes that the candidates have made. Everyone changes their minds about things. No one is perfectly constant. No one is completely honest. And we all have friends, pastors, parents, etc who say things that we strongly disagree with and offend us, but we love them anyway. If we didn't we would be robots. Obama - got to love the man - says that we need to stop focusing so much attention to what amounts to being basically little more than gas and focus on the real issues such as the fact that people are losing their jobs and unable to afford to buy the gas to drive and find new ones.
In the midst of the debate, Wales called. Her cat, Josie, died. Of diabetes. I didn't know cats got diabetes. Wales had come back from a two week trip and discovered her cat in a diabetic coma on her bathroom floor. The cat was just 10-11 years of age. A tabby with orange and white strips. Sweet natured. I managed to get her to laugh talking about how my dad went to sleep on me the other night while I was talking to him over the phone. And when I said: "how 10 years is pretty old for a cat, it's about 60 in human years, no wait, maybe that's not so old now I think about it, considering..." One of the reasons Wales and I get along so well, is she appreciates my dry and somewhat subtle wit. Also, the fact that my granny can't tell the difference between her phone and the remote any more - making it impossible for me to call her - because she might just point it at the tv or pick up the remote and say hello.
You have to laugh at these things or you will drown in your own tears.
Watched BSG last night. The episodes are getting better I suppose. But they still feel a bit, I don't know off. And the show is increasingly reminding me of a rather dark somewhat grim soap opera - taking the same illogical character leaps soap operas often take. It's like I said in my post about Mad Men, tv writers, particularly sci-fi ones, have a tendency to fall in love with an idea to such a great extent that they are willing to throw logical character progression and plot continuity out the window to accomplish it - doing what amounts to a ret-con. I see this happening on BSG. While it's ironically amusing what they are doing with Chief, Roslyn, Helo, and Athena - I'm not sure it works. Apollo has no legal background. He never went to law school. He has no political experience. His only background is in running a ship or military command. And no, it's not the same thing. To suddenly make him a lawyer out of the blue because it suits the direction of your plot? Or thematic arc? No. You have to earn it. If they wanted to turn Lee into a lawyer they should have had something about the character attending law school or wanting to do it - not just a quick reference about him inheriting his grandfather's law books and falling in love with them. It defys logic and makes it clear these writers know nothing about lawyers. They could have done this another way. (The first season handled it far better, as did the second, with Apollo grappling with the issues within the context of military law and whether the military should hold sway or the government, here we have him looking at it from a civilian perspective, when the character has never been a civilian and would never in a million years see it from that point of view - at least not at this point of time nor under these circumstances.) Don't get me wrong, I love the character and find him interesting. But what they are doing with him feels contrived and out of character not in the respect that he wouldn't turn his back on his father, he'd completely do that, but in the respect that all he knows is the military. He knows nothing else. But he's acting like the opposite. While Roslyn, who is not military and has never had any military background, is talking the military line. Granted this is great irony, but is it realistic? Or logical? I don't think so. And that's just one example.
The other problems? Not sure what is going on with the folks on the Demetrius or why Helo and Sharon chose to leave their kid on the Galatica and go off with Starbuck. It seems a bit out of character for them. And very convienent. I like the fact they went off with her. But it feels contrived.
I'm on the fence about the four new cylons. I love the irony, but I'm not sure it is working from a storytelling perspective. There are gaps in the plot. It feels uneven and I can't quite put my finger on why.
As for the old cylons - nice irony there. Also it does sort of work, even if it is at times confusing to watch.
The only arcs that are working for me are Starbuck's and Baltar's. They are not making illogical leaps. Both characters from the get-go have been on the edge of sanity. Deeply religious, but feigning disinterest. Deeply insecure, but feigning security and confidence.
The best pilot in the world and the best scientist, yet at root, both are lost souls and ironically may either be both humanity's saviors or the heralds of doom.
The show likes to use characters as mirrors of each other. Chief/Cally is the mirror of Helo/Athena. Just as Chief/Boomer was the mirror of Helo/Sharon. Apollo/Starbuck is a mirror to Adama/Roslyn. And Starbuck is a mirror to Baltar, and vice versa. It's an interesting technique and mostly works, except when I feel as if the writers are jumping over hurdles to make it work - which I think they've done in the case of Chief/Cally - a relationship that never completely worked for me.
I honestly can't predict where the show is going anymore, because they more or less left logic behind sometime in Season 3. The fifth cylon could be anyone at this point. And Starbuck could be a savior or the herald of doom. The fact that show is completely unpredictable makes it fun, but you have to sort of throw logic out the window to enjoy it.
Which isn't that hard to do on a Friday night, when your brain is fried from work.
It's fun if you don't think about it too much.
Also watching the Obama/Clinton debate which I taped. It's annoying me. I may have to switch it off soon. They are focusing far too much attention on silly and rather human mistakes that the candidates have made. Everyone changes their minds about things. No one is perfectly constant. No one is completely honest. And we all have friends, pastors, parents, etc who say things that we strongly disagree with and offend us, but we love them anyway. If we didn't we would be robots. Obama - got to love the man - says that we need to stop focusing so much attention to what amounts to being basically little more than gas and focus on the real issues such as the fact that people are losing their jobs and unable to afford to buy the gas to drive and find new ones.
In the midst of the debate, Wales called. Her cat, Josie, died. Of diabetes. I didn't know cats got diabetes. Wales had come back from a two week trip and discovered her cat in a diabetic coma on her bathroom floor. The cat was just 10-11 years of age. A tabby with orange and white strips. Sweet natured. I managed to get her to laugh talking about how my dad went to sleep on me the other night while I was talking to him over the phone. And when I said: "how 10 years is pretty old for a cat, it's about 60 in human years, no wait, maybe that's not so old now I think about it, considering..." One of the reasons Wales and I get along so well, is she appreciates my dry and somewhat subtle wit. Also, the fact that my granny can't tell the difference between her phone and the remote any more - making it impossible for me to call her - because she might just point it at the tv or pick up the remote and say hello.
You have to laugh at these things or you will drown in your own tears.
Watched BSG last night. The episodes are getting better I suppose. But they still feel a bit, I don't know off. And the show is increasingly reminding me of a rather dark somewhat grim soap opera - taking the same illogical character leaps soap operas often take. It's like I said in my post about Mad Men, tv writers, particularly sci-fi ones, have a tendency to fall in love with an idea to such a great extent that they are willing to throw logical character progression and plot continuity out the window to accomplish it - doing what amounts to a ret-con. I see this happening on BSG. While it's ironically amusing what they are doing with Chief, Roslyn, Helo, and Athena - I'm not sure it works. Apollo has no legal background. He never went to law school. He has no political experience. His only background is in running a ship or military command. And no, it's not the same thing. To suddenly make him a lawyer out of the blue because it suits the direction of your plot? Or thematic arc? No. You have to earn it. If they wanted to turn Lee into a lawyer they should have had something about the character attending law school or wanting to do it - not just a quick reference about him inheriting his grandfather's law books and falling in love with them. It defys logic and makes it clear these writers know nothing about lawyers. They could have done this another way. (The first season handled it far better, as did the second, with Apollo grappling with the issues within the context of military law and whether the military should hold sway or the government, here we have him looking at it from a civilian perspective, when the character has never been a civilian and would never in a million years see it from that point of view - at least not at this point of time nor under these circumstances.) Don't get me wrong, I love the character and find him interesting. But what they are doing with him feels contrived and out of character not in the respect that he wouldn't turn his back on his father, he'd completely do that, but in the respect that all he knows is the military. He knows nothing else. But he's acting like the opposite. While Roslyn, who is not military and has never had any military background, is talking the military line. Granted this is great irony, but is it realistic? Or logical? I don't think so. And that's just one example.
The other problems? Not sure what is going on with the folks on the Demetrius or why Helo and Sharon chose to leave their kid on the Galatica and go off with Starbuck. It seems a bit out of character for them. And very convienent. I like the fact they went off with her. But it feels contrived.
I'm on the fence about the four new cylons. I love the irony, but I'm not sure it is working from a storytelling perspective. There are gaps in the plot. It feels uneven and I can't quite put my finger on why.
As for the old cylons - nice irony there. Also it does sort of work, even if it is at times confusing to watch.
The only arcs that are working for me are Starbuck's and Baltar's. They are not making illogical leaps. Both characters from the get-go have been on the edge of sanity. Deeply religious, but feigning disinterest. Deeply insecure, but feigning security and confidence.
The best pilot in the world and the best scientist, yet at root, both are lost souls and ironically may either be both humanity's saviors or the heralds of doom.
The show likes to use characters as mirrors of each other. Chief/Cally is the mirror of Helo/Athena. Just as Chief/Boomer was the mirror of Helo/Sharon. Apollo/Starbuck is a mirror to Adama/Roslyn. And Starbuck is a mirror to Baltar, and vice versa. It's an interesting technique and mostly works, except when I feel as if the writers are jumping over hurdles to make it work - which I think they've done in the case of Chief/Cally - a relationship that never completely worked for me.
I honestly can't predict where the show is going anymore, because they more or less left logic behind sometime in Season 3. The fifth cylon could be anyone at this point. And Starbuck could be a savior or the herald of doom. The fact that show is completely unpredictable makes it fun, but you have to sort of throw logic out the window to enjoy it.
Which isn't that hard to do on a Friday night, when your brain is fried from work.
It's fun if you don't think about it too much.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:17 am (UTC)Quite a few people I know from my offline life appear to be on it. Both my cousin and my sisterinlaw. Was a bit surprised by that.
As well as my old college roommate...very odd.
Along with MySpace, it appears to be the most popular of the social networking sites.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 11:01 am (UTC)But content--I haven't found it yet.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 06:39 pm (UTC)but I don't know what to do with it... I joined because of the Dr. Horrible and other show tie-ins, but nothing ever seems to be going on.
if you give me a link to your facebook then I would totally 'friend' you! LOL
I'm at MySpace too: http://www.myspace.com/embersownmyspace
and I do more there.... only because I like reading a lot of the writers who post there. But basically livejournal is the place where I want to express my interests.
I was really underwhelmed by last night's BSG (maybe it seemed flat to me because Baltar wasn't there).... The story lines do seem confused and illogical to me. But I am very interested in what is happening on board the cylon ships, in fact maybe you could help me understand something:
The cylons were all original metal and they fought the humans, and eventually they made the 'skin jobs' right? But why would they allow the skin jobs to run the show? I thought the centurions had power, but evidently only if one of the human looking cylons lets them? I'm confused.
I had liked the first two episodes of BSG better than you did, but last night just left me feeling kind of lost and disconnected.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 03:53 am (UTC)Yeah, last night's episode was really confusing.
I know what they are trying to do though. The centurions like the raiders are organic and machine. They can think for themselves. And they evolved, giving birth to their children, the human cylons who are made entirely of organic material - we saw their original experiments in Razor - where they captured humans to create hybrids.
Why would they allow skin jobs to run the show? They probably didn't initially. It happened gradually over time. Remember forty years passed.
The metaphor is - kids take over from their parents, they push their parents aside, make them obsolete. Much like the cylons did with the humans.
The line Six kept repeating to Baltar in the first and second seasons- "This has all happened before."
The next generation or stage in the evolutionary process kills off and destroys the first stage. Does the first stage choose that? No. They get manipulated into it. The skinjobs probably found a way to control the Centurions and Raiders. The skinjobs in doing so, are no different than the original human creators. That's what Gina/Six is saying - we are no different than the people we are fighting.
The thematic structure is a circle - the cylons are taking on the traits of the humans, just as the humans are taking on the traits of the cylons, locked in a battle of mutual destruction where their worst enemy is not each other but rather themselves. When they look at each other, they are looking in a fun house mirror.
It's interesting, but also confusing and muddled in places. They are trying to do too many things at once and as a result losing some of the threads of the story. The flipping back and forth between the cylons and the humans works better if the two stories connect. These two don't really, except in a very subtle thematic sort of way.
ie. Lee Adama is challenging Roslyn for a more democratic society, while Gina/Six is challenging Dean Stockwell's cylon for a more unified society.
Both the challengers were formerly the military might. They are mirroring the two. But outside of the four new cylons hiding in secret, there is no direct connection, so the flips between are jarring and confusing particularly in 43 minutes.
It's too much story in too short a time span.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:11 am (UTC)Thanks for the explanation, it had seemed odd to me that the centurions and raiders lost so much power, but then many elderly parents lose their homes and end up in nursing homes, or in their child's spare bedroom. Power can be hard to hold on to in the long run....
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:21 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm impossible to find under my real name. One of my friends emailed me that there are 174 people with the same name on facebook. There's over 400 online.
I have popular name. I've run into men with the male version of my first name and my last name. One guy at work has the opposite, his first name is my last name and his last name is a version of my first name. LOL!!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:02 am (UTC)It's nothing like lj.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 08:53 pm (UTC)But I feel vindicated because CBS is getting ridiculed by everyone. They try to claim that they wasted the first hour of the debate on trivia because those questions go to 'character' but instead all the real journalists in the country have mocked them.... And all the comedy news people have mocked them!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:39 am (UTC)Worse debate I've seen to date. The last few actually dealt with the issues. These just hammered the candidates on stupid statements they've made.
I loved the Colbert Report - in which Obama says something to the effect that he misspoke and that the American people don't really care. And Colbert responds - yes, but, speaking purely for the news media? We do. We like that stuff. LOL!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:47 am (UTC)and it was incredibly stupid.
Colbert was a riot! He really is very funny. And I heard that Obama would be back on Jon Stewart's show again on Monday night...
Obama had been on there before, back before I had heard or read much about him, and I was impressed with how completely relaxed he was (I get used to watching politicians looking tense/stressed out).
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 05:03 am (UTC)Oh...I'm sooo glad I stopped watching my tape of the debate after the first twenty minutes - I spent the day in the park staring at the sky with a friend instead. Much more productive. I think I decided to just delete the thing. Now, I'm glad I did.
I thought the bit about what Obama said in Pa and Hillary's lie about the sniper fire was silly, apparently that was the HIGH point of the debate. They asked OBama about his flag pin? Were they stoned? I'm beginning to wonder about George Stephanopolis and Charlie Gibson...before this election, I thought they were intelligent...now, not so much. They are making me miss Ted Kopple, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 06:49 am (UTC)you can't love this country and/or the flag if you don't have that pin right there 24/7!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:23 pm (UTC)I kept thinking during the portion of the debate I saw, gee, it's a good thing I'm not running for political office since I've said and thought most of the things Obama has at some point.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:34 pm (UTC)grrr argh
LOL
I actually find it very easy to understand Barack Obama (and his wife Michelle, when she implied that she has been ashamed of the USA), it seems to me that the things they get criticized for are things I could have said myself. I find it easier to identify with them than the Clintons, the gamesmanship crap is just too much for me.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 03:27 am (UTC)I need to put a photo but have yet to get good one taken.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:53 am (UTC)I'm so glad I stopped watching after the first fifteen - twenty minutes. I thought the badgering over Hillary's lie on the sniper fire and Obama's bit about bitter small town American's was bad. That was apparently the high point in the proceedings.
My father recently heard a professional political journalist give a talk. The journalist told everyone in the room that tv news is all propaganda and promotion. If you want to get information? Go on the internet or newspapers. That television journalists are considered little more than talking heads, who look pretty. The journalist also said - that that political and news journalists don't care who wins or really know who will...they just like to report on the conflicts.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 04:51 am (UTC)And I'm sorry your grandmother is in the condition she's in. It must be hard to see that happening. [hugs]