ifeelbetter

I am awarding myself an ironic award tonight for completing TWO. WHOLE. SENTENCES. in my dissertation. (Four if you count the two I added and then deleted. [Also. There were like ten hours between each of those steps.] Six if you count the false starts too.)

In OTHER news: I am re-doing my Detective Fiction syllabus for next term. ( WAFFLE ABOUT TEACHING UNDER THE CUT. I HAVE SO MANY FEEEEEELINGS ABOUT TEACHING. AND THOUGHTS. FEEEEELINGS AND THOUGHTS. )

OK. That's enough waffle about teaching.

Other news: fabulous roommates and I are sticking together for another year (yay!), we're also getting Family Holiday Portraits at JC Penney this week because two out of four of us (me!) have never done so before (yay!), and the semester is almost over (YAAAAAAY!).

On the other hand, I am almost finished with Stargate: Atlantis (BOOOOOO!) and am already feeling Rodney withdrawal. I just....I love him. Lots. With all of my many Feelings and Thoughts. I always talk to my TV when I watch, yeah, but I stopped using his name at all like a hundred episodes ago (<--hyperbole to my left) and have started, at first unconsciously, referring to him primarily as "Babe." As if I was Danny and he was my Steve. I am H50-ing my love for him. It's crazy pants up in my head, is what I'm saying.

Look at this now:

So: confession. I have had a beef with the Stargate franchise for ages. You're not going to understand the logic, frankly, because there is little-to-no logic involved, it was all based on feelings. But, to make a long story short, I sort of blamed them for the end of Farscape. And, yes, I have also always been aware that they subsequently gave Claudia Black and Ben Browder jobs and I usually let bygones-be-bygones when shows I have grudges against give my favorite actors roles. Somehow, my grudge against Stargate persisted.

But I always knew, like, in the back of my mind/heart, that I was gonna love Stargate: Atlantis. That's probably a goodly portion of why my grudge lasted so interminably. And then it turned up on Netflix instant and I was like, "Just watch it, B. You probably were wrong about how you were going to love it instantly and passionately. You'll probably be able to have an even stronger grudge after."

That was not the case. I started, like, two nights ago. I'm already well into Season 2. I have work to do, you know. It's like the revenge of the franchise, this whole absorbing-my-whole-life-and-leaving-no-time-for-real-life-BS stuff. I already said I was sorry, franchise. Can't we just let bygones be bygones?

But, yes. My life is full of Atlantis right now.

I have a question, though. I am pretty perplexed by the Ronan Dex--why didn't the Wraith eat him? I have tried googling this (my Google history was already a shitshow of crazypants, not the least of which is the frantic question "How yu stop flambe??" from that minor emergency in the kitchen a couple of months ago) and have come up with contradictory answers. Can anybody help me out here?

So I had misgivings.






I no longer have misgivings.

Am I the only one who feels like Moffat has absolutely no respect for his audience's intelligence with this season's arc? Let me break it down for you under a cut.

( Break it down for the children. )

To illustrate my point, watch this fan video.

I saw two films today. Because I am no longer a teenager, I did not theater-hop. I paid for both. I think this justifies my upcoming rant tangent digression.

I will just start by saying that my hopes were moderately high for one and abysmally low for the other. Both surprised me greatly.

( ....suuuuspense.... )

In other news, I'm almost done with my syllabus for next semester. Highlights include: Exit Through the Gift Shop, My Fair Lady, George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television," and an article from Vanity Fair. Yes, my reading lists are eclectic. They are definitely that.

Plus, I'm trying to draft a proposal for a course for Comp Lit in the winter more geared towards my actual area of expertise, 19th century Japan-related texts. I'm thinking I might propose a course based on travel narratives on the far east, a sort of "orientalism" in practice sort of thing. That's still in the works.

Last note: did anyone see this week's So You Think You Can Dance? If you didn't, check this shiz-nit out:

Did you see that jump at 1:17? Did you see that??

Wallace Stevens: "Summer is like a perfection of thought."

William Carlos Williams: "In summer, the song sings itself."

Henry James: "Summer afternoon--summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language."

And yet, despite knowing such great thinkers feel this way about summer, I'm much more aligned with the Manny school of thought:

One of these days, I might just end up on some cars in the street, is all I'm saying.

I can't get myself to do anything. Not dissertation, not funtimes writing, not necessary household work, not grocery shopping....

Things I have been doing:
1) watching In Treatment. Makes me want therapy just for the helluvit.
2) re-watching Sports Night because I will always love Dan. I have this thing for characters named Dan/Danny. Especially written by Sorkin. IDEK.
3) I went on a mini-vacation with the family. We're about to go on the longer one to Denmark but I am temporarily back in my Real Adult Person home to do some "work" beforehand. Now if I could just get some actualfacts work done, that'd be aces.


If only it wasn't summer...I would have so much energy and will to accomplish shit if it wasn't summer!

So I have this love of television. I'm a grad student in English Language & Literature and I understand that The Thing To Do is to pretend I'm so above television and all...I knooooow. But the thing is...I really do think it's a venue for some of the greatest storytelling the last century has seen. Definitely the last couple of decades. And we are a resilient species when it comes to finding outlets for our artistic impulses and we will infest this planet with art if we don't get in our own way too often.

My point is that television is great. I have cried, I have laughed, I have done both of those things at the same time, and I have done gradations of every emotion on the spectrum between them. It is a great medium. Dickens would, if he were alive today, so be writing for television. He'd be all like, "Dudes. I liked the novels--don't get me wrong. But TV is what I'm talking about."

And of the TV shows I have loved most--and there have been some intense relationships with shows in my life (I'm looking at you, Firefly)--I have to say...Aaron Sorkin sorta kinda makes my heart strings play beautiful, beautiful melodies. In five part harmony. It is a Big Deal.

And I saw West Wing first. It will have my heart till the day I die. A good chunk of my obsession with bad take out comes from the romanticism of their late night planning-to-make-the-world-better-and-pass-me-the-dim-sum sessions. Then I saw Studio 60. I KNOW that I am nearly alone in this but YES. I love that one too. The episode where the dude who got ousted during McCarthyism comes back all amnesiacally? GOLD. PURE GOLD.

But I had never seen Sports Night. I just resisted it. I thought, nah, that can't be for me. It's about sports. And...just sports. And Felicity Huffman.

BUT GUYS. I WATCHED THE WHOLE THING IN THE LAST DAY AND A HALF. IT IS ONE AM AND I JUST FINISHED. IT WAS GLORIOUS. I FEEL CHANGED. I HAVE...SO...MANY...STRONG EMOTIONS DIRECTED TOWARDS THAT SHOW.

Just...so many. So, so many.

( Also: a product from the past week's late night sleep deprived madness. Five Reasons You Should Never Offer Me A Dictatorship. )

Yet again...this is why I need a "i make weird choices" tag. Because...my choices. They are weird.

PS -- in real life news...the presentation happened. It wasn't the best, it wasn't the worst. And I fly home--home, sweet Jersey, home--on Friday. [insert exclamation of joy that is up to the task of expressing the enthusiasm I feel for Jersey and my fam--honestly, I don't think language has caught up to my emotional state yet]

So somehow all this Harry Potter nostalgia business lead to me re-watching Doctor Who episodes and now I'm making a list. I like lists. I'm the opposite of organized in most ways but I really do like a good list.

This is my Top Ten Episodes of DW (since the reboot in 2005)

( This way madness lies... )

Now that I've gotten that out of my system....I want to make more lists. I love lists. Can anyone think of other things I can make lists of? Top Fives? Anything?

I was such a big fan at the beginning. I'm behind anything that brings musicals back into popular awareness--it's a genre that tends to get ignored and its awesome. So I was like, "Sweet. A musicals TV show." when it started. And the music is great--auto-tune, schmauto-tune, if you ask me. It's fun listening. And I like shows that tout their allegiance to the underdogs of teen culture. There are groups of kids--overweight, queer, teens of color, minorities, geeks, what you will--that desperately need somewhere to look to on TV.

Unfortunately, this ain't it. It talked the good talk and then it failed to practice what it preached.

( I have a feeling this is gonna go long... )

Imma stop now because there's this vein on my temple that might explode.

I always end up shouting at Glee when I watch it. I shout at the TV most of the time but Glee MUCH MORE than the norm.

[P.S.--Just so you know, I DO believe that a show has an ideology not necessarily related to the ideology of its creators. I mean...a show is a sum of its parts, right? There's no one writer--not even the show runner--who can claim the entire span of opinions and positions a show has taken in its run. So the show has its own positions. And I'm talking about the SHOW in this entry. I have no idea who is responsible for the massive problems of this show. I just...it makes my soul cry. This show makes my soul cry.]

Dear Supernatural,

Hi. I have hearted you for an epic span of years now considering that my affections have tended to flit back and forth between shoes faster than you can say "Bob's your uncle" most of the time. But I have stayed true to you--I'm not gonna lie, mostly because of Dean's face. And the way you deal with food. And that one episode last season with all the meta commentary about television. So my heart: you have had it for a long time.

BUT. Where have your writers gone, show? Did you fire them all? Did they just wander away this season? Did you forget you need them? Jensen Ackles is too lovely to be uttering this crap. Misha is sexy!smart. He shouldn't have to muddle through that stuff.

I'm just saying. Bring back your A game, show. Please.

Love,

Me.

PS - The Best Thing I Ever Ate did a special on burgers right after you aired tonight. I heart coincidence when it hearts me back.