Bearshorty's musings

Yesterday’s search for my historical atlas, inspired me to go through my Box of Crap and actually throw out anything that was not necessary anymore like old book catalogues. I also putting everything that was left in the box in some better order.

I went to the postoffice/library/comic book store walk this afternoon and by the library there was this gigantic dog, the size of the horse. (Strangely enough I’m not that afraid of really big dogs). This dog was ridiculously huge.

( Buffy Season 8 #39 )

Coldplay's “Christmas Lights” music video.

As I was flipping to “Community” during a commercial break on “Bones” I caught them giving a shout out to “Farscape.” That was awesome! Can’t wait for the whole episode tomorrow. I’m not going to do “Bones” reviews that much anymore; it is just a regular show now. I can really like Hannah and her relationship with Booth except that the writers set that whole relationship up as a place holder. I really wish they could just leave Booth and Brennan separate. Next week, angst. I would watch “Community” instead of “Bones” at 8pm except that I actually like watching my comedies online with fewer commercials.

Happy birthday, Marianna!

Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for literature this morning. I have never read his work. Papa read one of his books a long time ago in Russia and he really liked it. I think I will go through Amazon’s author’s page and pick one of his books to read sometime soon – they do sound interesting.

Hee. Lifetime is making a reality show about Brighton Beach . Brighton Beach is a center of the Russian-American community in Brooklyn. It is a long avenue with some side streets that has lots of food stores and an awesome Russian bookstore and other stores and some fancy restaurants. A subway passes over it and that adds character. There is also a nice boardwalk and an actual beach that is quite popular in the summer. My parents and I visit there occasionally when we go to visit my grandparents in Brooklyn. I find the idea of a reality show based there very amusing. I might even check it out.

I saw today that “Battlestar Gallactica” is now on Netflix Instant Play. Well, at least it will be easy to rewatch my favorite scene when they crawl into my head.

( Buffy Season 8 #37 )

( Bones S6E3 )

I walked to the comic book store today to get the “Riley” one-shot. It was a decent issue, mostly about Riley and Sam relationship and some about Angel’s terrible decision to be Twilight. That whole storyline still makes no sense to me.

‘Angel’ comic license is going back to Dark Horse. Maybe they will finally coordinate the two series, although I’ve had no interest in “Angel” series that is not written by Brian Lynch..


Highlander. “Colonel” Ah, Joe. Really interfering this time. Good thing for Duncan too. And Mac buying him a drink at the end. Smart villain in the episode too, with motivations. He might have been insane but he did have a proper grudge.

“Reluctant Heroes” Just when I think ‘how nice, they have a female FBI agent when they could have easily had a man’ it turns out that they needed a woman to have an affair with the Immortal and be all ‘in-love’ and with poor judgment. You can do better, show. Duncan’s motivations are not always pure, and I’m glad for once Richie called him on it and made him testify.

This is a lovely defense of fanfic . I particularly love that this person pointed out that much of fiction in general is derivative of something. And that people take different things from books and authors can’t control it. Personally, fanfic keeps me still interested in some stories and universes. When we had to wait years between Harry Potter books it was great to have something else to read to pass the time and kept the interest in the stories high. Most fanfic I like is about TV shows, and except for “Harry Potter,” I don’t read that much based on books. But I understand why people feel the need to play with someone else’s world: sometimes fanfic will address the plotholes and consequences the author did not address, or give tragic characters a happier ending or put a couple together who should have been together in canon.

Papa and I actually had a discussion about this after I brought up the recent internet explosion with one author being offended by fanfic. He never read or heard of internet fanfic but he immediately cited unauthorized ‘sequels’ to some Russian sci-fi novels that were deemed perfectly acceptable and in fact are highly regarded. He also agrees that as long as people don’t make money, it is all fair game. He even suggested that authors should use fanfic to advance themselves by holding a contest and publishing best fanfic as that would generate interest. I showed him some websites. Talking to Papa about this is a bit weird, like worlds colliding a bit but it was fun to discuss it.

Bear was a bit tentative about the subject, surprisingly. Being an artist, he understood the point of view of the author who didn’t like fanfiction and preferred that people didn’t play with her characters (people on the internet tend to be respectful of this, but I don’t think they appreciate being called immoral or perverts). He did think she went too far in calling it an immoral enterprise. But Bear himself does many fan video projects in his animation and other pursuits so I found his support of author a bit weird. I do get his point and I agree about respect of the author but there should be some parallel respect for the fanfic writer. They are not writing maliciously.

( Buffy Season 8 #35 )

On the way to the comic book store I bought ice-cream cone, mixed with chocolate sprinkles, from an ice-cream truck. I do this about once a year and to me it screams ‘summer is here.’ And, of course, since I was wearing white pants, I got chocolate ice cream all over them. I was not surprised.

I saw Robin Hood trailer when I was watching “Modern Family.” Hee Hee hee. That was so horrible. “The laws of this land enslave people to its king, a king who offers nothing in return” “Freedom” and “liberty” also made an appearance. Really, movie? All that pesky justice system and army to protect against invaders, and a bureaucratic state are just triffles. Should the king sbe democratic, for your ‘freedom’? And King John actually wearing a shiny shiny crown and I’m sure being super evil. Why do you play with middle ages so? “Braveheart” did enough damage with the whole movie based on ridiculous myths and historical inaccuracies. Granted Robin Hood is a myth in the first place, but still can the times be at least not that anachronistic. At least I can mock the trailer. I have no desire to actually watch the movie.

Cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Alejandro’ with the guy from "Modern Family."

I walked to the library today, about twenty minutes one way, since there will be a huge snowstorm this weekend that will preclude any walking. Plus I needed to make several stops on the way. I bought a Valentine’s Day card, after looking through a gazillion of very sappy and stupid ones. I decided for silly. I stopped by the bank. The weather was actually very nice and not too cold for a walk.

I returned the fifth Sookie book to the library and picked up the sixth, Definitelly Dead that was waiting for me on hold. I also picked up The North Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, published in 1980. I’m going to either read the Norse book first or, perhaps, read both, interchangeably. So far I read some of the introduction including a refresher on the Vikings (which just made me want to read the history book I have on Normans in Sicily), the cosmology of Norse universe and some of the pantheon section. I really enjoyed the cosmology section with its nine worlds on three plates/levels held together by the World Tree. There is even a really pretty map in the book. (I found a sort of 3D picture version of it online) It is still sort of heaven/earth/hell cosmology, just ‘heaven’ is just the halls of the gods and some dead special warriors. I like that giants live on mid-level with men and there is a sort of rainbow-bridge connecting top level “Asgard” to mid-level. I’m up to Loki now in the pantheon section. I think I will finish reading this section before I go to sleep tonight and read the rest of the introduction tomorrow. There are 32 myths in the book, followed by a long note on each story. I know I’m in grad school because I will read the notes with the same interest as the myths themselves.

I also picked up the new “Buffy: Season Eight #32” comic book today and it was really, really funny. I don’t think I laughed so much in this comic as when Xander was being such a big nerd in testing Buffy’s superpowers. A lot of dialogue in this month’s installment was just really amusing. Brad Meltzer, who wrote this arc, is a big name in comic books and he knows what he is doing. I’m looking forward to the rest of his arc. For Season 9, though, I will wait for trade paperbacks to read it all at once. This month by month basis is too slow.

I’m quite liking “Caprica” so far. I definitely want to see were the story goes. I actually prefer to watch serialized stories like this on DVD more, but I guess I don’t want to wait and I can watch this for free.

Buffy Big Spoiler Scandal of last week or Twilight-gate has been amusing to keep track of especially the publishers’ two mistakes of not just accidentally releasing the spoiler to a limited audience but then confirming it in loud capital letters for all to see and be spoiler accidentally. I clicked on Spoiler link myself when the original link to real covers became available because I really don’t care too much and the identity of Twilight raises more questions anyway. But it was fun to see fandom go nuts and publishers panic and some authors say things they shouldn’t in reply.

( House S6E11 )

Why is hell do they need a Spiderman reboot ? Didn’t they have “gritty, contemporary reboot already” set in high school? And I’m too old to be interested in high school movies, not that I’m invested in this franchise in any way. I did enjoy the movies (well, the first two) but I’m not crazy about them. I’ll take X-men any day or Superman.