Insanity

I am a total moron.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:47:17 GMT

Okay, so I was a little bored this morning - lately, I've been marking time until I start my new job on the thirtieth - and decided to watch a movie. I've got something of a 'thing' for Shakespeare, and, in my humble opinion, of all the play-to-movie translations out there of Shakespeare's plays, the best ones are Kenneth Branagh's versions. Of all his film versions of the plays, my favorite is Much Ado About Nothing. I've seen this version many, many times, and know the main players rather well (for example, Kate Beckinsale, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, and Keanu Reeves). However, this time, one of the actors pinged my 'who the hell is that' button.

It wasn't until I checked IMDB that I realized that the actor who plays Count Claudio is none other than Robert Sean Leonard - also known as Dr. James Wilson on House, M.D.

Face, meet Palm. Palm, meet Face.

I feel like a total idiot for not placing it before now. What I find particularly irritating is that I never had that 'who the hell is that' ping when watching House.

A Baker's Dozen of Random

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:16:31 GMT

1. Happy Friday the 13th! Be sure to stay away from anywhere called 'Crystal Lake' today, okay everyone?

2. I've discovered a new fanfic pet peeve - a writer who can write the steamiest, most explicit sex scenes, yet who seems totally incapable of using the words 'fuck' or 'shit' in a story. Seems like a rather large oxymoron to me.

3. It's Friday the 13th.

4. I seem to have a rather large crush on a tasty bit of jailbait. Unfortunately, the jailbait is likewise attracted to me. How the fuck am I supposed to deal with this??? Especially when one of my ironclad dating rules is to never date anyone old enough to date my sister (who is eight years older than me) or anyone young enough to date my niece (who is ten years younger than me). I am 27. Jailbait is 17. Not even 'almost-18', but 'just-turned-17'. Anyone know the laws on statutory in Texas? Anyone? Bueller?

5. Though I normally ignore the sweepstakes letters that sometimes show up in the mail, I got one yesterday that I'm actually following up on - it came from a local used-car dealer and had a key taped to the flyer. I like keys - I keep random keys as talismans of good luck (I still have in my possession the key to the front door of the house where we lived when I was eight - shortly after we moved, the owner tore the house down. When I found out that he'd bulldozed a 114 year-old farmhouse, just to clear the three acres it stood on for more corn, I mourned for a whole year). Maybe my love of keys is why I'm following up on a one-in-a-million shot at the grand prize (a 2009 Buick Enclave and a 2009 GMC Sierra - neither vehicle is one I'd willingly drive; I'm a Ford or Chevy girl and always will be). However, I could do with the first runner up prize of $50K, the fourth place prize of $1000, or the fifth tier prize of $500. I don't need the second place award of a 2009 Honda ATV (that's a four-wheeler for those of you who don't know already). And in researching how to get my crate-motorcycle licensed, I've found that in order to get a new vehicle titled in Texas, I have to pay some sort of tax that's based off the Kelly Blue Book value of said vehicle - if I won the grand prize, I'd have to decline, 'cause I can't afford the fucking paperwork. Sigh. Why'd I think this'd be a good idea again? Oh, yeah. Chance at cash. Maybe even enough cash to make my bike legal. That'd be nice.

6. Maybe my randomness is directly related to the fact that it's Friday the 13th. Think so? Sounds as credible as any other reason I can come up with.

7. I hate owing people, but I owe one of the ladies I go to church with big time. Since moving to El Paso, I've lost almost fifty pounds - and though I'm really liking the fact that I have a discernible waist and the beginnings of a really classic hourglass figure, absolutely none of my clothing fits any more. The lady I go to church with (her name's Tina) helped me out with a bunch of stuff that fit better than my old crap (though it's still a shade too big - I was a 22/24 and the replacement stuff is 18/20 when what I should be in are 16/18s). And again last week, I mentioned being broke and sick of having to come up with new ways to fix rice (because I am never out of rice or flour - I have a Sam's Club card solely so I always have a source of 25 pound bags of each) and she gave me a bunch of groceries to see me and Mom through to Mom's payday next week. Her husband is currently...elsewhere - he's in the military, and though I know he's not been deployed, he's also not at home and won't be until next month - and I offered to help out with her kids (she's got three at home, the oldest is somewhere between 10 and 12 and the youngest is around two, if I remember correctly) or anything else she needed, but it just doesn't seem like enough, ya know? I hate being in people's debts. (Huh, maybe if that sweepstakes thing lands me with those cars, I can shift them over to her - I know they need a reliable vehicle.)

8. I'm sick of being broke all the freakin' time and am so looking forward to starting work on the 30th. However, the company who hired me still hasn't gotten back to me to tell me where and when to report for my first day - I was recruited online and hired over the phone. The company is an outsourcing customer service center, and as a result of that, I've no clue what its local branch's name might be and so can't Google the fucker. Sigh squared.

9. Damn, but I'm wordy today.

10. The Last Resort by The Eagles. Listen to it. Learn it. Love it. It's a deceptively beautiful and somewhat melancholic song that I've known all the words to for years and years and years, but one of those that I'd never really sat down and listened to until recently.

11. I'm seriously considering joining the choir at the UU, even though I'm really not that great of a singer. I accidentally let it slip at the Samhain party that I'd had voice lessons (which I took to please my dad) and now the music director keeps finding excuses to corner me, even though I've told him that I never succeeded in learning how to read music and how I think I sound better singing lower registers (even though I can hit soprano if I have to).

12. I've been mainlining NCIS lately. How come I never seem to get on-board a show (or even really hear of it) until it's been circulating for years? I'm kicking around an idea for an NCIS/Supernatural/Harry Potter fanfic, though. I don't know yet when or even if I'll ever write it, but I have to admit that the thought of having Dean and Harry and Tony DiNozzo all in the same room is enough to make certain parts of my anatomy all gooey.

13. Happy Friday the 13th!

I think I've been in the desert too long.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:12:51 GMT

So, I went to check my email, and one of the headlines on the homepage was something about a Veteran's Day memorial at Arlington. The headline said something along the lines of 'cold and wet'. It took me a full five minutes to figure out what the headline was saying - that it's mid-November and that most of the rest of the nation is staring down the barrel at winter. I've definitely been in El Paso too long already (though we turned off the AC last month, we've yet to turn on the heater - and I'm still comfortable at all hours of the night and day in nothing heavier than a button-down). Not that I'm complaining, mind. Just that it's decidedly odd to have to realize that though it's been right around 80 degrees or so this week, it's freakin' November.

Ah, hell. Don't mind me - I been up too long as 'tis. Gonna sleep soon, 'else ain't gonna be makin' no sense 'tall.

Really freakin' odd dream...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:48:00 GMT

I usually remember each and every little detail in my dreams but the one I just woke from makes absolutely NO SENSE!

I was in this weirdo parallel dimension where, under specific circumstances, guys could get pregnant (kinda like the alien-abduction thing in the Sims 2). My sixth-grade teacher, Shawn Helle (woman) was there, and the crew of NCIS was involved in researching something about her second husband (when, to my knowledge, she's still happily married to her first). McGee was posing as...something that eludes me at the moment, but had to be called off the investigation early to have a pair of conjoined Cabbage-Patch dolls. And someone ate the last of my jar of maraschino cherries, so I took the empty jar outside to fling it in frustration, only to be lured to the other side of the garage of the house where I grew up by the sound of Paul Harvey - Dad was fishing in the little drainage ditch that ran down the side of the hill and before I could ask him why he was fishing (Dad never fished, and that drainage ditch wasn't deep enough to have more than frogs and crawdads in it anyway) let alone fishing there, a saber-toothed woodchuck the size of Marmaduke erupted out of the water. Then a little blonde girl of about six or seven just smiled at me and wandered off. There was also something about a former military guy on a closed-circuit TV and I know Ziva was involved in that aspect, but the details have disappeared.

Though I normally love my dreams, this one was freakin' disturbing.

No, really, WHAT?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:54:26 GMT

Okay, so I normally don't sleep much or well during the month of October (also the month of April). Haven't since I was about twelve or so. But I literally just woke up after a full twenty hours of sleep. I don't get it. Am I finally getting over the weird seasonal insomnia, or what?

And that doesn't go into the extraordinarily fucked-up dreams I had. I don't remember much of what I dreamt - another very odd thing, because normally my dreams are very easy to remember - just that I was shopping at some department store back in my Iowa hometown (but in reality the store I was in closed down nearly a decade ago). I was with my mom and though she'd told me I could have whatever I wanted, the store didn't have what I was looking for (a swimming suit that looked good on me). Mom said it was time to go, but at that moment, I thought I found the suit I wanted. Figuring I had a little time before Mom was done at the check-out, I changed into the suit in the fitting-rooms and then hurried out to show her. Apparently, I hadn't had that much time - she was already done and waiting for me in a large, brown SUV that I know for a fact we never owned. Dad was in the driver's seat. I ran outside (no one in the store bothered to notice I hadn't paid for the swim-suit yet) and climbed into the car. The suit was one of those tank-top and skirt two-piece kind (and not my usual black, either, it was blue and green and white stripes). As soon as I sat down, the scene around me shifted and I was suddenly on a school bus (sharing the seat with 'Bip' Roberts - his real first name was Adam - and in the real world, he barely ever said more than two words to me) with a few people I went to high school with (the only other face I can now put a name to was Tiffany, yet another person who rarely talked to me). I asked if we had any history homework, but no one could tell me.

Sigh.

That's all I can really remember, though I know there was more to the dreams I had than this. I still wanna know why I slept for twenty hours, too, 'cause I'm gonna feel out of it for a good two or three days. Good thing last night was a rerun.

What the hell...?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:37:06 GMT

Okay, so I admit that I don't really follow the news all that much (particularly politics, as it bores me to tears), but I was trolling through the odd news over at Yahoo and found a headline at the bottom of the article I read (about how this guy thought his dead neighbor's body, sitting out on the patio for a week, was just a Halloween decoration) that bothers me. The headline linked through to an article where the government is proposing an additional tax to soda as a way to raise money for whateverthefuck they're trying to do to the health-care system in this country.

Now, I don't often drink soda - maybe once or twice a month, if that often - but this idea the idiots in D.C. have come up with is just plain stupid; particularly since 'they' are trying to say that fat Americans are fat because of soda.

Sigh.

Doesn't anyone but me use their fucking brains any more?

Fat Americans are fat, not because of soda, but because of sheer laziness. It's too much effort to actually cook a real meal at home, and so restaurant food reigns supreme - and with everyone trying to save time and money, fast-food is especially popular. A sit-down meal at a restaurant (you know, the kind where a waitress takes your order and you wait for it to be cooked and brought to you at the table) in the US usually consists of enough calories to sustain a healthy individual for at least a day and a half (or longer, if there are appetizers and desert involved). For the number-nuts among y'all, this would be right around 2500 to 3000 calories, especially since us USers have grown accustomed to ginormous portions. Going back to fast-food, take a look at these numbers: a McDonalds Big Mac averages 485 calories (21.5 grams of fat, 42.5 carbohydrates, and 27 grams protein), a large fries averages in at 400 calories (17.5g fat, 57g carbs, and 6g protein), and a large Coke comes in at 310 calories (I couldn't locate fat, carb, or protein content). This totals 1195 calories in one meal alone. This is fine, if your only other meal of the day consists of nothing more than a couple of cups of coffee and maybe an apple danish. But how many of us USers only eat two meals a day?

Okay, let's look at an imaginary typical USer. I'm gonna call him 'Bob' for the sake of this post. Bob is 5'8" tall and weighs 135 pounds. He is 23 years old.

Bob's got some sort of officy-type job, say as a call-center rep. He works from nine in the morning until six in the evening, with an hour off for lunch. He likes his sleep, so he sleeps in most mornings and grabs his breakfast at the Dunkin Donuts on his way to work. He's a creature of habit, so he orders the same thing every morning: One 24-ounce coffee (black) and a cranberry-orange muffin. Since he drinks his coffee like a real man, the drink is only a grand total of 6 (yes, that's six, S-I-X) calories. The muffin, on the other hand, comes in at a whopping 470 calories - more, if he decides to butter the damn thing.

So far, 476 calories. Not too bad, huh? Well... Let's continue to follow Bob.

Bob gets to work, clocks in, works for a while, and then his first break pops up at eleven. He's not a smoker, so he heads for the employee lounge. He's feeling a little peckish because his breakfast had no protein (but he doesn't know that's why he feels a little off every day at this time - more on that later), and so scans the contents of the vending machine. He's trying to be somewhat healthy, so he bypasses all the chips, cookies, and candy and selects the only marginally-healthy snack in the machine: a Nature Valley Oats and Honey granola bar. He also refills his coffee mug. The coffee is another 6 calories, and the granola is 180 calories.

Subtotal - 656 calories for the day.

He heads back to his desk and goes back to work. His lunch break comes at one in the afternoon, and since he's got an hour to kill he heads for the chain of fast-food places up the street from where he works. He actually walks - like I mentioned, he's trying to be a little more healthy in his life. Of the garish restaurants, he selects Taco Hell... I mean, Taco Bell. He orders what he thinks is the healthiest thing on the menu - a fiesta taco salad. 'What could be healthier than a salad', right? WRONG. He makes the mistake of eating the shell, too, which only makes matters worse. His 'healthy' choice clocks in at a whopping 820 calories. This doesn't take into account the 42 ounces of pink lemonade he drank with it, which has 525 calories.

Post-lunch calorie count is now at a grand total of 2001 calories. He could stop right now, and still be above the recommended number of calories he's supposed to partake in a single day. But he grew up right here in the US of A, and so thinks that three full meals are needed (more on this later, too).

His lunch hour over, he heads back to his desk-job. His last break of the day hits at four that afternoon. Though he isn't truly hungry, he is far too used to having an afternoon snack to battle the 'afternoon slump' (c'm on, y'all've seen those stupid commercials promoting afternoon snacking), and, like I mentioned, he's a creature of habit, so he heads back to the vending machines. This time he snags a Snickers bar (a reward for being so 'healthy' for lunch). His afternoon snack is a total of 271 calories - but we can't forget his last coffee-up of the day, another six calories.

Total thus far - 2278 calories.

He finishes work and heads homewards. He decides to stop and pick up pizza for supper. He drops by Pizza Hut and gets a medium (12-inch) Supreme with hand-tossed crust. When he gets home, he eats two slices and has a bottle of Bud Light to wash them down. The pizza is 260 calories per slice and the beer is 110. He falls asleep watching television before he can get around to starting that workout regime he's been thinking about taking up.

Total calorie count for the day: 2908 calories.

For someone of Bob's size, weight, and relative (in)activity, he shouldn't need more than 2100 calories per day. If he keeps up with this type of diet, he's not gonna be a measly 135 pounds for very long. And thus, another fat American is made.

Now, to get back to those parantheticals I left:

First, I want to address this 'live by the clock' issue we've got. HUMANS DO NOT NEED TO EAT THREE MEALS EVERY DAY. We don't need a morning snack-time, an afternoon snack-time, or a freakin' midnight snack! WE ARE NOT HOBBITS, PEOPLE. The only times someone should eat is when they are honestly feeling hungry! And, yes, kids get hungry more often than adults do. That's because they're still growing. Teens, in particular, need to eat often as they add inches in bone and muscle mass (this growth is also why most teens have periods of extreme 'laziness' - the energy they're burning in growing is tiring). This does not mean that one should continue the eating habits of a teen once one is done growing. It takes an astonishing amount of caloric intake to build bone - this is why teens going through growth-spurts seem to have a 'hollow leg'. Once maximum height has been reached, eating like a hobbit should be discontinued.

This leads me to the second paranthetical: How often we should eat is directly related to what we are eating. Humans were not designed by nature to eat massive quantities of carbohydrates (starches and sugars) all day, every day. Look to nature - when are carbohydrate-rich foods in abundance? When are grains harvested? When do most fruits ripen? The answer: late summer to mid-fall. This is because nature intended us to binge on carbohydrates in order to build up fat reserves for winter, when energy expenditures increase and food sources run scarce. This is why sugar tastes so good - it's a nature-designed trigger to get us to eat as much of it as we can in preparation for lean times. Unfortunately, our technology has rendered this genetic trigger obsolete; not enough time has passed for us to have evolved beyond it. So, we still binge on carbohydrates, even though we USers have fresh foods available all year long, regardless of location.

The human body is made primarily of water, held together by various and sundry amino acids. Do any of you recall what amino acids are? Yeah, that's right. Proteins. Now, I'm not advocating a meat-only diet here - that would be really, really bad. If the meat is high in fat, you risk major heart-trouble, and if it's lacking any significant fat (if it's all you eat) you can literally starve to death (don't believe me? Look it up - I think the Canadians call it 'rabbit-starvation'). Besides, we all need certain vitamins and minerals in order to function (lacking enough vitamin C leads to scurvy, which is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to weirdo diet-deficiency related disorders).

So, what's the best type of foods to eat, and when should they be eaten? Well, I can't say this is right for everyone, but it's right for me. You're welcome to try it if you like:

Lean meats, non-starchy vegetables, some fruits and juices, and carbohydrates only when needed (or when I'm totally broke - it's sad, but carbs are cheap, just check the price of a crate of ramen).

Sounds simple, right?

That's only half the equation. I also have learned not to let a fucking clock tell me that it's time to eat. I only eat when I'm hungry. As a result, I find that I usually have one meal and one snack per day (I don't consider coffee to be food - it's my brain's go-juice). I don't count calories or fat grams or keep track of anything like that. I listen to my body and let it tell me what I need. Since I'm female, I get hungrier at certain times of the month, but that's to be expected as that horrible (not to mention messy) fact of being a chica takes additional energy. If I'm craving fish (which I loathe, by the way), I know I need fatty acids in my diet (those heart-healthy omega-3s we keep hearing about). If I'm craving pickles, it means I'm lacking the trace amount of aluminum my body needs to function properly (one of the ingredients used in most pickling processes is alum, also known as 'aluminum sulfate'). If I'm craving onions or garlic (which isn't often, as I nearly always flavor my meats with them), I'm lacking the trace amounts of sulfur I need.

Listening to my body and eating only when (and what) it wants has had me go from 275 pounds to 190 in a little under two years with no change to my lack of exercise. I'm pretty much a couch potato (only I stare at my laptop, not the TV - is there a term I'm unaware of for my type of lazy?) and though I enjoy riding my bicycle, I don't do it all that often (it gets too freakin' hot here in the day, and riding at night can be dangerous). I'm pretty sedentary and always have been and I've no intentions to change any time soon.

Sigh.

This post has already rambled on for far too long. To sum up: Soda doesn't make people fat, stupidity and laziness does. Know what's in your food - you've only got one body so learn to listen to it. Cook at home and your food will be healthier (first, make sure you know how to cook, of course). Lean meat and non-starchy veggies are your friends. We are no longer living in the Pliocene, so binging on starches and sugars is no longer recommended by Mother Nature.

Adios for now.

Why do they do this to me?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:58:55 GMT

Okay, so I'm out of smokes, and computer-stuff is my number-one 'need a smoke' time, so I figured I'd spend the day vegging out instead, only to find that I've got my choice of either NCIS or Bones. Sigh. Which do I watch? I kinda like whatsherface who's the female lead on Bones, but I also really like Dinozzo on NCIS. All the eps today are repeats, sure, but none are eps I saw before (have I ever mentioned how I rarely watch television?).

Sigh squared.

Maybe I'll watch an ep of NCIS, then one of Bones, and so on. At least until seven - that's when wrestling takes over USA and The Closer takes over TNT. Dunno what I'll watch then; maybe I'll just kick back and finish reading the Spider Robinson novel I brought home from the library.

My Area

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:42:10 GMT

I figured it was about time to collect some of the pictures I've taken of my new area and share them with y'all.

These first few are of the view at one of my favorite places here in El Paso - Murchison Park on Scenic Drive (my favorite road here in town - it's all twisty and turny and you have to pay attention while driving it or else you could wind up rolling down the mountain):

This one is looking west at the park. The mountains in the background? Yeah, those are the Juarez Mountains in Mexico.

This one is the view to the southwest. You can see downtown El Paso - one of the few places here in town that I hate driving.

This is the view to the southeast. The upper-right city is Juarez, the tiny little smudge in the middle is the Rio Grande, and El Paso is on the lower left... Actually, here (this is easier):

See? And yeah, the Rio Grande isn't really all that impressive. The little creek that I grew up next to back in Iowa was both wider and deeper - and that's not really getting into the fact that once you've seen the entire length of the Mississippi River, not many other rivers in the US can compare.

And, as you might have guessed, this is the view to the east of Murchison Park. I live a little ways off-frame to the left of this image (I live in the northeast corner of town).

This is Murchison Park itself. Well, not the whole park, just my favorite corner of it. Do you see why Mom laughs every time I mention that we now live in a matte-painting?

My second-favorite road in town is the Transmountain Highway that goes over the Franklin Mountains. It's twisty and turny, too, but not as much as Scenic Drive because it's a split four-lane.

This shows part of the Franklin Mountains (I know it's not the best pic, but it was taken through the window of the car).

This is the western side of Transmountain - just before it crosses I-10. It shows a slightly better view of the Franklin Mountains in the background.

This is the view from the first overlook on Transmountain. There are three overlooks in total, two on the west side of the pass and one on the east, but I prefer the ones on the west. I'm not sure why, because I prefer the eastern view back at Murchison.

This is the view at the second overlook - you can see the first overlook in this photo.

And this one shows just why it's 'Franklin Mountain Pass'. Just over the rise in the road is an elevation-marker for 5280 feet - for the metrics among us, it's a signpost marking the spot on the pass that is exactly one mile above sea-level.

Just another photo of the awesome view out at the second overloook. Hmm... Maybe sometime this week, I'll stop off at the east overlook and snap a few pics to share, just in the interest of letting y'all see it.

Okay, getting away from El Paso proper, the next few images were taken when Mom and I went on a little road trip up to Alamogordo, NM and back (it was in mid-August, just so you know).

This is part of the view available as you head north out of town on Highway 54.

Though we've only been to Alamogordo a couple of times (in the daylight), each time we've been lucky enough to see a rainbow. This last time, we caught it on camera.

Coming back from Alamogordo, we took a different route and went past White Sands, NM (it was starting to get dark, so we didn't linger long - I've plans to go back to White Sands and grab a few pics that illustrate just why it's called that).

Anywhoozits, I think that's all the pics I've got for now. Enjoy them in good health!

Question...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:50:32 GMT

Has Jeffery Dean Morgan played a character that hasn't died? I mean, I was watching S2 of Sliders over on Hulu when lo and behold, I realized just who was playing 'Sid' in the ep 'El Sid' (2.05).

See?

According to IMDB, he was 29 or 30 when he played this role. His voice hasn't changed at all in the intervening years, though - it's still deep and gravelly and kinda sexy for not having an accent. The character gets killed right near the end.

Anyway, just thought y'all would like to know.

Mind has Broken, Someone Fixy, Pls?

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:12:27 GMT

Okay, so I was somewhat bored and not in the mood to write or play any computer games. There wasn't anything worth watching on television, so I turned to Hulu. In perusing the shows offered, I found that they offer eps of Psych, and since I only ever saw the one episode that had Cary Elwes in it, I figured I'd see if it was something worth following.

I clicked on the most recent ep (one of my friends has said that Psych is one of those shows you don't really have to watch in order) and kicked back to watch. Much to my surprise, about ten minutes or so into the episode, my brain went 'splody.

Why?

Check this out:

And here's a slightly better cap:

Yes, that's Kurt Fuller, also known as Zachariah on Supernatural. Am I the only one who thinks this is just begging for a crossover?

Anyway, that's about all for now. Brain being brokted and all.

5.04 The End Reaction

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:22:00 GMT

So, I went to write up my reaction to episode 5.04 (The End) and found LiveJournal was undergoing scheduled maintenance. Ergo, I decided to go ahead and write it up and post it when the site was up and running again.

With that out of the way, it’s 9:07 pm, on 10/01/09. Show just finished a few minutes ago, and I’m about to sit back and re-watch the episode (since I don’t have the cash to iTunes it this season, I’m recording the eps as they happen with my DVD-R…hopefully, I’ve got enough blank DVDs to last until I can accumulate the cash for the iTunes season pass).

Initial reaction, prior to hitting ‘play’ on the newly-created disk:

OMFG.

Okay, so anyone who knows me knows I harbor an unhealthy desire to live to see the end of the world as we know it (preferably by zombies), so this episode…

GUH.

It hit nearly every one of my wonderful buttons – the only way it could have been better was if we had seen Dean without his shirt. Let’s go down the list, ’kay?

• Two Deans in the same place at the same time? – Check. For those of us keeping track of such things, this is the third time Jensen Ackles has had to play a scene (or series thereof) opposite himself. The first time was in episode 1.06 (Skin), when the shapeshifter stole Dean’s form. The second happened in episode 3.10 (Dream a Little Dream of Me) when he dreamt that conversation with himself.
• Dean tied up or otherwise secured with something? – Check. Let’s just say that there’s a reason I own a straitjacket and leave it at that, okay?
• Post-apocalyptic future where a virus has made it so that shooting someone is A-OK? – Check. See my previous comment on wanting to live to see the end of the world. (Yes, my favorite book is Stephen King’s The Stand; why do you ask?)
• Oddly coded messages to self? – Check. (I think.) Though I’m not totally positive until I actually hit ‘play’, when future!Dean was telling present!Dean about how, if he had it to do over again, he’d do it differently, when he said something to the effect of ‘say yes’, he wasn’t talking about saying yes to the angels.
• Awesome music? – Check. Awesome, strangely upbeat music while gunning down infected freaks? – Double check. The Contours’ Do You Love Me, just in case you were curious.

Well… there’s more, but I want to get back into rewatching the ep, so I’ll probably come back to this later.

(Music playing while writing this first bit: Godsmack’s Keep Away, Judas Priest’s You Got Another Thing Comin’, and Temple of the Dog’s Wooden Jesus…oddly themed, no? I’ve got the cable tuned to one of those music stations, so I find it rather weird. Don’t you?) Addendum while posting - the song playing when I copied this over from my text file? Fuel's Jesus or a Gun. Definitely a theme going.

The street preacher dude is, seeing this the second time, very suspicious. How did I miss the lingering shot of him? Huh. Musta been too busy chuckling over Dean’s reply.

And I agree with Dean – seeing him actually talking with Castiel on a cell phone is ‘like watching a Hell’s Angel ride a moped’. And I may just be warming up to Castiel thanks to this episode, largely due to his awkwardness with the phone. (‘The voice says I’m almost out of minutes.’ It’s almost schizophrenic, how he delivers that line.)

Our first major bomb in this episode is the fact that the Colt is still out there. I sense this may become important by the end of the season. But that’s just me (and, you know, the ninety-ton plot hammer). You can believe otherwise if you wish.

And at the end of the call, when Castiel says ‘I’ll just…wait here then’ – you know he plans on standing in that exact spot for the whole four hours. (Come to think of it, isn’t that where he zaps Dean to at the end of the ep? S’pose I’m gonna hafta pay closer attention when I get that far.)

Sam’s call to Dean? Not really expected. Especially not all that expected that Sam actually called to tell Dean what’s really going on with him – ’cause face it, fellows, he ain’t got all that great a track record with telling Dean the truth. Do you suppose he’s learned his lesson on that? (We can only hope.)

“I suppose I’m a little numb to the Earth-shattering revelations at this point.” – Hee!

And poor, poor Sammy. All he wants is forgiven for starting the Apocalypse. *pets him*

And who else wanted to hit Dean upside the head with a baseball bat when he said that he and Sam were better off apart? Sigh. Boys – THAT IS SO MUCH STUPID THAT I LOST BRAIN CELLS.

But Dean waking up in the same freakin’ hotel room, five years later? Made of win and awesome. Seriously. The set designers need, oh, I dunno, like a billion chocolate bars for how they aged the set and still had it remain recognizable as the same hotel room.

Yes, the pan over a burned-out and mostly-abandoned Kansas City made my pulse rate go up and my brain go ‘pretty, pretty carnage’. (Huh. Hafta wonder what that says about me.)

Then there’s the blood-drenched title card. Now, is it my imagination, or do the title cards appear later in the episode than they did last season? It seems like we’re getting longer teasers this year… Anyone know for sure on that? Anyone?

Episode title – “The End”. Wait a sec – wasn’t this episode supposed to be called “The Douchebag of Oz”? Or was that just a fake spoiler to harsh my squee? Whatever, handwaves, not that important. Let’s go back to admiring the carnage of a post-apocalyptic future.

Why would there be a random refrigerator in the street? I mean, most of the other debris I can understand – random trash, junked-out cars, barrels and shopping carts and all that, but a fridge? WHY? Did someone try dropping it on one of the infected (like that preview for Zombieland where the piano lands on the zombie)? Or was someone stupid enough to think a freakin’ FRIDGE was a good item to loot?

The theatre marquis says ‘closed for renovations’. Who else thinks it shoulda said ‘closed for the apocalypse’?

The creepy little girl (though I remain convinced she wasn’t all that little – I mean, she was shaped more like a short sixteen or seventeen year-old than an actual little girl) drooling blood on a shattered mirror is now my second-favorite bit of gore to have shown up in this fantabulous series (first place will forever belong to the exploding head in episode 4.19, Jump the Shark). There’s something oddly beautiful in that little glob of blood sitting on the shards of shattered mirror…

Then we get a whip-pan to CROATOAN in bloody, block letters on the side of a… is that a garage door? Looks like. Hi, Season Two! I’ve missed your innocence! (Have I ever mentioned that I live like a block from a street here in El Paso that’s called Roanoke? Yeah, I wouldn’t live on that street if you paid me – though that doesn’t keep me from wanting to take my pocket knife and carve ‘croatoan’ in all the telephone poles.)

The chase scene is very 28 Days Later-esque. But fun. As is Do You Love Me playing during the slaughter-scene.

Five years in the future and there’s no cell service on his phone, no radio signal, and so forth, but the car is still hot-wireable (shut up, is too a word)? Um… Sorry, but that doesn’t track. At all. Car batteries lose their charge if not receiving a regular recharge from the alternator – at best, a car battery will last roughly two years in ‘storage’ before it no longer has the juice to start a car. It woulda been better if they’d gotten a quick shot of him push-starting a stick-shift. Ask any mechanic (which Dean’s supposed to freakin’ be, so he’d bloody well know this) and they’ll tell you I’m right.

Am I the only one weirded-out by the fact that Palin is supposed to be president in 2014? If that happens, I’m moving to Australia, ’cause, man, does she freak me the hell out. ’Nuff said.

Then we find that our ol’ buddy Zach is the one who sent Dean back – sigh. Someone seriously needs to fry that angel’s ass. I really, really don’t like him. Oddly, I prefer freakin’ Uriel to Zach – mainly because Uriel was at least honest about how he felt about humanity and what he wanted.

Am I the only one who misses the days of ‘saving people, hunting things – the family business’? What I wouldn’t give for a good ol’ fashioned casefile episode right about now…

Anyway, back to the ep…

And we find that Zach sent Dean into 2014 for three days – which all take place inside four hours, if Castiel’s comment at the end about them having an appointment is accurate.

BOBBY! NOOOOOOOOOOO. Now I know that Zach’s just jerking Dean around. If anyone’s gonna survive the fuckin’ apocalypse – mobility issues or not – it’s Bobby.

IMPALA! See note for Bobby. Okay, I’ll admit I got more choked-up at the state of the Metallicar than I did at seeing the dried blood and bullet-holes on the wheelchair, but… Damn it. I’ve known the car longer than Bobby. But Bobby kicks ass. Damn it. My brain is being torn in two over who to miss more in this apocafuture! Still, though… More evidence that Zach’s fucking with Dean. Because, seriously? If there’s still running cars (which we see later), why the HELL would Dean be running in anything but the Impala? Unless…it’s some weird nod to the later revelation that future!Dean’s completely fucking lost it. Shut up brain, or I’ll stab you with my fountain pen. Zach’s fucking with Dean and leave it at that.

However, it is, and always will remain, endearing how Dean talks to his baby. (I talk to my Baby, too. She’s a red-and-white motorcycle, and ‘Baby’ is her name. Mom’s car’s named ‘Adria’, my laptop is Armond, and my desktop is Beulah. No, I’m not totally nuts. Really.)

HI DEAN2.0! You’re seriously fucked-up, you know that, right?

(Is anyone else sick of the ‘I Exist’ Dr. Pepper commercial?)

We know that Dean routinely carries a set of lock-picks, box-cutters, and switchblades! YAY! They’re always the same set, too! Otherwise, how would future!Dean known them on-sight?

And then we get this exchange (I’ll be giggle-snorting about this for the next two weeks, at least!):

Future!Dean: Okay, if you’re me, then tell me something only I would know.
Present!Dean: Ronda Hurley. We were, uh, nineteen. She made us try on her panties. They were pink and satiny. And you know what? We kinda liked it.
Future!Dean: Touché.

Something tells me that Dean would appreciate a pair of silk boxers. Something else tells me that the fans would appreciate it, too, particularly if he got to model them on-screen.

We also find out from this conversation that the virus ‘started hitting the major cities about two years ago’ – so, for those of you following along, that would be 2012. Would it have been December 21, 2012, perchance? (And if you don’t know the significance of that date, you’ve been hiding under a rock – check the History Channel sometime.)

“Heavyweight showdown in Detroit. From what I understand, Sam didn’t make it.” Now, future!Dean didn’t say that Sam had died – we were just meant to take it that way. And you can tell that present!Dean did just that. (Yet another instance of me wanting to pull Dean out of the television screen, wrap him in a blanket, and feed him cookies.)

“Me an’ Sam, we haven’t talked in, hell, five years.” Obviously referring to the phone call at the beginning of the episode. Or maybe not so obvious – I mean, math is involved here, so it’s possible to have missed this bit.

Present!Dean: We never tried to find him?
Future!Dean: We had other people to worry about.

What people, FD? You’re a committed loaner, only ever really attaching yourself to your family. You wouldn’t have had a group to lead until everything started falling apart, so what people, damnit???

Present!Dean: Oh, come on! You don’t trust yourself?
Future!Dean: No. Absolutely not.

Good call, FD. Unfortunately, you seem to be forgetting just how resourceful you really are.

(And is anyone else bugged by the fact that future!Dean isn’t remembering any of this? I mean, since Dean got popped five years into the future, wouldn’t it have been something of a major memory for him? Yet another clue that Zach’s simply fucking with Dean, and he’s not really in the future – just suffering an angle-induced acid dream.)

CHUCK! \o/ Always a pleasure seeing Chuck. Good to know he wasn’t killed off as unnecessary during the apocalypse.

And, I’ve watched the interaction with the GI-Jane wanna be chica several times and still can’t catch her name – is it Lisa or Rhyssa? Handwaves. Doesn’t matter – I’m calling her GI-Jane (even though there’s apparently an actual Jane in the camp, we never see her and so she doesn’t exist).

Then we see just why Castiel seems to be growing on me like a fungus. Though I wasn’t too sure about the character, I’ve always enjoyed Misha Collins’ work – I don’t think he’s ever played the same type of character twice – and how he played Castiel in this ep… Just so much squee! I said it before that I’d pay good money to see a drunk Cas, and had been expecting it in the ep (was it last week?) where he went to the brothel with Dean, but this? So much more what I wanted to see! Awesome to the nth degree.

Random observation: Is my zombie!apocalypse fic (Redefining Perceptions of Insanity, archived here) being read by one of the writers? I mean, I’ve got Dean as basically the ‘general’ of his little group of survivors in the story, and they do the same thing on Show, and… Well, it’s enough to make me wonder, is all. It’d be wonderfully awesome if so, but I’ll live with simply being on the same wavelength as them if it isn’t.

Anyway – back to the show.

Though I can understand present!Dean’s reaction at his future self’s killing of the man, I think I actually have to side with future!Dean on this one – he’s actually lived through everything falling apart. I would think that by now, he knows more-or-less what he’s doing.

And we receive confirmation that the Colt is still out there. Too bad future!Dean couldn’t tell present!Dean just where it was back in ’09. It would have been extraordinarily useful information to have.

(Is it just down here or does ABC usually advertise their news services on the CW?)

After the commercial irritation, we have another instance where I still can’t catch GI-Jane’s name. Anyone care to help me on this? Please?

But the sheer disappointment in himself that Dean shows in this interchange:

Castiel: Our fearless leader, I’m afraid, is all too well-schooled in the art of getting to the truth.
Present!Dean: Torture? Oh, so we’re torturing again? Well, that’s good. Classy.

Yeah. It makes me want to upgrade that blanket to one of those fake-suede ones and the cookies just got switched from store-bought to homemade chocolate-chip. (And yet more proof that I’m nearly positive Zach’s fucking with Dean. I don’t think Dean would torture anyone again, not after what happened in 4.16 (On the Head of a Pin).)

Huh. Did anyone else notice that future!Dean isn’t wearing his ring? And where is his amulet? I mean, if Castiel is chillin’ at the little survivor compound, then he would have no need for the amulet and should have returned it to Dean. So, is this another instance of evidence showing just how screwed-up future!Dean really is, or is it yet more proof that the whole episode was nothing more than a freaky acid trip?

And then, we have the following conversation:

Present!Dean: Why are you taking me?
Future!Dean: Relax, you’ll be fine. Zach’s looking after you, right?
Present!Dean: No, that’s not what I mean. I wanna know what’s going on.
Future!Dean: Yeah, okay. You’re coming because I want you to see something. I want you to see our brother.
Present!Dean: Sam? I thought he was dead?
Future!Dean: Sam didn’t die in Detroit. He said ‘yes’.
Present!Dean: Yes? Wait… You mean…?
Future!Dean: That’s right. The big yes. To the devil. Lucifer’s wearing him to the prom.
Present!Dean: Why would he do that?
Future!Dean: I wish I knew. But now we don’t have a choice. It’s in him, and it’s not getting out. And we’ve got to kill him, Dean. And you need to see it. The whole damn thing. How bad it gets. So you can do it different.
Present!Dean: What do you mean?
Future!Dean: Zach said he was gonna bring you back, right? To ’09?
Present!Dean: Yeah.
Future!Dean: When you get back home, you say yes. You hear me? Say yes to Michael.
Present!Dean: That’s crazy. If I let him in, then Michael fights the devil. Battle’ll scorch half the planet!
Future!Dean: Look around you, man! Half the planet’s better than no planet, which is what we have now! If I could do it over again, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.
Present!Dean: So why don’t you?
Future!Dean: I’ve tried! I’ve shouted yes ’til I was blue in the face! The angels aren’t listening! They just left, gave up! It’s too late for me, but for you –
Present!Dean: Oh, no, there’s gotta be another way.
Future!Dean: Yeah, that’s what I thought. I was cocky. Never actually thought I’d lose. But I was wrong. Dean, I was wrong. I’m begging you – say yes. But you won’t. ’Cause I didn’t. Because that’s just not us, is it?

There’s so freakin’ much packed into this one bit of dialog that I hardly know where to start! So… Lemme think for a moment – hopefully I’ll be a bit more coherent than I’ve been thus far.

To begin with, this whole going-to-the-future thing could be viewed as either actually something that Dean’s experiencing, or as an angel-induced vision. Personally, I think it’s a vision. So, with that in mind, we have to assume that Zach is controlling as much of what Dean is experiencing in this vision as he possibly can – but even being an angel, he wouldn’t be able to control every little detail. I honestly don’t think that future!Dean is talking about the angels here at all (at least, not as more than a cover). Why do I think this? Primarily because he quotes exactly the same line Dean said to Sam during the conversation at the beginning of the episode about Lucifer wearing Sam to the prom. Before he did this, though, he deliberately brought up the fact that Zach is ‘looking after you’ – basically, that the angel is watching them. Now, I don’t think that present!Dean really caught it until later – after he’d had the chance to think it over – but exactly how future!Dean revealed the information? It was either a deliberate attempt at changing the past (if this is an actual experience – and we all know from 4.03 In the Beginning that changing the past is futile on this show) or his subconscious trying to get a message through the angel-vision and clue Dean in on how he and Sam really are stronger when they’re together. First, he brought up Zach in such a way as to remind himself that they’re being watched. Secondly, he told about what happened to Sam. Then he said the line from the phone call. Then and only then did he tell himself to say ‘yes’. He pressed the point by confirming that present!Dean had heard him. After that point, he continues on about the angels not listening and so forth, but the main objective of the conversation was to get Dean to remember the phone conversation with Sam and to get him to change his mind about Sam coming back. I’m sure, would it not have seemed odd, he would have also reiterated the fact that he’d not spoken with Sam in five years, just to be sure the message got through. The way he ends, also, points in the direction of this theory – he ends by, however obliquely, telling himself not to say yes to Michael.

Anyhow, back to the rewatch.

Have I mentioned how much I love seeing Castiel so messed-up? It’s awesome.

Oh, and did anyone else have the thought that it woulda been easier to keep track of which Dean was which if one of them had been wearing the leather jacket? ’Cause the blue and olive? Not so easy to tell apart though Show’s filter.

And I really enjoyed both how present!Dean knew his future self was lying, and how future!Dean KO’d present!Dean. Seriously squee-worthy material.

Okay, so I am an admitted Dean!Girl, but Sam (Lucifer, whatever) in that white suit? Okay, so maybe, just maybe Sam’s got a few redeeming physical features. Think I like him better in that suit than in the towel from 1.17 (Hell House).

And Jared plays evil kinda awesome – but we knew that, ever since the Meg-bitch demon possessed him back in episode 2.14 (Born Under a Bad Sign) – but in this ep, it’s really freakin’ awesome how evil he’s being.

The whole conversation Dean has with Lucifer is just so…hurty. And another point to this being just a vision is Sam/Lucifer saying how nothing Dean can do will change how they end up. That’s a big, steaming pile of SHIT. Free will means nothing all of a sudden? And if this wasn’t a vision, and was actually something Dean went through, wouldn’t the fact that he’d remember where and when actually negate the possibility of it coming to pass?

Anyway, back to the rewatch.

We have Zach pressing the same damn theme that had been ongoing through the episode, but then Dean proves that his subconscious got through – he tells Zach no, and after Castiel rescues him, the first thing he does (after telling Castiel not to change) is call Sam and rescind his ‘no’ from the phone call at the beginning of the episode.

He tells Sam ‘yes’, and now everything seen in his vision? Changed. Quickly and easily changed. With one little press of a button, the ‘future’ he saw has been shot to hell. No pun intended (for once).

I love the power of free will.

Icon Meme...

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:07:49 GMT

(hijacked from hells_half_acre)

1. Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' and I will pick SIX of your icons.
2. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I chose, bitches.

The six that HHA picked for me are:

1.

This one comes from the LJ-based'Encyclopedia of Weirdness' (a fan-comic for that show that's overtaken my life). I tend to use it when I'm feeling particularly devious or mischievous, and also when I'm trying to decide between being good!me or bad!me.

2.

The photo (without the text) showed up in one of my mom's emails about two days after Supernatural aired Malleus Maleficarum (episode 3.08) I had Dean's general anti-witch attitude on the brain and had been wondering just what had caused it when Mom's hysterical laughter drew me to this pic - so I stole a copy and photoshopped the text into place.

3.

This one, like #1, is also from Encyclopedia of Weirdness - it's simply a .gif of one of the comics (my favorite comic) posted there. It also happens to perfectly describe my general attitude towards mornings - I ain't human 'til my third cup of coffee.

4.

This one is a screencap of that major WTF moment in Supernatural's episode Dream a Little Dream of Me (3.10). I added the text down the side. I use it when I have major confusion going on (much like I had during that particular moment of Show - before we realized that Sam was just having naughty dreams about Bella!Sue).

5.

Aaah. This is one of the few icons I use that wasn't made by me. Fanfiction is what keeps me going between seasons of Show (and before finding Show, it's what kept me going between Harry Potter books). It also helps me remember not to take life too seriously. If I ever get around to posting more of my fic here on LJ, I'll likely use this as the fic-alert icon, especially since it's not particular to any one fandom (and I apparently have a knack for SPN/HP crossovers).

6.

And this final one is the chemical breakdown of a caffeine molecule. Before I .gif'd the EoW comic, this was the icon I used when feeling particularly tired. I still use it from time to time, but I don't know how much longer it will remain on my account (probably until I get another idea for an animated icon - I love .gifs!).

Thinky thoughts on Astrology and Dean and Show and...

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:44:45 GMT

Okay, so I occasionally have imaginary conversations with people (either real, historical, or fictional) purely for my own amusement. The latest one was basically my imaginary version of my mom asking just why I like Dean more than Sam. The first thing that popped into my head involved the purely physical differences between the two: Sam's too tall for my taste, and though I can appreciate it when we get to see him shirtless, I'm really not all that into 'ripped' - I much prefer the quietly understated strength and musculature that Dean's got (not to mention my whole 'thing' for cowboys...damn but Jensen's bowlegged and I wish we could get an ep of Show with him having to go horseback for whatever reason). Ahem. Sorry. Got a little sidetracked there. Anyway, suffice it to say that physically speaking, Dean's more my type (laugh-lines and that shit-eating grin of his FTW!) than Sam. But then I started musing on their personalities and I pulled up a memory of when I was watching S1 for the very first time.

Now, I didn't get into Show until S2 had been released on DVD (hadn't even heard of it before then - I don't watch much TV), so I saw the first two seasons in lumps as I rented them from the video place. One of my hobbies is astrology (and not just the 'what's my horoscope today' kind, but the full charts and how they reflect an actual personality), and when I really get into something - to the point I start ficcing it - I try to figure out just what the characters' charts look like, especially if I don't know their birthdays. Until Dean made the statement in 'The Usual Suspects' that he was an Aquarius, I was totally convinced he was (as I am) a Cancer.

I still remain convinced that Cancer figures prominently in his chart.

Just why did I think this?

Well, since I am a Cancer, I know it's attributes quite well - it's the sign I've studied most. Generally speaking, Cancers tend to be somewhat shy, hiding behind a series of masks that help protect them from the outside world; as a water sign, Cancerians are very much based in their emotions, even if they try like hell not to show it. Cancerians also tend to be very focused on family - in lieu of having any available family to focus on, Cancerians will usually wind up 'making' a family; one of their defining characteristics is a need to take care of someone. Who does this sound like to you?

We've seen since the very first episode just how much Dean needs to have someone to look after, and with recent episodes we've learned that he will see about 'creating' someone to fill the role of 'care recipient' (read: little brother) when his own family is absent for whatever reason (or unwilling to fulfill the role needed). We've also seen how Dean has a tendency to adopt some sort of mask to present to whoever happens to be there - be it the charming womanizer, the triumphant hero, the sage older brother - we only rarely get to see him without a mask of some sort. Most of the times we've seen him 'naked' (for lack of a better term) have been either when he's been by himself (like at the end of 'Heart') or when he's been trying to deal with having his sense of self completely shattered and reformed in the aftermath of going to Hell. As of the beginning of S5, he's still trying to rebuild his set of masks.

So... Since we know his sun-sign (best described as the 'bones' of his personality) is Aquarius, just where would Cancer figure in his chart? Personally, I like to think that Cancer is his moon-sign (a moon-sign is probably best described as who you are when you're home alone), with his ascendant (the 'mask' he shows the world most of the time) as either Scorpio or Leo.

Well... I think that's about all I've got for now. I know - rather rambly and incoherent. If I find the time, I think I'll sit down and try to figure out just where all his planets and such are, based solely on what I know of his personality and the canon intel of his birthday (I'm not even going to try to make it compatible with real-world astronomy on his date of birth - I mean, it's a fictional character in a slightly different universe than our own, so how do we know that the astronomy matches up with our own?).

I know I'm a few years behind schedule...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:52:40 GMT

I finally fuckin' beat Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. Finally.

No, I don't think you quite realize just what an accomplishment I consider this. First off, I've had the game since...was it '01? I think it was. So, for the better part of 8 years, I've been playing the game off and on and TODAY I FINALLY BEAT THE FUCKER!!!!

Yes, this is why I've not posted anything on my fics lately. But now that I've FINALLY BEAT THE FUCKER, I can get back to my regularly scheduled life.

Face, meet Palm. Palm, meet Face. Yeah, it's one of them days.

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:44:50 GMT

Okay, so I was gonna do one last check of my email for the night before retiring to my room to bury myself in a book (a real book, one with actual pages and everything!) when I saw a headline in my news-box on the email welcome page: House Plans to Admonish Rep. Wilson Over Outburst. Doesn't sound all that interesting, right? Well...Let me set the stage, and then you can decide.

First off, I'm kinda tired and my eyes are starting to get a little blurry because I've been staring at the computer practically all day. As a result, my brain didn't process the 'Rep.' portion of that headline. Can we see where this is going yet? Secondly, the only medical TV show I watch at all is House, M.D.. Yeah. My brain went there. I actually stopped and asked myself, 'What outburst? Are they stuck back in...lemme think...was that season four? Early season five? Or do they know something about the upcoming season I've not happened across in my spoiler-whoring?' before I realized that it was a freakin' political article.

Is it obvious that I don't really follow the news all that much?

SHOW ROCKED! 5.01 Reflection.

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:41:53 GMT

Okay, so I'll admit that last season, when Show brought angels onto the scene, I was rather apprehensive, but I have to say they knew what they were fuckin' doing!

First off - THUNDERSTRUCK!!! The second-greatest AC/DC song EVAH! (First place belongs to Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheep.) And the new title card is...interesting. My favorite is still the season 2 card, though.

And I so TOTALLY did NOT see Bobby being possessed coming! I mean, I know he's the ONLY one we hadn't seen go through that yet, but still! The dude is PARANOID. Maybe he just let his vigilance slip a little what with the whole coming-apocalypse thing. Handwaves. Whatever.

Meg! Damnit, that demon needs a real name. Meg was the name of her freakin' host way back when. Why is she putting up with still being called that??? But anyway - BOBBY STABBED HIMSELF WITH THE MAGIC KNIFE! Who else thought that was the end of Bobby right there? I mean, I'm honestly shocked my eyeballs are still safely inside my skull - my eyes were that wide and I know I made some little 'meep' noises interspersed with 'Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, no they can't do that, no, no, no'. I was rocking. Literally.

And then, and then, and then...

They brought in the slash ficcer! I know I'll probably catch hell for this, but I liked Becky. I know a few fellow fans of both SPN and Harry Potter who are exactly like her. Hell, I used to be an avid Draco/Harry shipper until all the poorly-written sex scenes started irritating me. And the thought of wincest doesn't disgust me - I think I developed an incest-immunity from reading Fred/George fics - though I might have actually giggled at Becky's reaction to the boys: How she couldn't stop touching Sam and said 'You're...not what I pictured' to Dean. Happy place, that. So, just to say it and be done - if Becky bothered you, you obviously have trouble laughing at yourself because in this instance, Becky is a pretty true-to-life representation of our little fandom-family, and we all know that family always provides the best laughs.

And WHAT THE FUCK happened with Cas? Did I read that scene with Zachariah right and that Castiel had died, but their BOSS brought him back???? Sucks to be Zach, I guess. Question for the flist: Spoilerfix said that Dean was going to take Cas out on the town in this ep...What happened to that? Did it get pushed to the next ep or cut altogether? Anyone? Bueller? (I'd pay good money to see a drunk Cas. As much as I wasn't sure if I liked him or not back during 4.01, he's grown on me ~~like a fungus~~.)

And that bit with Bobby near the end? Um...the cable kinda glitched for a moment, but did they say Bobby wouldn't walk again? 'Cause that? Not possible from where he stabbed himself. Then again, horror-movie anatomy has it that if you get hurt anywhere on your torso, you WILL cough up blood, so...handwaves. Will be most upset if this supposition is true though. Bobby needs to kick ass. Kinda hard to do that if your ass-kicking is restricted to where you can roll.

But the main mind-blowing bit - DEAN WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MICHAEL'S MEATSUIT. All that angel-based CRACK has been validated. BUT DEAN SAID NO. The angeldicks threatened Bobby and he said NO. They threatened him, and he still said NO. Zachariah fucking TOOK SAM'S FUCKING LUNGS and Dean still said NO. I find it amusing that after the initial 'no' Dean repeated it three times, three being a very powerfully magical number. I love how free will and fate are hashing out their little argument right before our very eyes.

And the ending...DAMN YOU KRIPKE! I thought we were done with this useless rift between the boys back at the end of 4.22. Sigh. Show, you hurt me so good. Good thing I already knew I was a bit of a masochist before ever finding this series, 'cause if not... Damn.

To sum up:

THUNDERSTRUCK! \o/

Possessed!Bobby! O.o

STABBED! :-O

MEG! \o/

Slash-ficcer!Becky? HA! :-D

Dean's an angel meatsuit? O.o

NO, NO, THREE TIMES NO! \o/

Bobby'sgonnabeokayBobby'sgonnabeokayBobby'sgonnabeokayBobby'sgonnabeokayBobby'sgonnabeokay. :-|

BrotherRiftContinues. :-(

Sigh. Is it next Thursday yet?

Meme stolen from Caffienekitty: SPN Quote

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:51:56 GMT

When you see this, post a Supernatural quote in your LJ.

"It's Sam. Sammy's a chubby twelve year-old." -S.Winchester, Pilot

OMG!!!!SHOW!!!!!!!!!1111!!1!

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:49:08 GMT

After months of waiting, SHOW IS FINALLY BACK TONIGHT!

I woke up this morning (evening) at five-thirty (I fell asleep sometime between seven and eight this morning, so it's nothing weird, I'm just a night person by nature - I like to tell people that my internal clock is permanently set on Tokyo time) in a total panic because I had a dream that I'd slept through show and that the internet had crashed because of all the SPN-spamming going on. Once I bolted out of bed, it took me nearly five minutes to find my glasses (they'd fallen off my night stand and my room is rather a mess, so I didn't see them immediately), I suppose had anyone saw me, they would have laughed their asses off at me squinting and methodically scanning the area of my nightstand from a hunched-over distance of about ten inches (horribly nearsighted here, especially when I still have sleep-sand in my eyes).

Anyway, I found my glasses and then spent a nervy ten minutes waiting for my computer to boot up so that I could check the time and date - my alarm clock said it was evening, but I've accidentally screwed up the time settings on it before, batting at it half-asleep. When Armond (yes, my laptop has a name, my desktop is Beulah, my motorcycle is Baby, and the car is Adria - deal with it). Once he was finally up and running, I checked my email first thing (like I always do), simultaneously checking the date/time in my start-bar. Tiny bit of relief - it was still the tenth, and early enough that I'd not missed Show. I checked the date/time stamp in my weather-box at the start page of my email and got a similar time. More relief. Okay, still a little apprehensive because, like Ian Flemming said, twice could just be circumstantial. So, I checked another online source - the local news rag's website - and found that they agreed, so I was shiny on that.

In my email, I discovered I had ten, count 'em - ten emails. Now, I know that probably doesn't sound like much, but I usually only have one or two waiting for me. I have a secondary email through Hotmail that I use when signing up for anything that will result in spam. One email was a political forward from my sister (which I summarily deleted - I don't do any forwards and she freakin' well knows this yet insists on sending them to me anyway). Another was an update email from one of my Yahoo groups - it's supposed to be my local pagan group discussing pagan things, but lately they've gotten off on a tangent about the newly-initiated Texas state law that says public schools have to teach the Bible creation myth alongside evolution (which I detest the thought of - nothing against sheep, aka Christians, but religion has no place in public school - simply because this country was founded with the idea of separation of Church and State and in state-run schools, not ALL the students are freakin' SHEEP!) Sigh. Sorry about the tangent. Back to the topic. I also had a review alert waiting concerning my epic HP fanfic All at Once (...I think I need to post a chapter for that soon, the fans are starting to get scary with their reviews!). The remaining emails were all alerts concerning the SPN fandom's excitedness (is that a word? Screw it, I'm still waking up, so if it isn't, it is now) about the premiere tonight.

Apparently, we broke Twitter. Really, though, everyone twitting #LuciferisComing should have bloody well known the effect it would have on the uberChristians out there.

Shaky, excited sigh.

I set the timer on my DVD-R and I really really really hope I got it right. I don't have the cash for an iTunes season pass just yet and my main source for internet-rips of Show was shut down last summer (and though I know the theory of extracting an embedded code from a website, I've yet to get it to work properly for me...I guess my html-speak needs a little more work), because I'll need to know all the details for when I get around to writing fic (even though I'm still writing mid-S3-fic, I have plans for season four fic, and I'm sure various plot- and muse-bunnies will show up throughout S5).

Please let the timer work.

Please let there not be any power-outages tonight.

Please let there be no issues with the cable connection tonight.

Please let things turn out right.

Please.

At times like this, I have trouble activating the Zen of Kripke (something I learned in fandom - I think it originated with caffienekitty, but I'm not totally sure, so I hope I didn't manage to make anyone upset with me).

But it's Holy Thursday, the day that gives my life meaning, and the main reason why I've said that I'm unavailable on Thursdays 7pm-10pm on every job application I've filled out this week. (As a side-note, I also put down that I'm unavailable on Sundays 9am-3pm; I volunteered to be the teen mentor at the UU - yeah, I'm not real sure how that happened, either).

More later, gotta refill the coffee.

Dieing? Surely not.

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:56:34 GMT

When will people who otherwise have managed to combat the innumerable traps and pitfalls of English grammar finally realize that 'dieing' and 'dying' are NOT THE SAME FUCKING WORD??? They aren't even CLOSE TO THE SAME FUCKING WORD!

Dieing = currently changing the color of something with the use of a pigment (a dye).

Dying = currently engaged in the act of kicking the bucket, shuffling off the mortal coil, etc.

I know it's counter-intuitive, but it is how it is. Kinda like how 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean the same thing. The only time I want to see the phrase 'I'm dieing' or 'he's dieing' is if there is actual dye involved.

Feel free to pass this along to others. The more who know, the fewer times I'll have to deal with this in the future.

More ranting on the news...

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:27:46 GMT

Okay, so apparently the folks over at Yahoo news either read my journal or someone else more famous than I am made similar observations about the 'drop' in prices for consumer goods over the month of July. They just posted a new article that clears up the confusion: "Wholesale prices dropped sharply in July, and over the past 12 months fell by the largest amount in more than six decades of record-keeping."

Okay, I'll buy that. Makes sense and all, considering the fact that what I pay for something at a store is not the wholesale cost. It doesn't explain, however, why I'm still paying the same (if not more) for things as I was last year. If the retail outlets are paying less for their goods, why are they still asking the same amount from me to buy their crap? I'd think they'd at least try to pass along these savings to their customers. But then again, they're out to fleece as much money as they possibly can from the sheep. Since I hate being a sheep, I suppose I'm either going to have to find a wholesale hookup for all my needs, find ways to live without, or learn how to make more things from scratch.

Sigh.

Am I the only one severely disappointed in the way the modern world is being run?

Potter Fandom Observation

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:42:03 GMT

In conjunction with my earlier observation that - almost without exception - whenever Hermione's parents need first names, 'Dan' and 'Emma' are used I have a few other odd observations and a few questions I wanted to post.

Firstly, I've noticed that the vast majority of smut!fic (be it a PWP or something with an actual plot, however flimsy) tends to be written by men, unless it's a slash fic. As part of this observation, I have also noticed that most male authors who write smut tend to make Harry inordinately large, with the stamina of a professional porn star, and a level of skill that only two or three lifetimes can produce. Are they perchance overcompensating for something? I mean, in almost ninety percent of the smut fic I've read, the story (such that it may be) starts off after OotP, so Harry is still an underfed fifteen (or sixteen, depending on if the story begins before or after his birthday) year-old. Sure, a teenager might have somewhat astonishing powers of recuperation, but neither I nor anyone I know ever mentioned having had earth-shattering sex as (or with) a teenager. They simply don't have the experience. Sure, some might have a natural talent for it, while others might have a good grasp on the theory, but actual practice? Hah!

Also, they tend to pair Harry with a girl (the name doesn't really matter here, they invariably read as the same fantastical character) who will jump into bed with him after a relationship of mere hours (most male smut ficcers tend to use Hermione with the excuse that they've been friends for years - um...still don't see how they'd jump into bed on the first date, even if they did decide to pursue a romantic relationship; there's a world of difference between being friends and being lovers). Oh, I almost forgot, the girl is either already shaved 'down there' or has no problems whatsoever when Harry asks her to do so. I can sorta see the appeal in a shaved pussy - no one wants pubes in their teeth, after all - but why must the girl always be the one to do it? I mean, sure having a shaved twat is good for personal hygiene and it makes sure that stray hairs don't get caught in the elastic of underwear or swimming suits, but I don't know anyone who would voluntarily shave that area for the first time without some sort of protest! Is it too much to ask for an ounce of believability in a fic? To say nothing of how it fucking itches when it grows back in.

When they don't pair him up with one girl, Harry winds up leading a veritable orgy of women. Um...Why? There may be a grand total of three men on the planet who are good enough (and not just in the sack) to keep one woman happy, how the hell would a scrawny, inept sixteen year-old keep several happy? Not to mention the fact that women can be conniving bitches who don't care much for sharing (see, I'm not above pointing out the faults of my own gender). I'll admit that there are a few women out there who don't mind non-exclusive relationships (even if they happen to be married), but none of them would put up with it if the non-exclusivity applied only to the man.

Sigh.

To sum up:

Men, if you are going to write a smut fic, would you kindly make it somewhat realistic? Oh, and though I'm bi, it does get tiresome to read about how turned-on Harry gets when he watches Hermione make out with Luna (or Ginny or Padma or whichever other girls are spreading their legs to bare their shaved cunt for The-Man-Who-Is-Hung-Like-An-Elephant-And-Who-Makes-Porn-Stars-Weep-With-Envy). It gets old. Really.

The News Sucks.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:26:07 GMT

According to Yahoo news, "over the past 12 months, prices dropped the most in nearly six decades". I have to ask just how this makes any sense whatsoever when I distinctly recall paying more for groceries this month than I have at any other time in my life? I mean... Well, let's take a loaf of bread, for example. Just a plain old loaf of house-brand white bread. I remember Mom paying about fifteen cents per loaf for it when I was in first grade (only 20 years or so ago). Four days ago, I paid eighty cents for a loaf. That's not cheaper than what it was only two decades ago - let alone six! Or how about a normal-sized candy bar? A regular Mars now runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.39. King-sized are $1.79. These are way higher than the $.75 I remember the regulars ($.95 for King) costing when I was in high school (a mere ten years ago). Just how the fuck have prices 'fallen'???? This makes absolutely NO FUCKING SENSE.

Sigh.

I really need to stop reading the news.

Mom's Birthday

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:48:23 GMT

Okay, so Mom is turning 57 on 08/12. From my place of where, that's in a little less than an hour and a half. I've absolutely no cash to get a present (particularly since I can't donate plasma for pocket money until we've got an extra $75 on hand to go see a doc that will say I'm all healed up from my surgery back at the end of May), so I'm going to be making some foods that I'm relatively certain Mom likes. Of course, we'll have the meatloaf she's so enamored of for supper tomorrow (the recipe can be found here, along with some corn and baked beans or a salad. I also want to make a a cake, but I don't really know for sure what Mom's favorite cake is. I know Dad's was Angel Food, my sis loves Devil's Food (ironic, huh?), and I have a weakness for cherry jello-cake, but Mom? I have no fucking clue. I don't even know for sure if she's a cake-person. I know she's not all that fond of custard pies (my favorites, particularly banana, key lime, and dreamsicle - which is orange/vanilla), loves - of all things - rasin pie, and enjoys white-chocolate-macadamia-nut cookies, but cake? Shit. I've no clue at all. I do know that she's not as fond of either Devil's or Angel Food as the rest of the family, but that's about where my knowledge ends.

Sure, I could break down and make a (shudder) raisin pie, but that would just wind up punishing me for wanting to do something nice for Mom. (Grapes were put on this Earth for one reason and one reason only - to make wine.)

Sigh. Maybe I'll make a giant ho-ho. I like them and I know that it won't go to waste, even if Mom doesn't.

Weird Healthish Question...

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 07:51:13 GMT

Okay, so the ghouls at that doorway-to-hell masquerading as a hospital hijacked my gallbladder back at the end of May. Some of you may already know this. If not, I just said as much so now you all know this. Anyway, I've noticed something beyond weird since that horrible brush with demonic ghouls back in May: Any time I eat something - particularly if its something sweet, something that has a high-fat content, or both (like orange juice, pizza, or ice cream), I can literally feel my pancreas release whatever enzymes are needed to digest it. It's kinda like...well, you know how if you swallow an ice cube, you can feel it go all the way down your throat? Or the pressure-twinge in your guts when your body's telling you that whatever roadside stand you grabbed lunch at should be avoided at all costs in the future? It's kinda like that, only not so cold as the first and not as unpleasant as the second. A weird twisty, pinching, internal thud coming from just below the skin and muscle that overlays that particular gland/organ/whateveritis. I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced something like this or has heard of it before because it's somewhat disquieting.

Why is it...?

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:27:34 GMT

Okay, so I've been writing my little heart out the past couple of days and then hit a snag. To hopefully work my way around the block, I was poking around in my Harry Potter fandom for something decent to read. I found a promising fic over at Ficwad (it's called Harry's Second Chance, and is, as you may have inferred from the title, a time-travel-Harry-relives-his-life fic). However, while reading it, I did notice something. In all but a few fics wherein Hermione's parents need first names, the names chosen are 'Dan' and 'Emma'. I know that the authors are referencing the actors that play Harry and Hermione in the movies, but why is it exclusively these two? How come I've not seen anyone use 'Alan' and 'Bonnie' or 'Rupert' and 'Evanna' (Alan Rickman, Bonnie Wright, Rupert Grint, and Evanna Lynch play Snape, Ginny, Ron, and Luna respectively)? Why is it always 'Dan' and 'Emma'???