(no subject)
I don't watch TV. Shocking, but true. I've always found that books answered whatever needs I had regarding entertainment/education/distraction/mind-escape. Of course when I say "I don't watch TV" it's a bit more like, I don't have a schedule or anything - I love cooking shows (compensating for something, surely), cartoons (Tom and Jerry!) and geeky shows (Mythbusters!). Just about a year ago I got hooked onto House (Hugh Laurie is the best - I say this with total confidence after watching Blackadder and Jeeves/Wooster). And now I've got a new favourite - The Big Bang Theory. It's about a bunch of geeks who're shaken out of a comfortable geeky bubble when a beautiful blonde moves in next door.
Plot might sound slightly cheesy, but the actors (with possibly the exception of Koothrapalli) are amazing. Penny isn't just a pretty face, but she's confident enough about herself that she doesn't need to worry about feeling dumb in front of these guys. And let's not even start on how amazing Sheldon is - completely, neurotically genius - but extremely human and endearingly creepy at times. I think Leonard is my favourite, though - he's quite the nerd himself but he has all these quirks down pat; completely believable and very likeable. Wolowitz is, let's say, horrendously delusional about his personal charms, but he has excellent comic timing and he really does steal the scene most of the time. Koothrapalli is quite adorable at times with his cluelessness and Indianized Americanisms, but every time I watch him I know he's acting and it feels a little self conscious.
The first time I watched this, my friend sat me in front of the pilot eposide and swore I'd love it. And when I found myself nodding along to Sheldon's "light is a particle and a wave, oh! great t-shirt idea!" I knew she was right. Some favourite geekisms:
1. Penny mixing a drink for Leonard, who suddenly starts spouting on about the relative densities of liquids when mixed together, and then, inevitably, trails off into awkward silence.
2. Leonard and Sheldon showing off their boards to Penny; when Sheldon disparages Leonard's board as "something you find on the walls of any toilet stall in MIT", Leonard attacks with "At least I didn't have ot invent 26 dimensions to make the math come out right!"
3. Throwing around variations of what boys seem to excel at - toilet humour. Somehow these geeks doing it seems a lot funnier than usual.
4. Sheldon tries to explain Penny's impending date with Leonard in terms of Shrodinger's cat. She stares at him blankly. He tries it with Leonard. He calls it genius.
5. The boys try and figure out how to watch a movie at a Sheldon-approved theatre, after dinner at a Sheldon-approved restaurant, through the use of a terrifically complicated chart on a white board.
"Don't mess with nerds - one day you're going to work for one." Age of the nerds! A completely average looking fellow climbs a notch higher on the survival-of-the-fittest ladder if he owns an iPhone. But honestly, watching BBT is making me aware of how much geekiness I am actually missing.
On the other hand I'm halfway through a History of India book, and finding it fascinating. And disturbing, of course. It looks like I'm the descendant of a bunch of people who prided themselves on being closer to god than the poor suffering native Dravidians, and at the same time practised an array of rather... interesting... sacrifices involving horses and brides. That sort of thing becomes quite regular, though, when you get to somewhere near the Muslim invasions, or even if you go way down south and look at how the Cholas desecrated Sri Lankan Buddhist monasteries. Basically, no one in history is really a hero, I think.
Besides which it sort of makes sense. If some ancestor caveman of mine hadn't hit someone else on the head with a club so he could survive a tad longer I basically wouldn't be here.
But then that's pretty unfair; if some hominid hadn't discovered warm clothing during the Ice Age, or figured out how to build basic housing, or made the first stone weapons, or built the first boat, I might not've been here either.
In other news, I believe my cooking has improved somewhat. This is probably because of the addition of a boatload of condiments - Sriracha sauce and soy sauce are my best friends - but still it doesn't feel as though I'm floundering quite so much anymore. Although, really, you can't mess up pasta or rice all that much.
I also discovered a bottle of pulikachal mix which my mother sent with me, which sort of sprawls all over rice and vegetables and takes over the dish. Also perserved in oil, hah.
By the way, something rather strange has been happening to me lately. Have you read Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Detective Agency books? One of them involves Thor, and, more importantly, a girl who suddenly finds herself being terrorised by street lights that go out precisely when she walks by them. Which is exactly what's been besieging me the past couple of months.
I've tried various explanations for this behaviour, but nothing seems to fit. Sometimes they go out when I approach them, and sometimes they go on instead. Once a streetlamp went out across the road from me when I was toiling uphill. Last night was one of the stupidest: I'd just finished my route and was catching my breath when it occurred to me that a streetlamp (which is one of those 18th century London ones) was unchanged. At the exact moment I turned to confront the thing, it flickered out.
The only thing I can hope for is that I'm not about to be decapitated messily by a half-mad Norse god.
Plot might sound slightly cheesy, but the actors (with possibly the exception of Koothrapalli) are amazing. Penny isn't just a pretty face, but she's confident enough about herself that she doesn't need to worry about feeling dumb in front of these guys. And let's not even start on how amazing Sheldon is - completely, neurotically genius - but extremely human and endearingly creepy at times. I think Leonard is my favourite, though - he's quite the nerd himself but he has all these quirks down pat; completely believable and very likeable. Wolowitz is, let's say, horrendously delusional about his personal charms, but he has excellent comic timing and he really does steal the scene most of the time. Koothrapalli is quite adorable at times with his cluelessness and Indianized Americanisms, but every time I watch him I know he's acting and it feels a little self conscious.
The first time I watched this, my friend sat me in front of the pilot eposide and swore I'd love it. And when I found myself nodding along to Sheldon's "light is a particle and a wave, oh! great t-shirt idea!" I knew she was right. Some favourite geekisms:
1. Penny mixing a drink for Leonard, who suddenly starts spouting on about the relative densities of liquids when mixed together, and then, inevitably, trails off into awkward silence.
2. Leonard and Sheldon showing off their boards to Penny; when Sheldon disparages Leonard's board as "something you find on the walls of any toilet stall in MIT", Leonard attacks with "At least I didn't have ot invent 26 dimensions to make the math come out right!"
3. Throwing around variations of what boys seem to excel at - toilet humour. Somehow these geeks doing it seems a lot funnier than usual.
4. Sheldon tries to explain Penny's impending date with Leonard in terms of Shrodinger's cat. She stares at him blankly. He tries it with Leonard. He calls it genius.
5. The boys try and figure out how to watch a movie at a Sheldon-approved theatre, after dinner at a Sheldon-approved restaurant, through the use of a terrifically complicated chart on a white board.
"Don't mess with nerds - one day you're going to work for one." Age of the nerds! A completely average looking fellow climbs a notch higher on the survival-of-the-fittest ladder if he owns an iPhone. But honestly, watching BBT is making me aware of how much geekiness I am actually missing.
On the other hand I'm halfway through a History of India book, and finding it fascinating. And disturbing, of course. It looks like I'm the descendant of a bunch of people who prided themselves on being closer to god than the poor suffering native Dravidians, and at the same time practised an array of rather... interesting... sacrifices involving horses and brides. That sort of thing becomes quite regular, though, when you get to somewhere near the Muslim invasions, or even if you go way down south and look at how the Cholas desecrated Sri Lankan Buddhist monasteries. Basically, no one in history is really a hero, I think.
Besides which it sort of makes sense. If some ancestor caveman of mine hadn't hit someone else on the head with a club so he could survive a tad longer I basically wouldn't be here.
But then that's pretty unfair; if some hominid hadn't discovered warm clothing during the Ice Age, or figured out how to build basic housing, or made the first stone weapons, or built the first boat, I might not've been here either.
In other news, I believe my cooking has improved somewhat. This is probably because of the addition of a boatload of condiments - Sriracha sauce and soy sauce are my best friends - but still it doesn't feel as though I'm floundering quite so much anymore. Although, really, you can't mess up pasta or rice all that much.
I also discovered a bottle of pulikachal mix which my mother sent with me, which sort of sprawls all over rice and vegetables and takes over the dish. Also perserved in oil, hah.
By the way, something rather strange has been happening to me lately. Have you read Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Detective Agency books? One of them involves Thor, and, more importantly, a girl who suddenly finds herself being terrorised by street lights that go out precisely when she walks by them. Which is exactly what's been besieging me the past couple of months.
I've tried various explanations for this behaviour, but nothing seems to fit. Sometimes they go out when I approach them, and sometimes they go on instead. Once a streetlamp went out across the road from me when I was toiling uphill. Last night was one of the stupidest: I'd just finished my route and was catching my breath when it occurred to me that a streetlamp (which is one of those 18th century London ones) was unchanged. At the exact moment I turned to confront the thing, it flickered out.
The only thing I can hope for is that I'm not about to be decapitated messily by a half-mad Norse god.