My sincerest apologies to anyone unlucky enough to check their f-list before I had a chance to fix the formatting on this beast...
So...yes. Things. And stuff. I had several things to say last night, but I've forgotten them. This is why 85% of my posts are made after 1 AM - I do my best when I've had all day to think about things, I don't so much sleep as (fairly) regularly fall into short comas, and my short-term memory is completely crap. Completely.
I think the main thing I had planned to say - and the reason I didn't say it last night - is that I made the mistake of picking up one of my books for my Narrative (Unconventional Forms of) class last night in order to get a bit of a jump on next week's assignments*. It was short - 142 diary-style pages, plus supplemental materials of an intriguing nature - and I only intended to read the first little bit.
I finished the book at 6 AM.
I'm not sure what exactly it was that caused me to so thoroughly lose my mind over this book. I mean, it's not like I haven't been known to stay up past 4 AM on school nights, but usually that has at least something to do with insomnia. That was definitely not the case this time, as I could barely keep my eyes open and had one of those massive, throbbing headaches through the last half of the book. The reason I was initially interested in it was the gimmick of the "evidence" that was included - "photographs," takeout menus, "handwritten" letters and family trees, "newspaper" clippings - but, once I took a good look at the book, the dimensionally transcendental corner of my soul started tingling.
The main character's name is Cathy. She occasionally refers to her best friend as "you cow." The book is a journal chronicling her investigation into some very strange goings-on that leads her to say in the note printed on the back cover, "...don't worry. I'll be OK (I think). Hey, maybe this is the beginning of a new life for me. For sure it's the end of the old one." There is a somewhat-stylized fob watch on the back cover, and it shows back up as a motif in the final bit of the book. The cover of the paperback within the hardcover has three portraits: a young girl with the caption "A moment almost forgotten," a young woman with the caption "A frozen Memory in time," and a elderly lady with the caption "An Age still to live."
If I hadn't been thinking in Who terms, I don't think I would have sussed out what was going on nearly as early as I did. And figuring it out so early in the game made the fact that the main characters are several years younger than me stand out even more - there was a bit of a sense that, since I'm older, I obviously know more about the world than these silly teenagers, and they were a bit dumb for not twigging to it earlier. But the authors refused from the beginning to let Cathy or Emma come across as silly teenagers, and most normal people probably don't think like Wholigans, so it's not really valid to blame anything on the characters' age. There were bits of teenager-ish-ness about them - Cathy is rather too concerned about getting her makeup and wardrobe just perfect** and Emma is rather too concerned about getting her 4.0 so she can implement her master plan for becoming an Incredibly Rich Business Woman*** - but they were never the Disney Channel version of high school students****.
So, there wasn't anything too terribly surprising for me along the way, and I have a couple of questions about one of the things that was only surprising in that they didn't take it as far as I expected and never explained why. And I have some small misgivings about the fact that the book had a sponsorship - and by a cosmetics company, no less - and yet I paid $17.95 for it. But it was an extremely entertaining read, and I actually called the numbers. Considering my paralyzing fear of calling even my best friends, that’s saying something.
The book is
Cathy's Book (If found call (650) 266-8233) (and for some unknown reason, the price has dropped to $5.99 - where was that price three months ago?!). There is a
sequel coming out this summer. This is somewhat unfortunate for my bank account. There is also quite a lot of puzzle out there to work through, just with the first book. This is very unfortunate for my drive to do school work (which has been unfortunate in general for quite some time, now). I'm going to try my hardest to just forget this stuff exists, at least for a few months, so I can freakin' graduate already.
** This is, however, a much less annoying method of incorporating the book's Cover Girl sponsorship than it _could_ have been. And it does paradoxically show some maturity on her part on one or two occasions; she has obviously figured out how to dress for a job interview, which is something I have not yet mastered.
*** Which is not to say that planning for your future is a teenagery thing to do, just that, as I've finally let sink into my brain, ten- or fifteen-year plans are completely unrealistic. It's good to have goals, and it's good to have priorities, but whatever you decide now - especially if "now" happens to be when you are a junior or senior in high school - probably won't have anything to do with what you want five years from now. Life happens, family happens, loss happens...sometimes a movie or a book or a television show happens. And then, suddenly, you're a completely different person with completely different desires, and, if you planned too rigid a path, you will find it extremely difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to unstick yourself.
(Today's Life Lesson has been brought to you by the letter "E." Additional considerations provided by Ms Amy Gibson, Mr. Floyd T. Whittle, Jr., Dr. Terry Harpold, and The Doctor.)
**** Unless of course the Disney Channel show in question is Kim Possible, because, while Middleton is not exactly a realistic high school and Kim is not exactly a realistic teenager, it is a very smartly-written show that resists the urge to treat its viewers as though they were semi-concussed guinea pigs.
* I have to force myself to do _any_ work for my engineering classes these days, but I have been known to read all of my assignments for an entire month for my English classes so that I can put off doing engineering assignments without feeling like I'm not being productive.
Hmm... I appear to have remembered much of what I originally intended to say...
Work has commenced on Sculpey Captain (not Cap'n) Jack. Even when I had bare-breasted Martha lying around the apartment, I didn't have to fight so hard to keep my mind out of the gutter as I did while I was making Jack's noggin, and I have a feeling it's only going to get worse. Of course, I suppose that's a good thing, in a way - how can I expect to make Jack without letting myself think a bit randily? Doesn't mean I want to, though (Suffering for art: I has it.)
On the classic Who side of things, I watched "Destiny of the Daleks" last night.
David Gooderson did a good job, particularly considering the extreme handicap posed by the mask...which, as I suspected, was actually the same mask, so it was uncomfortable, bulky, restrictive, and didn't even _fit_ him. So, you know, mad props to Mr. Gooderson. Nothing Davros does will ever match that instant in "Genesis" where he suddenly sounds like a Dalekohmigosh!*****, so Michael Wisher totally owns that role. That having been said, they did a MUCH better job replacing him that first time than they did with Roger Delgado, so I don't think Davros will make it to my list of characters who were completely defined for me by one particular incarnation, to the exclusion of others. I have yet to hear David Brierly's K-9, so The Master may be joined soon enough, but Davros is with the Doctor and Romana on this one.
And, speaking of Romana, I was a bit worried about her second incarnation, as Ward's acting didn't really impress me in "The Armageddon Factor," and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to put up with it for more than one serial. And that regeneration scene was a bit ...ish (I feel much better about it after reading the speculative explanations in DWM, but, still, not my favourite bit of Adams' writing). But she worked MUCH better for me as Romana than as Astra, so that's a good thing. I rather liked how it wasn't a Romana-heavy episode, so we were sort of allowed to gradually get to know Romana II instead of having her forced down our throats.
Meanwhile, the Doctor was wonderful, as always, and the serial itself was yet another solidly-written, story/continuity-developing Terry Nation offering with a lovely speech or two, a nice analogy (Paper, Scissors, Stone = World Peace), and yet nothing that quite inspired me to sing its praises. There's still something about the Daleks that just doesn't quite do it for me. [shrug]
***** I was still getting over my MDF when I watched that one, and that bit made me gasp so big, I thought I was going to suffocate coughing. That Davros is a dangerous guy.
Publix had bags of Kissables marked way down this week, so I bought some and am munching on them now. They look like something out of a Robert Holmes serial.
Speaking of Daleks... (don't I have the best segues? Well, it worked before I added the random slam to Holmes.)
I told Chaotica just the other day that, after seeing the suspiciously Auditor-esque specters in "Invasion of Time," I had a strong urge to re-read Discworld with an eye out for Who references, now that I knew what to look for.
If I had read Good Omens last year as planned, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of scaring everyone around me on the bus when I started giggling rather creepily while reading the following passage (from page 203 in the 2006 Harper Torch paperback) for the first time after my inDoctrination:
"It looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen.
"As he stared over the top of his map, a door in the saucer slid aside with a satisfying whoosh, revealing a gleaming walkway which extended automatically down to the road. Brilliant blue light shone out, outlining three alien shapes. They walked down the ramp. At least, two of them walked. The one that looked like a pepper pot just skidded down it, and fell over at the bottom.
"The other two ignored its frantic beeping..."
The first half-dozen times I read the book, I assumed they were just making fun of poor R2 there. Now suspect there's something more to it.
I finally got around to watching
the first bit of last week's Friday Night Project. When wossname - not the little Davies-lookin' fellow, but the one with the hair - asked if there has "ever been a sexier Doctor Who" and the guy in the back of the audience yelled out "Tom Baker" and everyone laughed? I wanted to punch them in the collective face. First of all, unless you're talking about Peter Cushing, it's "The Doctor," not "Doctor Who." I would usually let that sort of thing go, but if you're going to be a twat about it... Second, the Doctor is not sexy. David Tennant might be a bit sexxy, but the Doctor is not sexy. Adorable, handsome, pretty, precious, magnificent? Yes. In spades. Sexy? No. Third, back off Baker T. I know I have weird taste, but Four recently became the first Doctor who managed to completely distract me from the lovely bit of technobabble he was spewing simply by being pretty (during the bit in "Invasion of Time" when he's lying on the floor explaining to K-9 how they are going to...do something. Like I said, I was distracted). Take that as you will. Fourth, I don't think anyone who looks like the hosts of this show should make any snarky comments about the likes of William Hartnell and Sylvester McCoy.
All that aside, Tennant continues to be adorably wonderful, the conversation about x-rated fanfic was far more entertaining than it should by any rights have been, and I was glad to see that he looked uncomfortable during the aforementioned Doctor-actor slander. Not that I am glad that he was made to feel uncomfortable, just that I'm glad he wasn't sitting there grinning away as usual and chipping in names of other actors who weren't as sexy as him. Because Two might have become My Doctor if that had been the case.
More fun with Classic Who screenshots (and alt-tags!) (aka, roll over the images for further nonsense):
Thanks to Captain Chaotica!! for the screenshot and the idea.
Or, alternatively:
And one from All Creatures:
It's such a good feeling to know you're alive
It's such a happy feeling, you're growing inside
And when you wake up, ready to say
"I think I'll make a snappy new day"
It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling
The feeling you know that we're friends.
The skies just opened up on me this afternoon while I was waiting for the bus home from campus. People were darting out in front of cars and diving for cover and struggling with brollies and all the typical nonsense, and I couldn't help but feel a little bit superior. Chinese zodiac be damned, I am so thoroughly in my element when I'm wet...so long as I'm not also cold.
And now, I think I may actually be done. Which is a good thing, as Battlestar has started and I'm determined to give it another chance.