Vacuum cleaners are totally exciting, what are you talking about?
1. I forgot to mention that I finally got my car smog checked - I went to a different smog test place, and inexplicably, they had different software, and so my car passed. Yeah, I don't know either, but I'm glad it's over with. Well, until I get my registration stickers anyway. It's been a week and they still haven't come in the mail. *taps foot*
2. I like really, really want to watch Supernatural now. I don't even know, but suddenly I just want to go and get really fangirlish again. I've like started reading fic (damn spring break) and reading about the fandom wank which is a never ending source of hilarity. Like seriously this is comedy gold. Or rather, the thread that the people there are referring to. God is watching you whenever you write slash fic! Too bad the facebook page they are referring to either doesn't exist anymore or isn't searchable; would have been a delightful trainwreck. I read a good chunk of the other threads on the anon meme - very hilarious or informative, of a lot of stuff that goes on in fandom that I miss, on account of not really being in that fandom, or fandom in general, all the time. One interesting comment somewhere was how all the three major pairings in Supernatural are taboo or problematic in some respect - which is interesting, because it makes the fandom be viewed a certain way to outsiders, that might not immediately come to mind for other fandoms - there's no obvious chaste harry/ginny here, for instance (mainly cause every female character doesn't stay around long enough or isn't interesting enough - I haven't watched most of the show, but from what I've read this appears to be true (???)) Well, despite most of the Supernatural fans being pretty normal (well, as normal as fangirls can be - special hell ahoy!), somehow this fandom above others seems to bring out the batshit crowd. Hence the delicious/hilarious wank. Oh and one more thing: I love the TV tropes page for Supernatural more than I can possibly describe. Seriously I have read it so many times and it makes me happy every time. Especially the following:
Famous for three main things:
The ridiculously attractive cast.
The sheer amount of Mood Whiplash it has.
How it raised torturing its two leads (emotionally and physically) to almost a fetishistic art-form.
I WILL BE LOLLING FOREVER. Um yeah. You will just have to take my word for it how hilarious this is.
3. 10 Things I Hate About You is starting its second season this week! I am completely and appropriately embarrassed about how excited I am about that particular fact. This is a guilty pleasure TV show for me in the worst way; seriously, it is possibly below my occasional dipping into watching soaps, especially Hollyoaks. It is a teen show, okay? Set in a high-school, with stereotypical high school drama, and no sci-fi elements at all. And yet I cannot get enough. I probably watched the first season through twice, maybe even three times actually, since I made my sister watch it with me. Don't worry, I'm appropriately embarrassed about this too. AfterElton wrote a great article way back when that describes why I do like it, while recapping one of the episodes, but I'm too lazy to find it. Basically is just has a really good handle on cracky teen narrative, okay? Don't judge me. Oh, and I hate all the possible ships on there too: Kat/Patrick is the one all the teen girls squee over, and I hate it with a passion because I can't stand Patrick, and because it's this annoying story of girls-always-go-for-the-bad-boys and all you need is a boy to tame the (strawish) feminist. Bianca/Joey I could be okay with, except they play Joey waaaaay too stupid to live, basically, and it's annoying, because Bianca is socially crafty and smart, and it just doesn't work the way it could. Forget Bianca/Cameron as well, b/c Cameron is the Nice Guy (and Bianca is the stereotypical pretty and popular girl), and I hate that trope too. I can't even ship Cameron with his coded-gay best friend, b/c of how stereotypy that gets. Doomed, see? And yet I wait with baited breath for the next episodes anyway.
In case you want to watch it with me (it's short!), as always, episodes can be located with the magic that is SurfTheChannel - but turn your popup blockers on!
4. I finally watched Precious. I got it off of netflix, b/c I wanted to watch it in better quality plus hear all the commentary, b/c this is a movie I've been hearing a lot about lately, and very worth of its commentary. And you know what - I kept expecting a depressing movie, b/c that's what I'd heard about it, and the story in summary is absolutely dark and horrifying - and yet the movie is actually very funny. I'm not a terribly reactive person or very good at interpreting subtleties in movies, so I actually didn't notice this until I heard my mom laughing a lot (she really wanted to watch it too - and my mom is a very reactive person.) But, as it turns out, this was the exact reaction the film makers were going for - Lee Daniels (the director) and Sapphire (the writer) as well as the actors reference this multiple times in the various commentaries on the dvd (there are a lot!) They would say stuff like, you had to laugh through it or you couldn't get through it. It definitely comes across. Also, Gabourey Sidibe is great and I'm totally obsessed with reading or watching interviews or whatnot with her in it. I think I will be keeping track of her acting roles a bit now. (Oh, and someone SERIOUSLY needs to change her wikipedia article - it is just minorly awful right now.) Ditto Lee Daniels - he actually reminds me a bit of Joss Whedon, oddly enough. I mean, in that he reuses actors, and is good at spotting talent - basically that he is more interested in maintaining a certain relationship/trustingness of his actors in general. He says a bit in the commentary, I picked this actor b/c we're working together in a subsequent movie. Oh, and he had a bunch of them go on without makeup - funny really, b/c I couldn't tell at all. (And Mariah Carey was apparently really self-conscious about it, and I'm like really, you are totally pretty with no makeup, come on.)
5. I should probably talk about school here (it started this week) but instead of that (which is like a post in itself), I'm going to talk about vacuum cleaners! And feminism. Yes, really! Hear out my brilliant (though unsubstantiated and non-scientific) theory. Okay, so I read some sociological blog posts every so often that talk about how products are not designed for women, b/c most engineers are men. Also, the people using the vacuum cleaners are traditionally (and usually) women. Now, many more women than men have long hair, and most men have short hair. You can maybe see where I'm going with this. I was vacuuming using my roommate's new vacuum cleaner yesterday (I also cleaned my desk and removed things like dead spiders and months-rotten apples - you should be proud of me!) and naturally, I barely was able to do anything before the vacuum wouldn't run very well b/c it was overrun by my hair (and it was definitely my hair - I have long brown hair, and my roommate has short blond hair, and there was very little of her hair stuck in the brush). Have you noticed that no vacuum cleaner ever has an effective way of dealing with vacuuming long hair? Seriously, we have the technology to get to the moon, but not to develop vacuum cleaners that don't require many minutes of digging hair out of the the gross, dusty brush. Now, I love taking stuff apart, and in fact, if you are willing to futz, vacuum cleaners can be dismembered and the hair is much more easily removed from the brush that way. But the point is, it really shouldn't take that much effort, and I really shouldn't have to go get out my screwdriver to remove the the brush - I mean, come on. Think about all the vacuum cleaner commercials you have seen - it is all about removing a small pile of dirt from an otherwise spotless floor. Somebody misinterpreted consumer needs somewhere down the line - I don't care about a little dirt, and I don't need it removed right away - but when I vacuum once a month or so, it would sure be nice if it could deal with hair - which is way more difficult to remove than dirt anyway. I think that if women were the engineers here, they would make this a priority. Thoughts?
Oh, and if anyone is curious, here is my low-tech hair-removal-from-floor technique, since I can't effectively use a vacuum for it - find something staticy, and wipe the floor with it. Seriously, it works great. I mean, the reason that hair is so much harder to remove than dirt is because it statically sticks to the rug, and dirt doesn't. So, I can get my super-staticy sweatshirt to wipe up all the hair, then use the vacuum for regular dirt after that.
2. I like really, really want to watch Supernatural now. I don't even know, but suddenly I just want to go and get really fangirlish again. I've like started reading fic (damn spring break) and reading about the fandom wank which is a never ending source of hilarity. Like seriously this is comedy gold. Or rather, the thread that the people there are referring to. God is watching you whenever you write slash fic! Too bad the facebook page they are referring to either doesn't exist anymore or isn't searchable; would have been a delightful trainwreck. I read a good chunk of the other threads on the anon meme - very hilarious or informative, of a lot of stuff that goes on in fandom that I miss, on account of not really being in that fandom, or fandom in general, all the time. One interesting comment somewhere was how all the three major pairings in Supernatural are taboo or problematic in some respect - which is interesting, because it makes the fandom be viewed a certain way to outsiders, that might not immediately come to mind for other fandoms - there's no obvious chaste harry/ginny here, for instance (mainly cause every female character doesn't stay around long enough or isn't interesting enough - I haven't watched most of the show, but from what I've read this appears to be true (???)) Well, despite most of the Supernatural fans being pretty normal (well, as normal as fangirls can be - special hell ahoy!), somehow this fandom above others seems to bring out the batshit crowd. Hence the delicious/hilarious wank. Oh and one more thing: I love the TV tropes page for Supernatural more than I can possibly describe. Seriously I have read it so many times and it makes me happy every time. Especially the following:
Famous for three main things:
The ridiculously attractive cast.
The sheer amount of Mood Whiplash it has.
How it raised torturing its two leads (emotionally and physically) to almost a fetishistic art-form.
I WILL BE LOLLING FOREVER. Um yeah. You will just have to take my word for it how hilarious this is.
3. 10 Things I Hate About You is starting its second season this week! I am completely and appropriately embarrassed about how excited I am about that particular fact. This is a guilty pleasure TV show for me in the worst way; seriously, it is possibly below my occasional dipping into watching soaps, especially Hollyoaks. It is a teen show, okay? Set in a high-school, with stereotypical high school drama, and no sci-fi elements at all. And yet I cannot get enough. I probably watched the first season through twice, maybe even three times actually, since I made my sister watch it with me. Don't worry, I'm appropriately embarrassed about this too. AfterElton wrote a great article way back when that describes why I do like it, while recapping one of the episodes, but I'm too lazy to find it. Basically is just has a really good handle on cracky teen narrative, okay? Don't judge me. Oh, and I hate all the possible ships on there too: Kat/Patrick is the one all the teen girls squee over, and I hate it with a passion because I can't stand Patrick, and because it's this annoying story of girls-always-go-for-the-bad-boys and all you need is a boy to tame the (strawish) feminist. Bianca/Joey I could be okay with, except they play Joey waaaaay too stupid to live, basically, and it's annoying, because Bianca is socially crafty and smart, and it just doesn't work the way it could. Forget Bianca/Cameron as well, b/c Cameron is the Nice Guy (and Bianca is the stereotypical pretty and popular girl), and I hate that trope too. I can't even ship Cameron with his coded-gay best friend, b/c of how stereotypy that gets. Doomed, see? And yet I wait with baited breath for the next episodes anyway.
In case you want to watch it with me (it's short!), as always, episodes can be located with the magic that is SurfTheChannel - but turn your popup blockers on!
4. I finally watched Precious. I got it off of netflix, b/c I wanted to watch it in better quality plus hear all the commentary, b/c this is a movie I've been hearing a lot about lately, and very worth of its commentary. And you know what - I kept expecting a depressing movie, b/c that's what I'd heard about it, and the story in summary is absolutely dark and horrifying - and yet the movie is actually very funny. I'm not a terribly reactive person or very good at interpreting subtleties in movies, so I actually didn't notice this until I heard my mom laughing a lot (she really wanted to watch it too - and my mom is a very reactive person.) But, as it turns out, this was the exact reaction the film makers were going for - Lee Daniels (the director) and Sapphire (the writer) as well as the actors reference this multiple times in the various commentaries on the dvd (there are a lot!) They would say stuff like, you had to laugh through it or you couldn't get through it. It definitely comes across. Also, Gabourey Sidibe is great and I'm totally obsessed with reading or watching interviews or whatnot with her in it. I think I will be keeping track of her acting roles a bit now. (Oh, and someone SERIOUSLY needs to change her wikipedia article - it is just minorly awful right now.) Ditto Lee Daniels - he actually reminds me a bit of Joss Whedon, oddly enough. I mean, in that he reuses actors, and is good at spotting talent - basically that he is more interested in maintaining a certain relationship/trustingness of his actors in general. He says a bit in the commentary, I picked this actor b/c we're working together in a subsequent movie. Oh, and he had a bunch of them go on without makeup - funny really, b/c I couldn't tell at all. (And Mariah Carey was apparently really self-conscious about it, and I'm like really, you are totally pretty with no makeup, come on.)
5. I should probably talk about school here (it started this week) but instead of that (which is like a post in itself), I'm going to talk about vacuum cleaners! And feminism. Yes, really! Hear out my brilliant (though unsubstantiated and non-scientific) theory. Okay, so I read some sociological blog posts every so often that talk about how products are not designed for women, b/c most engineers are men. Also, the people using the vacuum cleaners are traditionally (and usually) women. Now, many more women than men have long hair, and most men have short hair. You can maybe see where I'm going with this. I was vacuuming using my roommate's new vacuum cleaner yesterday (I also cleaned my desk and removed things like dead spiders and months-rotten apples - you should be proud of me!) and naturally, I barely was able to do anything before the vacuum wouldn't run very well b/c it was overrun by my hair (and it was definitely my hair - I have long brown hair, and my roommate has short blond hair, and there was very little of her hair stuck in the brush). Have you noticed that no vacuum cleaner ever has an effective way of dealing with vacuuming long hair? Seriously, we have the technology to get to the moon, but not to develop vacuum cleaners that don't require many minutes of digging hair out of the the gross, dusty brush. Now, I love taking stuff apart, and in fact, if you are willing to futz, vacuum cleaners can be dismembered and the hair is much more easily removed from the brush that way. But the point is, it really shouldn't take that much effort, and I really shouldn't have to go get out my screwdriver to remove the the brush - I mean, come on. Think about all the vacuum cleaner commercials you have seen - it is all about removing a small pile of dirt from an otherwise spotless floor. Somebody misinterpreted consumer needs somewhere down the line - I don't care about a little dirt, and I don't need it removed right away - but when I vacuum once a month or so, it would sure be nice if it could deal with hair - which is way more difficult to remove than dirt anyway. I think that if women were the engineers here, they would make this a priority. Thoughts?
Oh, and if anyone is curious, here is my low-tech hair-removal-from-floor technique, since I can't effectively use a vacuum for it - find something staticy, and wipe the floor with it. Seriously, it works great. I mean, the reason that hair is so much harder to remove than dirt is because it statically sticks to the rug, and dirt doesn't. So, I can get my super-staticy sweatshirt to wipe up all the hair, then use the vacuum for regular dirt after that.