Raithe

Not sure why, but I found Neil deGrasse Tyson's list of 8 books all intelligent people should read somewhat amusing..

To be fair, Voyager picked up in the last few years in general storytelling and character growth. But they also had a habit of making eunuchs of any previously scary alien encounter. "Oh look, it's something that was a big bad and immensely scary last season. Now we can kick its ass and it turns out its really quite wussified.." - Notably both the Borg, and Q. Janeway did tend to follow the more Kirk type of behaviour in some ways - Let's follow the Prime Directive in a hand-wavey kind of manner, well, unless it really gets in the way of keeping my crew alive and getting us home, in which case lets just chuck it out the window.

I have to admit, it's been a bit odd lately. I wouldn't call it seasonal depression or anything, but the combination of holidays that weren't actually a holiday, the blending of days, and visits to mom in the hospital, and the grey and windy weather has me in some skewed frame of mind I can't quite place. I'm having to make effort to remember which day is which, and I find I'm idling into listening to music, and half-heartedly reading or randomly doodling rather than doing anything of note.

I still call Tuvok the worst Security Officer. How many episodes do they string together where the ship isn't hijacked or vast numbers of the crew kidnapped in one form or another?

http://youtu.be/W3bp59Eci_0

He sings. He can sing. He sang quite well in the musical Psych episode if I remember....

Not new science, but throwing out the question of "What scientific idea should die?" http://vimeo.com/114683176

http://youtu.be/dOyJqGtP-wU

Heh, watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves via video chat with the girlfriend and her teenage kids. It's kind of scary to consider I was the age of the youngest when that film came out. But they'd never seen it (well, they'd seen Men in Tights and hadn't realised so many of the jokes were aimed via Prince of Thieves) and got immensely caught up in it. The joy of Alan Rickman hamming it up so evilly, Michael Wincott as that snivelling Guy, and the "OMG Morgan Freeman is young!" reaction from the audience was all entertaining. Plus the soundtrack pretty damn nailed it.

"In the beginning.... there was no plagiarism."

Wrapped up shooting Nazis in Wolfenstein New Order. Fairly enjoyable experience, with a few emotional tugs. Although it took me a bit to place Dwight Schultz as the voice of Deathshead. I think I only missed snagging a handful of collectibles in that playthrough. Pondering on whether it's worthwhile doing a 2nd to check out the other timeline depending on who you save at the start.

That guy was Billy Connolly.. http://youtu.be/uRrDiQiM0cw

Found out mom's scheduled bronchoscopy tomorrow has been cancelled for unknown reasons. So guess we get to find out even more medical weirdness or some such. Also got into a slightly amused conversation. If your teenage daughter who is dating a girl asks if its okay to spend the night at her girlfriends, is it sexist to find it easier to say yes then if she had a boyfriend? I posited its because there's never been a problem letting her do overnights with her friends as she's grown up, and in all those situations the friends were girls. So there's a certain mental predisposition towards saying yes in that case...

As someone I read pointed out, Tolkien tended to put a lot of "Tell, not Show" in the bits around his stories. With the change in media, Jackson tends to turn all of those short "Tell" into rather long "Show" instead. Collectively, I've found the three Hobbit films have all had their good points, but I don't think they're quite as fluid as the LoTR trilogy happened to be.

It's always fun to have dreams of running and jumping, and then you wake up and find half your body is locked tense...

The Doctor Who Christmas Special. It had its ups and downs. But at least the silliness had a good reason this time, the whole dream within a dream made weirdness a valid thing. This last season has been a bit odd. The character development between Clara and the Doctor seem to have been the main line, with all the episode stories being more afterthoughts just to give them some stage to strut around on while talking. Then the whole "is she/isn't she" of whether they were keeping Clara as a companion, and not deciding it till the last minute. Makes me wonder if that last 5 minutes of the show was added on rather than the original plan.... I will say Nick Frost worked magic as Santa Claus. A combination of merriment and edge.

Sex and Death 101 A quirky little tale of drama, comedy and romance. Simon Baker as a man who in the days before his marriage, receives an email containing a list of the 29 women he's slept with...and a further 72 names he will have sex with in the future. While he first goes into crisis mode over it, then enjoys it, he quickly finds it leaving him feeling quite the odd man out. At the same time Winona Ryder is a slightly gothic femme fatale "serial killer" who keeps putting her victims (various misogynistic men) into chemically induced comas. It is a strange little film, with some interesting turns, some good lines, nice performances, and some chuckles. But it can't really fit into a good description. Not quite deep enough for the drama, a bit too jaded for the romance, and it's not a laugh every five minutes for an outright comedy. I'd class it as enjoyable, but you need to be in the right frame of mind to get into it.

Okay, this looks like it's going to be a gloriously bad enjoyable viewing... http://youtu.be/SZ2628TiTyw