Random post! No segues!
Feb. 1st, 2007 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6My thumb's sore. And not quite as opposable as usual. Am I devolving down the evolutionary chain? Or perhaps I just hurt it playing Ultimate Spider-Man. Probably the latter.
This year, I'm going to try really hard not to post a depressed, ranty, V-Day post. Because really, it's all been said.
Features I wish LJ had (or if they already do, I wish I knew how to do it):
1) Browse posts to a community written by a specific person. Mostly this is so I can track down some of my old posts, but sometimes I might want to see what someone else has posted before.
2) Apply tags to your friends list. A lot of times I watch, say, Supernatural a couple days later than everyone else, and lots of my flist post about it that first night. I don't want to backtrack 3 pages to find the posts about it, or go to everyone's individual journal and read back (as I ususall do), I'd rather just say 'okay, let's look at 'tag supernatural' on my friends lists. Though I realize it'd probably be a lot more complicated to code than basic tagging (depending a little on how the flist is implemented), it would still really improve my LJ experience.
Book Foo:
Finished: Big Planet, by Jack Vance
A Fire in the Sun, by George Alec Effinger
Some thoughts, minimal spoilers, behind the cut.
Big Planet was a little disappointing. I liked the idea of it, but the execution didn't thrill me. For one, the characterization was slim at best - I never felt connected to any of them. Another, with an idea like Big Planet (a planet with almost no metal and so it's much larger than Earth but with the same gravity), I really wanted to get the sense of _being there_ more. But instead it was more an excuse to rapidly jump from one weird society to another. And sometimes that can be fun, but in this case none of them really grabbed me either, and if you were going to do that, you might as well have the grand trek be in space with required stopovers at planets on the way, rather than waste the big planet concept on it.
A Fire In the Sun was better. It's the sequel to When Gravity Fails. Although I liked the first book better than this one. It felt like they backed down from a few of the elements of the first too.
Still, overall, it was an enjoyable read, and did transport me to another world (even if it was only Earth in the near future in another culture). Oh, I don't have a quote. There was one I wanted to choose but I can't remember where it is or the gist of it. So you'll have to do without.
But I chose it because it's one of the few times that a book has made me change my mind about something, to look at it in a new way. See, the first time I read this, I mentioned that I think I'd have a strong aversion to moddies, on the account that I wouldn't want to override my personality and would be afraid I'd lose myself (although the temporary and reversible nature of it would perhaps tempt me).
When reading this part of the book it occured to me that the idea of moddies (the personality implants people in the series use regularly) sort of solve one of the problems of free will. You know, the whole 'we can do what we want, but we can't will what we want, so are we really free?' paradox. In this case, you _can_ will what you want.
Theoretically, if you were an immoral person and you wanted to be a saint, you could pop in a saint moddy and never take it out. A shy person and you want to be bold? Put in a bold personality. All that would be required would be the momentary choice, no need to force your will over yourself. There's still the same general problem (you can't choose to want to be bold) but it backsteps it once more, allowing for greater freedom.
Which then lead me to suspect, in its way, this that is why intoxicants are so popular, and to some extent it's the same sort of dealy... you can alter your feelings in a way that you couldn't choose to do without the chemical help. Of course, drugs and alcohol have all sorts of side effects that go with it, so it's still not an ideal solution, IMHO, but I can sort of see the appeal under this context more than I ever have before, and so it's changed my mind about that a little too. The same for certain types of mind-altering medication. I know I've got many problems, but generally I've been resistant to the idea of taking any kind of medication for it, under the theory that it's my mind, my being, and thus to change that would to make me be not me. I think I'm changing in this view a little.
Of course, it's still not likely for me to start doing any kind of recreational drugs or alcohol, because in a sense I've decided that that's not the person I want to be. In terms of medicine it's a little more a practical matter than stubbornness about 'me-ness' though (although, to be honest, there's still some of that - my views are changing, but they haven't completely changed) - I wouldn't seek medical aid for social anxiety because to do so would be a social situation that I would have trouble coping with.
Started: Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (Thursdays and Sundays) (reread)
Stardoc, by S.L. Viehl (Wednesdays)
Random cracky crossover idea. Yet another thing I'm not going to write, and I'd be surprised if nobody else has come up with it yet, but I've been playing around with it in my head a little. One of them is Supernatural.
The general idea is that Sam and Dean are in a town where they learn that several children at a home day care or something have gone missing. There's absolutely no trace of them. So, posing as FBI agents, they investigate. They use their EMF sensors to look over the house and find the most readings come from a piece of antique furniture. They do some questioning and investigating and learn that the piece has been in a variety of homes, and in many of the cases someone's gone missing nearby. One of the homes was someone named Albert Lewis, who's son was Clive Staples Lewis.
Sam, being the geekier type, recognizes the name. C.S. Lewis, writer of the Narnia settings. They theorize that the wardrobe is a portal to another dimension, and that C.S. Lewis himself must have taken a trip there as a young child, and either used it as inspiration for his stories directly, or repressed the memory and it came out in dreams later, which lead to the interest in the story.
So the two have to storm Narnia, with guns. Now, in my own version of the story, Lewis sanitized his memories somewhat and got a lot of things completely backwards, so, for example, Aslan would be the badguy, a lionheaded demon that eats children's souls or something. But you could do it either way, the twisted version or playing it straight.
Mostly I just really like the image of Dean charging through the wardrobe with a gun all keen to shoot anthropomorphic animals.
One of my minor goals in life is to have the adjective 'intrepid' prefixed to whatever description of me someone gives. I mean, sure, intrepid explorer would be great, or intrepid astronaut, or intrepid post-apocalyptic drifter would be awesome. But I'd settle for 'intrepid manual labourer'. Or 'interpid slacker' or 'intrepid layabout'. I think I've just typed intrepid way too much.
Some TV thoughts. Spoiler-Free.
Heroes: Glad it's back, but last couple episodes felt a little off. Plus, I'm getting really annoyed at the commercials for the next episode including elements that only show up in the last few minutes. Maybe I should try going spoiler-free, I think I'd enjoy it a little more.
Stargate: SG1 had a good episode, with some nice guest stars. Still haven't seen this week's Atlantis... well, I started to. But got distracted by something shiny and haven't finished it yet. Which goes to show that I'm not all that attached to it yet.
Veronica Mars: Good ep. Some nice quotes.
Supernatural: Good ending to last week's ep.
Grey's Anatomy: Starting to get a bit predictable and I want to smack too many people. Is the love dying?
BSG: Woot, some interesting developments. Too bad no ep this week. Stupid Super Bowl. Die die die!
Oh, speaking of TV, here's a quick list of the SF-related pilots for next year's TV. My thoughts:
Ehh... don't like that description of Babylon Fields. 'the dead rise and try to resume their old lives'? Looks like it won't be a mad zombie apocalypse at all. On the other hand, that might make the pure zombie apocalypse premise safe for another series to take up.
Of these, I'll probably give Pushing Daisies, Babylon Fields, Journeyman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles a look at least, assuming nothing else is on at the same time. Maybe Demons, New Amsterdam, and Them. None of them really excite me, though, like Heroes or Jericho did last year (although Jericho turned out to be disappointing, Heroes didn't)
Life update: Apartment hunt continues. No luck yet. I hate moving.
This year, I'm going to try really hard not to post a depressed, ranty, V-Day post. Because really, it's all been said.
Features I wish LJ had (or if they already do, I wish I knew how to do it):
1) Browse posts to a community written by a specific person. Mostly this is so I can track down some of my old posts, but sometimes I might want to see what someone else has posted before.
2) Apply tags to your friends list. A lot of times I watch, say, Supernatural a couple days later than everyone else, and lots of my flist post about it that first night. I don't want to backtrack 3 pages to find the posts about it, or go to everyone's individual journal and read back (as I ususall do), I'd rather just say 'okay, let's look at 'tag supernatural' on my friends lists. Though I realize it'd probably be a lot more complicated to code than basic tagging (depending a little on how the flist is implemented), it would still really improve my LJ experience.
Book Foo:
Finished: Big Planet, by Jack Vance
A Fire in the Sun, by George Alec Effinger
Some thoughts, minimal spoilers, behind the cut.
Big Planet was a little disappointing. I liked the idea of it, but the execution didn't thrill me. For one, the characterization was slim at best - I never felt connected to any of them. Another, with an idea like Big Planet (a planet with almost no metal and so it's much larger than Earth but with the same gravity), I really wanted to get the sense of _being there_ more. But instead it was more an excuse to rapidly jump from one weird society to another. And sometimes that can be fun, but in this case none of them really grabbed me either, and if you were going to do that, you might as well have the grand trek be in space with required stopovers at planets on the way, rather than waste the big planet concept on it.
A Fire In the Sun was better. It's the sequel to When Gravity Fails. Although I liked the first book better than this one. It felt like they backed down from a few of the elements of the first too.
Still, overall, it was an enjoyable read, and did transport me to another world (even if it was only Earth in the near future in another culture). Oh, I don't have a quote. There was one I wanted to choose but I can't remember where it is or the gist of it. So you'll have to do without.
But I chose it because it's one of the few times that a book has made me change my mind about something, to look at it in a new way. See, the first time I read this, I mentioned that I think I'd have a strong aversion to moddies, on the account that I wouldn't want to override my personality and would be afraid I'd lose myself (although the temporary and reversible nature of it would perhaps tempt me).
When reading this part of the book it occured to me that the idea of moddies (the personality implants people in the series use regularly) sort of solve one of the problems of free will. You know, the whole 'we can do what we want, but we can't will what we want, so are we really free?' paradox. In this case, you _can_ will what you want.
Theoretically, if you were an immoral person and you wanted to be a saint, you could pop in a saint moddy and never take it out. A shy person and you want to be bold? Put in a bold personality. All that would be required would be the momentary choice, no need to force your will over yourself. There's still the same general problem (you can't choose to want to be bold) but it backsteps it once more, allowing for greater freedom.
Which then lead me to suspect, in its way, this that is why intoxicants are so popular, and to some extent it's the same sort of dealy... you can alter your feelings in a way that you couldn't choose to do without the chemical help. Of course, drugs and alcohol have all sorts of side effects that go with it, so it's still not an ideal solution, IMHO, but I can sort of see the appeal under this context more than I ever have before, and so it's changed my mind about that a little too. The same for certain types of mind-altering medication. I know I've got many problems, but generally I've been resistant to the idea of taking any kind of medication for it, under the theory that it's my mind, my being, and thus to change that would to make me be not me. I think I'm changing in this view a little.
Of course, it's still not likely for me to start doing any kind of recreational drugs or alcohol, because in a sense I've decided that that's not the person I want to be. In terms of medicine it's a little more a practical matter than stubbornness about 'me-ness' though (although, to be honest, there's still some of that - my views are changing, but they haven't completely changed) - I wouldn't seek medical aid for social anxiety because to do so would be a social situation that I would have trouble coping with.
Started: Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (Thursdays and Sundays) (reread)
Stardoc, by S.L. Viehl (Wednesdays)
Random cracky crossover idea. Yet another thing I'm not going to write, and I'd be surprised if nobody else has come up with it yet, but I've been playing around with it in my head a little. One of them is Supernatural.
The general idea is that Sam and Dean are in a town where they learn that several children at a home day care or something have gone missing. There's absolutely no trace of them. So, posing as FBI agents, they investigate. They use their EMF sensors to look over the house and find the most readings come from a piece of antique furniture. They do some questioning and investigating and learn that the piece has been in a variety of homes, and in many of the cases someone's gone missing nearby. One of the homes was someone named Albert Lewis, who's son was Clive Staples Lewis.
Sam, being the geekier type, recognizes the name. C.S. Lewis, writer of the Narnia settings. They theorize that the wardrobe is a portal to another dimension, and that C.S. Lewis himself must have taken a trip there as a young child, and either used it as inspiration for his stories directly, or repressed the memory and it came out in dreams later, which lead to the interest in the story.
So the two have to storm Narnia, with guns. Now, in my own version of the story, Lewis sanitized his memories somewhat and got a lot of things completely backwards, so, for example, Aslan would be the badguy, a lionheaded demon that eats children's souls or something. But you could do it either way, the twisted version or playing it straight.
Mostly I just really like the image of Dean charging through the wardrobe with a gun all keen to shoot anthropomorphic animals.
One of my minor goals in life is to have the adjective 'intrepid' prefixed to whatever description of me someone gives. I mean, sure, intrepid explorer would be great, or intrepid astronaut, or intrepid post-apocalyptic drifter would be awesome. But I'd settle for 'intrepid manual labourer'. Or 'interpid slacker' or 'intrepid layabout'. I think I've just typed intrepid way too much.
Some TV thoughts. Spoiler-Free.
Heroes: Glad it's back, but last couple episodes felt a little off. Plus, I'm getting really annoyed at the commercials for the next episode including elements that only show up in the last few minutes. Maybe I should try going spoiler-free, I think I'd enjoy it a little more.
Stargate: SG1 had a good episode, with some nice guest stars. Still haven't seen this week's Atlantis... well, I started to. But got distracted by something shiny and haven't finished it yet. Which goes to show that I'm not all that attached to it yet.
Veronica Mars: Good ep. Some nice quotes.
Supernatural: Good ending to last week's ep.
Grey's Anatomy: Starting to get a bit predictable and I want to smack too many people. Is the love dying?
BSG: Woot, some interesting developments. Too bad no ep this week. Stupid Super Bowl. Die die die!
Oh, speaking of TV, here's a quick list of the SF-related pilots for next year's TV. My thoughts:
Ehh... don't like that description of Babylon Fields. 'the dead rise and try to resume their old lives'? Looks like it won't be a mad zombie apocalypse at all. On the other hand, that might make the pure zombie apocalypse premise safe for another series to take up.
Of these, I'll probably give Pushing Daisies, Babylon Fields, Journeyman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles a look at least, assuming nothing else is on at the same time. Maybe Demons, New Amsterdam, and Them. None of them really excite me, though, like Heroes or Jericho did last year (although Jericho turned out to be disappointing, Heroes didn't)
Life update: Apartment hunt continues. No luck yet. I hate moving.
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