Courtney wrote a wonderful alternate ending to last night’s BSG atrocity on Facebook.  I agree with her that there was too much spiritualism (any story that can be tied up with “angels” doesn’t do it for me).

Adama is going to be a ghost of a man, talking to a buried woman. Lee is going to be an explorer (good for him). Angels are going to walk around worrying about our robots. Cylons will come out of comas to deliver good byes. God doesn’t like being called God (which Biblically is his own problem since he won’t give us his name). Frak!!!  The producers said we’d be surprised and satisfied with the ending. I’m surprised it was so bad. The only thing that satisfies me is that a certain person got her comeuppance.

Courtney also mentioned that the series seems to have lost the human/cylon distinction, although neither the humans nor the cylons seemed to get that. But if we are to believe the monotheist mythology that the show is apparently grounded in, both humans and cylons are “designed” by an intelligent force. And part of God’s plan is to kill off 11 colonies and most of the cylons for . . . well, not sure. But we’re supposed to be awed by it.

I’m not sure the show is doing what good sci fi is supposed to do, which is to make us think about what being human means. The “other” in sci fi is there to make us think about ourselves, to define ourselves. The cylons became completely us by the end of this. On the one hand, we can take that to mean that the “monster” is us–which is what most sci fi/fantasy/jungian-driven stuff implies–but the mythology is somehow getting in the way. Maybe it’s that I feel that “God’s plan” takes away too much free will. So what are cylons and humans? Just pawns in some cosmic game. Why even worry about the monsters and whether we are they?

Frak.

Here’s my alternate ending:  Starbuck wakes up from a bad dream in a bed.  Her husband, Bobby Ewing, is in the shower, safe and sound. 

In other tv news, Breaking Bad is awesome; Nikki is getting caught for all her shit in Big Love. Family Guy took a swipe at The Simpsons last week (I hope the show takes it as a compliment).

And as for The Simpsons, the last episode bothered me. It was a Da Vinci Code-esque night. There were several fine jokes at the beginning, but The Simpsons, like BSG, got too religious. Lisa cracks a code–she thinks she is supposed to bring peace. She then is told that Maggie is actually the chosen one. While Lisa points out that the code only makes sense if Lisa messed it up first (which should bring doubt), the show ends in un-skeptically. It’s not sitting well with me.

No wonder I can’t frakkin’ sleep.

http://deniseduvernay.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/what-feminism-the-world-need-now-positivity/#comment-62

Denise–wear it proudly! We are what feminists look like!

I’ve been bragging to everyone about the boy.  He’s in a magnet program, he’s building robots, he’s taking violin, he loves scifi and Eddie Izzard and Monty Python and The Simpsons. 

His hair is long and is starting to show a slight curl.  A group of juniors (a year older than he) are starting to use his middle name (Dante) and thus he is happy, finally, to have it.

His high school put on a sort of history fair last week–they did group project on WWI.  We went, not expecting much, and were suprised to find costumes, props, videos, and a bunch of dressed up teenagers.  Someone had told them to make eye contact, which means that some of us saw the boy’s eyes (his hair was in a ponytail) for the first time in years.  The kids were articulate and when asked questions, could answer (with the correct information).  I actually learned a lot from them, though not from the boy, who wouldn’t let me hear his presentation (apparently, I make him nervous).

The most interesting thing was watching my son standing outside and getting people funneled into his group’s presentation.  My somewhat shy child was basically a carnival barker and I’ve never been prouder.

One of my friends had an op-ed come out today about the government’s relationship with the Taliban. Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/17rouse.html?ref=opinion

That’s right–it’s Saint Urho’s Day!  Now, some of you may notice that Finland is a traditionally Lutheran country and that there is no Saint Urho in the Church, anyway.  Saint Urho’s day is indeed made up–Finnish immigrants wanted their own day to get drunk at the start of Spring (this was back when only Irish people celebrated St. Patrick).

So they made up their own holiday.  And why not?  All holidays are basically made up and/or have changed incredibly over the centuries.  Why not celebrate that which is fake?

Reasons why St. Urho’s Day is superior to Saint Patrick’s day:  it’s the day before.  St. Patrick was a dick.  It wasn’t “snakes” he drove out of Ireland–it was Norwegians.  St. Patrick is famous for being anti-immigrant.

If Patrick drove out the snakes, the Finns decided that Urho drove out the grasshoppers and saved the wine crop.  So put on some green and purple and drink some wine.  And when people try to hand you a green beer tomorrow, tell them you’ve already celebrated (unless you’d still like to drink–in which case, you should have some decent beer or another bottle of wine).

With the advent of Twitter, I don’t see how “twitterpated” won’t make it back into the regular lexicon. Denise and I are fairly twitterpated this week. A certain director of The Simpsons movie twittered us after Denise said she was working on the Linguistics section of the book.

Since, he’s asked to see my syllabus! It’s the best thing that’s happened in a relatively lousy week. I won’t go into the lousy stuff.

Instead, I’ll go back to linguistics–why do we call a twitter response a “tweet” and not a “twit”? Then we could say, “This twit says she’s eating egg salad for lunch.” And, as a friend suggested this week, is the past tense of “tweet” “twat”?

http://www.matchflick.com/column/1893

Woohoo!

I went to the theatre this Friday. Nice little comedy done pretty well by the students here. More fun that the opera, except that the audience was worse (see last week’s blog about the opera audience). At least no one in the opera audience was playing with their phone the whole time (and my position in the theatre would have allowed me to see that).

A girl behind me at the play had her phone on vibrate. And it vibrated every time she got a text. And then she would take it out and answer right away, leading to a new vibration. I could see a bunch of other people texting and/or playing on their iphones during the production. One boy in particular, who attended with his four friends, did not look up at the stage at all. Even during the fight scene.

This was a small theatre. The actors and I could all see who was looking down and who was bathed in the blue glow of a phone screen.

In other news, have finally got around to reading Madame Bovary. I now understand Margaret Atwood’s line about how Bovary would have been saved by knowledge in double entry bookkeeping. The book exists in cultural imagination as being about adultery. Now, there is adultery. There’s commentary on faith and rural life and what we would now understand as crippling depression. But Madame Bovary is not ruined by her affairs. A loan shark takes advantage of her and her husband–he changes rates and threatens with third party intervention and pretends to be their friend. In the end, she’s dead because she’s bankrupt. If there had never been a money problem, the adultery wouldn’t have been a problem, either.

I have to say, it was much more readable than I anticipated, but I’m glad that I didn’t read it in high school. I hate that “classics” are always given to children, when it takes adults who’ve had money problems and more than one relationship, etc. to really empathize with characters. If I were speaking, I would raise a toast to reading the classics as an adult.

I’ve been watching Season Three of The Simpsons on DVD (I have to–it’s research!).  Early seasons aren’t often shown in syndication, so I don’t see them all that often (except for the episodes I teach).  I’ve been remembering my first time with all these episodes–how each one reinforced my love for the show.

The boy and I were watching “Homer Alone,” in which Marge gets stressed and needs a while away from the family at Rancho Relaxo.  The family misses her for various reasons and when she returns, they grab her, telling her how much they missed her and demanding she “never leave again.”  The boy asked me if I would like to be greeted that way if I were to leave for a day or two.  I said that the level of dependency was a bit much, but that everyone liked to be appreciated.  He said that I liked his independence and I said he liked mine, but we decided we appreciated each other a lot.  Ah, Simpsons family values.

Marge at Rancho Relaxo--Isn't she pretty with her hair down?

“The Otto Show” features one of my favorite moments in the show.  After driving badly, Otto admits he has no driver’s licence, but says that if anyone wants to confirm his identity, he writes his name in his underwear.  Except:  “Oh, wait, these aren’t mine.”  Kills me every time.

Last thought, in one episode, Bart plays a video game called Larry the Looter–his character breaks store windows and loots.  This small moment was supposed to be a commentary on violent video games through the power of exaggeration.  I remember seeing this for the first time around 1992 and thinking that games would never be that bad.

Naive Karma signing off to go write her name in her underwear.  Oh, wait, I’m not wearing any.