you might as well live's Journal

9:23pm: I'm kind of drunk right now. Okay, "kind of" is an understatement. We shall take this as an experiment into how good my spelling and grammar can be while drunk, yes, we shall.

Wodehouse saved my life, by Hugh Laurie. Yes, he's saved mine on more than one occasion as well.

So I've come up with the bright idea of posting thoughts on books I've read here so I don't forget what I've read or what I've thought of it, though I'm not likely to do that anyway. So here we are:

( The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea )

Thoughts on the Lost finale will probably follow after I've seen it, since I didn't catch all of it on Thursday. I did like what I saw.

Re: ASoIaF shipping, I was thinking about why Sandor/Sansa leaves me cold, and it's because they're the Beauty and the Beast archetype played straight. Jaime/Brienne are a twisted version of Beauty and the Beast where they're both the beauty and they're both the beast: Jaime is physically beautiful, while Brienne is ugly but has a beautiful character, and he has to learn to find the beauty in her physical appearance and also see the beauty in the kind of person she is. But OTOH Brienne has a beautiful character and Jaime has a beastly one, BUT he has hidden goodness that only she knows or cares about. Whereas Sansa is totally the beauty and Sandor is totally the beast. I can't have much interest in a pairing like that. I also can't have much interest in a pairing where one person has all the "masculine" qualities and the other person has all the "feminine" qualities, and that's exactly what Sansa/Sandor is. It's also because I'm not much interested in Sandor or in Sansa when she's around him, though I have a kind of trainwreck fascination with her when she's around Littlefinger. And on a more trivial note I don't like the ship name SanSan--it's almost as bad as LoVe or (*shudder*) Harmony.

11:24am: Happy belated 25th, Pratchett fans
How do they rise up, etc.

( Battlestar Galactica, 1.06 'Litmus' and 1.07 'Six Degrees of Separation' )

And, since meta breeds meta, I have a couple of ASoIaF thoughts:

( Dany, race and barbarian tropes )

9:54am: Sydney Bristow and other stuff
People, it ought to be against the law to get sick in May. It's v.v. annoying. I have a fever, so sorry if I sound rambling. Anyway, sickness means not much to do but fool around, so here I am.

Here's a question for the Alias fen: why does nobody hate Sydney Bristow?

It's not that I think people should. I love her. But it's weird behavior for fans not to hate her. Think about other ass-kicking female protagonists from popular shows. Buffy Summers? Loads of hate directed her way. Veronica Mars? Ditto. Sydney doesn't inspire nearly the same levels of antipathy.

Is it because Sydney isn't harsh to any pretty male woobies? She's harsh to Jack, sometimes deservedly and sometimes not. But Jack is not young and, as we discussed in the the_retelling, he'd make life very uncomfortable for anyone who called him a woobie. She's harsh to Sloane, but he deserves every bit of it and is also unpretty. She's harsh to Sark, but unlike Logan or Spike, Sark doesn't have too many humanizing moments. There are Sark fangirls, yes, but nobody really denies that he's a murdering, torturing, all-around bad guy. (At least, not that I've seen). Much of the Buffy-hate and Veronica-hate centers around them being mean to Spike and Logan respectively, so maybe the lack of such woobie-antagonists on Alias saves Syd from the hate?

( A couple of comments on ASoIaF, esp. Ned and Sansa )

9:05pm: Politics and Alias and ASoIaF and HP, oh my!
( Politics )

Onto more pleasant topics:

( Alias and vidding )

( Cliches, with reference to ASoIaF and HP )

9:37am: Lost and a Star Wars question
( Lost, There's no place like home, Pt I )

In other news, I recently re-watched the Star Wars original trilogy and now I'm wondering: what took me so long to notice the massive Han/Lando ship potential, and am I the only one who has? Apparently so, since a quick glance through SW fanfic reveals lots of Han/Leia (of course, they were one of my first OTPs) and a lot of the quasi-incestuous Han/Luke (ugh) and even a non-trivial amount of the actually-incestuous Luke/Leia (even more ugh). But no Han/Lando. What is fandom thinking? This ship has everything: a long and exciting criminal backstory, betrayal, redemption, trust, plus lots of physical contact and long lingering looks and smiles and they also literally share a ship. Is this racism? Do we need to have a movement for the all-important equal right to be slashed?

7:56pm: Lost and ballet flats
Jumping off of my post yesterday, would anyone like to tell me where they buy their comfy ballet flats?

Preferably not the uber-expensive kind.

On Lost: I enjoyed last week's Jack/Kate episode, but don't have much to say about it. This week's episode was batshit insane in that endearing way Lost has, and it also is a throwback to the S1-early S3 habit of creating rather than resolving confusion. It did that typical early-Lost thing where it put lots and lots of NEW weird stuff into the episode but didn't make any moves towards explaining the OLD weird stuff.

My favorite scene was Ben and Hurley sharing a chocolate bar; my second favorite was Locke's manipulation of Hurley. Someone's coming full circle from being a patsy.

10:49am: Befuddlement
Okay, so here's something that's been confusing me lately now that ballet flats have surged upwards in popularity: WHY do people wear closed shoes without socks or tights or ANYTHING between their foot and the shoe?

I can obviously understand doing this with sandals, or open-toed shoes, or sling-backs, or backless shoes, or shoes with slits in them, or even closed slippers made out of soft washable fabrics (though I don't get why you'd wear those on the street), but leather flats or pumps? Why? Doesn't it give you blisters, and make your shoes--and your feet--stink to high heaven? If the weather makes it tolerable for you to wear closed shoes, then wouldn't it also be tolerable to wear peds or tights or *something*?

Also, I've been looking through the shoes here and I covet them.


On another topic, I will scream if I hear another person say "Oh, Candidate X doesn't seem like those other calculating politicians at ALL--he's a REAL PERSON!" Huckabee used to get this kind of inane gushing earlier on in the presidential campaign. Now it's all given to Obama and McCain. (People go to the other extreme with Hillary Clinton and assume that her every facial twitch, however minute, is part of some long-term Machiavellian plan.)

Listen up, dearies: all politicians are calculating. All successful ones, anyway. This isn't me being cynical. I'm often cynical, but right now I'm just being factual. Presidential candidates hire armies of pollsters for a reason. If a politician strikes you as a "real person," or "authentic," or whatever, it's because he's got really good pollsters. He's no less of a robot, he's just a more convincing robot.

You know what the whole "oh, he's AUTHENTIC" thing reminds me of? That scene from Veronica Mars in the episode "An Echolls Family Christmas" where V. interviews that movie star about the poker game, and the star says he liked Weevil because "he was real."

Of course, the reason why he thinks Weevil was "real" was because Weevil is Latino and a gangster, which is why V. thinks the star is dumb.

The average person's assessment of "realness" in candidates is about that dumb, folks. There's no way you can see into the heart and soul of a public figure whose every appearance is scripted to at least some degree. If you try to judge their "authenticity," you'll inevitably end up basing those judgments on things that are at best superficial and at worst idiotic.

I can't help feeling contempt for people who say things like that, because this cult of authenticity is one of the most ridiculous features of American politics today.

Also, you'll notice I have a new tag: "politics is my new fandom." Although I'm more like an anti-fan. Politics is like a fandom I wish I could gafiate from, because of my extreme loathing of the source material, but since I can't I'll amuse myself by sporking the canon.

The point is that this LJ may be featuring more political posts, so fair warning. I'll put anything really contentious behind a cut, because I'm well aware of how annoying it can be to stumble over a heated political post (esp. one you disagree with, but even the ones you agree with can raise your blood pressure, in my experience) while indulging yourself in fandom escapism.

10:09pm: "Eli Stone." Also someone is WRONG on the INTERNET! (And lots of other places, too!)
( Cut for politics and annoyance )

On a happier note, Eli Stone:

( The last few episodes of Eli Stone )

10:48pm: Lost 4.09
( Brief comments on last week's Lost )

8:27pm: Lots of stuff and links
(1) The one blog I used to read regularly was Fafblog. I'm thrilled to see that it's back to save the universe. Hi, Giblets!

(2) One last comment on the whole Grope Your Way To A Sexually Free Utopia thing: if something degrading and violating happens all the time, that's not a reason to be LESS pissed off about it. It's a reason to be MORE pissed off about it.

Seriously: I've seen comments to the effect of "oh, but women are groped all the time, so what's the difference? You're just a spoiled middle-class white [yeah, way to make assumptions there!] girl complaining about not being treated like a princess!" These people seem to fail to realize that this is precisely WHY everyone is pissed off. I can't imagine how they fail to realize it, given the sheer number of comments and posts saying "I deal with this every fucking day."

On the plus side, a very good thing to come out of Utopian Grope-gate is this.


(3) Also, in general, just because something more serious is going on elsewhere doesn't mean you can't be pissed off about the infuriating thing you've noticed happening under your nose. I really hate it when people do that thing where they're all, "Pshaw, I have a hard time watching people get worked up about Problem A, because Problem B is SO MUCH WORSE." It always makes me want to respond, "Yeah, but there are TINY TINY BABIES being murdered and starved by various unscrupulous entities ALL OVER THE WORLD! What are you doing about that, huh? HUH?" In college I discovered the perfect description for this: "Misery Poker." E.g., "I have a paper due tomorrow and I haven't even started it." "Well, I have TWO papers and a test!" "Well, my cat died after devouring my pet hamster, AND I've got a paper!!" Etc.


(4) I'm not thrilled about ANYBODY for president, but McCain would be a disaster of the worst proportions and his too-late-to-do-a-damn-bit-of-good pandering about Katrina is one of the more nauseating things to come out of his campaign. I wonder if McCain will say anything about how the city of New Orleans has been basically stolen from its former residents since the hurricane by politicians and their cronies wanting to turn a profit, but I rather doubt it.

(5) I found this cartoon a while back and have been giggling over it ever since, and figured I might as well link it now. I think EVERYONE on my flist--and on Livejournal, really--should be able to appreciate it.

(6) Has anyone read or heard anything about Christopher Tolkien's "The Children of Hurin"? Would you recommend it?

(7) I fully intend to Netflix Alex Mack alongside BSG. I'm getting ridiculously excited about watching it again. And yes, I will inflict posts about it on you all. I may even write fic! MWAHAHAHA.