Galactica fanboyism - it's totally justified

I can't believe it's been a tenday since I wrote anything. To be fair I've been a little busy between work and school, but today I'm free. Just in time to fanboy out over Battlestar Galactica. Major last-night spoilage ahead.

For those who saw the episode last night, "Someone to Watch Over Me", you know this was simultaneously one of the best, most intense, most disturbing, and most ASLDJFALSKJDF (to use a computer curse) episodes of any television in ... ever. It was one of the most intense episodes of telly I've ever seen, plot-wise almost certainly. It was partly a Starbuck episode, one we've been waiting for since she found Char-buck on Erf (Yes, that's several fanon words but you'll have to get over it). Kara's drinking (big surprise) and she hears this guy incessantly playing a piano ... because he's composing. She goes over to help him because her father was a pianist and composer. In what we think is a one-off scene, she goes to Helo's place and gets a tape (cassette tape, yeah I know!) of one of her father's recordings, and Hera, AKA "Creepy Cybrid Kid" gives Kara a picture of what we think are stars. Later on, when Kara and the pianist, nicknamed "Slick", are working on the second movement, she remembers the stars drawing and puts it on a sheet of music. It works. They try it.

It's the Final Four theme - the "All Along the Watchtower" based theme music for the final four Cylons. 

Col. Tigh and Ellen are sitting at the bar, and Tigh's face is completely fucking priceless. He goes over and demands to know where Kara learnt that music, and 1) she says she played it as a kid and 2) she looks over at Slick, who is no longer there. Slick is her Head-Dad character. What the frak.

Meanwhile, the Cylons on the Fleet Baseship want to try Boomer, currently in Galactica's brig, for treason. Chief Tyrol, who used to be frakking Boomer before she shot Adama (christ, this is like a soap opera!) wants them to not try her and execute her. He replaces Boomer with some random innocent 8 and lets her go free. She uses his good will to beat the shit out of Athena, frak Helo (Athena's hubby) in front of her while she's locked in a cupboard, and kidnap Hera, drug her, put her in a box, and take off in a Raptor to take her back to Cavil, proving that she's a god damn piece of shit all along. 

All of it reads like a soap opera, certainly, except it wasn't like that. The one part that was VERY not like that was the "Boomer beating up Athena and frakking her husband" scene, which was very explicit albeit out of focus, and seriously fucking disturbing, because what we see IN focus is Athena, watching this other woman frakking her husband. The scene takes about a minute, and it's horribly painful to watch. What makes it worse is that Tyrol is an accessory to Boomer's kidnapping of Hera, because he actually helped her load the box into the Raptor, not to mention BREAKING HER OUT OF PRISON. 

This episode is by far the best example for why Galactica is one of the best god damn shows on television, dare I say ever. Every time you think something could go right, guess what, it not only goes wrong, but it goes more wrong than you ever imagined it could. Given one episode, anyone will get absolutely hooked on this show and be irretrievably attached to finding out WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN HOLY SHIT.

Businesses = idiots who want my money

Businesses must be, as a rule, run by retarded people.

Liz and I opened a joint bank account the other day. This has caused no end of problems, not one of which was our fucking fault. First, her direct deposit tried to go into her old bank account, which being closed, would not accept it. This is a similar situation to what happened with my direct deposit fuckup except slightly better except not, because the bank account in question 1) existed at some point and 2) belonged to the person who was getting the money.

The bank people claimed she would be able to access our account via her existing online banking username and password. We would have appreciated it if the bank people had been so kind as to inform us at that time that they were lying to us. She is currently only able to access the account using my password and name. This is not a problem apart from the fact that the bank people are dirty god damned liars who lie to people and don't tell the truth when they do it. Also, her debit card doesn't work, which we kind of figured would happen and we never even bothered to ask about.

Today, and this is where the complaint against dumbasses running businesses comes in, we sat down to figure out why our account had got so low. We looked at our online ledger which showed us no fewer than fifteen pending transactions. When we removed from consideration the deposits, there were thirteen pending transactions. Many of these transactions are from Thursday, when we went to Indianapolis, or Friday, when we were in town, or the weekend. Now I certainly know that banks don't do a god damn thing on the weekends, and they had, for some inexplicable reason, President's Day off. But the fact that since Thursday none of our transactions have gone through is not the fault of the banks.

This indeed has happened once before - to Liz when she was closing her personal bank account. She had a pending four dollar transaction on her card, which was at Chik-Fil-A, the famous mall crappy chicken "fast" "food" "restaurant". She hadn't used the card since the first day of that week, and the day we closed the account was either a Wednesday or a Thursday. Either way, they'd had three days to take their money. Apparently businesses aren't in any hurry to be paid for things, which is odd, because if you actually try the Wimpy approach ("I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," from Popeye cartoons) they will laugh in your face and probably spit at you and call the police because there is a crazy person in their place of business and they don't have to put up with that.

And I thought debit cards removed the money from your account instantly, and credit cards chalked up a running tally for you to pay later. Maybe I need to redefine. Or they do.

----------------
Now playing: Daft Punk - Face to face [Cosmo Vitelli rmx]
via FoxyTunes

I think I'm quitting driving.

I hit a motherfucking SUV today. There was damage to my car, and there was a scratch (that came off with a little light rubbing) on the SUV. I fucking hate driving and occasionally life in general.

Here's what the car looks like now:

Emo Conservatives

Now playing: Daft Punk - Robot Rock / Oh Yeah
via FoxyTunes

Oh, National Review, what won't you make up a "liberals destroyed it" myth about?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "War On Christmas," where "every" retail store "forbade" its employees saying "Merry Christmas" to customers out of a desire to "Discriminate" against "Christianity". Most of the examples of stores I've heard this myth about are Wal-Marts, and anyone who thinks Wal-Mart gives a rat's rotting corpse about anything other than cash is retarded. When I first heard of this, I worked at Best Buy. That year, we had gift cards with a Christmas tree on, as well as one with a menorah. The two years after that, I worked at Borders, where we had no shortage of Christmassy, and even Jesusy items for the season. At no point was anyone, to my knowledge, told to say any specific holiday greeting to anyone else, or refrain from saying a specific holiday greeting. I have never bought the utter horseshit idea of a "war on" any particular holiday. It certainly didn't help that it is notorious liar Bill O'Reilly's pet project from late October to whenever he gets tired of hearing himself talk.

Today, on Valentine's Day, the bastion of conservative circle-jerkery known as the National Review Online had a column on how awful Valentine's commercials are. I happen to agree with them, mainly because most of them are sexist and based on an ancient and irrelevent way of thinking. NRO, however, claim the problem is the same as the "commercialization of Christmas and the candy-fication of Easter". Okay, I don't like the commercialisation of Christmas either, mainly because I like to think of that holiday as one of family togetherness and sharing what we have in common. Easter is something I haven't celebrated in some years, so I don't care so much.

But then, the NRO went on to say that Valentine's has been reduced to "mail-order seduction by a nation of salivating Caligulas?" The obvious meaning is that Valentine's Day, in the modern tradition a celebration of love, has lost its original meaning, and this has happened recently as a result of the loss of "traditional morals", meaning of course since "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air. This is yet another example of tories being desperate for a time that never existed and using holidays that never or only recently meant what they want them to mean.

Much like Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day has its origins in a Roman festival. Lupercalia, yet another Roman fertility festival, was celebrated between the equivalent of February 13-15 and was abolished by Pope Gelasius I. According to Prof. Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, no link between a saint named Valentinus (the alleged basis for "Saint" Valentine's Day) and a celebration of romantic love existed until the time of Geoffery Chaucer, when courtly love became popular. In short (too late), Valentine's Day and its historic predecessors have been, and always will be, about fuckin'. And really, I'm not sure why conservatives have a problem with that. Maybe they don't like what they find at every branch in their family tree.

(Fuckin'.)

----------------
Now playing: Daft Punk - Face To Face / Short Circuit
via FoxyTunes

Anna Nicole Shitty Music

Today I'm going to talk mainly about my favourite place in the world: Britain. Britain has been called many things: a far-away colony, a damp little island, an empire, THE empire, and my personal favourite:

Britain, Britain, Britain. Why would you ever want to leave? Anybody who goes on holiday abroad is a traitor! I bloody love it here! Bloody love it! We produce the best films, the finest cuisines and our dogs are relatively rabies free. And this is all thanks to the peoples of Britain. Let us look at them in this program in which we now look at them now. Boom, boom, shake the room! - Tom Baker

That is an introduction from an episode of the hit sketch comedy show Little Britain. As noted heavily in the show, Britain is full not only of culture and history, but also idiots. Case in point: This news story from Britain's Guardian newspaper. Following on the heels of the Jerry Springer opera, which was the subject of an asinine obscenity lawsuit, one of the creators has decided to make a musical about Anna Nicole Smith's life. My only response is "ALKDSJFAKLSJDFALKSDFALKS" as that is what happens when I bash my head upon my desk without first moving my computer out of the way.

I'm glad I don't have to say, "This has got to be the stupidest idea for a musical ever," because I already know about the Jerry Springer and Batboy musicals (which incidentally had a long run on the West End). Granted, apart from stupid shit like this, the West End has Shakespeare plays and long-established old-ass musicals that most people have seen in one way or another before. When I was there, I saw Chicago and Fame, both of which are American. I didn't see any Shakespeare because ... well, I'm an idiot. I went for the cheap and easy ones I already knew about instead of LEARNING something about acting.

---

Other topic: Who doesn't know "Muzak"? It's a widely-known term for that crappy music they play at every department store, mall, grocery store, and most other public places. They used to play instrumental shitty versions of shitty pop songs, until they got the idea to play the shitty songs themselves. They are the reason you hear crap like the Dawson's Creek song in the mall, and ... probably the only reason anyone under the age of should-be-dead-by-now heard even one Barry Manilow song before he started getting blown by Pop Idol contestants. At the risk of ripping off Best Musical Ever Sweeney Todd, "But not for long ... "

Muzak, based in North Carolina (reason 47,827 not to visit the American South), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Apparently they owe between $100m and $500m. The CEO believes this will give the company* the chance to regain control of their finances and continue torturing people with good taste worldwide. Or, the way it was put in El Reg: Muzak says that its "sensory experiences" reach 100 million people each day. That should be a fucking war crime.


*hideous conglomeration of auditory shit
----------------
Now playing: Dogma Free America - Episode 76.5--Dogma Free America
via FoxyTunes

Free association - I need to write more goddammit

Now playing: Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (D.O.S.E. Mix)
via FoxyTunes

I haven't updated in much longer than I'd like, and I figure the next few days would be perfect to remedy that. Tomorrow I don't have class because my prof has a family thing. He also won't be there on Friday. Meanwhile, due to Liz having a doctor's appointment in Indy on Thursday, I won't be in class THAT day. So I had two days of class followed by a three-day weekend followed by one (possibly more) day of work. I feel like I shouldn't be wearing a shirt and have stains of all sorts on what clothing I do wear.

I'm officially desperate for a new electric guitar now. I keep finding all these awesome metal songs I want to learn to play and I feel like playing them acoustically sounds retarded. Plus, as digital and electronic as Rob Zombie's catalogue is, it would be asinine to play "Pussy Liquor" on a Grandpas Guitars. On the bright side, I remember how to play, and I remember several of the songs I knew when I was first learning. I have made it a point to forget all the Creed and Nickelback (one song each) I learnt because I am not a pompous no-talent wannabe.

As for newly discovered music that I recommend to anyone: Wolves in the Throne Room is great symphonic metal. I say symphonic because these songs could easily be considered symphonies on the quality, length, and intricacy contained. Rammstein is a band I heard of ten years ago and I thought they were pretty good, but I never really got into them because I was into generic rap and things one heard on the radio. Liz started flipping out about the song Spieluhr and then she found the linked video that reinterprets the (almost identical) story of the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child". My fiancee, for the record, has excellent taste in most things - exceptions include Sex and the City and peanut butter sandwiches. Today I listened to a Foo Fighters concert recorded at Wembley Stadium in London, which was utterly fantastic and only confirmed my desire to see them play live. I add them to the list that includes Metallica, Flogging Molly, Ozzy, KT Tunstall (whole thing this time), Rage Against the Machine (before they break up again), Tom Morello (with or without a band), and anyone playing with Jimmy Page.

I hate people who tell other people what sport team they should support. I was recently yelled at by someone for wearing a Patriots hat. I wear the Pats hat (as well as Boston Red Sox hats) because I have a strong desire to move to Boston or at least the Massachusetts area, and I've always enjoyed watching both teams (Boston teams I do not support include the Celtics and Bruins, as well as any NCAA teams). I do not support IU, UK, ISU, USI, SIU, UE, PU, BSU, FU, FSU, FUAD, UCLA, St Louis, Chicago (any team), Cincinatti, etc, etc, etc because I do not enjoy watching them. The person who complained about my Patriots hat said I should support UK, at which point I had to mentally count to ten to prevent from slapping him for insulting me so badly. Really, life is bad enough telling people I am from Indiana. I would never seek to move down the evolutionary ladder via sports or anything else.

I've decided to start marking both the start and finish of my blog posts with what song I'm listening to at the time. There are several songs in between, but I think on the posts where I actually have something to say that would be horribly interruptive to the general flow and progression of my writing. After all, that is what I'm trying to do with my blog posts: become a better writer.

Obviously today was not a giant leap for writing-kind. I'm okay with it though, because it's some fucking content already.

----------------
Now playing: Black Sabbath - The Sign Of The Southern Cross
via FoxyTunes

An edit! I nearly forgot - my friend Leah started a new jobs-related blog and twitter today. Check it out at http://leahsgotit.blogspot.com/ and http://www.twitter.com/leahsgotit.