OMG! This is amazing and hilarious! I had to share. Although, as much crap as people have, justifiably, given her over this song, maybe it counts as ironic that she created a song about irony that contains absolutely no irony whatsoever? Maybe it’s ironic in a meta way! But that’s probably giving her way too much credit. Anyway, enjoy!
Category Archives: Random
“Doctor Who” Question
Okay, I’m sorry, I have to continue my current “Doctor Who” rant, because there’s something I’ve been thinking about and I can’t figure it out and it’s bothering me. Does the Doctor love River? Does he? I can’t figure out if he does or not. I really can’t. I mean, I get what Moffet was trying for with this storyline, I really do. I’m picking up what he’s putting down. He’s trying for a retelling, or maybe reimagining is more accurate, of “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, which I haven’t read, but I quite enjoyed the movie. So, fine, cool, whatever. Meeting in the wrong order? Fine. It’s a weird and cool way to tell a story, if it’s done in the right way. She knows him more as he knows her less, and vice versa? Really a very cool way to tell a story and show just what it is that makes each of them fall in love with the other, showcasing what each of them finds most attractive in the other, what draws them in, despite everything. It can’t help but be tragic, as there is that short, so short, period of time, where each really knows the other, truly loves the other for all that they are, before they each start to move in opposite directions, each destined for that day when they look into the other’s eyes and see no recognition looking back. Awesome, epic idea- if done right. See, that’s the problem I think. It hasn’t been done right. For that kind of story, you need possibly a stand alone kind of character in a stand alone novel or movie, not something that is so decade- sprawling as “Doctor Who”. This needs to be something where it’s just those two, it will always be those two, with their love blazing away, in defiance of time and space.
I don’t feel like that’s happening here. For starters, I’m not even entirely sure if the Doctor really loves her. She loves him, very clearly, and has, very clearly, from the beginning. Even from her beginning, when you watch her grow up obsessed with the Doctor. Quite rightly obsessed, since she had been brainwashed to kill him. She probably thought about him a lot for most of her life, what with the brainwashing and being best friends with Amy, the girl who waited. So, you put her face to face with him, of course she’s gonna go a bit bonkers, which she did. And then she blew past “a bit” into I don’t even know what. She wants to marry him, then she kills him, then she sacrifices all the rest of her regenerations to save him. That’s… that’s a bit extreme. But, again, to be fair, she was raised to be a psychopath. Then, she crafts the rest of her life around the Doctor. She becomes an archaeologist in order to find him again, she tracks him down, again and again, she breaks Time itself, shatters it, in order to save him. She says that her suffering at having to kill him would be worse than all the suffering of all the billions of people in all the universe. Which is kind of sweet and kind of creepy. I mean, if she had said something like what Rory said way back in the Pandorica episodes, that, to paraphrase, the Doctor was more important than the rest of the universe to her, then I wouldn’t have a problem. But the way she put it? That’s pretty extreme. Like, really extreme. And being more afraid of the day when he wouldn’t recognize her than of his death or hers? We’re entering into fatal attraction territory here. But whatever, I get it, they’re going for a great, epic love. And God knows she has the pedigree for it, it’s in her blood. Her father guarded the Pandorica for about two thousand years, just to keep Amy safe. He would do absolutely anything for her, protect her from anything, fight through anything, do whatever it took, even if it meant giving her up for someone she wanted more. And Amy was willing to die several times to either get back to Rory or stay with him. That is deep, true, epic love. So it’s in her blood. But, I don’t know, it just seems a bit much to me. But I’m a cynic, I’m probably the wrong person to ask.
Then, we have the Doctor. What proof of love do we have on his side? He married her, that’s true. But why did he marry her? See, that’s where the problem comes in for me, because he flat out says “I don’t want to marry you.” And yes, marrying her wasn’t really presented as a condition of her touching him and going back to the beach, so they could fix Time, but I look at it this way: they say earlier in the episode that no one is sure if she is the woman that marries him or the woman that murders him. So, what if he saw it as he had two timelines to choose from? Or if that’s what he thought she thought? What if he thought he had to choose one, marriage or murder, and she wouldn’t accept the second option without shattering the universe. So that left him with one option. He had to marry her. I mean, they argue on top of that pyramid for several minutes before he busts out the bow tie. And the whole thing, to me, didn’t feel very romantic. It was more “end- of- the- worldy” than romantic. But, hell, when you’re over a thousand years old, you can certainly do things for more than one reason. So, maybe he does- a little. Because, recently, when I was spelunking in the internet, to try and figure this out, I read a quote from Stephen Moffet, that said that the Doctor feels very responsible for River (incidentally I would cite that quote but I have no idea now where I read it. But I promise that, unless the website I was reading lied to me, it is true). Responsible. He looks at this woman, crying and loving him with all her heart, just as she has the entire time he’s known her, destroying the entire fabric of the universe in order to save him, and how can he not give her something in return? How can he not give her this thing that she clearly wants, and what he probably knows she had to begin with. What is a Timelord to do? Save the universe and all of time, as well as give her what she wants/needs, not to mention keep him promise to Amy (to take care of her daughter) or to not?
Also, there’s this: in the killing Hitler episode, when he’s in the Tardis talking to the visual interface he asks it to show him someone he actually liked instead of an image of himself. So, let’s examine who it shows him: Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble and then little Amelia Pond. At no point does it show him River. I mean, even if it was working chronologically, wouldn’t River be between Donna and little Amelia? (Incidentally, when I googled this earlier, “Does the Doctor love River”, all I got was people arguing about was who was a better match for him: Rose or River? Not only does this not answer my question, thank you Google, but I maintain that the question doesn’t matter. Not only is Rose in another universe, hopefully living happily ever after with 10A, but he let her go. When 10 is dying he goes back and basically says good- bye to everyone who had been important to him, leaving Rose for last and then he walks away. He is letting her go. He accepts that they can’t be together, he’s accepted that for a while, and no matter how much he loved her, and he loved her a lot, he has to let her go. So he does. And then he regenerated, which really helped that process along. He told everyone goodbye and now he pretty much never references them. So, the whole Rose or River thing isn’t even really a question. He probably still loves Rose, but in that way where you’ll always have feelings for that person, you’ll always care for them and they’ll always be very important to you, but it fades, so that they’re simply special to you, and no longer the sun and the moon. But that’s just my opinion, we’ll find out for sure on the 50th anniversary special, when David Tennant and Billie Piper guest star, which I’m really looking forward to. Ten bucks says he stammers a lot and knocks something over.)
Anyway, there are all sorts of little things they show that says he cares about her, is attracted to her, worries about her and values her, but I can’t say as any of that adds up to “love”. They flirt constantly, he calls her a “bad, bad girl”, and every now and then they kiss but I don’t know if he loves her. Admittedly, the Doctor is pretty famous for playing it close to the chest, in any incarnation. He is a man with secrets and is very reluctant to give any of them up. Nor does he strike me as particularly emotionally aware. He isn’t given to much introspection, unless he’s yelling at himself for something. So, maybe he does love he and just doesn’t show it for some reason. Or maybe he loves her and doesn’t realize it. But then, why would he flirt so much with Clara? The one from the Christmas episode, not modern Clara, though I’m sure that’s coming. More to the point, why would he react like that when she kissed him? At this point, he is in fact a married man, yet when Clara kisses him he looks astonished and confused and maybe a little thrilled, like something confusing but awesome just happened, such as a pretty, smart, fun girl grabbed him and kissed him. Not the look of a man who has been kissed by someone who is not his wife and lady love.
Then there’s a separate question: in the “The Angels Take Manhattan”, at the end, after Rory and Amy went back in time and essentially died, the Doctor asks River to travel with him and she says no. She says she’ll have adventures with him, but she won’t be his companion, after having a pained look on her face. And she comes from his future. And, at some point after that, he finds modern Clara and they start traveling together. So, after they have such great chemistry together and the kissing and the attraction, does something cook up with Clara and River knows it? Is that why she wouldn’t travel with him? Because the reason she gave is just bullshit. “There should only be one psychopath per TARDIS?” What kind of excuse is that? Not any kind. It’s the kind of thing you say when you’re trying to avoid saying the real reason. And since she comes from his future, she would have seen that he has Clara later and, based on the kiss and attraction and her look of pain, there’s something there.
All of this brings me to one very unfortunate conclusion, which I really wish was the opposite: I don’t think the Doctor loves River. I think he cares for her, a lot, that she’s special to him and that he feels a great deal of responsibility for her, not only because she’s his dead best friend’s daughter but because when they first met she sacrificed her life for his and then tried to do it again later. And then again, when she used up all her regeneration for him. Of course he feels responsible for her. She pours so much of herself into him and this relationship that she insists is there and we have seen no real evidence of. He’s not the kind of man to just walk away from that kind of responsibility, that weight. He’ll carry it and take care of her, but I have yet to see real evidence that he loves her. Which, btw, makes this whole story arc they have going, officially one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. Here’s hoping that I’m really, really wrong.
“Dr. Who”!
So I just recently, despite the fact that it’s been on my radar for years, started watching “Dr. Who”, and I know this is a source of serious argument and personal taste, but I love Matt Smith as the The Doctor so much. He is my absolute favorite. I mean, David Tenant and Christopher Eccleston are awesome too, but I freaking love Matt Smith. He has that perfect combination of ancient wisdom and nine- year old on a sugar rush, with a dash of bad ass pacifist warrior (stranger combination of words I have never typed). So I decided to share some of my favorite moments from The Doctor, cuz I like sharing the things that I love.
That’s my favorite episode!
Soo…. I guess what I’m saying here is- I love Matt Smith, though only as The Doctor, don’t know him otherwise, and I want to marry him and have his babies. Matt Smith, if you’re reading this for some reason, sorry if that came across as creepy.
Oh! And I have two weird coincidence stories for you, in case you care. Okay, so a couple weeks ago, when I first started watching “Doctor Who”, someone finally answered my question on the “Libraries in Movies” post I did a while back, where it was obviously a screenshot, but I had no idea from what. Hang on-
That, it was that. Anyway, so someone finally let me know what it was from, which was “The Silence in the Library” from Season 5. Well, again, this was maybe a week after I started watching the show, who knows how long since I had posted it to begin with, and then the next day I saw that episode on BBC America. It was too weird.
Also, today I was at work, telling my coworker about this show, since I was thinking about it and I can be a tad bit obsessive and while I was telling him about it I was making someone’s drink and they got all excited because it turns out they’re a big Who- fan too. They were even wearing a Bad Wolf Corporation t- shirt at the time. It’s freaking weird how this keeps happening 🙂
Female Scientists
Something I found on Facebook, but I thought it was too cool not to post here. Female scientists don’t get nearly enough credit or publicity.
Science Is Awesome
Here are a few female scientists that you might not have heard of (but definitely should have). We haven’t included Marie Curie, because as much as we all love her, she is the automatic “female scientist” that always springs to mind and we think it’s time we branched out!
1. Ada Lovelace
Analyst, metaphysician, and founder of scientific computing. Read more about her life here: http://bit.ly/V3im
2. Rosalind Franklin
Biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. She received no credit for her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA. More on her life: http://bit.ly/4CJMC0
3. Rachel Carson
Marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. More on her life: http://bit.ly/16f4Hcm
4. Lise Meitner
A physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. She was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, but was overlooked for the Nobel Prize in favour of male colleagues. More on her life: http://bit.ly/3js4zk
5. Cecilia Payne
Astronomer and astrophysicist who, in 1925, proposed in her Ph.D. thesis an explanation for the composition of stars in terms of the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium. More on her life: http://bit.ly/n4RNqS
6. Mary Anning
A paleontologist who made many important finds in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis in Dorset. More on her life: http://bit.ly/rGXKq
Terry Pratchett Quote
Okay, so if you’ve read my previous post you’ll know that I mentioned a Terry Pratchett idea that is mentioned several times in his books and can be boiled down simply to- “Be yourself. As hard as you can.” Well, I decided I might as well be thorough and tracked one down. It’s a bit lengthy, but I like it and I feel like it says pretty much everything that needs to be said. It’s from Good Omens, which was cowritten by him and Neil Gaiman.
“Then something very strange happened to (Mary)… She discovered, under layers of silliness and eagerness to please, Mary Hodges. She found it quite easy to interpret builders’ estimates and do VAT calculations. She’d got some books from the library, and found finance to be both interesting and uncomplicated. She’d stopped reading the kind of women’s magazine that talks about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women’s magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form. So she’d started reading the kind of magazine that talked about mergers.
After much thought, she’d bought a small home computer from an amused and condescending young dealer in Norton. After a crowded weekend, she took it back. Not, as he thought when she walked back into the shop, to have a plug put on it, but because it didn’t have a 387 co-processor. That bit he understood- he was a dealer, after all, and could understand quite long words- but after that the conversation rapidly went downhill from his point of view. Mary Hodges produced yet more magazines. most of them had the term “PC” somewhere in their title, and many of them had articles and reviews that she had circled carefully in red ink.
She read about New Women. She hadn’t ever realized that she was an Old Woman, but after some though she decided that titles like that were all one with the romance and the knitting and the orgasms, and the really important thing to be was yourself, just as hard as you could.”
Repost: Being Happy in Yourself
I found this on Yahoo and had to share, because this woman makes a serious point. There is always something that’s wrong, that isn’t perfect enough. You need to be tall and statuesque, no- you need to be petite and 95 lbs. You need to have high cheekbones, no- full lips, no- sleepy eyes, no- you need wide doe eyes. You need a mysterious Mona Lisa smile, no- you need a wide vivacios smile, no- you need a seductive smile. It’s best to be fragile and vulnerable, no- it’s best to be quirky, no- it’s best to be confident and strong, no -it’s best to… blah blah blah. It’s endless. It’s never enough. No matter what you do, who you are, what you look like, it’s never enough, it’s never right. There’s always someone telling you that you should be someone else, shape yourself, body and soul, into someone else. Then you’ll be perfect, then you’ll be right, and then everything will be the fairy tale you see in books, movies and tv shows. Because it’s always that girl who has that indefinable combination that gets the happily ever after, that gets the guy, the career and the babies, who has all her dreams come true, and it’s always the imperfect characters who fall by the wayside, and are the object lessons for that indefinably perfect woman. These are lessons that we are taught through everything we touch from the moment we are born, lessons that are reinforced during school, when it’s the pretty, skinny, perfect girls in middle school and high school getting all the guys and going to all the parties.
There is no perfect and there is no right. Believe it or not, I got the best advice I have ever heard about how to be a woman and how to be comfortable in yourself from Terry Pratchett, who is not only a man but also somewhere at least in his 60s, maybe 70s. “The most important thing is to be yourself- as hard as you can.” I would say which book he says that in, but he says it in a couple and I honestly don’t remember which ones specifically. But seriously, that’s it, as far as I can tell, and that’s what she’s saying here. Just be yourself, as hard as you can. Simple and incredibly difficult, like all the best advice is.
What Losing 180 Pounds Really Does to Your Body — & Your Mind
By Refinery29
By Refinery29 | Healthy Living – Tue, Mar 19, 2013 12:39 PM EDT
By Jen Larsen, Refinery29
Jen Larsen is a fiercely real, funny, and honest writer. In her new book, Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head, she explains how losing 180 pounds and getting skinny wasn’t all she thought it would be. Here, in an essay for R29, she explains what it’s like to live through surgery – with unexpected results.
The doctor said, “It’ll be nice to be able to walk down the aisle of an airplane, right? To fit down the aisle, and to not see that look of horror when someone sees you coming.”
He said that because I weighed 300 pounds. He said that because he thought that all I wanted in life was to not be that creeping horror, shuffling sideways to the back of the plane, trying not to make eye contact with anyone because I didn’t want to see their relief when I passed by. Trying not to make eye contact with the person in my row because I didn’t want to see horror, and I really didn’t want to see pity, and I really didn’t want someone to lean over and explain to me that I was fat and that there are things I could do about it. Like water and jogging, or carrots and the Thighmaster.
He said that like it was a fact about all fat people. All fat people hate themselves. All fat people know that what’s good in life is really only accessible to thin people. Thin is the most important variable in of life’s equations. Thin equals happy, thin equals beautiful, thin equals a life worth living.
The most embarrassing fact of my life – and oh, how many embarrassing facts there are in my life – is that it was true. I was angry at him for saying it, for buying into the cliché of the fat person. For assuming that my life would transform immediately. Because he was saying all the things I had secretly thought. He was reinforcing all the secret fantasies I had about the way everything about me would be more amenable and lovable and acceptable to the whole rest of the world. To everyone on airplanes and everyone in my life. To myself. When I lost all the weight. When I got weight loss surgery.
He was my psychological consultant, the doctor who was tasked with clearing me for surgery. He signed off my mental and emotional fitness to get a surgery that I genuinely believed was going to save my life. Not just physically – though I was actually healthy – but emotionally.
And, three months later I got weight loss surgery. Seven months later I had lost over a hundred pounds; a year and a half from my surgery date, I had lost about 180 pounds. I lost a lot of things along with the weight. I lost my sense of self. My sense of proportion. My sense of dignity, of maturity, of control. I was skinny, but my life wasn’t suddenly and magically perfect-and that completely astonished me. It sounds ridiculous, having really fallen for the fairy tale of weight loss. But I had fallen for it completely, and then was blinded by the egregious lack of a happily ever after.
The nature of the weight loss surgery I got is that you can completely ignore the things the doctors tell you to do. They say, exercise, don’t drink, don’t smoke, eat well. And you don’t bother to do any of that, but still lose weight. You still lose every pound you want to lose, and then some.
The problem was that I lost all those pounds, but I didn’t have to change a thing about my self. I didn’t have to address any of the emotional or psychological issues. I didn’t have to figure out why I had been depressed – why I was still so, so depressed, despite the fact that the one thing I thought had been ruining my life was suddenly gone.
I was skinny, finally, and I was fascinated by the physicality of it. It was like my skeleton had floated up to the surface from the bottom of a murky pond. I had muscles and tendons and bones and in the shower I’d soap the ridges of my ribs, the knobs of my hipbones, and be amazed to make their acquaintance. It wasn’t pretty-I lost so much weight that I didn’t look like myself, and then I lost past that, to the point where I looked like a sick stranger. Briefly, I was a size two. Sometimes I was disappointed that I couldn’t be a size zero.
It doesn’t go away, you see. I thought that my body was wrong when I was obese; I thought my body was wrong when I was thin past the point of health. I thought there was something wrong with my body whatever I looked like, because there’s always just one more thing to fix before I look perfect, feel good in bed with hands on my body, feel sexy in a dress or a bathing suit, feel comfortable in my skin.
I felt helpless before. I tried to dodge out of the feeling by getting weight loss surgery, and now I’m angry. That I wasn’t fixed, yes. But also that so many people deal with this, this exact and pervasive struggle at whatever size they are, whatever shape, whatever they do. That we’re not good enough, with the implication that the best we have to offer to the world is an appropriately sized pair of jeans.
Magazine articles about body image talk about loving yourself despite your flaws. Sometimes they get really radical and they talk about loving yourself because of your flaws, and that is supposed to be empowering. And it makes me mad, because we’re talking about flaws here. A body that doesn’t look like the body of a Victoria’s Secret model is a flawed factory reject. My thighs aren’t the thighs of a figure skater, so they’re not good enough, but I should love the flubby little things anyway because I am so incredibly self-compassionate.
I want this: I want to say, don’t love yourself even though you’re not perfect – love yourself because you have a body and it’s worth loving and it is perfect. Be healthy, which is perfect at whatever size healthy is and at whatever size happy is. And of course that’s totally easy and I have just caused a revolution in body image. Let’s all go home now.
Right. So, I don’t know what the answer is, and I don’t know how to make it happen, and I don’t know what to do except keep yelling about it, wherever I can. Saying there’s no magic number, and there’s no perfect size – and of course you know that, but we have to keep telling each other because it’s hard to remember sometimes. We have to keep saying it. We have to figure out how to believe it.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/losing-180-pounds-really-does-body-8212-160-163900419.html
Awesome Music Video
So if you watched that video, which you totes should, you’ll have noticed it is perhaps the most awesome music video ever. Not to mention being a kick ass song. But seriously! Cage fighting muppets! Beating up teddy bears! How awesome is that?
Now, having seen that- I defy you to listen to that song on the radio after this and not imagine cage fighting muppets. Seriously, you can’t do it, I speak from experience.
Awesome Pictures
Okay, so I sort of collect pictures that I find on the internet. If I like it, if it makes me smile or laugh, then I save it. Obviously, considering how many pictures there are on the internet, I have a rapidly expanding file that is, at this moment 2,021 strong. I expect it to grow again and soon. So, needless to say, this has left me with a surplus of just awesome pictures- here are some of them. I will share later, perhaps in themes.
Dirty Food- Literally
I saw this on Yahoo and just had to repost it because.. because, well seriously? Dirt? Really? What the hell, people? I read that in a book once as a joke and you’re actually doing it? Seriously, it’s in “Hogfather” by Terry Pratchett, look it up. And here I thought it had been a fairly farfetched joke…
This Japanese Restaurant Has a Dirty Little Secret
By Elise Solé, Shine Staff | Shine Food
Tokyo has a well-deserved reputation for high-end dining but one restaurant is making headlines for a menu that’s less hoity-toity and more down and dirty.
A French establishment named Ne Quittez Pas (“Please don’t leave”) is serving a ‘dirt course’, according to Japanese Rocket News, a website that sampled the menu. For $110 you can eat the stuff you scrub off your sneakers and pry from your kid’s mouth on the playground. Ne Quittez Pas’ menu includes a potato starch and dirt soup, salad with dirt dressing, aspic made with oriental clams and a top layer of sediment, a dirt risotto with sauteed sea bass, dirt gratin, and dirt ice cream. According to the Rocket News investigation, despite appearing, well, dirty, none of the dishes actually tasted like dirt and were described as “delicious” and “divine.” They also reported that the dirt contains coffee grinds and palm fiber.
“The dirt is called Kuro Tsuchi and it’s volcanic ashes mixed with soil and plants from the Kanto District in Japan,” Saeko Torii, a rep from the dirt manufacture Protoleaf told SHINE. “It has good bacteria, healthy minerals, and is natural and pure.”
So will we start seeing dirt on U.S. menus? And is it even safe? “Dirt isn’t regulated for human consumption so it’s hard to know the effects it would have on a person,” says Rebecca Scritchfield, a Washington, D.C. based registered dietitian. “Food gets its nutrients from soil, but one does not eat the actual soil. What’s more, countries have different safety regulations—people in Scotland eat sheep brains but that’s not allowed in the U.S. Protoleaf says their soil is safe to consume but is it safe to eat by American standards? We don’t know because we don’t really know what’s in it.”
For example, does the soil contain toxins, glass, or rocks? And is it even soil at all or just a snazzy marketing tool?
“My guess is that it’s a gimmick,” says Scritchfield. “You can consume good bacteria that promotes healthy digestion and immunity by eating foods like yogurt, tempeh, olives, pickles, or sauerkraut. Likewise, you can consume minerals by eating more fruits, vegetables, beans, and dairy.”
So, if you have an adventurous palate and a plane ticket to Tokyo, would you be insane to sample the dirt menu at Ne Quittez Pas? “If it’s real dirt, I’m not going to recommend it any time soon,” says Scritchfield.
PROTOLEAF: Salad with dirt dressing
PROTOLEAF: Dirt risotto with sauteed sea bass
PROTOLEAF: Dirt ice cream
PROTOLEAF: Dirt gratin
PROTOLEAF: Aspic made with oriental clams and a top layer of sediment
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/this-japanese-restaurant-has-a-dirty-little-secret–164612162.html
OMG!
Okay, so I was at Wal-Mart the other day, when I spotted this:
It’s a Batman- pig. It’s a Batpig. Obviously, I had to get it. It was practically a moral obligation
Soo… Now it has a new home 🙂
It’s the simple things in life, really.
literaryninja 