vaznetti

So I had this idea that now that I am back to working part time, I would be able to get back online more. I would update here! Maybe I would do some memes! Maybe I would even write something! What I forgot was that the nature of part-time academic work is that you are in fact doing almost all the work in only half the time (because of childcare) for roughly a quarter of the pay. So what has actually happened is that since starting work, I haven't updated at all. I often don't check my personal email now for whole days. I owe people mail like you wouldn't believe.

Of course as I type this, (while Spartacus naps) I really should be writing a lecture instead.

Needless to say, I will not be doing yuletide this year. Although that may be for the best, because I keep hearing rumors about how Yuletide has been taken over by the crazy this year. That seems so bizarre to me -- I mean, yes, of course it drives everybody crazy, but not usually in the anonymous flaming and trolling kind of way.

In other news, I will probably watch Spooks, although this week I had to dodge in and out of the room ( spoilers )

At this point, I am kind of hoping I remember how to code for LJ, to avoid spoiling everyone in the world.

In other TV news, regarding Strictly, my hatred for Craig Kelly cannot be textually rendered. And although I have no idea who is voting for Anton and Laila, I'm glad that they are.

Anyway, Spartacus will be waking up any minute now, so I think I will go ahead and hit post!

It is quite nice to be watching a fannish TV show in real time again, since the closest I've come to that for the past year has probably been Primeval, and I only know a couple people who watch that. Whereas lots of people watch Torchwood! And I can read their posts! Yay! (My other appointment TV shows are things like Timmy Time and In the Night Garden. OMG, you guys, CBeebies is TOTAL CRACK! I think I enjoy these much more than Spartacus does.)

And not only that, but this Torchwood miniseries is really good. I haven't seen much of the show itself, because I didn't like the first few episodes, but I am definitely enjoying this season. ( cut for spoilers and general impressions )

Actually, my icon reminds me that Being Human was also watched by other people -- and it has been funny watching Merlin eat through fandom. But watching TV in more-or-less real time with other people is still one of the things I like best about fandom, and a lot of my disengagement and frustration over the past year have come from not being able to participate in that -- and only being able to read meta, not fic (because of spoilers), is a pretty horrible way to experience fandom. Not that I'll be requesting Timmy Time fic at Yuletide or anything, because I know where that would lead...

This is the one about the vampire, the werewolf, and the ghost all walking into a bar sharing a house, and their wacky hijinks, complete with obligatory peasants with pitchforks (sort of). It was awesome, and has been renewed, and you should all watch it. My love for George cannot be textually rendered. Seriously. Also my love for Annie. I'm a little cooler toward Mitchell, because I feel that the vampire with a crisis of conscience is something I've seen before once or twice, and his relationship with Herrick was very Forever Knight -- except here Herrick is the cop, which I guess was a nice twist. So yes, although Mitchell and his issues drove the series plot, he didn't really interest me that much.

( a little more, with spoilers for episodes five and six in particular, under the cut )

I am so looking forward to series two.

In other news, I let Spartacus play with the keyboard this morning, since he often grabs for it. He promptly his some combination of keys which crashed the computer. ::rolls eyes::

I gather from reading a few non-spoilery posts and guessing at cut tags that the Batman movie is pretty good, and I'm pleased because I've been looking forward to it. But last night we watched I Am Legend and I found it horrifically scary and traumatic and in fact only half-watched the last half of it, and was still awake all night. So, friends list, give me some advice -- will Batman be too much for me in my current over-sensitive state, or was I Am Legend in fact really really frightening and depressing?

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Meanwhile, we are watching an unbelievably silly show on the BBC -- it's called Bonekickers and it seems to be some kind of cross between Indiana Jones and that Dan Brown book everyone but me has read. Except sillier -- and I can't tell whether the stupid title is a sign that they know how implausible and idiotic the show is. This is a show that makes Primeval (key phrase: "These anomalies are proof that the past exists!") look intellectual. And yet it isn't quite stupid enough to tip over into the hilariously funny. Sad, really.

At least they haven't tried to carbon-date a piece of rock yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time.

( spoilers of the most serious kind )

Don't click the link until you've seen the episode. Please.

Watching this week's episode of Bones, I suddenly thought... hey, this is what all those shippers feel! It was a very odd moment for me. I don't usually ship the ship, so to speak.

As for ( NCIS (spoilers) )

I should probably think of getting icons for these shows, especially Bones, because it is so bright and pretty.

I saw this meme on upsy_daisy's LJ -- it's the "What shows are you watching?" meme. You know, as in Your Friends are Not Watching the Same Show You Are.

( I am not watching as much TV these days as I sometimes do )

I'm sure there are others -- name a show you know Ive seen and I'll tell you what I watched!

I had managed to resign myself to not seeing this week's SCC until next Sunday (and oh how tempting it is to click on all those links!) -- but I forgot entirely that I'd be missing a new episode of Jericho, as well. Hm. I may need to take action, although I may wait until I get home and see if I can watch it on the CTV website.

I did see the last episode of Primeval, without having seen any of the earlier episodes -- BH was patient with my questions, although I think it helps that the show is not really all that difficult to follow. ( spoilers to follow )

We also debated the Helen Cutter vs. Irina Derevko match -- Irina is smarter, I think, but Helen's secret weapon is dinosaurs, which may trump everything else. And someone should write a Primeval/SCC crossover, since time travel (and it's inherent potential to change both past and future) is kind of a big deal in both.

* * *

We also watched Day Watch; it's kind of neat that the movies here have diverged so far from the books. I'm not sure which I prefer -- the movies can be unnecessarily boggling, at points, but there's usually a through-line for the plot hidden in there, and although the world of the novels is a little richer, there's something about the style I find really grating. I'm not sure whether the problem is in the original text or in the translation; I suspect that it's the original style, and that it sounds much less annoying in Russian than in English.

* * *

So far, I am not doing any of the work I brought with me. Maybe this afternoon?

* * *

I read Robert Harris Imperium, and liked it very much -- it's the story of Cicero's career up to his election to the consulship in 64. Harris may be something of a hack, but he's a very good writer and the book is mercifully free from major howlers. I think it helps that Harris is honestly interested in politics, and I think he does a nice job catching the balance between the failures and the successes of the Roman system. He makes it seem modern in some ways without ever losing sight of the ways in which is isn't at all. It also helps that Harris finds politicians interesting, and particularly, that he finds Ciceo worthwhile -- he works in fragments of Cicero's speeches and letters very neatly. The narrator is Tiro, Cicero's secretary (in these years still a slave); if the book has a weakness, it's that we never get much sense of who Tiro is as a person: he's totally devoted to telling Cicero's story.

It's apparently part of a proposed trilogy, which may explain the end-point (literally, at the election itself). You can see he outline of what's coming, but I did wonder how the end would read to someone who doesn't know how that story plays out: triumphant or troubling?

All that said, I really enjoyed the book, and would recommend it.

So. I redid my Yuletide sign-up. I changed my requests and my offers. I'm offering 13 fandoms, which is more than I expected to -- I cut some out this time, but added a few on the "well, that would be really cool to write" principle. I have offered to write a couple of things that will result in massive panic, but it will be panic mixed with significant amounts of joy and excitement; the fandoms I cut were fandoms I was pretty sure I could write, but was not feeling much excitement about. And I cut one of my requests and changed it to an offer, because I had far too clear an idea of what I wanted. I mean, I kept it out of the request, but still, no one wants to be that person: "and then they had a fight, and it was raining, and he bought her ice-cream!"

I feel that I offered more random stuff and more random collections of characters, this time around. I love reading the sign-up email, when it sends you character-groupings in the form of pairings which defy time and space.

By the way, there are two things I regularly do in Yuletide, and have always wondered if other people do them as well. One is to only offer one character in a fandom, if I feel very limited about what I can do. The other is not to offer what I request: even if I do offer the same fandom, I try not to offer the characters I've requested. Am I weird and anal about this?

In other fannish news, I really enjoyed last night's Heroes. I realize, though, that among the many things that keep me out-of-step with the fandom is that I find Peter Petrelli really uninteresting. ( spoilers, in a small way )

I'm also watching both Reaper and Chuck, but find them a little too similar in their premises -- the whole slacker forced to excel his expectations of himself notion leaves me kind of cold. I think I may have a similar problem with Bionic Woman, actually, despite la Sackhoff. The stilted writing and acting on the last of these doesn't help. I just can't shake the feeling that I ought to dump either Reaper or Chuck, although it's kind of a moot point, since I managed to miss Chuck for the past two weeks, anyway. But in principle, I am still watching it.

On the non-fannish but thoroughly enjoyable side, I have Cane, Dirty Sexy Money, and Women's Murder Club. Oh, and NCIS and Numb3rs. What do these shows all have in common? Protagonists who are not in their early 20s. I think I'm moving out of the right age demographic for shows like Reaper; I keep thinking, "do your homework!" at the characters. But honestly, this is far too much TV for me, and that's without SPN and Pushing Daisies and FNL.

My week in television watching, very briefly and without spoilers. In no particular order:

Reaper: Yay! That was funny! I will watch it again!

Chuck: I only caugh the last third of this, but it looked worth a second try.

Bionic Woman: D'oh. I forgot to watch this. I'll try to remember next week.

Journeyman: I watched the first five minutes or so, and caught the joke about the Niners winning, and then realized that I needed to go to sleep more than I needed to watch this show. So far nothing I've heard has made me feel that was a bad choice.

Moonlight: There are no words. This was the worst hour of television I have seen in my entire life. Honestly. I watch a lot of not-very-good TV, and enjoy it, but this was... horrible. Blech. Toward the end it veered into "mockably bad" territory, but mostly, it was just bad.

Numb3rs: Yay! My show made me happy! But did anyone else feel that the camera work was weird? Is it always like that, and did I just forget over the summer?

Cane: I talked about how this was the trashy evening soap of my dreams earlier in the week.

I also watched Heroes (yay!), Ugly Betty, Bones and House; I think I'll switch those Tuesday shows out for Reaper and NCIS, unless they conflict or something, because I found myself not really paying much attention.

I had a day of sadness and irritability, but am happy to be able to report that Cane was exactly the kind of cliched, trashy fun I hoped it would be. ( cut for not-all-that-spoilery commentary, and really, it's not like you can't predict the plot after the first five minutes or so )

I don't actually have much to say except squeeeee!, and that I found it very enjoyable, and exactly what I needed to watch this evening. I recommend it heartily to anyone who wants a trashy evening soap. Which, now that I think about it, is probably only me.

I took the career-finding quiz thing; it told me I should be a historian. ::facepalm:: The next choice was criminologist, though, which sounds pretty neat. After that? Writer. ::facepalm, again::

My TV-watching schedule is a bit up in the air -- I sometimes forget to pay attention until a week or two into the season, when the rest of you can tell me what's good. Also, sometimes the Canadian scheduling monkeys make things conflict that would not otherwise do so, or help me avoid conflicts I would otherwise have, or show things on totally different nights for reasons best known to them. But here, tentatively, are shows I will try to watch at least once next year.

( monday )

( tuesday )

( wednesday )

( thursday )

( friday )

( the weekend )

I have just filed three year's worth of student exams and papers, because students seem unwilling to come and get these things after the end of the term. And by "filed" I mean, "put up on the top shelf of my bookcases, where I can't get to them without standing on a chair." Now one part of my desk has a lot less paper on it, but the other part still has a stack of papers about a foot high to be filed and/or shredded. There are other stacks as well, but those are only a few inches high and thus don't really count.

We watched the first two episodes of season 1 of The Wire last night; it was as good as I expected it to be. I'm not sure why I keep putting this show off, considering that my two contenders for "best show ever" are Deadwood and Homicide, and The Wire is basically a David Simon show made by HBO, and the first couple episodes were directed by Clark Johnson. The only thing i didn't really care for, to be honest, was the character of McNulty: right now he seems very much the maverick detective, fighting the good fight against the forces of political bureaucracy. Or what he defines as the good fight, anyway. This is a character type I find irritating; I am hoping he will grow on me, although history suggests he may not.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the rest of the season despite that, because I have faith that the ensembleness of the show will far outweigh my irritation with any single character, no matter how important he is.

I have two caveats, before we go any further. The first is that I'm not a Who fan; I watch it when I'm in the UK, or when I notice it on Canadian television. There may be a lot of show-context I just don't see. The second thing is that I pretty much only ever talk about the First World War with historians of the period (i.e. BH and his colleagues and students), and the result is that what I think I know about WWI and what you think you know about WWI may not match up, and that I have only the vaguest idea of what is and is not common knowledge.

( war as metaphor, or analogy, or something )

Instead of keeping up with Doctor Who I watched the last episode of Life on Mars this evening. ( spoilers under the cut )

This may be a stupid question but I will throw it open to my friendslist: I still haven't uploaded Blessings to that Supernatural crossover archive because I can't decide whether it's a series or a single multi-chaptered story. I go back and forth and back and forth and I can't upload the damn thing until I decide which one. I mean, I think of it as a set of interconnected stories, but then, some of them do end on cliffhangers (like the last piece, which, sorry about that).

Someone, tell me what to do.

And you know, those are words I almost never say.

* * *

I have recently watched BSG, Heroes and The Black Donnellys.

( notes on Heroes )

This episode of The Black Donnellys was slower and more irritating than the first, but I will give it a few more tries because it's still pretty. Although I am kind of disturbed by the extent of the muscle definition apparently expected in young male actors these days. I mean, I know that's part of what they're selling, in the same way that actresses are selling unreasonably thin bodies and pert breasts but... it's just a little shocking when I see it.

Also, ( and this should be spoiler-cut )

More Kate Mulgrew would be nice, I think.

I'm not really paying attention to BSG these days; it's on in the background while I decompress from Rome, instead.

* * *

There was some other thing I was going to post about, but I can't remember what it was.

::waves hello to new people:: I have to admit that when I look at the recent entries, I have no idea why people keep friending this journal. Does everyone think that their lives are as dull as mine seems to be?

Someday there will be fic here again. In the meantime, random commentary on television or possibly ancient history seems to be the way forward.

My television-watching schedule has been thrown completely out of whack by the appearance of The Black Donnellys in mid-season. ( the thing is, I'm a complete Luddite )

By the way, I loved this week's Heroes; focusing on a single storyline (especially such a good storyline) really worked for me. ( brief and not very spoilery comment )

I also watched The Black Donnellys, as you might have guessed from the whole middle part of this post. I liked it a lot, despite wondering whether my dance card is already full of shows about brothers and their manpain. It was pretty and prettily filmed, although I had trouble telling the flirty brother and the gambling brother apart for a while. I will watch it again next week.

Thank you to the people who wrote me valentines on svmadelyn's meme -- I don't make a fuss about that kind of thing (I mean, my husband forgot the holiday and I just laughed), but it means a lot. And no, I have not made a deal with the devil, although if he looked like... oh, never mind.

* * *

( spoilers for the end of tonight's Grey's Anatomy )

* * *

( incoherent laughter and exclamations relevant to tonight's SPN )

* * *

So I have Men in Trees on in the background and ( spoilers, again )

My television loves me tonight. That's all I can say.

I've found a channel that shows early Due South -- from the Ray Vecchio years, which were the years I watched. And I've completely forgotten just how slashy that show was. Last night's episode had Fraser in drag dancing with Ray at a Catholic school dance. Usually, you have to go to fanfic for that kind of thing, but not Due South. I never got into the habit of watching it when they had Ray Kowalski, because I was in the UK during those years, but I hear that it got even slashier. How is that even possible? BH used to call Angel the gayest show that ever gayed (my husband is a secret Spike/Angel shipper), but Due South is in another class altogether.

Actually, in tonight's episode they're squabbling again. But I'm sure it won't last. And I think Fraser's still wearing eyeshadow.

* * *

There's an archive for Supernatural crossovers now, on the model of Twisting the Hellmouth. TtH is one of my guilty pleasure sites, since although the stories are not really all that good, usually, they do satisfy, in their way. The SPN site is, of course, a great deal smaller, and doesn't look like quite such a guilty pleasure: right now it's got a lot of summaries with typos and portentious questions.

I think I may feel obliged to join and put my stories up there, though. I mean, I like SPN crossovers, they like SPN crossovers, what do we have to lose? It just seems like an alien culture, after all this time on LJ, where I can tailor my experience to my elitist bitch preferences.

* * *

Not unrelated, as I was walking home tonight it occurred to me that one of the Three Portions of An is called Hel, and a story with Sam, Dean, Rood of An and a whole lot of pigs would probably be extremely funny. A caper, I think. Or possibly a brawl.