Worst damned funeral I've ever been to

The house was filled with visitors for days and days, but they've all finally cleared the fuck out so I can get back to my 'net surfing and TV watching.

Tuesday's Lost was made just for me. I've had enough booze that I'm feeling too lazy to pick apart the episode, but I enjoyed the same things I always enjoy. Whether he's Locke or the smoke monster, whoever the fuck he is I sure do like him. Just like I sure do like Ben, and he gave the best damned eulogy Locke could have asked for. Then Locke and Ben meeting in the LA timeline had me squeeing a little bit; that scene in the teachers' lounge was terrific.

I don't know what the fuck's going on with the cave and the names of candidates, and whether or not "Locke" and Sawyer will get off the island and what that might mean for this guy who's been there for so long, but I find this show a lot more entertaining if I maintain a "going along for the ride" attitude. Can't be overly concerned with making sense of it. There's lots of talk about the idea that Sawyer's setting up smokemonster-Locke for his biggest con ever, which'd be pretty cool.

On another front, I stumbled across the blog Eureka Unscripted, about the show Eureka by some of the people who make it. Very cool stuff there, not least of which is this two part interview with adviser Kevin Grazier, who I've mentioned on this blog before as both a super genius scientist guy, as well as someone I've seen several times at DragonCon and have a crush on - Part I and Part II. Super awesome cool news - Eureka is slated for twenty-two episodes in its upcoming fourth season, up from eighteen last season.

Live Nude Girls...

...reading science fiction. Aww, yeah. If you're in New York, go to this and tell me about it.

Chapter Six: Haven't We Been Here Before?

The latest season of Heroes is finished and I'm disappointed but not surprised. Samuel's little saga did indeed turn out to be impressively boring. He wasn't alone, though. For some reason, Parkman's family life makes me want to claw out my eyes, and the whole Nathan-Sylar mindfuck went on for far too long. Even Claire's big reveal at the end had me thinking, "Enh, so what?" I don't care about any of these people anymore, and all their drama and intrigue is tiresome.

Worst of all, though - more disappointing than any three other boring storylines - was Sylar's conversion. Is he actually nice now? I hope not, because he was damned uninteresting to watch for the last few episodes of the season. He and Peter had an energetic chemistry that I liked, but I thought it was stifled by the action being so weak. What a fucking shame.

Thankfully, the season finale wasn't a complete downer. I liked the resolution of Charlie's situation and appreciated that even if Hiro didn't "save" her, she still had a good life. That suited the character better than dragging her around through time again would have. Speaking of Hiro, I'll also mention that, while the Hiro-on-trial gimmick that went on in his head during surgery was only mildly engaging, it sure was nice to see David Anders again.

Well, Heroes isn't the only show I've left then returned to. Yes, I have made much fun of Lost and mocked the people who watch it, but I'm back on that pony and enjoying the show almost as much as I enjoy the mockery. I won't claim to know what's going on, or even to have a sure idea of what timeline we're seeing sometimes, but I am entertained and that goes a long way with me.

It's primarily John Locke's story that's kept me coming back for more (I'll admit, it helps that I have the hots for Terry O'Quinn, the actor who plays Locke). He's a great character and I feel like I'm just starting to really recognize him for the pathetic tool that he is. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Who knows why (and we probably won't find out), but for some reason the island chose Locke, before he was born if we're to believe what we've been shown. His destiny was on the island and once there, he flourished. And now it looks like he was being used the whole time, still not understanding even as he died. What a sorry fuckin' tale.

Which, of course, brings me to Ben. Talk about being used, and for him it just goes on and on. He won me over when we first met him as Henry Gale, and as his nature was revealed, I liked more and more how manipulative and conniving he was. In any other character, a lot of his tendencies would bug the fuck out of me. But in Ben, I love spiteful and petty, and when he starts pulling the martyr act he's just fucking great. And, I so enjoyed seeing him learn how much of who he is and what he believes are products of Jacob's machinations.

Lo, some crazy shit doth happen 'pon that whack-ass island.

Here's something that's cool - popularmechanics.com has a series of articles on the science of Lost that are interesting. Start with their look at the season six premiere, "LA X", then check out the links at the end of the story for more Lost science.

After bitching about there not being anything good on TV a couple weeks ago, it's nice to have something to look forward to watching, even if (especially if?) it also frustrates and confuses me.

Groovy fandom, geeky tunes, and a good way to waste some time

I actually intend to do more than a once-a-week dump of links, but that's just not how things are shaping up these days. Well, there's some interesting shit here, so I hope you enjoy it!

Check out the very cool FANAC Fan History Project, chronicling scifi fandom in its many wacky forms, with stories & photos going back to the early 1950s. Fandom really is amazing.

In the spirit of my last post, here's another cool example of musical geekery, the Geekiest Songs in the Universe.

For those into time-wasting social media trends, I hang out on Twitter. My twittilations (I just wanted an excuse to use that word) can be found at http://twitter.com/RockyMtnErica. Groovy people to follow: @dragoncontv, because they post funny things; @popmech, for interesting science & tech articles; @sjgames, that's Steve Jackson Games and if you've never played a Steve Jackson game, your geek cred is in jeopardy; and @dhewlett, because I really like David Hewlett. There are other good finds on Twitter, but this short list is a dandy place to start.

A musical interlude, the search for strange objects, and still looking for signs of intelligent life in the universe

My slackerly ways have gotten the best of me this past week, but I did run across a few things that I thought were interesting. Probably the coolest is a 2008 series of entries from the blog Cruise Elroy, about the music in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Even though I'm not much of a music enthusiast and I know nothing about its technical aspects, I am a big fan of several of the Zelda games, and I often sleep to the soundtrack from Ocarina. Well, I was blown away by the depth of analysis and appreciation in these posts, even while most of it went over my head. Each post taps into a level of geekery that tweaks a special part of me deep inside. *ahem* Yes, well, I recommend checking out Cruise Elroy in general for nerdly interests both musical and game-ish in flavour.

Also cool: Saul Rubinek posted to Twitter today with, "http://twitpic.com/10jq4d - can't wait to start using my Artie stuff again March 1." Yay! I assume he's referring to the start of production on Warehouse 13's second season, which is scheduled to air this summer. While it's not the best TV to be had, it is entertaining and has some decent potential. Plus, I like Saul Rubinek so much that I'm pretty sure I'd watch him in damned near anything.

If you've been wondering what's up on the search-for-aliens front, wonder no more.

And that's a few things!

Extra geek on the side

Since my return, I've made a few changes to the "Geeky places to go" list over there on the right. Today I'm adding Dot Physics, the blog of Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, Rhett Allain. His blog caught my attention with his recent post, Flying R2-D2, you are doing it wrong, but I definitely recommend browsing past entries as well. He writes interesting things.

I also ditched a couple things that I'm tired of, and added TED to the list. Remember TED? We talked about TED the other day. If you still haven't checked out TED, well, that's just a damn shame because you're missing out.

Finally, I added Penny Arcade, which oversight it's about damn time I corrected.

H.G. Wells: Bitter old hack

I consider Fritz Lang's Metropolis to be one of the most amazing and influential films in the history of cinema, scifi in particular. Mr. Wells, however, thought it was "silly." What a jerk. His petty and dismissive review, originally printed in the New York Times in April 1927, is available for your perusal.

What I'm not watching on TV

The subject line says it all, but before I dive in, I want to give a little warning: this post is about the shows I tried and passed on, so it's not very complimentary. I'll rave when I write about Dollhouse or Star Trek, but for now it's all about the bitching.

Sanctuary was entertaining for awhile, but it lost me shortly into the second season. I certainly wasn't a cheerleader for Ashley, but I kind of missed her - they got rid of one irritating chick only to replace her with a far more irritating chick. The stories got dull, my favourite character (John Druitt, played by Christopher Heyerdahl) went away, and I just don't like any of the other characters enough to care about what they're up to. Finally, a good bit of my TV viewing is for the hot people, so between Druitt's absence and Henry (Ryan Robbins' character) getting less hot every time he did something stupid, the thrill was gone.

I also gave FlashForward a try and ended up saying no thanks around episode nine. The various ideas it presented made for some fertile ground for speculating, but the execution got too hard to watch. More soap opera than I could stand anymore. That was especially unfortunate, as I like John Cho quite a bit, and Sonya Walger (who also plays Penny on Lost) is more than enough of a hottie to overlook a lot of other flaws in the show.

V is another show I couldn't give more than a taste before I was compelled to take a pass. Aside from just not grabbing me, it starred Morena Baccarin, who's pretty painful to watch. I've yet to see her in anything where she's able to display any kind of dimensionality or nuance, and her role as Anna in V was no exception. Another unfortunate loss, since I enjoy Elizabeth Mitchell (Erica on V, Juliet on Lost) a lot.

I almost skipped mentioning this altogether, but I've raved about Stargate on this blog so much that I pretty much feel obligated. As big a fan as I am of SG-1 & Atlantis, Brad Wright & Robert Cooper (the creators) have convinced me to give Stargate Universe a pass altogether. Their attitudes about the earlier shows and the fans of those shows has just been too shitty and insulting. I'm not in their desired demographic, and that's all right by me.

So, is there anything on TV worth watching? Well, I'm not exactly thrilled with Heroes, but I am entertained by it and I could probably never get tired of Sylar. I've been enjoying Dollhouse quite a bit, so of course it's been canceled. Shit. I guess this is what folks mean when they refer to TV as a wasteland.

Brains: not just for breakfast anymore

Enjoy some cool pictures of brains by photographer Peter Ross.

Taking a dump

Haha, I bet you thought I meant poop! Since I was away for so long, I'm dropping on you a link dump - a collection of some of the interesting things I've found or been pointed to in the past while.

The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images from the Popular Science website. As you would expect, holy-shit-amazing pictures.

Super cool photos of the LHC No, I'm probably never going to get tired of talking about that thing (and some of the comments on that page are hilarious).

50 Years of Space Exploration This is super fucking amazing. If you check out no other links on this list, look at this. LOOK AT IT!

Planets and Stars to Scale If you were wondering just how small you are, this will help you understand that you are really, really tiny.

Free Science Lectures In addition to the above video, this site has all sorts of cool science shit.

Questions for the Author of The Physics of Superheroes I talked about this book awhile ago (here), enjoyed it and was quite pleased to stumble across this interview.

Top 10 Worst Portrayals of Technology in Film A list you'll appreciate eye-rolling along with.

The Bohr-Einstein Debates, with Puppets Puppets! And physics!

100 Games Cupcakes As an appreciator of both games and cupcakes, I think this is just spectacular. My list of words for #39: ado and coat cod coda con coy dan don nod oat tad tan wad wan wand yon

Os Gameboys Legend of Zelda medley This actually and truly made me a little misty-eyed.

I'll end this dump with some wonderful silliness - Star Trek meets the A-Team

Enjoy!