The Movie Channel Conspiracy

I think movie channels are purposefully working with my favorite SF/F things to keep me out of the loop. I don't know why. Maybe my geek status has ratcheted to such heights that they feel the need to knock me down a few. Maybe they just hate me. I don't know, but I would like it to stop.

When "A Game of Thrones" premiered on HBO, I let it slide. A Song of Ice and Fire is not my favorite fantasy series. I'm pretty sure it scarred me for life by exposing me to sexual acts I never wanted to know about. It might be a good series, but lets all be honest with ourselves. It's rated at least NC-17. (Wait, is that a rating, or the number on the Enterprise? I can never remember and I'm constantly getting them confused.) I would have liked to have given the show a try, but I understand. I have no expectations that George R.R. Martin would try to appease me, since I'm not a huge fan.

But Torchwood? Really? Come on! How can they lock me out of the Whoniverse? I need to see this. "Children of Men" left me with nightmares and questions. I can't leave it like that. I need my Captain Jack Harkness. I need to know how he can get on with his life after what he did. I need to know if Gwen and her husband are going to stick it out. I need to know how the universe can go on.

Just thinking about how I can't watch it in another two and a half hours, when it comes on, is making me sad. Why did they have to put it on Starz? I mean, I understand they can have more gratuitous sex by putting it on a movie channel, but Torchwood did fine on regular cable before, or at least BBCA. Just put it on the Syfy channel and show it late at night so kids don't stumble upon it. Pleeeease. *sad puppy dog eyes*

Please don't separate me from my Captain Jack Harkness. The real Captain Jack. The only Captain Jack. Johnny Depp doesn't hold a candle to him.

So if anyone out there knows where to go to watch Torchwood online, I would really really appreciate it. I'm counting on you geek community.

Funny Things I Enjoy

So I recently applied to an advanced writing class that only accepts 5 participants. We’re all supposed to hear back tomorrow and the waiting is a little nerve wracking, so I decided to make today a little more humorous. So voila, links to funny things I enjoy. (I would have inserted them in, but I think that’s copyright infringement. Let’s go the legal path shall we?)

Women in engineering. It's all pressure.

Dividing by zero. It's not good.

The best movie ever. Seriously. I would go see this in a heartbeat.

Some Doctor Who love from a classic Doctor.

The joys of being a TA. Times two.

TV science. It's all lies.

Stuff Christians Like & Vuvuzelas. What's not to love?

More vuvuzelas. Annoying sound? Yes. Awesome word? Yes.

LOLC + Bible = awesome or appalling?

Ok, that's enough funny happiness for now. Hopefully this will lighten everyone's day a bit. And for future reference, I usually go to Piled Higher and Deeper and Stuff Christians Like for my daily dose of happiness. I recommend them to you as well.

Do you guys have anything funny you would like to share?

Pandora's Box & Doctor Who

WARNING: This blog post contains spoilers of the latest Doctor Who episode. If you've been watching Doctor Who on BBCA - then you have not seen the latest Doctor Who episode. BBCA is a few weeks behind the UK. So you've been forewarned.

The myth of Pandora's Box has never made sense to me. Oh, I get the part where curiosity killed the cat. Pandora is told never to open the box (or rather jar), curiousity gets the better of her, and she opens the box. Classic human mistake. What I don't get is that, according to the myth, every evil thing came out of the box, but Pandora closed it just in time to capture hope inside. This has always left me with a few questions.

1. Why was hope inside the box with all these nasty things? It's not like the box was full of lots of nasty things and lots of good things. No, it was filled with lots of nasty things and hope. That doesn't make any sense.
2. So opening the box released nasty things into the world - I get that. So why close hope in? Doesn't that mean hope has not been released into the world? Doesn't that mean we don't have hope? Hope is still trapped inside of the box! That means we're all hopeless, right?
   

Apparently, I'm not the only ones with the second question - though my high school Latin teacher kind of brushed my questions aside. Research into the matter will see that translators also argue about the same question.

However, it's all been cleared up for me, by the latest episode of Doctor Who. The episode does not take us back in time to meet an actual Pandora with a jar, but centers around a box called the "Pandoricum" which the Doctor believes is a myth. According to the myth, the box contains the greatest evil in the Universe - something that destroyed every planet and race it came across and there was no way to stop it.

Then at the end of the episode it is revealed that the box is empty. All of the Doctor's great foes show up and shove him in the box. The Doctor has been their greatest evil - their greatest foe - and according to the story line of this season, an explosion caused by the TARDIS has created cracks in time and will destroy the universe. By imprisoning the Doctor, they're hoping to prevent that.

What they don't realize is that it is too late. The TARDIS is already exploding. The Doctor is their only hope to stop it, but they put him in the box.

Now, this doesn't completely line up with the myth of Pandora's box - since opening the box didn't release all those evils. However, it does give us a picture of how the evils and hope are like the same person. Hope is put in the box by all the evils of the universe who think the Doctor is the greatest evil in the Universe.

Does this answer all the questions of Pandora's box? No. Does it make complete sense with the myth? No. But I love stuff like this - because it shows that the writers are thinking - which is what makes Doctor Who such a great show. The writers are intelligent. (Wish I could say the same for some of the writers of American television. *sigh*)

It's an episode that left my thinking and left me wanting more. (Is Amy dead? Will robot Rory survive to become real Rory? Will the TARDIS blow up? Who will free the Doctor? My money is on Rory for the last question.)

And this sort of stuff is exactly why I love Doctor Who. It's really a great show. If you don't watch it - you should.

Now I just have to wait a week to see the season finale. Ahhh!