you've just been cylon'd sci-fi rant 2

I just finished season 2 of battle star galactiga. this show rocks me in ways I've never dreamed possible. I have vary mixed feelings on the season finale though. It was good that they changed what was up before it got old, but I felt there were better ways of doing that.

I think I'm burned out on it for now, especially with the kind of weak ending to season 2. Some of the aspects of the situation they're in they handle well, especially in the first season where an episode about them getting more fuel is exciting. I mean the human population was reduced to 50,000 spread across something like 30 ships, its a hard concept to grasp, as the human race is literally on the verge of extinction. On top of that, they're constantly losing people as the Cylons keep attacking them. One of the aspects I love is the up to date population counter at the start of each episode. When 4 people die in the previous episode, and this one takes place the next day, the population is reduced by 4. But sometimes this next episode is a month after the last one so it drops by like 30.

Its kind of like LOST in that there are a lot of sub-plots bouncing around and lots of characters to focus an episode on. However, unlike LOST, they actually answer questions and instead of replacing them with several other questions, replace them with plot. Unlike Star Trek, planets that can support life are rare to say the least, so when they actually found one it was actually dealt with, explained and all subplots dealing with it played out. Granted, that added a NEW subplot, but its one that makes sense and fits the story.

Basically, they found the long lost planet where all humans originate from. No one has lived here for over 2000 years, and finding it is like finding proof that your religion is true. They had several sub plots and issues with it, but they dealt with them and eventually used that to find out where the legendary 13th colony (earth) of Kobold was. Now they have a new objective, get to earth because they know where it is now (kinda, they know the direction and what to look for basically).

At the end of season two, it does get a little more complicated as they deal more with the politics of the surviving fleet, and less on other questions that I would of liked to see answered. For example, they never explained how hey had enough food for everyone, even after explaining how much food they would need per month (lots).

Hopefully they'll pick things up a bit in season 3 (which I'm going to try to severely limit the number of episodes I watch, as I don't think season 4 will come out until 08) and get things back to a state of equilibrium

qucik update

So I've been watching Battlestar Galactica a lot recently to see what all the fuss was about.

apparently the fuss was the best show since Firefly.


Theres been two bomb threats at my school since the VT shooting. One was during the night which prevented the campus from opening until 6am about a week or so ago. The second was today and specified for Flowers Hall, where I was headed to class. I was running a bit late because I had to use the restroom, and when I got there I saw some security outside the door who stopped me from going in.

Its weird, I don't think Garland High ever had a bomb threat, and neither did Collin county community college for the year I went there. Tx state never had one either until the VT shooting...at least I never heard about one. I don't know if they have and just ignored them or if no one has actually made one until the shooting. Its just sad because I know they won't find anything, and that this was either a prank or someone just didn't want to turn in a paper today. I hope the find the guy is all really.

Some insomnia

Its 4:20 am when I sit down to write this. The reason i'm writing so late is that i'm just now getting back from a party at sean McCoy's place. And by getting back, i mean going to nick's place right next door. It was a pretty fun party, good music and some all around merryment. I discovered the joy that is Kahlua, its like liquid candy.

The main entertainment of the night was aparently Nick's ability to get really drunk really quickly. It was kind of sad after a while to watch my best friend offer to fight everyone and constantly have to repeat everything to him.

But then again we where with a bunch of college girls who's sole mission tonight was to get drunk and have everyone around them be just as drunk as they were.

I've always had a little problem with that mentallity, as to me if you're going to enjoy some liqure, it should be for the apprichiation of the beverage itsself. However, people will suck down a bottle of anything if you tell them it'll get them wasted. I've gotten more and more used to it, to the point where I don't really look down on it anymore, but it still just seems like a weird ritual for people to partake in.

I also find myself sometimes envious of the ability to just knock back a few shots of whatever is put infront of a person without any thought as to what it even is. While drinking my drinks tonight, I knew that I needed to moderate it and take it slowly because otherwise I might get just as drunk as nick was. However, thats just the problem though, I've never been drunk and as far as everyone in america is concerned, i've never actually lived.

And the thing is, i hate to say it, but for the most part I can't stand the taste of most drinks with alchohol in them. But I already don't like rootbeer and simply detest the taste of mint, both of which people can hardly belive when I tell them. I despretly do not want to be the guy who hates mint, rootbeer AND liqure and is constnaly refusing drinks offered to him because he's just a picky drinker. Theres also the possability of being the constant designated driver, thus having to deal with the drunk asses of all my friends and the responcability of making sure they find their way to a bed that night.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts on the subject of drinking that came to me when I listed to nick puke in the bathroom just a few minutes ago. We have to be up and at a place by 10 am to talk to the director of Snakes on a Plane. This is going to be a looooong saturday.

wait! ooh good news though, we rented season 1 disk 1 of the new Battlestar Galactiga, so heres hoping for some good entertainment tomarrow

Sci-fi rant part 1: star trek

Sci-fi has always been a prefered genera for me, Star Trek and Star Wars where always personal favorites of mine. I loved sitting down with my dad every week and watching the latest episode of Star Trek: Voyager and was stoked when I got my Star Wars VHS box set.

Theres this weird phenomanon in the genera of Sci-fi which I don't see in other types of television, and thats the reserection of a series. There are three distinct staples of Sci-fi that have all come back from the dead so to speak.

1) Star Trek. The origonal star trek only had like 3 seasons in it. The movie didn't come out until 10 years later. Officially, it should of been a flop, however almost 20 years after the origonal show, it gets completely re-invented with a new cast and new concepts. It completely redefined the sci-fi genera, for the second time in a row really.

Star Trek the origonal series was great in its own right for changing what people think about when they think Sci-fi. Up until this point most of Science fiction had been what you think of when you think of classic pulp sci-fi



the space cowboy with his trusty ray gun going around in his rocket ship. Vary Flash Gordon.

Then Star trek, 20 years later gets a spin of, but heres the kicker, its not really a spin off, as there are few elements from the origonal show still present in The Next Generation. I mean obviously there are the same races and concepts of phasers, warp travel and so on and so on but the look and feel of everything else has completely changed. Honestly its Star Trek The Next Generation which has all the spin offs (deep space nine, voyager and arguably Enterprise)

Its sad to see where the franchise is heading, because each new show has been progressivly worse, starting with DS9. Deep Space 9 was wrong from the git-go as it took place in a space station that didn't go anywhere. If a show is about exploration, why the hell are you sitting in the same place? They even had a freakin' worm hole that took them to a never before explored part of space, but didn't do that much with it. It also had magic.

Voyager had possibly the coolest concepts since the conception of Star Trek itself. Take an ordinary ship, stand it on the other side of the galaxy to a place where NOONE from earth has EVER been to before. Introduce a typical Star Trek crew, and then kill half of them off in the first episode. Lets replace them with a band of mercs who this crew was in persuit of to start with. The chief of medicine is a computer program, the 1st officer is the leader of the rebels, hey, lets throw in some weird aliens you've never seen before. Then they take a Borg drone, possibly the scariest thing they could take, liberate it and make it a crew memeber. Holy crap thats just damn good television.

What Voyager did wrong though, was just be lazy in their writing. Lots of the episodes all deal with the same thing and fallow a vary similar structure and sometimes just strait up contradict themselves. A prime example would be when they experiment with going faster then warp 10.

For those who are not familure with the concepts, Warp is the speed of light, warp 2 is 2x the speed of light, all the way to warp 10 and anything beyond that point is considerd "trans warp." OOOOoooOOOooo fun.

so they take a small shuttle craft, make it trans warp capable and test it. It works pretty well, but with one tiny problem. The pilot evolves millions of years over the course of 48 hours, kidnapps the captin and evolves her as well, has babies with her, they find them and the doctor reverses the process. The highly evolved (btw, we turn into slugs in 1000000000000 years) children in a hole on a planet and never talk about it again.

Enterprise was the next installment in the Star Trek series, which actually took place before the origonal show in terms of continuity. This was just too stupid to comprihend in my book, and the whenever I even tried to watch the show I would fall asleep. I was also supposed to belive that this set, full of flat pannel screens and tech that we have today which is more advanced then some of the stuff that was on the origonal show was somehow set 150 years in the future.

None the less, sci-fi has still shown considerable influence from Star Trek in any of its conceptions. Take Firefly for example, a great show on its own right (even if it did die too soon) and there are definetly influences from Star Trek in it. The casting is similar to that of a Trek show, fom the basics of a Captin, first officer and specific specialists, to even the moral/guidence officer and the true alien trying to discover what it is to be human.

I think that if Star Trek where to continue and a new series where to come about, I would love to see it move away from The Federation (the big allience of planets that all ships on Star Trek come from) and move on to an approach like Firefly. A ship that is not controlled by The Federation but and but still subject to their laws and regulations, making a living for themselves out in the edge of the universe. Bring it back to its origins in the since of true explorers dealing with problems out in space, but move it forward still by doing something completely different.

the VT shooting

One of the main reasons I created this blog was to help form opinions over things, and to give me something to write about on a daily basis. After asking April if she knew anything else about the shooting that went down in Virginia Tech, she asked me how I felt about it, and I found myself somewhat unable to form any real opinion.

later in the day I came up with this:

its hard to say what should and should not of been done. Apparently closing the school was the correct choice this time, and its sad that didn't happen, however would the shooter just have left with the other students leaving, only to come back when classes start again and do what he did in the class room?

I think its still too early to say what should or should not have happened because not all the facts are really present yet. I mean something that comes to mind for me is not the question of why the school was not closed down after the first shooting, but why was there not enough security patrolling the campus after the first shooting to prevent the second?

It seems to me that if someone where shot on campus, they should call in everyone they can to patrol and at least look for anything suspicious. However, for all I know they did that and the shooter still got past them.

I was talking it over with my girlfriend earlier today, and she asked me if I thought that society was in a decline as violent crimes like this become more and more of a problem. All I could really do was deny that crime like this really was on the rise and question her sources for her accusation, because honestly I don't know, I haven't seen any numbers or data on it so I just don't know if that IS true. But then again I also think of other tragedies that my generation is going to be remembered with and i'm looking for SOMETHING in our recent history to be proud of to counter balance it, and drawing a blank. I don't know, maybe i'm just rambling at this point, but I needed to get that off my chest. I apologize if i'm getting off track or anything, I'm mainly just wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

I had posted that on a forum for one of my favorite web comics, "Least I could do" under the thread they had created. For the moment I feel most of it is still true for how I feel, maybe with the exception of how there is nothing truly great in America's recent history that could really counterbalance the tragedies that have recently befallen our country. I mean, we have done some pretty amazing things, and every day are getting closer to curing some of the worlds most problematic diseases. I think that in my lifetime we could see a relatively good treatment for most Cancer and even AIDS on the market, and if we actually take the lessons learned from the war in Iraq to heart, possibly a decline in war....possibly.

Something I don't really mention is the issue of gun-control that is a mandatory discussion topic after a shooting of this nature. A somewhat popular opinion that I've seen circulating is that VT was a gun-free zone, thus had it not been that way, some of the students might of had guns on them and been able to fight back once the Norris hall shootings started. While that is true, I still don't think that "because someone might go nuts, everyone should be armed to the teeth so they can possibly stop it" is the solution to our problems.

The reason I say this is just that I think a lot more encounters would escalate a lot quicker if people carried guns on them on a regular basis. The thing about killing someone with a gun is that it kind of makes it less personal and a little easier to do, which is why our gun violence is a lot higher then people being stabbed to death or through other means. Also think of the accidental shootings that take place, you can't accidentally stab someone, you could accidentally mace/tazer someone I suppose, but those are at least non-lethal. I think that's a much better compromise, then to just give people lethal weapons and expect people to handle them with the caution and respect they require.

edit: I guess another thing thats on my mind, is that I want to be afraid. I mean, really Texas State and Virgina Tech are simmilar in general population and status. I don't think either are really BIG schools or anything and the class sizes are about the same. The thing is though, theres no point in being scared about it because that won't get me anywhere, it'd be like being afraid of driving because theres always that risk of getting in a crash. Theres nothing you can really do about it but just keep on going and living the way you always have. I'm sure this feeling will go away with some time but its still a little unsetteling for the moment.

This kind of reminds me of a film we recently watched in my Culture through Film class, entitled "The Gods must be Crazy" which has the general message of : the more convenient we make our lives, the more complex they inevitably become.

collections

I collect movie ticket stubs and have since I saw Bruce allmighty on June 22, 2003. I don't know why I started with that movie, because it wasn't particularly good, but I did like it none the less. I've got about 66 stubs in here so thats about 60ish moivies i've seen since then because some of these I saw twice (clearks II i saw 3 times) and I think one of these belongs to my dad who gave me his so i'd have a spare.

I used to keep them in my wallet, but once it got to be a just plain silly amount I moved them into a series of tins, mainly a 3 stooges tin I bought at a mall once, and recently april gave me an empty altoids tin, which i personally like a bit more because its got hinges on it and is a better fit for tickit stubs. Its got a old style pin-up girl on the cover and a dent in it, which makes it look a lot older then it really is. Hopefully this will keep them intact longer, some of these are getting hard to read, I can barly read my "I heart huckabee's" stub

I think its a cool collection to have, as movies are a huge part of my life and its cool to have a bit of cinima history.

lets see how this goes

Ok, so i'm wanting to get the comic back up and going and i'll see how this goes for starters. Hopefully this will let me do what I want for now. Eventually i'll want to get my real website back and actually keep it updated with news, reviews, a regular web-comic and other tidbits that I find interesting.