Saturday, January 17, 2009

Poem for Saturday

At Briggflatts Burial Ground
By Jonathan Williams


Dear Basil,
Eighteen months after you left us,
poetry (that abused & discredited substance;
that refuge of untalented snobs, yobs, and bores)
sinks nearer the bottom of the whirling world.

For the rest, you there in the earth
hear the crunch of small bones
as owl and mouse, priest and weasel,
stone and cardoon, oceans and gentlemen
get on with it...

--------

A ridiculous amount of my day was devoted to Battlestar Galactica, but this is the first and last time that is going to happen, so you don't have to take me off your reading list. I had plans to meet Gblvr early at an Indian restaurant, but my stomach was a bit off, so I begged for a change of venue and we ended up deciding to go to the mall so she could get sushi and I could get comfort food. We also did a bit of schmoozing, found clothes on a huge sale at Torrid (I got a $44 shirt for $7, go me). Then I learned that Gblvr wanted L'Occitane en Provence's Amber perfume, of which I had an extra bottle left over from trip provisions last summer, so I invited her back to my house for eau de toilette and BSG marathon. She knitted, I wrote a review of "Data's Day" -- which I must confess I like better than any BSG I have seen -- and we compared notes on who we thought would be the last unrevealed Cylon.


One of the otters at the National Zoo last November.


There are two North American river otters in Beaver Valley, not to be confused with the smaller Asian otters on the Asia Trail.


They seem particularly fond of showing off their back-flipping skills.


And they are very cute and playful in the water and out...


...mostly in. They get out, run around for a few minutes, then go back to resume diving.


A favorite activity seems to be rolling over and pushing off the plexiglass wall through which they can be seen from the lower trail.


The Friday Five: Aromas
1. What are your favorite smells/scents?
Vanilla, cloves, cinnamon, pumpkin, patchouli, orange, lime, coconut, sandalwood, peach, sea water
2. Do they bring back memories for you? If so, what? All of them bring back different memories -- sea water and coconut make me think of the Atlantic coast, peach makes me think of the perfume I wore when I was pregnant with my older son, etc.
3. What are your least favorite smells/scents? Strong floral perfumes, portable toilets.
4. Do they bring back memories for you? If so, what? The former: migraines. The latter: Renfaires, concerts, lots of things I enjoy but wish had better sanitation.
5. What are your favorite perfumes/colognes? L'Occitane en Provence's Neroli, Crazylibellule and the Poppies' Blue Orchid, BPAL's Calliope, Bath & Body Works' Vanilla Noir, plus essential oils -- vanilla, almond, coconut, peach, patchouli, frankincense, sweetgrass, sandalwood, amber, myrrh.

Fannish5: Name 5 things from science fiction's vision of the future that you wish you had now.
All from Star Trek:
1. A replicator.
2. A transporter.
3. A communicator.
4. A tricorder.
5. Warp drive.


We had dinner with my parents, then returned home for more Battlestar Galactica -- I was determined to record "The Hub" this time, having hunted for the episode title in the morning by asking which one had the "I love you" scene in it. That moment gives me warm fuzzies, but the show is just as craptastic as my initial sense...it holds my interest, sure, but it continues to mystify me why people love it and how anyone thinks it is better than Star Trek is beyond my comprehension, unless you mean these actors are much better than Voyager's. Adam calls it "Battlestar Is Craptica" for a reason.

Great big spoilers: I'm sure there are plenty of people who will buy whatever alternate reality/shifting timeline/black hole/it was all a dream explanation MooreRon comes up with for Ancient Scorched Earth, but I can tell you right now that it ain't working for me. Ellen lived on Earth back when people lived in Earth and knew she was a cylon? Unless that's all a ruse, which I could certainly believe, and Ellen was just a nutty chick who believed in reincarnation and Dee is going to download somewhere and come back because otherwise WTF -- it's another installment of Women Fall Apart, Again! See Dee blow her brains out! See Roslin burn books and curl up on her floor! When Kara is the one reacting with the most admirable calm to finding out something that's so preposterous it...well, let's just stop there. The men on this show do lots of drinking and crying and falling apart, but for the most part, they then pull their shit together and do what needs to be done. The women, not so much, and this isn't a new problem.

I'd like to believe Cidercupcakes' long-ago offered explanation that Ellen was the first Six, who aged just as Tigh did, meaning she's not the last cylon (the Final Five apparently being the Final Five survivors of Earth, not the Final Five cylons), which would mean Starbuck or Dee could still be one, but Cidercupcakes has always been more creative than MooreRon so I'm not counting on anything that clever. The whole "We died in a Holocaust. So why are we alive?" thing isn't really working for me at all, either. Sure, it's fun to see the Chief's romance with his stain on the wall, and Anders playing air guitar, and at least we get some reason for "All Along the Watchtower" having being played across the galaxy, but as for the rest...

They all should be cylons since they can reproduce together, and I said years ago I thought that was how it would end, with them discovering they actually killed off the "real" humans long ago. But then how come they can differentiate so far as corpses are concerned? How come Leoben of all people is freaked out at the discovery that Kara may be a Cylon or an AU twin? I have no faith that any of this will be answered to my satisfaction in the remaining less-than-half-a-season. And I am relieved I followed my gut instinct where MooreRon is concerned and didn't let myself become overly attached to any of the female characters I really like, because I am quite sure every one of them is going to end up dead or worse than dead.

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