Little Reviews: Poem for Saturday

All The Immortals Ever Think About Is Sex
By Brooks Haxton

Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
—Catullus

I'm picturing a whitewashed house, the bedroom
overlooking an olive grove by the sea.
There's wine; there's poetry; there's you, me, eros:
so: what if all this were to end at midnight?
Night, Catullus said, is sleep perpetual.
His fear of death, he thought, would put his mistress
in the mood. But soon she left him, and he died.
When I was small, I dreaded ignorance. Now,
though, all I ask is to be made forgetful
in your arms. When Heraclitus said gods know
all things are good and just, he might have meant by
"gods" eternal knowers of things truly known:
the Good, the Just, the soul's delight enacted
by the flesh. Those waking need not act and speak
as if they were asleep, he said. Though sleepy,
you and I need not be sunk in isolate
stupefaction, but may touch, while in the bay
a little square sail stiffens, and we watch, oars,
though massive to arms of oarsmen, tiny
from our bed. And look! That tiny man on deck,
who paces and shouts orders to the crew, from here
cannot be heard under the soft crush of the waves
borne up invisibly between the sash and sill.

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I got up stupidly early because I wanted to get enough coins to buy a Superpoke Pets television before they sold out, an activity that Adam had strongly encouraged the night before. I thought that after that, I was going to have a quiet day getting things done at home, but Gblvr offered to come over and bring bagels, which was a much more appealing option! So my laundry is not put away, but I had a lovely afternoon involving lox spread and Doctor Who -- because she hadn't watched the Sontaran episodes, and I hadn't watched "Midnight" since discovering Colin Morgan on Merlin.

While Gblvr was here, I worked on a review of "Night Terrors", which was difficult because it's really not a great episode. Imagine my surprise to find that tonight's Terminator had a very similar theme -- insomnia and dreams that may not be. I tend to like stories focused heavily on Sarah rather than John, so while it wasn't my very favorite episode, it was one of the better ones.

We put on a Xena episode rather than subject ourselves to Dollhouse again -- Paul was out for part of it anyway picking up Daniel after robotics -- though I saw the first five minutes and part of the last five minutes, and actually chose to watch Sci-Fi's long cluster of pre-BSG commercials rather than more Joss Whedon Exploits Hot Girls! BS-Gee wasn't bad this week, great performances all around, my favorite Starbuck episode in ages and ages, and I am laughing my ass off that a prediction I posted here after the freakin' miniseries was apparently correct. To think I didn't need to watch the show to figure out its secrets! Small spoiler: Does anyone else find it weird and vaguely repulsive that the decomposition of the body of Roslin is being paralleled with the decomposition of the body of Galactica? Oh wait -- they're all machines!

The Friday Five: Chocolate
1. What tastes best covered in chocolate? Maraschino cherries, coconut, marzipan, almonds, peanuts...pretty much everything.
2. Why do you eat chocolate the way you do (or don't)? Because it is the nectar of the gods.
3. Do you know how chocolate is made? Yes -- I've been on both the Hershey and Wolf Candy factory tours.
4. If you knew you would live 5 years longer if you never ate any chocolate again, would you give it up? That's one of those silly hypotheticals; if I knew I had diabetes, I'd eat sweetened chocolate in very limited amounts, but there is no "if you knew..." with absolutes.
5. Have you ever had carob? Yes. Blecccch.

Fannish5: Name 5 characters you initially found appealing, but eventually came to hate.
I don't know that I'd say I hate any of these characters, but I tend to be much more disappointed when women are written badly than men, and these are the leading contenders for massive disappointment.
1. Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager.
2. Amy Gardner, The West Wing.
3. Lana Lang, Smallville.
4. Nymphadora Tonks, Harry Potter.
5. Jane Gibbons, Sharpe.