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itsallovernowJust lost my post because I thought I was being clever.
I'm enjoying the SaCOC Drabbles very much. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fbf for organizing them.
There was much aquisitiveness in my weekend. Virgin was having a $10 DVD sale, so I bought Say Anything, Much Ado about Nothing, and L.A. Story. I love this movie. It's such a love letter to the city, even if it ignores the racial tensions, the governmental corruption, the poverty and inequality and life as a facade. It's everything that's loony and loopy and joyous about this place where people turned the desert into their dreams.
I also did a little polka in Best Buy because they had the Farscape 3.3 DVD for $25. Hello instant gratification. I had actually gone there to buy us a new phone. Two many occasions of being dropped and/or thrown at various objects and people finally did our phone in. It kept giving off little death gurgly chirps and cutting out.
I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer count myself among the musical intellectuals. I like Radiohead's The Bends so much better than Amnesiac and their newest album - the title of which I consistently get wrong. I'm all for experimentation and pushing the boundaries of music, but apparently, I just like melody and car shaking, window rattling rock n' roll better. Perhaps the other albums will grow on me in time.
I got to discuss post-modernism and post-colonial theory at a bbq this Sunday. Sometimes I really miss being an academic. If only they would have let me write my dissertation on theory instead of expecting me to apply the theories to the actual material culture. Sigh. I should have stuck with cultural and just said fuck you to everyone who wanted me to be a social scientist and draw graphs and charts and use statistics instead of doing reflexive work.
And finally, DWTB.
It's hard to give a definitive opinion on this ep. People either love it or hate it, or just don't get it. It makes me sob, in an entirely different way the IP. For me, it just defines everything about this show and this world they created. Everyone is leaving because they've always had different plans, different agendas, and John is left behind, his delusions and fantasies seeping out as surely as the wormhole equations are seeping in. He has these dreams and visions and all of them are false, all projections of his fears and dreams, bearing very little on reality - which we find out later. In some ways, Terra Firma is a companion piece to DWTB far more than with Kansas or UR. John is the outsider, the alien, a role his subconscious puts on everyone else, even though - in his illusion with D'Argo, the metatext gets switched. John keeps trying to tell D. that he's an alien, and D'Argo knows it's not the case - he fits in, the boys prove that, and John just keeps getting things wrong.
And he breaks your heart through and through. Tired of running, lost and aware of being lost, covered and surrounded by this alien existence and unable to go home.
So they all say goodbye, free to move on, Talyn's burial the completion of the cycle begun in A Bug's Life, and John tries to go back to those moments before there were two of them. He wants to be unique, but he also wants to fill the place in Aeryn's life left by the other one and, coat or no coat, he just can't be both - and yes, I do want to talk about the clothing arc but I have to get some work done today:) Aeryn turns him down because he just doesn't listen to her. He wants what he missed out on so badly that he stops listening, which shows up in his delusions, but also in the lines he lays down for her. Do you love John Crichton? Well, yes. But he's a theory, hasn't been anything more than a theory since the moment they were twinned, and Aeryn, finally, knows that. So they toss the coin and everyone says goodbye and John is back where he started, floating alone in the middle of a hostile universe.
I'm enjoying the SaCOC Drabbles very much. Thanks to
fbf for organizing them.There was much aquisitiveness in my weekend. Virgin was having a $10 DVD sale, so I bought Say Anything, Much Ado about Nothing, and L.A. Story. I love this movie. It's such a love letter to the city, even if it ignores the racial tensions, the governmental corruption, the poverty and inequality and life as a facade. It's everything that's loony and loopy and joyous about this place where people turned the desert into their dreams.
I also did a little polka in Best Buy because they had the Farscape 3.3 DVD for $25. Hello instant gratification. I had actually gone there to buy us a new phone. Two many occasions of being dropped and/or thrown at various objects and people finally did our phone in. It kept giving off little death gurgly chirps and cutting out.
I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer count myself among the musical intellectuals. I like Radiohead's The Bends so much better than Amnesiac and their newest album - the title of which I consistently get wrong. I'm all for experimentation and pushing the boundaries of music, but apparently, I just like melody and car shaking, window rattling rock n' roll better. Perhaps the other albums will grow on me in time.
I got to discuss post-modernism and post-colonial theory at a bbq this Sunday. Sometimes I really miss being an academic. If only they would have let me write my dissertation on theory instead of expecting me to apply the theories to the actual material culture. Sigh. I should have stuck with cultural and just said fuck you to everyone who wanted me to be a social scientist and draw graphs and charts and use statistics instead of doing reflexive work.
And finally, DWTB.
It's hard to give a definitive opinion on this ep. People either love it or hate it, or just don't get it. It makes me sob, in an entirely different way the IP. For me, it just defines everything about this show and this world they created. Everyone is leaving because they've always had different plans, different agendas, and John is left behind, his delusions and fantasies seeping out as surely as the wormhole equations are seeping in. He has these dreams and visions and all of them are false, all projections of his fears and dreams, bearing very little on reality - which we find out later. In some ways, Terra Firma is a companion piece to DWTB far more than with Kansas or UR. John is the outsider, the alien, a role his subconscious puts on everyone else, even though - in his illusion with D'Argo, the metatext gets switched. John keeps trying to tell D. that he's an alien, and D'Argo knows it's not the case - he fits in, the boys prove that, and John just keeps getting things wrong.
And he breaks your heart through and through. Tired of running, lost and aware of being lost, covered and surrounded by this alien existence and unable to go home.
So they all say goodbye, free to move on, Talyn's burial the completion of the cycle begun in A Bug's Life, and John tries to go back to those moments before there were two of them. He wants to be unique, but he also wants to fill the place in Aeryn's life left by the other one and, coat or no coat, he just can't be both - and yes, I do want to talk about the clothing arc but I have to get some work done today:) Aeryn turns him down because he just doesn't listen to her. He wants what he missed out on so badly that he stops listening, which shows up in his delusions, but also in the lines he lays down for her. Do you love John Crichton? Well, yes. But he's a theory, hasn't been anything more than a theory since the moment they were twinned, and Aeryn, finally, knows that. So they toss the coin and everyone says goodbye and John is back where he started, floating alone in the middle of a hostile universe.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 12:33 pm (UTC)You say it so well.
Re:
Date: 2003-07-14 12:59 pm (UTC)It's so many layers, so many things, and uses words and images and memory to create and sustain this world that is all about why we say goodbye, how we define ourselves, and how we try to be the things we think we should be instead of who we are. And, it's just really good, really passionate TV.
academic musings - on foils, dopplegangers and the like.
Date: 2003-07-14 02:23 pm (UTC)All this silliness is my way of saying
I don't want to do my job todaythat MY academic issue is wanting to throw away a large chunk of the theory and just DO something with my studies, stuff that has real, tangible relevance. I find reading theory fascinating, and often quite useful in real, tangible circumstances (for example, Bourdieu's idea of habitus & cultural capital, and Gidden's structuration theory both play out in how I use language in my work, and in how I understand how other people's language affects me and the world in general), but writing theory is the bane of my existence. But a big chunk of my diss has to be about theory, which means I am writing theory. And I didn't discover my interior social scientist, or that my real interest, language in use, could be studied through a social scientist lens until TOO LATE. My diss topic was chosen before I found out I could have done something quite social scientisty, even in my department. Even with my topic. (My advisor's diss and her current research project both do this.) So I am stuck trying to write theory without real practice. BLECH!!! I understand I need theory. It is just lacking application right now, and that BUGS ME.So, if you write my theory, I'll do the field work and tables. . . And we can get that PhD/2.
What d'ya think?
Re: academic musings - on foils, dopplegangers and the like.
Date: 2003-07-14 02:46 pm (UTC)Then I went to grad. school and didn't want to be a social scientist, I wanted to be a post-modern anthropologist with was totally passe. I think you could project your application, however. There have to be some related studies that you can approach from your theoretical perspective.
Damn I miss academia!!
Anyway, I'd be happy to write theory for you:) (I'm sure your advisor would be thrilled!!!) I'd love to read more about your thesis topic btw. You sound like you're studying the grownup practical version of what I was trained to do as a lowly undergrad.
Re: academic musings - on foils, dopplegangers and the like.
Date: 2003-07-14 02:56 pm (UTC)*HEE* right. Ok, sure!
Grown up. *HEE*
Re: academic musings - on foils, dopplegangers and the like.
Date: 2003-07-14 03:19 pm (UTC)Isn't the grass always greener?!
I could send you a conference paper (under 10 pages) I wrote a couple of years ago on my topic. My work has changed a bit, but the paper does hint at what I am doing. Let me know if you are interested, and where I should send it. (My email is on my profile page).
Re: academic musings - on foils, dopplegangers and the like.
Date: 2003-07-14 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 02:29 pm (UTC)And yes, you're so right about poor John....
John just keeps getting things wrong.
And he breaks your heart through and through. Tired of running, lost and aware of being lost, covered and surrounded by this alien existence and unable to go home.
I've watched this episode so many times and the coin toss scene still sucks me in every time . Ben and Claudia just tear up the screen. I can't wait until this comes out on DVD....heheh,soon!
Re:
Date: 2003-07-14 02:34 pm (UTC)And I can't help watching. They air here at midnight on Sundays. I have a job, I should be in bed, and I am just unable to look away. (We won't talk about the fact that I have them on tape!)