Showing posts with label tv shows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv shows. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2014

WTF?!?!?!—The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Just a warning: your mind might be blown; you could get minor headaches or migraines from thinking about what I'm about to share with you too hard; I'm not responsible for either of these things, or for breaking you to the point that requires some therapy.  Seriously, I'm sorry for what happens to you after, despite your reaction to this post being COMPLETELY up to you.

            I will be honest here: I think I'm having a little bit of an existential crisis.  It's not exactly like, "What's my purpose in life?!  I NEED RELIGIONS TO GUIDE ME!" and it's definitely not like that more familiar Midlife Crisis of "Hey! I'm not that old!  I can still do young stuff!  BATCYCLE, TO ME!"  I know I'm addressing things that are WAY outside of most people's perspectives, but I'm serious—I'm having an existential crisis at the universal we're-too-small-to-have-any-major-impact-on-the-whole-of-the-universe-and-are-helpless-at-this-point-in-time-being-at-the-mercy-of-our-solar-system level.

            Please, allow me to explain….with the (optional) theme song being "FarCentaurus" by Nigel John Stanford, the guy whose Cymatics music video was so AWESWOME!


            Just recently (as in, this past weekend and prior to), I indulged a bit at the library, checking out Discovery's How the Universe Works and Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.  Just a quick bit about these two shows: the former, sometimes having blogger-and-discovery-of-dark-energy-assist-master Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) in it and voiced overall by Mike Rowe (#NerdCombo #NerdDrool), and the latter written by Stephen Hawking, with voice-over segments done by Benedict Cumberbatch (#SQUEE!).  Both of these shows are very well done, but they both also changed my perspective quite a bit.  And when I say quite a bit, I am really saying BY A FUCKLOAD!


            What I gathered from these two shows is that we, the denizens of the planet Earth (Sol-3), are not exactly the creation of a deity.  We're not living in the only solar system that exists in this universe (If you need more proof, just look at science headlines that go along the lines of "NEW EARTHLIKE PLANET DISCOVERED!"), and our physical selves did not just come out of nothing.  We're made of STUFF, these different elements such as iron, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, iodine, sodium, etc, that did NOT exist at time of the Big Bang.


            Instead, we're the product of a series of VERY fortunate happy accidents.

            Think about it: we're probably in one of very few (out of an infinite number of) universes that actually supports the existence of life, that mysterious chemical reaction that results in organic multi-cellular beings, with each one made of an uncountable number of molecules, making up a shit ton of cells that are able work together to function as a whole system by itself.  This universe was able to form out of matter and not antimatter, just because particles of matter simply just happenedto outnumber antimatter particles.  The universe that then formed after this cosmic battle of matter-vs.-antimatter (which results in the destruction of both particles, by the way) just happened to be uneven enough for gravity to attract these particles to each other, enough to form the first stars.  These stars just  happened to create the elements (out of hydrogen nuclear fusion) necessary to build us.
            Yes, we're not made of regular dust just like the Bible states in the Book of Genesis; we're made of stardust!  Which is pretty neat, if you think about it long enough; it's kind of romantic, in a sense.

            Anyways, some of these stars just happened to explode, creating enough material to form our current solar system, and the sun (Sol, of course) just happened to form successfully, and in just the right size in the PERFECT spot in the Milky Way Galaxy: not too far from the central supermassive black hole, but also not too close to whip us around at impossible speeds, expose us to deadly radiation or to suck us into the black hole.

            And, in addition to the whole "What the Fuckery?" I just laid out, the Earth formed in just the right spot in the solar system, at just the right size with the perfect amount of gravity and elements, AND survived the Hundred-Planet Demolition Derby that took place after the sun first formed.  Not to mention that enough comets hit the surface of this rocky and hot world to give us exactly the right amount of water (give or take a few litres) to cool it down to exactly the right temperature.  Plus, the atoms of specific elements successfully created these molecules that formed the first cells and, therefore, the first forms of life!

            And to top it all off, Jupiter, our big tough super-strong super popular planetary brother, formed far enough away to not affect us, but also to act as our bodyguard, deflecting and/or attracting in-bound comets and asteroids that would've hit Earth and prevented our existence otherwise.  Plus, the moon formed and took its spot at the right distance for us to land on it, and gives us almost the right amount of light at night so we can still see just enough to be able to not trip on something in the meadows and grasslands.  (Well, in my opinion, at least…)

            AND, to top it all off, that comet/asteroid that hit Earth millions of years ago wiped out all the dinosaurs, to allow US, the mammals, to survive, and evolve into creatures that can understand and map the universe!  We are simply the product of a series of accidents who can create abstract ideas that have no solid tangible presence in the universe, and extremely large solid objects made up of the same stardust as us that DO have such a presence!
            Which.  Is.  Weird!!!!


            What the hell?!  What is humanity's purpose in the universe?  Are we really experiments, something that just SO happened to form as part of a simulation (which I suspect due to the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, or the Keyon, as I like to call it)?  Or are we the creation of the universe itself so that this (possibly sentient) universe could understand itself—making us its neurons in three-dimensional space?  I have so many questions, many of them being "WHY….?" and eager for an answer that doesn't just have any basis in statistics and probability.

Perspective: Now You Have It

            It's frustrating and scary to see how we have all of this amazing stuff going on and NONE of it is the primary focus of the human race!  We're all on the same spherical rocky iron(ic) boat, orbiting the same star, paying witness to some of the same awesome stuff in the skies (including the moon), and yet we're too busy bickering with each other about police brutality and who crossed which lines in the sand, eager to collect all parts of an abstract creation of ours, an idea that we place numerical value upon, despite it having not a lot of purpose besides being a tool that we use in a system that we set up, and fighting over how people see other people who are different from them (Sunni vs. Shiite and Middle East vs. America—everyone wants to be right, nobody wants to be wrong; it's pointless to force your ideas of how people should live/think/function onto someone else, and that goes QUADRUPLE to the (tel)evangelists and racist fucknuts out there!).  Why do this, when we have a whole other realm to explore?

            And why destroy the planet we're all living on?  IT'S THE SAME PLANET EARTH!!!!  The climate-change global warming deniers (read: idiots) are poisoning the same air that everyone else is breathing and relying on for survival, only because they're not educated enough or they don't believe that we're all going to destroy ourselves as the result of our own actions.  We're making each other sick, we're killing each other, and we're ruining ourselves because of disagreements and bullshitting.  (Also, any deniers are NOT going to be allowed in my boat.  You cause it, you suffer the consequences—have fun either treading water or drowning or dying from dehydration!)

            Why fight?  Why destroy things?  We could be the only witnesses to everything the universe is showing us, and yet, we're staring at the ground and our cell phones and computer and/or television screens, and glaring at everyone else.  We're unhappy narcissistic creatures that are intent on focusing on ourselves and our own problems.  Our world-view is small, limited to what we each see around us, when we could just look up together and learn what we have yet to know about everything and everyone.
            Why don't we just do this right?!

            This is all I can say right now.  That is the gist of my sort-of existential crisis.  That is the result of watching those two shows on DVD—and I think everyone else should do this, too.  It would be good for you, at least, to realize what I have learned: we're a miracle that isn't acting like one, and should start in order to save itself from the extinction we've forced on many other creatures that live on the same planet we do.  If we do get our act together, cooperate and accept everyone's differences (including the colors of our skin, the religions we practice, and the fact that many of us have Autistic Spectrum Disorders and other disabilities), we can do incredible things, which can help us understand the universe (that can be scary due to the sheer size and scale of it—but only if you look at it that way) and also ensure the survival of the human race in case the universe decides to butt-fuck us again, with Apophis or whatever else is out there.

Random Thoughts Are Random

            I know: I was "thinking like a crazy person" (despite being completely reasonable) prior to this part, so why not share some thoughts that I had amidst this whole existential crisis I'm having and before?




            That's all for now, folks!  Keep sharing this blog, and ENJOY YOUR COSMIC TACQUITOS!


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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Some Sort of Paradise: A Review of Utopia, Fox's New Reality Show--UPDATED

***At the time of publishing this post, Utopia is already in its 12th Day, with one person (the former convict) having already left the place after ranting and cursing and being generally angry.  Two people came in his place.***
            Sorry for no post last week.  I was sick with some sort of cold or respiratory infection, so I was like, "Fuck it, I'M QUARANTINED!" for the entire week.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for dropping off the store brand DayQuil and NyQuil med stuff.  It really helped a lot!)  I was staying inside, not doing much except eating, sleeping, medicating and repeating.  And watching shows on TV and listening to podcast episodes and playing computer games.  So this week, I'm lifting my self-imposed quarantine and trying to not strangle people because of my impacted unwise wisdom tooth (that needs to geddafuckout!) in order to re-acclimate to the outside world.  Meanwhile, I was able to watch one of the premieres of a new reality show on television: Utopia and then following it up with some disturbing news on Fox.

            Which brings me to my optional theme song mix for this post: Spacemind's "Space Ark"


Justice for Cruelty: People Are Not Punching Bags


            Thanks to news teasers on Fox, I was convinced that I needed to watch a segment about howsome idiot youths were filming themselves beating up an older man who hasdisabilities (or, as the media likes to put it, "special needs man," or "mentally challenged man".  It's a step in the right direction, but now try using Person-First language.  News media outlets are the source of "disability-first language"' usage, and I want to change that all over the mediascape.).  First, some idiotteen at Musikfest tries to use brass knuckles (of which possession is ILLEGAL everywhere in the States) to beat up an older man who was defending his wife, all because the idiot teen and his girlfriend "weren't being respected."  And now some dumbasses think it's a good idea to just beat up someone with disabilities who is older than them and to put it up on YouTube.

            Let me tell you something: IT'S NEVER A GOOD IDEA TO DO THAT!  In PA, it counts as assault.  And just hurting someone who has a disability (or two….or five….) is wrong no matter what you think because it only means you're so gutless and cowardly and full of shit that you have to pick on someone you see as "lower than you" or (and I hate using this word) "retarded," which, today, translates to "stupid," among the youth (who need to learn etymology more; "mental retardation" is a term used for a disability that delays the mental and emotional development of a person).

            This sucks.  I'm outraged by their actions.  Not to mention that I'm now more cautious: I have no interest in being treated that way, and I have a lot more self-respect than those losers.  But if I'm ever faced with that situation, I'll either try and make a quick exit or I'll stand my ground, using my intellect to scare them off, while calling 911 because I'd rather have cops there to handle the situation than to be left alone.

            This is why it is important for there to be self-defense classes provided for people on the Autism Spectrum; it's so they can defend themselves if idiots like the ones in the news decide copy their attitude, arrogance and actions to seem tough, and to teach us self-discipline.

            Seriously, this bullshit is not something I would EVER tolerate in my Utopia; the perps would be thrown to the zombies.


Building Paradise: My Garden Does Not Look Like This….

            Yes, I'm going to review this new reality show called "Utopia".  So what?  (I'm not referring to the idyllic location that Professor Yana was trying to launch a giant rocket towards, by the way.)

            It's not like it's Big Brother; far from it!  You see, what's different about this show is that there isn't a real prize like cash or a house or a vacation or whatever is tangible in this realm.  It's actually a social experiment (like every Big-Brother-structured reality competition show is) that is to be done over the course of a year, examining every participant's idea of a perfect world or perfect society and how they can create it.  The Pioneers (the first fourteen or fifteen people in this society where cameramen aren't around) are vastly different, with backgrounds ranging from pastors to professional chefs to Apocalypse preppers to yogis to expecting mothers and even convicts; my personal favorite among them is Hex the Huntress, who has brought her own bow and quiver of arrows Utopia!

            The idea of the show itself is audacious enough: a perfect society where the Pioneers are not allowed to be outside the gates, but outsiders are allowed in during certain hours.  It's self-governed, remotely monitored 24/7 for an entire year, and the electricity and food had to be obtained by themselves, a complete bubble with a fish-filled pond, a pool, chickens, cows (or "Mootopians"), fertile land, some money and a barn.  The group itself is not going to stay the same, as more people will come and others will go.  It's all going to be streamed live, all day and all night, and the audience will have a chance to join the group inside the gates, applying to casting to say, "I want to help build a perfect society!  SIGN ME UP!"

            And it's already on its first two weeks: soon after the project started, there have been conflicts ALREADY!  Someone didn't want to share his things because it's all he had, another man (whose ego is bigger than the show, I bet) drank too much whiskey and was being a total pervert, the redneck and the chef exchanged heated words and butted heads, literally and figuratively, which led to the redneck almost just up and leaving.  There were lots of people stripping down until they're nothing but naked blurs with faces and arms diving into the pool, and a few of the Pioneers are uncomfortable with that because they're that frickin' conservative.

            And yes, I live tweeted during Part 1 of the premiere:







            And I do believe that this is interesting enough, but they're not done yet; I have some ideas that they should implement with their rules and practices and stuff.

         Î     Anyone who breaks a rule or something to the point where it pisses the others off should spend the next 24 hours shoveling manure and sleeping with the cows that night, if it's a minor offense.  Major offenses or repeat offenders should be ejected from the society.

         Î     Court is a good idea: let the offender and 3 to 5 witnesses give their testimonies, and then have them go out and wait for the verdict that will be decided amongst the rest of the Pioneers.  Punishments must also be determined during deliberations.  (Manure shoveling should be a punishment!)

         Î     Get a full on bull or something, a cow that can help the female cows make little calves, which results in better yield for milk!  Same with a rooster for the chickens; animals don't live forever!

         
  Π    Get some sheep and a ram, as well as a couple of goats so that the wool can be sheared off, carded, spun into yarn and used to make clothing that they can sell online for more money or to replace torn or lost clothing.  Also get a loom, so you can weave together sheets and blankets for the cold winter months, and knitting needles for scarves and hats and stuff; knitting and weaving aren't hard to learn, but it's fun to do and it boosts self-esteem.

         Î     If Amanda gives birth inside the grounds, let a certified midwife come and help out with delivery in the barn with sheets hanging around them and almost everyone else waiting outside, then get Amanda and the baby off to the damn hospital to get them both examined just in case.  Medicine is not optional; people in colonies like Plymouth and Salem and Johnstown did get sick and die from illnesses and childbirth and whatnot, and we don't need a Utopia that is quarantined with CDC officials milling around in Hazmat suits just because someone believes that they shouldn't get vaccinated.  (Also, get someone to come by and give vaccinations.  Pioneers who are vaxxers don't have to get them as they can suffer the fucking consequences of their "decision", but not everyone is a vaxxer.  VACCINATE!)

         Î     Don't shy away from Twitter; we (Utopians, aka fans of Utopia) love communicating with you, and should be able to give feedback when asked.

            At least, that's what my perfect society should be doing.  That and making thrones for me.  :P

            Anyways, the idea is audacious (so is building a colony on Mars), but it should be interesting to see what does and does not work for creating a perfect society.  At least then, I can get to work on building my colony for when the zombie apocalypse comes; so far, all I can come up with is either live in Antarctica or on one of the rocky Aleutian islands off Alaska, or to move in with Bigfoot and Chewbacca.

            Unsure how many Dalek plungers out of 5 to rate this show, because the jury is still out on how many should be awarded.  But it is something to be checked out.  I shall continue to watch until I get bored!

            Until then, ENJOY YOUR PERFECT TACQUITO!


"Perfection is overrated.  I still strive for it, though, because it makes sense to me." — myself
***Utopia airs on FOX on Tuesdays at 8pm EDT and Fridays at 9pm EDT. Live streaming is available on the website at http://www.utopiatv.com/home and requires a "passport" for people to vote for new members and view videos and live streams.***

 UPDATE: After about two months, Fox cancelled Utopia, due to low ratings.  Which is sad.....

RIP Utopia (2014-2014)
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Monday, March 10, 2014

A Review of the Great Cosmos: A New Journey Begins When Another Ended

            Wow!  WOW!  I know this is a highly verbose review, but I am typing this up as fast as possible so that all the knowledge and impression of the show doesn't fade away from my brain or attention span!  The theme for this blog post is Snow Park by Connect Ohm!


            On Sunday, March 9, 2014, at 9:00pm EDT on all the Fox and National Geographic networks, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, author and hilarious scientist, led us on our first steps on a journey that Dr. Carl Sagan started a generation ago, on the show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (preceded by Cosmos: A Personal Voyage) with the (paraphrased) words, "It's time to get going again."  I've been treated to a perspective that the late loved Dr. Sagan has only introduced us to, to a thirst of knowledge that many scientists are trying to quench with new information about Life, the Universe and Everything (to which the Answer is 42!  HA!  Hitchhiker's Guide, people!  Come on, nerd out with me with that one shitty joke!).

            I have to say, the introduction was mind blowing!  I swear, all the visuals in the intro sequence gave my mind a blowjob!  I loved it so much, I think I was sort of drooling at the end of it, but only "sort of" because I was having dinner, my Soup of the Cosmos (which I will share the recipe to at the end of this post; it's perfect for people on the lower end of the income scale!).  Anyways, to have Dr. Tyson start the show at the edge of the very same sea cliff that Dr. Sagan stood on when he started his Personal Voyage is entirely poetic; it's like Dr. Sagan was still with us, continuing our journey through the universe that we dwell in.  I've been fortunate enough to be able to watch Cosmos: A Personal Voyage thanks to National Geographic airing it before the premiere of A Spacetime Odyssey.  We were taken on a journey of the mind, to the edge of our universe, being given our address in it, which I have to say is a little inaccurate: according to the Doctor of the Whoniverse, we live in the Sol system, on Sol-3!  Not just "the Solar System"!  So please, astronomers and astrophysicists, incorporate that into our universal address!  But I swear my brain was fried when we went a bit "Inception" with the Universe-inside-of-a-multiverse-that's-inside-of-another-Universe.  My nose didn't start bleeding, but at least my brain got a warm-up before the show: Journey to the Edge of the Universe, narrated by Alec Baldwin, describing our observation of the universe as we come across celestial bodies in the sky, such as "angry moons", dangerous hypernovas, etc, etc.; during that show, I managed to come across a realization of my own, Dr. Carl Sagan style:

If we were to travel across the Universe beyond our galaxy, we'd also be traveling back into time, as the universe is not only a bubble of a network, but also has a reverse sort of tree-ring effect to the point where the farther we travel from Earth to the edge of the Universe we live in, the more we travel into the older parts of the universe, and if we exited past the universe's threshold, we would've been able to witness the Big Bang, to which I ascribed the physical edge of our Universe, the Big Bang Threshold.

            Not only that, Dr. Tyson says that our Universe started out smaller than a subatomic particle; in a sense, it relatively still is if you're far enough past the Big Bang Threshold, outside of every Universe located within our multiverse; we're still smaller than sub-atomic particles in a universe before the Big Bang, like cells in the human body.  Yes, it's frustratingly confusing, but it really is Inception-like!  BWAHHHHH!!!

            I'm sorry, through that shared epiphany, if I made everyone's noses bleed and their brains hurt more than Chris Hardwick's and Matt Mira's did when Dr. Tyson described the Ascent of the Cubes in Nerdist Podcast episode number 139.  If you have to be redirected to it, I suggest you check out the bottom part of this ranty blog post.

            But I have to say, "Spaceship of the Imagination" is pretty cool, despite the name!  I would've loved to have kept the retro look Dr. Sagan had in his spaceship, but Dr. Tyson's ship is a bit cooler, having the ability to not just travel across space but also peer through time, with its poetic floor-portal to the past in the floor (archaeology anyone?) and ceiling-portal to the future (STAR TREK IS OUR FUTURE!  If we have not destroyed ourselves with the thermonuclear World War III or disastrous climate change due to our self-inflicted global warming!), and has a sort of gyroscopic sort of bridge in that spaceship (in a realm beyond ours that has no "up"?  Really, Dr. Tyson?), which, to me, is in the shape of a dandelion seed.  You see, the dandelion seed is quite an integral part of the Cosmos program, and Dr. Sagan used it quite a bit when he was hosting Personal Voyage, and it only seems poetic to be traveling on that seed throughout the universe as we know it, as the dandelion seed in the organic sense is actually an organism traveling in its own spaceship to someplace new where it can colonize the ground it lands on.  But I also have to say, "Spaceship of the Imagination," doesn't exactly have a good ring to it: I understand that it's, to put it in Dr. Tyson's words in Nerdist podcast episode #139, "a journey of the mind," but couldn't you just name it the "Tyson TARDIS"?  Or the A.S.S. Imagination?  Just saying.

            But the visuals were stunning, the inclusion of history in the science exploration, the addition of the multiverse inside of the lectures, the sharing of the perspective of our slice of time in the universe, how the birth of the universe and our existence would've looked liked spread over a Gregorian calendar year, how religion treated new ideas, all of it, to me, was pure GENIUS!  I was looking forward to this premiere, as my friend Jesse (who still needs to do that superhero blog post) also was, despite not having access to cable.  And I can't wait to continue on with our next steps in this journey of 13 episodes where we are enlightened over how scientifically accurate the theory of evolution is, and the whole Creationism issue may go back as far as the Big Bang, which I'm sure was not instigated by Stewie Griffin restarting his time machine.  Which is why during the show, I posted these tweets:



            And I hate to spoil it for everyone, but I have to describe the end bit: I saw all the old footage, and the Sagan seaside cliff bit, and I can't help it but I cried a little much like Matt Mira teared when he was watching the last shuttle launch of NASA, but for reasons a little bit different from what Dr. Tyson ascribed to him in that first episode of Nerdist podcast that he was on all that couple of years ago.  In fact, I tweeted this when it happened….


all because not only did Dr. Tyson talk about how much of a leader Dr. Sagan was, but he also suddenly pulled out Dr. Sagan's planner, and turned to the page where an appointment with a young Dr. Tyson was listed, and it was not only a tale of how a young man growing up in the Sky View apartments in the Bronx was influenced by his genius and his tutelage, but it was also, in Dr. Tyson's words, a sort of "passing of the torch," which made me think a little: Dr. Sagan would've been so proud of him, and he wouldn't have trusted anyone else to do the reboot of his show, because Dr. Tyson would've been the only one to do it right.  He influenced many scientists, much like Aristotle influenced many mathematicians.  He is the Aristotle of our time, and if he saw the show today, he would've approved, despite any flashiness.  RIP, Dr. Carl Sagan, wherever you are, whether you're in heaven, the great big observatory/laboratory in the sky or even in the fourth or fifth dimensions.  We miss you, even though I haven't watched your show before Saturday or Sunday, March 8/9th, 2014!

Our Universe Is One Giant Pot of Soup: A Recipe for the Soup of the Cosmos

            Because I was running a little low on food, I improvised my dinner, anxious to have it be done by the time Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (which shouldn't be "STO", because "STO" is already taken by Star Trek Online!  It should be ASTO, so as to not confuse people!  #addressingthiswiththehopethatIAmNotTooLate #longhastags #hashtaggingoutsideofTwitter) aired.  And I tweeted:


because I'm sure that it has not yet been done in detail!  Nerd-Chef Alton Brown might disagree, but goddammit, IT'S MY RECIPE AND I SHALL SHARE IT WITH Y'ALL FOR NEXT WEEK'S EPISODE!

Soup of the Cosmos (aka, Cosmic Soup)

Pasta In Potato Pot (aka, a saucepan that's the second to smallest you have)
1 ½ cup salted water
1/2 cup small pasta shells

Broth In Vegetable Pot (aka, smallest pot you have)
1 ½ cup salted water
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon chopped basil
1 tablespoon (or more) dried minced onion
½ cup panko bread crumbs

Other
Fancy shredded Mexican blend cheese
Four packets of string cheese, unwrapped and chopped into 1/8-1/4 inch long pieces
  1.  Boil pasta according to directions.
  2. In small "Vegetable pot", boil water; crush and add chicken bouillon cube, stir.  Add basil, minced onion and panko breadcrumbs; stir, let sit.
  3.  Drain pasta when finished, return to "Potato pot" without heat.  Add broth to pasta, stir.  Stir in shredded cheese and chopped string cheese, making sure it melts.
  4.  Serve warm.  Makes two servings.
Isn't our Universe like this soup?  Isn't the basil like the asteroids and comets, the chopped string cheese like our planets, the pasta shells like our stars in the sky, the shredded cheese like the nebular clouds and the broth like the dark matter of space?  It's so poetic that I think it's appropriate for everyone to have.  Also, it's great for Lent because it doesn't have real meat!  It has chicken broth, but not REAL meat or poultry or pork!  Can't the bouillon be an exception to this, Church?  PLEASE?


           Anyways, I hope you enjoyed Cosmos ASTO just as I enjoyed my soup with it.  And I hope everyone gets to experience the enlightenment and pleasure of education in the hopes that we can all become smarter, we can all become nerds and continue to have intelligent discussions about science, the universe, the multiverse, and our place in the—SQUIRREL!  *scamper, chase, falls asleep and snores*

P.S. I have GOT to share this tweet!  This tweet won the Internets last night in my opinion....so go Favorite and Retweet this, because it's HILARIOUSLY TRUE!

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

Celebrating the Time Lord's Genesis: A Review of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special Episode

Today's theme song is The Doctor's Theme/Next Stop Everywhere


        After a long and agonizing wait, the day finally arrives.  It's not just any old day.  School day, business day, the Sabbath?  No, not at all!  A birthday?  Well, yes, for Chris Hardwick (Happy Birthday, nerd bro!), but that's not the point!  Today belongs to a science fiction icon.  It's named after him, and, fittingly enough, it lands on his favorite day of the week!
       For today (Saturday, November 23, 2013) is actually.....

THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR!!!!!

       Exactly 50 years ago today, a science fiction program named Doctor Who was born, the brainchild of Sydney Newman, which then grew up, died and regenerated over 12 (going on 13 times--John Hurt's War Doctor counts!) faces!  It gave a new definition to innocence, danger, time and space, and especially danger.  And so, to celebrate, I'm doing my usual REVIEW!  What else would I be doing?

Actually, it's 2 reviews in one blog post, one being spoiler-free for the people who have yet to watch this epic episode, and the other is for the ones who already watched it or just don't give a fuck.

So here we go, the review that I actually wrote down during the episode, which means that it's my real-time in the moment reaction to the special.

Spoiler-Free Review


       Huh. :O Oooh!  LOL!  Oh my gosh!  SQUEE!  Le gasp!  I want that Moment box--or a replica of it!  LOL again!  Ooooh!!  Whoa.  BWAHHHH!!!!!  Hahaheeheehee!  HA!  ROFL!  So that's where that came from....  EEWWW!  OH SHIT!  Heh!  ROFL, round things!  SQUEEGASM!  Little giggle.....  Aww!  Huge squeal!  WHOOOOAAAAAA!!!!!  Meta squee!  Le gasp!  Jaw drop!

       And of course, NERDING MY PANTS!  SUPER AWESOME!

       Now, for the more detailed review--so SPOILER ALERT!

 

Actual Review With Some Spoilers

       Well, if you've already seen it, congratulations!  Together, throughout 94 countries across 6 continents, we Whovians have all recreated the climax of Last of the Time Lords!  (Series 3, with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman)  Nothing can be more meta than that!

       Anyways, I was quite fortunate to watch it during that very broadcast at 2:50pm EST with my parents!  And to be honest, we were quite surprised to see that they used the old Doctor Who opening to kick off the transmission!  It was quite a sweet tribute!  And then, we have Clara, back to normal--I think.  How the HELL did the Doctor get her from that little temporal bubble thing where she passes out and he carries her away?  How did they get out of that?!  I'm more confused than a skunk on a black-and-white tiled floor!
       Thanks, Moffat, for that little plothole!

       But now, we've got John Hurt's War Doctor (who supposedly did something drastic to the race of the Time Lords), Doctor Tennant and Doctor Smith gallavanting about together!  What nerd wouldn't dream of that?!  And when we saw Tennant and Smith interacting with each other, pulling out the sonic screwdrivers and saying the same things at the same time, we were giggling and laughing.  And it made sense, knowing that they are the same person from different points in time!  Though, I've always dreamed how it would be: will they bicker at each other?  Will they have their companions meet each other?  Obviously, the companions never met, so, oh well.....

       But so many questions were answered, and if you've seen The Big Bang (Series 5 with Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill), make sure that you brace yourself: a similar bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey thing is going on, and it could be a little....bendy-wendy?  Not to mention that you could get headaches from that craziness, so make sure you have some painkillers on hand.

       The Daleks are also back, but they don't have a very strong presence in the story, despite the sheer size of the army attacking Gallifrey; they were more of a phantom threat, in a sense.  Like, they were a problem to be solved later on.  And has anyone noticed how it was the old Dalek casings?  This is, obviously, due to the Time War taking place long before Victory of the Daleks, which is where they get regenerated with the help of a progenator.  Oh well, my condolences to my Dalek tweeps!

       But seriously, to have the synchronicity going on between the three Doctors (three-fold man from Journey's End, anyone?) is quite clever, and awesome, and it just really tickles your nerd bits!

      I enjoyed Billie Piper as the sentient interface for The Moment, and she did really, really well!  She's got talent, that's for sure; I saw her in Shakespeare Retold's Much Ado About Nothing.  But the outfit--FANTABULOUS!  Though the ugly boots could be replaced with some badass ones.....  But it's still awesome enough to wear to a con!

      So, to catch a ride with the Doctor, the Doctor and the War Doctor was certainly fun.  I'm sure my parents enjoyed it almost as much as I did.  And a ton of questions that were raised by the trailer (How many Doctors were there really?  What was the red jewel thing? [A BIG RED BUTTON!]  And what really happened to Gallifrey?)  Not to mention that having a little meta moment going on, with Doctor Tennant speaking to Doctor Smith--major tearjerking moment there for me, because I still miss Doctor Tennant!  And lastly, you can't help but really nerd your pants, especially with all of the Doctors in one place together, looking at Gallifrey at the same time.  I enjoyed it!  I really did, and I hope that sometime soon, the series will take us to Gallifrey (again, for all the more experienced Whovians).

      Oh, and there's a surprise guest in the episode!  Thank you Tom Baker for making the episode extra meta by taking up your role again!  But I'm still waiting on that 4-foot TARDIS cake!

P.S.  Oh, yeah!  I almost forgot!  I didn't get to meet my cursing quota!  Soooo.....  SHITFUCKSHITMOTHERFUCKINGCOCKSUCKINGCRAPFUCKITYFUCKERFUCKGODDAMNDAVROSDAMNASSHOLEWHORENUTS!!!!!!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A Review of @Midnight, the New Nerdist-Funny or Die Show

            WOW!  Chris Hardwick is still alive!  And he still looks great on television, despite the weird Indiana Jones lighting on Talking Dead giving him a sepia-esque tan (that somehow doesn't seem to come across on the computer--I blame my tv)!  I wish I could look that great; that sounds like another subgoal to work on: look as great as Chris Hardwick despite being a fat, pale, hermity squirrel-brained woman at the moment!

            But I'd never guess he'd be a pop-culture social-media "game" show host on Comedy Central--didn't those guys fuck over Futurama by ending it…for the fourth time?  I'm pretty sure they did…  Oh well.  At least he's hanging out with friends that aren't Matt Mira and Jonah Ray. (Sorry guys, but I think he felt that you're tying him down. *plungerpets*  He must've gone, "THERE'S ENOUGH OF ME TO GO AROUND!" to you two before riding a stripper pole out the doors of the Nerdist podcast studio, and then Meltdown Comics, and then flew on it to Comedy Central's board room meeting--with the rest being recent history.)

             Anywayyyyssss, I've yet to start on reviewing the actual episode I witnessed being aired on that Colb-hairbrained network the very night it premiered!  Let's start with the scoring system: was there a set scoring system, or was it a rerun of one of those Oprah's Favorite Things episodes of her Oprah show that people may or may not have forgotten about after it was canceled years ago?  It's like, "You get points and you get points and YOU get points, and everyone in the audience gets points for just laughing instead of saying something funny!"  Really!  Kumail Nanjiani, Doug Benson and Natasha Leggero, who were contestants on the show, all managed to get at least 1,000 points before one of them was eliminated for the head-to-head "For The Win" showdown.  I did laugh, but only because it was decently funny.  And I'm sure you saw my tweets to Chris Hardwick in regards to his promos and during the show…

            It should be noted that I only tweeted twice during the show…


            Anyways, it was hilarious; just not as hilarious as Jenny Lawson's blog and book, both ofwhich left me dying from laughter and in need of self-defibrilation!  (THAT set the standard for awesomely funny!)  And I was more intrigued by that one moment on Dancing With The Stars, where the "officials" (read: producers) decided not to eliminate anyone this week, despite Bill "AholĂ©" Engvall dancing like my dad all the way down the favorability charts.  Turns out there was a glitch in the voting system last week, so the "officals" (producers) decided to be fair and not eliminate anybody (aka, "Let's try again!").  I thank them for giving Bill a second chance to stop dancing like my father, who is really white and really nerdy (I so believe he's a real life Mr. Spock, despite not looking like Leonard Nemoy.); they both need to loosen up with an awkward spa day together!  By the way, that's why I consider Weird Al Yankovic's  hit song, "White and Nerdy" to be my dad's theme song!  (I shall share that song with you for your enjoyment…)


            All in all, @Midnight needs several improvements:

            1.) Scoring system needs more definitive structure, beyond "saying something funny will get you points, with Chris Hardwick deciding if it's funny or not!"
            2.) Comedians need to workshop a little more; they are funny, but my laughter died in 15 seconds.  That's at least 100 funerals I had to plan for--rest in peace, multiple peals of laughter!
            3.) If you want @Midnight to be a hit show, fuck over ABC and CMT by grabbing and dragging Bill on (by his chest hair, preferably), with Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy in tow, and wait for me to cry, "UNCLE! HARDWICK, YOU WIN!  I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHOW!" while my fat ass falls off from laughing so fucking hard.

            I have to say, the lines were definitely funny, especially the FTW round.  (Damn typo keyboard sex fairies--I'm not even on Second Life and they almost had me put "reound"!  Thank Davros for my spelling ninja skillz!)  I think it depends on the person, in my opinion; it's less to do with the extra nerdy discussion stuff and more to do with comedy (which is why Comedy Central exists, by the way).  If you love people being silly, watch it.  If you want something a little more profound, go check out the Nerdist podcast.  It's still Chris Hardwick in either direction, and you'll benefit from your decision.

            Yes, all roads lead to Chris Hardwick; that is the law of our existence, besides "allow Kale and Daleks to be your overlords while worshipping Davros as your Creator."

            #boobs #excelsior #butts

           P.S. Sorry, Dad.  I can't think of any other way to describe Bill's dancing....  HE DANCES LIKE YOU!

           P.P.S. I've been listening to almost all the Nerdist podcast episodes in order, starting with Episode 1--A New Podcast Series.  Hopefully I'll get caught up before I miss anything.  Thank you, Chris Hardwick!  (I know--why not just address him as Chris?  So I don't confuse him with Chris "CMNeir" Neir.  Here, you try telling the two apart!)
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