So I've started reading Journey to the West as translated by W.J.F. Jenner, thanks to the e-book files by Arachne Jericho, and I'm having a great deal of fun; but I'd definitely like some annotations and background information. And lo and behold, I see that Anthony C. Yu's translation has extensive annotations. But looking at the samples, I don't find that the prose flows as smoothly or is as, well, fun. I don't suppose anyone's read both and has suggestions? (Maybe a secondary reference source?)

* * *

I was thinking about watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles the other day, and a rather belated realization struck me: I don't actually like time-travel stories. Rather, time-travel stuff—causation and multiple futures and crossing timelines and all that—I can't get my head around it and I don't really care.

So given that and the cancellation on what is apparently a cliffhanger season-ender, should I bother? I've watched about ten minutes of the first episode.

Edit: it's the combination of the time-travel and the lack of resolution that are particularly making me think I could skip this.

( very short spoilery comment on finishing season one )

Screw flying cars. Where is my in-home custom clothing fabricator?

(Prompted by an unfun trip to get maternity clothes. Chad thought I was going to say "uterine replicator," but I pointed out that even if I wasn't needing maternity clothes now, I'd still have to buy clothes sometime.)

* * *

The first four episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender were entertaining; pitched a little young, but that did make them undemanding after a long day. We'll probably keep watching.

* * *

Hugo nominees update:

Ragamuffin (booklog) and The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (booklog) for novel; honorable mention to The Secret History of Moscow (booklog), which I am allergic to. The Arrival (booklog) for related book, which you all have to go out and get right this minute, seriously, I mean it!

I may try and squeeze in Acacia, but am unlikely to get to Shelter (I'm sick of winter and am not much for dystopias at the best of times).

* * *

Just a few links, because I've been spending all my delicious time on boskone reports.

( links )

( very short spoilers )

Further thoughts on Heroes, now with spoilers.

( spoilers )

So, if I've seen the last two episodes, finding them a bit heavy-handed and predictable (well, tonight's) but on the whole enjoyable, is it worth going back and watching the rest of the season? Especially given the issues people have had with the show's treatment of race and gender? (I've been reading people's spoiler posts pretty well indiscriminately, which is how I followed most of the two episodes I saw.)

My contrarian determination never to watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was foiled by Chad's inviting Jennifer Ouellette, author of The Physics of the Buffyverse and another pop-science book, to speak at Union next week. Chad figured it would be good if he'd actually seen more than a half episode of Buffy here and there, so Netflix'ed the first two discs of Season One & borrowed Season Five from a pimping co-worker (who recommended episodes 5 & 12, FWIW). We watched the very first two episodes tonight.

I'd always said that I wasn't interested in Buffy because I didn't want to watch a show about high school, even the demons of high school literalized. I realize now that I forgot a much more salient objection:

I don't want to watch horror.

I realize to everyone else in the world, the things-that-go-bump (or boo) moments are very tame, but I react very badly to that kind of suspense, and just don't enjoy watching it. Which is actually a relief, because I was afraid I'd like it, and seven seasons of Buffy plus how many of Angel?, well, that's a really big time commitment.

Some specific comments about these two episodes, behind the cut. If you're going to spoil anything past these episodes, ROT13 it or enclose it in <span style="color: #999999; background-color: #999999"> </span>.

( spoilers )

ETA: Congratulations if you didn't find it scary. I did, I didn't enjoy it, you're not going to convince me otherwise.

Man, I knew this was going to happen if I posted this, but I thought my comments were sufficiently clear to avoid it.

ETA 2: See this conversation with pnh for an explanation of why I felt the previous ETA necessary.

ETA 3: Chad's comments.

[Written Thursday night when Internet-less.]

So there I was, in a hotel room surfing TV channels for acceptable background noise, and there was an episode of Supernatural, the show which it seems like half my reading list watches. Heck, why not?

Of course I would land on an episode that required stupid legal stuff for its plot—and I assure you, it was very stupid. ( spoilers )

That said, I definitely noted some appealing bits about the show, though I doubt I'll watch, partly because I'm not much for spooky and partly because I just don't watch TV often. I really liked the shot of the pivoting cell doors when they first get into prison, and the actors playing the Winchester brothers are watchable (though it seemed to me that Dean stole this episode something awful). And I didn't foresee the twist about 3/4 through, though I lacked the context to know that there needed to be a twist, if that makes sense. I did catch some of the significant sibling interaction, thanks to skimming spoiler posts, which I suspect kept the episode from being just filler?

Anyway: didn't suck, not highly motivated to watch more (I'll be looking for people's spoiler posts about the next episode based on the preview, though).

Food in Review:

• Oatmeal raisin cookies are definitely better with half the cinammon (replaced with an equal amount of ginger), but they still need something more; I'm thinking of increasing the brown sugar (and decreasing the white) and increasing the ginger and vanilla.
• The baked potato soup tasted a lot less like chicken stock on reheating, so while I still intend to reduce the chicken stock relative to the milk, I won't need to do it as much.
• We attempted rosti this weekend and last. We'd had a fabulous version in Québec City, all melty creamy cheese-potato goodness with a lovely brown crispy crust, and I tried recreating it with the leftover potatoes from soup. Unfortunately all-purpose potatoes are very definitely not the way to go for this, but Chad's attempt tonight worked a lot better.

  ( Something like a recipe )

Sports in Review: speak not to me of football. I am strongly contemplating hiding in the bedroom with a book during the Super Bowl.

Work in Review: very hectic, though thankfully moving past the stuff that had me feeling flayed for much of the last two weeks. I was called for jury duty and rescheduled it for next week before things got crazy; I'm not needed on Monday, and I suspect I won't be needed for the rest of the week, which is kind of too bad because I'd like to serve on a jury, but is probably for the best because of the timing.

Health in Review: I have had a remarkable amount of medical stuff lately, all minor things, but it does add up.

Entertainment in Review: I did fit some reading in, and have a couple books to log. Also, I've put Genji on my Palm and got through the next chapter that way; post to come. (Anyone else want the .pdb file, let me know.) And the next episode in the Dresden Files was just on the background and didn't suck.

Weather in Review: it's been really freaking cold, I can't seem to find any satisfactory winter boots, boo hiss winter.

Clearly, I need to go to bed.

The TV series based on Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series has started on the SciFi Channel. Harry Dresden is Chicago's only professional wizard; in the first episode, a kid seeks him out based on his ad in the Yellow Pages, saying that monsters are out to get him and his mom.

I've only read the first of the series, though I fully mean to get around to the rest. It was a fast and enjoyable first-person urban fantasy, and I recall thinking that the magic system had some nice touches.

The first episode was decent. I saw a comment that it had not been intended as the premiere, but I thought it was a reasonable introduction regardless, weaving together some of Harry's backstory with his present case. And even though I knew that Murphy the cop and Bob the spirit were recurring characters, I don't think that would have been hard to guess. I wasn't blown away, but I didn't roll my eyes much either. This isn't much my kind of thing on screen, but if it's yours, now you know it exists.

The episode is re-running throughout the week at various times, and at 8:00 this Sunday, with the next new episode to air at 9:00; you can also apparently watch it in full online. (At least one review I saw said that the second episode was much stronger, so we'll see.)

No spoilers for the books in comments, please.

I was going to say something about Survivor, but then I realized that I didn't want to waste my time and energy on such a transparent bid for attention from a declining TV show. However, if you'd like to marvel at the appallingness of it all, check out this article from the Washington Post—be sure to read the second page, which quotes Jeff Probst.

(Lisa de Moraes gives such lovely pointed snark.)

Lost my temper over not one but two online discussions, which is the first time that's happened since I can remember. Only SHOUTED in one; I'm not sure if, in the other, it was apparent to anyone other than Chad that I was truly angry.

I did come up with a ten-second theory on the predominance of women in fanfic, which is that it's more socially acceptable for men to channel those impulses into gaming. Over at Chad's blog, a commentor offered the same explanation, so if it's loony, well, at least I'm not a lone loon.

In other news, a new restaurant in Schenectady, Cella Bistro, is seriously yummy. Chad had, as an appetizer, mussels with a huge heaping of french fries, and as dinner, duck done two ways; I had two appetizers for dinner, filo-wrapped baked brie with greens and pear-Chardonnay sauce, and jumbo crab claws. They also have a tapas menu, which I am going to have to try just for the apple & brie panini. Mmmm, melty brie and fruit.

It's an odd location for an upscale restaurant, kitty-corner from a decaying strip mall, so, like Karavalli in the Quality Inn in Rotterdam (which I appear to have not written up: great and wide-ranging Indian menu, branch of a place in Latham that we really like, not near anything and almost always empty), we'll have to go there often to keep them open. Oh, the hardship.

Also, Animaniacs is brilliant, and I'm very glad that it's out on DVD now. Nevermind Tiny Toons, it's the true heir to Looney Tunes as far as I'm concerned.

Things I failed to do this weekend: write up the next chapter of Fellowship; booklog four books; draft the "you may not discuss copyright unless you can pass this test" list; read Inda; convince the dog that she need not bark before 7 a.m. on weekends, truly.

But I did get some work done, and now that I've dashed this off, as Yakko says—g'night, everybody!

We watched several episodes of Homicide over the past couple of weeks. The airing order and the order on the DVDs appear to differ by quite a bit, but here are quick comments on : "Hate Crimes," "Thrill of the Kill," "Heartbeat," "Sniper" (parts one and two), "For God and Country (2)," and "Full Moon."

( spoilers )

Chad was away last weekend on a debauch, and I took the opportunity to eat a lunch buffet at an Indian restaurant. I had lentil doughnuts (medhu vada, judging by the menu; surprisingly good), and something unindentifiable that was very much like a crepe with a dollop of mashed vegetable curry in the middle, and grilled stuff, and naan, and rice kheer (nice thing about a buffet, I could take just a taste), and then I rolled myself back home to lie in the backyard and read.

On the way to the restaurant, I saw two striking things: a wild turkey winging its way across the road directly in front of me—they seem even bigger than they actually are (which is not inconsiderable) for being so ungainly; and a truck that had replaced the knob below the license plate with a chrome skull, with red LED eyes that lit up when the brake lights did.

Chad got home around 2 a.m. Sunday (delayed flight), and of course the dog woke up when he came in, but she went back to sleep surprisingly quickly; I actually laid awake for about twenty minutes expecting to hear her start crying after him. Chad's theory is that she thought it was a dream, which would explain why she was so amazingly excited when I let her into the bedroom the next morning. She frequently orbits the living room and dining room, running full-tilt in as wide a loop as possible; but when her orbit expands to include the bedroom and the stairs (and she is not good with stairs), well, that's an excited doggie. It was ridiculously cute in a way that probably only other dog owners appreciate.

Chad's folks were up for dinner Friday night. It started inauspiciously, when I opened up the cabinet for plates and saw a house centipede scuttle away in that freakishly quick way that they do. Everyone else helped hunt it down, as I quietly quaked in the other room with the dog; Chad's dad gets credit for finally killing it. However, Chad assures me that this time, my freakout was justified, as the thing was huge, as big as his thumb.

On a more serious note, I was sorry to hear that a great-aunt of Chad's had passed away; though not surprised, since it had been about a year since she was given three months to live. I understand it was a good year, but she was a cool person and will be missed.

After that, though, dinner went fine. We were puzzled to learn of the existence of fat-free half-and-half, which Chad had grabbed unknowingly for the fettucine alfredo; I wouldn't have thought such a thing possible.

We went to the library book sale today, just on a whim, and found ourselves faced with a swarm of literary locusts. It was their bag sale—$2 for a brown paper grocery bag, which you could fill up as you liked—and people were filling those things up like there was no tomorrow. It was kind of heartening, in a way, that so many people wanted books! but it was also frantic and rather claustrophobia-inducing.

We picked up a few random things, and also two hardcover copies of John M. Ford's The Last Hot Time—they had four, which made me sad, so we rescued two of them. sloanesomething, you need one of these; do I have your address somewhere? The other free to whoever asks first.

And then we read in the backyard some more, and I booklogged a bit crankily, and watched an intense episode of Homicide ("A Doll's Eyes"), and now it's time for bed.

Last weekend, I got most of my Christmas shopping done and saw Rent (ridiculously long post on that forthcoming). (We still have to see the new Harry Potter movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and so forth, but I figured that they'd be in theaters a lot longer than Rent.) I finished the rest of my shopping today, then went into work and cleared up a bunch of stuff while checking the Patriots-Bills score online (go, Pats, even if the Bills aren't very good).

Yesterday, we went to our first event of the season, a Physics Department party. That was fun, and started and ended early, so we got home in time to decorate the tree we'd bought earlier in the day. It looks lovely, even if Chad was disappointed by my refusal to follow his family tradition of examining every tree in the lot minutely and agonizing over them (actually, it occurs to me that they treat trees the way I treat, say, shoes, or suits). I was minorly disappointed that all the baked mac & cheese we brought got eaten—I'd been hoping for leftovers—but I am flattered (also, there were a lot of kids there, and it's a very safe food for them. Have to remember that for the future.).

In household news, our roof has been fixed. Actually it was mostly fixed before we even noticed—this is what happens when you come home in the dark, you don't see the new roof until the next morning. We'll have to get the plaster in the entryway repaired too, but that can wait until after the holidays.

I also made peposa in the crockpot last week, a good winter dish; the recipe and notes follow. ( peppery beef stew )

In DVDs, we watched the first two discs of Samurai Champloo. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying this a lot; I had basically no expectations, unlike Cowboy Bebop, and so far the tone is more consistent too. It is silly, with just enough seriousness to keep it from floating away; the snark amuses me, and you know I love Jin. (The first disc was somewhat distracting; I don't know if any of the voice actors are actually the same as Cowboy Bebop, but I kept hearing them as such. This passed fairly quickly.)

Oh, and the preview on disc one for the Saiyuki Reload anime was absolutely hilairious. It was just a sequence of character poses, without (I think) a single word of dialogue; I can't imagine that it would sell a single person on it who didn't already know the story. Well, I'd heard the anime was terrible anyway, and that preview certainly didn't make me doubt that opinion.

We're also watching season one of HBO's The Wire, which is well-done but not entirely my kind of thing. However, so far there have been two great scenes that entirely justify the series' existence, the chess explanation from the drug dealer to the pawns low-level flunkies ("the king, he stay the king"), and the working of a cold murder scene conducted solely in variants of "fuck."

Finally, I don't think I actually want an Avenging Unicorn, but the idea really amuses me.

I was only half-watching, because I was doing work and Chad was flipping back and forth between hoops. So I have very little idea what was going on.

( spoilery questions )

P.S.: the icon lives in hope. They have an axe.

I fell asleep on the couch and only saw from about day 40 or 41 or so. ( spoilers ) Did I miss anything else?

The icon was not made for Lost, but is used in a spirit of hope.

Very briefly because I have work to do.

( spoilers )

( spoilers )

This is part 2 of 2 of the Firefly commentary roundup; part 1 contained episode-specific commentary. Again, these are largely plundered from ealgylden's memories; however, unlike last time, I've given up on annotating the posts and just organized them, since they were collected ages ago and I still haven't gotten around to it. It's theoretically possible that I might annotate some as I go when I refer to them myself, but, well, don't hold your breath.

( Contents )

( On the whole series, including DVD features: )

( Characters )

( World-building )

( Miscellaneous )