Past!Me was clearly leading quite the investigation here...

Totally just found an epic "how do feelings work?!" chart I made when I was younger. 

Kay. So when I was 13 I watched Episode 2 significantly more times than was necessary and I absolutely could not make sense of Padme falling in love with Anakin. It just didn't make sense. There was no logic to it at all. Being me, I set out to solve this using, wait for it, a two page chart documenting Anakin Skywalker's emotions and personality traits across episode 1, episode 2, and the original trilogy.

Stay with me here, cause this made, and to a certain extent, still makes a lot of sense to me. Here I could cross-reference his developing personality with Padme's, as well as mathematically add up desirable traits against the undesirable ones. Here, surely, was the logical answer to her falling in love.

I remember the look on my mom's face when I told her what I was doing, proudly showing her the list I was composing as I complained that I still hadn't made sense of it. 

She told me this: "Feelings don't have to make sense."

I was confused, insisting that I could figure this out. The answer was out there somewhere, perfectly sound and logical, just waiting for me to find it.

But no. "Feelings don't have to make sense," she said again, "And a lot of time they don't."

To this day I have to stop my train of thought to remind myself that feelings don't have to make sense. I still expect them to though. My first reaction to feelings being a rather logical analysis of the factors at play, solving for the emotion by examining the factors that affect it. Once I've identified the emotion and then the factors, it's easy enough to change the factors to change the emotion. Right?

I can't get a handle on feelings that people around me don't have control over. I know they don't have to make sense, but that doesn't make it any easier to understand. 

Jar Jar is about to enter another dimension of annoying...

The Star Wars films are going to be theatrically released in 3D. Unfortunately, it looks like they're releasing them in story order, which means we have to sit through all three prequels before we get to see Luke destroy the Death Star. According to this, Episode One will drop sometime in 2012. I dread to think how long we'll be waiting to see a certain metal bikini in 3D.

Completely unsurprisingly, I'm so totally excited for this. Any reason that gets Star Wars back in the theatres so that crowds of people who love them can experience them together is absolutely fine by me.

Arbitrary Appreciation: Movie Posters that use the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose

Ray Park as Darth Maul demonstrating the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose.

This poster was the first poster I owned that used the "tilt head down and make eye contact" pose in order to make someone look epic. This shortcut to epicness is used in countless posters, some deserving, some really really not.

There are more. Lots more. 

Warning: Trying to recreate this pose without a marketing team, reasonably high budget, brand name or certain level of fame is a surefire way to look very silly.

Adventures in Androgyny: Hesitate

There's this moment when strangers address me, a moment of hesitation before they pick a pronoun when they trip over their words or awkwardly pause because they're unsure which to use. I always enjoy that moment because it feels like up until they had to consciously pick a pronoun they were just seeing me.

Damn you Zelda!

I do not need another copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
I do not need another copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
I do not need another copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

But the 3DS screenshots are so damn pretty...

Arbitrary Appreciation: Tony Stark's Fierce High Heels

Iron Man 2 comes out on Blu-ray and DVD today. This means I can finally throw a viewing party where we high five every time we spot the glorious heels. It'll be like Where's Waldo but fiercer. A lot fiercer. 

Look at them!

I'm also pretty sure the official drinking game for Iron Man 2 will be based around Tony Stark's ever-changing sunglasses... 

No Spoilers

Dexter's back!

And it remains the only TV show that catches in my throat when I watch it. There's a physicality to watching Dexter, a tension that lingers even after the credits roll. It's so fantastically human. Is it Sunday again yet?

Anyone have a sharpie?

I bought new shoes today.
They are Star Wars shoes.
They have a spot on the underside of the tongue for me to write my name.

I swear, one day my feet will be big enough for adult sized shoes...

FINALLY

Dexter. Tonight.

Adventures in Androgyny

Laser tag tonight:

Kid 1: "He's right around the corner! Shoot him!"
Kid 2: "She's a girl!"
Kid 1: "Then shoot her!"
Kid 3: "He's clearly a boy."
Me: *shoots them all and runs away cackling*

BRB getting excited about December 16, 2011

Stephen Fry is going to be Mycroft Holmes in the Untitled Sherlock Holmes Sequel. This pleases me greatly. You have no idea.

I'm also very happy that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace is playing the female lead.

Yes to all of this. Just. Yes.

Adventures in Filmographies

I love movies. And I love the process of discovering new movies (and TV shows and books and radio plays and audiobooks and…)

Star Trek 2009 blew my mind and made me want MOAR. Which was totally fine, because there's more Star Trek around than I could ever want. So off I went, watching the Original Series and enjoying the hell out of the awesome life lessons offered (Rule #1: Don't wear red shirts). But at the same time, I was also going through the actors filmography, adventuring into their past in film and TV series appearances, some of which were far more entertaining than others. The unquestioned winner of the Star Trek phase was Incubus: a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto starring William Shatner from the 1960's. 

By including an actor's past work in the excitement of "Yay new movie I love!" I'm introducing a highly random element. Sherlock Holmes (which has the original stories as well as literally hundreds of adaptations to pick through) also started the Robert Downey Jr filmography phase, which led to me discovering one of my favourite movies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and sitting through some of the most bizarre films I've seen (Rented Lips, Hugo Pool.)  I'm pretty confident no actor or actress will be able compete with the sheer bulk of WTF that ye olde Robert Downey Jr films can provide. 

And the tangents that come from these adventures in filmography are unexpected and delightful. I ended up spending a couple weeks appreciating a bunch of "Patrick Dempsey films made before 1997", which I can truthfully say is a line of interest I could not have predicted. It's also cool to see what films keep popping up. Seven separate quests led me to Bent, a film which has somehow become the Kevin Bacon of my movie world.

The best part of questing through past works is, without doubt, finding something AMAZING that otherwise I would never have come in contact with. Cabin Pressure, a BBC radio sitcom that I listened to because Benedict Cumberbatch was in it, is now one of my all time favourite sitcoms. Of course, the danger of such  method is that there are fantastically awful movies and TV shows waiting to be unearthed. But dodging or suffering through movies that define "why was this made?" just add to the experience and to the joy of finding something awesome.

Arbitrary Appreciation: Carrie Fisher with a shotgun

I watched Sorority Row last night. Why you ask?

The trailer promised Carrie Fisher with a shotgun. And I can't say no to Carrie Fisher with a shotgun. 

Exhibit A: Carrie Fisher with a shotgun

SPOILER WARNING: It was awesome.

Not the movie. The movie was bad and I could actually feel my brain cells dying as I watched it. But Carrie Fisher with a  shotgun? Hell. Yes. 

It's not that you're not sexy, it's just that I don't care.

It's Asexual Awareness Week!

Somewhat ironically, I wasn't aware of this until today. I'm assuming I just missed the memo and the large, bat-signalesque spotlight asexuals use to communicate with each other.

Anyways, on to the awareness. An asexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Asexual is a sexual orientation like homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, etc.  Asexuality is NOT the same thing as celibacy (celibacy is a choice, asexuality is an orientation). Do not mistake a lack of interest in having sex for erotophobia or repression. There are lots of sex-positive asexuals. 

Consider yourself a little bit more aware! As with anything, there's a lot more to it than that. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network and the Asexuality wikipedia page are good places to start.

Brief awareness shout out for the term "aromantic"  which, while lacking a concrete singular definition (some define it as lack of desire for a romantic relationship, others as lack of romantic attraction) it still opens up discussion around romance, romantic attraction and actively works to untangle them from sexual desire. (There are aromantic asexuals and romantic asexuals). 

And finally, some really simple advice for anyone who has someone come out to them as any of the countless non-normative sexual identities and/or gender identities:

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

My The Legend of Zelda Success/Moderate Success/Epic fail list

Zelda games I have beaten:

Ocarina of Time

Majora's Mask

Link's Awakening

Wind Waker

Twilight Princess

Zelda games I have almost beaten (got to last dungeon or further):

Phantom Hourglass

Spirit Tracks

Oracle of Ages

Zelda games that I suck at and will quite possibly never beat:

A Link to the Past

Four Swords

Zelda games I haven't played yet:

The Legend of Zelda

The Adventure of Link

Minish Cap

Oracle of Seasons

It feels like I've played more than this list shows. Probably because I replay the top five with alarming frequency (hello minimum of 30 replays of Ocarina of Time). Also: can you tell my first system was an N64? Anything not 3D is way more difficult. 

Laserdisc collection one step closer to being complete

My Terminator 2 laserdisc arrived today! Easily the best $1.03 I've spent on ebay. Past!Me is terribly happy that I now own most of my favourite movies on laserdisc.

Movies I own on laserdisc:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Lion King
Goldeneye
Terminator 2
Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
Batman Forever

I'm very pleased with this.

First Official "Arbitrary Appreciation" Post

First up: Benedict Cumberbatch's name.

Holy shit guys. Look at this name. I am still not over how epic it is. Like really, KNOWING your kid is going to have "Cumberbatch" as a last name you go with "Benedict". Brilliant.

My name will never be that ridiculous/awesome. I'll never forgive my parents.

Tis a very special day

Happy Birthday Frodo and Bilbo Baggins!

You Shouldn't Have Done That

I really enjoyed Jadusable's Majora's Mask ghost story (crash course HERE). Stories of haunted games have drifted around the internet for years. This one was different.

Careful and planned yet somehow chaotic. I loved the truth claim and the obviousness that it could not be true. And I loved the fact that the question "Why?" burned so brightly, more so than the "how?" or the "who?". Was it viral marketing? It was too dark for Nintendo and it why would someone market something with an old zelda game? And the the direction of the story moved away from the marketable, not towards it. Someone was, most likely, doing this for fun.

But what I loved most was the gentle invitation to the audience, first to read the story, but then watch, download and interact with the ghost himself via a learning bot and a website and an ominous countdown to "The Fourth Day". The escalation of reality, as the narrative spiralled away from the ghost simply being in the game to one that was actively tampering with the various pieces of the story. Jadusable told us a story that caught our attention and then, only once we were listening, asked us softly, "Hey, you wanna play?"

And we did. We really really did.

Once the ghost was out of the game, so to speak, the internet was abuzz with people dissecting each aspect of the story for clues, breaking it apart to search for the "truth". Not the truth that this was a made up story told through clever use of the internet, that one was too simple. No, the internet went looking for the "truth" within the story. The one where a lifeless statue told us every step of the way, "You shouldn't have done that."

Well done sir, I thought when "the truth.txt" told us that BEN communicated through CleverBot. A bot that learns as people interact with it. When hundreds of people talk to the bot associating "BEN" and "drowned" and "Majora's Mask" the bot began to do it automatically. Simple, effective way to let the audience experience the haunting themselves.

He brought the creepiness of Majora's Mask, and the ghost that haunted it from the game to the internet at large  putting up a countdown clock and telling us only that it was counting down to "The Fourth Day". By including a website with ties to Ben and parallels to the apocalyptic moon in Majora's Mask, he brought his story a little closer to "real".  Suddenly there was a nagging doubt, was this the work of someone desperate for attention before committing some horrible act in the real world? The question again, was "Why?". The increasing sense of reality forcing us to wonder, if only for a moment, if this was a warm up for something much worse.

It wasn't of course, but that's not the point. He played with our anticipation and our doubts to the point that what we knew (this was not real) mattered less than how we felt (intrigued and unsettled). Well done sir. I'll look forward to the next haunting. 

Laserdisc Appreciation Post

Laserdiscs are awesome. This should not need saying. But it does. It really really does.

The Best Things About Laserdiscs:

1. Their size: A laserdisc looks like a giant double sided DVD.

2. Flipping the disc: Each side of the Laserdisc only holds about an hour of video. Get excited.

3. The Name: LASERDISC. Enough said.

4. They were delightfully ahead of their time, and were around for way longer than you'd expect. 1978-2000?!

5. The untainted unmodified version of the Star Wars Original Trilogy is available on Laserdisc.

6. A laserdisc player is 8 times the size of a DVD player and weighs significantly more than you're expecting.

7. LASERROT. It's a problem, but it's a cool sounding problem.

8. Laserdisc cases are big, which means lots of room for epic cover art.