The Thing About Your Past, It Must Always Last.

Another edition of videos I enjoyed this weekend!

The first trailer for Captain America came out! Very excited for this movie - I love the franchise, and I can't wait until the Avengers all come together.



Showtime has a new show coming out called The Borgias - It stars Jeremy Irons and is about the Papacy in Inquisition-era Italy. It should be fascinating!



One of my favorite bands from my time in Chicago is called Cobalt and the Hired Guns. They made an adorable video for their song "Of Summer", which they filmed in the aftermath of Chigago's 2011 Snowpocalypse.



Doctor Who is almost back! And we have a teaser of the new season, a prequel to episode 1 "The Impossible Astronaut"



I have not yet seen the movie Sucker Punch - it's one of those movies I'm sort of wary of seeing, because it's either going to be phenomenal or horrendous. There is no in-between. That said, these three animated shorts were inspired by the movie - they set up the worlds the characters of Sucker Punch travel through, giving some extra back story.







ETA:

Who doesn't love tiny adorable kittens being dressed up like insects and little monsters and being sent into outer space?

Despite the fact that I'm still a little bit in denial, and I'm still hoping Delicious will be saved somehow, I find it necessary to figure out where I'm going next with all my web-based bookmarking needs. So I'm writing up a series of posts to review and compare other social/web based bookmarking tools to Delicious, to see if I can find my next social bookmarking tool.

In order to find a suitable replacement, I first need to layout my criteria.

Things I Need From A Delicious Replacement Tool

. Obviously, it needs to let me bookmark things so that I can return to them later
. Tags are a must - I need to be able to organize my bookmarks so I can find them again or sort by category.
. I need to be able to access them from anywhere, even if I'm using a device that isn't mine, so it has to be web-based.
. I really do use Delicious socially - not in the sense of having conversations, but in the sense of sharing content. I need a tool that will let me navigate my friends bookmarks as easily as I navigate my own, and allow them to do the same.
. I also want to be able to search everybody's bookmarks by tag or keywords - and the chance to see how popular any given bookmarked URL is. I'm going to trust a bookmark tagged "Recipe:guava" saved 100 times way more than I'm going to trust a bookmark with the same tag saved only twice.
. That being said, I don't necessarily want EVERYONE to see EVERYTHING I bookmark! For one thing, the Holidays are here and I can't let people I'm shopping for peek at the product reviews I save! So an option to save selected bookmarks privately is a necessity.
. I'm not really ready to go through a whole lot of hassle to bookmark things - Delicious lets me click a button in my browser's toolbar (or just hit Apple+D), enter my tags (plus a title or some notes if I want to), and hit save! Easy peasy, pumpkin pie! The replacement needs to have a comparable level of simplicity
. It's gotta be free. Sorry, Pinboard.in, but there's enough things in my life to pay for, and social bookmarking is not going to be one of them.
. Must support high-volume bookmarking. Bad luck, Historio.us. I currently have 1126 bookmarks on Delicious, and that number will only grow as I continue to bookmark. There's no way the 300 bookmark limit on your free trial will cut it for me.


I've compiled a list of websites/applications/services to look into, from various sources on the web. Those two-sentence write ups aren't going to do it for me, I need to evaluate these services and see how they stack up against Delicious.

. Google Bookmarks
. Firefox Weave/Sync
. Xmarks
. Diigo
. Evernote
. Zootool
. Mister Wong


Edited: So, as it turns out, Delicious is not facing imminent demise and will likely continue in a post-Yahoo! life. Which is AWESOME news! Because I am a huge Del.icio.us fan and don't want it to go away. What that does mean is that this project is much less urgent that I felt it to be when I initially made the post. So, due to that and the fact that I have recently started a second job and no longer have quite so much free time to research and write blog posts (because I was really good at it before) - this project will proceed, but at a much more leisurely pace. Expect reviews to come sort of eh, whenever.

In conclusion: DELICIOUS LIVES!

Dear Ryan Murphy,


PLEASE. I am begging you on bended knee: Stop writing plotlines surrounding Will Schuester's gross obsession with Emma and inability to function romantically! Because it's not endearing, watching him ruthlessly pursue a woman who has already clearly rejected him. It doesn't make me cheer for Will and Emma as a couple to watch her get him shirtless, then abruptly become horrified with herself and run back to the boyfriend who has been good for her. It makes me feel icky, and it makes me want to turn off the show.

And R.Murph, that's a shame. Because you have all the ingredients for something really wonderful in this show - you have a bunch of charismatic young people who really understand and embody the characters they are playing, and each of them deserve the opportunity to shine in plotlines that actually show their character development.

Mercedes stepping up to play Frank-N-Furter was INSPIRED. She completely rocked that solo, and I would have loved to have seen more from her this episode.

Brittany and Santana just had a big fight, and we didn't see how they worked it out. You had them singing and dancing together during Touch-A Touch Me, but couldn't you have given them a scene together?

Mike Chang, who has been my favorite character since before you even gave him lines, is finally getting a little more room to shine, but why don't you give us a story line that actually shows some of the family problems he's been hinting at in his fight with Tina and his parents not wanting him to do the show?

Just - just stop with Will. He's awful. He didn't start out that way, in fact I kind of liked him for a lot of the first season, but episodes that focus on him are always awful and icky and leave me wanting a shower. His romantic life is pitiful and gross, and the reason those story lines creep me out as much as they do is because the show writes those stories in a way that's asking me to feel sorry for him, or cheer for him, or be on his side. And I can't be on his side, Ryan Murphy. I can't be on Will Schuester's side because I think that he has terrible attitudes toward women, and that he's bad for Emma. Despite his frequent moments of remorse over his behavior, Will Schuester has shown himself to be incapable of genuine self-reflection and has a disturbing tendency to act incredibly selfishly without regard to how it will affect the people around him, including the students he is responsible for.

And the thing is, Ryan Murphy, that you don't actually have to figure out how to *fix* Will as a character. In fact, I don't want you to (or, to be quite honest, think you can). Just stop focusing the plot on his storylines and give the other incredibly talented actors in your cast some space to shine.

I am a fan of the show. I love that it tries so hard, and takes on issues that other shows don't. When it's good, it is so good - but it has problems. And the problem that poses the biggest danger of making me turn the show off for good? Is Will Schuester.

All that said, there were a lot of elements of the Rocky Horror episode that I liked. At this point, though, an actual show recap is a whole other post.

I was underwhelmed by the first episode of Glee this season.

Basically all we did was rehash some major themes from last season, such as:
( Everyone is exactly the same as last year )

Narratively, it's re-setting the scene for a new season and essentially putting everything back to where it was in the first place. I'm left so cold by this episode because I don't want to watch the same season over again.

There were a few things I did like.
( Sometimes, good things happen )


But tomorrow night is Episode 2! And despite all its problems, Glee still gets me excited. So that's a point in its favor. And I've also just learned that ( CASTING SPOILER FOR LATER THIS SEASON )

I typically enjoy Glee because it's totally ridiculous, but boy- wasn't Chris Colfer (Kurt) amazing tonight? I feel kind of redundant talking about how much I love the way the show is crafting Kurt's relationship with his dad, but they've taken that really well crafted relationship that they built and they matured it beautifully.

Most shows would have considered Kurt's coming out issues laid to rest with Wheels, and I'm really glad that Glee didn't. They showed that for Kurt, his dad saying he's ok with "the gay thing" isn't enough. They showed Kurt experimenting with his sense of self, trying to see if he could be the kind of son he thought his dad wanted. Kurt's ridiculous impression of a good old midwestern boy was in equal parts hilarious and tragic. And his dad was so on-point in his total bafflement and the way he was trying to not push Kurt in either direction.

I think Kurt and his dad are just one example of what Glee does better than any other show, and that's relationships. The relationships on Glee are fantastically developed. The romantic entanglements of the Glee kids are never just romantic entanglements - they all take place within the context of a social group. And even when relationships don't last for more than a single episode, their impact and the way they change the group dynamics can still be felt. Emma and Will have an incredibly layered and complex relationship where they want to be together, but they both have their own issues that they need to deal with before any successful relationship can come to fruition.

Glee has this way of coming across as a really surface show, and most of us tune in for really surface aspects. But the show's actually got a lot of depth that has a tendency to get hidden under ridiculousness and quick changes.

Top moments:

Puck's Sammy Davis Jr Solo

Britney's desire for a "perfect record"

Kurt's second solo and the following scene with his dad

Mercedes back in her fabulous wardrobe and out of the Cheerios uniform!

Not so top moments:

That version of One was terrible

Finn and Rachel fell flat for me. Those two have absolutely no chemistry, and that arc was not handled well.


I really hope that Jesse hanging out with his Vocal Adrenaline buddies is going to accelerate the torn loyalties drama that has to come. I'm still holding out hope for a melodramatic pay-off on Jesse's arc. Preferably one that involves Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff emoting at one another a lot.

Just in case you were wondering, the Weeping Angels? Still the most terrifying creature in the entire Whoniverse.

( 5.04: The Time of Angels )

I love Doctor Who. I'm a New Who fan, Chris Eccleston was my first Doctor and David Tennant was the first Doctor who stuck around more than a single season. I have a mission to go back and watch some Classic Who, because I'm big on knowing my history, but it's one that I probably won't get to for some time.

David Tennant was a lot of people's First Doctor. Those people are very sad that he is going, because for most, your First Doctor is YOUR Doctor. But as long-time Who fans will tell us (such as Neil Gaiman on his Twitter feed), it doesn't matter if he's YOUR Doctor, after a few weeks the new Doctor will always manage to become THE Doctor. Have faith in the show.

So far, my faith has been rewarded. I'm loving Matt Smith. And I love Amelia Pond (who now that she's grown up goes by Amy, but the Doctor promised to fix that nasty "growing up" affliction - I hope that means he'll fix her name too! She is in so many ways delightfully fairy-tale, spouting lines like "A long time ago tomorrow morning")

The Doctor-Companion relationship is a tricky one. It's never an equal relationship (though Donna Nobel, temp of my heart came pretty darn close by demanding the Doctor's respect & not giving him an inch of unearned ground) and because of that, the relationships that have a romantic tinge to them can frequently leave me feeling a tad uncomfortable.

We got introduced to Ms Pond as a little girl. The doctor remembers her as little Amelia Pond, and the first episode is devoted to her childhood stories about the Raggedy Doctor who promised to take her away to see the stars. Despite the actors' closeness in age, Matt Smith and Karen Gillam have thus far been doing an incredible job of portraying the difference in age. This is part Amy looking at the Doctor with such an earnest sense of childhood wonder, combined at times with a childishly self-centered sense of injustice ("Why did you say five minutes?!"), and part Matt Smith having moments in which he achieves a sense of ancientness that David Tennant never *quite* managed. What I hope for their relationship as it grows is that it becomes more of a girl and her grandfather, which would be a clever reference back to the very first Doctor, whose companion even referred to him as "Grandfather".

I'm looking forward to watching Matt and Karen grow into their roles. I'm excited by what I've seen so far, and I trust Stephen Moffat. I trust him a lot more than I trust Russell T. Davis (a Children of Earth/General Torchwood tangent for another time), I trust him to treat the characters I love with the respect they deserve and to hold the show I love up to the high standards that I and legions of other fans have for it. The New Doctor is always an exciting time. We're sad to see Tennant go, but a new chapter is beginning and I'm hopeful and excited.

I consider myself a good feminist. A living-in-the-real-world, we'll-never-be-a-perfect-society-but-we-can-at-least-be-better, I-think-it's-ok-to-sometimes-laugh-at-myself feminist, but a good feminist nevertheless. But I don't consider myself someone who toes the pitchfork wielding line of extremists who tell me that I'm a bad feminist if I don't take the most radical point of view. I don't consider myself someone who is so firmly rooted in what I believe that all I can do is shout it more and more emphatically, shutting down the lines of communication with people who think differently than I do.

There's this event that has been advertised on campus for the last few weeks. It's happening this Wednesday. It's an event that, in the interest of not shutting off lines of communication with people I disagree with, I will probably end up attending. The advertising for this event has been intentionally radicalizing, blatantly one-sided, and in the case of the table-topper pictured at the top of this post, actually offensive to me. Mostly because of the hypocrisy represented in the line "IF YOU ARE A WOMAN, YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND". Excuse you, if you don't think that the blasted patriarchy you're fighting so hard against should be permitted to create a discourse that constructs my body as something I don't wish it to be (a sexual object, a childbearing object, a care-taking object &c. &c. &c.) then WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING? My body is NOT a battleground on which you are permitted to stage your fight, my body is my own.

Yes, yes, yes, the body is a cultural object the meaning of which is not derived from a sovereign (ie singular and centralized) power but rather is entrenched in a cultural discourse and is constructed out of social, political, and cultural meaning. Ok, I understand that you want to shift that discourse. But how about instead of keeping notions of gender and sexuality so firmly rooted in the body you move it away from the physical body, from biological sex. How about you don't reaffirm the already existing notions of objectification of the female body by structuring it as a thing devoid of will or agency, something that is acted upon rather than something that acts. Because a battleground does not fight back, a battleground is appropriated for the use of the soldiers who fight on it. A battleground can be destroyed, ravaged, torn apart, with no final affect on the battle.

So my body is not your battleground, Sunsara Taylor. Not yours or anyone else's. And if the fliers I have seen plastered all over campus are truly reflective of your views then I fear your so-called revolution will do me as a woman more harm than good. I guess I'll see you at your event tomorrow, because now that I've critically engaged in your advertising I'd better at least see if it matches the views you present at your talk.

Edit: Attended the talk. A lot of outrage, not a lot of solutions. This is my unsurprised face.

This comment is really late. Not a few days late, or even a couple weeks late. This comment is A BUNCH OF MONTHS LATE but it's still really bugging me so I need to put it out there:


Was anyone else really confused when they learned that this major motion picture called "Avatar" that was getting all this buzz at comicon and among all these geeks was actually going to be about blue people and not about a little airbender named Aang who needs to learn to master his powers so that he can stop the FireNation from destroying the world? Did anyone else feel like someone had pulled a fast one on them? Yes? You too?



Ok good. Now that we've established that we can finally move on.

I think it was yesterday that someone posted Lady Gaga's new video for Bad Romance up on my flist. And yeah, it's pretty awesome. And I was surprised, because I remembered not really liking her videos for "Just Dance" or the Disco Stick song (which yes, I know, is called LoveGame, but every time I hear the title I just think of Old Gregg.)

Because I liked the new video so much, I decided to see if maybe her other music videos were worth a second look. And while neither the Just Dance or Disco Stick videos were compelling, I did discover the GEM that is her Paparazzi video!

It plays out like a mini-movie, in which Lady Gaga and Alexander Skarsgard star in an epic drama of Fame, Lust, Murder, and Revenge! More relevant, a silver eyepatch and a whole mess of crazy outfits! Why, you ask? Because Lady Gaga is crazy and ASkars is game enough to go along with it.

Lady Gaga is interesting as a celebrity, because she doesn't fit into traditional celebrity molds - She markets herself as a singer and a musical artist, but her music is very nearly beside the point of her art. She's a performance artist performing the role of pop star, which is really very interesting because it means that her music is just a vessel for her art, it is not in and of itself her art. I love the way she uses fashion to create a cohesive artistic vision as a celebrity personality. She wore this crazy getup to the red carpet of the VMAs this year, the most notable part of which was the collar. It completely restricted movement in her neck, having a brace-like quality (albeit an elaborately adorned brace), and the fashion choice didn't make sense to me until I saw the Paparazzi video - the plot of which has her thrown off a balcony, then returning, injured but still fabulous, to exact her revenge.

Part of me wonders why she even made an album, rather than only putting out singles and creating music videos and doing live performances where she pushes the boundaries of what a pop star is and should be. It would have been a really interesting artistic and career choice to not put out an album, one that might have been a commentary on the state of the music industry at present.

I like her as a celebrity and an artist. I think what she does with fashion and music videos and her presentation of her self is interesting and compelling and thought provoking. Her music itself is kind of bland dance pop music, which is why a lot of music snobs look down their noses at her. Her lyrics aren't bland, but the actual music is pretty conventional. It's catchy and popular, and I actually do like it quite a bit, but it doesn't begin to approach the level of Avant-Garde present in everything else Lady Gaga does.