Randomness

So, I found the little CD folder I had used to take DVDs to Disney World last summer.

(Yeah, yeah.) 

Anyway, I had slipped in what I thought were season 3 DVDs of Lois and Clark; they were, in fact, season 4.  

Now, the first half of season 3 is my favorite run of episodes in the series, from the first episode ("Who's asking?  Clark...or Superman?") through the Christmas one.  Right after the Christmas one, the frog thing happened, and...yeah. But now I'm on kind of a Lois and Clark kick, which is a shame because the DVDs are very poorly labeled (hence me packing what I thought was season 3 and was, in fact, season 4). 

So, in order to distract myself, I went trolling through things that were hanging out on my TiVo waiting for my attention, and found one of my favorite early Stargate episodes ("The Fifth Race," where Jack absorbs knowledge of the Ancients and -- even better -- begins speaking randomly in Ancient.  At one point, he grumbles, "I've apparently lost the fallatus to speak properly!") along with a good Cam/Sam 'shippy one ("Line in the Sand") from later on. 

Then I notice that there's an X-Files on there that I haven't watched in a long time -- "Triangle," an episode that was set in the Bermuda Triangle on a ship in the 30s -- only to find that Sci-Fi had shifted its schedule ahead by five minutes, so the end was cut off.  Grr. 

(They do that a lot with late night Twilight Zone reruns too.) 

Sci-Fi has been promoting the heck out of Stargate: Atlantis's return next week, and...well, I don't much care.  I did like the episode "Trio" last year, wherein Sam, McKay, and the doctor were trapped in a big hole (I especially liked the doctor's casual reference to a bar game, and Sam and Rodney's blank "huh?" reaction), but that's about the only episode I've watched in full in years.

Meanwhile, adapting Greek myths for my kiddos this summer has been fascinating.  It turns out, for instance, that the Titans' parents were Mother Earth and Father Sky.  Not only that -- the Greeks had a flood myth, just like most other culture in the world.  In theirs, Zeus was so angry about Pandora opening the box, he sent a flood to destroy all of mankind, except for a couple of humans who floated around in a box. 

Ironically enough, a couple of weeks ago, I found a neat book on the bargain rack at Borders called Parallel Myths.  I have only skimmed some of it, but the gist of the book is to examine those exact similarities. It'll be interesting to see what the author says.  

I had a teacher in high school who led us in a discussion of Jung and the collective unconscious after reading Heart of Darkness (although it may have been The Metamorphosis -- but I don't think so...'cause that was the one she likened to the episode of TNG where they think they've left the holodeck but haven't).  

Anyway, she asked us to follow along the argument that all the similarities in all of these cultures come from humanity sharing some sort of unconscious bond, and we create these stories because we're all tapped into it. 

Funny...I only just now realized exactly how radical a thought that was for a teacher at a Catholic high school. Anyway, I find the subject fascinating on a variety of levels.  Are we all tapped into some shared memory, as Jung's theory would suggest?  Are we, as a historian on a special about Egypt once said, a species with amnesia?  Do we all have expulsion-from-paradise stories because, at some level, we remember becoming aware and, for lack of a better word, sentient, and leaving the carefree in-the-present world behind? 

Clearly something is going on, for cultures all around the world to have stories about fallen "angels" (for lack of a better word), stories about a great flood (perhaps remembering a period of high ocean levels, or a remembrance of a particularly terrible tsunami), but is it just expression of universal fears, or something more? 

Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come posits that heaven is what you expect it to be -- that your own expectations and desires frame your existence.  So, if you expect heaven to be floating around in the clouds, that is what you'll experience.  If it's lounging around on an endless beach, that's what you'll experience. 

If that's true, you'll find me planted in a giant celestial library, watching playback of Earth's earliest history. I wanna know, one way or the other, about Atlantis.  I wanna know if it really was the Minoan civilization on Santorini, with outposts like Akrotiri that faded into obscurity, or if it really was an actual continent that sank. (Or, if -- again bringing up the idea of a species with amnesia -- if it's some much earlier memory of continental drift changing landscapes.) 

Speaking of Atlantis, however, one other fannish-type thing:  Cameron Mitchell is just too cool for words. 

Actually, two:  I saw posters for the X-Files movie today.  Despite my desperately trying not to have expectations of it going in -- one way or the other -- it's kinda neat to have that to look forward to. 

Okay, three:  the Star Wars special I watched yesterday was interesting but I think it didn't quite do Amidala or Leia justice.  I do agree with them that the movies are way more about Anakin's journey than the first...err...the 70s era trilogy would have had you believe.  Also, I like that they acknowledged Anakin as a tragic hero -- who caused his own doom (much like Oedipus) by trying to avoid his own doom.