Real Life Crossover

Okay, so, it's Saturday night and nothing is on TV, so I end up watching a History Channel special called "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed." (Note in regards to my prior post...the rule also works for episodes and series titles.  "The Trouble with Tribbles" is a popular episode of Star Trek, and "The Choice" is to Farscape what "The Body" is to Buffy.  However, I'm not quite sure where this special falls...it's two hours, but I wouldn't call it a movie....) Anyway, all sorts of important sci-fi people are providing commentary, including (so far) J. J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Peter Jackson. It's Peter Jackson that prompted the post. He has, apparently, lost quite a bit of weight since his Lord of the Rings days...and he now looks a whole lot like the guy who played Merry when he was on Lost (I think it's the beard). It kinda broke my brain a bit.

Grammar Lesson for Today

I was reading a message board thread about songs, and I hit upon a new grammar pet peeve.

You put song titles in "quotation marks."

You italicize the name of the album.

(Memory trick:  Short things get quotation marks.  Long things get italicized.)

So, this is correct:  My favorite version of the song "Hallelujah" is on k.d. lang's album Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

Bonus tip:  The same trick memory trick works for stories and books.  Short stories get quotation marks; books get italicized.

So, this is correct:  The only thing of Stephen King's I've ever finished is the story "The Langoliers" from the book Four Past Midnight.

Yikes

I love my iPhone.  I really do.  I am also planning on handing it down on or near the 11th when I buy my birthday present for myself (a 16 GB iPhone 3G).But...that's a week from now...and there's already a line?

Yikes.

ETA:  Speaking of lines...I imagine I will be taking Patrick to Disneyland on Sunday....

ETA2:  Hey!  It's Patrick's friend!  Awesome!  (Yes, he rides the monorail enough that pilots recognize him, and many stop to chat with him -- especially Bill, the one in the picture.)

The 32 D'ohs

Yes, there really is a sound file somewhere on the Internet composed of 32 "d'ohs" right in a row.

What makes me think of it is that I just managed to scrape straight up my left arm, nearly from elbow to wrist, on the spring that popped out of the side of my mattress some time ago.

(Yes, I should get a new mattress, but I mostly remember it's there, and as I have a California King sized bed (a hand-me-down), mattresses are expensive.)

Ow.

The long campaign of making Bulldozer not hate his communication device began today, when I made him Bingo caller (our spelling words this week are the basic colors, which he -- not so coincidentally -- adores talking about).  He began to hate his device when he began to hate speech -- also not so coincidentally, but that's another story.

He did, however, sit with Speech Aide C -- who may not be returning to our school next year due to budget issues -- and do actual speech with her for nearly 20 minutes, quite happily.

Ironically, she sends everybody else she works with into a tailspin meltdown.

Also, once upon a time at our school, there was a boy named MF, as opposed to MW.  MF, because he is extremely intelligent, was moved to a more challenging program.  Every time -- every time -- I have seen MF this summer, walking to or from the bus, some aide has been leading him BY THE HAND.

Grrr.

I had MF one summer for summer school -- I think he was in first grade at the time.  I didn't lead him by the hand then.  He knew where he was going.

Grrrr.

Of course, I also can't figure out why former student J (the one who was legally blind) is coming to school every day with someone who I assume to be her mom, using a white cane, only to have her mom take the cane home with her every day.

So, we have my brain struggling with: (1) Hooray!  She finally got a cane! and (2) Um...canes only help if you use them...in this, you know, unfamiliar, crowded environment.

Bwuah?

A Ha!

Okay, here's the thing.

I cannot -- absolutely cannot -- pick faces (or anything, really) out of a crowd.  I call it "Can't See the Trees for the Forest Syndrome."

I vividly remember one day when I was about twelve or so -- I was helping teach a class at the park near my house with this lady Vicki.  Vicki wanted something in the art supply cabinet.

I remember opening the cabinet and just seeing...stuff.  No rhyme, no reason -- I had seen all of it, knew what all of it was, but all my brain could see was...a great big mass of stuff.

"No, no, down!" she said.

I looked down.  Stuff, stuff, and stuff.

"To the left."

I looked left.

Stuff, and stuff.

"It's right in front of you."

Eventually, I found whatever it was...but what I had to do was look at each item in the area she indicated individually, until I found whatever it was.  I'm sure she was thinking that it would have been easier for her to get up and get whatever it was herself.

I have the same problems with faces in crowds.  Faces, faces, faces...if I don't have something concrete to hold onto (at my cousin's graduation, I knew she was near the beginning, and found her only because she was right behind two boys), I don't have much of a hope of finding things.

But I recognize people, and I recognize voices.

(Doesn't mean I put names with faces, mind, but that's irrelevant for this discussion.)

Keep in mind that I watch a lot of sci-fi.  Lots of times, people are buried under prostheses and makeup, and sometimes even contacts.  But I recognize them.

In fact, I recognized him:

as also being him:

In this case, it was, I kid you not, the fingers and the smile...even under all that make-up.

So when I mentioned a while ago that the guy who played Nicki's boyfriend on Heroes looked like the guy who played Gunn on Angel, it was with misgivings.

I know what he looks like, and it wasn't him...but I never quite got rid of the idea that he had something to do with Angel.

I was close.

He played Forrest, one of Riley's buddies, on several episodes of Buffy in the fourth season.

So...

equals...

I'm actually a little put out that I could recognize Rene Auberjonois under all that make-up, and not this guy, even though he played humans in both cases.

Still, it's nice to solve the mystery.

By the way -- I'm all caught up, but...did I miss the part that explains why Matt and Molly live with Mohinder?  Or, for that matter, how Matt convinced anyone that he should have custody of Molly?

Well, Darn

General Hammond has gone to the great Stargate in the sky.

RIP, Don S. Davis.

Fandom types will also remember him as Scully's late father in the X-Files episodes "Beyond the Sea" and "One Breath." 

A quick trip to imdb.com says he was also in episodes of Psych, Supernatural, West Wing, Andromeda, The (newest) Twilight Zone, two episodes of The Outer Limits (playing different characters), and an episode of Highlander, along with starting in co-starring in Twin Peaks, amongst many, many other things.

But, to me, he's General Hammond, and I always picture him with two expressions: either the why-on-Earth-did-I-take-this-job incredulity as his best team insisted an invisible Urgo was talking to them in their heads; and the look on his face when Jack started spouting technobabble in "The Fifth Race."

Mistaken Identity

I got a great big hug from Goodfella today (I think?  Is Goodfella Boy M?).

As in, he saw me, opened his arms up, and half-ran, half-waddled ('cause that's just him) right up to me.

I think he thought I was Cat, though.

I Am Officially Insane

Here is a peak into how my brain works.

For years, while standing in line for Pirates of the Caribbean, my brain would immediately latch on to whatever my particular 'ship of the moment was (Riker/Troi, Tom/B'Elanna, and others...) and concoct ridiculous reasons for them to be in line for Pirates.

Only Pirates, mind.

(No, I don't know why.  Really.  I have absolutely, honestly, 100% no idea why it would be Pirates and nothing else.)

And, no, not with me.  Just...in line for Pirates.  I think with Tom and B'Elanna it was often Tom introducing B'Elanna to Disney in an attempt at helping her connect with her inner child.  I dunno.

But now, the last three times I've been to Disneyland, my brain has helpfully provided the beginning of a scene of a full-fledged story, that actually makes sense, where it's actually reasonable for the characters to be at Disneyland.

It's getting harder to avoid writing it.

I am utterly insane.

Another Photography Discovery

My point and shoot vastly over-saturates green.  Yeesh.  I was messing around with a few photos in Aperture, which has a slider called "vibrancy" -- which, essentially, saturates everything but skin tones.

It makes the photos beautiful, but on every single one, I've had go to back and desaturate the greens just a little bit.

Also?  One of these days, I'll win the lottery and be able to afford a wide angle lens.  Yeesh, are those things expensive...most of them cost more than my Rebel + kit lens did together a few years ago.