I'm a little teapot

This journal is not Friends Only but some entries are. If you're curious about my deep dark secrets, comment to be added.

I started a community called civilservice. So, if you work for the government in any capacity, from an intern or an aide to a provisional or permanent employee, here's a community for you!

I just read in the newspaper(!) that my work leased office space somewhat close to my house. I really, really hope that my office moves there. Please G0d, make it happen.

ETA: It doesn't like it's going to happen. :(

I was thinking that I might want to go see it next week but man, this was a really awful trailer. Really bad. Like, one of the worst ever. I understand why they picked the clips that they did, but their tone was all wrong. They just didn't have that "sound-bite" quality, so they made the whole thing sound dull and ordinary, when I imagine that movie is anything but.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GxSDZc8etg&feature=fvst

I used to have a Blogger blog that would come up if you Googled my real name. After it got me into trouble a couple of times, I took my name off it. And I pretty much haven't updated it since. I think I should just delete it already.

Completely overrated. I was willing to suspend disbelief about most of the plot contrivances, coincidences and deep, deep holes, but I couldn't suspend disbelief about the characters and their relationships. There was no chemistry between Jamal and Latika, not to mention that Latika didn't actually have a personality so I couldn't see what Jamal saw in her in the first place. And since Latika was such a beautiful girl, I couldn't see what she saw in Jamal, who was such a geeky looking guy. The worst thing was the way that energetic slumdog grifter Jamal grew up to be a morose clean-cut kid willing to work for whatever passes as minimum wage in India. It was not believable at all. Dev Patel wasn't great casting because apparently he can't act. He had the exact same facial expression in almost every scene.

The best part of the movie was the dance they did over the credits.

I'm looking forward to reading the book, hoping that it'll be better.

My weekday goal is to walk a minimum of 10 minutes a day, 5 times a day: to and from the train to work, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once during lunch.

My weekend goal is to walk for about 10 minutes once on Sunday. Saturday is free.

A new comedy from HBO coming in September. It looks cute. Almost makes me wish I had cable. Show's description:

A show created by Jonathan Ames starring Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifianakis about a Brooklyn writer living out his dream to be a character in a Raymond Chandler novel.

Trailer: http://www.hbo.com/events/boredtodeath/

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are remaking Alice in Wonderland. If it's anywhere near as good as their Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then I'm very excited about it.

http://screencrave.com/2009-03-11/johnny-depp-in-remake-of-alice-in-wonderland/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOlw-4h7PLE

Looks marginally less moronic than the first movie, but I'm not buying that Shia LaBoeuf's character is smart enough to go to Harvard.

It was really sweet but I could have lived without the cockroach sidekick.

- If my friend loves living in the suburbs that much, why is she dreaming about nightmarish vampiric worlds where all hope is lost?

- I've learned that standing up to (online) bullies really works. You don't verbally slap them and you don't tell them that they're being jerks, but just the right answer back that shows that you're not hurt by what they're saying effectively shuts them up.

Maybe it's because I identify with Vicky's character that made me not hate this movie. But otherwise, I thought it was poorly done. Overall, there was really no point -- all the characters ended up in the exact same place where they started, having learned absolutely nothing. I find it hard to believe that until Vicky met Juan Antonio she had no idea that she wasn't just a boring grind; after all, she was friends with Cristina. Those sorts of friendships don't happen by accident.

Another problem is that Vicky would never be happy with Juan Antonio long-term, and Doug was not presented as boring enough. He was a decent guy, and didn't spend all his time talking about mergers & acquisitions or golf. So, I guess what I would have liked to have seen was Vicky having a fling with Juan Antonio and Christina having a more serious relationship, and neither of those relationships working out. Now that would have been an interesting role reversal. Hmm, good idea for a screenplay... Because in all other movies like this, the wacky/serious couple always seems to work out. Forces of Nature comes to mind, but there are a million other movies like it.

Oh, did I mention that Javier Bardem was really hot in this movie?

Though I'm not 100% sure, I got some good indications today that the cops did eventually catch that guy they were running after.

Phew, that's a load off my mind. I didn't like the idea that a criminal got away because I just stood around like an idiot.

Today I was at a housing development and I saw a cop chasing a guy in his teens or early 20s. It was pretty exciting, though, unfortunately, I don't think the cop caught up with him. If I were a (big) man I probably would have tried to intercept the guy myself, but being a shrimpy girl, I wimped out. And yet, the big man I was walking with didn't get involved either.

Later on we compared descriptions of the guy's clothing and we couldn't agree on what color his shirt was.

BSG has been on for four seasons. Only the first two were really good. The second two completely veered off the rails character-wise and plot-wise. This last season was the worst, with a massive mutiny subplot being wrapped up in two episodes, for example. So I didn't expect a decent season finale, and I wasn't disappointed. The characters may have been crying in almost every scene, but except for Laura Roslin's death scene, my eyes were dry as a bone.

If anything, I'm glad it's off the air and put out of its misery before it descended into Lost territory. But if Lost, or Supernatural for that matter, give us this kind of ending, I will be furious. Lost because the show has been on for too long and has tantalized us with too many mysteries, and Supernatural because they are really tightening up the show, the episodes are getting better and better, so it would be a total letdown not to have a great finale.

As for head!Six and head!Baltar at the end of BSG, head!Six makes a comment about god and Baltar replies, "He doesn't like to be called that. Silly, silly me." He is clearly referring to himself in the third person. He is god. Which is why the real Gaius spent so much time as a Jesus figure.

This plot point and so many others were shoehorned into the story. This is not where seasons one and two were heading. If I had the time, I'd write an alternate third/final season.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/us/18juries.html (excerpt)

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

“We were stunned,” said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”

I was a juror like five years ago and I was kicked off because they found out that I had looked up the law of whether the jurors were required to be sequestered or not if we couldn't come to a decision. Nothing even to do with the case itself!

I thought this was a travesty, though, frankly, I didn't mind, because basically the only thing I missed were closing arguments and after hearing all the testimony, I had no idea if the defendant was guilty or not guilty. I didn't quite understand what he was charged with, or why, nor was I sure that the testimony made any sense.

If I ever get voir dire'd again, I am going to demand to be able to ask questions of the wintesses as well as be allowed to take notes during testimony. Otherwise I will refuse to be a juror.

While I still think this is a good show, I feel like it's veered into Lost territory the way its plot has gone from one thing to the next with little cohesion.

It started out with a simple idea: the Cylons have destroyed human society so the remnants have to find Earth while trying to beat the Cylons who are trying to kill them. Along the lines they needlessly complicated things and half the time I don't even know what's going on. The messed with the characters. Even though it's an ensemble, BSG is really the Apollo and Starbuck show and they've taken that away from us. Neither character acts as a pilot anymore.

I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think they got a little too full of themselves, sort of the way George Lucas did with his Star Wars prequels. The originals worked so well because they had a simplicity to them.

But it's too late to turn back now. I can only hope that BSG has a better ending than the Sopranos.

I'm back from my vacation. I didn't have the best time, but I'd rather be there than be at home, going to work. Three weeks is just too much time off. It makes you forget what your life is really like.

I started working on a YA novel tonight and I'm very happy about it for two reasons:

1- Recently the only writing I've done has been for NaNoWriMo and I've felt completely uncreative. (The really awful Supernatural fanfic that I wrote in January doesn't count. And anyway, that was almost seven months ago.)

2- This is probably the very first book I've ever worked on where the main character was not a thinly veiled version of me.