Here's some geeky fun to mark the occasion:

This is a big day for me, personally. My family wasn't huge about football (never having lived in a city with a team for very long -- Army brats) but we always watched the Super Bowl. Now I'm in my new city and they're in the Super bowl for the first time ever. New Orleans has always loved the Saints, no matter what, and even had they lost, they would have been welcomed back at heroes. 

Let me give you and idea about what this has done for NOLA, a generally euphoric town at this time of year, regardless. No establishment without a television and alcohol service stayed open past 4pm today. The grocery stores had replaced the store music with CDs of Saints music (and there are scads of them - this IS a city known for it's music, yanno) for the last month.

New Orleans is still struggling to recover from Katrina, in more ways than one. We needed this. We really did.  Don't b'lieve me? Take a look at this:

New Orleans is entirely unlike any other place on the planet, and I'm utterly in love with my new home. My usual post- SuperBowl fun is to take a look at the ads and pick a favorite -- something that we will likely do very soon. But right now I'm just going to leave you with this:

 

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Those of you who havebeen around here for a bit maybe acquainted with our resident purveyor of snarky movie recaps, Fluffy Bunny.  You may not know that Fluffy (otherwise known as Lisa), besides having a great wit and writing for us here, makes her living as a self-employed artist. She is based in Orlando, and also has an internet shop, F-Bod Studios, where she offers both her art and her gift of snark for us to enjoy.

I've always been impressed by her, making a life for herself with her art and wit -- and all on her own terms.  Like many self-employed folk in recent years, Lisa had to make the choice between food and shelter  and health insurance. (I know how this feels, too -- my Beloved and I have been self-employed for years, and now pay more per month to ensure our family of four than we do for housing, and we've reduced our coverage every year. It's only by the grace of God (and the fear of losing our children's future to catastrophic illness and financial ruin) that we remain among the lucky insured.) 

It's not a new thing -- lots of people in America have had to make that choice. More and more every year. Consider this fifteen-year-old clip from The Simpsons:

   

Recently Lisa was rushed to the hospital with heart palpitations. Soon she discovered that her  heart is fine, that her condition is easily treatable and not currently life-threatening -- but it could easily become so without surgery.

Basically, she has uterine fibroids that cause such severe bleeding every month that she is dangerously anemic. So anemic that her organs don't get enough oxygen, and her heart becomes stressed trying to push what hemoglobin she has around to everywhere that needs it. She's on iron supplements, but whatever she manages to build up is lost every 28 days. The only treatment that can help at this point is a hysterectomy. 

No big deal, right? It's a fairly routine surgery, and one her gynecologist will gladly do for $2700.00 up front, which Lisa simply doesn't have. She's exhausted the options available to her through hospital programs (and they are more than willing to let her pay off her recent $8,000.00 bill over time). But she falls in that sweet spot financially -- the one between being well-off enough to afford medical care or health insurance on her own and being poor enough to qualify for medicaid or other state-funded programs. 

So Lisa, our own Fluffy Bunny, is stuck waiting for a relatively simple health problem to become a life-threatening one -- which it definitely will long before she can save up the $2700 for the surgery. AND once it has to be done in an emergency situation, the cost will likely be much higher, not only for her. I used to work for the government, and I've seen it happen a lot, something treatable, left untreated, ends up ruining people financially and causing the health care system to absorb the rest of the cost. 

This is a good thing for exactly no one. Especially not for my friend, and you can help her.

This article is scattered with images of her art, her wit, and her livelihood. And now I'm going to beg you to help raise money for Fluffy's operation. Spread the word! If we can get enough people to donate a dollar or five, maybe we can save her the expense of another ER visit or however many it takes until they decide she's close enough to death to warrant an emergency operation.  Things being what they are, I know few of us are in a position to give large amounts. But if you donate a little and help us spread the word, we can help.   

Together, we can help.  I'm even putting a up this handy button, to make things easy. It's for a PayPal account dedicated to Fluffy's Bye-Bye Woman-Part That is Killing Me Fund. (The Human Fund is the actual name that comes up, and everything donated goes straight to her.)

Also, if any of the designs or slogans scattered around this article catch your fancy, you can buy them on a variety of products here. She's got some freaking awesome t-shirts.

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If you're not up to date on the Macmillan/Amazon kerfuffle, go read John Scalzi's hilarious rant on the subject. It summarizes what happened pretty well.

I spent my software career working in electronic publishing, which gives me some perspective on this situation. I've been out of the industry for a while, so much of my knowledge is out of date. However, I have a good overall sense of the business. This kerfuffle has led me to think some more about the future of the publishing industry, and what role companies like Macmillan (traditional publishers) are likely to play in it.

Question #1, What is a publisher's value-add?

Before I look at that, I have to answer question #2, Why do we care about a publisher's value-add?

We, and by we I mean readers, care because we pay for that value-add. When I buy a traditionally published book, I am paying 3 different entities, not counting middlemen. A percentage of my money goes to the retailer (e.g., Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble), another percentage goes to the publisher (e.g. Macmillan, Random House), and another percentage goes to the author. While I don't know exact numbers, my impression is that the retailer gets the largest share, followed by the publisher, followed by the author.

Here I have to bring in self-publishing, because it's my belief that self-publishing and the growing ebook market are very closely related, in that as ebooks replace paper, self-publishing will become more viable, and it represents a threat to traditional publishing. When people self-publish, they cut out the publisher's percentage of the take, because there is no publisher. The take is split between the retailer and the author. The author has a choice of pricing his book the same as a traditionally published book and taking a larger cut for himself, or using the savings to undercut the market and price his book lower.

Given the financial advantages of self-publishing, why do most authors opt not to do it? Because having a traditional publisher is well worth it. The publisher provides value-add.

What's the publisher's value-add?

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It should come as a surprise to no one that companions from the Doctor Who reboot (2005 to present) took the highest places in our poll, because the earlier Who iterations are no longer being regularly broadcast. It seems the original series has been relegated to the purview of  die hard Who enthusiasts and pre-Eccleston purists. (As hard as it may be to believe, I know at least two people personally for whom there never will be a Doctor after Tom Baker.  Baker was the Doctor of my childhood - mostly due to a ten-year lag that used to exist between shows airing on the BBC and the same shows entering the US airwaves - so I have a great sympathy for them. However, they've missed some great stuff, especially lately.)

I urge all of you new Who enthusiasts to check out the old show on Netflix. Yes, sometimes the sets wobble and the Daleks are thwarted by stairs, but the show transcended its trappings. If it had not, there would not have been a reboot. Pinky swear.

Now that I've had nearly a month to heal the blow to my heart that was The End of Time, and it is time to face up to the end of Ten as well as the end of our  Who Companion poll. *sniffle* Thanks to all who voted!

Here's the final tally:

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I'm a sucker for comic books.

I love the art. I love the story telling. I love the combination of art and story telling. I love that they use art to tell a story just as much as they use dialogue and narration. And I love bulked up superheroes, flawed and perfect. I love that we've taken the richness of classical myth, and recreated it for our modern world in a way that people who would never otherwise pick up a book on the topic can find meaning. The reinvention of myth and even the reinvention of what it means to be a hero. I love it all.

Lately, I've been taken in by the relaunch of Marvel's Thor title. It started innocently enough. I've always been fascinated by mythology, pantheons, and the cultures that worshipped them were always my favorite part of history classes. I took a class on Norse Mythology in college, in fact. It's impossible to ignore the influence of the Scandinavian people, and their heritage when you live in North Dakota for any extended period of time-- but I'm pretty sure my love for Norse Myths, and Thor in particular, came before I fell into that Midwestern (and I say it lovingly) black hole.

The Thor title in its previous incarnations (588 issues? really?) never attracted my attention, though. For one thing, it wasn't until my teens that I cultivated any real independent taste for comic books that wasn't influenced by my older brother, and for another, it's a little bit hard to jump into those titles when they're on issue 500 and counting, and you have no idea what the heck is going on. In my opinion, this is the number one problem with the big titles, today. Superman, Spiderman, X-men, Avengers-- you almost have to know the entire history, as well as read every other title in the universe to have a context for the story in the issue you picked up off the rack, but that's another post altogether.

But I was totally blown away by Ultimate Thor-- that is, Thor as he appeared within the Ultimates 1 & 2 titles (3 was a catastrophe that I've been trying to repress). The idea of turning Thor into a hippy conservationist using his powers to try to save the planet, ecologically, while boozing it up with his fellow activists was so alarmingly different, so incredibly unique a take, that I couldn't resist. Who can say no to a thundergod smiting a whaling ship with a bolt of lightning? Not only that, but this incarnation of Thor didn't feel at all compelled to speak awkwardly in the third person with outdated language! I was hooked!

So naturally, in my casual stroll through the graphic novels section of the bookstore, when I happened across volume one of this new title in trade paperback form back in August of '08, I had to pick it up. Why not, I thought? I had a long train ride ahead of me to go visit my sister, and some reading material was in order. But once I read the first couple of pages, that was it. Marvel had me. Again. Just when I had given up on them because of that horrible Ultimates 3 fiasco. Here was a Thor I could respect! And more importantly, a story that treated him as more than a musclebound oaf.

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The iPad seems, on the face of it, like it would be ideal for someone like me - someone who is less than super tech savvy. It is a sexy piece of technology. It's beautiful, functional and it has hipster cachet.

But it's also horribly, deliberately crippled.

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Here at GC, we're never happier than when our readers engage us in conversation. No, really. I have always enjoyed being challenged. If no one bothers to question our assumptions, how can we grow? When I went through the "Why is the sky blue?" phase, my family actively encouraged me to ask more questions.  (I'm a parent now, and I've got to tell you, I have more respect for my folks every day.) So, I find it actively enjoyable to discuss points of interest in the articles I write. (This is a different thing entirely from trollishness, which amounts to "[insert noun/pronoun] sucks" or the YouTube version,  "shut up and show your boobies." Those, while amusing in their own way (Ha, HA! Inarticulate boy is inarticulate!) are not really engaging.)

So it was with great delight that I sorted through the mailbag to find the following letter from Mark Warren, a Whedon fan and writer of fanfiction, who had a few bones to pick with my recent article, Dollhouse: Did I Fall Asleep?  Mr. Warren was kind enough to let me share his letter with GeekaChicas readers. It is presented here with some serious formatting issues I could not fix, though I tried. (Our site software has some issues with the text, though it looks fine when we go in to our WYSIWYG editor.) 

There are more spoilers than in my original article beyond this point.

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Remember that show, My Two Dads?

Not really an original theme. For instance: Theseus has two fathers. And he isn't the only Greek (and when I say Greek, I also mean Roman) Hero suffering from a redundancy of dads.

To understand this, maybe I need to go into the philosophy a little bit. You see, back in the day, men in their infinite wisdom (a la Aristotle) operated under the common misconception that women really weren't more than just an oven. The sperm did all the work of making a baby, and the wife contributed little if nothing at all to the resulting offspring, other than providing the space for incubation. Semen was the provider of all...well, they didn't really consider it genetic material then, so lets say life-forming matter or spirit. As a result of this understanding if a woman had intercourse with two men in the same day, or the same night, the child born was believed to be a mix of those two men--fathered by both.

In Greek Myth and History we see the Dual-Dad syndrome in children born of the gods, pretty exclusively as far as I know, which is convenient because it relieves them of the burden of being illegitimate heirs. I have to admit, I'm not exactly sure what the lot of an illegitimate child was, but the fact that the children are labeled as such in works like The Iliad leads me to believe that they were probably not given the privileges of their legitimate brothers and sisters. Certainly Hera had no love for Zeus's bastard children, and legitimacy seems at the very least to be required of one who will inherit any kind of land, wealth, or kingdom.

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Most of you probably don't know that my day job used to be copy editing. Basically, people paid me to make sure their important documents didn't accidentally make them look like morons to people with a decent grasp of grammar and punctuation. I worked on a contract basis, and I found it rather surprising how much my skills were worth on the open market, considering that anyone who halfway paid attention in English class should know what I know. This was both encouraging (Woot! I can has Monies!) and depressing. (The the high-powered business people who could pay me $30.00 an hour to toss their jargon-filled corporate word salad into something recognizable as English obviously didn't need to know they shouldn't use an apostrophe to pluralize to be, well, high-powered business people. I console myself that this basic life skill could have saved them a lot of money. Money I was happy to take from them. Chumps.)

I soon discovered that online communications had new and exciting ways for people to violently misunderstand each other. Ways that could, perhaps, be helped by good punctuation, but never completely eradicated. In online written communication, we only get words. Things like inflection, tone and facial expression are lost entirely. Which is to say, it becomes much harder to express the concept of sarcasm elegantly.

Inventive netizens found ways around this in this in annotations used to make their meanings clearer, such as [/sarcasm] or [j/k], and let us not forget the wide array of emoticons and smileys with which we are now quite familiar. (Such as )

Still, netizens of note would occasionally remark on the lack of a clear way to denote sarcasm in writing. (Most recently by Neil Gaiman, who was told by his readers that such a mark existed in Ethiopian - an interesting side note, if not terribly useful to those of us unfamiliar with the language.)

Well, my friends, our prayers have been answered! The US firm Sarcasm, Inc. stepped up to fill the void by inventing the SarcMark, a downloadable punctuation mark you can install on your computer or texting device for the low, low price of $1.99.  It currently supports most Microsoft platforms and many popular devices, and they are working on expanding to Mac as well. Right now it is available in graphic as well as in font formats, but the font version (which can be re-sized or appear in different colors) can only be seen by another device that has the SarcMark installed. 

"That's a great idea," you say, "but will it catch on?" It's too soon to tell, but early sales are promising. The inventors are also reporting that they have been approached by several software companies and social networking sites who have an interest in incorporating the mark into their applications.

They even have a commercial on YouTube:

 

Only time will tell whether this will catch on, but I hope it does. I've always been proud of the inventiveness and can-do spirit of the Internet, and this underscores the way 'net culture inspires people to do things for themselves. Feel the lack of a sarcasm mark? Invent one!

That's what the Internet is all about!*

*Well, okay. What the internet is all about in a social evolution sort of way.  In terms of commerce, it's still largely about the porn. But that's a topic for another day.

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Due to the delightful laxity of my mother as a censor, I became acquainted very early in life with a great variety of “adult” literature (no, not that kind of adult…geez!  get your minds out of the gutter people!).  I think, however, it was not my own inquisitive mind that led me first to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but a summer vacation to visit my cousins in Oregon.  I loved those visits.  My Uncle Jim had a habit of reading to the kids every night.  One year it was “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.  For those of you without an Uncle Jim, I can only pity you, that you will never experience that story, as read by him.  It was epic.  And it whetted my appetite.  I’ve loved mysteries my entire life* and here was a master at work; I could see that much even from my 6-year-old perspective.  By the time I was 10 I’m quite certain I’d read about 95% of all Sherlock Holmes stories ever written.  By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d read most of them several times.   

The Great Detective, then, was an old childhood friend of mine.  So perhaps you can imagine the mixed feelings that entered my soul when I first heard the announcement that they were going to make a Sherlock Holmes movie.  Of course, there have been Sherlock Holmes movies in the past, but none really in my lifetime.  On the one hand, there was pure, unadulterated excitement.   At last, one of my great heroes was going to come to life!  I can’t wait to see what they’ll do with him!  This is the innocent, idealistic child in me, by the way—the one who hasn’t seen the travesty that Hollywood can make of classics (see Ella Enchanted).  On the other hand, the cynical and painfully disillusioned adult in me was absolutely terrified.  Especially when I heard the casting.  And then saw the trailer.  Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes?!  Are you serious?  He’s what?  Five feet tall?  Sherlock is over 6’!  Every instinct in me revolted at the idea of this egocentric man trying to portray my retiring hero.  And speaking of the trailer, why, might I ask, is Rachel McAdams mincing around in her undergarments through the whole thing?  Sherlock Holmes doesn’t deal with sex.  He is like a great, asexual god, too logical to ever bother with such mortal things.  There was just so much potential to ruin a true masterpiece, and they seemed to be taking every opportunity.

I was very undecided.  The scales were quite perfectly balanced, and if I could not rejoice, neither could I reject.  The thing to upset that balance and tip me toward excitement was Jude Law as Watson.  Now that was an interesting choice that I probably would never have thought of, but it intrigued me (ok, let’s face it, it’s freaking Jude Law…I indiscriminately adore him no matter what the movie and role).  So, my roommate and I blew off our homework one Saturday afternoon and indulged in a trip to the full-priced theatre to see what we could see. 

I would like to take this moment to thank Peter Jackson, for being the first to teach me that a movie adaptation of a book can be both different and still wonderful**.  It was a lesson well learned and now Guy Ritchie has reviewed it for me.  It’s true, this is not the Sherlock Holmes we are used to, not this uncouth, unshaven, unrefined fellow.  No, this is a Sherlock Holmes I can really believe is spending his down-time trashed out of his head on cocaine and morphine.  But guess what?  This new, different Sherlock Holmes?  He’s pretty  awesome!

To be completely honest, I still don’t think that Sherlock Holmes, as imagined by Doyle, would be anything like this drunken, violent, carousing letch.  But I don’t really care.  There were enough of the core elements of The Great Detective to make a passable resemblance.  I found this to be most obvious in the clinical way we see Holmes planning and carrying out absolutely devastating physical beatings.  These were not angry outbreaks, but carefully planned and thorough attacks.  If I was going to imagine Holmes fighting someone, that is how he would be doing it.  The same with the legendary powers of deduction.  These were done full justice, forming the focal point of most every scene.  I’d go into more detail, but if you somehow haven’t yet seen this movie, I don’t want to spoil anything for you.

And as for Mr. Downey Jr., well, let’s just say that I am happily eating my words.  Yeah, I still think Sherlock Holmes should be taller, but in the end, how important is his height when you’ve got the kind of winning charm Robert Downey Jr. has?  Even better, the bromance between him and Jude Law was magnificent to behold.  They had fantastic chemistry and they worked off of each other superbly.  I felt a little muddled on the timeline, but again, there was nothing glaring.  I loved the appearance of Irene Adler, even if it was a Hollywoodized version of her.  And of course, the villain.  What would a Sherlock Holmes mystery be without an appropriately menacing antagonist?  Mark Strong as the villainously snaggle-toothed Lord Blackwood was there to fill the role.  He managed to seem intimidating even while posing little or no challenge to our hero. 

All in all, I give the movie two very enthusiastic thumbs up.  What with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder Mr. Downey Jr. seems to be making an art of the popcorn blockbuster.  If you want pure fun (and an awesome soundtrack from Hans Zimmer, by the way) don’t miss out on Sherlock Holmes.  Even a literary purist and lifetime devotee such as myself was swept off her feet by this charming piece of fun and adventure.  I really can’t wait for the next one.

*I just have to mention here, my favorite mystery of all times, which I have read at least five times; Ellery Queen’s The Greek Coffin Mystery

**It is important to remember that, while it is possible, it is by no means guaranteed.  

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I just had to share with you the awesomeness that is artist Joshua Allen Harris' street art Bag Monsters. They are haunting and kinda creepy, brought to you by the same vagaries of air pressure that famously lifted Marilyn Monroe's skirt in The Seven Year Itch.  They're really fascinating to watch as they grow and become animated and sink back down as you watch.

 

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Let's show some love for today's Guest Blogger, Jessenovels from JESSEnovels, and welcome him to the lofty state of Honorary Chicahood. (He's already got the geek thing down.) ~ The Management

It's no surprise that I'm a huge Batman fanatic, and with this coming year my mind jumps to one thing, THE NEXT FILM. So, as the crazy bat fan I am, I thought I would put my two cents and try to predict what we will and won't see in the next film, also dismiss some rumors. As we all know, MOVIE PREDICTIONS ARE FUN! (except when they're wrong )  

(Things We Won't See )

- Robin -   For those fans who want to see Batman's young sidekick in this film, do three things. First walk over to the nearest mirror. Second, start slapping yourself. Third, repeat after me, "Not a chance in hell."  

Let's face it, Robin isn't much of a character. I wasn't of a fan of his when Bob Kane created him, or when he came out in Jeph Lobe and Tim Sales, " The Dark Victory." If you ask me ( and I know you didn't ) Bruce should have taken the boy blunder to a mall three cities over and left him there.  

Robin would be poison to the franchise, having him would radically change the dark feel of the story, which would be a huge mistake. Nolan and Bale are anti-robin, so it's clear that this rumor can be put to rest. (I SAID TO REST!!!!)  

( Batgirl )    

Miley Cyrus as BATGIRL! I know the Geekachicas will get behind me on this and say, "For the love of God, no! " This nasty little rumor started to fly around when Comic-con got on its way last year. It was said that Miley  made herself a homemade costume to impress some executives at Warner Brothers  ( and what a fantastic costume it was). She even read a few lines for them and, believe it or not, she KNOCKED THEIR SOCKS OFF! Only a fantastic actress like Miley could do this. You've seen her acting skills, I mean someone please give that girl an Oscar. ( sarcasm... as if you didn't know )  

Yeah, this amazing story is fake! (But you know what's not fake, my website jessenovels.wordpress.com.  Don't look at me that way, it was bound to happen)   Hannah Mountain fans Don't hold your breath, maybe when hell freezes over she might.. na, not even then. Just save it for your fan fiction.

Let's face it, do we need another Batman Forever, let's keep the character in the closet until ... maybe a reboot is better .

( The Penguin )

It would be nice to see Nolan recreate the character for the franchise, but as we heard from  Nolan before, that's a no go.   

( Killer Croc )  

If you've seen Gotham Knights, you know he would tie in perfectly with the movie. Sadly that's not going to happen, Nolan is more interested in bringing in characters that are more realistic. (He's a must for the next film, fingers crossed.)

    (Characters That will and might appear.. percent included)

 The Joker

Percentage of coming out in the next film: 75%  

We all know the Joker was a huge story arc for the next film, but after the late great Heath Ledger's death, the chance of the character coming back looks slim.  

People have said no one would be able to fill the shoes left by Heath Ledger, but these are the same people who bashed him when he was first cast. I, for one, would love to see the character recast. I strongly believe in sticking with the story. I'm not the only to think so - producer Chuck Roven said at the People Choice Awards to MTV,  "On a personal level, Heath was a friend of mine. We had worked together before 'The Dark Knight,' but I still think that 'The Dark Knight' is its own thing, and we have to separate them."

A storyline should not be changed due to one actor. If Nolan and the team change the foundation, the third film might be the blow that ends a successful franchise.  

( Harvey Dent/ Two Face )  

Percentage of coming out in the next film: 55%  

Yes, he's dead, BUT  could the death of Heath Ledger make Nolan rethink this decision? Let's not forget Two-Face was the one leading the freaks in the Long Halloween comic, and it would make for a strong storyline between Bruce and Harvey.  

As much as I want Two-Face to come back, his presence would hinder the Dark Knight story. So the chances of Harvey coming back look bleak, but we shall see. We can't deny fans would jump off their seats knowing Harvey Dent is back from the grave, maybe even camping, "I Believe in Two-Face" as he crushes the mob and hunts down the Batman, with the aid of the Riddler.  

( The Scarecrow )  

Percentage of coming out in the next film: 98%

This is a given, we might even see his role extend more then just a cameo.    

( Catwoman )

Percentage of coming out in the next film: 85%

The thought of having Catwoman in the next film wasn't a sell for me, but if we don't see the Joker or Two-Face, this is her time to shine. She would tie in easily and add a nice romantic relationship with Bruce. Just no Megan Fox. She's eye candy, not an actor. (You've seen her films *gag* )    

  ( The Riddler )  

Percentage of coming out in the next film: 100%

Mr.Nigma is the face for the third Batman film, and a solid actor like  David Tennant would make that role shine. Tennant himself expressed interest in playing the Ridder. Let's hope he gets the role.        

Before I wrap this piece up, let's go ahead and make some predictions on who will be in the next Batman film. Will I be right? We'll soon find out...( I hope I can re-edit this,  so I can tell people " SEE TOLD YOU SO" Muhahaha!)  

Cast and title predictions:

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

Joker  ( Johnny Depp )

Riddler ( David Tennant )

Catwoman (Angelina Jolie )

Scarecrow ( Cillian Murphy )

Cameos - Mad Hatter - Zsasz    

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Space shuttles are for sale, people.  And as sad as I am that the shuttle program is ending, I'm also curious to see where NASA is going to go with their next program.

Unfortunately, I'm a little short of the $28.8 million price tag as far as my personal funds are concerned.  Wanna split one?

We can keep it in the field behind my house, and the engines are free!  All we need is a few mechanical engineers, and we can start our very own commercial spaceflight business.  Let's give Richard Branson a run for his money. 

Even better, let's actually go through with the plans I gave my university for my degree:  let's equip it with phasers and torpedoes and go build a base on the moon.  

From there, who knows?  I think the grand majority of Cool Space Stuff is going to come from the market at this point instead of from NASA. 

Vulcan, here we come! 

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US Life On Mars wasn't enough.  US Little Britain, of all the weirdly self-contradictory ideas, wasn't enough.   US Being Human still wasn't enough.  Now, against all logic, we will soon have US Torchwood!

Now, I hear the low keen of despair rise from you all, and I am tempted to join in*, except that they've got not only Russell T Davies BUT ALSO Julie Gardner AND Jane Tranter aboard.

Besides, it's on Fox, so it'll be canceled pretty quickly whether or not it sucks.

* For the LAST TIME, Hollywood: what we like about British shows IS THEIR BRITISHNESS.

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Growing up, I suffered from geek persecution.  Hardly surprising, if you know me well, but true all the same.  I tried many things to fit in: drill team with their short skirts, taking classes with the popular kids, going to dances.  Needless to say, nothing really distracted people from the fact that I was--well, for lack of a better word-- a geek.

I made my peace with being a geek years ago when I made one simple discovery: It was more fun to march to my own drum.  

I thought, as a mom, I was doing a decent job of instilling the idea of being your own drummer to my kids.  Then my 9 year old daughter came to me crying.  

"Mommy, I don't want to play D&D this summer."

"Why not?  You LOVE playing D&D with us."  (She indeed loves the game nights -  she waited for years for us to declare her old enough to play.)

"The kids at school called me a geek.  I don't want to be a geek!"  At this point she started crying.

 I was baffled.  Here was an intelligent, compassionate little girl falling apart at being called a geek.  I actually considered it a badge of honor that she was a bit geeky.

I thought about it from her point of view for a moment.

"Sweetie, did one of your friends say that?  Or just another kid?"

"One of my friends.  She said I was too smart and a real geek."

I nodded.  I've been there.  I considered telling her some story from my childhood of suffering at the hands of my classmates before realizing that what she really wanted was a clarification: was being a geek such a bad thing?

"Sweetie - is it such a bad thing to be a geek?  I'm a geek."

"I don't know, Mommy."  *sniff sniff*

"Well, you know, everyone is a bit of a geek in some way."

"Really?"

"Yep.  Some geeks like music.  Some geeks are good at math.  Some geeks like to read.  Some geeks grow up to be doctors.  Some geeks grow up to write for newspapers.  Some geeks bake cookies and play D&D.  Some geeks paint and have huge art gallery exhibits."

She thought about it seriously before saying, "I guess I should be proud to be a geek, right Mommy?  It just means I can be anything I want to be."

That evening she happily sat down with us and several friends as we played Dungeon's and Dragons.   As her character (a pixie-naturally!) easily shanked a monster in the most rogue-like fashion possible,  I knew that while she hasn't completely surrendered to her inner drummer, she was beginning to find her own rhythm.

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I feel I should give a bit of back story to this particular review, considering how very strongly hooked I now am on streaming movies and TV shows.

I've had a Netflix account for quite a while. Very convenient, very fast, and no movie rental store leaving me angry voicemails about how they're going to charge me $60 for that copy of Serenity that my ex-boyfriend borrowed  and never brought back.

Unfortunately, after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I had no mailing address.  Another university had agreed to let me attend for that semester and live in the dorms, and they'd worked out a deal with my school so that my scholarship would still be honored.  So  I wasn't exactly going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Of course, that meant that I couldn't use Netflix by mail.

Enter the "Watch Instantly" on  demand streaming function.  I loved it.  Sure, I had to watch things on my computer, but considering I don't do well with roommates anyway, I was perfectly fine with shoving headphones in my ears and having an excuse for not responding to anything any of my three roommates said.

Eventually, Netflix  announced it was going to make streaming available directly through televisions.  Currently, this can be accomplished through any of several gaming consoles or by buying a Roku box. I was intrigued by the Roku box, but I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks for it until I'd heard something good or bad.  Unfortunately, no one that I know has bought one since they came out.

So when I opened one of my Geekmas gifts and found a Roku player, I was excited.  Very excited.

I've had time to play around with it, and I have to say that I'm impressed.  I wanted to see how the manufacturer had managed to address some obvious issues (set-up, connection, selecting titles, etc.).

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I know. I'm totally behind the curve on this, but I love them.  I've been culling through the dregs of YouTube enjoying the wonderful things that happen when you arm the populace with video cameras and digital editing software. I've ranted before about how awesome it is to put  the power to tell visual stories in almost everyone's hands. Even when the product is little more than audio-visual collage, I still believe this is a Very Good Thing.

One thing I had failed to come across until now, is the miracle of Literal Video. These are videos produced by the marriage of over-the-top music videos and comic ingenuity. People with varying degrees of wit and ability add their own versions of the lyrics (with helpful subtitles) that describe, in an amusingly literal way, exactly what is happening on the screen in the original music videos. As with every category on YouTube, some of them kind of suck. Okay, MANY of them have issues (from failing at being adequately literal to microphone crackles on plosives, and bad singing). 

The best ones, however, take the absolute most wacked-out videos, and describe the action to the tune of the original song. (It is a tactical mistake to use a visually bland video such as James Blunt's You're Beautiful, no matter how much I personally love to see anyone give him a bit of piss over that song.)

So, my sister geeks, having done some leg work, I must say that the following is my favorite. I have a great pre-emo affection for the song itself, but holy cow, what a video.

 Watch out for The Glee Club of the Damned (hee!)

 

_

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     I want it noted that the only reason I picked up the controller to even try this game was the simple attempt to head my Husband off at the pass.  For weeks, I've lost countless hours of MY tv watching time (and wasted several revealing lingerie choices attempting to get some attention) thanks to my Husband's almost obsessive addiction to Dragon Age: Origins.  Finally, unable to stand it any longer, when I realized his intent was to spend the evening with her (his game avatar) I finally grabbed the controller as he made a pitstop in the jakes and quickly created a character of my own.

The back of the game box offers a basic description, which, once you've actually played the game you come to realize is horrendously generic.

You are a Grey Warden, one of the last of a legendary order of guardians.  With the return of an ancient foe and the kingdom engulfed in civil war, you have been chosen by fate to unite the shattered lands and slay the archdemon once and for all.

 Of course, I already knew the central plot line for the game.  After all, I'd been stuck on the couch watch my husband play this game for a while.  I won't reveal it here, simply because there might be one or two folks who haven't attempted the game.

As I started to create my character, I noticed that this game was a bit more interesting than I thought.  You are offered total control over character creation.  You start by choosing your race, ethnicity and class.  (As of this point I've played most the female combinations.)   Then you have the options to customize your appearance.  Eyes too close together?  You can fix that.  Want your lips fuller?  That's correctable too.  Think your dwarf is too clunky looking?  Give her a thinner neck.  Want a nose like Pinnochio?  That's also possible.

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I'm quite new to the twitterverse, which is why you should forgive me if you've thought of/read all of what I'm about to say.  I always read people's tweets on Facebook and I saw evidence of Twitter's rise to social networking dominance all over the internet.  It wasn't until I got a shiny new phone with internet access that I finally decided that the rest of the world needed to receive up to the minute notifications about what song I'm listening to at any given moment. 

And then I discovered something:  for an entertainment news junky like me, it's much more fun to be a follower on Twitter.  It's like standing at a crowded party full of all the people you want to hear from.  You hear snatches of the conversation, pass along anecdotes of your own, and come away with plenty of gossip for later.  If you can't stand what someone is saying - *Click* - they're out of the party!  I love that it's instant, I love that it's banal, and I love that the URLs are tiny. 

The coolest thing about Twitter though has to be that, as geeks, we positively own the place.  Geeks were the first to start using it (except for latecomers like me, obviously) and geeks are the ones who cry foul when Twitter tries to 'improve' the service (i.e. that irritating retweet function that doesn't allow the user to add comments).  If we add # to the front and 'fail' to the end, you'd best hope that your name/product/show/company is not hanging out in between.   The power that the internet gave us in the 90s seems to have increased exponentially, and Twitter is a huge part of that.

But I love being a geek because, for the most part, we use the power for good and for fun.  We're a breed that likes to share information and support something that we think is valuable and wonderful.  We hang on to things, even if they haven't become popular quite yet.   And, we laugh like crazy when afterelton.com pits Captain Jack Harkness against the delicious Dr. Horrible for Gay Man of the Decade in an online poll.  The ensuing and completely delightful Big Gay Battle was one example of how the word 'viral' has taken on a brand new meaning since the advent of Twitter.   Movements and news spread so fast, and I love that. 

Of course, everyone wants a piece of what all this free advertising can do.  The little band of Community fans to which I belong is currently using Twitter to show support for the show and spread the word around in hopes we can keep it on the air amidst the huge NBCfail.  (@community_tv if you're interested!)  I know similar movements are always occurring and that many of them have actually succeeded.   Entrepreneurs are able to generate exposure and buzz in a completely free and painless way.  'Free' makes everything better in my opinion.

If you're getting started on Twitter, or you want to increase your geek exposure,  Wired just posted their list of 150 Geeky Media People You Should Be Following on Twitter.  This list is a veritable gold mine of geek royalty.  It was exciting to see that I was already following some of them but, needless to say, I found plenty of new folks to add to my pool.  Grant Imahara?  I am so there.   Simon Pegg?  How did I not think of that before?

But I think what makes me the proudest, the most secure in my own geekiness, is the fact that I saw this list tweeted by someone I was already following: Al Yankovic.  He's definitely at the top of my geek list.  Who's at the top of yours?

You can put US at the top of your Geeky Twitter List if you feel so inclined.  Follow us at @GeekaChicas.

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