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Scribblings by Lizbeth - LiveJournal.com
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Things that Make You Head-Desk
I've decided: Harmonian fans are far, far scarier than Whedonites. For real.
The sustained temper-tantrum going on in Community online fandom is awesome to behold. Look, I'm sorry Sony decided to replace Dan Harmon since he was basically the show-runner auteur, but the fact of the matter is that most of the writing staff, production crew, and all of the cast is staying on.
While no doubt Community is going to change, after the sometimes-indulgent second half of Season 3, I'm not so sure it's a bad thing if Community starts being a little less up its own meta-ass.
And I say this as someone who has fallen head-over-heels with this show.
Besides, there's no way you can convince me that Harmon didn't know this was coming, considering he shares agents with the new show runners (Can you say LAWSUIT if Harmon's telling the truth, boys and girls?), and Comedy Central announced that he was working on a pilot for them even before Sony's announcement that Harmon was being being replaced.
You wanna feel bad for someone?
Feel bad for the reporters of the New Orleans Times-Picayune who found out today that one-third of them will be losing their jobs.
How did they find out?
By reading The New York Times.
Yeah. Now that's classy right there.
I'm saving my sympathy for the poorly paid newspaper personnel who are now shit out of luck. Given the way the newspaper industry is going, chances are most of those people reporters and editors included are going to not only have to switch careers, but leave the industry all together if they ever want to work for a living again.
Shit like this puts things in perspective, no?
Note to self: Stop nosing around the edges of online Community until Season 4 starts because biting my tongue hard enough to make it bleed is causing anemia.
Also: File this shit under how fandom can be f**king funny.
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Out Burns-ing Ken Burns
Someone explain to me how it's even possible that a comedy that clocks in at 21+ minutes (minus commercials) can actually out-Ken Burns Ken Burns?
How is this possible?
I pretty much spent the entirety of Community howling with laughter, right from the PBS-like cold open to the close of the PBS-like pledge drive.
And, and, AND!
They parodied Burns's The Civil War to absolute perfection! Right from the liberal use of still photographs with voice-overs, Britta's attempts at dramatic war photography, the dramatic readings of the text messages between Jeff and Annie (I was howling people...HOWLING!), to the musical signature that sounded suspiciously like "Ashokan Farewell".
And finally, KEITH DAVID as the narrator. He actually worked with Burns!
It's like Ken Burns threw up all over Community. No, wait. That's exactly what happened!
This episode has rocketed to the number two spot in my heart ("Remedial Chaos Theory" will never be dislodged because it's the first episode I ever watched) just for the Burns-ian/PBS-ian conceit alone.
You can watch the whole episode at NBC.com, and it is soooooo worth watch if you've seen even one Burns doc and even if you've never seen Community before. Beware, though. I believe the video is geo-locked, but I'm not sure which regions have access and which don't.
Wheeee! My week is now officially lighter.
And I have the overwhelming urge to watch Ken Burns's The Civil War again.
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SERENITY NOW!
Wow, it's been...
*counts on fingers*
Almost 6 months before I posted anything at all at any journal.
So, the short answer? Not dead.
The long answer? Real life, work, school, parental units? Kinda kicking my ass.
Thank god the Daleks have put out a relaxation vid. I don't know how I would've survived without it.
Seriously. Best. Thing. Ever.
Between this and Inspector Spacetime, I think I'm set.
What? Don't look at me like that. Yes, I've finally discovered Community (see icon). Thank you "Remedial Chaos Theory" (literally the first episode of Community I've ever seen and I was hooked like a hooked thing) and Hulu and Netflix and now DVDs from Amazon.
With the way my life is going these days, 21+ minutes per episode is kind of like the perfect size.
Sidenote:
How is it possible that Bio 101 has so much writing involved? I seriously have to write a 12 page lab paper per week. And I swear I have a test every second Monday of the month (I have one this Monday in fact). Plus the reading. The reading. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
I keep asking myself how I managed to go to school full time and work full time when I was getting my bachelors because I sure as hell couldn't do that now!
Anyway, this rambling message brought to you by...by...exhaustion? Yes. Exhaustion.
I'll try to be better about keeping in touch. I swear.
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Over on NPR: R.E.M. Listening Party
NPR is hosting a first listen for R.E.M.'s farewell greatest hits double-CD Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011.
Yes, 'tis streaming now!
While it's great to listen to some great R.E.M. songs from really, really early in their career that never, ever get air play (like "Radio Free Europe", "Driver 8", and "Fall On Me"), if you already own a boatload of R.E.M. CDs it seems that this release is not worth getting. There is nothing rare or unusual to be found on the two-disc set. It is what it says on the tin: a greatest hits release that collects music from across R.E.M.'s career.
I will admit this much: listening to the R.E.M. stream has inspired me to dig out my bootleg R.E.M. CDs when I get home. I have the "Bingo Hand Job Live at the Borderline" (from 1991) and "Poets of the Wheat" (bootleg compilation of various live performances recorded across 1989-90).
Also, I apologize for not responding to my "Ask the Person Who Grew Up in a Haunted House" post yet. Things have been a bit nuts in RL at my end, between preparing to go back to school, work, and some life-change type things with the parental units.
It doesn't help that on weekends I collapse into a whimpering heap, barely able to complete even the most basic chores.
*sigh* It'll slow down soon. Maybe. I hope.
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Facts and figures on income iniquity
Some interesting points in favor of supporting the Occupy Movement (as I do).
First up, Matt Taibbi lays it out for people who keep insisting on "not getting" what the Occupy Movement is about, which is amazing considering there are freakin' signs explaining it. Read, Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating for the best (and best-resourced) explanation why a good chunk of us 99% are pissed off.
The import nut graphs from Taibbi's article:
The point being: we have a massive police force in America that outside of lower Manhattan prosecutes crime and imprisons citizens with record-setting, factory-level efficiency, eclipsing the incarceration rates of most of history's more notorious police states and communist countries.
But the bankers on Wall Street don't live in that heavily-policed country. There are maybe 1000 SEC agents policing that sector of the economy, plus a handful of FBI agents. There are nearly that many police officers stationed around the polite crowd at Zucotti park.
These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don't want handouts. It's not a class uprising and they don't want civil war -- they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It's amazing that some people think that that's asking a lot.
Yes. This. Exactly. Go read the whole thing.
Also, from LiveScience, an infographic on the spread of income/power iniquity in the U.S.
Source:LiveScience
No, your eyes are not deceiving you when you see the cycle of the wealth gap in this country.
No wonder why many school districts have cut back on teaching post-Civil War U.S. history in schools. If more people realized that we were making the exact same damn mistakes over, and over, and over again, things would get real ugly hereabouts.
Why yes, history is a weapon, provided you educate yourself and use what you've learned. You can start with buying Howard Zinn's book to see how the shit hit the fan before. And by seeing what happened before, you can definitely see how the shit hit the fan again.
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Ask the Person Who: Grew Up in a Haunted House
I've been thinking about doing this for awhile now, and have held off for various reasons.
But I've decided: 'Tis the season! And what's the season without a little old ghost story?
In this case, a ghost story that's roughly 40 years old and still going strong.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Liz! What's with the woo? You're all about the science!"
To which I must answer, "Indeed. I'm a hard-core skeptic, especially when it comes to claims that some place is haunted."
The irony is this: If I didn't grow up in a house that was haunted, I'm pretty sure I'd be much less of a skeptic about these things. And honestly? That's not at all unusual for people who've grown up in for-reals haunted spaces. They tend to be the biggest skeptics of all when it comes to claims about hauntings (and by extension, all things woo like UFOs and pyramid power).
It's because we know, man. We know.
So, I offer myself up for questions about growing up in a haunted house.
But first, I'll try to get some of your questions out of the way with a FAQ of the ghosts that still (un)live in the house in which I grew up.
I noticed you used the word "ghosts". That looks suspiciously plural to me. Typo, yes?
Nope. Ghosts. Two. One we've taken to calling "Jimmy", who appears to be a child. The other we call "the Farmer Who Lives in the Basement", mostly because we never did get a name.
Ummm, "Jimmy" for the ghost described as a child? Where the hell did that come from?
From me, actually. Okay, I was a toddler at the time, but it appears I was the one that came up with the name. According to my mother, when I was a wee tadpole, I had an imaginary friend named Jimmy. Apparently, my interactions with the invisible Jimmy was so intense and my conviction that Jimmy was real was so insistent that my mother was >>thisclose<< to calling a child psychiatrist.
The weird part? Jimmy never left the house. In all my mother's research (pre-Internet, remember), the imaginary friend always followed the imaginer everywhere. Not Jimmy, though. Whenever we left the house to go anywhere, I would wave good-bye to Jimmy and that was that. Once I left the house, Jimmy (from my parents' point of view) ceased to exist for all intents and purposes.
Eventually, Jimmy disappeared as a playmate, right around the time my younger brother was old enough to start babbling on this own. And no. He didn't play with Jimmy.
Has anyone actually seen these ghosts?
Define seen.
If you're talking actual full-body, full-color apparitions, there are 2.5 people who qualify. (I'll explain the 0.5 in a bit).
Dad!Marcs is the high scorer here. He's actually seen both Jimmy and the Farmer Who Lives in the Basement. Before you roll your eyes too hard, he's seen both exactly once. And the occurrences were several decades apart to boot.
The first appearance was Jimmy and it was when I was a baby (as in almost pre-verbal). At the time, I was quite sick, the way babies sometimes get. My dad was coming home from work at 2 a.m., got out of the car, and headed for the back stairs.
Suddenly this kid who looks about 6 years-old shows up at his right elbow (essentially between him and a solid wall) and asks, "Is [Liz] going to be okay?"
Now my dad, who's half-asleep mind, answers automatically as he's walking by the kid, "The doctors say she'll be fine. Give it a few days."
He walks five more paces before his brain does the waitaminute mental whap, which consisted of the following in the 1.5 seconds it took him to spin around: 1) It's 2 a.m., what's a 6 year-old doing outside? 2) All the other kids in the neighborhood are either way older or much younger. 3) The only kid with long, blond hair is a girl, and she's a few months younger than my daughter. 4) Why's a boy wearing a nightgown? 5) I think that kid was barefoot.
By the time he's done with the turn, there's no sign of that anyone was ever there. Plus, if the kid ran off, he ran off without a sound. Cue every hair on the back of his neck standing up. He turns around and flees upstairs.
The second event took place only two months ago. My parents were waiting for someone to come to the house. They hear heavy steps on the back stairs. My dad quickly looks up from the kitchen table and sees the face of a man with round cheeks peering in through the door window. He automatically goes to the door to the let the guy in. As he reached for the door handle, he realized a few things in quick succession: 1) Whoever this is, he's standing between the screen door and the wooden door and the screen door is firmly closed. 2) I can see the screen in the screen door behind this guy's head. He freezes, the face disappears like there was nothing ever there, and my dad shakily makes his way back to the kitchen table.
The other person who's seen a full-body apparition is the 4 year-old daughter of my high school girlfriends. She was visiting, and my mother, myself, and my friend were talking in the parlor while she gathered her things to leave. It's right then that we realize her daughter has kind of disappeared. My friend calls her daughter and, to her utter embarrassment, said daughter comes trundling out of my mother's bedroom.
Before my friend can say, "Going into people's bedrooms are not polite," her daughter excitedly says, "Mommy, can we stay a little longer so I can play with the little boy?"
"What little boy?" my friend asks.
"The little boy sitting on the bed."
Now, my friend had heard about Jimmy for years. So I want you to picture this. Three women momentarily freezing, and then booking it for the bedroom. Also picture three grown-ass women trying to get through the door at the same time.
Naturally, there was no little boy.
But the absolute kicker for this story is this: My friend's daughter followed us into the bedroom and, seeing the same empty bed that we did, let out a wailing, "Where did he go?" Then she burst into tears. It took us 10 minutes to console the poor girl.
I'm actually the 0.5, and it happened 6 months ago.
At the time, the apartment downstairs was empty, so there was no one inside. I had parked my car next to the house, got out, looked up, and saw a distinct human shape (white in color) flit by the window. My brain read it as, "Oh, there must be a car passing by the street that runs perpendicular."
Then the needle scratched in my brain as I realized: No car had done so (I had a clear view), it was daylight so it wasn't headlights, and given the angle I was at there was no way it was the sun's reflection off a car. Then a car actually did pass by, and there was no reflection at all.
Needless to say, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I raced from window to window to find out if there was anyone in the apartment.
Nada.
I go upstairs and spill what I've seen.
My mother's response? "We've been hearing lots of noise downstairs since the apartment's been vacant. It sounds like someone's moving around furniture."
The kicker?
We immediately went downstairs (I was adamant about this) to check. Naturally it was empty. I also realized that for me to see what I had seen, the white figure had to walk through a wall.
As for human-shaped shadows, and low-to-ground grey blurs: Way too many instances to count. But there are a few good stories there.
Aaaaand, next question...
Did you guys always know the house was haunted?
In my favor (and in the favor of my family), no. We didn't catch on.
The "how long did it take you guys to figure it out"...well, that's actually embarrassing.
It took us 8 years. Why did it take us so long? My parents, and a cousin who was living with us at the time, didn't want the other family members to think they were crazy. My brother and I were taught (very firmly, I might add) that there was no such thing as ghosts.
Then, one day, my mother tripped over a grey blur in front of witnesses. (Let me pause and explain the grey blur. The grey blur is basically this round thing that's about kitten-high and moves very fast. It comes out of nowhere, you see it peripherally, and disappears almost as quickly as you've seen it. I've lost count over how many times we've nearly tripped over the grey blur.)
That's when it all came out. The grey blur. The human-shaped shadows we'd see. The footsteps in parts of the house where there was no-one. The whole enchilada.
At some point, we had to face the inevitable. We had a ghost.
By the way, it took us another six years to figure out that we had a second one.
Like I said. Really embarrassing.
How'd you find out about the Farmer Who Lives in the Basement?
Mostly by feel. I know, it sounds very woo, but there you go.
See, when Jimmy would skip his way around the house, the footsteps were very light (as you might expect for a child).
When the Farmer Who Lives in the Basement walks, it's always up the back stairs, it's always a very heavy tread, and the shadow that comes with it is always very tall.
By the way, I have no idea where we got the name, the Farmer Who Lives in the Basement. We just spontaneously started calling him that.
Fine. Your immediate family is willing to make this claim, and possibly a 4 year-old girl will back you. Any other witnesses?
If you count several tenants, a distant cousin, a number of carpenters who worked on remodeling the house over the years, and a complete stranger as witnesses, then yes.
The complete stranger one is the funniest story. My parents were stopped by a woman looking for directions. When they mentioned that she needed to go past the street where we lived and take the next right, she piped up that she knew that street since she had a girlfriend who'd lived as a tenant in the first floor apartment at my parents' address some years before. My parents brightly answered that they owned the house now.
The woman gave them a wide-eyed look and, completely unprompted, said, "Oh my God! Did they tell you that the house was haunted when you bought it?"
As for the carpenters? More than one had to play find-my-tools. As in, they'd put a tool down right next to them for a moment, and then when they reached for it again it would disappear. Vanish. Gone. This would result in a lot of noise and swearing as the hunt was on. Invariably, the tool would show up in a completely different part of the house a few hours later. Out in the open. On top of an uncluttered surface (on top of the television, on top of a table). And in a weird position.
That's just some examples.
Halloween must be a big day, right?
Look. I love Halloween. My family loves Halloween. The ghosts? Not so much. Not a big day for them.
Christmas on the other hand...
Seriously. The Christmas tree gets played with. The Christmas ornaments get played with. Paper on presents start mysteriously crinkling (like someone is touching it) even though there's no one nearby.
And at night? When we're all in bed and the lights are off, we can sometimes hear the light footsteps of someone dancing around the Christmas tree.
And, yes. It kind of breaks my heart, too.
Have you tried telling them that they're dead?
Yes. Many times. My mother, more than once has explained to an empty house that it's okay if they want to move on. The house will be fine. We will be fine. Go to the light. Go be happy. I've done it. My father has done it. My brother has done it. Multiple times.
And yet, they continue on. We don't know why.
Have you tried communicating?
Once. My mother with a dowsing stick. We were playing with it (and not really believing that it worked), and my mother jokingly asked for it to find the ghost. The damn thing started spinning like Linda Blair's head in the exorcist.
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