Chaos Theory: Geekitude

What's Going On

Quotes

Beth Sekishiro:
"You don't need to be conventional to love people. Maybe you've got to give up your whole life - but that's just when you'll find it."
Cormac McCarthy:
"Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way."
From "Andromeda Klein:"
"sometimes the Universe was subtle; other times it hit you over the head like it thought you were stupid."
Dame Margot Fonteyn:
"But somehow or other, fate doesn't always do the things that might be sensible. Fate leads you to do other things. And I'm a great fatalist."
Alan Moore:
"Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
Lani Diane Rich:
"I have a good friend going through a horrendously bad time right now, the kind of lifetime crisis that either kills you or changes you so fundamentally that you will never again be the person you were before. I recently went through something similar, although I don’t think I let it take as much of a chunk out of me as it’s taking out of her, mostly because I’ve had my ass kicked by the Universe before. I know that when you keep trying to make something work, and it doesn’t no matter what you do, then you need to relax and figure out what the Universe is trying to tell you, because the Universe will continue to make your life hell until you do."
Cary Tennis:
"Some people might not approve of your needs. Screw them. You didn't invent your own needs."
Jennifer Finney Boylan:
"The world is full of false hopes, most of them dumber than the hope of being transformed by love."
Hugh Macleod:
“Good ideas come with a heavy burden; which is why so few people execute them. Few people can handle it.“  
Fiona Glennane on meditation:
“I want you to close your eyes and breathe deep. Picture a peaceful mountain stream. Can you do that? Picture yourself drowning the kidnapper in the stream.”
Sarah Haskins:
"We used to just grow old and be spinsters. Now we have a lot of options: We can be spinsters or cougars."
The Doctor:
"All that attitude, all that lip, 'cos all this time... you think you're not worth it. Shouting at the world 'cos no-one's listening. Well... why should they?"
Winter, the guy trying to visit all the Starbucks before they close:
"Pointless though it might it be, a goal is a goal."
Carolyn Hax:
Carlsbad, N.M.: How do I figure out what to be when I grow up? Carolyn Hax: I dunno, but it's easier if you grow up first, then figure it out. Otherwise you'll just change your mind when you get there.
Bobby Singer:
"Are you under the impression that family is supposed to make you feel GOOD? Bake you an apple pie, maybe? They're SUPPOSED to make you miserable, that's why they're family!"
Dan Savage:
"You want crazy frosting on sane cake."
fillyjonk on Susan Boyle:
"What makes people stop laughing — or at least, what makes you stop caring if they do? The discovery that something about you is utterly remarkable."
Gregg Levoy:
"Chaos is just going to throw on a tie-dye shirt and come to work with no pants on."
Carrie Fisher:
"My mother always said to me, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear!” and I wanted to say, “Oh, okay! Then I won’t! I thought that it was a good thing to rough yourself up, but you say it’s not, so I’ll just stop! Thanks for the tip!”
deering:
"Someone who wants to be a doctor or an engineer isn't told right off that bat that they are untalented, or impractical, or can't make it, ever. :P"
Jonathan Coulton:
"This is the thing about the new landscape that drives everyone crazy: you can’t see inside the cow; you can only build one, feed it music, and wait for it to poop."
Andrew Ramer:
"All life wobbles on this planet. Wobbles, or dances. As sometimes, when someone bumps into you on the dance floor, you turn to them with anger in your eyes. And sometimes, you turn to them and love stares back, and the bruise on your thigh was all worth it. So with Earth. It smiles, and rubs its hip. "When you understand fire, you no longer stick your hand in it, you contain it and cook with it. When you understand the wobble, you no longer fear it or hate it, you move with it, use it. And sometimes, when your life is a mess, when you've been in therapy for 57 years and you're still falling in love with the wrong person--stop blaming your parents or yourself. Stop and take a deep breath and say to yourself--I'm living on a world that wobbles on its axis. It has seasons and changes. And sometimes, what seems to be going wrong in my life isn't really a flaw in my nature. It's just that I haven't learned to wobble with the world yet. The Earth laughs at itself. Can you?"
Carolyn Hax:
"Short description of a long process: Figure out the things that make you feel confident/fulfilled/energized; that give you a sense of purpose or accomplishment; that tap into your natural abilities and strengths; and that -don't- put you at the mercy of any one person, and orient your life around those. Often, this requires another step--concurrently or as a precursor--of reducing the role in your life of things that make you feel worthless/empty/exhausted; that require skills that don't come naturally; that feel like a waste of time; or that put you routinely at the mercy of others."
Kitty Norville:
"People are always saying that to me--how can I possibly be a skeptic given what I am? Given how much I know about what's really out there, how can I turn my nose up at any half-baked belief that crosses my desk? Really, it's easy, because so many of them are half-baked. They're formulated by people trying to con other people and make a few bucks. The fact that some of this is real makes it even more important to be on our guard, to be that much more skeptical, so we can separate truth and fiction. Blind faith is still blind, and I try not to be."
Kitty Norville:
"The supernatural world was like an onion. You peel back the layers, only to find more layers, on and on, hopelessly trying to reach the mysterious core. Then you start crying."
regicide is good for you:
"Are ads even trying to sell anything anymore, or just keep us vaguely, constantly aware that there are generally things on sale somewhere nearby? I like this new model. People get paid to delight me, and I walk away still blissfully unaware of products."
Hanna Rosin:
"One fleeting thing—an unearned pile of money, a one-night stand, a tattoo, a suddenly paralyzed teammate—can change your entire life. Accident and coincidence are more powerful than any God-driven holistic narrative."
B.J. Love (what a name, eh?):
“People may think art is a waste of time because it’s not ‘goods’ that can be bought, sold and taxed, but down the road art is all we got. The only historical documents I've read from the 1860s are the Gettysburg address, a poetic speech, and Leaves of Grass and THAT is how I understand those times, and I think years from now, poetry will still be how we understand times, these time included.”
Seymour, "Burn Notice":
"Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass."
NoStyleHere:
"So I'm 48, good god man, and my experience is that every time you think life is finally starting to be less weird, it busts loose with a whole new *kind* of weird. Life ebbs and flows and changes and much of the joy of it is in its utter unpredictability."
Patricia Briggs:
"As an author, I sometimes feel like the wicked witch. My job is to find someone happily minding their own business, and mess up their happy little lives until they're upset enough to get off their rump and go change something."
Elliot Bangs:
"What the hell was I doing? I asked myself, more than once. But haven't you ever needed to follow a mystery past all the limits of common sense? Have you ever found yourself in a whole awful prison of a world in which every last familiar and sensible thing has finally come up hollow and pointless? Have you ever been left with nothing on which to stake all your hopes of transcendence, save one good leap into the abyss? It also suffices to say that the story would have ended here if it hadn't been for alcohol."
Elsa:
For me it’s like being a horse… a thoroughbred. That "horse is born to run… pretty much that is why it is here. It can rest but the basic life is getting ready to run, running and then recovering from running. If you take a horse like that or a person like me and you tie them down, you are killing that horse. You are perverting nature. That horse is not going to thrive and God or the universe is going to be very pissed at you. He or it will also be pissed at the horse because what’s it doing standing there when it knows damned well it’s supposed to run?"
Carrie Fisher:
"Now, keeping yourself impervious to mockery is a full time occupation. I’ve been working at it ever since I can remember."
Murdoc Niccals, The Gorillaz
"Always be wary of people who use quotes." I don't know who said that."
flipside:
"Following your heart through life is like following your feet across a piano."
The Doctor:
"You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself."
Jessica Lovejoy:
"You know what would be great? This totally impossible thing!"
D. Brian Burghart:
"I’d like to be in love—if not with a person, then with a consuming new idea or project that will move me from the waiting for the next phase of my life to the real deal."
Anonymous:
"If a cannibal can find someone to volunteer to be killed and eaten, surely our problems of finding the appropriate relationships to suit us are considerably more minimal."

December 01, 2009

Bwahahahaha

"For, you see, Jack has exactly three things to do, in this movie. The first is to stand around looking adorable as the wind tousles his already-artfully-tousled hair. The second is to get really, extremely, catchphrasily enthused about the fact that he is on the Titanic. (Although, to be fair, everyone is really enthused to be on the Titanic in this movie. All you need to do, to recreate the early scenes of Titanic at home, is to gather a bunch of friends together and make all of them run around going OMG WOOOO TITANIC BEST SHIP EVER TOTALLY NOT GONNA DIE ON IT TITANIC 4-EVER YEEE-HAAAAAAA. Then, have somebody say something about how poor people are awful and women shouldn’t be allowed to do stuff.) The third, and most important task, is to enable Rose’s Girl Power. This is literally all he does in their relationship."

Posted on December 01, 2009 at 09:08 AM in Feminist Chick Talk, Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 30, 2009

This is not a bad idea

Recasting WKRP with the Serenity cast. It really works.

"Mal has a lot of trouble controlling his crew. His plans rarely work and trouble seems to hover like a cloud. Andy was a great program director until he moved to Cincinnati. He struggles with keeping the station running smoothly and the crew doing the right thing. I think it fits. Next I dropped our lovable pilot Wash into the role of station manager Mr. Carlson. They both love toys and play time. They both enjoy a good joke. Despite the fact that they both pilot the crew, someone else is making all the directional decisions.

Just as Inara acted as a sort of ambassador, Jennifer often is the face of WKRP, the person that relates to everyone else. They have beauty and grace and more intelligence than their positions would suggest. On the other hand we have Herb. A distasteful man who surprises everyone that he gets any sales. Jayne is a distasteful man who surprises everyone that he has any social skills at all. Plus, they aren’t the snazziest dressers."

Posted on November 30, 2009 at 03:51 PM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

Star Wars Status Updates

In which Vader force chokes a bitch from across the Internet.

Posted on November 30, 2009 at 02:45 PM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 27, 2009

I love this.

I would so do this if it was real.

Posted on November 27, 2009 at 09:37 PM in Geekitude, NaNoWriMo/Writing Stuff | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 26, 2009

Free pie charts

Hah!

Posted on November 26, 2009 at 08:07 AM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 25, 2009

I am the pirate Bob!

Awww!

Posted on November 25, 2009 at 09:24 PM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

So true.

10 Most Cliched CharacterTypes in Sci-Fi

Posted on November 25, 2009 at 08:33 PM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why weres and vamps?

Discussion over at Smart Bitches.

"I’ve talked about why paranormal romance is so popular and related that to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, and I think that same resolution of fear is, in part, what makes vampire romance so continually interesting to readers. I think (and many people disagree with me here) that paranormal romance became superbly popular in the US market following 9/11/01, for two main reasons. First, the evil is easily identified. Either he wants to exsanguinate you, or he gets really hairy in compliment to her lunar cycle, but the otherness and the potential intent to harm is pretty easy to spot. Contrast that with the kid and a backpack on the subway who might be a student or might be ready to blow himself and his neighbors to bits. The easily identifiable evil is a comforting contrast.
Then, there’s the resolution of that otherness. Either the Other is tamed by the Power of Lurrrrve™ and the protagonists united through conversion (she becomes a vamp, he becomes a were, etc) or the Other is destroyed because it’s the antagonist preventing the happy ending. And when a paranormal creature is destroyed in romance, it’s not just a duel with a handkerchief in the dew. The offending Other is chopped into pieces, set on fire, beheaded, and possibly sent to an entirely other dimension, depending on the world building and mythology at work. There is no ass kicking like paranormal villain ass kicking."

Some interesting remarks in the comments:
"Every “new” element in romance (whether time-travel, paranormal, werewolves, vampires, fairies, robots, what-have-you) is an attempt to up the conflict quotient and thereby make the resolution that much more intense and satisfying (in more ways than one). The key is always finding the right combination (and it does tend to be a zeitgeist thing) to enact the eternal dance of attraction-conflict/sexual tension-false resolution-more conflict/sexual tension-final resolution. Many of the “old” tropes that gave the romance its conflict and sexual tension (nobleman/commoner, yankee/rebel, patriot/tory, rancher/farmer, settler/Indian) have been played out, so “new” ones have been introduced. Eventually, they too will get old and something else will replace them. I remember about 15-20 years ago, every other romance involved time travel. You don’t see so many of those anymore. At some point, even vampires and werewolves will give way to some other exploration of what-makes-the-world-go-round."

"I was rereading Patricia Briggs the other day and thought of it as a bit like paranormal romantic suspense. In contemporary romantic suspense there has to be a reason not to go to the police. But when you add monsters, weres or vampires, then of course the human police can’t help, and the hero gets to kick butt, instead of just picking up the phone to call the local cops."

"I seem to encounter a lot of wimpy men in the real world. Men who stand by, refusing to tell a woman they like her, waiting for her to make the first move. Then when she goes off with some guy who was brave enough to say “I think you’re attractive and I’d like to get to know you better” stand there and whine “Women only want a**holes!” Not realizing it’s not a matter of women liking jerks, it’s a matter of the woman liking a man with a backbone.
These same guys tell me it’s my lack of confidence, not my weight, that keeps me dateless. Yet can’t accept that their own lack of confidence also keeps them dateless. They equate being a wimp with being “a nice guy.” Plus their fear of rejection keeps them afraid. If they’d just man up and say “I like you” they’d have more dates.
Vampires don’t lack confidence. Even the most tortured one goes for the girl if he’s attracted to her."

Posted on November 25, 2009 at 02:41 PM in Geekitude, NaNoWriMo/Writing Stuff | Permalink | Comments (0)