Caprica, Just a Frakkin' Excuse

I watched the original Battlestar Galactica back when Starbuck was a guy who smoked cigars.  I was loyal through Galactica 1980 whose only possible redeeming quality was flying motorcycles.   And I watched the most recent incarnation on SyFy and was left confused, sad, and a bit unfulfilled by the ending.  So, of course, I am currently watching Caprica.  It's still early, but so far the story is interesting and the characters are intriquing.  Everyone is fighting personal demons so there is plenty of emotional turmoil.  There's also a house robot/butler/security guard that is very cool.  My problem is that it doesn't feel like this show really needs to be set in the Battlestar Galactica universe, which makes me wonder...is this just an excuse to say frak?

Frak first appeared in the original series as frack but was changed so it could officially be a four letter word.  It's fantastic because you can say it and you're swearing without really swearing.  It rolls right off the tongue just like what you can't say and although most people will look at you funny and think they didn't quite hear you, those in the know will smile and nod.  Say it, and you feel like you've gotten away with something that only you and your fellow geeks understand.  (Face it, if you've ever used frak, even once, you are a geek.)

There have been plenty of scifi swear words that have made their way into the geek lexicon over the years.  Frell (Farscape) was a pretty good one and you'll still hear it at least a dozen times at your average con.  And Gorram (Firefly) is still uttered by Browncoats everywhere.  But as those shows fade into the past, so do their swears.  Since Caprica feels like it could easily be on any generic planet of the future with any old bunch of humans, I am left with one answer as to why it's set in the Battlestar Galactica universe.  It's all just a big frakkin' excuse to keep the coolest scifi swear ever from fading into oblivion.  You got a frakkin' problem with that?

Star Trek Online Preview

I was fortunate enough to play in the beta for Star Trek Online over the last month and just wrote a review for GeekGirlsNetwork.  Wanna know what I thought?  You can read the full review right here.

A Gamer, A Wife and A Broken Bowl

Last weekend we headed over to a friend's house for dinner and Lego Rock Band.  While helping her make some truly excellent pizza, I noticed a Christmas bowl still sitting on her kitchen counter.  It was bright red with a cute little tree in the middle.  I figured it had probably been left behind by a random  guest and that leaving it on the counter increased the odds that it would be returned before next Christmas.  Then I noticed it had a pretty big chip on the edge and that all the little chipped pieces were sitting neatly inside the bowl.

I asked her what had happened to this little red bowl and she pulled it out to show me that she had almost all the bits needed to put it back together, but not quite.  It actually belonged to her Mom who put it on display every year, and it hadn't been left behind, but had been brought over in the hope that my friend's husband could do a little repair work.  Because of the tiny missing pieces, even when you put the jigsaw of bits where they belonged, there were still bright patches of white ceramic showing through the red glaze.  At about this time her husband wandered into the kitchen and she showed him the bowl.  This is roughly how their conversation went...

"What?  You want me to fix it?" he asked.

"Yes, but there are pieces missing so can you use that stuff?" she replied.

There was a brief pause while he considered her request and then he said, "You want me to use Green Stuff to fill in the missing pieces?"

"Yeah, and then you can paint it so it won't show!"  she said.

He smiled, nodded, and turned back to the living room where Lego Rock Band beckoned.  I don't know which was more impressive.  The fact that she thought to call on her husband's mad modeling skills to fix a bowl, or that she had actually paid enough attention over the years to know that there was such a thing as Green Stuff in the first place.  Either way, I think we should all remember this lesson.  The next time your significant other spends a whole Saturday afternoon cutting, filing and attaching one arm to one little toy soldier, know that someday he may be all that stands between you and a set of mismatched dishes.

Geek Music or Jonathan Coulton Re:Your Brains

I am obsessing over this song of late.  I don't work in an office and there are no zombies in the neighborhood (that I know of) so I'm not sure why it's been stuck in my head for the last few days.  I did have quite a lengthy discussion with some D6 Generation listeners about creating a zombie compound and who would be invited, but that was awhile back.  Regardless, this is such a fun little ditty and it makes me smile as I hum the tune while driving the kids to school or waiting in line at the bank.  And I just found out that Jonathan Coulton is going to be at PAX East in a few months and I'm hoping I will get to hear him play this live so I can scream out the chorus in my best zombie-voice.  So, for your geeky listening pleasure....

Going All Marvin Martian over Vanity Fair Bashing Twitter Women

Vanity Fair has made me very angry.  Very angry indeed.  It's all over the article  America's Tweethearts which they recently published.  It profiles women who have, according to the author, created fake fame she calls "twilebrity".  Let this serve as notice that putting a tw in front of a word, or in the course of this article, a whole bunch of words, does not make one sound like an expert.  And since when does what a person is famous for actually determine if their fame is real?

The women, like @feliciaday, are all well followed on twitter, but they are also know for more than their tweets.  I follow Felicia Day because I am a big fan of The Guild, not because she happens to have a twitter account and tweets alot.  Hey, whaddya know, she has an actual honest to goodness career as an actress and she enhances her career through social media.  Shouldn't that be celebrated rather than denigrated?

The article then goes on to further discredit these women by calling them "the Internet's equivalent of a telephone chat line staffed by a bunch of cheerleaders".  Wow.  Where is this hatred coming from?  Seriously, what has the internet, and in particular smart, savvy women done to this author...wait a second!  Vanity Fair is a print magazine, firmly entrenched in archaic, traditional forms of communication that do not involve the internet and things like twitter or facebook.  So if we all embrace the internet and get information from twitter and the folks that effectively communicate there, then what happens to print media?  Ah...it goes poof...and I didn't even need to use my Illudim Pew-36 Space Modulator.

Schoolhouse Rock with Dragons, Pirates and Battlestar Galactica

You never know what you're going to find when you search the internet.  I was searching for Schoolhouse Rock because I was trying to remember the lyrics to "Interjections!".  First, I found the original which aired on Saturday mornings back in the 70's..... 


 


Then, I found a fantastic parody called "Exclamations" by the Brobdingnagian Bards (could they have a longer name?!)  in which they reference fire-breathing dragons, pirates and even Battlestar Galactica.  You absolutely must listen to this song.  You can also read the lyrics here.  Oh, and although they hail from Texas right here in the USA, they proudly wear kilts, which raises the coolness of their whole endeavor by orders of magnitude.

A Ghost, A Werewolf and A Vampire on Being Human

I heard about Being Human through listeners of  The D6 Generation Podcast just after Series 1 finished airing in the UK.  The premise sounded great - a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost struggling to lead nice, normal lives, just like us humans.  Unfortunately the show wasn't available in the US at the time and all I could do was get a few sneak peeks through the website and hope for a US release.  Then, in July, the show made it's way to BBC America and later it even became available on XBox Marketplace.

I watched the first episode and immediately fell in love with the characters. George, the timid werewolf who wants nothing to do with the beast that appears at every full moon. Mitchell, the vampire who craves human blood but resists the urge to drink.  And Annie, the sweet ghost that only Mitchell and George can actually see.  You're thinking it's been done so many times, why watch it again?  Because "Being Human" does it with amazingly sympathetic characters that you end up caring about, believing in, and cheering for in every episode.

The show did very well in the UK and Series 2 starts up on January 10th which means sometime later this year it'll probably be available here in the US, too.  And I discovered something interesting while taking a peek at the website.  There is going to be a US version.  Looks like it's going to be on SyFy and it looks like it's going to be 13 episodes.  You'd think I would be thrilled with this news, but not so much.  There are shows that have been remade successfully for American audiences (The Office) and then there are shows that have been miserable failures (Coupling).  This leaves me a bit worried.  My suggestion, check out the UK version of Being Human on XBox Marketplace or iTunes before it gets lost in translation.