Know Thyself

After long deliberation...

Deep thought...

Philosophical pondering...

B. and I have come to the conclusion that "when we run out of condoms, we watch an art movie".

Yup, that's who we are. Nothing earth shattering. Probably not even interesting for other people, and not nearly as funny as it is in my head.

So I mostly wrote this down for myself, so I wouldn't forget.


(Ehm, sorry about this post, my sugar bun, my evil twin made me do it.)

Hooked on Heroes

(This blog contains minor spoilers)






I have recently started watching Season 3 of Heroes on BBC 2. The Beeb usually airs things earlier than Belgian TV AND the big bonus is that there are no annoying commercial breaks: TV as it should be.

I have not really been all that impressed with most new series for the last few years. Sure, I like the occasional 24 or Prison Break, but I can pretty much live without it.
Heroes is one of the few series I was truly excited about, alongside the new Doctor Who, which I really started liking after it was revamped by Russell T. Davies.

First and foremost Heroes is a geek feast. It has many references to other comics/series/movies that we adore, yet it makes sure not to be plagiarism. The most obvious parallel, of course, is with Marvel’s X-Men.
I think the character of Hiro Nakamura(who is a comic book geek himself), actually even calls Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde by name once.
And then of course there is the comic book within the series, 9th Wonders, that is clearly appealing to the comic book fans.
But there are smaller, more subtle references to other oeuvres, such as calling the man who has the ability to become invisible Claude Rains.
Season 3 has some clear references to The Fly, but I’ll let you figure out for yourself where that is.

References aside, I loved the show from the start because it’s visually very dynamic and does interesting things with characters. Besides having these great super powers, the characters are fundamentally human, and fundamentally flawed.
I like how some people have powers contradictory to their nature. Such as Claire being the unbreakable yet petite teenage girl, Linderman being the crime boss who has the power to heal, or Hiro, who can control time and space, while still being geeky and clumsy.
The storytelling is sound, and even manages to weave in time travel fairly well. It also tends to have a bunch of twists that make things more interesting.

I think Heroes, alongside with other series/films about people with superpowers, calls out to something deep within us. It raises questions like: Is this really all that we are, as a species, or can we become more? Where is humanity going? What’s the next step in our evolution?
While decades of sci-fi have been about the “what if” of scientific evolution – cyborgs, spaceships, futuristic weapons – the new generation of sci-fi is more often playing on the “what if” of human evolution. This is in a way even more disconcerting – and exciting – because we are, literally, going further than skin-deep. It’s being taken to our very core: our DNA.

In any case, I'm not the only person loving it, because after 3 seasons Heroes is still going strong.
While I didn’t find Season 2 to be as stunning as Season 1, there is in fact much to be liked about Season 3: Villains.
True to its name, it sheds more light on the role of the “bad guy”, and shows that all is not black and white. Moralities are explored, and glimpses of the future show us that today’s hero might be tomorrow’s villain, and vice versa.

Without being too spoilerific: Season 3 tells us much more about the character of Sylar. We learn that his “hunger” for other people’s powers is in fact part of his ability. Claire is going through a personality change that is both interesting and scary to see, and Mohinder…well, let’s just say Mohinder stops being goody two-shoes quite dramatically.

See, my hands are itching to write spoilers, but I won’t – I rather hate it when I read them myself.

I want to see more! Is it Wednesday yet?

What would MacGyver do?

Just a short little blogpost, because I quickly wanted to share something funny I found on the world wide web. This is now my desktop, ladies and gentlemen. I have stooped to toilet humour...and I'm loving it.

For the record, I did not make this image and in no way have a claim to it. It's just something I liked and I wanted to show to my friends. I don't know who the author is, I found it on The Comic Forums.

It also brings back memories.

I loved MacGyver .
I stayed up until 10pm to watch MacGyver.
I yawned in class because of MacGyver.
I annoyed teachers because of MacGyver.
I made other kids jealous by watching MacGyver .
I was a rebel because of MacGyver!


Of course, I was 10 when I watched MacGyver.

Darn, it used to be much easier to be a rebel back then.

F.A.C.T.S. 2008

I am a bad blogger. I do a lot of stuff, after which I’m tired, and end up not blogging. When I’m not tired, of course, I usually do not have much to blog about. At least nothing recent. So the post that is about to follow should in fact have been posted (and more importantly, should have been written) about two weeks ago. But let’s disregard that fact for now.

Every now and then I choose to unleash my inner geek. Well, every now and then has become exponentially more often since I met B. We have some sort of mutual geek influence going on. So, once again,‘t was the time of the year to be jolly. Or rather, it was the time that the city of Ghent became geek central again for two days: F.A.C.T.S. 2008.

I have been to F.A.C.T.S. 2006, and quite enjoyed it. It was the closest thing to a convention that I’ve ever been to. Apparently it was famous enough to draw quite a crowd even two years ago – because it drew not just people from neighbouring cities, but people from neighbouring countries.
I sadly missed F.A.C.T.S. 2007, to go to the Mensa weekend in Daverdisse. Going to the weekend does score me geek points on another level, but it’s not quite the same. On the bright side, that is where I met B. However, that is another story.

Now back to the geek stuff. F.A.C.T.S. stands for Fantasy - Anime - Comics - Toys - Science-Fiction. So imagine that crowd. I usually go there because it’s sci-fi and comic book paradise, but there’s something for everyone.

Of course there’s the obligatory Star Wars and Trekkie stuff. There are a lot of statuettes, books, posters and various memorabilia to be grabbed. You have (semi-)celebrities signing pictures - for a fee - but apparently some people are willing to pay for it.
We caught a glimpse of Richard Hatch, better known as Tom Zarek in the new Battlestar Galactica.

There were a bunch of games to be bought there, both second-hand and new. This always interests B., and I must admit I’ve also been getting into gaming again. There were also some games to be tried out, but with a place as crowded as that, we didn’t really get to play. I’m not much of a wait-in-line person anyway.

And then of course there is the cosplayer crowd. For those who don’t know: cosplayers (from: costume players) are people who dress up as (their favourite) characters. From what I understand, it originated in the manga and anime community – but it has spread to (Western) comic book, movie and television characters.

I think some of my friends still silently believe I dress up as an elf or something on weekends. I don’t. However some costumes really are very nice. There was a rather impressive General Grievous costume – a huge contraption with a human being in it. The manga boys and girls (and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which) are generally quite pleasing to the eye. Some have built huge replicas of weapons. By huge I mean they’re sometimes bigger than the person wielding it.
I saw a Mystique walking around, which is impressive, since you have to be, well, all blue. Same for the Aayla Secura I saw.
Anyway, it’s really a feast for your eyes, if you’re into to whole people watching thing. You can bump into life-size remote controlled R2 units, or watch some Jedi knights jump around on a Dance Dance Revolution.
Oh, and did I mention scantily clad barbarians?

I’m still not inclined to dress up though. And If I would – it would have to look impressive.
I did get a handmade neko (cat) skull hat and a kitsune (fox) hat from a Japanese dude from San Francisco. So, I can look like a geeky idiot in wintertime now. A unique geeky idiot even, since the guy doesn’t usually sell his stuff in Belgium.

The rest of my loot was mostly comic books. I haven’t read them all yet. Mostly because I still haven’t finished Persepolis, which I got for my birthday from B., and the copy of Watchmen that I borrowed from him. The only thing that I have read by now is Marvel’s Poptopia, a comic that I might write a few words about on this blog. Hopefully soon!

As for F.A.C.T.S. – two days was not nearly enough time to spend there. I’m planning to go back next year, so that Mensa weekend better not be planned then, you hear?

Oh, and below you can see one of my silly headgear thingies :

Silly Things I Do

When I was in elementary school, I had a classmate who was rather forgetful. “If your head wasn’t attached so firmly to your body, you’d forget it at home, too”, the teacher used to say. The same teacher used to send me to the lavatory soon after my arrival, right after he asked: “So did you have chocolate milk again this morning?” . Meaning I had forgotten – or simply not cared about - wiping my mouth off.

Many years have passed since then, yet I have never quite mastered the art of getting chocolate milk off my face. I have also reached levels of forgetfulness that my previously mentioned classmate could only dream of.

Often I kind of envision myself as a nutty distracted cartoon professor figure. This image of myself is probably entirely in my head, since to unsuspecting onlookers I am by
far not nearly enough into science, too young, the wrong gender, and haven’t really had any instances of having my hair stand up after electrocution. This is not because I haven’t been electrocuted, mind you – I have been at least twice. It has more to do with my hair being long and not really prone to stand up straight, electrocuted or not.

Yesterday wasn’t really a case of forgetfulness in the strict sense of the word – fortunately, or I’d have to explain why I had forgotten my security pass for the third time.
No, I went to work quite normally, yet in the car I noticed something was off. My jacket felt kind of weird on my arms while turning the steering wheel. Then, of course, I noticed it wasn’t my jacket at all. I had gone out in my boyfriend’s jacket. Now in my defense – they’re both black, the same material and apparently a similar size. The latter being mostly because I wear my clothes quite tightly, because in size I’m somewhat taller and quite a bit broader than my beloved. Fortunately, however, I didn’t tear the bloody thing and was able to return it safely to its owner.

And I live to be a moron for another day.

Beverly Hills 90210

Soms, heel soms - zie je een tekst waarvan je weet dat de schrijver er plezier mee heeft gehad.
Onlangs gelezen op : "Orale seks in Beverly Hills 90210 schiet in verkeerde keelgat".

Ach, wat voel ik me weer lekker puberaal.