the vault.

so close

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:22:58 GMT

lea michele is performing in a cabaret tomorrow night just a couple blocks down from where i'm staying in nyc... but the shows are sold out (duh).

mild angst.

edit: oh glee, you kill me with all the naff. i want to hugs you but you're intangible.

fuck you!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:38:10 GMT

omfg windows live mail outlook piece of shit fuck off and die i hate you so much and whichever retards designed and programmed you just all of you go fuck off AARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

omg, brittany

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:33:29 GMT

brittany: "i find... recipes confusing."

lol.

ps. when i find an appropriate screencap, it will join this quote.

the best thing

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:22:49 GMT

love lucy durack. download "the best thing" from metro street.

also i was randomly watching kim possible the other day. so awesome, love it.

i think...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:56:36 GMT

... i may just be a little bit obsessed with lea michele/rachel berry.

and a performance.

glee

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:03:59 GMT

finally more television that i would actually watch. it couldn't come at a better time considering the new seasons of gossip girl is making me yawn.

glee is my new candy. i wish i could binge on it, but it's only up to episode 5 in the states. it's awesome. could do with more sex but at least it makes up for it with music.

the show is meant to be satirical (and the pilot episode laid it on thick) but it still manages to bring the cheese. the thing is: i love cheese.

dollhouse is also going well. joss whedon = genius.

woe

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:08:25 GMT

don't want to do assigment :'(

stuff

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:37:07 GMT

so much stuff!

D:

raaaahhh!!!

it starts!

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:45:38 GMT

this week has made me feel so special. in the lame way. i blame hormones, sugar, caffeine, bad dieting habits in general, and too many new faces, all blended in with my own special brand of special. in some cases it was like "why on earth did i think that was a good/appropriate/acceptable thing to do/say/blurt out at the time". sigh.

also i have such a peter pan complex, and grown adults still freak me out, regardless of how small the age gap may be. anyways, here's to hoping i don't alienate people any further with my strangeness :P

musical theatre = love

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:41:27 GMT

was in melbourne over the weekend and saw wicked and avenue q. so nice to be able to see the full stories instead of just listening to broadway soundtracks and catching whatever promotional performances are up on youtube.

wicked was exactly just that. i haven't seen many live theatre performances, so the scope of the production just killed me. also i just get really giddy when the music starts - i love love love live orchestras. rob mills was ridiculously adorable as fiyero. he was just so genuinely simple, and his character transformation at the very end just made me feel all mushy and gaw.

can't wait to go to new york and london. more so london, just because i want to try and stalk julie atherton's performances. that actually brings me to the one thing missing from the avenue q experience: julie atherton. she really brings the puppets to life, rather than just opening and closing their mouths. and on top of that, she's just such an expressive performer, with whatever she's singing. i'm incredibly jealous of the fact that my brother and sister got to see her in avenue q.

kina grannis is <3

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:42:53 GMT

so in love with her and this performance.

omfg

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:26:58 GMT

chuck and blair = so much love.

three posts in the last week. can you tell that i'm procrastinating? and now that the season has ended, i can say that the following are the top blair/chuck moments of season 1 and season 2.

kina grannis

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:39:58 GMT

is awesome. the power of youtube & procrastination has introduced her to me, and now i am a massive fan. she already has quite a large following, quite possibly due to her song about digg.com which actually had a shitload of diggs on the site itself. also here's a link to the "message from your heart" official video. also here she is singing a duet with a zach braff lookalike (he seems a bit intense). and then a more interesting duet with friend, david choi. and seriously, because she is so awesome, have another song which also features her little sister providing accompanying vocals. if she were to make a trip to australia to perform, i would so be there.

random (really random) emotional brain dump

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:42:08 GMT

whilst surfing the web, as one does when procrastinating from study, i stumbled upon the fairly recent news of the death of a female usaf (united states air force) officer in afghanistan. i'll be honest, what initially caught my attention was her photo. i then went on to read the main article and, after a moment to process the details, i realised just how deeply the death of roslyn schulte seemed to have affected me.

after reading a few other related news articles as well as tributes that had been posted on various blogs by her friends and colleagues, i can't help but unconditionally believe that roslyn schulte was everything that people claimed her to be - which is nothing short of absolutely beautiful, inside and out (as one of her colleagues put it). sounds completely silly and naf, right? but it's how i feel. we're not talking about a military grunt but an educated career officer.

basically i was deeply moved by what i'd learned of roslyn schulte - not of her "honourable sacrifice" but of her life and character. it saddens me to think that a martyr was made of such an inspirational woman, and that the only way her influence could reach someone like myself was because she was "the first female usaf academy graduate to be killed in action". what a way to marginalise what appeared to so many others to be an extraordinary influence in their lives.

a lot of comments follow the lines of "she died serving her country", but you know what? apart from accepting that there's danger involved in the occupation and genuinely caring enough to actively improve the human condition in such parts of the world, i still get the impression that roslyn schulte did not die for these lofty american ideals of 'freedom' and 'peace'. instead, i get the impression that an intelligent and talented, young woman, with great ambition and morality, died whilst trying to be her best. i managed to find the following article which supports this impression - it was written in 2005 and includes mentions of roslyn schulte as an academy student and the attitudes and mentalities of her and her fellow students

In the Footsteps of Tocqueville - source
Death row and a brothel in Las Vegas; a pilot's lecture on creationism; genealogy and the Mormons; higher learning in Austin; a gun show in Fort Worth; and the rain-struck opening of the Clinton Library

The Myth of the American Empire

I remember the way we used to demonize the American Army when I was young. I remember the image we had of the My Lai kind of GI—all the makings of a brute and a fascist. And I remember the fever with which a few months ago Europeans in general and the French in particular seized on Seymour Hersh's investigations revealing the despicable crimes committed in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib.

I know, of course, that in all countries in the world, and necessarily in America as well, an army has contradictory faces.

And I'm sure that the United States Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, which trains officers for one branch of the armed services, is not the ideal observation post from which to judge the recent evolution of the military as a whole.

But when you come down to it…

These boys with chubby, sensible faces…

This girl from St. Louis, Roslyn Schulte, long brown hair pulled back in a bun, beautiful, gentle, deep gaze, who went to one of the best high schools in the country…

This other cadet, who doesn't know the name Clausewitz but who has over his bedside table a copied-out quotation from Rabbi Harold Kushner on the meaning of life, death, suffering…

This table at lunchtime where eight cadets out of twelve confess, in the heat of a surprisingly free debate, that they weren't in favor of the war in Iraq, because, according to them, the chances of a "police option" weren't fully explored.

This class, finally, which I am allowed to observe, where the questions under consideration—the weighty and highly strategic problems that will be debated for an hour by a dozen future knightlings of the sky, as they all sit calmly behind desks arranged in a semicircle—are these: First, "How many times in the morning do you push the snooze button on your alarm clock? In what circumstances? Why? And how can you get rid of this annoying habit?" and second, "How can you stop this other pathological behavior, much more serious for a future pilot and officer—the smoking habit? Do you think the right method is to use chewing gum? To slip the money you've saved from every unbought pack into a piggy bank and see how much you end up with after a certain period of time? If you're married, or dating, should you get a gentle massage every time you don't smoke? Or should you be punished if you smoke, and be made to eat your cigarette?"

Why did you enlist? I ask them. Why, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, does one decide to become an Air Force officer?

Some (whose decisions, they tell me, date from the shock of 9/11): To defend my country.

Others (who, obviously, are aware of all the major historical debates over whether the United States has the right or not to meddle in the affairs of other nations): To defend the Constitution.

Still others (supporters of a neo-conservative foreign policy—which is to say, plainly, a more active, more aggressive foreign policy): Beyond even our own Constitution, to defend the values of freedom on which it is based, and to defend them everywhere, yes, everywhere, wherever they're scorned.

And last is Roslyn Schulte, from St. Louis: "Do you really want to know what brought me here? I wanted to fly the most exciting airplanes—the small, fast jets they only fly in the military. I was thinking of flying; I was thinking of fun."

I don't meet a single one, in fact, who mentions the greatness of the military profession as such.

Nor do I meet anyone who really seems to take into account the increased risk of death today, given the Iraq War, inherent in the simple fact of choosing a military career.

The response of Brigadier General Johnny Weida, the commandant of cadets at the academy, is all the more clear-cut: very little military background in his family; not the least hint of fascination with war or the Army; his first motivation was not planes but sports. What? He guffaws. Yes, he did say "sports." It was 1974; he was twenty; he had a friend who told him that the Air Force Academy was a great place to develop one's athletic skills. The vocation, of course, followed; it came to him, as it often does to others, at the controls of his first F16s; but in the beginning that was it. In the beginning it was primarily "Integrity first, service before self, excellence in all we do"—the motto of the Air Force as well as the values of sport.

I repeat that this may be an exceptional case.

And I'll take care not to judge the broader mentality of the U.S. military (or, above all, of those backup troops who dishonored themselves at Abu Ghraib) on the basis of this academy where they train officers who make it a point of honor not to be "mere" soldiers.

But I should confess that I return to my hotel somewhat confused.

And I decide, this very evening, that from now on I will think twice before allowing myself to talk glibly, like too many of my fellow citizens, about the imperial American military—or, beyond the military, about the imperial calling of the country itself.

"Involuntary Romans," Paul Morand said.

"Incompetent imperialism," added the British historian Niall Ferguson, whose thesis is that the United States doesn't have, and never did have, sufficient military will for its ambitions.

"Incoherent empire," Michael Mann, on the other end of the ideological spectrum, asserts, denouncing the "untidy militarism" of a country that never knew, and knows increasingly less, how to control the territories it has conquered.

And once again, Tocqueville long ago lent us a key to the riddle when he wrote that Americans have even less inclination for war than for politics.

i really can't help but feel that roslyn schulte is a person i should continue to remember. and it sucks, cos in the world of "what ifs", you just know she would have been destined for great things.

God Speed 1LT. Roslyn L. Schulte - source

Yesterday, my closest friend for the last couple months, Roslyn Schulte, was killed in a roadside bombing halfway between here and Bagram. She is one of the most incredible people I have ever known, and I want to tell you about her. I had only known her about three months, but she was assigned to my unit, and so, she and I being the only two junior officers in the group, she had the unfortunate pleasure of having to hangout with me. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we did not eat at least one meal of the day together since she arrived here in early March.

Ros was truly an exceptional person. Usually when you hear that about someone who just died, it's almost always exaggeration, if not pure BS. With Ros, it's not. She passed up on the Ivy leagues to go to the Air Force Academy. She qualified for state in five different sports in high school, was an all-American in college, a qualified pilot. She was ALWAYS kind to others. She went out of her way to call her mom and dad two or three times a week every week she was here. Sorry I don't do that, Mom and Dad. No one did, except for Ros. She dreamed of getting out of the air force to settle down and start a family. She didn't drink. She didn't like the lifestyle of the military — said it didn't work well for family. She wanted to be a successful business owner (like her mom), but worried that would interfere with raising a family.

I've gotten good at bragging about her in the last 38 hours or so since we lost her. I'm generally recognized as her closest friend on base. It's an honor. But with that comes great misery too. I don't think there are too many people here who haven't seen me sobbing or choked up at some point in the last couple days. It feels strange for me as well, given I'm usually a pretty emotionless person. What is this watery substance hat appears to be forming in my eyes??

Ros and I usually traveled together on longer trips. We were almost always paired off together, in the same vehicle. That's how we wanted it, and how the mission planners did. Yesterday however I had to go somewhere else. We saw each other briefly in the morning, just shy of 7am. She was walking from her room, my convoy was already staged and waiting. She saluted me, in typical jest. Junior officers usually don't salute other junior officers, especially when they know each other. Without too much said, we each went our separate ways — I fully expected we would both be back having a meal together at Camp Eggers that evening. In fact, even though the day had just begun, I was already looking forward to that. She was my friend. My helicopter took off at 8am. By all accounts, Ros was killed halfway between Kabul and Bagram about 8:05. When my helicopter landed at the destination, around 9am, I got the news that there had been an attack along the route I knew she would be taking. Being a logical person, I quickly jumped to hope — that it was a well-traveled route for coalition forces, what are the chances that the one vehicle hit would be the one that Ros was driving? But something just didn't seem right, and my worst fears were confirmed in the excruciating minutes and hours after that initial news. No news is clear, especially when spotty reports are coming over cell phones, etc. But I would guess around 10am or 10:30, we got a phone call that Ros was dead.

I'm writing this to you so you can know a little bit about this wonderful person, Ros Schulte. My friend. I think it's ironic that this is happening just shy of Memorial Day, but I hope you will think of her this day. Fly a flag or something. I don't know. I've never lost anyone who was this close to me in my life — someone who was a fixture, who I counted on to be there everyday — so I don't know how to handle this stuff. But I do know that many of the people in my unit have been writing back to their family and friends about Ros. And I figured since she and I were the closest, I should do the same too. And you should honor her, because she was my friend.

A Tribute to 1LT Roslyn Schulte - source

1Lt Roslyn Schulte, USAFA '06, was killed on Wednesday. Roslyn was an intel officer, serving in an incredibly cool job in Afghanistan. Her convoy was driving down a frequently traveled road, and her vehicle drove over an IED that was buried under the ground, partially covered with asphalt, and detonated by someone who was watching and waiting to take American lives.

That man does not know what he has stolen from us. The enormity of this grief seems ill-contained by words... cheapened, even. But words are all I have, and this is my lament.

Roslyn was truly special, the sort of woman who had everything going for her. She was something of a celebrity at the Academy, phenomenally successful by all of their standards. She was envied by more than a few people, not only for everything she had succeeded at, but for her strength, and for the success that you could sense was in her future. I admit that when I was a younger and more foolish girl, I occasionally felt a flash of jealousy that could only exist from a distance, the sort that perished up close in the warmth of her personality. She was so smart and attractive, and so good at everything she did, and so incredibly self-possessed and poised besides... and back when some of us were too young to see something admirable and admire it (instead of feeling threatened), that was a little scary. She had the sort of beauty that could have been pulled from Elizabethan portraiture, with a quiet dignity in her bearing that could have been called regal if I didn't suspect the military would want me to find a different word. But when I think of her, my first thought isn't of the woman who looked so sharp in uniform (though she always, always did)... I see her in a cute T-shirt and jeans, relaxed and smiling among friends. I'm not sure where I'm pulling that particular memory from; I think a get-together during intel school, or something. What I'm trying to say is that she stood for everything you would have wanted in a cadet, and then in an officer, and always in a friend... and the heartbroken praise that you will read about her, written by friends and coworkers and former teachers and her loved ones, more than attests to that.

But in the wake of tragedy, no one talks about the human side of the person who has been taken from us. The luxury of having someone speak bluntly of you belongs to the living. Roslyn was human, too. She was a woman who had fallen in love and made mistakes and was finding her own way towards happiness and trying to figure it all out, like all of us. And she never gets to be that again. For that, too, my heart aches. My faith tells me that she is in a much better place, away from these surly bonds of earth. Our friend Shane remarked that she had lived so well in her time on earth, "I'd be happy to leave at 25 with a guaranteed pass to Heaven like she had. You and I, we've got a few things to make up for first." And even though I know she is in a better place, her journey with us on earth was far too short. I never realized what a blessing I would see in the pain and frustration of life, how lucky I am to still be here to make mistakes; I have a strange sense of appreciation for the things I would otherwise complain about, because I am still here to experience them, and Roslyn never will again.

My intel girlfriends and I have felt a particular chill, realizing that this woman who had so much in common with us has been taken from this world. At least four of us who were in intel school when Roslyn was are deployed right now. Every one of us has said, "It could have been us," because it very well could have been. And every one of us has also thought, to some degree, that there's no good reason why we were sitting in an air-conditioned room in front of our computers on the day that she was killed. We have read every report of the accident that we can get our hands on. We all want to know the truth, even though it has been very hard to read. Every one of us wishes there was something we could have done to prevent it, or something we could do now to avenge it. I have been struggling not to let the anger I have felt create the kind of evil in my heart that would make me no better than our enemy. It has not been easy, but I believe that Roslyn want us to carry on a good fight for her, not a poisoned one.

My friend Christine -- a USAFA '05 grad who had been in Roslyn's cadet squadron and had worked closely with her when we were cadets, and also an intel officer -- is serving in Afghanistan right now. She told me that three days ago she had to drive on the road where Roslyn died. Christine's convoy passed by the site where Roslyn's vehicle was hit by the IED. Blood and oil are still all over the road.

Christine made sure to call her dad the night before she left, and again when she had made it safely to her destination. I have read that Roslyn called her parents two or three times a week -- far more than most of us do, out here. There is some comfort in knowing that, for me. Roslyn's death is a reminder to all of us to never miss a chance to say "I love you" or "You are important to me" -- with words and with what we do. And still, it is so much more.

I feel flashes of confusion at signs that the rest of the world has gone on turning... that not everyone has stopped to honor the loss of this beautiful woman and all that she stood for. I feel guilty for my own moments of happiness, when I forget the somber mourning that sits patiently in my heart, waiting for me to remember that the world does not quite make sense right now. Sometimes I find a way to look at it that quiets the outcry I feel... but like it's written in sand, a wave of fresh shock washes the fragile logic away. I literally could not understand that her death was not front-page news in every newspaper. I could not understand how her life could end without the nation stopping to honor her. I could not understand how the President could address the graduating class of Annapolis and talk about American Idol, but not call Roslyn Schulte out by name to her brothers and sisters in arms.

Roslyn and I were friends, but we weren't terribly close... a couple classes together, working on the same convention as cadets, always hellos in passing, and lots of shared friends. Some of my friends were very close to her. Just as people who see me see but do not feel my sadness today, I realize that I cannot feel the pain that these friends are going through. And as broken as their hearts are, none of us can comprehend the hole that has been ripped into her family's lives. I can try to imagine it, but just as I could not imagine the grief I feel now, I cannot draw the outlines of their sadness.

The cost of these wars that we fight now cannot be measured in numbers. There is no measurement that will account for every day in this fight that takes more men and women from the people who love them, for this indefinable grief that is left behind when they are killed... And as high as this cost is, we can't stop fighting these wars, because we fight an enemy who wants to bring their hatred to our homeland. Every man and woman whose blood has been spilled in this fight has kept this evil at bay, and we cannot let their passing be in vain.

The way Roslyn left us is undeniably a tragedy, but we must not forget that it was much more than that. She willingly laid down her life for every one of us still living. We could have been there, in that car, but she was there for all of us. She was a quiet warrior, and left us with a warrior's death that very few Americans, or Academy graduates, or intel officers, or women, will ever know. A friend of mine here, a woman who served in the Army, told me, "Don't think for a second that she was not happy or ready to go... I say this because I was a soldier: what an honor to go as she did."

The Air Force Academy did not exactly give us a mechanism for dealing with the grief of combat loss, mostly because we Zoomies encounter it so seldom. I have been told that West Point and Annapolis graduates have historically been better prepared because their long lines have been broken more often, by many wars and different dangers. But the Zoo produces zipper-suited sun gods, and the warrior's death that was glorified to us while we were there was that of an aviator -- and while pilots once faced terrible peril, they seem far safer these days than the men and women on the ground. Our rituals, such as they were, were always geared to remember those who had gone before us in a bygone era, or to mourn those who were lost in more "civilian" ways. But this modern way of war is not easily understood, anymore, and although I do not feel spiritually prepared to deal with this, I am turning to what I have.

We learned a poem by heart when we were freshmen (or four-degrees, smacks, plebes, or doolies, depending on your dialect). The words I've found online don't match the ones I remember, and the ones I remember are the ones I am going to share:

We toast our faithful comrades, now fallen from the sky
And gently caught by God's own hand to be with him on high.
To dwell among the soaring clouds they knew so well before
From dawn patrol to victory roll at heaven's very door.
And as we fly among them there, we're sure to hear their plea:
"Take care, my friend; watch your six, and do one more roll, just for me."

Roslyn, this is my toast to you. The world needs to know who you were and what you stood for. We -- your classmates, your fellow intelligence professionals, your comrades in arms, and those who loved you -- we will not let your death be in vain. You have reminded us never to waste a second. Now it is up to us to carry on and do what you cannot in everything we do, and to teach those who come after you to do the same. We will take this and make it our strength. Our friend Kevin said it best: "The few of us were going to take over the world anyways. The plan hasn't changed."

Love, and one more roll...
Jen

Memorial Day: Remembering My LT - source

I haven't posted in a long time.

This is my fifth day back from Afghanistan.

This post is for my LT. Her memorial service was in St. Louis today and I wish I had been able to attend.

Lt Roslyn Schulte was a memorable person. She was very sweet and had alot of the same friends I did. The three memories of her that stick out the most are the following:

1) Seeing her lifting weights in the Warrior Gym. She was so skinny so I always used to giggle on my way upstairs to do cardio. She was a fit girl.

2) Of this one time in our office when I was having a mini-battle over security and she stepped in and quietly said I was being mean and rude for no reason. At first I was suprised, because no one jumps in my battles willingly, and then I laughed about because she was more solid than I thought to be able to calmly step in.

3) And finally of the time when we were stuck someplace for like 6 hours and I was starving because we had left before lunch time and we had no way to get to any bases with food. She had just gotten to Afghanistan but apparently always kept a bookbag with food. She fed me and won me over just like that.

She was a wonderful person and she would always rep the AF with me even though we were surrounded by Navy, Army, and Marines on our camp. She was more gung ho than me since she wore the flight suit for missions. I wore ACUs. She enjoyed getting out and meeting others.

Of course she was very witty and could throw out sarcastic quips with the best of us...you kind of have to be able to in our career field.

She will be missed.

Someday I'll have children. I've already decided my oldest girl will be named Roslyn. When she asks where she got her name I will be able to tell her it came from an strong woman I used to know who was named after her Grandma. [When the boy, Taylor, asks I'll tell him about another friend named Archie who was a sarcastic Marine.]

To be born is to die...but she went far too soon. I can honestly say she was a great leader and would have become so much more.

It was a pleasure and a honor to serve with her.

beautiful kisses

Siobhan

Roslyn Shulte - source

Today, 05.21.2009, Lt. Roslyn Schulte died. She was my cousin’s girlfriend, and he was going to propose to when she got back from deployment this August. Today she was killed in a car bombing in Afghanistan. Everyone in my family felt your pain today, we will always remember you. Rest in peace Lt. Roslyn Schulte. There was an article in the paper on her, and a link to the funeral and some words from my cousin.

smooth in so many ways

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:56:33 GMT

i saw adventureland on sat. very different pacing to what the trailer suggests. kristen stewart only really plays the one character in all of her movies (herself) which is fine by me cos she's just hot. so to movie producers everywhere: if you ever need someone to play the part of a seemingly depressed, self-deprecating, and somewhat lethargic young adult, then just cast kristen stewart. the twilight contingent alone will take care of the opening weekend sales, but only for films released within the next 2-3 years.

now this looks pretty awesome:

pedobear strikes

Sun, 03 May 2009 01:36:37 GMT

keeping tally

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:17:08 GMT

i ~~may~~ hopefully have heartburn or acid reflux (as opposed to a stomach ulcer or something) which means i'm not allowed to have coffee, chili, alcohol, soft drink, citrus fruits, fatty foods and other stuff which may aggravate the acids in my stomach (ie. most of my entire diet). epic phails!

my boss gave me beer. win!

i can't drink the beer due to aforementioned illness. fail :(

i have not had a great run of health lately. these past 3 months i've probably been to the doctor more often than i have for the past 3yrs.

we're going on an adventure!

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:25:03 GMT

don't want to watch superbad, but totally want to watch this. kristen stewart = yay. also i want a "games" t-shirt. online t-shirt stores are getting all of my money :(

i <3 rookie boomer

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:11:38 GMT

awesome flashback. don't care if it was convenient, it's just -so- boomer; the way she was/is. athena had the power of free will and choice but boomer, being a sleeper agent, didn't always get to choose her actions. it's easy to say "i worked hard to be accepted" but then it's a whole different story when you're programmed to go against your inherent nature. eights are so earnest, that's one of things that just makes me adore them. athena may be the 'good one' that chose to side with the humans, but boomer -was- human. she was always good at heart.

it's kind of weird when i think about it. athena was essentially boomer as a self-aware cylon, and she only really became 'human' through helo. when i think about it now, much of her merit came from either her interactions with helo, or the traits that she shared with boomer (ie. boomer's personality). in the same way that you only really sympathise with "athena-wannabe" eight because she essentially has athena's personality, athena would be just another eight if you took boomer out of her programming. relationship with helo or not, what really makes athena is the fact that she is, on some level, the same as boomer. what you love about athena is what you loved about boomer. whereas athena had the opportunity to be with the person she loved and grow as an individual within the fleet, boomer had that opportunity ripped away from her. firstly due to her programming as a sleeper agent, and secondly due to cally being a murderous bitch.

boomer never had a chance. and yet everything there is to love about sharon valerii is essentially boomer. i'll always find it slightly weird how athena has such a hard time connecting emotionally with other eights. it's ironic how boomer attempts to be less human and more machine, and ultimately fails to be anything less than what she is; then on the flip side you have athena, who in a bid to be more 'human' actually ends up cutting herself off emotionally from other cylons and even other eights.

i will always <3 boomer

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:08:59 GMT

so bsg finished.

it was good and both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. emotionally overwhelming cos wow, i love the characters. story was underwhelming cos they went for the "realistic" conclusion rather than the kickass awesome sci-fi fanboy conclusion (of which i am sure there are many).

oh boomer. you tried so hard, you got so far, but in the end it didn't really matter. it's ok, i'll always love you <3

also "kara thrace = squee!" is tainted with "kara thrace = wtf" but still, i have developed so much love for starbuck. she started off all aggro and manly, but then she became this awesome kickass woman of "i always do the right thing and won't take your bullshit! although sometimes i find the time to cry".

seriously, the women of bsg are so friggen awesome; sharons, sixes, roslin, starbuck. even bit players like d'anna, or even ellen tigh after she resurrected. i even feel some sympathy for racetrack - i kinda feel she went through a bit of character assassination. they could have just let her go on the mission, do the right thing having learnt a valuable lesson from the mutiny and at least die honourably, but instead she's all like "i'm here cos it beats being in prison" and then dies cos of flying debris. pretty lame. and she was so accepting of athena when she was made an officer and allowed to fly again.

but that's neither here nor there. really the only females i had issues with were ones like tori and callie. i felt a bit bad for tori towards the end cos she seemed like she'd found her home with the cylons and was a little less angry and vindictive (and she was pretty cool as roslin's aide before she found out she was a cylon). why can't they just let these characters find peace instead of going "uhoh, time for you to die an unheroic death!" but i suppose it was a means of teaching everyone a valuable lesson: you can't get away with airlocking someone's wife (even if that wife was a whingey slutbag of a whore).

omg that just reminds me of this awesome deleted scene where athena confronts callie. yeah, callie, take that you pasty whingy bitch. it almost makes me want to go back and watch season 1 and 2 just so i can watch boomer and athena being awesome before everyone got sad and angry and became less cool. oh boomer :(

there were lots of things about this ending that i have small gripes about (and some are shared by others, so you know, stuff) but this one pretty much sums up how i felt about the final episode:

"The biggest problem I had was the last couple of minutes. The present-day scene with Head Six and Head Baltar was preachy and way too in-your-face for a show that rarely was. Completely unnecessary and it ruined the flow. The episode should have ended with Adama at Laura's grave, looking out onto that new, wonderful world." source

amen.

sitting in someone else's bed

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:49:34 GMT

yeah... stuff's not as organised as i'd like it to be. but still chugging along. i'm starting to feel the stress but i can't seem to be able to find an outlet. i'm afraid of sleeping too much or just generally being lazy and unproductive. also omg, so afraid of saying the wrong thing - especially when i've been drinking. i think the answer will inevitably be to not drink. also my appetite's been weird these past two weeks. i hate not enjoying my food :(

battlestar galactica has picked up again and is almost over. i find it weird how i can get so emotionally attached to shows (like back in the day of buffy) and it's also weird to think that potentially one of the best tv shows ever is coming to an end. but these things never really do end, even when they say they will. they'll milk it for all it's worth with the prequel series and other spin-off material, for sure.

but it'll mean no more sharon valerii :\
unless she appears in the prequel somehow :O
i wish :(

also started watching dollhouse. the acting isn't great for what i feel should be required for the material, but it's a joss whedon product so it just works. eliza dushku is eliza dushku, as per usual, which works given that she just about always plays the same kind of character (or just always plays her characters the same way) oliva williams started off looking a bit strange in the first couple of eps but is now back to looking more olivia williams like and less old-british-hag. she's hotter as max fischer's teacher though.

OMG, BOOMER, WHY?!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:18:41 GMT

OMG, BOOMER, WHY?!

ps. as hot as fucking your doppelganger's beau may be (in a naughty way) it's still wrong. not to mention stealing his/your doppelganger's kid, manipulating your ex-beau who still held a (very guilty) torch for you, and just generally OMG, BOOMER, WHY?!

pps. also kara thrace = squee!

le sob :'(

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:56:17 GMT

oh blair! :(

leighton meester is so awesome. so much sympathy for blair. i can't get over how awesome her character is. i could re-watch blair scenes for hours. my fave gossip girl episode to date is still "blair waldorf must pie!". so much love.

omfg!

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:36:56 GMT

this is just too awesome. some of the best references in there - especially when they sing a line from lincoln hawk's "everytime". genius!

cries

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:10:03 GMT

omg, chuck is being so mean to blair :'(

update: omg, drunken apology and hugs

update2: omg, what happened on new year's??? :O

this episode is one of the better written ones in a while. i can't tell if it's because i haven't been reading spoilers lately or if because the writers suddenly woke up and started doing their jobs properly.

onto episode 15: omg, blair and jack bass? that's kinda hot in a scandalous way.

update: omg, blair looks hot! chuck stood up hot blair! D:

update2: rufus is such a douche. i guess washed-up rockstar who thinks he's still young and attractive doesn't go well with wisdom and maturity. even lily is more rational and grounded, and she's an ex-skankaholic.

update3: omg, jack bass manipulates blair in the same way that she manipulates others. he's a one-up from blair!

update4: another chuck & blair implosion :(