Miscellanea Exotica

I saw an off-Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast last night. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. The evening got off to a roaring start when I showed up at the wrong theater. Oops!

1. I'm not entirely sure who the intended audience for this show is. It was toned both up and down from the movie -- a bit more slapstick, funny voices, and exaggerated reactions for the kids, but also more in the way of sex and violence for the adults. Lumiere and the French maid's flirting is a lot more present and overt, as well as Gaston's relationships with the fawning girls in the village; the Beast is more menacing/abusive in the beginning, actually hitting Belle, throwing her to the floor, and grabbing her by the throat.

2. Also, the whole show was a lot more talky than the movie, which is just a natural consequence of Show vs Cartoon, but I could hear a lot of the kids losing track of what was going on, and getting bored. Likewise, the show ran a little long for something intended for little kids that started at 8pm; I spent most of the second half listening the five-or-six-year-old girls whimpering to their moms that they they wanted to go home -- they were very obviously tired and cranky. Which, believe me, was making me quite cranky, as well.

2(b). I was reminded of just how much I don't want kids.

3. I was totally shipping Gaston and LeBouf. No, really. At intermission, I was thinking that they might actually skip the whole "Gaston is thrown from the castle tower" thing, and he'd settle down in humiliation with LeBouf, who would be happy as a clam to be his little homemaker and massage his feet... and such.

4. Speaking of which, the guy playing Gaston was making a very determined, and mostly successful attempt to run away with the show. Next to his antics, Belle and the Beast seemed positively bland. Best line of the show? "Who can think up these endless refrains like Gaston?!"

Maybe I'll do better chronicling the Steelers next season. Suffice it to say, hooray for yesterday, and next Sunday's gonna suck. Patriots are gonna whip our asses. (Unless not. They got beat by the Buffalo freaking Bills, after all.)

I got my replacement Kindle, and there was much rejoicing. In celebration, I bought Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. Four hundred and some-odd pages of pure self-indulgence, and I basically had to wring the testosterone out of my hair afterwards, but it was fun.

Next up, Shogun. Because I never actually finished it, and I've always meant to.

In other news, work sucks, but we knew this.

I dropped a computer on my toe, this morning. It's not broken, but a fair amount of skin got ripped off. A lot of the skin is still attached, and it's grey. I nearly passed out and did throw up when I tried to move it. It might be a good idea, actually, to go to an emergency room for this.

I have no health insurance, and not so much as a single sick day from work. I've cleaned it, put some Neosporin on it, and wrapped it like a frickin' mummy. And now I'm going to work and hoping for the best.

...Sometimes, life really sucks.

May I just say that being a real live adult, with a real live office job sucks giant donkey dong?

Work has been keeping me busy, and I've been spending a lot more time reading actual honest-to-god books. Which would be a good thing if only I would just read the ones I've already got and wouldn't insist on going out and buying new ones.

I've noticed an odd trend, though, you see. The authors that I am currently crazy for?

Ursula LeGuin
Patrica McKillip
Elizabeth Bear
Kelly Link
Genevieve Valentine
Catherynne Valente

I have no idea if it means anything or not, but it used to be I read primarily male authors. Suddenly, I'm leaning heavily toward female authors. I will have to give this more thought.

However, if I can recommend only one thing that I've read so far this year? I'd recommend Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. It's a children's book, yes; but it's the sort that a child will read and love, and when she goes back to it years and years later, she'll have an entirely different experience of the book, and quite likely an improved experience. As an adult, I love it for just what it is.

Isn't it amazing? In a month, I'll be twenty-six years old. And I'm still reduced to helpless sobs by The Last Unicorn.

Of course, the same could be said of several cartoons. Don't even get me started on The Land Before Time. I was trying to describe to my aunt a few months ago why the movie still makes me cry, and before I got all the way through the explanation, I burst into tears.

And, just recently, I saw Up. I spent half the movie laughing at talking dogs, and other other half sobbing.

The fuck is up with kids' movies that make me cry? Am I just sensitive?

So, I was just browsing the news. Looks like Rahm Emanuel is the new mayor of Chicago. This is my shocked face --> O.O

I don't live in Chicago, and I never have. However, I very much would like to one day. I hear so many stories about the place, and mostly they make me smile. It amuses me that there is a place that is openly as corrupt as the day is long, but for the most part, people shrug and say, "Well, that's Chicago, and anyway, it works."

And, really, this is one of those capers that really stinks of fish, and really makes me laugh, though it seems like most people are discreetly not saying much about it. Attend:

1. President Obama is a senator for the Chicago area before becoming President.
2. Rahm Emanuel also comes from the Chicago area, and becomes his Chief of Staff.
3. Mayor Daley, who had, heretofore, ruled his city with a fist of iron and shown no signs to doing otherwise until he dropped dead of feeble old age like his father, announces out of the blue that he'll be stepping down at the first end-of-term during Obama's administration.
4. Rahm Emanuel quits his job as White House Chief of Staff to return to Chicago to run for mayor.
5. Mayor Daley's brother is announced as Emanuel's replacement as Chief of Staff.
6. Emanuel is one of six candidates running for mayor, and was not predicted to receive a majority vote, meaning there would likely be a run-off.
7. Emanuel does, indeed, receive a majority vote and becomes the new Dictator for Life Mayor of Chicago.

Wow, that's a lot of connections and coincidences they want us to buy. It's like a Tammany Hall-style game of musical chairs. Fortunately, I don't think anyone actually expects anyone to buy anything.

This is not my face of moral outrage --> :D. I'm just laughing and laughing and laughing.

WE WON!! WE WON!! WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!! I DIDN'T THINK WE'D DO IT, BUT WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!

HERE WE GO STEELERS!!

So, I don't muse on sports all that often. This is the first year I've actually paid any attention to the mechanics of the football playoffs. I only got into football a couple of years ago, at which point it all came down to voodoo, as far as I was concerned. Then last year, the Steelers just fell to fucking pieces and I didn't care quite enough about the Cowboys, and so it didn't matter. This year, the Steelers at least have got a shot (even if it was the Cowboys who fell to fucking pieces) and I'm paying attention, and when the whole process isn't giving me a headache, it's really very interesting.

So. The AFC (and for the moment, I only care about the AFC) looks like this:

1. Patriots
2. Steelers
3. Colts
4. Chiefs
5. Ravens
6. Jets

This weekend, the Colts play the Jets and the Chiefs play the Ravens. I'm just going to muse on some of the outcomes and what they might mean for us getting to the Superbowl (verdict: unlikely but possible).

I haven't been paying much mind to the Colts this year, as we haven't played them at all. From what I've gathered, they've had a pretty mediocre year, not one of Manning's best. The Jets, on the other hand, have been having a wildly uneven year. They've gone from brilliant to just awful, and back again. It's hard to say if pretty consistent mediocrity will beat fatally inconsistent brilliance.

And really, it's the Colts/Jets game that's going to be important. Baltimore is going to cream Kansas City. I don't think there's anyone who has any doubts of that. The Ravens are going to be winning that game. So, it comes down to whether Indianapolis or New York wins.

If the Colts win, they'll absolutely be the high seed winner, and they'll play us, while Baltimore will play the Patriots. This might well be the optimum outcome. I'm pretty sure we can beat the Colts this year. Meanwhile, the Ravens have beaten the Patriots already this season. They could do it again. If so, we'd likely end up playing them after that, and we're pretty evenly matched with them. I'd say it'd be about 50/50, but we absolutely can beat them. And the Ravens play nasty, so even if they lose to the Patriots, they might beat them up enough for us to snatch a victory in the Conference Championship.

On the other hand, if the Jets win, they'll be the automatic low seed, meaning they'll play the Patriots, while we play the Ravens. This outcome... not so favorable. Once again, we've got a fair to good chance of beating the Ravens. However, as previously mentioned, the Ravens are all about doing maximum damage to the opposing team, and, being our division rivals, they've got a particular hate-on for us, and for specific, key members of our team. If they can take out Ward, Polomalu, or Rothlisberger, they absolutely will. Anything to leave us unprepared to play against whoever wins the Patriots/Jets match-up. Which... well.

The Jets have beaten the Patriots this season. And then were unceremoniously creamed in the rematch. They could muster themselves to beat the Patriots again. Or they could continue with their ongoing tailspin and just serve as an appetizer. Even on the tailspin, though, the Jets beat us. So. Most likely, the Patriots will crush the Jets, and we'll limp over to New England and get our butts kicked. Or, by some miracle, the Jets will win and come to Pittsburgh, where... well, we'll just have to hope they fall to pieces again.

In the unlikely event, though, that we somehow triumph over the Patriots or whoever beats the Patriots, and we go the Superbowl, we will then have to face either the Saints or the Falcons. We've played both of these teams already this year. We beat the Falcons (one of only three teams, including the Saints!), and were steamrolled by the Saints. I'm not sure we could beat the Falcons again. I mean, on the one hand, we beat them without Big Ben, but we beat them on the first game of the season. You could very legitimately argue that they weren't really warmed up yet. And we just barely beat them in a very low-scoring game. So. Maybe, maybe not; but I'm tending towards not. As for the Saints? I'm going with "no." I'd be very interested to see the game played between the Saints and the Patriots -- I honestly think that's what's going to happen, though I'm really pulling for us and the Falcons. But, yeah, us and the Saints? Going with the Saints.

So, very long story short, I'm thinking that we have a 25% chance at best of making it to the Superbowl in the first place, and only a, say, 40% chance of winning that if we get there. But, hey, we've won the Superbowl with essentially this same team and much lower odds. So. We'll see.

When you come right down to it, I am a geek. Specifically, I'm a geek who loves lists. Kind of always have been. When I was, say, about eleven, I decided to pull out a notebook and make a list of all the books I owned, title and author. For the record, I'm pretty sure the number hovered around 800. Yeah, I had a lot of books. But, see, knowing how many books I had, and which books they were, and where I had them stored (I had so many, I had to be rather creative in regards to storage) wasn't enough. I had to know how many pages they all had, and how much that added up to. So I spent days going through every book I owned, writing down the page count, and then even more days going through with a calculator adding it all up. And then I wanted to know how many words that was, so I started trying to come up with an estimated wordcount per page. Looking back on it, I might have been (and might still be) just a little OCD.

When I got my first computer, and discovered spreadsheets and databases, well. Things started getting a little out of hand.

Then I got into fanfic and discovered del.icio.us. My obsession with tagging is actually a little frightening.

In the spirit of my obsession, I spent a couple of days going through the upcoming Big Bang descriptions and posting dates, and created a database of the ones that I thought looked interesting. I'm currently resisting the temptation to start creating multiple tables and adding several new fields of descriptors, like: Have I read anything by that author before? If so, did I like what I read enough to save it to delicious? If not, did I like it, but just not enough to save it? Am I interested in reading the fic because the description sounds good, regardless of the author, or am I willing to look at it because I trust the author regardless of whether I found the description interesting? Or is it a fic with an interesting description written by an author I trust? Am I really eager to read the fic, or is it just something I'll take a look at? And so on.

But anyway. My point is that I figured out how many Big Bangs I'm currently planning on at least attempting to read (112, for the record). And that got me thinking. I still have a bookmark folder filled with fics (mostly Supernatural and CWRPF) that I want to read but haven't had a chance to get around to. The folder is quite large. I'll never ever lack reading material. But, I knew that a few of the fics in that folder were Big Bangs from previous years. So, I decided to go through and tag all them, to see how many. It took all night, but I finally discovered that I still have 38 Big Bangs from 2009, and 11 from 2008 bookmarked and waiting to be read.

But figuring out how many I had waiting to be read was not enough. It got me thinking: how long would it take me to actually read all of those? And wordcounts are much more useful in figuring that out than just numbers of fics (after all, a fic of 100,000 words would take considerably longer than one of 20,000). So I went through every one of the Big Bangs that I have bookmarked, and put the wordcounts into a spreadsheet (separate columns for 2009 and 2008), and added it all up. I have 2,158,612 words (give or take, since most of the given wordcounts are approximate, and even I'm not obsessed enough to go through all of them to get accurate counts, even with my handy-dandy wordcount addon for Firefox) worth of fic to read. In addition to the 112 fics (minimum of 20,000 words each, so a minimum of 2,240,000 words total, with an absolute guarantee that pretty much every single one of them will be over the minimum, with many of them being considerably over) for this year.

And still my obsessive geekery is not satisfied. I have read that the average mass market paperback holds an approximate average of about 300 words per page. My own investigations (which involve pulling random books from my shelf, counting the words from a random line on a random page, and multiplying it by the number of lines on the page) suggest something closer to somewhere between 400 and 500 words per page. In the spirit of compromise, I decided to divide the wordcounts by 400. Which means that for previous years' Big Bangs, I have approximately 5,397 pages worth of fic to read. At an average of perhaps 400 pages per novel, that's about 13.5 novels. For this year, there will be a minimum of 14 novels worth of material. If I assume that the average wordcount for this year will be similar to last year, and that the 49 wordcounts that I currently have in my spreadsheet offer at least a semi-valid sample, then the average wordcount will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 44,053 per fic. So, for 112 fics, that's 4,933,970 words. Which boils down to about 31 novels.

This has actually been kind of embarrassing. I swear, I'm not actually obsessive compulsive. Except possibly where it comes to my delicious tags -- 16 bundles holding 1,498 tags might be a little excessive for most people, particularly given how often I feel compelled to go back through my 800 bookmarks to add entirely new descriptors.

And for those of you playing at home, this post has been 957 words long.

I didn't get to watch the SPN finale in real time. This makes me quite sad. Why do I always end up with Thursday night classes? Tonight was the first class for Business Econ, and the dude took up every last minute of his three hours and ten minutes. Plus a few. So class didn't even end until after nine. I didn't get home, with one thing and another, until after ten. So no spn in real time. Not that I could have watched it anyway. Life interfered with me seeing 5x21 last week, and I kinda decided that, all things considered, it would be better to spare myself the suspense of the no-doubt heart-wrenching semi-finale, and just watch the two back to back. Which I'll just be doing anyway. So whatever. Just. I didn't even get the option. :(

Today was a good day, anyway. Aside from class, I also got my hair done, got my ears pierced again, and went to lunch/dinner with L.

I got my hair a lot shorter than I usually do -- usually it's an even just-above-shoulder length, and now it's just-below-chin length in front and just-above-neck length in back. I think it looks good. We'll have to see how it looks once I've washed and brushed it myself -- it always looks so much different than when the hair dresser does it.

I finally decided to just go for it, and got a third set of piercings in my ears. I love earrings, and any excuse to wear more of them is good by me. I got it done in an actual piercing parlor, as opposed to the previous three piercings (including the one that ended in disaster), which I just got done at those kiosks in the mall. This one, he did the piercing by hand, rather than with a gun, and it hurt quite a bit more. The last two mostly just felt like bee stings, although I remember the first one hurting about that much. I can't be sure about that, though: it was a long time ago, I was only ten, and my pain threshold was considerably lower. Also, that was the one that got a horrible infection. Could be I was already reacting (though I doubt it). Anyway, I now have a serviceable pair of hoops in my ears, and they're gonna be there for a couple of months, minimum. And my ears don't heal quickly, so it may be a bit longer than that. But, yay for more piercings. Though these will likely be my last. I might get one more in the cartilage of my ear(s), but that's it. I don't have any desire for bits of metal in any other part of my body.

Lunch went pretty well, I thought. L continues to be awesome, and she seems to like me, which, yay for me. We were eating in the Panera downstairs from my classroom so that I could duck out at the last possible second, and we got so caught up in a discussion of games and comic book movies, that I still managed to be late. That's a good sign, I think.

That was my day. It was a good day. And I will no doubt have more to say once I've seen 5x21 and 5x22. Just have to wait for for the latter to be put up.