Boo for TV

So I had basically no television viewing time over the last few years, because a) I like to watch TV on TVs b) I didn't really get into the whole illegal streaming thing and c) For a while I didn't have internet. So over the last few years I've amassed a list of TV Shows that have gotten great reviews and that I was really really excited to watch. Over these past few months, I've tried to get into a lot of them and all I have to say is that I want those hours of my life back. So-called "great" shows are not that great. With one exception. So I won't listen to people for advice for TV shows now. I think I'll go back to sit-coms.

Show I tried to like but it turned out to be boring
Note: when I say try to like I mean I've watched at least 5 episodes
True Blood
The Wire
Mad Men

Shows that I've watched one episode of but I may or may not like
The Sopranos

New Shows that I love
Archer
The Office

Yup. Comedy it is for me.

Films - Dreams - Psychoanalysis - Myth

When I started becoming interested in more than a film's plot - I became excited about a film's camera angles and shot types and sounds and the technical terminology. And so I thought it was so different from literary analysis. English was my favourite subject in high school because it was an escape from all the other courses I was taking by the end but at the same time I sort of hated it because it just repeated itself over and over: okay now, we're going to examine a character and the world that the author has created. At the end of the day, it was cool but deep down inside I was always asking, "Yeah, so, what's the point? I can't relate, really, to any of these characters." Not the guy from Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World or girl from To Kill a Mockingbird or Hamlet.

So I started taking cinema classes and it's all this stuff about visual representation and whatnot but then when I write papers about the films it's all this other stuff you have to consider like the industrial complex and the social and historical circumstances (as well as the "aesthetic" bits). And then you have to explain the character's motivations. And interpret it. Well. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that cinema studies is psychoanalysis of a text, with all the other 'circumstances' thrown in for good academic measure.

Myths, films and dreams all do something to our subconscious that should be analyzed pscyhologically, and they intertwine, which is interesting, but shouldn't we be leaving these to the psychologists? Cinema studies should be a social science. I was tricked into thinking it was in humanities! Or the performing arts, even!

Well, we'll see where all this theory leads to eventually...

S.A.D., anyone?

I don't care how many exams I have to take, just give me the sun! In the meantime, here is a sunny song:


Sweet sun! Leaves

Incredible meatless quesadilla recipe

1. Sautee half a medium smalley-diced onion but do not brown it.
2. Add a can of that tomato paste stuff which is nasty by itself but delicious with other things.
3. When the rest is warmed thoroughly, add half a pack of Yves' Mexican Veggie Ground Round.
4. Take a corn (or flour) tortilla and warm it in the microwave. Meanwhile, when the above mixture is warmed, add some cheese and red peppers or jalapeno to the mix.
5. Spoon the mixture onto the tortilla. Add a thin layer of cheese onto the surface. Microwave until the cheese melts.
6. Either roll it up if you can or press another tortilla on top and cut into triangles.!!

Challenge: Spend Less Time on the Computer

People (used to) complain about watching too much TV and wasting your life away, but now that TV and movies have shifted online or onto harddrives, we have too much TV AND too much computer. I think out of all the challenges I have on 43Things, this will be one of the most difficult.

Almost none of the best memories I have in life were spent in front of a computer (except reconnecting with some people through social networking or Skype), yet I spend maybe 50% or more of my waking hours in front of a computer (my waking hours are about 16 in total. I absolutely need 8 hours of sleep.)
The worst for students is that now basically all essay writing (Microsoft Word), studying (PowerPoint presentations) and research is done online, so I can't really escape the computer.

All last year I had an office job where I sat in front of a computer all day and it was ugly, both for my body and my mind.
Even my current job requires me to do most of my research online.
So how am I going to get away from the computer?
First of all, let me define my goal the SMART way:

Specific - I think "turning off the computer" is pretty specific. It does not mean I can hibernate then go back on it at night.
Measurable - I want to cut down my total computer use (not just Internet use but computer) to 1.5 hours a day.
Attainable - People have lived for thousands of years not having a computer stuck to them daily. It's not like I won't have Internet, or other entertainment within my reach, and I will have other off-line projects to work on (baking, anyone?)
Realistic - Well, other than my research-oriented job and writing some stories on my computer, I don't have much else I absolutely need to do for more than 1.5 hours other than if I wanted to listen to music or watch a show. But this is a daily thing, so if I listen to 1 hour of music a day, then I'll just have to watch a show another day.
Timely - I want to do this by March. By then I will know more of what I'm doing when I move back in with my parents. Or, rather, less of what I'm doing...

So that's it. I can't really start the challenge until all my exams are done because that's just unfair to myself, but once I start I will allot some of my 1.5 hour quota to updating on here!

Epic

I was at my university's FreeStore the other day and I was milling about, looking around, looking around, seeing nothing, and then within the span of two seconds I pick up two great books, both hardcovers.

1. Edward Rutherford's massive London
2. Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential

and then my friend handed me her copy of Atlas Shrugged so that'll help me with my challenge. So even after January when I have no more school I have a bit of reading to do. I'm excited, actually!

Note to Self

I am suddenly struck by an interest in World History, Historiography, and the Philosophy of History.

I am interested in history through metanarratives (Lyotard), cyclic and time-dimension -type history (Nietzsche) and Mythemes (Lévi-Strauss).
I think the idea of evolution as a narrative makes me think that there is some climax to the "story of humankind" and that each generation or century thinks that they are living in that climax (maybe. or not. maybe that's just my theory, me with no training in history. I'm just brainstorming ideas here).
I would also like to think that no, there is no "end", no "impending doom", no "apocalypse" and these are all just made up. Magazines like this because they grab you with headlines like "The end of ______insert thing vital to this culture here_________." "The end of food." "The end of technology." "The end of..." etc.
So what if it's the end? I'm trying to think of something that was vital for past civilizations but nowadays we don't even consider it a real thing. At a smaller scale, this would be something like the Vinyl Disc, or not even...maybe the Laser Disc. Probably when the Laser Disc was put out, some media were writing headlines like "The end of video." But no.
What probably started me thinking about this was my Climatology course's class on Climate Change and how everything needs to be looked at in terms of scale. Humans have been here only a tiny portion of earth's life, and yet me studying in Humanities, it seems like we're all that matters. I guess there's a biological need for it, I guess if we "evolved" thinking that all that mattered was, say, (ugh it's so hard to think of something universal to humans) Pine Cones, then we would spend most of our time and energy on pine cones and not enough to actually feed ourselves or warm ourselves and then we would've died. I guess.
Another thing that started me thinking about this was viewing The Edukators, how one generation of activists just slowly fade away and another one comes along and raise caine. Stuff like this makes me think that history comes in cycles. Once something is forgotten, and oh how easy it is to forget, then it just repeats itself. I remember learning about the Holocaust in high school and they said that the most important part of why they're telling us all this is so that it isn't forgotten.
To have history, there has to be a belief in such a thing as a past, and there has to be a belief in a future, and then a present has to be defined from past and future. But what if there is no past and future? What if it is just a big circle and that archaeologists and historians and all those who are digging up the past...what if the past is actually the future?
There also has to be a belief in something called progress. I've read countless times texts in which there was the claim "Today we live in a state so much better than people in the past. Despite every problem we have today, we have this and this and that and look how much we've improved." Yeah, I guess you can claim that if you're measuring "betterness" by stuff like "social justice", "development", "(right to) education" (I'm putting EVERYTHING in quotes because I'm really tired), "equality", "non-discrimination", "peace", "meeting of basic human needs such as food, water, shelter", "dignity", "social mobility", "democracy", "freedom of speech"...for some places more than others at least...(notice how none of these include "having lots of money", "being famous" and "having a bigger house" [maybe except for equality...not equality of opportunity, which is merit-based, but equality]?)
The problem is...only back for a couple of generations, you're still comparing the present to the present if you make the above claim. You're still comparing today's interpretation of indirect documentation of the past to today. You say, "Unless there's time travel!" But that's just it. Even with time travel, you were born into a certain time period in a certain culture (though with globalization I think that culture is spreading-not transmission-wise but more like a spreading out, thinning of peanut butter onto toast. although there is the issue of cultural imperialism.), and even if you travel back in time, like being raised in one culture and then living your adult life in another, you are still of your own time so you are immersed in the ideas of that time. Getting back to the point of time travel, say you went back to, oh I don't know, the 1st century A.D. You go and you say, "Look at what they eat and look at what they wear! And how they treat their squirrels!" And then you go back to your own time and you think that what you have in comparison is better. Well maybe if/when we do get time travel, some people would fall in love with the place and choose to stay in it (Crichton), but then maybe that's due to exoticism or grass is greener on the other side syndrome.
First and foremost of all, we do not have time travel so we have only one life (well even with time travel we only have one life with different time-domain alternatives; right now we only have space-domain alternatives i.e. moving to another place if we don't like it here barring borders and barriers), one perspective - that's right one perspective no matter how educated and open-minded you are because as one person = one vote, one person = one perspective. So anyway of course the idea of progress is relative and I guess like everything else in the social sciences progress is also dynamic and along a continuum. So, say that "we" are aiming at progress. Then we're aiming at a moving target, not just moving towards "higher" progress (another topic to discuss are the loaded superlatives such as higher and lower and majority and minority in discourse), but aiming a target that is shifting according the society's "needs" and "wants", probably with a lag time of about oh I don't know.
I guess this is also the tenet of Orientalism (Said). Europeans looked at people living in the Arabic Peninsula, saw that they desperately lacked the comforts of the current European civilization, and decided that what they needed was "progress".
I am really skeptical of governments now because they tend to go by either their own interests or what they think is right for the masses (actually advertising goes the same way, except it is usually "What is marketable to the masses to earn the top dollar"). This links in with the idea of control and power (Chomsky).
Even with an idea of reincarnation...what am I getting at here I am too tired I no longer know!
But what do I know? I am merely a product of my society, right?


Anyway, books I want to read are:
The Postmodern Condition (or not. it's too demanding)
Guns, Germs and Steel (I started this like 2 years ago but have yet to pick it up again)
What Technology Wants
Any book recommendations would be good!