in which our heroine never asked to be born

People usually defend the Battlestar Galactica finale by talking about "character," and insisting that a myopic focus on gaping plot holes misses the point of this character-driven show, and the real point of the finale is all the bittersweet emotional character moments. But the worst plot holes were character driven, story points that made no sense at all given what we have come to know about these people over the past several years. A few examples:

(1) BILL ADAMA LOVES HIS SON....so it's completely inexplicable as to why he's apparently "never coming back." I understand that your girlfriend is dying and you want to spend that time with her and give her a loving burial, but after that, why wouldn't you go back to the only family you have left in the universe? Why did you spend years repairing a strained relationship with your son only to abandon him once you reached the goal you were both desperately pursuing? And speaking of that goal....

(2) LEE ADAMA IS NOT A MORON....and as an unabashed civics nerd, he should probably know that remembering our history is the way we avoid repeating it, not dismantling and incinerating it. As someone who, from the beginning, has believed passionately in the value of his civilization's institutions, whence came this sudden pastoral love affair with the nobility of the savage? After all this time defending his people's democracy, with both pen and sword (or more accurately, wireless and gun) sometimes against his own father, sometimes against the president herself, he suddenly wants to go back to a state of nature? Which brings me to my last point....

(3) THE FLEET IS COMPOSED OF RATIONAL, SELF-INTERESTED HUMAN BEINGS....who for some reason acquiesed to giving up their already scant material possessions and creature comforts for new and exciting lives as hunter gatherers. There was a mutiny and nearly a civil war when they started smearing cylon goo on the walls, but everyone is really going to go along with this idea of becoming cave people? These are people who lived through the privations of New Caprica, which seemed like a relatively stark existence even before the cylons invaded. (Squirrel barbeque!) And that was with all of their technology, and with everyone still together in one place. What happens when you break your leg or your kid spikes a fever, and all of the x-rays and antibiotics have been sent into the sun, and the only medical personnel are a continent away?

Kara's undead-god-machine-ness aside (maddening all on its own), my major problem with the finale was summed up pretty succintly by AB: "Why is everyone foresaking their relationships?" I have always been impressed with running theme of BSG that there is nothing more human than having a love/hate relationship with your creator, be it God or your parents or the person who downloaded you into your body. And until now, I thought that BSG's answer to the problem was "relationships." Bill and Lee rebuild their father-son bond; Sharon and Helo make a freak-baby; Caprica Six realizes that genocide is bad when she falls in love; Kara posthumously (for both of them, it turns out) forgives her father for being a dick. But the finale's answer turns out to be "solitude," "aloneness." Dismantle your community. Scatter, wander, live alone or in pairs. Avoid building anything, like a city, that lasts, that imposes your values on generations to come. Make nothing in your own image by giving up the tools to do so. Avoid playing god by remaining a babe in the wilderness. Forget the past. Forget where you came from. Be like Cavil. Deny your history. Deny your ancestors. Deny your god. Avoid becoming your parents...by running away from home.

notes on media

I consumed a lot of geeky media this weekend (I say as though it somehow distinguishes this from other weekends).

Two thoughts:

- This week on Battlestar Galactica, we got to see just how angry Sharon was that her husband Helo had sex with another person, who, in Helo's defense, is an exact physical copy of Sharon. (Answer: very. Very very.) I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if your workplace, which is also your home, is crawling with dozens of perfect physical replicas of your wife, you should be extra, extra careful when attempting to surprise her with semi-public sex...to the point of maybe just not trying at all.

- I also saw Watchmen this weekend. Since so much has already been written about this movie, I will confine my analysis to this: I repeatedly found myself suffering from what I like to call "Schindler's List Syndrome," which occurs when a movie's villain is too attractive, such that I find it difficult to focus on his many terrible atrocities. Mmm, Ozymandias.

on corporate policy

Today at Starbucks an odd thing happened to me for a second time, and per my statistics professor's apocryphal admonition that "you can't tell anything from one data point," I now feel free to comment on it. The scenario was the same both times, even though it happened at two different Starbucks franchises (which I think says something both about Starbucks and about me). I ordered a tall chai. Due to a handwriting mishap that predictably results from writing on a curved surface with a slippery pen, the barista misread the notation and made me a tall caramel macchiato. It's an understandable error, so without ire I asked them to make me a chai instead. And both times, what appeared on the coffee bar was that veritable tower of caffeine known as the venti. I let it sit on the bar on the assumption that it wasn't mine, and had to be prompted by the unnecessarily contrite barista. When I finally picked it up in that gingerly way that is the usual manner of the politely unsure, I was given the same explanation both times, "I upgraded you!"

Upgrade?

I feel like Starbucks fundamentally misunderstands my motives in ordering the second smallest size. I ordered a tall instead of a venti, not because I lacked the resources or wherewithal to do so, but because I just didn't want that much to drink. I still don't, in fact. And because I am an Asian female, and therefore pathologically unable to throw away food, I am now stuck carrying around this pail of lukewarm chai all day, like some demented boho milkmaid.

So...would anyone like any chai?

auld lang syne

Going through some old law school stuff on my external hard drive yesterday, I discovered this series of haiku I must have written during some particularly boring classes (on the blatantly orientalist theory that this would render the experience more serene):

I have stolen the
Weak internet connection
From Jim; he hates me.

Secured Transactions:
Punishing people hit by
Cars; protecting banks.

Middle-aged Asian
Without an accent; they don't
Exist where I'm from.

Solitaire game in
Front of me going well; she
Plays with all four suits!

So cold in Room 1
I warm my hands upon my
Laptop computer.

a mercifully unnecessary neologism

In the epic contest between "related videos" on YouTube and "related articles" on Wikipedia to be my most crippling time-suck, "related articles" recently took the lead as I learned all about the War of the Spanish Succession, in particular, how Charles II of Spain was physically disabled, intellectually stunted, and emotionally unstable, and how this probably had something to do with the fact that his grandmother was simultaneously his aunt and he was descended from someone called "Joanna the Mad" in a total of 14 different ways. All of this prompted MS and I to create a new, kinda gross word--grandbrother: n., the male offspring of a marriage between one's child and one's (hopefully step-)parent.

in which we observe at least three different kinds of dorkery

Mind the gap:
mikaydee: so this morning, for no raisin, b minor just came to my hand
AB: no raisin!
mikaydee: it just worked
mikaydee: it was weird
AB: congratulations
AB: you just made a leap into the next talent-bracket
mikaydee: level up!
AB: but under barack obama's administration
AB: you're going to have to practice twice as much to stay at this level
mikaydee: XP penalty
mikaydee: for success
AB: correct
AB: it's almost marxist
AB: his leveling-up policy is dangerous
mikaydee: well geez, i don't even want to practice any more
mikaydee: i'm going to just set my guitar on fire right now

also apropos of the season

MS takes a quantitative approach:
MS: I think you're the only one I'm asking
MS: right now I have a 100% yes vote
mikaydee: nice. don't screw it up. representative sampling is for jerks and communists
MS: exactly. and I mean really, representative of what?
mikaydee: not people who suck, that's for sure
MS: right on