Earlier today someone on Reddit started a poll to find out “What’s your favorite television show across time and genres?” That’s a pretty broad brush for a survey. I have a hard time picking my favorite ice cream, much less my favorite work in a certain medium.

Part of the problem I think is that shows on this side of the pond are expected to run for too long. It’s hard to maintain perfection over a lengthy period of time, not to mention adequate character development. Look at Fawlty Towers — two seasons of six episodes, and they’re almost all perfect. Compare that to the Simpsons, which has been on television for 22 seasons: some seasons have been magnificent while others were utter crap. The overall impression is pretty mixed, though, which personally would knock it off my list of favorite shows of all time despite points of brilliance.

The only show I can think of that doesn’t stick to the “longer run = worse show” formula is Seinfeld. Seinfeld was on the air for nine seasons, but was saved in part by the fact that the characters really never developed and the plots were about nothing. The episodes were pretty self-contained with few callbacks to previous events, and “Jerry is a jerk and steals a marble rye” was fairly interchangeable with “Jerry is a jerk and makes out during Schindler’s List”. (As with all the best shows, having exceedingly good writers helps.)

So I guess being canceled early or being British are your best bets for television greatness.

Okay, links:

* The TV Tropes page for Community’s amazing Modern Warfare episode. But didn’t I link to a Community-related thing just yesterday? It’s almost like I’ve become a huge Community fangirl and am trying to convince people to watch it on Thursday nights on NBC (or the internet)!

* What’s Alan Watching covers The Wire for newbies. I just started this series last night, and I can already tell that it’s going to be amazing. I adore Oz** and loved Homicide: Life on the Street, and both of those shows supplied much of the on- and off-screen talent. It’s really big and confusing and interwoven, though, so a viewer’s guide like this can be handy.

* The 8 Best Running Jokes in Arrested Development. If you are one of my friends who does not watch Arrested Development: a) god, just watch the damn show already; and b) viewing these videos might explain a number of my verbal idiosyncracies. (Me: “Steve Holt!” Friend: “What?” Me: “Steve Holt?” Friend: “No, you’re Jessica.” Me: *exasperated sigh*)

* Also, a random news article unrelated to television: Police alerted to superheroes patrolling Seattle. I liked the description of one of them driving around in his godmother’s Kia, doing good deeds.

** Well hell, as I was writing that I realized that Oz also bucks the shorter is better rule. Harumph. It also would be one of my favorite shows ever.

Bleh. I’ve been having a tough time posting lately.

I think I spend too much time agonizing over style and not enough on content. “Oh, that’s too short to post. That’s too long to post. That’s too personal. That’s not interesting enough. Needs more links.”

There is a certain amount of ego that goes with writing anything online. You have to assume that you have communication skills, and that anyone would possibly be interested in anything you have to say. You have to believe that you have something to contribute to The Conversation at large.

I think traditionally people gain self-esteem as they get older. No longer a teenager, adults are, apparently, supposed to have more confidence in who they are and what they are doing. It’s the opposite for me, though, in many ways. In my late teens I was the goddamn Jessica, and everyone get out of my way because I was taking over the world. The older I get though the more I feel like we’re all just humans stuck on this rock and no one has more or less to contribute than anyone else.

I cannot even begin to convey the number of times that I have sat down to write something and given up because who cares what I think? I mean that kind of rhetorically — no one is supposed to tell me that they care — but why is my opinion worth sharing any more than my neighbor’s or that dude walking down the street? It’s not. It’s not more interesting, it’s not more valuable.. I just happen to know how to buy a domain and install WordPress.

I don’t know. I guess when I was younger I had this drive to communicate and be understood because I felt my thoughts were worth something. I thought I had something important to say. But now I sit down in front of the blinking prompt and I often can’t think of anything.

After weeks of fighting with proxies I got Boxee working and now I have proper awesome internet television. And I’ve decided to try and work “prude-shaming” into discussions with Internet Feminists as much as possible, because I am tired of being given second-hand lectures about slut-shaming. And I really really really hate the new TSA xray scan nonsense. I could write about any of these things, but why? Do you care? Would I care if you posted a blog about that?

I dunno, I just find myself saying, “Eh, what do I know about anything?” and closing the Add Post window more often than not.

PS: Ah mah gahd, such a self-indulgent post. I’m sorry. Go watch Steve Porter work his techno remix magic on Community. Donde esta la bibliotheque?

Update: Clearly I am just in a mood. After writing this I decided I needed a lot of comfort food for lunch. Then it started to pour rain, so I just stopped at the nearest eating place. Then I read something really sad about moms on my phone while I was eating. So if you saw a big damp white girl today at the scary half-abandoned Asian mall crying into her large MexiFries, that was me. Man.

Listen you rotten, smug November — I’ve been posting. I have! Just maybe not here, okay? Stupid month.

Anyway, just a few links, mostly picked to provoke outrage because I’m in that kind of mood:

Mother Jones on the new TSA backscatter scanners. I have a flight to the US coming up next month, and I am excited to be able to choose for myself if I want the pornscan or the groping.

Maxim magazine in 2003 on how to cure a feminist. If you have ever wondered if feminism is still necessary in our modern decade, the answer is in this headline: “Turn an unshaven, militant, protesting vegan into an actual girl!”

Hark a Vagrant takes on Dracula. This will probably not provoke outrage unless you are a Stoker purist or hate root vegetables.

The internet has been a conduit for many horrible things, like hate-mongering or invasions of privacy or Tila Tequila, but this week it was redeemed. Yes, this week a company built an internet-controlled robot arm that plays with kittens. Kittens and robots, together at last! Awww.

So there I was this morning, minding my own business, surfing the web, when I came across a little science article about zombie ants.

Apparently there is a tropical fungus that will take over the mind of an ant. The ant will give up its old life and, according to the article, “[j]ust before dying, the infected body grasps a perch as the mature fungal invader erupts from the back of the zombie’s head to rain down spores on unsuspecting victims below.” Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

Look, I am heavily trained in zombie combat and evasion, but even I have never considered a fungal apocalypse. I can’t hit that with an axe! I can’t escape it on a boat! The best plan I can come up with on the spur of the moment like this is covering myself in Gold Bond and holding my breath for a really long time.

Sometimes Nature is way more terrifying than killer midgets.

So I know I said I was going to post something every day in November and in fact I have posted 2 of 7 days which is not really a very good track record but I have been sick! Again. Sick again. If it makes you feel any better while I was sick I encountered a number of people being wrong on the internet and wrote some very trollish forum posts.

I did manage to get my US Netflix account functioning again. (Thanks, Max. <3) I'm on a classics kick lately, and one of the things I watched was the old school supernatural movie Don’t Look Now. I’m about to blow the end of this movie, but frankly it came out in 1973 so you’ve had a little time to watch it before now.

In the movie good Canadian boy Donald Sutherland is running around Venice chasing ghostly visions of his dead daughter, and his wife Julie Christie is all hanging out with weird elderly psychics. It’s all very European, with an infamously realistic sex scene and atmosphere by the bucketload. At the end Donald Sutherland climbs up a high tower, and… suddenly, there’s an elderly Italian midget woman who slices open Sutherland’s jugular and he dies. That’s right. A midget.

Now it is entirely possible that I missed some of the nuances of this movie, but it seemed to me that we were all chugging along for a nice atmospheric ghostly good time, and then BLAMMO there is a sudden heretofore unmentioned killer midget. I.. I still don’t know what to think.

So anyway, Don’t Look Now reset my whole frame of reference for bizarre intensity in a movie. “Oh sure, yeah, those subterranean canibals in The Decent were pretty scary, but it was no sudden killer midget.”

Links:

I found a nice essay on why the flagging modern movie industry needs more of Donald Sutherland’s buttocks.

This dog looks like Sutherland in Body Snatchers.

And for something completely different, here is a cake made out of turkey.

My name is Jessica, and I am fat. I’m not just “ooh *giggle* I’m soooo fat”. I am overweight and I wear plus-sized clothes and I have a great big butt.

There was a much discussed blog post last week on the Marie Claire magazine site where the author expressed her distaste for seeing overweight people kissing (in reference to the new television show “Mike & Molly”, specifically), and also commented that frankly she was disgusted just having to watch fat people walk across a room. Naturally there was a lot of ensuing outrage, but in reading the responses I saw almost as many agreeing with the original author. “We can’t let fat people get too comfortable,” seemed to be the prevailing thought, “because then they won’t bother to lose weight.”

Oh, thank you, wise and caring western society, for making overweight people feel bad to teach us a lesson. Here is a lesson for you: I know I’m fat. Yes, indeed, I am well aware of this fact. The problem is, I suppose, that everyone else can tell that I’m fat too. For the most part I can’t tell that the person walking down the street is an asshole or a liar, or gambles too much, or is racist, or has any of a litany of personal failings. My failing is that I am physically lazy, and I get to wear that failing everywhere I go.

Let me assure you, my svelte, judging friends, that fat people are not in fear of getting too comfortable. We know we’re a pariah. We know we’re paid less, we know we’re skipped over for professional and personal opportunities that we’re qualified for, we know we’re a punchline publicly and privately. We know that western society generally sees us as barely human monsters who are desperate for love.

When I was really depressed for a few years, my body and my self image were two pretty big contributors. I didn’t leave the house because no one should have to look at me. I didn’t get my hair cut because what hairdresser would want to touch the hair on my disgusting fat head? To this day I am paranoid about eating in public because who wants to see the fucking fat girl put food in her fucking face? This may suit the Marie Claire author just fine, but I can say from experience that it’s a pretty miserable way to live.

It does not matter to many people how nice I am, or how well put together I look, or how smart or funny or loyal or creative or quick I am. It doesn’t matter that I have wonderful people who love me as a friend or family or partner. To the majority of people I encounter each and every day, I am not intrinsically worth as much as the skinny person standing beside me.

So go ahead and pat yourself on the back for your tough love stance against fatties, you majority. I will continue living my flawed, human life, and I will dare to go out in public in front of other people, because I know that at the end of the day that I — big butt and all — I am the better person. And I won’t forget it.

Another November, another ignored NaNoWriMo. Not that I consider myself much of a fiction writer — I’m far too staid and concerned about my creativity being in socially and critically acceptable boundaries. But I’d probably work on a zombie story, or change it into 50,000 words of non-fiction. Alas, work and my usual hobbies are once again in the way of a good write-on, but I did read one person’s interpretation of the event as “post on your blog every day in November” and I might see if I can muster that. (Yes, I realize I already missed the first day. Shhh.)

For anyone who is feeling snarky about gaming as a legit hobby, by the way, I wish to share with you my schedule after work last night:

5pm – 6pm: Home, change, dinner, check in with people who live in my house.
6pm – 8:15pm: Work on customized character images for World of Warcraft guildies.
8:15pm – 8:30pm: Update Lord of the Rings Online client.
8:30pm – 9:15pm: Royal visit to LotRO to visit branch guild’s new in-game house. Waved serenely, chatted, told hobbits that they were doing a teddibly good job.
9:15pm – 11pm: Log on WoW, check in with folks, do some guild maintenance, actually play a bit.
11pm – 11:30pm: Oh snap, forgot to update Minecraft multiplayer server for the Minecrafters. Backups, upgrades, tests.
11:30pm – 12am: Review the game community’s forums, look at loose threads and private messages, clean and post photos of LotRO house — basically close out today’s community stuff and set up prompts for tomorrow.
12am: Oh hey, dinner.

This whole “organically grow an online gaming community” thing is actually a lot of work sometimes. Oh, and somewhat on that note I have coined a new word, which is “blazy”. It is a combination of “busy” and “lazy” and is now my standard response for why something didn’t get done.

Oh right, links. Umm, let’s get profane today in honor of the American elections:
Yourfuckingpollingplace.com
WhatthefuckhasObamadonesofar.com

Also, here is an insanely gorgeous typographical map of Vancouver, by Ork Posters. I want that Vancouver one, and the four-color special Seattle map is also very tempting.