Health Update & What I'm Watching

For those few souls who wander through this blog, I'm not doing so good healthwise. Having run myself into the ground, I'm not rebounding at all this time and I couldn't have chosen a worse time for it. At least I've avoided bronchitis or pneumonia so far with the intent of being able to breath. Which is helpful in living, I've found. Worst thing about this bout of intensified illness has been the inability to read. This past week was the first time I've been able to even follow a storyline in TV shows or movies, so there has been little to no distractions.

Segue way to what TV shows I watch these days:

1. Stargate: SG1 and Stargate: Atlantis. New episodes start airing in March *sigh* but you can download episodes at iTunes.

Both are fun scifi shows with SG1 winding down as it was just getting going again. SG1 is fighting the Ori, ascended beings from another galaxy who draw power from their worshippers and who are out to dominate our galaxy. So far they have been unstoppable and the quest for the Saangral (Holy Grail) weapon that can kill them has brought the Arthurian mythos into Stargate.

Atlantis has been firing away on all cylinders this season with great character development and fantastic action -- sometimes even in the same episode. Common Ground will go down as one of the greatest Stargate episodes ever, mark my words. The cast has gelled completely and dark times are promised ahead for the heroes.

2. Eureka. Season Finale on Tuesday, hope it gets renewed.

Cross Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, and the X-Files, then throw in constant satire and silliness and you have Eureka. Great characters, great one liners, and an underlying sweetness make this a fun show to watch. It is about a top secret town where America has gathered all its scientific geniuses to work together. In comes an average guy, a US Marshall with a criminal teenage daughter and he ends up as sheriff to this exceedingly strange town. In the pilot (can be gotten at iTunes), we are introduced to all of the cast except Stark, the quasi-villain of the show. There is true progression to the characters, so first impressions aren't always accurate.

3. Doctor Who. Starting the 2nd season of the new Who on SciFi this coming Friday

This update has been hit or miss, with the hits home runs and the misses being popups to the catcher. The underlying sexual metaphores are highly annoying, with the gay producer being heavy handed a lot of the time. Still, this has been a fun ride and the closest to family entertainment the Brits have put out in some time. Not for little kids due to the afore mentioned metaphores (and sometimes blatant dialogue). Watch for the return of the Cybermen in a new form and a heartbreaking final episode.

4. Battlestar Galactica. Starting season 3 Friday, catch webisodes on scifi.com

This bleak and adults only scifi show has been an exploration of human behavior under the worst of circumstances. With the shocking ending to season 2, the few remaining humans have settled on an arid but habitable world only to be taken over by the Cylons. The few who stayed in the fleet fled the approaching armada, with both battlestars leading the flight. The webisodes have been grim and are painting the resistance in a harsh light, with the humans sounding and acting more like terrorists than freedom fighters. I think this season is going to be interesting for that reason and for the growing feeling that neither side is particularly virtuous. But a few on each side are and I wonder if the good guys on both sides will unite at some point.

5. Heroes. Just started on Monday nights, can be found at iTunes

Basically a comic book come to life, I was expecting it to be an X-Men lite show aime at kids with little potential. Boy was I surprised, this is one of the darkest things put on TV in some time. Keep kids away from it, the gore is R rated including bones protruding from the skin and a large man cut in half with his entrails visible. The characters are interesting and flawed: a suicidal HS cheerleader who finds out she can heal from any wound, a nurse who thinks he can fly and has an empathic bond with his older brother, a single mother stripper with a murderous split personality she sees in mirrors, an Indian doctor following in his murdered father's footsteps in researching super evolved humans, a heroin addicted artist who paints the future when high, a Japanese office worker/comic book geek with a yen to be individualistic and growing power to stop time and fold space, a cold politician running for office who happens to have a brother who thinks he can fly, and more characters to come in the next episode. Everyone is linked one way or another and the show dared to do a scroll about the heroes being gathered for their first epic battle to save the world. Hiro the office worker and Claire the cheerleader are standout characters already, soon to be fan favorites. Despite the gore, I really liked the show and predict the politician may become one of the most important heroes.

6. Mythbusters. Found on the Discovery Channel

Simply a lot of fun as various urban legends and historic myths are tested with real world experiments to see if they are plausible. Often surprising and always entertaining, I constanty forget to watch new episodes. Good thing they rerun them so much.

7. Smallville. New season on a new network, the CW

I've had to watch this on DVD because of not having the WB on DishTV, but when UPN merged with them to create the CW, jackpot! Season opener had more action than the entire Superman Returns film according to online fans. It felt rushed, should have been stretched another hour, but it was a good ride. Excellent cast and an ongoing mythos that works (unlike the X-Files) make this a fun series. I missed last years season and need to rent it, some major dynamics changed in that 5th season. It looks like this year will have a radical change in that it is setting up Clark to be Superman at long last. Doubt we'll see the costume, but with Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow in Metropolis to gather super humans into a team it may happen yet. Especially since Green Arrow has a costume which breaks the no costumes rule of the series. Looks like this year will be the beginnings of the Justice League of America and gives me hope we'll see Smallville transition to the big screen in a few years. They just better not kill Chloe off.

I find myself watching less and less TV for a variety of reasons, one being most of it is dreck these days. There are more quality shows out there, but I simply don't have time for them. Real world things matter so much more and I'd rather devote time to them. I worry about our escapist culture, too many are fleeing reality and nothing good can come of that. The narcissism of reality shows is scary, with an emphasis on fame and attention that are the worst things we can teach our youth.

Meanwhile, I'm just glad the DishTV box has DVR on it so I can see the shows when I can. Means I don't have to schedule my life around fictional distractions!

An Evening with Elie Wiesel take 1

My father managed to score a couple of standby tickets to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's lecture at Viterbo College in La Crosse and we were fortunate to get in. While we ended up in the Black Box theater in the basement watching it by very poor quality TV feed, it was quite an occasion. It was announced it was the largest turnout in the 35 years of hosting such lectures and the atmosphere was electric with anticipation. It started out with an emotional performance of "The Cry", a Jewish folk song, on the viola. Following that, a wonderful prayer was given by Rabbit Saul Prombaum and the Spirit could be felt powerfully, setting the mood for the night. The lady most involved in getting Mr. Wiesel to speak there introduced him by referencing the first time she saw him speak several years ago. Darryle Clott mentioned that up until then, the biggest moment of her life had been when she'd seen Elvis perform and crashed the police barricade to get to the front of the stage.

Elie was greatly amused by this, he'd never been compared to Elvis before. The afore mentioned music and prayer had deeply touched him, leading him to mention if felt like it was a special night. What followed was a special night, with what was supposed to be a symposium on the Holocaust branching out into something more like a revival meeting. I was surprised by the frank and unabashed spirituality of his talk which touched deeply on his relationship with God and how we should treat one another. The Holocaust was talked about in relation to other subjects and was an ever present backdrop, but the main word that kept being repeated was "moral." The gist of his charming and sincere presentation was that humanity needs to be more moralistic in confronting hate. We must take action and never stand idly by.

All in all it was a wonderful night and I'll go into more detail in a future post, after watching the program again. WKBT Channel 8 will be showing it at 10:35 Saturday night and I plan to record it.

Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

After being really ill for the past week, I've had time to think on the whole subject of being disabled by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I usually don't like to think about it much, as just dealing with it eats enough precious time as it is. But I've been so sick that I haven't been able to read anything of depth, whether it be scriptures, non-fiction, editorials, or fiction. Even TV shows and movies have been hard to focus on this week. So I've been left to think about things and contemplate things (cue ominous music). Or not so ominous, just a good Animals tune.

One thing that jumped out at me is how relatively healthy people simply can't comprehend the disability I have. I don't "look" sick, I'm not in a wheelchair, I'm not walking with braces, I don't have hair falling out... In other words it isn't apparent to the naked eye. Oh there are times I am pale as a ghost, had my father worried the one night I went out to get some things done this week, but most of the time I look normal. This leads to people thinking I don't try hard enough, or that it is in my head, or I'm just lazy. Oh the irony in the last, as I have a very bad tendency to push with every ounce of energy I've got. Which isn't always the smartest thing to do as it makes me even more ill, but there's that whole being "type A personality" thing I've got going. So I end up being misunderstood, which adds insult to injury on occasion. I can't stand being misunderstood.

Interestingly enough, this line of thinking takes me to the spiritual side of things. So I'm not understood, perhaps thought less of -- does this give me the right to be angry about it? Not really. Jesus Christ taught us that we must forgive others in order to be forgiven ourselves (Matt 6:14-15, Luke 6:37). Not always the easiest thing to do, but a necessary thing to do lest bitterness creep into my soul. I often think, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) when I run into people who wronged me in the past or who are wronging others. So much cruelty and meanness comes from simple ignorance or unwillingness to walk in another's shoes. Even more comes from the simple sin of not thinking at all, for reason is one of our more Divine gifts and when exercised properly leads to compassion and caring. It also can lead to forgiveness.

I'll finish this post with a quote from Doctrine and Covenants, section 64, verses 10-11:

I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men. And ye ought to say in your hearts -- let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds.

Something to contemplate on a sunny Sabbath day.

Creepshow

While addled by being really ill, first thing I ran into on the net today was this little horror story about what happened Alistair Cooke's remains. There is an astounding problem with medical ethics these days, ranging from organ donations to research fraud. But this takes the cake, it is ghoulish in the true sense of the word. Grave robbing is what I consider it to be. Meanwhile, I discovered the teens who tried to dig up a young woman's corpse for sex won't face any sexual deviancy charges. It turns out there is no law in Wisconsin against necrophilia.

And here I thought the Romans were bad.

Testing BOINC stats

Being ill right now, hence the lack of posting. Trying out something meant for message board signatures to see if it will work here at all. I've found a decent distributed computing app called BOINC and have my dual core AMD PC crunching data for a variety of projects...

A Drop of Water

If we could get a few more OpEd's like this one, a lot of good would come of it.

9/11: The Aftermath

We now know that El Qaeda believes they were the ones who brought the Soviet Union down. This is predicated on the idea that the war in Afghanistan bankrupted the USSR. So Reagan's policies had no effect? Amazingly dumb thinking on their part. We also know that Osama thought taking down the WTC would devastate the US economy. So much so it would collapse completely. The latest dispatch from El Qaeda talks about how the war in Iraq is bringing our economy to ruination. Once again, amazingly dumb. It also had a call for all Americans to convert to Islam, which makes every one of us fair game if we don't. This shows that they think they have the way to beat us and they are in it for the long term. It is a step towards the global caliphate, when the whole world is forced to convert to Islam.

Yet so many people in America (and the rest of the West) simply don't get it. They think that we are the bad guys, that we are evil and have persecuted the downtrodden Arabs at the Jews behest. Aside from the lunatic fringe conspiracy theories about Jews, there is a hatred of Christians who actually profess their faith while being in public office. I've run into so much hatred and histrionics from leftists that I despair about the Democratic Party ever returning to rationality.

But it isn't just the far left who are wavering, a lot of people in the middle are too. Maybe being overly educated has become a problem. My theory is that we've gotten so civilized, we've forgotten the majority of the world is still barbaric and riven by tribal and regional violence. The presumption is that they think like we do, which they very obviously don't. What seems reasonable to us is insane or corrupt to them; what we consider crazy and violent is considered normal in their circles. Amongst the greatest of mistakes humans make is to think that others think in the same manner they do. You'd think married couples would have figured out this isn't true, given the different ways the sexes think! But it applies to different cultures as well.

It is time to start thinking about the way radical Islamists think and start communicating to them in their own language. Unfortunately, that language is one punctuated by bullets, comma'd by threats, and uses bombs for exclamation marks. Which means we are going to have to become a more hardened people if we are to survive. We'll never love death the way radical Muslims do, so I don't see us becoming blood thirsty by nature. But we must tolerate more civilian casualties on the other side and more military casualties on our side. Otherwise, we'll see a lot more civilian deaths on our side.

The wheels of history are in full motion right now, so I think a lot of very bad things are unstoppable now simply because we have been terribly short sighted in the West. The enemy thinks in the long term and has been patiently maneuvering for decades. That's something we need to learn, how to operate and plan for the long term. That will require a massive change to our culture and those things don't happen overnight. Or, when a massive catastrophe happens. I'd prefer it not to be the latter, so we must remain steadfast and vigilant.