Cogs can think.

Charlie Sheen is fcuking awesome.

That is all.

The Pirate Bay case, summed up.

Music:

Old World: we want to put you through the trouble of going to a store, and buying overpriced CDs, because it benefits the artists us.
New World: we’re lazy, and we want the easiest way possible to get our hands on music, but we are willing to pay for that (iTunes).

Film:

Old World: we want you to buy a DVD ten million yeas after the film’s release, filled to the brim with unskippable warnings about how you are a pirate and a criminal and will go to hell - all on a legally purchased DVD.
New World: we’re lazy, and we want the easiest way possible to get our hands on films.

Seriously, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I buy all my music Old World style (.mp3 sucks ass), and when it comes to film (TV series in my case), I download first, and buy later. This is because most of the series I like aren’t even broadcast and/or sold in my country, so I’m forced to go the way of the pirate. Even if a show does appear on TV here, our local companies fcuk it up by having irregular broadcasting schedules, and we’re always two to three years behind. I see downloading TV shows as the solution to stuff not being broadcast here. If the show is good, I’ll buy it on DVD (BSG, Dead Like Me), and if it isn’t (Lost), I don’t. Hey, just like real TV!

It doesn’t matter fcuk anyway over here. In The Netherlands, you are allowed to download whatever content you want, copyrighted or not.

Last week, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped watching last week’s Lost episode somewhere midway. It was so remote-snappingly bad.

I also know why I’ve had it up here with that overrated piece of junk: there’s absolutely no character development. Sure, there’s character building through the corny flashbacks, but have you ever noticed that the characters in Lost haven’t changed at all over the course of years of in-universe time? Even the group dynamics are exactly the same as during the onset of the series!

Please explain to me how people can go through hell like they have, all the weirdness and hardships and death they’ve experienced - and they’re still exactly the same? They haven’t learned anything? They still all respond to one another in exactly the same predictable way? I haven’t been surprised by any turn of events or any line said by anyone in like 20 episodes. Everything’s so utterly predictable.

In addition, they’re dragging everything on and on and on; the story should’ve been told in four seasons, tops - at least then it’d have decent pacing.

Add to that the cheesy “just-in-time” time travel plot device, and you’ve got yourself a show that started out rather promising, but has since degraded into mediocre bite-sized Hollywood soap opera Americanised flatness.

I didn’t even bother to finish last week’s episode, and didn’t download this week’s. They lost a viewer.

And so I finally gave Firefly another shot. I just finished the 4th episode, so here are a few short first impressions.

The elephant in the room: the western theme draped over this scifi. Weird, odd, but at the same time, infinitely brave and original. And if there’s one thing the dead space-faring scifi market needs it’s originality.

No aliens.

Kaylee is fcuking awesome. Seriously. One of the coolest scifi characters in a long time. And she’s so pretty!

The obviously developing romance between Inara and the captain is a little too cheesy for my taste. From their first scene together I knew these two were going to hook up. I’m going to be infinitely surprised if that doesn’t happen.

I like the depiction of the future: not the utopian nonsense of Star Trek, but the brown and metal dystopia of the Alien series and BSG.

No aliens.

Kaylee!

That is all for now.

People aren’t angry because it had religion, people are angry because just saying “God did it!” is such a completely lame answer. I was a fan from the start, to the end, still am, the religion part never bothered me.

It amuses me when elitists say stuff like “sorry it’s above your level of understanding” considering the people most likely to use “God did it!” IRL are creationists and the like — people totally renown for their intellectual prowess.

Sorry, “God did it!” isn’t above anyones level of understanding.

What is the difference between:

“A higher being did it” (he was not called god).

or:

“Aliens did it” (the general way scifi works)

Both are equally ridiculous, you see, but that’s science fiction for you. I find it endlessly amusing that scifi fans have NO qualms whatsoever about accepting nonsense like time travel, teleportation, aliens that all look like humans, and so on - but have quarrels with accepting “a” supreme being (NOT god, as they specifically said he did not want to be called that) that toys with our lives. Did you complain when Q (essentially gods) came onto Star Trek?

The fact of the matter is that I personally do not find if far-fetched at all to imagine that there are beings far beyond our comprehension, that see us as mere insects to pull legs out of, much like the neighbour kid who uses a magnifying glass to burn ants.

El Reg’s brilliant analysis of Battlestar Galactica. They completely understood what everything was supposed to mean, and really put into words exactly how I feel about it.

And that’s what has made Battlestar Galactica such a satisfying journey. There were no clear answers, just a series of worthwhile questions that involved the intersection of human kind, technology, God, and society.

Spot on. BSG was so much more than just pain, boring, and old been-there-done-that sci-fi.

For the first time in the history of EVAR I’m actually reading fan boards about a series. I love how everyone is torn apart by the finale, and everyone is left wondering what the hell it all means. The best comment is this one:

“Plus, it’ll also piss-off the militant atheists across the board, not just in SF.”

Hah, yeah. A rabid atheist on another board got pretty huffy a couple weeks ago when I said that the head characters were angels. He expected them to be be aliens or something. Neverminding all the talk of God and angels, did he really expect them to turn out to be aliens after all that? This isn’t TNG, where the Devil turns out to be an alien with a holographic device and a cloaked ship. Don’t know why he expected that to turn out that way, especially given that the whole religious angle has been layered on thick since pretty much the beginning, whereas there’s been NO hint about aliens whatsoever.

And really, getting mad over that is silly. So there’s a religious angle. So what? Must everything be antiseptic atheism like Star Trek? Is something different from the sci-fi norm really so bad? Nevermind that it’s silly to take offense over that. That’d be like my taking offense over the existence of Thor as a character in the Marvel Universe, even though I’m Catholic. OH NO! A pagan god running about? How dare they! …And yet, Thor is one of my favorite titles. Amazing the things some people get offended about.

But yes, I was very happy with the finale. The angels were angels, “the hand of God”, as it were, in the form of Racetrack’s dead hand (Poor Racetrack ) finishes off the evil Cylons once and for all (God knows that Cavill would’ve NEVER stuck to the agreement. Once he had resurrection he would’ve started hunting them, again), Kara’s an angel, too, and the Colonials have found a new home. Altogether pretty satisfying. Even though it blew a whole in my theory about the show being set in the far future.

BTW, Anyone else sad about Racetrack’s final fate? Poor, poor Racetrack. What a way to go out. At least she got her wish, though. She ended up filling Hell to the brim with the souls of pretty much every last enemy Cylon in the universe, even if she did do it post-mortem.

As for the end scenes with the robots, I thought that one scene with a bunch of those white robots was hilarious. “The March of the Cylons”. Heh.

I couldn’t agree more. Brilliant analysis.

…but the question is, will it happen again?

What an amazing finale to an amazing series. It blew every one of my expectations out of the water. This was so beautiful. I’m not ashamed to admit that tears were rolling down my face. Everything came together, and it was beautiful.

All this has happened before, and all this will happen again. By far the best piece of television ever.

A few notes for tonight’s final 3 hour long Battlestar Galactica episode.

First of all, Admiral Adama will go down with Galactica. The ship will not survive, and Adama will die with it. Adama is inherently tied to Galactica, and can’t live without the ship. I can’t imagine him settling down somewhere while Galactica is a rotting carcass.

Roslin will die as well. It was pretty clear during last week’s beautiful episode that she is on the verge of dying.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with Kara, or who or what the hell she actually is. Harbinger of death - will she be the cause of Galactica’s eventual destruction? It’s interesting to note that the harbinger of death thing comes from the Cylons - it’s quite likely Kara will be the key to destroying Cavil’s base, or even to destroying all of the Cylons.

It’s going to be interesting to find out how Baltar will join the rescue mission. According to the Opera House vision, he is supposed to take part in the mission to rescue Hera. In addition, Baltar’s inner Six has continuously stated that Baltar is Hera’s “father”. However, he did not cross the red line and has not volunteered for the mission.

“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.” Something tonight will allude quite clearly to that Pythian prophecy.

I’m so excited, but at the same time, I’m also very sad. I don’t want BSG to end. It’s going to be very long before any science fiction show (or any show, for that matter) will have the audacity and confidence to produce something as beautiful, deep, and intelligent as BSG.

Ambivalence abound.