It's been a long, long time....but TV!

Okay, so I see that I haven't blogged in more than a year and a half. Keeping up with something like this is pretty evidently not my strong suit.

But I think I want to write something/talk about TV. Mainly Lost, The Wire, and Glee. I'm caught up on the first and the last, so spoiler alert (as if anyone was actually going to read this). The Wire's over and done, and I'm still in the 1st season, so I'm not so worried about it there.

Okay, so Lost is over. It was a really great show, and I really liked the ending. I can buy the whole last-season-sideways world as an imaginary world/purgatory, and once I wrapped my head around the fact that that part, and the church gathering in particular, was essentially outside of time, I was good. I like that Ben stayed outside because he wasn't ready to forgive himself and move on and I LOVE that Juliet and Sawyer were together. I'm a little disappointed that Michael didn't at least get a chance to make the choice that Ben did, and wonder whether Harold Perrineau was busy or not asked to come back. The sideways world definitely had a bit more of an impact for me in that last episode, with the exception of the realization that Vincent was there when Desmond was helped out of the well and the appearance of Rose and Bernard (oh, and Vincent lying with Jack when Jack dies -- but I'm always a sucker for animal-related story lines like that). I loved it when all of the people we hadn't seen in a while showed up -- even Shannon, whom I kind of detested when she was on the show. My favorites included Hurley's pleasure at seeing Charlie, Charlie's reaction to seeing Claire, Sun and Jin, and Sawyer and Juliet.

I know that a lot of people didn't, for various reasons. Some people seem to have thought that the show crapped out and said that everyone died in the initial plane crash. I think those people may need to re-watch. That's just not what happened. Others didn't like the ending because it didn't answer the big island questions or because of the religious stuff at the end. Those are legitimate complaints, but I disagree. 1) If you want questions answered, you were probably watching the wrong show. Lost is about the mystery and about how some things are just beyond rational and/or simple explanation. It's not just drama; it's sci fi/fantasy. 2) I really don't think they could have answered the questions to the fans' satisfaction. Any explanation would have been a letdown. 3) Lost has been about faith vs. science for a long time now, and it seems to have come down on the faith side. I'm not thrilled with this part, but at least they didn't decide that all of the important players were angels, like in Battlestar Galactica.

Also, a comparative note -- Lost's ending was so much less disappointing than Battlestar, The X-Files, and Alias, all of which had great moments in their multiple seasons.

I really don't have much to say about The Wire. I've been hearing what a good show it is for a while now, and was a little doubtful. But it is so good. I'm a latecomer, and my husband and I are watching it on DVD now.

On to Glee -- a lot of people talk about Glee, and maybe I seem like a teenage girl for doing so in a favorable way. But I love that show. I think I love the fact of it more than anything else. It makes me laugh and makes me want to sing (although I don't do that when people can hear me). I've heard some people talk about its misogyny, but I'm not seeing it (and I usually do -- that movie The Box? It HATES women). I think it's more of an anti-adult thing, mostly done to focus the show on the kids and their POVs. At first, the talk was about Terri and Sue Sylvester, but the Principal is kind of sucky too, and now we have more with Finn's mom and Kurt's dad to make the adults more sympathetic (Kurt's dad is awesome). Again, a lot of my fandom of this show is based on the mere fact of its existence. Even when others talk about the weakness of certain musical numbers, I have trouble looking at those same numbers with a critical eye (cultural or musical). I just find it incredibly entertaining that they even have a number with Kurt, Mercedes, Tina, Brittany, and Artie (easily the most underused in terms of musical talent -- seriously, he should be the group's male lead) doing a stealth performance of "Can't Touch This" in the school library. Basically, the show is just fun.

Okay, now a quick moment to tie this all together. Up until now, my Tuesday nights have been about watching Lost and then getting Glee on iTunes. This week, with Lost over, I was all set to watch one episode of The Wire (with husband) and then catch Glee (definitely without husband). But then Neema went and got shot, so I held off on Glee. How many other people move from watching The Wire into watching Glee. I can't imagine that there are very many of us with that kind of range in our scripted television.

fun web stuff -- Happy Halloween!

I'm enjoying the character creator at http://www.sp-studio.de/ way too much. It lets you design your own South Park characters and save them, and I've used them for profile pics on Facebook a few times. So, here are some pictures of me as a South Park character -- one regular and one for Halloween.


Again, credit goes to http://www.sp-studio.de/.

Okay, so I had a sort-of job interview this morning. I went to a temp agency, and I'm sort of down about that. It seems to be a good place, and I think they'll really help, but it's kind of a last resort. I want something permanent, full-time, and preferably with health insurance.

Health insurance -- there's something that I don't completely understand, but I know that I need it and that the current system for it in this country sucks. Why can't we have universal health care?

That's kind of a depressing topic, so I'm just going to stop writing and post some pictures of my cute pets, Simon the cat and Linus the ferret.

Posting 2

Please forgive the unoriginal title, but I thought I might deal with several things here. I've been inspired to try this again by a friend's blog.

I've been OBSESSED with politics lately. I'm really anxious about the election and an Obama supporter. Actually, I'm probably a little further left than Obama, and therefore really scared of a McCain/Palin administration -- especially the Palin part. This isn't so much about my politics, though, as about my obsession with various types of political coverage right now. There's The Daily Show, of course, and I've been trying to eat lunch at 1:00 so that I can catch it during the day (I'm still unemployed, so that's not much of a problem). I'm also a big fan of podcasts, and that's where I catch most of it -- the Slate political gabfest (http://www.slate.com/id/2201574/), Tom Ashbrook's Week in the News (on Fridays -- http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510053), NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" (http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5183214), and the Rachel Maddow show (it's the audio of the TV show, but portable -- I think they have the video up, too, but I just listen to the audio -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8132577/). I've also got several other Air America shows that I haven't tried out yet waiting for me. You can find them all on itunes as well.

Anyway, about the obsession. I was never really all that interested in the news (except, of course, the Daily Show and Wait Wait) before this election. I would download some of the podcasts because I thought I should listen, but never really did. I'd just erase them when the next one came out. Now they are the first podcasts that I listen to (even before the beloved Filmspotting now), and yesterday, I spent almost the whole day listening to the ipod -- all news podcasts. Maybe I should consider it an addiction. I guess that I don't really need an intervention, though, since it will all be over (God willing) next Tuesday.

Introduction to Me

Hi. My name is Jenny, and, as you can see, I've decided to start a blog. I know that this in no way makes me unique, or even very interesting.

The title "Ramblings" comes from my unwillingness to narrow down the scope of this thing. I'll start by writing a little bit about everything in my life, and then maybe something will stick and that's what I'll focus on.

I am a 32-year old woman who is married and unemployed. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, right now, and have for almost three months. We moved here for my husband's job (academics), and I just haven't come up with anything yet for myself. I'm a former academic myself, but didn't finish the Ph.D., because I hated it. We have two pets -- a ferret named Linus and a cat named Simon. I enjoy reading and watching TV and movies, and so will probably write about those fairly often. I also enjoy food and cooking, and I'm sure that will come up as well. My other hobby right now is making jewelry, which I also sell on Etsy under the name StaceyG.

That's the big stuff for now, but I'll try to keep up with this and make it interesting.