Nerding out for a minute

Ultimate, unabashed nerd moment: Doctor Who.

If you haven't seen it, first of all, you should. Second of all, by way of explanation, it's a fantasy/sci-fi British TV show that's been around for ages in various incarnations. (Get the in-joke? No? THEN GO WATCH IT.) And, since I joined it fairly late in the game and happen to have plenty of downtime here in Taiwan, I've been playing catch-up.

Today, I got through Season 4, Episode 13: Journey. And it, together with the fact that I am still hard at work finishing up the article I've been working on, has left me with no words to write. (Spoilers...)

Not at all coincidentally, I've had this song stuck in my head for the past few days. When I first heard it, I had no idea it was from the soundtrack to Twilight; quite apart from that, Christina Perri is a great artist and so I am choosing to ignore its origins and just enjoy its beauty. I suggest you do the same--maybe just minimize this screen and listen.

Wormhole

Some things just disappear into mind-numbing nothingness. Today featured several of those things for several different reasons. Let's just catalog them, shall we?

1. My sleep schedule. Let's just throw this one out there: it's currently 2am. Why am I up? Because I woke up today just before noon. And why did I wake up just before noon? Because I went to bed last night just before 4am. And why did I go to bed just before 4am? Because I took a long nap Friday afternoon. And why did I take a long nap? Because I had to wake up early Friday morning, and I had gone to bed just before 1am. And why did I go to bed just before 1am? Because I had gotten up just before noon.

The end of my week, every week: it's just completely, totally screwed up. Also, it makes Mondays (and Friday), Hell.

2. My work ethic. What did I do today? Ummm.....

3. My decision-making ability. Today, my original planned productivity was to be centered around choosing and booking a hostel for Australia. However, as I've noted before, my ability to choose such a place utterly sucks. I have had it narrowed down to four for over a week now, have asked several people's opinion on the subject, and have still not found a way to pick. It's a wormhole of too much information.

Cue today. I did pick a hostel, sort of--like 85% sure now--but I haven't booked. Why? Well, because I realized that to book a hostel, I need to know what nights I'm staying there, and to know that, I need to know what nights I won't be, and to do that, I need to know when I'll be on a boat at the reef, and to do that, I need to know what company I'll be going through, and to do that, I'll have to pick one.

And, incidentally, the picking may require me to go through my hostel to get the best deal...

4. My evening. Like I said, it's past 2am. The last productive--or even semi productive--thing I did was at least three hours ago. What have I been doing in the meantime? Watching Youtube videos. Several of which did, in fact, involve wormholes as part of their conceits, and which did, themselves, form a wormhole into which my evening was sucked. Here are a few, to illustrate the wormhole effect for you:

 

 

 

No, for those who hear an accent and stop paying attention, those are not the same guy (or rather, the first three are the same and second two are the same), but they are friends, and both quite hilarious and relatively famous Youtube Vloggers. Also, if you haven't watched "Alex reads Twilight" (the last clip), do so immediately if you want to see the horrible deadening effect those books have on actual human readers. Also, it's funny.

So those were the items being sucked into my wormhole of a day. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Or, you know, hope you remember to wave to the time that slowly seeps out of you as you watch them... :)

Pastime

I don't really feel like writing today. This is in part because I finally just finished uploading the 170 or so photos my mom and I took while she was here visiting me; if you're interested, you can see those here.

But mostly I'm just languishing in the wonderfulness that was the holiday special episode of Downton Abbey, a masterful British TV drama that I follow. And since that's mainly on my mind right now, know that if you're interested, you can watch it here. Because perhaps the only thing better than great character development and superb acting is great character development and superb acting coupled with a British accent.

Which is appropriate, I guess, seeing as how it's Boxing Day today: perfect time to watch British TV!

So that's it for tonight. Enjoy. :)

Back of my mind

*Note: contains more serious stuff than usual*


This post has been a thought writhing at the back of my mind for a few days now, and today on my drive home from school, I realized there was no good reason not to put it down in blog form. Well, okay, there was one reason: it has absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan. It does, however, give you a glimpse of what I do here other than teach, meet MLB players and write blog posts, so that's something.

When I'm not off being productive, I often watch TV on my computer; when I've run through the week's new episodes of my favorite series (Saturday Night Live, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Bones, all viewable by me online the afternoon after they air in the States), I turn to watching House. House, for those who don't know it, is essentially a show about medical diagnoses; I've heard it described as a medical detective story, which is  a pretty apt description, if you add in a steady flow of sardonic humor from the title doctor.

"I'm smarter than you and I hate people. Therefore, I will now mock you mercilessly. Trust me, it'll be fun!"

I'd heard it was good, and so far, it is--though watching more than two in a row is a bad idea, as with any TV show that uses a distinctive formula (ope, it's only 23 minutes in. This isn't the real diagnosis; his liver has to fail first. Why the liver? I don't know, but the show's pretty consistent on this.)

When I got here, I had never seen more than one episode, but had heard it was good, so I started at the beginning and went from there. I'm currently halfway through season 3.

"So what?" you say. "What makes this worthy of a blog post?"

The other day, I got to an episode which broke from all of House's standard patterns. There was no patient with unusual symptoms, no endless series of tests and arguments to determine what he or she had. No, they knew what this patient had, or rather they knew what had happened to her: she had been raped. The episode, called "One Day, One Room," dealt with the fact that the woman refused to talk to anyone about it except for House, who, given his character, had absolutely no interest in talking to her. It turned, essentially, into a battle of wills.

In other words, it was a character-driven episode. Now, usually, those are my favorites; I love going deeper into the lives and thoughts of the characters who populate the series' world. This time, however, was a little different.

See, the major turning point in the story--you know, the inevitable plot twist that always comes about halfway through--was that the woman was pregnant as a result of the rape. As House delivers the news, he launches immediately into "Termination is not a pleasant procedure..." and gets interrupted, as we learn that the woman is a Christian and believes that life begins at conception, and has absolutely no intention of having an abortion.

My first reaction: "Wow, I'm glad they gave that perspective to such a sympathetic character!" Then she keeps talking, and parroting the most empty and fatalistic version of Christianity I've ever heard. "But even so," I think, "We genuinely feel for her and respect her character."

The show goes on; eventually House opens up to the girl and she tells him about her horrible experience; they have a bonding moment through sharing pain, and she is no longer suffering psychologically now (I guess?) so the hospital can discharge her. Nothing more is mentioned on the subject of abortion.

Nothing, that is, until the final scene. As House tells his boss about the case, he says "She terminated, and was discharged." The boss nods as if that were perfectly normal and asks him how it happened.

WHAT?! Here we had a strong female character who is vehemently anti-abortion, to the point where she is not only willing but adamant that she will carry to term a baby who came about as a result of a rape, and suddenly we, the audience, are supposed to not only accept a complete 180 in her stance for no apparent reason, but applaud the doctors who brought it about. I'm sorry, but even if you're pro-choice, isn't it the woman's choice that's supposed to matter? How could it ever be even marginally ethical for a doctor to use the doctor-patient intimacy to push someone into changing their core beliefs?

Granted, House is a show about doctors performing marginally ethical practices to accomplish their own goals. But this wasn't even presented in the light of "House being House and doing what he wants regardless of patients." That sort of thing gets him yelled at. Actually, this wasn't presented in any sort of light; rather, it was seen as a foregone conclusion: once her psychological wounds healed, she would obviously see the light and agree to have an abortion. And I, for one, find that hugely offensive.

I didn't really go into this intending to perform a full-on argument on the issue of abortion; I guess I'll know if people actually read my blog or not by whether or not this sparks people off on a huge debate. But it's been gnawing at me, goading me on to express outrage where outrage is due. Because, though House does exist in a fictional world, it is a fictional world meant for public consumption. And if the public eye is so used to tying together irrationality and refusing abortion that it would accept this episode without outrage, it might just need a little writhing idea planted in its consciousness.