.- quantum uncertainty -.

Previously:
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- "The Five Mrs. Buchanans"
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching -- "The Big Bang Theory"
Day 03 - Your favourite new show (aired this season) -- "V"

Day 04 - Your favourite show ever



I think that's probably right. I can't think of another show where I would willingly watch just about any episode at any time. I love the future that TNG paints, I love the characters, I think the stories are, by and large, awesome. I can't think of a single other show (and I have watched MANY) where I was just so absolutely anxious to watch it when it aired each and every week.

I first watched Encounter at Farpoint when it aired in 1987 and I was 10. My friend, E, and I watched it, mostly for Wil Wheaton, whom we found to be "soooooooooo cute". I was definitely a little upset that Wesley Crusher was a bit of a disappointment, but hey, his mom turned out to be pretty cool. ;D

If not for TNG, I never would have met people like mtgat, shiningmoon, jessruth, trexphile or moireach. Hell, I wouldn't have met bethofalltrades because it was my TNG-love and a certain awesome mailing list that led me to create a similar one, which is where I got to know bethofalltrades.

I'm sure there are others I'm missing, but those are some of my oldest Internet-era friends. I've known the first three since late 1994 (!!!), bethofalltrades since late 1996, I think and trexphile and moireach since mid-1997.

So TNG had a rather huge effect on me and my life and it ended up being a great show that I still love to watch to this day.

Except perhaps chunks of Season 2...

( Coming up... )

Previously: Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- "The Five Mrs. Buchanans"

Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching



Most people I know like The Office or 30 Rock or How I Met Your Mother or other amusing 30-minute sitcoms. But most people I know do not watch The Big Bang Theory. One of the most hilarious shows I have EVER watched, I honestly can't eat or drink while watching this, lest I snarf something.

This may have something to do with the fact that, hi, I'm a geek. I get the World of Warcraft jokes, the Star Trek jokes, even most of the science jokes. The first episode I ever stumbled upon had them playing Klingon Boggle. I was hooked. And the BARENAKED LADIES do the theme song? This show is basically made for me.

Never mind the fact that I apparently share Sheldon's ideas on who should be the next Batman; if it's not Dick Grayson (who is, remember, off being Nightwing!), I mean of course it should be Tim Drake and NOT Jason Todd! </geek>

Plus, Wil Wheaton's made appearances. As himself. And it's probably the most hilarious thing ever that he is Sheldon's nemesis.

Highly recommended to everyone, geek or not. The show is about two geeks (Leonard and Sheldon) who live across the hall from a non-geek girl, Penny. Leonard and Sheldon have a couple of geeky friends, Raj and Howard, and they all work at the local university. From a geek perspective, there are a TON of little things that make you squee and go "holy crap, they're talking about stuff I KNOW!!!" which makes it so much fun. But from a non-geek perspective, you at least have the ability to identify with Penny and just go "oh, those crazy geeks". Or something. I'm not sure if that's enough to be really amusing for the non-geek, though. :)

Where you know them from: Leonard is played by Johnny Galecki, who was Darlene's boyfriend, David, in Roseanne. Howard is played by Simon Helberg, who was Moist in Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

And here's a link to the first part of the first episode.

( Coming up... )

In other news, my laptop's power cord died last night. I spent about 17 hours between its death and knowing it WAS the cord (and not the computer). Not fun, not fun, not fun. Thankfully, my brother and I have the same computer and so I plugged his power cord into my laptop today to verify that it WAS just the cord. Whew. Then ran out and dropped $134 that I didn't really have on a new universal power adapter. :P

One day, I will have a desktop again and be a lot less panicky when things go wrong with my computer.

Having said that, guess who's going to back up a crapton of stuff in the next couple of days, just in case? :P

Guess what time it is, kids?

Time to read along with my reactions to the two-hour season premiere of Lost!

( Okay. )

So... Meredith Baxter (whom I still occasionally call "Meredith Baxter-Birney") is gay.

Mrs. Elyse Keaton, from Family Ties is gay.

If I could shake her hand for coming out, I would.

Today Show video: http://bit.ly/61eV2j

Advocate interview: http://bit.ly/8Htvty (either she is a huge Grey's Anatomy fan or she was the inspiration for Erica Hahn's coming out speech.)

And in yet more gay news: Venice premieres this Friday at 11pm ET (8pm PT) at http://www.venicetheseries.com/

Venice YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/venicetheseries

The promo is excellent, but so are the Q&As with Kimmy and Crystal.

Dude. Dude, dude, dude.

Venice the Series begins on December 4th, 2009.

Promo at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/venicetheseries

or, at the official Venice site (if it's currently accessible):

http://www.venicetheseries.com

Looks so damn good!

Starring:
Crystal Chappell (Olivia Spencer, GL & Maggie Carpenter, OLTL & Carly Manning, DOOL), Jessica Leccia (Natalia Rivera, GL), Galen Gering (Rafe, DOOL), Lesli Kay (Molly, ATWT), Nadia Bjorlin (Chloe, DOOL), Gina Tognoni (Kelly Cramer, OLTL & Dinah, GL), Hillary B. Smith (Nora, OLTL), Jordan Clarke (Billy Lewis, GL), Michelle Carter, Michael Sabatino (Lawrence, GL & Jonathan Kinder, AMC & Vince Russo, GL), Harrison White & Tina Sloan (Lillian, GL).

LOTS of familiar faces for soap fans. I'm sure even drsnicket will recognize Hillary B. Smith from OLTL. :)

Today, I am going to use my LJ as a soapbox.

I got my flu shot today. The Quebec government is letting people between the ages of 20 and 65 with chronic diseases (asthma, in my case) get their flu shots for H1N1 now. So I went and it was surprisingly painless and I hardly waited around.

That's not soapboxy.

What drives me crazy, and I don't know if it's just because my dad's a doctor or what, are those people who don't like vaccinations.

And by "don't like", I mean don't vaccinate their kids or themselves against actual dangerous diseases, not the people who don't like needles or what have you.

It continually astounds me to hear about people who do not want to vaccinate their children for fear of autism, cerebral palsy or risks to do with mercury and aluminum. Drives me nuts. If vaccines actually, without a doubt, caused things like autism and cerebral palsy, would they still be used? Seriously. I'm guessing not. All I've read is that there are tenuous, POTENTIAL links between these illnesses and vaccines in a small PERCENTAGE of populations.

As to mercury, yes, thimerosal (a form of mercury) is used as a preservative in some vaccines, particularly the H1N1 vaccine that I got today. Know what? You get more mercury in a can of tuna fish than you do in this particular vaccine. And do not get me started on aluminum causing Alzheimer's, because again, there isn't a direct, proven correlation. My dad worked in the aluminum industry for 20 years, doing his part for occupational health and safety of the workers. If my dad tells me there's no direct link between exposure to aluminum and Alzheimer's, I'll believe him, because he's a doctor who has had a job in which he had to do research that covered that possibility.

Is everyone going to have an easy time with a vaccine? No. Everyone's body is different, everyone's immune system reacts differently. People are unique individuals and there will be more severe reactions to vaccines than others.

I got the shot about two and a half hours ago.

In the first fifteen minutes or so (where they ask you to stay in a waiting area to ensure you don't have a severe reaction), I felt a little bit light-headed and dizzy, but it soon faded. And I am TOTALLY jinxing myself here, but my arm isn't even sore. I'm sure it will be, since that's a side effect in 50%+ of the population, but right now, I'm feeling pretty good. I am not concerned that I will develop autism, cerebral palsy or Alzheimer's. I am not concerned that I will have a severe reaction to the vaccine. And what's more, I'm not concerned about getting H1N1, now. I wasn't terribly worried before, but the reason I got the vaccine was that I got the regular flu last year and felt like death. So I wanted to avoid that again, and will also get the seasonal flu vaccine when it becomes available.

In so doing, by making myself as close to immune as possible (as it bolsters, but does not guarantee full immunity), not only am I saving myself the trouble of being very ill, but more importantly, people are probably not going to get sick because of me. I take public transportation, I hang out in public places, and if I'm contagious just before I'm symptomatic, then guess what? I've just potentially infected the 50 or so people I was sitting near, handed money to or held the door for. That's how a pandemic works, people. That's why governments are setting up vaccine centers, are giving out information. It's not necessarily because they care SO much that you, personally, are going to be sick. But one sick person can get any number of other people sick. That's why there are vaccines -- to immunize and prevent the spread of disease. That's why there's a schedule for people who are eligible for vaccination. Health-care professionals first, because they're the ones in contact with the sick people. Then people at risk of serious cases of the illness. Then people at risk of moderate cases or side effects of the illness (chronic illnesses, like asthma). Then people who are basically healthy. And finally, people who have probably already been exposed.

And speaking of that, H1N1 isn't new, people. My dad had it in 1968. He was miserable, but he lived to tell the tale. And, just in case, he STILL got his flu shot, too.

What really drives me crazy about all this is that there's very little middle-of-the-road thought about this. I saw a man today who lied about his age to try to get a vaccine. They're currently vaccinating people 20-65 with chronic illnesses, right? Dude was born in 1938 and was busted. He said he was 64 and then had to hand over his medicare card (province-run health insurance card) and they're like "uh... you're 71."

So you have all these people PANICKING about the flu and trying to lie their way in to get a vaccine, and then you've got the other loonies who are so adamantly against vaccinations that they look at you as if you have three heads when you tell them that yes, you got the flu shot.

Obviously, I feel strongly about this myself, but I didn't panic about getting the flu and I even debated getting my shot, but ultimately, I got it because I didn't want to be as sick as I was last year and I didn't want to spread it.

Anyways, rant is done for now, but oooooh, some people being so misinformed makes me nuts. It's like that xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/386/

I try to tell myself to breathe, but it doesn't always work. :P

So, due to my friend SY and trexphile, I started watching Castle earlier this week.

I have now watched 13 episodes. In like, 3 days.

And, shockingly, I was really enjoying it! I still AM really enjoying it, except that it's finally happened -- I had nightmares. Which is why I'm sort of conscious at 9:41am.

I had a very long, convoluted dream about Harvard vs. Yale, the Barenaked Ladies and the Red Dwarf crew, ALL of which was pivotal to a murder that my friend SY and I were trying to solve.

Seriously, overactive imagination.

That said, I've watched all of Season 1 and three episodes of Season 2. I love the guest stars. No joke, my hand to God, that's one of my favourite parts of the whole show.

So far, I've seen:
- Tina from The L Word (Laurel Holloman)
- Candace (the carpenter) from The L Word (Ion Overman)
- Ben from Queer as Folk (Robert Gant)
- The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager (Robert Picardo)
- Chip from Kate and Allie (Fred Koehler)
- Homer from The Simpsons (Dan Castellanetta)
- Martha Kent from Lois & Clark (K Callan)
- Adam from Ellen (Arye Gross)
- the dad from Life Goes On (apparently his name was Drew Thatcher on the show) (Bill Smitrovich)

And that doesn't even count Susan Ruttan, who I know just because L.A. Law used to be huge back in the day, even if I never watched it.

No joke, btw, I recognized all of their names in the credits, except Smitrovich, who I recognized when I saw him. Even Fred Koehler, who played a kid in Kate and Allie. From the 1980s. I'm aware that it's more than a little sad. :P

Interestingly, I HAD NO IDEA Dan Castellanetta looks shockingly like Armin Shimmerman...

Anyways, I'm going to try to get back to sleep without nightmares, now. :P

My insomnia is your good fortune.

( More /facepalming ahoy... )