synapsida

Now that we’ve learned about the rather important role that ‘All Along the Watchtower’ plays in BSG, I figured I might as well take a look at the lyrics and see if there isn’t anything in them that might point to other things in the show.

Yikes, interpreting–here goes! Feel free to add thoughts in the comments. (Spoilers abound!)

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,

Well, we rather understand this one, now: the song was the key to finding Earth-take-2.

“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.

An Eight utters this to Tigh in sick-bay right before she dies.  This seems more a comment on this whole damned series than anything else.  May also point to the general confusion that many of the characters feel by being guiding in directions unknown by Godshand.

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”

This may well be used here as an allusion to the coming desire to start with a clean slate, get back to farming and etc.  It could also refer to everyone getting frakking drunk all the time.

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

A possible reference to Zarek and Gaeta, playing politics while the future of humanity hangs in the balance.

But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,

This bit seems like a reference to the Cycle which is so prominently featured in Season 4.  Also, having “been through that” perhaps notes that most of the folks have moved beyond petty game-playing in order to save the human race.

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

Reconciliation of humans and the rebel Cylons?  And/or of the Final Five coming to turns with who they are and being honest with themselves?

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

A reference to the important decisions made by those in power, with most of the civilians being but pawns in the events happening around them?

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,

The Cylon’s return as the distant wildcat?

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

I rather like this as a reference to the Gaius and Caprica angels, given that their arrival was damned near the time when everything got all blown to shit and whatnot.

Ahoy, here be spoilers!

I have way too many thoughts about the BSG finale (and the show as a whole) to leave them in a comment on my friend vague’s totally awesome media blog as I usually do, so I may as well resurrect (har!) this blog for the purpose.  Still, head over there for a great photo recap of both parts of the finale, along with other assorted awesomeness.

Godsplan

I have quite enjoyed the supernatural aspects of this show.  As a long-time fan of Babylon 5, I like it when sci-fi gets mixed up with elements of religion like fate, destiny, non-coincidental coincidences, etc.  And overall, I thought BSG did a really great job of making these elements present, but not shoving them down your throat.  After all, we all have strange occurrences in our lives, and I for one am far too tiny to say definitively that there isn’t something out there orchestrating the whole damn thing.

But here’s the thing–I’ve never seen any evidence of actual interference from a higher power.  So, while I can buy a thing about Kara drawing circles and learning songs that are important later, I have difficulty believing that God CAUSED HUMANS TO EVOLVE ON A PLANET LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM WHERE THE REST OF HUMANS EVOLVED.  This is just totally bogus.  Completely.  No way, no how, no sir!  This is one (of many) reasons that I never much enjoyed Star Wars–there simply is no “Force” that we can manipulate.  Likewise, there are pigeons on Caprica–did Godsplan need pigeons to evolve in two different places, too?  To forever watch over Lee Adama and his kin?  Or did Kara turn into a pigeon rather than disappear at the end?  Is she the “mitochondrial Eve” of all pidgeonkind?

I wish I could come up with some sort of non-canonical explanation for this damned ending that fits with the facts as explained in the show, but I just can’t.  My original theory about what was going to happen would have been MUCH better (if I do say so myself): namely, that jumping so close to the singularity near the Colony would frak up the FTL plotting, and instead of sending Galactica through space, would also send it through time, back to a previous point in the history of the original Earth (or the Colonies), allowing them to subvert the Cycle and avoid future chaos and mayhem.  I would have been completely content if they had found themselves orbiting the first Earth, but 150,000 before any shit goes down, and gotten it on with the natives there, all the while teaching about the evils of robotics.  Apparently the writers thought multiple planets evolving humans was a far better idea.  I just happen to disagree, since it makes NO DAMNED SENSE, people.

Distance

Previously, when discussing the emigration of the Final Five from Earth to the Colonies, I was quite happy to finally have some figures about the volume of space we’re talking about–±10,000 light years (ly) by my rough estimation.  This helps explain why the Fleet had such trouble finding a habitable world (our galaxy is about 100,000 ly in diameter, so 10,000 ly is a pretty measly chunk of it).  But then, at the damned end of the damned finale, Adama says that the odds of humans evolving on a planet “a million light years away” are mind-boggling.  What the frak?  Where did this “million light years” nonsense come from?  The only thing I can puzzle out of this is that the events of BSG occurred in the Andromeda galaxy (which is our nearest galactic neighbor at about 2.5 million ly away).  Um, is everyone “a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?”  They better damn well now be, because THAT WOULD MAKE THIS SHOW LIKE STAR WARS!  And that would make me cry.

Part I of the finale opens with the image of a galaxy, which, as near as I can figure, is indeed the Milky Way, and not Andromeda, so I could be damned well wrong.  Also, the Season 3 finale (if I recall correctly when this happened; it was right after Kara reappears from Earth) zooms out from their location, and back in on Earth, all within the same galaxy, so this would seem to speak against my theory.  Unless, of course, the Earth it zooms in on is the previous Earth, and not the current Earth.  Then this could still work.  I’m somehow happier with humans evolving once in different galaxies–God is all not putting his mitochondrial DNA in one basket, as it were.  Sadly, I’m left sans explanation, except the one they give, which makes me die a little bit inside.

Tech

I appreciate the lack of technobabble in this show, as it made the whole thing much more acceptable to non-sci-fi fans (hi, vague!), gave it a huge fan base, and helped make it one of the best TV shows ever.  Still, there could have been a bit more discussion of the mechanisms and science behind all of this.  How did we go from 10,000 ly to 1,000,000 ly all of a sudden?  How is the Colony not torn apart by tidal forces, if the only safe parking place is directly in front of it–would it have killed you to actually say “Langrangian point” during the episode?

Regarding Cylon resurrection–I have some problems here, too.  This idea isn’t horribly new in sci-fi (see, e.g., pretty much anything ever written by Peter F. Hamilton), but what IS new to BSG is the idea that memory transfer seems to take place seamlessly, nearly-instantly, and without any loss of memory, at the death.

But how does this happen?  If your body stops working and is, by definition, dead, then how do your memories get out of your skull?  It seems much more plausible to me to have the memories backed up somewhere, which can then be reconstituted should an individual die.  I find the transfer at or after the moment of death to be rather silly.  I let this slide up until now, as I was always hoping for some sort of explanation, but since science seems to have gotten flushed with this episode, as did any hope of explaining resurrection, I can bitch now.  Hopefully they’ll take this issue up in Caprica, as it seems they might from the trailer.

People

I think this show has had some of the best character development ever seen on TV.  I absolutely loved the flashbacks during the finale, which provided motivations for the characters which would have been otherwise lacking, and tied a nice bow around the whole series.

Having said that, though, why are these people so frakking terrible at managing their love lives?  I mean, Caprica fucks Tigh, has his baby (sort of), and then goes back to Gaius all happy-like cause she decides she’s proud of him?  The relationship with Tigh just disappears?  Likewise with Lee and Kara–the only damned thing that makes any sense is Bill and Laura…  I guess since Kara is an angel and Caprica a Cylon, maybe they are just, by nature, totally frakked.

Also, I could SWEAR at the end that Kara whispers “I don’t love you” to Sam.  Does she say she does love him?  Cause it doesn’t sound like it to me, and actually not-love would make more sense with the Lee flashbacks…

Overall Thoughts

I suppose I still like BSG, but I really feel like the finale was a let-down.  They had plenty of time to prepare some totally amazing “twist” or explanation at the end, and instead when get a video of robots.  Robots?!?!

And not even a damned Roomba in sight…

Only on the Internet can you find delicious, savory nonsense like this:

“By interacting with the symbolic stimuli within the dream via lucidity one can consciously manipulate the information and thereby the energy that they encapsulate. The symbolic stimuli of the dream are energetically emotive charged knots of information that tie up all probable past, present and future time lines. By consciously untying the symbolic knots, energy is released so that one can forge new knots of symbolic stimuli into becoming as flesh into one’s sensory reality experienced as synchronistic phenomena. One in essence would have the ability to forge a new destiny rather than become as a prisoner to one’s encoded destiny programmed into one’s DNA.”

from http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/glor_011/sleipnir.htm

I love this picture.  It’s from An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe by Thomas Wright, published in 1750.  This was the first book to explain the appearance of the Milky Way as the result of the Earth being immersed in a flat, thin layer of stars.  Wright was also the first speculate that fuzzy ‘nebulae’ were in fact distant galaxies.  This “plate” shows Wright’s impression of the juxtaposition of various solar systems.  Love.

Test-post from desktop publishing thingie…

Why would someone pay $40 bucks for a text editor that posts to their blog??

I have a horribly embarassing secret to disclose to you, perusers of the Internets: I did not learn to ride a bike as a child. I was rather hard-headed, insecure, and paranoid as a child (okay, fine, still am) , and I simply couldn’t stand doing something I was awful at. “Welp, I tried! What do you want from me? I fell over for godsake. Are you trying to kill me?” Various family members tried to teach me on different occasions, and nearly every time they were forced to turn to alcohol afterwards, shaking their head at my ineptitude (and unwillingness to give it more than a single try).

Because of this rather torrid lapse in my childhood, I have gotten very good at avoiding bike-riding situations. On the occasions when I was forced to admit, sheepishly, that I did not know how to ride a bike, the always-following “Really?!” never ceased to make me pissed off as hell. Yes, really, ass. Why the hell would I lie about that?

However, the reader will notice my use of the past tense in the preceding. The astute reader will realize what that means: I have learned to ride a bike, bitches! After some 20 years of ridicule and “Really?!” I can now ride a bike.

Well, sort of. I’m pretty good at the going-fast-in-a-straight-line bit, but the slowing-down-without-flying-over-handlebars and the turning-a-corner parts are not so great yet. The going-in-a-straight-line-and-not-hitting-anything is also a bit rough. But I am improving, and I have been at it for only 3 days (with a week-long break in the middle due to the cold and rain), so I reckon I will soon be turning corners and staying on my seat with the best of them!

For the moment, though, my newfound confidence and desire to be part of the bike-riding public often somewhat overshadow my actual skills. Take today, for example. After riding down the street to deposit letters in a mailbox (I even had to avoid people on a sidewalk–which I managed successfully! While carrying three envelopes!) and then back my starting place, in a fit of uncontrolled jubilation, I completely ate shit turning into the driveway. Down I went, knee first (“There we go with the scraped knees again!”) and then, the worst, falling on my arm in such a way that it acted rather like a curb driving up into my ribs, and I became very suddenly and sickeningly aware of all of the mechanics and evolutionary forethought that went into producing a ribcage, and exactly how mine is put together. Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt too terribly bad, although I am rather sure that my ribs are bruised and that moving my left arm tomorrow will extract a great price from my continence.

Despite my rather rough day of biking, I am still pretty chuffed with myself that I can ride a bike. I still find it hard to believe as I pedal along, wind in my hair, trying desperately to avoid that rock, and this pothole and FUCK FUCK! No, no, we’re okay!

Now if only I could get rid of gravity….

I am TOTALLY going to start writing a blog here again!  Aren’t you all so damned excited??

Content will appear when my head stops pounding.  You see, I accidentally drank a lot of very strong beer last night, and now I don’t feel so well.  Ugh.

I’ve decided I may as well start using this domain for something, rather than just cyber-squatting, especially since I’ve already paid for like two years of web hosting up front (note to self: freeze credit cards in block of ice).

I had originally intended to make this an evolution blog, but that seems to not be happening. Instead, I am going to make this a blog dealing with my life generally: graduate school (I’m studying linguistics), my general annoyance at the universe, and probably even some of my workouts, now that I’ve started to see a personal trainer. I might even blog about gay stuff once in a while. I’ve sort of steered clear of that area in the past, seeing as how the gays and the Internets often don’t play well together. But who knows…. I’m also something of an amateur scientist/hanger-on, so horribly nerdy things may also appear.

Anyway, that’s all for now, but I have some great ideas for future posts (tattoos! beards! poor life choices!), so stay tuned!