An Open Love Letter To Joss Whedon or Joss Whedon: How He Has It Right

As most of you know, I am a HUGE Firefly fan. It is one of my favorite shows...EVER! I fell in love with the show immediately upon viewing the pilot episode and I haven't looked back from Firefly fandom since. The best dream I ever had was when Capt. Malcolm Reynolds himself, asked me to join the crew of the Serenity after I graduated from college. The pain of waking up from that life was truly tragic. If there was anything as tragic as my dream being a dream, it is that the show was canceled after only one season, thanks to the idiots at Fox. Joss Whedon did not deserve to have his dream of the "Space Western" crushed so soon.

Speaking of Joss, I'm just going to come right out and say it, Joss Whedon is a f**king genius. You can quote me on that. Sorry for the profanity, but it's needed to stress the gravity of the word 'genius'. For a guy to create such complex worlds as the Buffverse, Angelverse, and Fireflyverse, is just incredible. Read more about his other work on Wikipedia here.

During the WGA strike, Joss (being the true creative force he is) couldn't stop the creative juices from flowing, so he and his pals decided to create an alternative form of entertainment. Enter, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog:



It is a hybrid of a comic book/sci-fi show/musical. Joss is no stranger to the music world. Two notable mentions, The Buffy Musical: Once More With Feeling and the Firefly theme song. Both are incredibly campy and incredibly good. Dr. Horrible feels like a natural branch from the Whedonverse.

Dr. Horrible is exclusively online and comes in three installments. The first two acts are already available online (click link above) and act three comes out tomorrow. Please go watch them over and over again, you won't be disappointed. Both Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are hilarious and I can't wait to see how he ends the story.

On a side note, and really the meaning of this post, I believe Joss Whedon has it right, in life I mean. The guy has surrounded himself with his friends and they all work to create really funny and really good entertainment. He has created his own production company, Mutant Enemy Productions which is responsible for some classic hits (Buffy, etc.), spends time writing awesome comic books, and is adored by millions of fans. The guy knows how to live and how to work. And he's pretty socially enlightened as well! He describes himself as a feminist and frequently features LGBT peoples in his work with complexity and understanding.

So, I salute your Joss. I hope to one day have it right like you. In the meantime I will continue to appreciate all your Joss-y goodness.

Firmly yours,
Karen

Music Is Your Time Capsule

I am a music freak. Like most people my age, I can hardly go any where without having my entire collection of music at hand. Thanks to technology we can do this, at a reasonable price. My 30G iPod Video holds all my music, some videos, and backs up some old photos to boot and it only cost me about $250 two years ago.

Even though Apple is a huge ass and makes it hard for users to copy stuff OFF the iPod, iTunes is still a pretty awesome media player. The iTunes store and Amazon MP3 integration built into iTunes makes buying and playing MP3s easy and convenient. Even though you have other choices in media players (I also like Winamp I used it before iTunes came along my freshman year) that offer the same features, there is just something really simple about iTunes.

One cool thing I've noticed about iTunes is its capacity to serve as a time capsule for your life. When you enable the "Date Added" category column in your library you suddenly can track back through time. For example, if you and your best friend went on a road trip back during Fall 2004, you two probably downloaded some kick ass songs to make a sweet playlist. Or you went through a really heart smashing breakup that one summer and was hopelessly devoted to Taking Back Sunday. By sorting your songs with the "Date Added" feature, you can go back and look at what you listened to. You see, we forget a lot of things! Some times its really awesome to be reminded of how music touched and possibly even shaped our lives. There lies a little, subtle, story in that data. It's really quite neat!

In effort to not lose this information to a iPod crash, like what happened to my iPod mini back senior year. I decided to immortalize (digitally) my iPod data. Thanks to Google spreadsheets I am even able to publish it to the web. See it here! You can also see my music collection and be inspired!

I encourage all of you to back up your data, whether it be iPod data or just important things in your life. The Internet is such a wonderful thing and allows us to organize our lives in ways we only imagined a few years ago. Google in particular has made the transition to a digital life easier than ever.

For those who know me, really check out the list. It's at some parts kinda funny!

Return of the Jedi : PIAS Edition

On Saturday, April 5, I'll return to Play It Again Sports. Michael, my old boss, asked if I could help out this weekend because he was short on staff. Even though it involves waking up at 8:30am on a post-Friday drink-a-thon morning, I am excited to help him out. I feel it will be a positive experience. I'll be down in Fredericksburg anyways for a friends birthday and the shift he needs me for seems to fit perfectly in my schedule.

Ahh the old job alma mater (actual PIAS not pictured):


I'm curious about how it is going to feel to be back there. The last five months have been quite traumatic and I wonder if being back in a place I really loved will be a nice break or a sad reminder. My guess is it will be a nice break. I believe I'm past that whole "I want to be back in college" phase. It's no doubt going to be weird working with the old crew and Michael. I'm sure to go down memory lane and succumb to nostalgia. Hamper back to the good-old-day of college and reflect on that tumultuous senior year. But hopefully it'll lead to some needed resolution.

If anything it will be a nice change of pace from my regular day-to-day sitting in front of a computer. As said in a previous post, I've become a depository for information. For the past five months revelations on life and living come bi-weekly (average) among those revelations is the notion that an office job is simply not for me. The need to move around, be outside once in a while, and really believe what I do is unique is now critical for happiness. Thus far in my career I've only done the extremes. I went from the exact opposite of an office job (PIAS) to the classic office job (Science). I now see these two extremes serving as well needed experience in what no to do. Thanks to both I know my ideal lies in between.

On an semi-unrelated topic I will also be picking up the rest of the Radiohead tickets from Paris. YEAH! I still need to find though, someone else to go with the group. So if you're interested in the greatest band alive, the ticket is $45.

3D imaging and nauseous vitamins

Isn't incredible what we hold inside of us? Sometimes I forget how amazing the human body truly is. I've been watching this TV series on the Discovery Channel called "Human Body: Pushing the Limits". It is awesome. There are four episodes: "Sensation, Brain Power, Sight, and Strength". I've caught all but the "Sight" episode. While watching the show you can't help but want to take better care of yourself. You know, start going to the gym, take more vitamins, eat a more nutritious diet, etc.

However, the series led me to something interesting:

After an episode last night I had an enormous feeling of guilt. I believe it stemmed from the notion that if we don't take care of ourselves, if we don't use our bodies to their fullest potential, then we are being irresponsible human beings! Now that might sound kind of harsh and militant, but seriously, we take so much for granted when it comes to our bodies.

I'll take it as a motivator.

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On another semi-related note, I feel nauseated from the vitamins I just took. So a note from the wise, take food with your multi-vitamin!

I Want Aliens

From The Daily Galaxy Considering humans, E.T. life, and why it's so quiet out there!

"When we consider the chronological history of life on Earth, humans have only existed for a small fragment of time and our existence has always been precarious. The entire time we’ve existed, we been banding into various groups and attempting to kill each other—or at least are constantly in the process of developing more effective ways of killing each other—just in case. The US government, for example, spends on “Defense” (including “preemptive” warfare) and Homeland Security, 8 times what it spends on educating the next generation. There is enough nuclear weaponry in storage around the world to kill every living creature on the planet several times over. Clearly, we’re a species with poor odds of surviving indefinitely.

Our self-destructive natures aside, curiosity may end up killing more than the cats. The faster technology is advancing, the more our “leap now, look later” nature appears to grow as well. If evolution on Earth serves as a somewhat typical template for evolution of other life forms, then becoming a truly advanced civilization must be a very daunting task indeed and a very rare, if not impossible, achievement."

damn the new york times

Mid-life Crisis
read that.

I feel like I'm in store for a heavy mid-life crisis. It's just so "me".

"Popularly viewed as a unique developmental birthright of the human species, it supposedly strikes when most of us have finally figured ourselves out — only to discover that we have lost our youth and mortality is on the horizon."

I can totally see myself in like 20-25 years, finally have my shit worked out, look in the mirror and freak out that I'm no longer 22. I'll examine my life with a fine tooth comb and declare I've "done nothing". Every accomplishment will be insignificant in comparison to life I thought I would live; the Great Life I dreamed of as a idealistic youth. There will surely be a scene where I fall to my knees, break down and sob, shout out to the heavens and proclaim "WHY LORD? WHY?" "I've only just begun to LIVE!" (cue epic soundtrack and celine dion or whoever sang that song).

I already kinda had a 1/4 life crisis. When I turned 20 I totally freaked; seriously. I was home for the summer between sophomore and junior year. Right on July 7 I started freaking out, thinking I had some horrible disease. I turned into a slight hypochondriac. I couldn't believe I was 20. I was the baby of the family; babies aren't 20! Needless to say, it was quite a stressful experience. I eventually though got over it. Realized I was being silly and swung into junior year as a confident new 20 year old.

But this whole thing has got me thinking. If I reacted like I did to my passage from teen life to adult hood, how am I going to react when I pass into middle age? I freaked out at a moment in life most kids cannot wait to get to! How am I going to react when I enter the first days of my golden years?! Many elderly people say the best years of their life were after middle-age. So why all the fuss? The article cites a youth obsessed culture, and in part I agree with the author. I know I'm pretty youth obsessed. Hell! I'm only 22 and I'm writing about how my mid-life crisis is just around the corner!

Who knows, maybe it does come down to the fact that I might be a raving narcissist. Or it might be that I think too much. Or it might happen that by the time I get to my 40s I will have grown enough to handle feeling a little old. Or it might be nothing...

I've often quoted the once great Garth Brooks "I'm much too young to feel this damn old."

This is all of course assuming I make it past 26.
....at the most!




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oh...and another thing i realized today: women=bullets

the train

i can't help it.
i find myself staring at people on the train. it is a habit i just can't break. my sister is more notorious for it, but i'm just as guilty.
but today while commuting, i feel like my bad habit was worth something. i saw a woman with a sony walkman with over-the-head headphones. i was completely enamored with this woman. she seemed so at peace with the world; eyes closed, a slight smile, like she knew something the rest of us did not.
i don't know why, but just seeing this woman made feel so calm. in a world which has apparently outgrown cd players, let alone a tape player, she clutches her walkman with pride. and even though i don't know this woman, or what kind of person she is, it was nice to see something different on the train. i feel like public transportation is either full a bunch scowling 9-5ers who take themselves way too seriously or urban nut jobs. to see someone who appeared to be enjoying "the simple" was refreshing.