I had another of those, "oh no they didn't say a sci-fi thing isn't sci-fi, did they?!" moments yesterday on the train. And it's sad, because the movie (The Adjustment Bureau) looks interesting, it's based on a Philip K. Dick story, and... well, frankly, I wanted to see it. But now, not so much. Here's the quote from EW, with preliminary stuff to make it make more sense...

...their relationship is star-crossed, since the titular bureau, a shadowy collective of fedora-sporting agents acting as the arbiters of fate, is trying to keep them apart. Whew. And while it's based very loosely on a Philip K. Dick short story, Nolfi insists the film isn't really science fiction. "Sci-fi to me conjures up lasers and spaceships and time travel," he says. "This movie is told very realistically."

Okay, here are my objections.

1. You're insulting your audience. Realism isn't something that only happens in non sci-fi movies. If what you mean is "I want this to appeal to a broad-based audience," well, that's not the way to put it and congrats, because you just lost a lot of the people who enjoy movies with well-done science fiction. Additionally, sci-fi movies do well... usually when they're GOOD (or have an awesomely bankable star, or both). So can I assume that the director doesn't think his movie is very good?

2. Philip K. Dick was a very famous writer of science fiction. He wasn't a genre-bending or genre-straddling author. To base something on anything he wrote and then say it's not science fiction is just plain wrong. Given the plot sketch provided, you could maybe try to get away with calling it magic realism, but... no. It's still science fiction.

3. Science fiction - real science fiction - isn't just about lasers (which are commonplace in our society anyway), spaceships (which we sort of have, though not commonplace), and time travel. Science fiction is the fiction of ideas that (usually) are based in reality, but unbound by current technological limitations. It's a fiction of exploration. Educate yourself before making yourself look like an ass.

4. If your quote is this pretentious, probably your movie is too. And that's unfortunate, because before I read this article I wanted to see it. I like movies. All kinds, including drama, comedies, mysteries, action movies, documentaries... oh, and sci-fi. Guess I'm not the target audience for this one.

Here I'm going to try to explain my attitude about tv plots, after talking to a few people about it recently. It perfectly reflects how I feel about both BSG and Lost, among many MANY other shows.

Basically, I don't want to be part of some groupthink experiment to create plots. If that was a goal of mine, I'd probably be a writer. I'm not a writer, I don't want to be a writer, and I've watched enough tv and movies that I'm rarely if ever surprised by anything, yet I crave that surprise... although surprise might not be the right word because I don't always care about spoilers, because how you do something is often as important as that you did it, storywise. Anyway, I want there to be something for me to latch onto that will distinguish it from other things. Something that will make me stop and think. Like the end of the Dark Tower series did... love it or hate it, my mouth dropped open when I read it. Or the end of Only Forward (my exact thought was "wow, that's... unfortunate"). Basically, I want to have an opinion after the fact. Were I to think of what could happen plotwise with something, it can only go one of three ways...

1) the plot I think of could be better than the actual one, leading to disappointment.
2) the plot the actual writers come up with is better than I thought, leading to happiness.
3) we are in sync, and I am left feeling dissatisfied.

More often than not, number three is true. It's not a dissatisfaction that is soul-crushing, it just leads to me saying, "eh. was okay." Not brilliant, but entertaining. If everything else is done well enough, it doesn't even bother me, it's like a finely crafted novel that will be forgotten a week after you read it because there's nothing truly interesting about it, though it was technically good.

But I want number two to be the case. I want that so badly that I'm usually willing to let whatever show I'm watching play out without me seriously analyzing or debating even the larger arcs, never mind the minutiae. I respect that other people enjoy those things, but for me it robs the joie de vivre from the entire experience. After the fact, sure I'll debate and analyze.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I want to view the art itself and then interpret. Art can be collaborative, don't get me wrong. And obviously part of the attraction of it is that people can see different things in them. But I want to see it play out.

When I was younger, my younger brother used to try to convince me I was adopted even though we look exactly alike. So alike that people sometimes think we're twins. He went so far as to record a tape in which he pretended to be my parents talking about how they could never tell me that I was adopted. Of course, the tape also said that I was the child of a rat-bastard goat demon that they found on a curb.

This is why children should not have recording devices.

Soooooo.... Terminator was on again! Hah. Anyway, it made going to the gym more palatable. And I worked out for more than an hour... because I had to stay till the end of Terminator. Hee.

Right, anyway, in other news, Dragoncon!!!

And in real other news, I got into the learn-to-row program!

So I read yesterday that Stephen Hawking thinks we should colonize other planets if we are to survive as a race. I agree. And afterwards we should create AI slaves, uh, I mean servants... we'll call them... pylons. And hubris won't be our downfall, though the pylons might not agree.

So last night was supposed to get a little nipply, and I'm aware of how much my coffee plants don't enjoy that, so I decided that it was the time to bring the buggers in. So I did. Oh. my. god. They're 6 1/2 feet tall now. They didn't look that big outside... probably because the ceiling is higher, but oh. No. Really. They only clear the ceiling fan by inches. Light doesn't penetrate through them. Right now they're situated between the couch and the table. So when you're watching tv, they just kind of... loom over you. It's not right. Now I have to find a place for them in my bedroom. I don't see this going well, and I know there will be several nights where I'll wake up and think there's someone else in the room. And that I'll always think it's raining because I'll never see the light from the window again.

Now consider the plight of the rubber tree. It's not as tall, but it's wide. It takes up at least a third of my deck. It has no place to go. It won't fit anywhere. It's still outside, and will be fine out there for a while. I feel bad about leaving it to die, but I'm starting to think there really aren't other solutions. I could maybe bring it to work (though I'm not sure how well that'd go over), if I could borrow a minivan, because it sure as hell won't fit in my car. I could find someone who needs a tree that size, but that's unlikely. It has leaves the size of my HEAD!!! And you know what's sad? I don't water it. I don't fertilize it. In the winter, I don't even give it direct light. I do NOTHING for it and it just keeps getting larger and larger and more monstrous!!! It's like it thrives on my neglect. Maybe it's trying to shove my face in it... "Yeah! You think you can kill me??? I'll grow a leaf as big as your freaking head!!!" So, um, if you know anyone who wants a tree like that, let me know.

Someone asked me what I was thinking when I go these trees. And really, I was thinking two different things... for the coffee plants, "Oh cool! Beans to plant!" and for the rubber tree, "Nifty, I just air-layered a little three leaved plant!" So yeah, they didn't start out monsters. But then, they never do.

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

But what if happiness to you *is* pursuit? What if without the pursuit you have nothing? Answer me that, fortune cookie man!

Granted, I'm not all about pursuit. I'm happy doing many things, but find pursuit of happiness kind of boring and tedious. Except maybe I'm actually thinking about funding for pursuit of happiness. Maybe pursuit is just something that happens when you're not paying attention. Or maybe it's the car ride to Six Flags. But what if you are happy on the ride? I don't know.

Oh my! I am thirty years of age, with no prospects and no money to speak of! I shall be left penniless if I do not die first for lack of love. Oh, what *shall* I do?!

Okay, the moment has passed.

Yesterday I was really tired. And the theme song from the Gummi Bears cartoon kept running through my head.

My coworker has told me that the sauce I made for my stir fry had too many ingredients and was in fact many sauces mashed together. I disagree. Here's the listing, answer the poll after reading...

Soy sauce
Water
Lemon vinegar
Sugar
Sesame oil
Grated ginger
Wasabi powder

[Poll #752218]

Last night I dreamt that I was in love with Buckaroo Banzai.