![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
1. Chuck versus the Best Friend (now two weeks back, because I am that far behind) was possibly the best-constructed episode of TV I’ve seen in years. Just … perfect use of each character, A and B plots perfectly intertwined with C plot weaving in and out at just the right time providing just the right contrasts. Repetition with a difference, friendship and the ways in which friends are and aren’t family, are and aren’t lovers. Plus beautiful Chuck/Sarah bittersweetness at the end, completely earned.
2. Krystal Chang remarks, in reference to Lolita, that “the traditional motivations for a road trip are numerous but repetitive: The road trip as rite-of-passage, as a fugitive run, as a search for the ‘real’ land; to rebel, to discover, to escape…but never to reach a destination.” Now I really want to read an analysis of incest in SPN fic, or, hell, an analysis of the canonical sexual relations of the boys, compared to sexual abuse in Lolita (“the landscape and the language are drawn out through a stunning, archetypical example of the road trip genre, with all the traditional tropes: the descriptions of small towns, deserts, and highways; the running, the searching and the tragic end”) and sexual rebellion in Thelma and Louise. “Although the road trip is American by virtue of space, it is ultimately self-defeating by virtue of geography; it is by nature a temporary state of affairs. The hoped-for discovery is simply nothingness.”
3. Inexplicable gifts from the universe: I washed my iPod. Like, a full laundry cycle washed it. It stopped working for a while, but now it works again. I bow before you, Tiny One.
4. Via Naomi Novik: download full novels, in DRM-free PDF format, by Novik, Harry Turtledove, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robin Hobb, and T.A. Pratt (never heard of Pratt, but given the company kept here I am going to try the book). Great use of back catalog. Now if I could only figure out what kind of PDF reader I should use on my iPhone. (Also downloaded the free Kindle app for the iPhone and bought the new Stephen King short story. I’ve read that the Kindle format books are a loss leader for Amazon—they pay the publishers more than the cover price—which makes the existence of the iPhone app somewhat hard to explain. But I am out of room, physically, so if I can get cheap enough Kindle editions I will go ahead and commit to tethering. It’s psychologically easier to do it through the iPhone; I accepted tethering of music and video with my iPod long ago.)
2. Krystal Chang remarks, in reference to Lolita, that “the traditional motivations for a road trip are numerous but repetitive: The road trip as rite-of-passage, as a fugitive run, as a search for the ‘real’ land; to rebel, to discover, to escape…but never to reach a destination.” Now I really want to read an analysis of incest in SPN fic, or, hell, an analysis of the canonical sexual relations of the boys, compared to sexual abuse in Lolita (“the landscape and the language are drawn out through a stunning, archetypical example of the road trip genre, with all the traditional tropes: the descriptions of small towns, deserts, and highways; the running, the searching and the tragic end”) and sexual rebellion in Thelma and Louise. “Although the road trip is American by virtue of space, it is ultimately self-defeating by virtue of geography; it is by nature a temporary state of affairs. The hoped-for discovery is simply nothingness.”
3. Inexplicable gifts from the universe: I washed my iPod. Like, a full laundry cycle washed it. It stopped working for a while, but now it works again. I bow before you, Tiny One.
4. Via Naomi Novik: download full novels, in DRM-free PDF format, by Novik, Harry Turtledove, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robin Hobb, and T.A. Pratt (never heard of Pratt, but given the company kept here I am going to try the book). Great use of back catalog. Now if I could only figure out what kind of PDF reader I should use on my iPhone. (Also downloaded the free Kindle app for the iPhone and bought the new Stephen King short story. I’ve read that the Kindle format books are a loss leader for Amazon—they pay the publishers more than the cover price—which makes the existence of the iPhone app somewhat hard to explain. But I am out of room, physically, so if I can get cheap enough Kindle editions I will go ahead and commit to tethering. It’s psychologically easier to do it through the iPhone; I accepted tethering of music and video with my iPod long ago.)
