Let us now take an easy definition for Emergency like say: a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action. Good. Now, it turns out the Art Store on Craig Street has suddenly started a clearance sale and urgently wants all of us to immediately come buy their products which may be (up to) 75% off!

Walking past the other day a mutual acquaintance of you, fair reader, and myself, asked: Are they going out of business? To which my answer was – no no, they have had giant signs up since the day I arrived in Pittsburgh (two years ago), however things have only become an emergency as of the last few weeks. How unexpected.

I have never wanted the nice weather to come back this much. I don’t know what happened to me, if it was the warmth from traveling last summer, especially just spending so much time out in the sun in the badlands and cheyenne and albuquerque, and white sands, or if this winter was particularly cold but I find myself really feeling deprived of the light of our local star.

Pittsburgh is just starting to get nice out though and so Kristen and I had our first outdoor dinner of the spring/summer tonight at Murray Avenue Grill and it was real great. I am excited for summer, warmth, sun.

Intelligent commentary on Battlestar episodes could be a challenge. One that I am ready to fail at. However so that I can actually use things like specific events and proper nouns these posts are going to be absolutely full of spoilers. So if you don’t want to know, just don’t read it.

I have a really hard time with this episode, the first standard ep. of the season (the internet unanimously seems to be calling Razor, episodes 1 & 2 of season four), and most of my dislike for it spans from an … interesting decision at the end of last season, which I will bet had less to do with where they wanted the series to go, and more to do with coming up with something really surprising for a season finale.

Two things I want to talk about from this episode, which I think should quietly disappear as not-so-relevant and one of those episodes where everyone talks a lot and then we all immediately forget it.

1. The new intro: Twelve cylon models, seven are known, four live in secret, one will be revealed. So this seems incredibly short term to me, as I find it hard to believe that only one of them is going to be revealed all season (won’t they all be?), so are they going to change this halfway through the season (yes). And even past that, this used to summarize what the series was about, cylons rising up and fighting back. I do think the whole show has become too focused on who the cylons are, who are the final five, who is the missing one, blah blah blah, and lost sight of the interesting questions about what it means to be cylon or human?
2. And more important, yet related, now that they have revealed these four cylons whom are living in secret, does it not seem like every single character on the show is a cylon? It should – because they all are. Thus ridiculous scenes can be created with cylons looming in the back of every shot, since … well humans are in short supply. We will now joke that Adama & Adama can just walk around saying “Good thing there isn’t a cylon in the room” at which point the camera can zoom to, well basically anyone for … umm tension?

Tomorrow at 10pm is the fourth, and possibly maybe, probably (love?) last season premier for Battlestar Galactica. Considering the first three-episode sequence that made up last season’s premier is likely the best television I have ever watched (yes, well – I don’t watch much – really any, television) I should be looking forward to tomorrow evening.

Yet, I look on warily. The end of season three made me really angry (mostly with the writers/producers) and they have some work to do if they are planning to win me back. I don’t want to get into the specifics of that, as it could include spoilers for people who are not completely with it – and I am still willing to entertain the possibility that over the next twenty episodes they can make me come to agree with the direction of that which has happened.

But since depending on who you believe (and when you believe them) this is the end of the road, I will watch it through to that end – I owe it that much in loyalty points. And even if the end is all bad electronica covers, earth-addicted toasters, and a numbers game … I could always drown myself in fan fiction.

ha.

Ok, back to catching up on movies now that my site looks … interesting (so many colors!). Over break I watched Hotel Chevalier (again) and The Darjeeling Limited. Which was fun. Except Katie was tired and went to bed during it, and I think Phluff also missed some chunks. It made me decide that I really like Anjelica Huston. I enjoyed it but it is not the best ever. I also like Adrian Brody I think.

Oh also, Hotel Chevalier was much better than the real movie.

This is the first film I have posted in a while that I am actually going to give a low rating to. I blame my general positive attitude on very pruned selection (my own and Elliot’s) through increased Netflix usage. This one snuck onto the list somehow and while it did win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film… it just doesn’t do it for me.

I can’t quite explain why, it was mostly well filmed, the plot was somewhat interesting, but in the end the storytelling guise led to what was in my mind an incredibly disappointing and anticlimactic ending. Also, in someways the film was just too simple, too straight-forward, too neat.

I think we will have to head back to more closely following the Chlotrudis list which Character is notably absent from.

I was reading some article (link now lost to the internet) of overrated and underrated things of 2007 and Atonement kept hitting the overrated side, the british writers/critics were not into it.

I loved it. I enjoyed the british beauty quality (even if Ballard might complain it was a costume drama — though it wasn’t all that old!), and it followed the story well enough that I wasn’t upset. I did find the ending more abrupt than I would have liked it, they could have slowed the whole thing down a bit more, for my own tastes, and I think also the tastes of the above critics. But it is fast enough to keep anyone interested, and terribly horribly sad (of course I cried, always do – mostly at the Luc Cornet scene); about halfway through I was told by Marissa that this movie was sad, I responded warning her: it is only going to get more sad. She refused such a possibility but then found it to be true. Anyway you should all go see this film because movies are pretty and sad – however if you plan to read the novel (wonderful) do that first.

p.s. one of my favorite recurring themes, they made typewriter clicking into some really wonderful music. I should look into getting the soundtrack.

I am at something like twenty-six hours of being awake. I am convinced that this is the way to fix my sleep schedule which constantly gets off because my body really likes to sleep for about 12 hours and then stay up for about 16, leading to a really normal natural cycle.

Although I still feel totally awake right now, I have been a bit hyper all day (I partially attribute this to the amazing 60degree weather we had today here in early January in Pittsburgh – as the girl I was walking behind told her friend in front of the Pitt Union – I think this must like totally be global warming // friend-girl responds: I think I like it? ) and have probably said a bunch of crazy things to people.

So what if I post some charts on all the crazy short messages I have broadcast out to the internet over the last year – convenient because I seem to have tons of these year2007 posts backlogged.

The following charts show my Twitter stats from 2007. Except actually they are my all time Twitter usage – I realized this because ever since I installed Leopard at the very end of October I stopped twittering, because for some reason Twitterific didn’t load on launch, and I kept forgetting, excuses, excuses, blah, blah, blah, end of the semester – and I ended up not twittering all of Nov. & Dec., which means those big bars on the chart are from last Nov. & Dec. Which is fine.

If you have twitter (and a mac) you can also do this – the script was created by Damon Cortesi and if you don’t have a mac there is also a web version linked over there that doesn’t need Numbers which above uses.

I also have the post-lunch peak that gruber noticed, an awkward Thursday drop that I can’t explain, and I have very low @results, because I really just post updates, I don’t use it so much for conversations. Maybe that could be a resolution for 2008.

(for those of you playing along at home – the bad ideas are in bold. — jk, I like Pittsburgh)

Drove back to Pittsburgh today. Hung out with Jenna and Erin. Plan to go see No Country For Old Men tomorrow. Had a good coffee experience, need to write that down. But for now, nothing.

Do you know how long it takes to cut all these out? (Actually not that long, and it was pretty fun.) More about it soon. Happy Thanksgiving.