Life on the Couch: So, this thing happened yesterday...

...and I've had no idea how I'm supposed to feel about it.

I watched along with millions of people around the world as my President announced that the American military, on his command, had killed a man who had spent the last decade being a modern-day boogeyman... and I was frightened. I listened to reporters and correspondents discuss the end of the war on terror... and I was skeptical. I watched footage of a crowd outside the White House singing and chanting and celebrating this boogeyman's death... and I was disturbed. I read statements from my own friends who were fiercely joyful at the news that a man had been killed... and I worried. I heard congratulations being offered by people I admired to other people I admired... and I squirmed.

I also wondered... why he was killed. Why he wasn't captured, and tried. I wondered what happened in that mansion in Pakistan that led to more death.

I've been thinking about 9/11 today, remembering the horror and the devastation and the fear and the mourning. I've tried to make those feelings fit with the feelings I've had about the death of Osama Bin Laden. I can't make them fit. I think about all the people who lost someone they loved as the result of orders and plans made by the man who was killed on the orders and plans of the American military and Barack Obama. I don't want to begrudge these victims the feeling of closure this might give them, the small amount of peace they may get from knowing this man is dead.

But it feels so wrong.

Here's what doesn't make sense. In his address to the nation (to the world), Obama said that justice had been served with the death of Bin Laden. But what happened last night wasn't justice. It was vengeance.

Justice would have been his capture and trail... even if the end result was the same. I am not a military strategist, or a politician, or an expert on foreign policy. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, an atheist or a believer. There are a lot of situations where I don't like to take a stand one way or the other because I just don't know enough about it to do so. But sometimes I have to trust my gut. And my gut is telling me that it's not right to celebrate Osama Bin Laden's death. I could ramble on and on about why, but Martin Luther King Jr. said it better than I ever could:

“I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Thanks to all the people who posted this on their Twitter feeds or Facebook statuses, and helped me to understand why I cannot celebrate alongside so many people that I love and respect.

Geek Weekly: Television review – Game of Thrones

Spoiler alert! For the first episode only.

I'll start with the confession that I haven't read the “Song of Fire and Ice” series by George R.R. Martin, largely because I find literary fantasy quite boring. It's just not my flavor of geek; the politics bore me, the strange and impossible to pronounce names make my head hurt, and the pace drags too much to hold my limited attention span.

However, “boring” is not a word that can be used to describe anything to do with this show.

The episode starts off with a group of gruesomely hacked-up bodies arranged in some sort of presumably symbolic pattern in the nearly colorless winter forest near The Wall. The whole scene is incredibly creepy and atmospheric, not to mention insanely gorgeous. Everything from the cinematography to the costumes to the pitch-perfect casting is breathtaking. There is also plenty of gratuitous gore, which certainly caught my interest. As the action ramps up we are also fleetingly introduced to some creatures who are presumably not human, but who do seem to be a combination of an Uruk-hai and a 28 Days Later rage zombie... an idea cemented by the apparent reanimation of the corpse of a small girl. I had no idea there were going to be monsters in this, let alone possible zombies, and all I have to say about that is AWESOME.

The rest of the episode is a lot of introductory political hum-drum, but the framework is laid out through a series of lovely, dark, and fascinating scenes that keep the dullness of the politics well hidden. We move to Winterfell, which is presided over by the blessedly simply-named Lord Stark (Sean Bean). After a disturbing lesson in the morality of the land and the introduction of several squee-inducing direwolf pups (WANT), we move briefly over to King's Landing, where (conveniently enough) King Robert (Mark Addy) resides with his wife (Lena Headey), her smarmy twin bro (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and their drunken lout of a dwarf brother (Peter Dinklage). There are about a thousand other awesome actors and characters, and if I take the time to list them all this review will be one giant IMDb entry.

There is one more group worth mentioning though, and that's the blondie siblings (Harry Lloyd and Emilia Clarke), and the warrior-clan leader (Jason Momoa), who we meet in Pentos as they plot some more political stuff. I'm sure it's all very important, but all I could think was how delightfully creepy some of the sibling relationships are on this show. Blond brother feels up blonde sister for a bit, then offers her for marriage to the scary and intimidating warrior-clan leader who, as far as I'm concerned, is best off remaining shirtless as much as possible. Woof!

Back in Winterfell, the queen makes inappropriate remarks during the feast and the King asks Lord Stark to come back to King's Landing with him to be his right-hand general or something. Then we return to Pentos in time for blonde sister's wedding to the pectoral warrior. The wedding dance includes lots of bare boobs and humping and fights ending in flailing intestines. Because they're savages, see? I give blonde sister two weeks before she's completely bonkers.

Lord Stark agrees to go off with King Robert and they celebrate by going boar hunting. Then Stark's youngest son accidentally catches the queen having sex with her twin brother. Just when I thought this show couldn't get more awesomely disturbing, they haul out the twincest. Oh, and then the brother casually tosses the kid out the window of a 50 foot parapet as his adorably anxious direwolf pup watches.

Holy hell. I am in love.

Life on the Couch: A bit of housekeeping.

In the interest of not being ridiculously off the mark with the “Geek Thursdays” and “Life Sundays” posts, I've decided to rename them “Geek Weekly” and “Life on the Couch.” I'm still going to attempt to do the geek posts on Thursdays and the life posts on Sundays, but at least this gives me some leeway. Just don't be surprised if there are double Sunday posts every week.

It might have been a bit much to expect myself to keep up with a rather rigorous twice-weekly posting schedule, since I'm not good with deadlines. I thought it would be useful practice for regular writing once I start school, and also to help me get some structure that I can apply towards keeping up with homework. I think it will help, too. I'm inclined to be disappointed with myself for not successfully posting on schedule... but I think it's more helpful to be impressed that I've kept up regular posting for this long, and still going strong.

Life on the Couch: Creative constipation.

I think there’s little in the world as frustrating to me as wanting to create and being unable.

I’m in one of those horrid blank spots right now, the place where I have all these half-formed ideas swirling around in the strange ether of my brain. Ideas that mock and tease and flit away the moment I try to reach out and grab hold.

I’ve always written, ever since I was old enough to string together sentences. Stories, tales of my life, essays, journals, even the odd poem or song. I’m lucky I’ve always enjoyed writing, because it was the only form of creative outlet I had for most of my life. About four years ago I also discovered that I have some talent for vidding (if you don’t know what that is, go here and click play on pretty much anything, you'll get the idea), which gave me a whole new and fabulous way to express myself. I've even dabbled in graphic art in the form of icons and banners for various online communities.

In the past year or so I've been writing a lot, most of it in the form of fan-fiction for "Alles Was Zählt," the German soap opera I blabbed about in a previous post. It's been exhilarating, getting to flex that muscle again after not writing much in the past three years. Maybe it was getting feedback from my beta writer and the others in the fandom who read my stories, or maybe it was just getting a chance to let my imagination out of my head, but it was the kind of writing that seemed to happen without any effort on my part. The best kind of writing.

I've done very little vidding in the last 18 months or so, and none at all lately. I don’t know if it was related to the increase in writing, or if I simply reached some sort of (hopefully temporary) plateau with the vidding. All I know is that line of expression seems to have been cut off. The graphic design thing never really took off, and I've done none at all in the past few months. The worst part is that whatever momentum I'd built up in terms of writing seems to have come to a crashing halt since the new year. Now all I can do is stare at all the half-finished fics and just shake my head.

I got nothin'.

This constipation of the brain has even overtaken my blogging, which is evidenced by the fact that I can't get a post up on time anymore. This one was originally meant to be about my trip to Europe in May, but all I could come up with was "I'm going to Europe in May. Woo."

I don't know the cause of this particular blockage, but I can only hope it's temporary. I'm in desperate need of some inspiration to get me through. Right now all I can do is shake and tremble at the idea of starting school in the Fall and being completely unable to write anything.

Hopefully plugging away at the blog will help by forcing me to keep flexing the muscle. I'll keep trying to post on time, but I imagine Life Sundays will soon permanently morph into Life Wednesdays while Geek Thursdays become Geek Saturdays. Eventually it'll probably come back around to where it's supposed to be though. I'm cool like that.

Geek Weekly: We. Are. Everywhere.

I'm starting to think it was a bad idea to put a specific day of the week in the titles of my theme posts. I'm not this good at committing.

I work in an office that is only slightly different from any basic corporate/government office in that we all know and use sign language on a daily basis. Otherwise it’s exactly as you’d expect… fluorescent lighting, cubicles, people who tetch and roll their eyes at each other’s music, a kitchenette with a sign on the microwave imploring people not to make popcorn. Just another of the many, many skyway-adjacent offices you’ll find in any Midwestern metropolitan area.

Being a geek is a bit like being gay.

Bear with me on this.

Both sets of people tend to hide this part of their lives in the everyday world. Or at least, not call attention to it. Both will steer clear of subjects that bring it out in the open when they are in certain environments (like work), for fear of alienating people with their unique nature. Both were probably traumatized by bullying and ostracism by the “normal” folks when they were young, and often when they find out that a person is gay- or geek-“friendly” (or gay/geek themselves) in a work or similar environment, the floodgates open and they can finally be themselves.

At least geeks can marry each other.

But I digress. My point was that it’s sometimes hard to know who I can talk about random geek things with and not get the blank stare (or worse, polite smile and shifty eyes that says I’ve set off some sort of DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! signal in their brain). So mostly I just keep it to myself… unless someone sets off my geekdar. Or even better, I set off theirs.

The two geeks I’ve met in my Office Space-like environment are H the delivery guy and K the security dude. Both of them are almost always in uniform when I see them, which is why I didn’t catch the geek signals from either of them… although I have seen K in his civvies on a few occasions, so I suspected. But H hides his geek well, under the guise of his good looks (and awareness of them). But in both cases, I ended up out myself to them.

With H it was excited babble about a pending trip to the UK, during which I’d be attending a “Doctor Who”-centric sci-fi convention. When he heard this, he promptly told me how he’d always dreamed of going to Comic-Con, and that he’s a total Star Wars nerd. It was an instant connection, the walls came tumbling down, and we were suddenly geeking at each other with the kind of enthusiasm rarely seen or heard in Cubicle World.

It was another con that outed me to K. I do sign language stuff for a local sci-fi/fantasy convention, so had brought some flyers to work in an attempt to maybe grab the attention of some of the deaf folk who never bothered to go because they didn’t realize there were interpreters. K spotted the flyer, with its eye-catching Metropolis-inspired artwork, and it was 45 minutes before we emerged from our horror-themed geek fugue.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine that all the normal people we interact at our jobs or in our daily lives with could be as geeky as us. But the truth is, geeks are everywhere.