Okay, first of all, I want to thank the people who watch Avatar on my f'list for being so considerate with their icons and posting, because even though so many of these episodes aired in the U.K. months ago or leaked last week, I was able to watch them tonight with my whole family completely unspoiled. And it was awesome.

( Unintelligible oh em eff geeing! )

1. I have officially been declared a casualty of the flu. This weekend was awful. I was so sick that I actually had trouble sleeping; I barely slept for more than an hour or two at a time on Friday and Saturday. Now I've got this prescription antihistamine that's helping me sleep, but it is also giving me weird, scary dreams that I can remember in detail. (I rarely if ever remember my dreams.) But I do feel better today, so I guess it is working.

2. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't seem to focus on reading, so I spent a lot of time fooling around on Photoshop and fiddling with LJ customizations. My new layout is all thanks to minty_peach, although I did modify the CSS quite a bit. I like it so much that -- apologizes in advance -- I've turned off simple comment pages for the time being. I know some consider that bad manners when you have a custom layout, but I think it is clean and should not take long to load. ( But I noticed some funny business! )

3. I discovered a Tiny LJ Icon Generator! If you've ever wanted to change the default tiny icon next to usernames or communities (i.e. caitiedidit hates ohnotheydidnt), this makes it really simple. All you have to do is plug in the URLs and size of the tiny icons you want to replace the default ones with. It generates code that you simply paste into your custom CSS box. It is literally as easy as 1 2 3! (The only catch is that there is a fix you have to do for certain layouts, but it's still really easy.) You can get custom icons from a lot of places, but I recommend FamFamFam.

4. I'd say that Johnny Weir should shoot whoever costumes him if I wasn't 100% certain that he designs every inch of his horrendous outfits, meaning he'd have to shoot himself. (Which, actually, I don't have a problem with! I KID YOU, JOHNNY WEIR. NEVER CHANGE.) But even I have to admit that he was pretty great at nationals and was totally robbed of the title. I bet he would have won if his outfit wasn't so HIDEOUS and embarrassingly literal.

5. TV Guide got a great letter about last week's stupid cover story in which the "women of House House" were profiled based on their relationships with House, all of which were approached in romantic terms. And this has been my problem with House for awhile. House is supposed to be a misanthropic jackass, but most of the women who cross his path are attracted to him, often inexplicably so. His superiors and his underlings react to him in generally ridiculous ways. It drives me up the wall when characters' flaws cost them nothing. I recently had the same problem with Beka Cooper and her so-called shyness in Terrier.

6. I know Pitchfork is... Pitchfork, but the score they gave In Rainbows was much with the lulz.

7. I think the Scientology protests were ridiculous. I understand that the event was organized to protest censorship by the church, but that's not how it came off, and I'm sure that's not why most of the protesters showed up. I get that people think Scientology is really weird and creepy, but the fact of the matter is that all three major religions also believe some pretty crazy stuff and have branches that are also pretty freaking creepy. It is all very people-living-in-glass-houses-throwing-the-first-stone to me. Most annoying of all is that if such an event was organized to protest Christianity I'm pretty sure we never would have heard the end of it. Bill O'Reilly would totally have gotten off on it.

8. This is iiiinteresting! A while ago, Obama pledged to abide by public financing in the general election if the Republican candidate would also agree to do so. Well, John McCain has agreed. And since Obama's nomination is looking more and more likely, McCain is already demanding that Obama honor his pledge. I am very nervous about us losing our huge financial advantage, and it's totally the opposite of pragmatic, but I still think this would be a really cool thing. It would also go a long way towards proving to me that Obama is the kind of candidate he claims to be.

9. I saw the most depressing Valentine's Day documentary on Current this weekend, all about roses, chocolate, and diamonds. I already knew the bad stuff about chocolate and diamonds, but apparently most of the roses we buy are grown in South America. And since South America's safety laws are much more lax than ours, the growers use awful chemicals and insecticides and herbicides. Since the roses are grown in greenhouses, the chemicals are even more dangerous. There were even a few cases of greenhouses asking women to submit proof that their tubes had been tied before they could be hired. They claim it's a productivity issue (which should not even be legal; can you imagine if pregnancy was allowed to be considered a liability against hiring women over here?), but it's a flat out lie. They just don't want to have to pay out the ass when their workers' children are born with mental and physical problems because they exposed them to chemicals on a daily basis that no living thing should ever be exposed to. Just so our flowers look pretty! So there's another thing I won't be buying anymore.

10. Attn: Avatar fans! Since Nick has remained silent on the issue of when we'll finally be seeing episode 3.14, boosette is hosting a very clever Pi Day (3/14) ficathon. Be there or be square, etc.

P.S. Barack Obama held my hand when I was frightened! (by way of carrielh)

( Hannah Montana )

( Ugly Betty )

( Avatar )

( Private Practice )

( OMFG Y&R )

I am in the middle of the second Gossip Girl book! I will probably talk more about this some other time, but I gotta say that Nate Archibald is even lamer in the books than he is on the show. I know, I can't believe it either. (In the books' defense, they openly acknowledge his lameness.) Chuck is also TEN BILLION TIMES grosser.

P.S. OH MY GOD, WHY ARE THE STRIKE NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSED?! D:

( Friday Night Lights )

( Avatar )

( Ugly Betty )

( Big Shots )

( Private Practice )

( Pushing Daisies )

( Nip/Tuck )

( Y&R )

( Chuck versus The O.C. )

So the writers are set to walk out this Monday. The last writer's strike (in 1988) lasted five months. Immediately, stuff like The Daily Show will be affected. Three-to-four weeks and there will be no more Y&R (good!), and then in January, there will be no more new TV! So let's hope that the networks and studios decide to properly compensate their writers in the VERY near future, because I will be completely devastated if there is no new TV come spring.

In the meantime, I will be thinking of shows to watch and catch up on during the possibly longer-than-normal hiatus. I am thinking Life, Samantha Who?, Mad Men and possibly Damages. I still need to watch S2 of The Closer. I might retry Dexter. Any other suggestions? Maybe we could start like a TV club or something, if the strike seems like it will go one for a super long time.

+ Woooow, HP fandom. You are lame. I just do not even know where to start with regard to your complete and utter lamery. Instead of enjoying your canonical slash, please, continue to bitch about it incoherently like the bitter, paranoid twats you are. You do that. I will be over here having an awesome time reading the CANONICAL SLASH. Awesome times are the point of fandom, no? No? Well, that explains SO MUCH.

+ Avatar tonight was full of FAIL for the first time ever! At least it was unintentionally hilarious, what with all of the SECRET PAIN and emo hair. ( vaguely spoilery )

+ FNL is surprisingly better when you fast forward everything to do with Tyra/Landry.

+ Rob Thomas very nicely spoke to jujubee for a college project, and she very nicely decided to share the interview. It's very interesting, has some deets on the writer's strike (which I am dreading, although I fully support the writers guild) and some info on where the show would have been going in S4. Must say that the direction for the fourth season leaves me kind of cold, and that actually makes me feel a little better about the cancellation.

Dear F'list: I feel like a tool because I have recently missed several Big Posts that I totally meant to comment on. I got this layout a month or so back, but I still haven't customized my f'list display, which I usually set at around 50. So I have read your posts, but I have a bad habit of reading and then putting off commenting until I think of suitable things to say. And then 25 new posts happen and your Big Posts float off my main f'list page and I forget. And then it is too late or by the time I remember, you have locked them and I feel bad. Sorry! :(

( + FNL )

( + Avatar )

+ Bigshots: bactaqueen, remember how I told you that Nia Long is an executive at Amerimart, not Michael Vartan's assistant? Well, apparently, I was wrong. My sister watched the second episode too, and she said that Nia Long was giving Michael Vartan his messages and being all smiley and stuff. Which kind of pisses me off, because in the pilot, she was absolutely not meant to be his assistant! She even seemed a little disappointed when she found out that he had been made CEO because she was competing for the promotion. I also hear that she told him that his wife loved him and was generally encouraging, but in the pilot she told him in plain terms that she had never liked his wife at all! WTF, offensive and lame changes.

+ Matt Yglesias asked "Where have the Jews gone?" wrt Gossip Girl. I wondered this too, as the "minority twins" are the only minority characters in the show, and the fact that they are completely subservient to Blair (so much so that she sees them in maid outfits in her Breakfast At Tiffany's dream) could easily be construed as offensive. Jewish characters in a show set in UES New York should be a no brainer. I gave it some thought, and I decided that the lack of Jewishness has to do with two things: 1.) There are probably no main Jewish characters in the GG books and 2.) Seth Cohen. I mean, Seth Cohen's half-Jewish heritage was made a big deal of on The O.C., and Schwartz has already been fending off comparisons to The O.C. But still. They do not have to make Chrismukkah mixes and yamaclauses! Jewish characters, plz!

+ OMG, I love Blair! "Diazepam. Lorazepam. All the pams, really." Is it Wednesday yet?

So my detailed thoughts on FNL's premiere are here. My thoughts on the change are here.

( Amazingly, I have a couple more things to say. )

Avatar was awesome and like ten million times better than the FNL premiere. And seriously, the little short at the end totally made my life. DO NOT MAKE ME UNLEASH MY MOON POWERS ON YOU!

( Footloose in the Fire Nation )

1. Ugly Betty was quality. Even though parts of it were a teensy bit OTT sappy for black-hearted bitchez like myself, it was a great season-opener with an awesome fake-out.

2. Big Shots was not nearly as offensive as I anticipated. I did not completely hate it, and I expected to. Um, bactaqueen, did you watch this? If you didn't, YOU'RE FIRED. The things I do for you!

3. Dirty Sexy Money was so-so. I will probably end up watching it, just because I plan on being parked in front of the TV on Wednesday nights. Wednesday is the new Tuesday, AFAIAC. Hopefully the production break they took means that it will get better.

4. Moonlight = awful. But I won't be surprised if it does all right for itself after Ghost Whisperer.

5. I did not watch Grey's Anatomy, but I did read everybody's comments. And I would just like to say FTR that, ha, I was so right about Mark.

6. I completely and totally agree with Alan Sepinwall's criticism of Private Practice:

But there still be plenty of problems here, mostly centering around all these borderline middle-aged characters acting -- as all Shonda characters do -- like they're still in high school. The fascination over Pete having kissed Addision, Sam seeing Addison naked, the giggling over the geezer giving the sperm sample... I could just barely tolerate that coming from George and Izzie (season one and two versions), but what's the point of doing a show with more mature actors if you're going to write them the same way you do your twentysomethings?

Seriously! How spot-on is that? In fact, probably the appeal of characters like Addison and Burke (S1 and S2) and Bailey has a lot to do with how they generally act their age in a world where most of the characters seem to perpetually act their shoe size. And since PrP is supposed to be a show about middle-aged people, it *is* really bizarre for all of them to be acting so immaturely. And next week doesn't seem to bode well, either, what with everyone seeming to be so fascinated/concerned over a patient who happens to be a stripper? Whatevs, PrP.

( So I'm reading those Stephanie Meyer books... )

I wanted to talk about Avatar, but I don't have much to say.

( Spoilers for The Awakening )

1. REJOICE AND BE GLAD, FOR TODAY IS AVATAR DAY!

So exciting! Also, remember a couple weeks back how we were discussing what exactly the Fire Nation hoped to accomplish by wiping out the Air Nomads? Little Miss Ten Whole Years bought a book on waterbending, and it had the answer! ( Snip! )

2. I watched the All Addison All The Time Grey's primer tonight, and it was a fun time. It was basically half an hour of watching Poor Derek be a complete douche, which is actually kind of amusing now that I no longer care. But, dude, Addison equals AWESOME! I really hope that Private Practice will give her the chance to be all Va Va Voom again.

3. And then I watched soft-core porn ( Young and the Restless. )

4. NEW TV FOR REALS IN T-MINUS THREE DAYS. I am going to renew my plea to The Powers That Be for a Nielsen Box! I deserve one, universe! I am totally TV savvy! Screw random samples! I am FABULOUS! With great power comes great responsibility, and I swear to use my Nielsen powers for good and not for evil! PLEEEEEEEAAAAASSSEEE.

5. Where is gaiadaughter at?

Three fannish questions that have been irking me lately:

1. I've been rewatching Avatar, and I'm wondering why the Fire Nation particularly targeted the Air temples and peoples. I guess I always figured that they'd essentially committed genocide because they were afraid of the avatar's return, and they knew that the next avatar would be born an airbender. But that doesn't make much sense because even if they had managed to arbitrarily murder the avatar before he came to power, he would just be born again. And again and again and again, because of the reincarnation cycle. So that couldn't have been the reason, right?

2. The creators of Avatar seem to have implied that we won't meet any airbenders because (paraphrased) some of the things the Fire Nation has done are so bad that they can't be undone. I applaud that, really, because that's a pretty impressive statement coming from a kid's cartoon. But at the same time, it doesn't make a lot of sense. We know that Aang had an insane amount of mobility, even as a child. He had friends in other cities and nations, even the Fire Nation. He'd been all over the world. Haven't we continually heard airbenders referred to as nomads, or am I making that up? Even if the Fire Nation did target airbenders and air temples, it seems crazy to think that they would have managed to wipe them all out. It seems like there ought to be at least a few in hiding!

3. Isn't the "house" in house-elves sort of emblematic of their enslavement? They're just elves, right? And the "house" refers to the fact that they're bound to Houses, i.e. The Most Odious and Annoying House of Malfoy? I'm not sure what my point is. I'm not saying that OMG WE MUST BE FICTIONALLY POLITICALLY CORRECT and stop using the "house" or anything; I am just doubting that they would still be called "house-elves" if they were ever freed. /has been reading too much post-DH meta and fic

P.S. The new Bourne movie is awesometastic!

P.P.S. Only I did get a little motion sick a couple of times.

Siege of the North was on TV tonight, which was totally wicked! My sisters and I sat around and watched it and made fun of Zutara shippers. We specifically looked for and did not see the alleged sexual tension in their fight scene. I did think it was funny that he called her a peasant, though. And, you know, totally meant it. Besides being a racist terroist traitor to all that is good and holy, he is also totally a snob. And yet somehow indispensible to the show. He's weird like that.

Watching Siege of the North also generated a fresh batch of rage for Mattel, because it reminded me that Admiral Zhao has an action figure and HE'S BEEN DEAD FOR AN ENTIRE SEASON! And as much as I prefer Zhao to Princess Azula, I must admit that Azula kicks a helluva lot more ass than Zhao ever did. And, you know, KATARA IS THE ASS-KICKIEST OF ALL, and yet no action figure! Yes, I have been here several times before, I know. But the INJUSTICE and SEXISM of it all really infuriates me. Especially when Mattel is being all liey over in Pleasant Company Land about how they think girls are awesome. (BTW, Kierra's American Girl stuff arrived today in PINK boxes, OMFG.)

While Kelly was taking a shower tonight, me and my other sisters stole her door! It was much with the awesome, only we botched it up because Kierra freaked out midway through and tried to warn Kelly. She was afraid that Santa was going to bring her coal or something because we were being naughty. But Kelly deserved it, so I say we were merely dispensing karmic justice. But anyway, Kelly heard what we were doing so the effect was mostly ruined. But otherwise, it was A+! And I still have the door right here in my room! Mwahahahaha.

( OMG AVATAR )

I think the fact that I delayed watching what promises to be the shippiest episode of BSG ever to watch Avatar speaks to its awesomeness. WHY are the rest of you not watching this completely fantastically wonderfully awesomely satisfying goodness?

( Battlestar Galactica )

I have felt opressed by The Man this week for various reasons, and of course the one I'm blogging about is the most inane of them all. I was at Target with my mom to buy... I can't remember what. But we bought a lot. (Target is like that.) And I saw Avatar action figures and reverted to toddlerhood. I may have jumped up and down and done my hand-claspy thing and squealed a little. And Mom bought them for me, for Christmas! She bought me an Aang and a Sokka. (She would have bought me a Zuko, but they only had Zuko in his racist-terrorist stage, which I am so not about.) So I told her she had to find me Katara! And then when we got home, I got them out of the bag to look at (because I am five), and on the back it says that they don't have a Katara! TRAVESTY!

Katara is practically the main character of the show! She was the first character we met! She narrates the opening! Is Nickolodeon so sure that stupid, nose-picking little boys won't play with a girl action figure that they can make three types of Aangs and two types of racist-terrorist Zuko's but can't even be arsed to make a non-boobified Katara?! Or even a boobified Katara?! Oh, I am pissed off. I want my damn Katara action figure.

And I finally picked up Terrier today. I groaned when I saw it because it looks like a tome. Except, really the writing is just FREAKING HUGE. And I hate the design. What's with the boxy frame thingy around the edge of every page? Anyway. Now I just have to force myself to read the damn thing. And I do mean force.

Last but not least... Heather and I agreed to trade episodes last night, so I had to watch Supernatural in order for her to watch some FNL (which I am obsessed with, yay!). And I suppose I owe all the SPN fans on my f'list an apology. I didn't say anything bad about it because so many of you like it, but I have been thiking very nasty thoughts! And not the fun kind! Anyway, it's not quite as terrible as I thought it would be. And not really terrible at all, but it's just not my kind of TV. And I still think Jenson Whatshisface sucks at acting, but admitting that I know him from the most painful seasons of the many painful seasons of Dawson's Creek and Smallville probably means my glass house on the sand is now fully furnished. Or something.

YAY FALL BREAK!

Dude. The CW's ratings are sucking ass.

7th Heaven - 2.9/5
Runaway - 1.5/2
America's Next Top Model - 3.4/5
One Tree Hill - 2.5/4.
Gilmore Girls - 3.1/5
Smallville - 2.9/5
Supernatural - 2.2/3

That is an unprecedented level of ass-suckage, especially for a network that used to be two networks. What is up with this? Not enough new programming? I really fear for Veronia Mars. At this point, I'll be ecstatic if she breaks 2.0.

ETA: All of my thoughts on tonight's Avatar are over on boosette's LJ, enabler that she is.

Avatar: The Last Airbender has started rerunning weeknights @ 6:30 on Nick. I have vast amounts of love for this show that boosette made me watch. I started watching it with my baby sister so I wouldn't feel silly. And then my ENTIRE family got addicted to it. Sometimes I go home on weekends just so I can watch Avatar with them. No lie!

hobviously has written a comprehensive list of reasons you should watch it. My name is caitiedidit, and I approve this message. (Except for that one thing about Katara not being awesome. LIES!)

( The One Where Zuko Has Hair )

Yay! Good episode. :)

I totally need an icon of Aang phasing into Avatar-Mode that says: "You won't like me when I'm angry." Because you have to admit that it's all very Incredible Hulk-esque.

Public Service Announcement for all West Coast Avatar: The Last Airbender fans! Nickolodeon is running at least 6 minutes early on the East Coast, so I missed the entire beginning even though I tuned in at 8:00. You might want to plan on tuning in a little early just in case.

ZUKO HAD HAIR!

The thing I really like about Avatar: The Last Airbender is that the Fire Nation has a bit of depth to it. I'm not sure I'd like the show as much otherwise. I certainly think it could do with more, but I appreciate that the white hats in the story aren't just fighting a bunch of hobgoblins, C.S. Lewis or Tolkien style.

( Read more... )

One uncut question, though... I've read a couple bits of Aang/Katara, and the idea of a forbidden affair type of romance seems to be a reoccuring motif. Is the Avatar not allowed to fall in love or something? Did I miss that?

boosette made my new icon. Candice, does it say "Wicked"? I think that's what it says but I can't tell.