New Years Resolutions

1. Take care of my body better, including but not limited to: Taking my vitamins every day, not just when Mom reminds me; Flossing, even if I hate it and its gross; Plucking my eyebrows consistently so that there's always two of them and not one; Washing my face every morning.

2. Lose all the weight I gained since leaving college. I'm guessing it's 10-15 lbs, although I don't know for sure. Too afraid to approach the scale.

3. Be less judgmental and critical of others. Appreciate them for their talents, even if they're not good ones, and forgive them their flaws, even if they're fucking inept at Pictionary and making my team lose--"Honey Bee" is not a hard subject no matter how much you whine about it, you twit.

All I Want for Christmas is My Job

This morning, while peacefully enjoying my morning cup of Earl Grey, I caught the faint aroma of brimstone. I looked up, and stared into the face of evil.

This was only the third time I had seen this woman, including my first day of work and a chance meeting in the break room. She is my Kelly Representative, or as she would prefer to be called, Her Most Majestic and Omnipotent Workplace Overlord, Queen and Master of Temps, Devourer of Hopes and Dreams, and Sovereign Over All Lunch Breaks. Supposedly, her job is to be there to assist the Kelly Temps on-site. In practice, this means she’s there to spy on me and, if given the opportunity, call me into her office to inform me that I’m fired. Maybe my job got shipped to Bangalore, or maybe I took a lunch break fifteen minutes too long. The suspense is all part of the fun.

I’m not really sure what she does on the days she’s not firing people. I know that some of that time is spent thoughtfully composing her semi-weekly e-mail announcements. Last week, for instance, I got her Christmas e-mail, which informed us that the Christmas break was not paid. Stop asking. This was followed by a list of rules that, if broken, would mean that she could (and would!) fire us. Oh, and Happy Non-Denominational Holidays.

I tell you this so you’ll understand that her sudden presence at my desk this morning was as ominous and unwelcome as it was unprecedented. The conversation that followed, as I recall, went something like this:

Her: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Her: Merry Christmas.
Me: You too.
Her: I got your present here.

The blood rushed out of my face. I hadn’t gotten the Workplace Overlord anything. I’d briefly considered anonymously giving her a Darth Vader doll, but later dismissed the idea as a waste of money.

She flashed me her teeth in an expression that wasn’t exactly a smile, and then reached her hand into the depths of a paper bag. “Merry Christmas,” she repeated, handing me a sticker with “Kelly Services” logo on it, and a candy cane.

I hate candy canes.

I grinned maniacally like my job depended on it until she was out of sight. Then, and only then, did my heart resume beating.

I’ve composed a haiku to commemorate this moment:

A whiff of brimstone,
The creeping touch of Evil,
Am I still employed?

Plan B

Reason Lee must die #78: Lengthy phone-calls to his mother about his teeth. Lee, I do not need to hear about your concerns about your tooth density. I certainly do not need to hear about it at length.

Reason Lee must die #79: The singing, off-key, and with lyrics of dubious accuracy.

Reason Lee must die #80: Lengthy phone-calls to his mother about the advantages of dog over cat ownership.


Lee, the only reason you still draw breath is that you're something to blog about... and that the trained assassin monkeys did not work out. Oooooh, just you wait until robotics advances just a little bit more. Then I'm buying a robot, naming it "Electronimo", and sending it after you. Electronimo will not rest, will not feel pain, and will not know fear.

Spoiler Warning (?)

Ok. I think I have Battlestar Galatica more or less figured out. Here's my crackpot theory:

What makes the Final Five different from the other cylons is that they're from Earth. This means, of course, that this new Galatica is handling time very differently than the original show, which took place in the (then) present-day. If the new show takes place at least several hundred years in the future, then humans on Earth probably developed their own versions of cylons independently--although on Earth, they're probably called "robots." And if Earth was significantly more advanced than the Twelve Colonies, these robots could be so sophisticated that they could easily pass for humans. This would explain, in part, why four of the Final Five came to realize what they were by remembering a song from Earth: "All Along the Watchtower," by Bob Dylan.

Ronald D. Moore has, in the past, described the Final Five as the Cylon gods and suggested that they were immortal. Immortality would be a very handy feature in a robot sent on a long-range space exploration mission.

Supposing I'm correct in this guess, the Final Five likely stumbled onto the Cylons shortly before, or shortly after the Armistice. We know from Razor that the Cylons at that time were experimenting with upgrades to biomechanical technology. First contact with the Final Five would have held the promise of skipping all the trouble and jumping right into the finish line. (In fact, it's entirely possible the Final Five made a deal: the secret to biotechnology in return for ending the war with humans.)

The problem with this is that once Cylons upgraded to organic bodies, the old toaster models the Twelve Colonies made were obsolete, and needed to be retired. The result was effectively a form of genocide. This could potentially explain why the old Cylons in Razor were so pissed off at Kara Thrace. If she is the final member of the Final Five, than from a Cylon perspective, she is the antichrist for helping created the new Cylons.

What this also would mean is that the Cylons never actually broke the armistice. The machines that attacked the Twelve Colonies weren't real Cylons. So in that sense, Kara Thrace is also the human antichrist for helping to create an army of zealots hell-bent blowing up humans.

Regardless of if I'm right in any of this, what is clear is that for whatever reason, the Final Five decided to forget who and what they are, and then concocted elaborate personal histories so they could integrate into human society. Then, either at a predetermined date, or in response to a specific trigger, they came to their senses in unison. To me, this suggests a plan.

One problem that needs to be addressed before the show ends is Starbuck: Why did she have those visions, why did she crash her ship into that gas giant, how is she still alive, and how did she get to Earth and back? If I'm right about some of this, one explanation is that the visions were to keep Kara on track--to get her to do the things she needed to do, without having to remember why she needed to do them. Like, say, killing herself.

Let's say for argument's sake that the Final Five taught the cylons not only how to make organic robots, but also gave them the regeneration technology that allows a cylon's body to die and reawaken in a new body. If that technology has a parallel on Earth, but with a much, much longer range, then Starbuck could have died in that spaceship, and then woken up on Earth. Then it was only a matter of getting a new ship, finding Galatica again, and then leading them back.

Only time will tell if Starbuck is a good witch, or a bad witch, in the same way that only time will tell just how horrifically off-base I am about Battlestar Galatica. (I shall probably never live down my fevered insistence that Snape would kill Voldemort in Deathly Hollows.) That being said, I think this plot would make a cool ending to the show, and it also presents yet another possibility that really bakes my noodle:

I've so far been assuming the the Final Five are actually robots. They could just as easily be what humanity has evolved into on Earth--not quite machine, not wholly organic, and functionally immortal. If so, what kind of greeting can Galatica and the cylons expect to receive when they finally do get to Earth?


Oh, thank god I finally got that all out of my head. Ahhhh. I am cleansed. I feel so fresh and so clean. Now I can finally think about something--anything--else.