Fictional Characters #1 - The Villains

As you all undoubtedly can tell I've been in a blogging slump, so in order to solve that I decided to create a list of my favorite fictional characters.  I was shooting for roughly fifty and came up with forty-seven entries, which is close enough.  There was no set criteria or scientific process involved, just me, rattling off a bunch of favorites and trying to group them in some interesting way.  So here it goes, in no particular order....

Today's entry?  The Villains, not necessarily the baddest (though they're bad enough), but in my opinion the most memorable and interesting.

Darth Vader (from the Star Wars movies)
Head-to-toe black, telekinetic strangulation, a secret past, and a whole fleet of deadly looking ships waiting to blow you out of the sky, and if that weren't enough just his breathing can scare the crap out of you.

The Cigarette Smoking Man (played by William B. Davis in X-Files)
The ultimate poster child for a "Smoking is Bad" campaign, he expertly toyed with and tortured Mulder and Scully in episode after episode.  The only thing more satisfying in the final episode than seeing the dynamic duo in full mushy mode was watching the Cancer Man go up in a ball of flames.

Lex Luthor
There are lots of versions of Superman's nemesis, one of my favorites is Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns, a little bit goofy, but pure evil.  One of the best things about Lex Luthor is that in most versions he doesn't have any super powers of his own, he's just clever and absolutely ruthless, demonstrating that Superman's biggest strength, his goodness, is also his greatest weakness.

Screwtape (from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis)
In all seriousness, Screwtape  may be the scariest villain of all, because every one of us, in a manner of speaking, fights him every single day.  His truest statement,  "The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slopes, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

Ursula (from The Little Mermaid)
Nothing is more delightfully wicked than belting out "Poor, Unfortunate, Souls."  The fact that she reminds me of a junior high teacher who scared me to death is just a bonus.

Love, love, love

Happy Valentines Day!

Does it have an apostrophe or not?  I am chronically apostrophe challenged, so who knows.

Tracy and I actually celebrated on Saturday, we went out to dinner and had a great day.  I think that Valentines Day should be about all kinds of love.  Love for family, love for friends, love for humanity in general.  So I'm sending everyone a big mental hug today!

Marathon Application

So I just applied for a job.  Frankly, the timing stinks a bit, as I've basically just quit another job to focus on my dissertation, but awhile ago my Mom asked me what the ideal history job would be after graduating and I said something like, "Oh, probably a public history job, like doing museum education, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest."

Well this job is job is a museum education job at a small history museum south of Seattle (far enough south that the cost of living isn't insane). Not only is it a fantastic job, but I'm pretty qualified for it and it has great pay and benefits.

It was posted four days ago and I've been hemming and hawing ever since.  Not just because of the timing but because I knew it was going to be one of those herculean job applications, with hundreds of tiny little boxes to fill in and supplemental questions that require pages of writing.  I just wanted to officially decide it was worth it before putting in that kind of time. Well, today I finally went for it and only THREE short hours later, the application was complete.  Ugh. 

Anyway, I don't know whether to hope I get the job - because it's exactly the kind of thing I want to do, or hope I don't - so I can actually finish my dissertation.  But in either case, my brain is officially fried.

A Television Reborn

So a couple of posts ago I lamented the loss of our television set.  Tracy and I did some initial looking, but the idea of slapping several hundred dollars on our Visa was seriously unappealing.  So my very clever husband got on EBay and for about $60 found a television just like ours , and fully functional, only with a cracked screen.  It was a bit of a gamble, as we weren't 100% sure what was wrong with our old TV, but Tracy felt pretty confident so he bought it.

The TV arrived yesterday (the biggest package I've ever received via the Postal Service I might add) and in less than an hour Tracy had used parts from it to fix our television. Genius!

Oscars

When Tracy and I went to True Grit I told him that part of the reason I wanted to see it was so that I might have actually seen one of the movies sure to be nominated for Best Picture.  Imagine my surprise to find out that I've actually seen TWO of them...gasp!  Now I admit the odds of Toy Story 3 actually winning Best Picture are pretty minuscule, but hey, it's nice to know that not everyone in Hollywood is determined to find the edgiest, most cynical and most amoral thing and give it a shiny trophy. 

I'm also fairly delighted that the actress from True Grit was nominated.  That kid is an awesome actress.

Death of a Television

Ok, so this is not an exciting topic, but I'm having blogging blahs so it will do.

Our television died last Friday.   We've only had it four years, which seems like a short life especially, considering that, as far as I know, the decade old television it replaced is still happily working 2,196 miles* away from here.

We can still watch things that have been recorded on our DVR using our PCs, but nonetheless it's oddly aggravating.    I've been trying to be grateful that it wasn't something more essential that gave out, and I really am, but there's also the annoying fact that if something essential gave out I wouldn't feel guilty about buying a new one.  Alas and alack.  Still, with all the monster chaos going on in the world these days,  a dead television is something I can handle.

* Literally.  You've got to love Google Maps.

A New Year

Happy New Year everyone! 

New Years always makes everybody think about resolutions.  I do think the idea of having a time to reflect on what we want to accomplish is a great idea, on the other hand I think it can be a bit depressing to realize that at least half your resolutions are the ones you made last year.   I have, once again, pledged to give up soda and deep fried food, and to match my husband's resolution of 15 minutes a day on the treadmill (that one started today).  Now, I have already set these goals, accomplished them, and then slowly faded back into bad habits.   I also want to have a draft of my dissertation completed and my current novel finished, also both goals, that in some way, are hold over, or at least extensions of, last years goals.  I'd also like to at least crack the second level piano book that I've had for five years (to be fair, I'm nearly finished with book one after three years, ugh).  

I've always considered myself good at setting goals, and at least mildly successful at achieving them, so taking stock of the last year, in which I feel like a lot of wheel spinning went on, is a tough look at myself.  Granted I have excuses - surgery, lots of traveling for my job, having what amounted to a full time job for most of the year etc.  Still, its sobering to feel like I could have done much better.

Yeah, this is depressing blog post.   So to make this blog and myself more cheerful, I'm going to end with a few things I did accomplish.

-  Defending my dissertation proposal and acquiring at least 3000 pages of research in Washington, D.C.
-  Writing least 150 pages on the first two Capstone books. 
-  Reading the Book of Mormon again
-  Maintaining, for another year, my ridiculously happy marriage.  (Of course I can't really take the credit for this, I'm married to an awesome guy.)

That's not such a bad list, right?

Here's to 2011, may it be a great year for everyone.  We all could use it.