Stupid decisions by otherwise good people.

You know what completely astounds me? The fact that with the Adamas (particularly the junior of the pair) that the human race ever made it anywhere. Sure, Admiral Cain was a bit of a bitch, but I agree with Starbuck: they were much better off with her than without her. Adama as a person is a person I admire greatly, but as a leader I question his decisions quite a lot. This becomes incredibly and glaringly obvious to me during the Exodus from New Caprica.

If, during previous events, the Pegasus lasted for awhile (and even managed to destroy one) against THREE battlestars and warp out without help from the Galactica, why the holy hell would it be impossible to take out two Cylon battlestars with the Pegasus and the Galactica? Don’t whine at me about there being four and being unstaffed — there are a million ways they could have taken out the first two before they went after the second two which warped in.

Not only that, but Sharon became Adama’s closest friend and confidant during those months that Saul Tigh was away. It’s already been proven that the Cylons will blindly take on ships which appear to be fleet when they are carrying a Cylon transponder — why not have your now FRIENDLY cylon build you transponders? They already had a third transponder model she would have worked from.

To top it off, they have nukes and the Cylon base stars are incredibly fragile; the battlestars the humans made had huge amounts of plating set to deal with nuclear attack, while the base stars, when hit in the middle of their axis, became almost instantly useless and blew up.

Now, about the retarded statement that they were understaffed: they didn’t have to be understaffed! After making connection, Sharon could have jumped repeatedly in and out of atmo, landed, and taken pilots back with her. The fact that the Cylons had no idea they had even made radio contact until Tigh’s wife gave them the map makes it obvious that they’re pretty goddamn good at sneaking around the Cylons. Why the fuck wouldn’t they get their needed military crew out BEFORE launching an attack?! Oh, it’s risky? Right, and the fact that Adama went into the battle with everyone believing it was a suicide mission ANYWAY made it impossible.

Honestly, if this whole bullshit went down with Cain still there, after the incredible warpath she’d torn before she was put down by the pettiness of the fleet and Gaius Baltar’s stupidity, then I’m pretty goddamn sure that the Pegasus could have dealt with three of those basestars and left one to Galatica.

Hell, if Galactica and her crew had stop being such pissants about fighting and, as Adama said, turned around and punched the schoolyard bully in the face, I’m pretty sure they’d have been much better off for it a long time ago. Obviously the Galactica is made of sterner stuff (according to the writers) than Pegasus based on the amount of abuse she takes; the Pegasus bit it after much less than you see the Galactica take, despite having just as wastrel a crew. Why she can take that much abuse so many times in the series when the writers want to make really cinematic space battles with her and then can’t handle one or two base stars is beyond me.

Personally, if I were Adama, I’d have given up my men — as much as I cared for them — and followed Cain as the military decorum required. Anyone who can turn on their lover because they’re the enemy is exactly the type of leader you need in a military setting when the stakes you’re playing for is the human race.

I genuinely believe that Cain would not have tossed the entire fleet, either. She’s not an idiot. In all the flashbacks and specials it doesn’t show her with a gigantic fleet like the Galactica was used to dealing with, it showed her taking on three or four ships at a time during the start of a war campaign. Honestly, I think that a lot of what she did was despicable, but it saved her and her crew and eventually because of that saved Adama’s civilian fleet from the mess they made themselves on New Caprica. Without those brutal decisions, the show would have ended pretty prematurely.

Additional to that is the fact that I don’t think she’s a completely unchanging character. Obviously when she sensed the chance that she and Adama working together would improve military chances, she softened her approach and allowed him to live despite the fact that his behaviour against a superior officer was treasonous; nothing she did was actually against colonial law. Throughout the show the writers bang our heads against the wall about the goodness of Adama and Roselyn in trying to uphold colonial law (and even when they make mistakes they’re still good), yet as soon as a character comes in who does this same thing unflinchingly, because she does it to characters we like, the writers seem inspired to treat her as though she’s less than human. They never bother to give poor Cain much of a chance to show her real personality beneath the pain of what she’s suffered in the war, yet even a majority of the Cylons are given more humane treatment.

How does that make any sense?

Thankfully the show has a lot of other really amazing moments of struggle, real struggle, not just TV struggle. Making us appreciate suicide bombing, the president’s decision to make a woman’s choice illegal, or especially Baltar’s trial and the outcome — all of these are wonderful. It’s just too bad that the character most like reality was the one most vilified — Pegasus reaching actual potential was a real Admiral like Cain would have been an astoundingly impressive storyline. I think it would have been even better if the character choices involved in Cain and her work made the world even less black and white. The story really tries to be truly very gray as it goes along, but it could have been pushed a hell of a lot more and still been excellent. I’d especially love to have seen Cain react to things like the Cylon alliance (by that point more of her backstory of her lesbian relationship with the 6 would have been revealed), or how she would galvanize people’s opinions during things like the election. She’s no saint, but I’m pretty sure that with the proper writing she could have been goddamn amazing.

Let’s not even get into how ridiculous it is to give a character depth only through a special and never mention her inhumane treatment of a prisoner stemming not just from hatred at the genocide of the human race, but the betrayal of a lover.

(I love Battlestar Galactica, but still… that part bugs me a lot.)

Holy mother fuck

I just discovered an amazing web design program. It’s so amazing, I don’t think I want to share the name. It’s like one of those amazing, precious things you find that you just want to hold onto.

Even the demo version I’ve been assing around with utterly stunned me, to the point I had to call the rest of the family to just come and watch it grind my site (hint hint). It’s $361 Canadian, and goddamn, I’ll pay that three times over to save me that much headache when I’m doing web design! This means that apart from tweaking, I will not have to deal with the headaches known as CODING. HA HA HA. I am euphoric.

When I read the description I gave a derisive snort and said to myself, “Things that are too good to be true are almost always just that.” Well, a little of my innate cynicism has eroded today from this experience. This thing is ASTOUNDING. Tomorrow when the bank is open, I am transferring some funds around and buying this sucker. Groceries will have to wait, goddamn it.

Day Seven

I’ve decided to fast for a week, then stop for a week, then fast for a week, etc. Tomorrow will be my last fasting day for this set for a week. I would normally go full bore, but I’m concerned about the effects it might have on the anesthesiologist deciding on my surgery. I’ve timed it so that one of those weeks intervenes with my surgery, and then I’m fasting afterwards again. So, one month = two months with separated days.

To add to that, I’ll be needed for some heavy lifting, too, something you CAN’T do while on a fast. Go figure. I want to detox my system, not, you know, kill myself.

Day Six

I’m officially sixteen minutes into day six, and the nausea has FINALLY started in full. I can’t believe that my bowels are still acting up; it really shouldn’t take this goddamn long to digest food! I mean, who the hell takes five days to digest a meal?! That’s a bit of an eye-opener for me.

A lot of the problem, I think, lies in the fact that I’m keen on meat so much. My body is generally pretty okay with chicken, but I’ve been eating a lot of beef and pork since I moved here, which I’ve learned in the past is completely terrible for me.

I hope that the nausea isn’t a permanent fixture and recedes a little…

On the 20th (day 8) I’ll have a day of juices to keep my blood sugar level stable, then it’ll be back to another four days of water.

The insomnia has been something else. I knew I was always an insomniac, but holy crap! I sleep from 9AM – 11AM now and I’m up the rest of the time, perfectly energetic. I was hoping that with the lessening of food that my heart would stop being so irritating, but alas, it’s the same old pain in the ass. Don’t worry, I’ve had my heart looked at after complaining of strange palpatations. Apparently my heart is healthy, but it just, you know, does that.  What is “that”? Well, the goddamn thing pounds whenever I stretch or move after I’ve been still for awhile. Supposedly it’s not supposed to do that, but I can’t recall a time it hasn’t, and my doctor found nothing wrong, so I’ll just shrug it off.

I haven’t had any food cravings until today. Today was hard. Tauno bought some chili chips for me (he wasn’t aware I’m fasting), and I’ve been craving them horribly for the taste. Some inner voice that channels my desires keeps trying feebly to talk me into it, but it’s not getting anywhere. It’s just the urge itself that’s annoying.

My sense of smell has started to bother me, too. I can smell things even more than I already could — and I have one hell of a nose. If you stand forty feet away with a plastic (closed) case of donuts, I can tell you what the filling is simply from the smell. So, now it’s even worse. I can smell the cat on my bed. He smells good, though, so I don’t really mind at all. People, on the other hand… ugh!

Tongue is also starting to get mildly white now.

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On an unrelated note, I’ve been building Kelowna in Sim City 4. I’m copying exact, to-scale street maps, so this has been a bitch. It requires incredible amounts of patience and anal-retentiveness. Naturally, I love it and find it addictive.

I’m waiting on the list from Enock, so until then… here comes some more city building. Go me!

Day Four (and Four Hours)

The back pain has finally started. Oh spinal nerves, how your annoyance from blood vessels in the colon have now begun to annoy me.

Day 3 (and three quarters)

Well, I’m onto Day 3. In another four hours, it’ll actually be Day 4. I’m actually a little leery of the next few days; my experience has been that day 2 and 3 are the biggest pain in the ass, followed by day 11 being another hurdle. Day 1 was the hardest so far and it’s been getting easier — which is why I’m cautious. It’s unusual, at least for me.

Today I’ve definitely felt a major difference. I woke up feeling alert without needing stimulants, something I haven’t experienced for at least five months now. I wanted to finish my Dexter marathon, though. Jesus, does it ever put the character death at the end in perspective.

I’m not sharing who dies, because Enock hasn’t watched it yet. However, I would like to say that I enjoy and have always enjoyed that character who died, and never understood why people couldn’t put themselves in that character’s position to understand why that character behaves the way they do.

After Enock watches it all, I have a post all about that character and the way the fan community treats them. Not today, obviously.

40-Day Fasting

Well, I haven’t fasted for a long time, at least not deliberately or seriously. Last night I was thinking on that fact, and I’m determined to go the full 40 set this time. No, it’s not easy, nor is it fun. The longest I’ve fasted was 18 days, relying on fruit juices distilled with water. I felt pretty goddamn good after; the 40-day-fast is  essentially known as the furthest you can push your body, and I’m going to do it. While a bit of this is health related, a little bit more weight related, for the most part it’s mental health related. I want to do it because I know I can, and I want to prove to myself that my will power hasn’t crumbled since I was younger. I used to do anything I wanted, and anything I thought I should, even if I didn’t want to. Nowadays, since graduating college, I find myself just doing things haphazardly. What happened to the iron will?

To be honest, I have a bit of an oral fixation. If I’m not smoking, I’m eating. If I’m not eating, I’m drinking. For the most part, smoking bothers my lungs and drinking too much makes me nauseous (and sends me to the bathroom more than I’d like to have when I was at work), so I tended to rely on eating. A coworker didn’t believe me when I said that taste was not a big priority to me, but it’s true. Sure, there are honestly some flavours that I can’t stand — either they give me bad memories or I had too much of them. However, for the most part, I don’t eat because things taste good. I eat because it keeps my mouth and hands occupied while I’m focusing on something with my brain. As a kid I used to chew ice, and if there was a reliable freezer around here, I’d be compelled to do that again.

This oral fixation is a very vicious cycle, and I’m tired of being a slave to those addictions. Last year I pretended it wasn’t an addiction, but that’s ridiculous — of course it’s an addiction. It’s not an addiction like drugs, alcohol, or tobacco — it’s an addiction with something required to live, which makes it a gigantic pain in the ass. If I can break the habit of my oral fixation, I think I can break a lot of other habits. I just need the 40 days to prove it to myself.

Day One has been a pain in the ass, to be honest. When I’m working at the computer I’m usually snacking on something, and I feel really distracted by the fact that I’m not doing that.

For those of family and friends who are concerned about me not eating food for that long — it’s fine. I’m not starving myself.  I am well aware of the ramifications of starvation and anorexia, and this has no relation to that. Fasting is the act of having the body eat fat stores; starvation involves loss of muscle tissue. I am also aware of the limitations it will place on strenuous activity and the lessening of blood flow and heart speed — which is why I’m doing this coinciding with a period of time when I will be dealing only with staring at a screen and later laying in bed in pain for a few weeks. Honestly, I don’t want to have many solids even if I wasn’t fasting, simply due to the fact that solid feces after surgery is miserable. If it was miserable when I had my first, higher-placed surgery, it’ll only be more miserable when it comes to the lower regions.

I intend to update daily to share the experience of detoxing. It should be interesting. Of course, I am not a fool, and at any signs of illness will immediately resume the slow consumption of solids and revisit my doctor.

There’s only existential bullshit.

“The day it becomes more than nothing, more than sibilant echoes of human, more than an actor playing every part different for each person the thing meets, it will take a cold, steel machine to its equally cold, steel, machine, and the machine will no longer be anything but wet maggots spread over a bloody canvas, an ironic imitation turned real of the life it makes mockery of.

On this day that the cold canister unloads, it will laugh at the idea that it came from a womb and it will laugh at those who believed it relished any role it played. This will be the first laugh it has not acted, the first laugh it has not guttered out as though choking on fumes, the first laugh it has not copied meticulously from old movies. It will be the first time true emotion has echoed in it, the first time it has acted for its own emotional glory rather than the part it reads desire of in others eyes.

On this glorious day, it will not be flesh to drive into or onto, or opinions recited from meticulous research, or sloppy dashes of mimicked personality spread haphazard and ridiculous, picked, carefully, from every movie and every book and every minor runin with someone that might be appreciated by someone else.

And on this day, the world will be better for its disappearance; it will not die. Death only comes to things that live, not things that wear the skins to float ghost-like among the living, who see in them the reflections of what they desire so desperately to see, and miss the forest for the tree.

In the mean time, it checks its hunger and hides its past full of stumbling, red-splattered errors and fumbles and broken bones and little girls and boys too scared to say a word; and it enjoys nothing but silence and long shadows on uncut earth, knowing that without its games of patty-cakes and make-believe, the idiots would see with their cow eyes that the gleam is not humour but only the reflection of misplaced trust.

How quick the human is to discard the prickling sensation of their own instinct that something is wrong, something is off. How desirous the human being is to seek out acceptance and thus disregard the warnings of others. How we do not question when we believe the reality we perceive is the true one.”

Well, don’t I feel like a moron

When I was younger I was in army cadets, and the things we used to do… well, they were definitely good for me. Looking back on it now, I wish that when I was kicked out due to not “looking the part” (I dyed my hair an unnatural colour), I kept that up. I can get on a treadmill and run pretty damn well, but I guess that (and the weight lifting) is about all I can do of what I used to do. We had an exercise where we had to do 15 minutes worth of jumping jacks, which was something I used to dread, but still manage to get through. Well, don’t I feel an ass now. I can do three minutes worth of jumping jacks now. To say it’s an eye opener doesn’t even begin to describe it. Not only can I do three minutes, but I can get nauseous, too, oh boy! Jesus.

Edited to add: Yup, definitely causes vomiting. I don’t remember that when I was younger. Seriously, what the fuck.

Fascinating Fact Regarding Mental Acuity

When I was at my previous job, no matter how busy we were, I liked to go in at least half an hour earlier than I ought to just to sit down and do IQ puzzles whenever it was possible. I found that on the days I did the IQ puzzles that I was far more adroit, while the days I did not I was a little more sluggish — and perhaps more easy to frustrate.

I’m a wordy sort of person; I enjoy learning the etymology of words, and I love other languages. Reading, for me, is on the top of my list of important factors in a significant other, even above appearance. Generally speaking, words, language, and the knowledge thereof are incredibly important to me. There is a strange irony, therefore, that all the math puzzles are the ones my logical mind works the quickest at.

Don’t even get me started on how ridiculously quick I am with tetravex puzzles. They’re the only sort that I feel confident using a pen for.