What are your favorite science fiction TV shows, books and movies?  Lately I’ve become addicted to some BBC sci-fi shows, thanks to Max’s recommendations. I burned through three  seasons (or series as they’re known in England) of Primeval and I eagerly await the fourth, which isn’t even in production yet.  I’m also watching Torchwood which I like a lot, though its not quite as good as Primeval. I’ll probably move on to the new Dr. Who eventually, since Torchwood is a spinoff of that franchise. I got bored with the drama queens and kings on BG after the first season. Is there any reason to watch Caprica if you didn’t finish all of BG?

I’m in the car 1.5-to-2 hours a day, 5 days a week, and have carried on this routine for the past year. About five months ago I started listening to audio books during my commute, and quickly discovered that they  decrease my commute stress substantially — mostly because I become so engrossed in whatever tale is being told, that I don’t mind rolling along in 7MPH traffic. A longer commute means more time with my stories.

I was telling recently a friend about all the books I’ve read while in traffic. She insists that these don’t count — that listening to audio books is not the same as reading, and that my brain inevitably wanders so I don’t consume the details as I would with reading. Admittedly, whenever I think of one of the books I’ve read, I can’t divorce the images of Lake Washington and the 520 floating bridge from them. But I still think that I’m fully able to digest what I’ve heard in as deep a way as if I had read it. Isn’t it like listening to NPR? Most of us do that on occasion, and do we feel like its not as good as reading the New York Times?

(By the way, the books I’ve finished: The Audacity of Hope, The God Delusion, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, and Anansi Boys.)

Me and food: we have a on-again/off-again relationship. Which is not to say I ever dislike food; to the contrary, I love food, and usually can’t get enough. Which is where the problem always lies: like two red-hot lovers, food and I are engaged in a perpetual cycle of violence, disengagement, renewal, and sex. (“Get away from me, you bastard!” “But I love you!” “SHUT UP!” “I hit you because I LOVE you!” “I can’t be without you.” “Let’s make out.”) Like Bobby and Whitney.

Why the cycle? Because my tongue craves the wrong things: ice cream, fluffy pastries, freedom fries, Doritos™, Pepsi™, cake, pie, ice cream cake, freedom pie, deep fried ice cream, Pepsi™ Doritos™. Etc. And as a result, my will-power ebbs and flows. When I’m good, I follow the advice of nutrionists; when bad, I eat whatever my lust tells me to.

However, I’m beginning to now think that even when I’m “good,” I’m not so good–that even when I was a vegetarian, my diet was far from healthy. When I dropped 40 lbs. back in ‘02, I ate a lot of protein bars and breakfast cereal and diet soda. Healthy? Probably not, but instead, simply calorie deficient (also, I ran a LOT). Oh, I ate a lot of low-fat foods… but as I’ve come to discover, these are rarely healthy for you. DAMN YOU FOOD MARKETERS!!!

So what’s my point? I feel like over the past few months my eyes have been opened to a new way of eating that contradicts past habits and current conventional wisdom. I’ve watched my diet carefully for a long time, and for a while fully bought into the health claims of manufactured foods that touted themselves as this or that (I’m lookin at you, highly processed fat-free all-natural vegetarian packaged foodstuff!) But now the paradigm has changed.

The eye opening has happened in two parts: first, I decided to start a new fitness plan that eschewed carbohydrates for the first month (working them back in later). What a change. This forced me to eat in a way I hadn’t eaten since… well, honestly, never. For breakfast, usually an egg scramble with some turkey and mushrooms. For lunch, a spinach salad with red peppers, broccoli, celery, olives, and blue cheese. For dinner, a grilled chicken breast with asparagus, onion, cucumbers, and tomatoes. (For example.) And it felt GREAT — I felt stronger than I ever had on previous plans, and the occassional acne breakouts I’ve had since puberty stopped. (Seriously.) I haven’t craved sugar since, which is super weird.

Then Dina picked up In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan’s follow-up to this bestselling Omnivore’s Dilemma (which I haven’t yet read). This book validated many of the food choices I had recently made, and explained further why I felt such an uptick in health as a result. The thesis of the book comes straight from his previous book: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This seems obvious on its face, but is harder to do in practice, given the large amounts of processed food and oversized portions that permeates our grocery stores and restaurants, particularly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (which I’ve come to regard as the devil), and processed flours and grains.

Implicit in his thesis was a move to a whole foods diet–to paraphrase, eating “what your great-grandmother ate”–and away from the fake, gutted, processed, manufactured “food” that’s been marketed to us for the past 50 or 60 years. How to do this? He offers a few simple guidelines: shop on the edges of your grocery store (meat, produce, dairy); go to your local farmer’s market; avoid packaged foods; don’t buy foods made of ingredients you don’t recognize; etc. Pollan also warns against foods that market themselves as health foods (“7-Up — natural and fat free!”), and argues that normal fats (yes, animal fats even) are good, and part of a normal, moderate diet, but fake fats (trans fats, margarine) are never good. Worst of all are the highly refined sugars and flours that are in everything — Cheerios, white bread, barbeque sauce, juice, peanut butter, and other sorts of seemingly inocuous foodstuffs. These are so quickly processed by our bodies that what we can’t immediately burn is stored as fat, and thus arguably responsible for the obesity epeidemic the U.S. is currently experiencing. So, fat doesn’t necessarily make you fat. Sugar and other refined carbs do. Way to go, low-fat diet revolution.

Lastly, Pollan takes nutrionial science to task for its focus on micronutrients–ignoring the wide-ranging diets of the human population at large, and instead prescribing narrow dietary guidelines based on on those nutrients themselves (hence, fortified Wonderbread), rather than on a more holistic diet containing foods that might naturally contain those nutrients.

In short, this is a very good book, a quick read, and highly recommended if you’re at all interested in nutrition, food marketing, or food politics. If you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore, there’s something to be learned, and the book doesn’t advocate any particular dietary choice, other than eat stuff that’s natural and make moderate choices. Wise advice.

Kables and his special lady friend gave me a book for my birthday which shows you how well they know me. The book was “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn and it was the first book in a few months that made me look forward to climbing into bed or waiting at the doctor’s office. Thoroughly loved it. No exaggeration. I was hooked immediately.

But then I finished it and that sad lonely lost feeling came that I get when I’ve finished a great book and don’t have it to look forward to. It’s like a friend has moved away and I desperately need to find someone new to spend my Friday nights with. (Note: I’m not kidding that Friday nights are my book nights. At least I’ve always loved reserving Fridays for myself. No social activities, just curling up at home.)

So needless to say I was thrilled when a co-worker of mine sent me to this site. Not only will it provide me great ideas for what I should read next, but it also will warn me about what not to read, thus the name of the site: What not to read.

Added bonus: if you click on “buy it now” it takes you to the Queen Anne Books website which made me smile proudly that instead of the usual link to Amazon (especially knowing he could have gotten Amazon Associate credit by doing that) he sent us to a local bookstore in my very own city. Yes, MY city. In case you didn’t know. We’re married. Me and Seattle. But that’s old news.

IMPORTANT ADDITION: A friend of mine runs a non-profit school for autistic kids and this weekend if you mentioned them (APL) at the Pacific Place Barnes and Noble when you buy books this weekend (April 11-13) they will get a cut of the proceeds. So I marched down there tonight with my list of new books pulled from the site and proceeded to make a huge contribution to the school. Sigh. I love books. I don’t really need an excuse to spend too much money on books, but I do need one to spend it at B&N. Ick.

Okay. I’m done. Now go buy some books.

10-Steps to Fascism as Outlined in a New Best Selling Book by Naomi Wolf:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Long, long ago I blogged here about Everything Bad is Good for You; a book that discusses the value of TV watching, video game playing, etc. I am not a big TV watcher. The box is often turned on, but it’s usually tuned to a movie or being used as a radio. My favorite television shows of all time are Little House on the Prairie, Northern Exposure, and Party of Five. I do not think that list gives me street cred. In the book, the author discusses how watching complex new shows like 24 increases people’s mental capacity for making connections. I probably have not developed that capacity and should not be reviewing TV shows, but for some reason, I keep doing just that on this site. Here I go again….

I’m losing interest in Weeds. It’s kind of driving me crazy. The main character’s life is a spiraling mess and it’s stressful to watch. Even the addition of Michelle from Full House to this week’s episode did not revive my interest. But. There’s another show that I am drawn to like a moth to the flame and that is Rock of Love. Rock God Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison, is searching for the love of his life and he’s decided to do it on a reality show.

Oodles of really beautiful (in a pink-hair rock and roll babe kind of way) women perform challenges, hoping to qualify for time with Bret. During the first few episodes I watched, I could not stop wondering why they would want to win this prize. But, as I watched last night (we’re down to the final two), I realized that I have been totally sucked in and felt happy when the mean woman got kicked to the curb. I do not think watching this show is increasing my ability to make mental connections, but it is making me want to try a temporary pink hair color.

Remember those sickening daily affirmation calendars that state the obvious and leave you feeling like someone just patted your head and sent you on your way without listening to you? I hate those fucking things. “Today is your day to shine” or “Give of yourself and it will come back to you.” Excuse me…I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Well, I discovered a book, “Daily Afflictions,” that was written with the purpose of helping you get through life, but more with a shock of reality and touch of sarcasm. What I love about the entries is that after the motivational (or slap across the face) paragraph, they sum it up in a phrase or mantra to take with you.

I’m currently going through some situations at work and in my personal life that are paralleling each other. I have choices and I’m getting close to where I’ll be forced to make decisions. But I hate the idea of not knowing how each would play out if I had the chance to explore them all. This book had an entry that hit it on the head. Here is the entry:

THE TRAGEDY OF COMMITMENT

“Whoever wants something great must be able to limit himself.” –WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Sometimes you are paralyzed with indecision. You can’t bring yourself to choose any one future because to choose one is to forsake the promise of all others. Yet not choosing is making you crazy. In such a state, drastic action is necessary. You must choose – and then, one by one, murder all the futures you passed over. Like a faithful companion you’ve cherished all through your youth, you must lead each future back behind the shed, and even if it looks up at you with those big eyes, dreamy with possibility, you must put the cold muzzle to its head and pull the trigger. You must do it, again and again, for each future that competes for the attentions of your heart. Only then are you ready for commitment. Only then can you pursue the one thing which will, in time and after much mourning, become all things to you.

           The future is full of possibilities that I must shoot in the head.

The Golden Compass (movie version) is due out in December, and I love their viral marketing campaign. Take a quiz and get an daemon (a daemon is your soul in external form). Then you ask your friends to comment on whether it suits your personality.

My daemon is an ocelot apparently. This explains so much, and yet so little. If you click on the Flash animation below, you can take a quiz about my personality. And if everyone disagrees with my own self-assessment, I think my daemon changes into something else. So be nice. This is my soul your messin’ with. If I turn into a cockroach you’ll find me in your cereal someday.

Between the big blockbuster movie and the last book, I’m on Harry Potter overload. To be fair, I don’t like the guy–he’s average and boring, but by virtue of his un-asked-for gifts, not nearly the anti-hero that is, say, Holden Caulfield–nor do I feel like I’m paying particular attention to the Potter phenomenon, which goes to show the breadth with which this latest marketing blitz has been launched. I simply can’t escape Harry and his companions in trouble.

I could easily ignore the hype by pushing it to the far recesses of my brain. But here’s what really gets my goat: the way that J.K. Rowling and her Scholastic thug posse attempt to control absolutely every aspect of the new book’s release. Two cases in point:

1. TechCrunch points out that the new HP book leaked is available on the internet on illegal filesharing networks. Scholastic’s lawyers send a takedown notice to TechCrunch . . . even though TechCrunch is merely reporting the fact that the book leaked (in the form of crappy photos!) and is not hosting the book itself.
2. J.K. Rowling gets pissed off that the New York Times reviewed the book two days before its release, and a Scholastic spokeswoman likens the review to the Boston Tea Party, implying American impudence, and articulating an international rift where there likely isn’t one.

I understand the desire to keep spoilers under wraps, but we’ve been dealing with this problem since the dawn of publishing and movie-making, and we do reasonably well with a system of avoidance (avoiding revealing reviews) and trust (trusting our friends not to tell us how it ends). Furthermore, neither Scholastic nor Rowling cannot reasonably think that a photographed–not scanned, remember–copy of the book is an adequate substitute for the book itself, and thus will cost her money. Anyone crazy enough to download the thing and actually read it is likely to buy the book, buy the DVDs, buy all the horizontal merchandise, dress up as Ron for Halloween, and give Rowling his firstborn upon request. The rest of us could care less.

I, for one, am continuing my Harry Potter boycott of several years, which thus far has been driven by disinterest, a desire to read other things, and the fact that the first few books failed to sufficiently brand my brain.

I read.  As much as I can.  Not necessarily impressive challenging works, but I like to escape.  I just recently reread all my favorite Kurt Vonnegut books and wanted to dig him up from his freshly laid grave and give him a big hug. 

Anyway, I noticed Douglas Coupland had a new book out called Jpod.  Coupland is most notable for Generation X (which I haven’t read) and his Microserfs (which I loved and even cried at the end, can you believe that?).  In Microserfs he basically wrote a fictional book that looked at the lives of the dotcommers.  Definitely recommend it. 

BUT…this book, Jpod, is about gamers of today.  It’s absurd.   He takes a fun simple topic and throws in completely outlandish story lines that are hardly swallowable.  Is that a word?  Here is my biggest complaint.  Coupland inserts himself into the novel.  What do I mean by that, you ask?  Exactly what I said.  He has made his characters talk about him and interact with him.  You can tell he tries to be clever by making the characters despise him and think of him as a jackass, but in the end it’s so disgustingly self-indulgent that I almost can’t get through the book.  I asked Kables his thoughts on it and was happy to see we felt similarly.   

The sad thing is, if I had ever become a writer I could totally see myself doing the same thinking that the self-deprecation would be endearing.  I am glad to have witnessed someone else making that mistake and now I will avoid it like the plague.  Just like I may avoid any future books by Coupland.

That said, I was extremely happy to sit in The Whiskey Bar reading Jpod.  At least I could sit there feeling self-righteous about my disgust in between delicious sips of my Maker’s Mark Manhattan on the rocks.  Sip sip, that fucker Coupland, who does he think he is, slurp slurp, mmm…manhattan…next page….