Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ozle]

[blueblimp]

All I Want for Christmas Is You

The best pop Christmas song.

[AndrewisFTTW]

All I Want for Christmas Is You

The best pop Christmas song.

Thanks Ozle, I have to learn that for a gig tonight... in Nashville!

[LastFootnote]

All I Want for Christmas Is You

The best second worst pop Christmas song.

FTFY

[WalrusMcFishSr]

A lot of Christmas music may be crap. But I love the old school carols that make me feel like I'm in medieval Europe. Adeste Fideles is really solid. Probably my favorite is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Coventry Carol is beautiful and slightly disturbing.

One year I decided to make a figgy pudding, and carolers actually showed up demanding figgy pudding. I think they were suitably impressed.

[KingZog3]

Whenever I hear "little drummer boy" I always think he's saying "Rum pum pum pum, me and my bum." I can't unhear it.

[Witherweaver]

Rum tum tugger!

[Kuildeous]

Firefly is a pretty strong, character-driven show. It takes place in space, but it's more like a western. That's odd for me to say because I am not a fan of westerns.

It has space themes, and they try to adhere to physics well enough (no sound in space, killing the engines doesn't mean you stop, etc.), but I wouldn't say it's too hard of sci-fi to chase off people who don't like sci-fi. All you can do is watch a couple of episodes and see if they're up your alley.

I think Shindig and the Train Job (see, western) are really great episodes for a newcomer to watch. They sucked me in. Naturally you'll want to eventually see the pilot so you can see how some of the characters came on board, but I think you can do fine watching either one of those episodes without the context of other episodes.

[ashersky]

Add me to the "absolutely never ever watch Firefly" camp.  I've seen the entire series and the movie, so I am speaking from experience.

I'm also a huge Buffy/Angel/Avengers fan, so it's not like I'm a Whedon hater.  I'm also partial to a number of actors on the show, as they've been in some of my favorite series at other times (Baccarin, Staite specifically, but of course the entire cast was on Buffy/Angel at some point).

It's just a terrible, terrible, terrible show.  (That's a grand exaggeration, by the way.  It's not all that terrible.  It's just that the only way to combat the extreme fanboi love of most Firefly fans is to really go to the other end of the spectrum.)

If you are a huge fan of a show bashing you in the face with the horrendous gimmick of using Mandarin Chinese to replace swear words (it's worse than the "frack" thing in Battlestar), then by all means, watch the show.

But really, don't ever watch it.

[AndrewisFTTW]

It's important to remember that only one season exists. Since when is the first season ever the best season? Since never. It's not so much that the episodes that exist are really good (they're ok) , it's the missed potential of a promising series.

[GeoLib]

If you are a huge fan of a show bashing you in the face with the horrendous gimmick of using Mandarin Chinese to replace swear words (it's worse than the "frack" thing in Battlestar), then by all means, watch the show.

This was your takeaway from Firefly...?

[Awaclus]

Don't know how many of you are interested in heavier stuff, but here's another cover by me. And no, the previous ones weren't heavy. This one is.

[Teproc]

@ash : Besides the mandarin thing, which I'd agree is cute at first, but not very well executed and a little grating after a while, why do you have against the show ?

[Kuildeous]

I do agree that the swear replacement in Firefly can get old, but I also view it as a cultural shift. Languages evolve all the time. Just look at how language was changed for A Clockwork Orange. Actually, A Clockwork Orange handles that way better than Firefly, which seems to only change swear words while not changing anything else.

But you get over it (unless you're ashersky, apparently).

[soulnet]

I do agree that the swear replacement in Firefly can get old, but I also view it as a cultural shift. Languages evolve all the time. Just look at how language was changed for A Clockwork Orange. Actually, A Clockwork Orange handles that way better than Firefly, which seems to only change swear words while not changing anything else.

Well, A Clockwork Orange is a masterpiece. Being worse than it does not really mean that much. I have not seen Firefly, so please, do not take this as a judgement of how masterpiece-y Firefly is.

BTW, the Spanish translation of the title actually means "The Clockwork Orange" instead of "A".

[Teproc]

The French translation forgeoes the article entirely, it's just "Orange Mécanique".

@Kuildeous : Yeah, that's the point of the mandarin thing, but it's half-assed, becase everyone still speaks English. SUre, they have a few specific words like "shiny" and "gorram" but really it's impossible to handle language evolution realistically so it ends up just being a gimmick.

Which I'm not too bothered with, but I can see ash's point. I doubt that's the onlything he has against the show though.

If you think about it, the way fantasy handles languages in general is really dumb. The whole idea of a "common tongue" which is very often used is pretty ridiculous : try walking around 14th century Europe speaking only latin, good luck getting understood by anyone other than monks.

[soulnet]

If you think about it, the way fantasy handles languages in general is really dumb. The whole idea of a "common tongue" which is very often used is pretty ridiculous : try walking around 14th century Europe speaking only latin, good luck getting understood by anyone other than monks.

I wanted to experiment this, but those damn airlines are only selling tickets to 21st century Europe.

[Kuildeous]

The French translation forgeoes the article entirely, it's just "Orange Mécanique".

@Kuildeous : Yeah, that's the point of the mandarin thing, but it's half-assed, becase everyone still speaks English. SUre, they have a few specific words like "shiny" and "gorram" but really it's impossible to handle language evolution realistically so it ends up just being a gimmick.

Which I'm not too bothered with, but I can see ash's point. I doubt that's the onlything he has against the show though.

If you think about it, the way fantasy handles languages in general is really dumb. The whole idea of a "common tongue" which is very often used is pretty ridiculous : try walking around 14th century Europe speaking only latin, good luck getting understood by anyone other than monks.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer the very alien environment to continue using contemporary language if it's not going to go all out. Battlestar Galactica was mentioned, and I have to admit that I cringed every time I heard "frak." It doesn't strike me as a curse word, even though it was used interchangeably with "fuck." Farscape did the same thing, only it makes even less sense to use "frell" in place of "fuck" because the little Babel fish that was injected into Crichton really should just translate it correctly so he never hears "frell."

The "common" tongue is a convenient conceit that allows the story to progress without bogging it down with linguistic gymnastics. It's not realistic, but it provides greater entertainment. Star Trek wouldn't be nearly as interesting if Worf had to have a translator on bridge with him. Sometimes, a story plays up the language barrier, which can still be amusing.

There's an RPG called Witch Hunter which takes place in the 16th century. The publishers tried to be somewhat historically accurate by allowing for different languages, but it's a real buzzkill when you have characters traveling to London who don't speak English. For that matter, they perhaps can only barely speak to each other. The Spanish monk can speak Latin to the French scholar who can then translate it to Arabic adventurer who can then translate it to his American Indian that he befriended on his travels. That shit gets old real fast in an RPG.

[Elanchana]

Ć̗̞͡ͅO̬̳̦̯͎̞̰̼͟͞M̸̗̘͉͇̀͘ͅE̶̡͔̟̣̱ ̭̰͖͙͇̭͕́͢P̮͓͇̻̲̗̤̰͢͟ͅĹ̘͘A̻͢Y̵̼͚̜̹̠̜ ̴͇̠͉̮̙ͅW҉̲̭̩̩̦̳̜̦I̧̞͖̭ͅŢ̹͖̺̩H̡̢̜̳̗̦̰͠ ̢̳̟̠͈͕̺͕̀U̹̺͜Ş̴̩̭̯̕

[jonts26]

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

[Watno]

I finished watching Season 2 of Homeland. I was pretty disappointed about the episode where someone gets killed by hacking his step maker at first. It seemed really far-fetched to me and destroyed the believability of the story.
Then I googled to find out wether others felts similarly, and it turned out that this could indeed happen. That really baffles me.

[eHalcyon]

Re: Homeland, is "step maker" supposed to mean "pace maker"?

The main thing that bothered me about the Chinese in Firefly is that it was all pronounced really poorly. You can fudge that as more language evolution, but it always sounded wrong to me.

[AndrewisFTTW]

Ć̗̞͡ͅO̬̳̦̯͎̞̰̼͟͞M̸̗̘͉͇̀͘ͅE̶̡͔̟̣̱ ̭̰͖͙͇̭͕́͢P̮͓͇̻̲̗̤̰͢͟ͅĹ̘͘A̻͢Y̵̼͚̜̹̠̜ ̴͇̠͉̮̙ͅW҉̲̭̩̩̦̳̜̦I̧̞͖̭ͅŢ̹͖̺̩H̡̢̜̳̗̦̰͠ ̢̳̟̠͈͕̺͕̀U̹̺͜Ş̴̩̭̯̕

Uh, spam?

[Ozle]

Ć̗̞͡ͅO̬̳̦̯͎̞̰̼͟͞M̸̗̘͉͇̀͘ͅE̶̡͔̟̣̱ ̭̰͖͙͇̭͕́͢P̮͓͇̻̲̗̤̰͢͟ͅĹ̘͘A̻͢Y̵̼͚̜̹̠̜ ̴͇̠͉̮̙ͅW҉̲̭̩̩̦̳̜̦I̧̞͖̭ͅŢ̹͖̺̩H̡̢̜̳̗̦̰͠ ̢̳̟̠͈͕̺͕̀U̹̺͜Ş̴̩̭̯̕

Uh, spam?

Possibly the scariest 10 seconds I have heard all year! (And that includes listening to your music andrew!

Sorry, i joke of course....I've never bothered listening to your music!

[Watno]

Re: Homeland, is "step maker" supposed to mean "pace maker"?

Yeah, that's what I meant.