Good vs. Evil

Supernatural and suspense television series I have loved! I was going to make this just two blog posts, one for the short-lived series (one or two seasons, or a third incomplete season) and one for the longer running seasons (three or more complete seasons).



This is not from the show. It is, however, hilarious.
Interesting how Jesus hasn't won yet, hm?

That immediately became overwhelming. Like, before I even opened Word to get started. So I’ll start with one and we’ll so how it goes, maybe more later. I’ll begin with the show Good vs. Evil, the one that started me thinking about this. I don’t know why I thought about this show this morning, one of those thoughts that come out of nowhere. “Hm, I wish that show hadn’t been cancelled. I really liked it. How long ago was that?” And then another show and another…like that.

 

Upon searching for pictures and links for this first show I found another blogger who’d had the same idea, only he remembered far more shows than I did.  Thank you, Diacanu of Shmegalamonga. He includes superhero shows too and included shows whether he likes them or not. I’m only doing my own favorites. He didn’t appear to like G vs E, but he had a good picture and that’s what I needed.

Also, his writing is more entertaining than mine. Check him out!

G vs E (original title, later titled Good vs Evil)

I prefer to quote the opening narration for description, rather than use the IMDB or Wikipedia synopses. Or write my own synopsis, as my memory on the show is patchy. In fact, the one episode I thought I remembered was actually from a similar show on a different network, Brimstone.

Mostly I just remember I liked it and was disappointed when it was cancelled. And so…

“(Deacon Jones): A man torn from his family, murdered in his prime, only to return to Earth, resurrected as an agent of the Almighty Corps. With no magic, no special powers, forbidden from intimate contact, unrecognizable to those from their past lives, Chandler Smythe and Henry McNeil now fight to save lost souls against the minions of darkness. It is a battle of Good versus Evil. G vs E, that's what it is!”-copied and pasted from the IMDB page for G vs E.

Many of the episodes titles have the word “evil” in them. I really like the minor character of Ford Plasko, Chandler and Henry’s supervisor. Ford was played by Marshall Bell, a most excellent character actor.

This.

 

It ran for two seasons, 1999 on the USA Network and 2000 on the Sci Fi Channel (now the SyFy Channel…because…what, they wanted to appeal to 13 year old girls? Who knows.)

Its genre is sometimes listed as sci fi, action, comedy, drama (really?)…I consider it firmly in the supernatural and suspense genre. Because I say so. It’s has dark comedy, there was some action and maybe some comedic drama…really I don’t think sci fi truly fits.

It was…a sort of extremely tame precursor to Supernatural. And if you haven’t heard of Supernatural, I must ask if you’ve been living under a rock.

Now get out there and kick evil’s ass!

 

 

G vs E on IMDB
Good vs. Evil on TV.com
G vs E on Wikipedia

 

 

DO NOT USE THIS BLOG POST AS SOURCE MATERIAL!

Notable people from Alaska! I don’t know why I just spent four hours breaking down this information. I don’t remember what sparked the desire to look up famous people from Alaska this morning.

The list is not comprehensive. I used a pre-existing Wikipedia article; I did not use Google. Except to find the Wikipedia article, which was last modified on 12/10/13. I did not chase back up sources for any of the people or what they did that was notable or when they died. If they have died and are not immortal or something. Alaska. Who knows what really goes on up there?

If you are doing some sort of paper about notable Alaskan people DO NOT USE THIS BLOG POST AS SOURCE MATERIAL! Would anyone ever be stupid enough to do that? You never know.

The criteria used for including people in the article is quoted as, “individuals who were born in Alaska, grew up there, retired there, or in any other fashion lived there even if for only a brief period of time (such as infancy, during one or more of the many gold rushes during the late 19th century and early 20th century, or as a result of rapid military influx and out flux from 1940 onward).”

All numbers are approximate. They may not add up because math. I was making notes on the backs of envelopes. Occasionally I lost track of whether or not I had marked someone down. I don’t want to have to type ‘approx.’ it for every single stat so I’ll say it once more here: ALL NUMBERS ARE APPROXIMATE.

Many of the individuals were noted for a several things but in different categories, e.g., politics and writing. I did look them up if I wasn’t sure in which category I wanted to put them.

The article listed people from the 1800s to the present. There’s nothing before the 1800s because there were few non-native peoples lived there in the 1700s. Lots and lots of native peoples lived there, but they had more interesting things to do then record the native version of “Washington slept here.”

Notable people of Alaska: 133 men, 53 women

 

Artists: A broad category. I lumped in all the things people consider the traditional arts both visual and dramatic as well as such creative things such as writers and journalists, a printmaker, and a video game designer.
Living	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
56: Jewel Kilcher-singer Robin Hobb-fantasy fiction writer	7	14	0

 

Science and Education: Includes the regular science-y stuff and also historians, an ethnographer, and the last speaker of the last speaker of the Eyak language ‘cause I figured language is culture and relates to anthropology.
Living	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
8: William Oefelein -astronaut	3 Marie Smith Jones –Last speaker of Eyak Language	3	0

 

Sports: Includes well-known sports as well as dog sled racers and mixed martial artists.
Living	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
42	2	5 Leonhard_Seppala: sled dog racer, key musher in the 1925 serum run to Nome	0

 

Politics and Law: Politicians, activists, lawmen, lawyers, and one female former United States CIA Operations Officer (pretty much a spy-but she’s on our side).
Living	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
9: Valerie Plame: Spy! Sarah Palin	4	5 Wyatt Earp: Lawman	0

 

Crime: I’m sure Alaska has its share of common criminals, these are just the best known.
Living:	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
0	0	1 Robert Stroud: convicted killer, later better known as "The Birdman of Alcatraz"	1 Soapy Smith: Con Artist and gangster
Military:
Living:	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
0	1	4	0

 

Business:
Living:	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
0	1	1	0

 

Adventurers: Explorers and aviation pioneers. I put the aviation guys here instead of science because I felt like it.
Living:	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
0	0	11	1

 

WTF: Dood, you should not be famous. Unsurprisingly, they’re all still living in 2013. Being famous for…being famous is a relatively new phenomenon.
Living:	Died 2000-2013	Died 1900-1999	Died 1800-1899
4 Levi Johnston: former partner of Bristol Palin	0	0	0

 

I’ve now spent another two hours typing it all up.  I don't know why all the other tables worked fine but I can't get the crime and the military tables apart. Normally I would look up pictures to break up all the text but I have to make sloppy joes. I'm tired and have other things to do. I spent six hours on this. Why? Even I don’t know.

Move like an Englishman...it's different from walking like an Egyptian.

Cold. Oh so very, very numbingly cold. It's ten degrees, but with the wind chill it feels like one degree. One tiny Fahrenheit of warmth in the air. The earth sleeps. The trees and the green things sleep. The people shrink inside their clothes and dream dreams of warmer days. And still we all live here, in this place where it can be so very cold. We are all mad as hatters. Speaking of mercury poisoning...

I did not know Fahrenheit needs to be capitalized. And spelled with an "h". It's derived from a proper name, you see. "Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (1714)..." - Wikipedia.

There you go. You can learn something new everyday. If you are so inclined. Some Dutch-German-Polish guy is responsible for the many incidents of mercury poisoning from broken thermometers.

See...this is what I do. Make connections. One thing leads to another...

Cy Curnin, the lead singer of The Fixx, and prominently featured in the above video, moves like an Englishman. And how does an Englishman move? Well, like him. I'm not sure why it's different and distinctive from an American male moving, but it appears that way to me. What do you think?

As I was saying, before I was interrupted by my own thought. This is what I do. This is why I am Corpus Callosum. I make connections.

But back to the cold. Once upon a time some famous writer somewhere (I posted about him once but I don't feel like looking it up right now) mentioned it was poor form to begin your story with weather.

But I think, I think, I think if I started with an thorough description of the main character dealing with the mind and body numbing cold, a cold he cannot escape until his damn difficult quest is finished, that might be okay.

And I want another word for "dragons" because sometimes I think if I hear that particular word again I'll scream...

So. Dragons.

Have they been done to death? Or can the fantasy book world stand yet another book about their scaly majesty?

I have a story idea. A very complex story idea. It crawls around in my head.  It makes trouble for me when I listen to certain songs, because I'm supposed to be driving, damn it.

I long to sit and write it out complete, but would it sell? It would take a long, long time to finish, can I really afford to spend time, money, and energy on it if I will only be told yet another dragon story won't sell?

Did you ever see the movie Frida? A fabulously delicious movie about an amazing, amazing woman. This connects to my opening, I promise. Frida Kahlo, surrealist Mexican artist. In the movie Frida has a long convalescence after a terrible accident and takes up painting. When she can walk again she takes one of her paintings to the famous muralist Diego Rivera and asks him if she should continue painting, does she have any talent? Can she make any money?

Diego tells her (I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember the words exactly and I can't find a clip and dear gods, WHY do I not OWN this movie?) if she's a real painter she will paint all her life because she can't not paint. She tells him she doesn't have time to screw around painting if it won't make her any money, her family needs to, like, eat and pay bills and shit. (Again, I'm paraphrasing the movie. Frida was much more eloquent in her response.)

That's how I'm feeling about my dragons. Yeah, ya'll are driving me batshit crawling around my head making stories and demanding to be written down, but you will take all my energy and if no one wants to read the story after its finished I got whole lotta nothing with which to pay bills. I want to write you down because I'm a writer but I can't afford the huge chunk of energy it will take to create your world from whole cloth if no one want to wrap themselves in it.

Now go find Frida and watch it. There's art and sex and drinking and swearing and revolutions and death. And then there's more art and sex. It's the perfect movie and it's about an actual person.

Frida Kahlo - photo by Lucienne Bloch

I didn't really fall back a step so much as just sort of stayed where I was at the moment.

Well, I didn't call the number today.

If you are just tuning out, that statement makes no sense. Sorry. Let me back-track.

As part of the process for getting my bipolar self out of the house on a more regular basis and finding more friends in the immediate living area (more than just my one friend I know from massage school and the people who are my husband's friends I mean) I am going to join a book discussion club.

There are several options, but the most one most likely to work at getting me to leave the house is the science fiction book club.

The library website asked please call the discussion group leader before you attend. So they can sound you out I guess and make sure you're not a complete freak. I mean...if you're joining a science fiction book club, you're already a bit of a freak. That's why it's fun.

And I was going to call today. But I couldn't do it. I said it over and over again that I needed to do it. But I didn't, even though I had plenty of time.

This phone/social phobia really sucks. Calling from my cell phone while I was at work just paralyzed me. Even though I had plenty of time, my schedule was very slow today.

I need to call tomorrow. I need to. Because I really do want to go and the meeting is on Tuesday. Like, the day after tomorrow Tuesday.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Or so I have read.

Thank the gods, Blogger has not signed me out of my account due to inactivity. I don't think I can find where I wrote down my password info and although I know I could get it sent to me it would require signing into my email. Jaysus....I can't face THAT.

So, I've had my appointment with my counselor. In a couple of weeks I'll have an appointment with the doctor and get a prescription for my meds, but right now we're operating without a med net. That sounded so much funnier in my head.

The counselor (who has an awesome name I wish I could share) helped me come up with a few ideas to start the process of self-healing. Getting back to writing here is one. Another idea is joining a book club.

There's several options there, but the most promising (meaning the one I'm most likely to actually leave the house for) is the science fiction book club at library in the next town. So.

Tomorrow I have to call the book club discussion leader. Because in the directions on the website, the library politely asked that you call the book club discussion leader if you wished to attend. And good lords, I don't want to offend my fellow SF geeks.

So tomorrow I must work up the courage to call the number listed. So I may commune with my people.

Bipolar Happens. Usually right on top of your head, when you're trying to get other shit done.

I have a mood disorder.

I'm Bipolar. Type II.

I probably also have anxiety disorder, but I've never bothered to ask for a diagnosis on that.

I meant this to save to a draft, but I've already published it so...what the hell. There it is. I'm going to edit it later and add some informative links and pictures and shit.

It's quiet in here, but not quiet enough.

So I'm having difficulties. I'm trying to fix them and they are taking all my energies.

Just when I thought I had something figured out...the rules seemed to change. Again. Only slightly but enough.

I don't know if I should explain more. Not that its some big secret, I'm not trying to be mysterious or tragic or anything. It's just boring. More of the same, only more more.

I have to make myself leave the house now and I don't want to. But I do want to see my sons and they are an hour away so I have to go.

My personal curious case of less is more.

Here's something I have noticed about myself.

I've had nearly three weeks off of work now. Three weeks in between jobs. I knew I had two paychecks coming from my last job and my husband has a good job so I could afford to take a little time off. A vacation of sorts. I thought I would enjoy this, resting up, getting up whenever I wanted, doing household chores leisurely, reading anytime I wanted.

I found I did not enjoy it so much.

I found sleeping in made me feel part of the day was wasted, even though I hate getting up early. Not getting up with my husband meant I didn't get to see him until the evening.  Not that we do anything spectacular with the early morning fifteen or twenty minutes we have together. We're both bleary-eyed, drinking coffee and smoking, occasionally talking about what we'll do later on that day or what we'll do together in the evening. After he leaves for work I go out and run or ride my bike or start on the writing I want to do for the day.

So I didn't enjoy sleeping in...but...I couldn't get my ass up out of bed. I slept in but got no benefit from it.

I wonder how that feels. Sleeping weightless.
Those lights would probably bother me.
Sleeping in Space is Easy, But There's No Shower

During this three week vacation I could of course still get up with him if I'd wanted to. I tried to do it.  I'd set my alarm but I'd just shut it off. I guess some part of my subconscious didn't deem it necessary and I couldn't drag myself out of bed as I had when I still had to budget my time and energy for work.

I didn't get household chores done because...and I do not claim any logical sense to this statement...there was always more time to do them. I hate these chores; they are mind-numbing. Tedious. Just fucking boring. For some reason they give me no sense of accomplishment, no over all feeling of order. They're just another boring thing I have to do and if I have plenty of time to do them they can always wait until later. I have books to read, god damnit. There are other worlds with far more interesting things going on in them than having to wash the dishes for the one thousand and eleventh time.

Oh, Allie Brosh. You are so perfect, just the way you are.
picture credit: Hyperbole and a Half

Not that I don't procrastinate with chores when I'm working an outside job too. I do. Just not to the extent I did in the past three weeks.

I was trying to explain this strange break in logic to TheMan last night. After I'd spoken to my new boss and gotten a set schedule for the week...I suddenly found it much easier to come home and start cleaning up. It just wasn't as boring. What. The Hell.

TheMan proposed the idea that perhaps I now feel I have "a purpose" again, over and above that of caring for the house and family.



Purpose...I haz it again?

I respectfully submitted that being a household caretaker is a fine and noble purpose in and of itself.  I don't like the idea that I can't find joy and fulfillment in caring for my family. But apparently I can't.

What is a purpose? The general definition is, "the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists."  Hm. Okay. While I really do love being a massage therapist and helping people achieve health and renewal, I don't know that it's my purpose in life. I'd much rather my purpose be telling stories for people to read.

Please keep in mind, o dearest reader, this is subjective. This is all about me. I am not making my experience a corollary to any other person's, male or female.

So, if I'd rather my purpose be writing, shouldn't I have been, oh, I don't know...writing?

But I wasn't. Not in the way I'd wanted to. My writing has suffered on vacation. Shouldn't I have gotten MORE writing done? I had plenty of time. I thought my days would be filled with hours of clacking laptop keys. I thought my stories would pour out of my fingers with ease and grace.  But instead...my characters stop talking to me. They ceased their silly, knees-bent, running-about, advancing behavior. I got nothing done in those three weeks. I was more creatively productive when I had less time to write. How does that work?

Mr. Productive. I bet he doesn't need an outside job to get his characters to move.
Stephen King: The 'Craft' Of Writing Horror Stories

So...in order to create the drive I need to fulfill my personal inner purpose...I, for some reason, also need outer purpose...over and above the insular life of the household.

Huh. I sort of feel I ought to be able to create drive on my own. But I have not been able to. In fact having no job sort of paralyzed me. I wasn't earning any money and felt no need and no desire to leave the house. I hate not contributing to the general household through earnings.

Okay, I'm tired of pondering now. And I have to go do stuff.

Pictorial inspiration for travel and fiction.

I'm thinking of having my dragon people live in mountains like this. Obviously the carvings on their entrances will be kept up better. Check out the faces on the rock in the lower left hand corner of the picture.

Rock cut tombs - Turkey

Myra  is an ancient town in Lycia, where the small town of Kale is situated today in present day Antalya Province of Turkey. It was located on the river Myros , in the fertile alluvial plain between Alaca Dağ, the Massikytos range and the Aegean Sea. - Myra Wikipedia page

"Initiation Well" - Sintra, Portugal
More info about its construction at Abandonedography.

Thinking of something like this for the human religious orders in the book. The orders will be mixed.
Picture Credit: National Geographic
I'm adding the link in the interest of giving credit where it's due,
but if you click the link it will ask you to register to sign in or continue.
 

Picture Credit: Amazing Facts



Stepped well.  Village of Abhaneri near Jaipur in Rajasthan, India.
 





Roman Baths - Bath, England
credit: The Roman Baths







Do you have any pictures of inspirational architecture or geography that YOU would like to share? Please do!







A slightly more motivational post than the last one.

It's raining. It's storming. Somehow this makes me feel better.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” - Dune, Frank Herbert

What do we say to the little-death? There is only one thing we say to Death.



Game of Thrones
Book credit: George R. R. Martin
Television Series credit: HBO

Couch to 5K - Week 5, Day 3 (mileage workout). This entry is not as encouraging as I'd wish it to be.

Preface: I am having a very hard time right now. Emotionally. I do not want to do anything but stay in bed and read. I don't want to do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone.  Anytime I have to do these things I feel like screaming in my head. Don't approach me unless it's to bring me another book I haven't read yet.

I keep typing things I want to say and then deleting them because they are too much. I want to be encouraging. If other people, depressed people, find this blog while looking for exercise tips (in the random way I've found some other exercise blogs) I want them to see exercise does help. It does help. Exercise is supposed to fucking help.

Two Miles. I ran it. Slowly.

Let's get this out of the way: I ran two miles with no stopping in thirty-five minutes.  I don't have the patience to type it up the way I usually do, nice and neat. I was supposed to do this workout on either Monday or Tuesday. I waited until today. Monday I was tired. Tuesday I was really fucking tired. I had a flood day on my period and had major cramps and found out I didn't have any tampons or menstrual meds. Fuck you, running.






Wednesday. Nervous, I'm supposed to be hearing back about a job. She said she'd check my references yesterday and text me a tentative schedule. No text yet.


I have to get this damn two mile run done.  So I went out and...in the middle of the pre-run stretches I realize I forgot to put a sports bra on. I have a sports tank on, with a shelf bra, but this is not enough support. Great. Fucking great. Just run. So I run. I'm miserable. Physically I'm fine except for the hard breathing (due to smoking...it's tolerable for now, just annoying) and the mucous in my throat (same reason, spit and move on) and the ever-present pulling down feeling in my shins. Mentally...I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home the whole damn time.

At 1.7 miles (the twenty minute mark) I'm begging to go home and nearly crying. I honestly don't know why I wasn't actually crying. At that point I didn't even care if anyone saw me. I would've felt BETTER if I could cry. But I couldn't get any tears out.

Well, I just would've dehydrated anyway. I really wanted to stop. I had even resolved to stop. "I'm going to stop. I don't have to keep going, you can't make me. Twenty minutes is enough. I can stop if I want. I'm stopping; I'm walking home now."

Please realize, I'm arguing with myself, in my head, at this point.

I didn't stop. I kept running past the corner. "But if I stop, the miles win," I wailed in my head. "The miles win? What the fuck? They're miles! They're not sentient! They don't win! I'm going home at Oak. I don't want to go past Oak, you can't make me. That's twenty-eight minutes, that's enough!"

But I went past Oak. I went past Oak up to Hickory. "You gave birth twice! That was a lot harder! You can do this." "Fuck that shit! It's not like you get a choice in childbirth! The kid comes out! I want to go home!" "Christ, shut up, we're almost there." "I hate you for making me do this."

Onto Cleveland and back down to Oak to home.  I did the whole two long, hateful, fuck you, miles. Thirty-five minutes. Approximately. Somewhere on Hickory I managed to accidentally hit the stop button on the chronograph so I don't have an exact minutes and seconds time, but I know when I started.

Ben Kane, dressed as a Roman, walking Hadrian's wall.
Two miles from the end. This is something I want to do.
Except not dressed as a Roman. Just in regular clothes.

I honestly don't even really know how I did that. Mentally, I mean. Physically I was fine. In fact once I got past Oak I wasn't even physically tired. I can't say I got my endorphins, because I didn't feel good mentally, but I got a second wind. Nothing hurt, no pain in my joints, no pulling in my shins. Just some elevated breathing and spitting.

Christ, I want a fucking cigarette. I don't have any left. I have to go to the gas station if I want some.

I don't want to go out again. I'm having a very bad day. A very bad day.

It's a battle for the ages. My "drop-kick an orphan" desire to have cigarette versus my "whimpering ball of snot" desire to not leave the house again today.








I found this Diet & Exercise Diary that I bought on clearance last year and never started. I'm starting it Monday. I'm filling in the preliminary goal stuff today. I'm not going to bother counting carbs and calories and fat grams, but I do want to track what I eat. Am I getting enough veggies, how did what I ate yesterday affect my workout today, how much caffeine am I taking in, how much water...like that.

There is space for strength training, cardio training, and "incidental" exercise, which I guess means things like when I visit my Twin in DeKalb and we take an impromptu walk around town.

This diary also has places to record sleep and sleep quality, appetite, stress, mood, and energy levels, and injuries or illnesses. I like that. That's probably why I bought it in the first place.

So I'm trying to be happy that I just ran two miles with almost no physical pain. I should be proud. I should be proud and happy. I'm trying. It's not working very well.