Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Eee! Best. Ep. Ever. Just like old times, I was grinning through the whole thing... at least when I wasn't laughing and snickering! I would have liked the ending with Karofsky to have gone differently, but it was perfectly understandable as-is.

Eeee!

February 5th. 2:30 in the afternoon.


Party at my place! Bring your shorts! :D :D

And in totally unrelated news, the Oxygen channel is doing a Glee marathon! It's interesting to see the early eps again. (And we can add "Will planting drugs on Finn to make him join Glee club" to the list of reasons why Will is so skeevy.) At first they showed only the best eps (Madonna, Gaga), which made me remember why I loved the show so much. Then they moved on to the current season... All the horrible mean stuff they did to Beiste, all the reasons I'm no longer really comfortable or happy with the show.

Apparently Oxygen is going to have a new reality show. "The Glee Project". Whoever wins it will appear on Glee. I'm assuming it must be a singing contest, but there were no details mentioned.

Oh well. I'm still looking forward to the new Glee ep tomorrow! And it's so lovely having all of my windows open all day. Yay airing out my apartment! :D

Edit: Oh hey, and for Groupon folks, there's a "super Groupon" out today, $10 for $20 at either Barnes & Noble store or online. I bought it. It becomes active tomorrow, expires 4/11 (at which time it becomes worth $10 instead of $20, so not a total loss!).

This is going to be quicker than I'd like, because I'm exhausted.

Glee: I don't like Christmas specials and I hate Christmas music, so I knew going in the ep would likely be my least favorite. Liked:
- Kurt's song (what a voice!)
- Becky was amazingly cute (though I'm disliking the situations Sue puts her in -- she's a child that needs to learn right from wrong, not a dog or a doll of Sue's)
- That Britt believes in Santa is so cute (she's really one of my favorite characters)
- But best of all was Beiste's story of her childhood Christmas wish. If any character is ever, ever horrible to Beiste again, I shall hunt them down. Hunt down a fictional character, yes. That's how serious I am.

WoW: *insert screenshot here* The fact that my first experience in Cata's new areas was face-down, floating lifeless in the water made me laugh out loud. Welcome to how the last two FFXI missions started -- with you dead!

Did some questing on big Keen to get him the seahorse mount. Never, ever will I quest on him again. I HATE HATE HATE rogue in PvE. Leather armor, no self healing*, no pet... Fighting one single 80 mob brought me below half-life every time. Two or more killed me every time unless Vanish was cooled. It wasn't until I was almost done did I bitch about that and Morny pointed out that rogues were given a minor heal in the last patch. That was something, though far from enough. Plate-wearers, druids, mages, I didn't see a single class that had a hard time with one mob, and most of them were killing many at a time.

After that I did archaeology for, um, hours. Too many hours, but I have a hard time stopping.

Another cross-over between FFXI and WoW: In Hot&Cold on FFXI, the... whatever they were called, the spots with the chest, they were in fixed spots, it wasn't truly random. I quickly noticed that in Archaeology, too. There are a set number of goal spots, you can memorize where they are and that helps.

Hit 110 in archaeology. Leveling slows so much after 100. zzzz I mean, you go from a skillup nearly every dig to five skillups every... lord, my tired brain needs to do math... well, lot less skillups.

zzzz

This is the first ep all season that I really, really liked... right up until the end. Who'd have thought that Sue would be effective as a principal? And the wedding had me grinning the whole time. This is the first ep where I liked almost all of the songs, too.

The ending though... it negated all the good feelings. I felt terrible that their honeymoon money would be spent on the school (and would it even cover more than a year?).

The most disturbing part of the ep was that I felt a little bad for Karofsky. He was totally and 100% in the wrong, let me be clear on that. Bullying? Death threats? Forced kisses? Unacceptable. But it's sad that he couldn't come out, that his background and culture made him too scared to do it. His father seemed like a good man, and Karofsky is just a kid (the character, anyway). I feel horrible for feeling bad for him, but I wonder if my judgment of him has been too harsh. When the actors look like they're in their mid to late 20s, it's easy to forget how young the kids are. ...and the more I type, the more I feel like I'm betraying everything right. I'm not defending bullying. I'm not defending his actions at all. But the fact that a situation could be created that would make him develop into this person who would bully... that I can feel sorry about.

I love Glee. :D

I should have had more faith in Glee. The description was "Glee finds religion", which scared the heck out of me. I really like the show, I didn't want to become annoyed or disgusted with it, but wow, it handled the subject so well. I really couldn't have asked for better. (And I love Kurt even more than ever.)

"I think God is like Santa Claus for adults. Otherwise, God's kind of a jerk, isn't he? I mean, he makes me gay and then has his followers telling me it's something that I chose. As if someone would choose to be mocked every single day of their life.

No offense to religious folks, but I've always seen religion as a crutch -- something some adults need because they can't face reality without it (things like the idea that there's nothing after we die is just too scary for some). (And "No offense to religious folks" doesn't make that any less insulting, huh? My intent isn't to insult, but that is how I see religion.)

That being said, I loved the whole speech about needing to believe in something, and (probably selfishly), I've always liked the "you don't have to believe in god, He still believes in you" idea. (Because, while I don't believe... what if I'm wrong? I would like to be wrong. I'd like there to be a god, but it's not a realistic desire, no more than wishing Santa was real is.)

And, on one character saying that Kurt couldn't prove there isn't a god:

"You can't prove that there isn't a magic teapot floating around the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightning bolts out of its boobs, but it seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it?"

However, as much as I agree with Kurt, I liked how the different religions were treated. The show didn't bash them. (Kurt disagreed with them, but the other characters were true to their various faiths.)

This may have been my favorite Rachel song ever, too! And Fin singing Losing My Religion! One of my favorite songs! He even moved his hands in the same way as the music video! :D

And Sue and her big sister? I love every interaction between the two, but when her sister asked her if she wanted her to pray, it broke me.

This is easily the best ep of the whole series. It worked for non-religious folks, I bet it worked for religious folks, it was so kind and loving and wonderful and heartwrenching. Kurt had some fully accurate and fair comments about religion, but the believers weren't painted in a bad light. This show deserves all the hype it gets.

On WoW, with the end of Brewfest, the final tally:

Keen (mount collector) - Kodo x3!, Shanker x2!, Ram (97/100 mounts!)
Haken: Kodo, Shanker, Tankard
Crowfeathers: Ram
Thack: Remote x3!, Shanker, Tankard

I'm sure I had more WoW stuff to write about, but after Glee I've forgotten it all.

So very very happy that last week's poor ep was a one-week thing. This week... man. I have no idea how a show can keep me grinning from ear to ear for an entire hour! And it ended really, really, really well (not what I had expected at all!).

I can't believe the darned season is over. Months until a new one! (But at least people who aren't into the show will get a break from posts about it, huh? :P )

What a show!

PS: They're starting replaying the whole series from the beginning on Thursday nights, so if you missed it thus far...

‘Media watchdog’ is outraged that ‘Glee’ doesn’t have friendly homophobic characters.

Quote:

L. Brent Bozell III, right-wing scion and president of the conservative “media watchdog” group the Media Research Center, wrote a column today in TownHall to express his absolute outrage at the television show “Glee” for promoting a “homosexual lifestyle.” Bozell, whose “think-tank” is funded by foundation money from David and Julie Koch of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, among other corporate sources, denounced the show for portraying opponents of homosexuality as “vicious school bullies.” Bozell lamented the fact that that Glee’s homophobes were “two brutish football players” who “threatened to pummel the openly gay and riotously effeminate character Kurt for dressing up like a girl”:

“Bill O’Reilly recently hosted a “culture warriors” segment at Fox News where both “warriors” agreed that homosexuality is morally acceptable. That same no-debate mentality has been a regular drumbeat on the Fox television series “Glee,” a musical drama/comedy about a high school glee club in Lima, Ohio. [...] The only characters on the show disapproving of homosexuality are vicious school bullies. In the May 25 episode, two brutish football players threatened to pummel the openly gay and riotously effeminate character Kurt for dressing up like a girl. Everyone else in this series approves, endorses or participates in the homosexual lifestyle.“

source

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What skill and imagination the Glee writers must have! To come up with the idea that school bullies might want to beat up gay people! I don't know what world they come from, but in this world school bullies skip through hallways handing out flowers to anyone who is different than the accepted norm.

My beloved show, the show that always made me laugh, grin ear-to-ear, and be happy days after... tonight's ep was so mean! Beginning to end (almost end, 10 minutes left). What the heck happened to everyone being happy and friendly and upbeat and decent human beings?

I really could have used a big dose of happy tonight. Darned Glee! Live up to your name, grumble.

Edit: Okay, I did get a laugh in the last 20 seconds, but that's hardly enough to make up for the whole ep.

Few days ago I wrote that in order to enjoy the show, one must ignore the characters and not look for any kind of a plot. I was totally wrong. Seven eps in and I love every single character to death (except Mr. Schuester's wife, who I think we're supposed to dislike). And sure, okay, the plots aren't OMG DEATH AND DESTRUCTION AROUND EVERY CORNER, but there's still plenty of plotty stuff going on.

Most important of all, the show makes me happy. I don't understand it, I can't explain it, but even just thinking about it makes me smile. Part of it must be that it's about a bunch of outsiders in high school forming their own group and becoming happy themselves, but it's more than that.

Glee lives up to its name. Glee!