The backlash is here. Compared to many I’m a late joiner of Twitter, so I could easily be lumped into the unwashed mass of people that pushed Twitter from “cool” to the “oh shit my grandma is on here” category. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, and I imagine that in a few years we’ll reminisce about the olden days of Twitter the way we do about once really cool things like email or newsgroups. Or chat for that matter.*
Anyway, I’ll probably talk shit about Twitter for awhile, mostly because everyone else is. It’s only appropriate given that bandwagon hopping turned it uncool in the first place. After that it’ll be integrated into everything and I won’t even think about it. What really worries me is what happens when all of my online and offline identities somehow merge into one.** Maybe that’s the next killer app, something to manage all of our ridiculous online personae.
* There was a period of time during which I printed and saved all of my chats. This might make an interesting ongoing feature, Banal Chats from my Past.
** People talk about the Singularity, maybe that’s what will happen. Identity boundaries cease to exist. I implode under the gravity of my cognitive dissonance.
There I was, in my kitchen, in a dream, with a cabbage in my hands. It was a long slender cabbage and it fell in half as I moved it through the air, the sides still attached by several cabbage strands. An estranged friend was there, nervous and making small talk with someone else. The outer strata of the cabbage were slightly brown and soft, I questioned the utility of the vegetable. My friend was now thin and clothed in designer garb. He had pierced an ear. Acknowledging me he tried to speak but the words I expected to be an explanation stuck in his throat. I tore off half the cabbage and threw it in the trash.
What did we learn? Adama once got so drunk that he couldn’t even lean forward to puke in the gutter. A pigeon woke Apollo from a nap. Tigh really loved strip clubs. Doc Cottle becomes awkward during emotional exchanges. Roslin was a cougar. Oh, and all the weird unexplainable stuff? It was god. Maybe we should call him the Galactigod.
How they introduced that pigeon into the story without crushing it with their giant ham-hands is beyond me. I really enjoyed the series, but I will never rewatch it. Knowing that Baltar is not crazy but is instead talking to an agent of the Galactigod is too much. Writers, just because you didn’t know where your story was going all along didn’t mean you had to introduce an omniscient character that did.
We know the Galactigod really digs Bob Dylan and that in His spare time He sets up confusing and convoluted scavenger hunts. When the Galactigod watches a Cylon have sex, occasionally her spine will glow red for no good reason. The Galactigod will never do something the easy way. For instance, to save Hera He implanted prophetic visions in four different people, a subplot that spanned multiple seasons. Instead, one of his angels could have simply told Baltar and Six to “run down that hallway and pick up Hera.” But where’s the flair in that?
In one final assault on subtlety, the surgically enhanced Caprica Six angel tells us that we are living in times where “commercialism, decadence, and technology run amok.” Had the space battles and Cylon robots been hand drawn, or were I unable to buy a Cylon logo-bearing toaster from the show’s webstore, maybe I’d believe that you, Galactigod, are more than just a convenience.
Yes, another blog. Why? For years I’ve leeched off of the work of other posters and bloggers without making any contribution of my own. I do believe that collecting and sorting information, even trivial information, can be a public service. So this is my effort to help extract a little meaning out of the chaos.
That all sounds rather haughty and high-minded, especially considering I’ll likely follow this post up with a link to a squirrel playing the banjo or some such nonsense. And since I’m the only one likely to read this, allow me to say that you’re looking lovely today.