shut up and let me see your jazz hands

1. I watched the season premiere of Community and really liked it. ( Spoilers )

Parks and Rec was also fun. ( Spoilers here, too )

2. I finished typing up the worst of the inventory stuff at work. They gave us a new form to use this year and it's easier to use, which is nice.

3. Payday today.

1. Not that I needed yet another translation project to work on, but the other day someone emailed me about collaborating on something and it sounded interesting and I got caught up in the excitement of a new project and already translated the first chapter! She's doing all the typesetting and such, so I don't know when it will be ready to go, but hopefully soon. It's not a time-intensive project and there are only a few volumes out so far (and I could only find scans of the first one), so I'm hoping it won't interfere with my other projects.

2. My aunt is in town visiting and I went out to lunch with her and my mom today. We went to a pizza place and I got a pesto pizza which neither of them were interested in, so I got to keep the leftovers, too. :D

3. I went to the bank to talk to them about the ridiculous fees I was charged and they agreed to reverse the second one, so that's something. When I got home I found I was charged $15 by the credit card company as well, for a bounced payment. Bleh. At least $45 is better than $75 and I'm also glad that I wasn't paying it near the due date, so I wasn't charged a missed payment fee as well.

4. I was hoping to find this new Ben & Jerry's flavor at the store today but they didn't have it, alas. I considered going with another Ben & Jerry's flavor (especially since they were on sale), but nothing caught my eye, so I started looking at what else they had and found the store brand has a caramel ice cream with chocolate-coated caramel chunks and caramel swirl, which turned out to be super tasty.

5. I watched the season premiere of Parks & Recs! It was fun! Also Ann and Tom broke up, thank goodness. I like both those characters individually, but Ann has had enough of flaky boyfriends. I loved that they were pretending to still be together out of spite (and because Tom bet Donna $1000 they'd last longer).

OMG THIS SHOW. How is it so awesome? I just can't even explain. It fills me with glee just watching the characters be themselves, not even any particular thing. Just seeing them. I watch it with a huge grin on my face because they are just so awesome.

I really loved how Leslie&Ann* focused episode thirteen was, both because I ship them and it was fanservicey in that regard, and because they are just one of my favorite BFF pairs on TV and I love them so just as they are.

And why are Tom and Jean-Ralphio so adorkable despite being the skeeviest guys ever? I don't get it. Maybe because it's obvious how dorky they are under their trying-to-hard-ness, idk. But Jean-Ralphio should be on there more.

And Ron. Oh, Ron. His endorsement of Snake Juice! XD XD XD And Jerry and Donna in the totally-not-The-Newlywed-Game game. And Ben moving in with April and Andy and teaching them how to be adults! (Which was actually the other week, not last night's episodes, but still.) And Chris being Chris (so, so, SO glad Rob Lowe stayed on as a regular, though I'm also glad he and Ann broke up).

And Ben and Leslie omg. *_* They are too dorky to live. As much as I would ideally love Leslie and Ann to end up together, the fact is, I'm so-often a sucker for canon pairings (when done well, anyway), because it's happening right there on screen (or on the page, depending on the medium!). So yeah, I ship Leslie/Ben, too.

And next week is two more episodes! Woohoo! (But then that's the end of the season, so boo.)




*BONUS! While looking up whether it's spelt Ann or Anne, I found that I had actually somehow missed episode twelve!! So I don't have to wait til next week for another episode, I can just go download that one! Wheeeeeeee!!!

1. Big Bang Theory. There's no one horrible thing that has made me want to stop watching. I'm just feeling more and more like the annoyances outweigh the enjoyment, not just in terms of things I find problematic about it, but also that it feels like it's the same jokes every week.

2. Modern Family. This has always been one that hits my embarrassment squick a lot, but this season there have been eps I had to just stop watching and more and more that I fast-foward through more than I watch.

3. Community. The season finale last year was bad, so very, very bad, but I thought maybe I could still watch it. I have been, but it's just painful. I've gone from loving Troy and Abed to hating every joke and deliberate bit of subtext because the show is so fucked up about queer people and it's just enraging. There is one actual queer character on the show and that's the dean, whose sexuality (and kinks, because kinky people are such a joke) is only brought up to be a punchline. Then there was the recent episode about lesbians, which I seriously can't even begin to talk about because I have nothing but RAEG for it. And I just can't find the Troy/Abed joking funny or cute in the middle of all this. I think it's to the point where I wouldn't even be able to enjoy them in fanfic, though I haven't tried.

There is also Pierce. I am so, so, SO sick of this sort of character. He is the Sue Sylvester of this show, the character who is there so the writers can indulge in every ism they've always secretly wanted to because he's the designated Bad *ist Character, so when they have him say and do all these horrible things, they are free from any guilt or blame and so is the audience. Everyone is free to laugh at the things they say, to enjoy that vicarious thrill of the forbidden things they could never say for fear of the "PC Police". But just because the character is a Bad Person doesn't mean it's okay! There is no purpose to this sort of character except as a way to be "un-PC" and get away with it.


Parks and Recreation is the only one I'm not considering dumping (yet), but the fact that they apparently decided not to keep Natalie Morales on this season and the constant fat hate are not very happy-making. :-/

So I'm all caught up with Parks and Recreation now and really loving it. I love all the characters now. Well, I'm not that keen on Mark. I mean, I don't hate him or anything, but he's not really great. I have really warmed to Andy and Ron over the second season, though. And Leslie hits my embarrassment squick a lot less often. I think Ann and Tom are still my favorites, but not by much because I've come to love the others so much.


I think I might quit watching Modern Family after the end of the season. I like the characters, but the show is so embarrassing. I just really find it hard to watch. Like last week's episode, when ( spoilers )

So we'll see. If nothing else, I'll finish out the season.


cesare is always raving about how great Venture Bros is, so I decided to give it a try, but I just think it's not for me. I watched the first five episodes and I think I laughed maybe twice. :-/

So having decided half-hour shows are much easier for me to keep up with than hour-long shows, I decided to check out Community and Parks and Recreation.


Community I loved immediately. I watched all twenty eps in two days (and then found to my dismay that it's on hiatus for a few weeks) and was totally hooked. I love Troy and Abed especially, but I don't think there's any characters I don't like.

The premise bugs me, because I hate the prejudice against community colleges and the whole elitism thing going on there, and this just perpetuates the idea that community colleges aren't real schools, that they have horrible teachers, that you can get a degree taking nothing but filler classes, and that even the real classes are a total breeze where you don't have to do any work.

I love that the cast has multiple women and multiple characters of color (even if the main character is a white male and the balance is overall more men than women and more whites than PoC) and that they're not just there as window dressing. It does play to stereotypes (Britta is the annoying unfun feminist, and I cringed at the plotlines involving Abed's family (also why are both Abed and his dad played by South Asians when the characters are Palestinian?), among other things), but thankfully not all the time.

Also...I totally ship Abed/Troy, but the nudge-nudge wink-wink thing with them and with Raj and Howard in Big Bang Theory really gets on my nerves. There are no openly queer characters on either show, so the only thing approaching queer representation we get is joking about how close male friends might be gay. Although in Community there's also the dean, which um...again, queerness played for laughs. :-/

Still, I really enjoyed it and am eagerly looking forward to more episodes.


Parks and Recreation I'm a little more ambivalent about. I watched the "whole" first season, which was only six episodes, and while I didn't dislike it, and I liked a lot of the supporting characters, the main character, Leslie, hits my embarrassment squick majorly, so it can be difficult to watch.

I really love Tom and Ann, though, and while at first I wasn't sure if I was going to continue watching, the fifth episode really hooked me. That is the episode where everyone thinks Ann and Leslie are a couple at a function, thanks to Leslie's very masculine haircut and suit. XD (That wasn't the only reason I loved that ep. Ron's speech, omg!)

So I'm downloading what there is of season two now and will see how that goes. :)


Overall I am really enjoying this foray into sitcoms. They were pretty much all I watched growing up (aside from some action shows like Magnum P.I.), but when I started watching TV again a few years ago after my long hiatus, it was all stuff that had big fandoms, like SGA and SPN, or that sounded interesting like Brothers & Sisters and Ugly Betty, and I find that while I can enjoy longer shows okay, I really do prefer short ones. I have trouble staying interested in a forty-minute plot, plus IMO, drama shows should have limited runs, yet networks want to draw them out forever.