linx/odd topics

I’ve got a couple of links to share that I keep forgetting about. First there is the comic below, which is too funny for me just to link to and take the chance that you won’t read it.

There is also this, a map of heavy metal band names, which created peals of laughter in our computer room when BF and I looked at it. TB and Heather, take note; I think you will like this.

I have a few other things I want to talk about, and each is a little weird.

BF and I have now watched the entire fourth season of Highlander together. In my view, this is not a great show; it’s a pretty good show, entertaining and rarely awful and with an excellent overall concept (taken from the movie, obviously), but it’s not a great show. That’s my opinion. But good shows can have great characters, and one of them is Methos.

For those of you not willing to click on the spoileriffic link there, Methos is a 5,000-year-old immortal*, a guy who’s passed entirely into legend among immortals who do not actually know him (such as the main characters of the show). He also poses as a mortal Watcher, part of the organization that…watches…immortals and their doings. His backstory is, shall we say, substantial. He is played by Peter Wingfield, and from what I’ve seen of him in this sole season of Highlander I’ve watched, he is marvellously characterized. The thing that I find most interesting (aside from the 5,000-year-oldness) is that he seems to admire Duncan (the main character), although it’s never explicitly put into the scripts or the characters’ performances. I think he thinks that Duncan is simply a better person than he is, and that current runs under all the ways he interacts with Duncan and the favors he agrees to do for him. That’s a pretty neat dynamic for a pre-Sopranos TV show.

*Stop, and think about that, for a moment…alive three thousand years before Christ, and still around.

He’s also cute, and charismatic, and great fun to watch. The actor is a Brit, one of those British men with vast noses and angular faces. I like Methos sort of the same way I like Butters on South Park; stuff that each of them says makes me spontaneously tell them I love them through the TV, and I am always happier watching an episode involving them. Although that’s where the similarities end; I am not remotely attracted to Butters.

So, the other night we watched an episode with Methos in it, and that night I dreamed about him. I dreamed that I was an immortal, and a group of evil immortals kidnapped me and were going to take my head. In the dream I was in love with Methos and had been for ages, but he didn’t know about it, except when he found out I was in mortal danger, he started to fall in love with me, and eventually rescued me. Squee! I woke up feeling happy and ashamed at the same time. I mean, this is Highlander, people. Peter Wingfield is no Hugh Laurie. (I suppose.) But it was still a fun dream.

Before I went to sleep and dreamed that dream, something else unusual happened. I had been reading my book, earlier I had been watching Highlander, and in my head a few scenes from various films were running around. (I get scenes from movies stuck in my head the same way normal people get songs stuck in their heads. It’s generally only movies I’ve seen many times, but there are a lot of movies in that category.) Suddenly, disconcertingly, all of that was swept out of my head as if a recycle bin had been emptied, and I was staring up at the ceiling inside my very own life. All the fictions, all the narratives I had consumed were pushed away, and there I was, unglamorous, unafraid, unsheltered by fiction, alive. I wasn’t comparing myself to any characters, I wasn’t distracted by any narratives, I was just there. In the moment. I explained this to BF and he said, “Moments of clarity are rare.” I seized on this phrase – this was exactly what had happened. It was a moment of clarity, a realization of being-in-the-world, as Heidegger would have it. I feel this sometimes during yoga, but it’s never been a snapping-back that was as sudden or extreme as this one.

Fun fact about me: I always win at Freecell. I suck at computer solitaire, I don’t get anything out of Minesweeper, and I like Spider OK as a pleasant time-suck, but Freecell has always been a gift for me. When I was in high school, I had something of a rep among my friends for being able to beat any Freecell game, and I set one friend to staring, openmouthed, at my quick (three tries, as I recall) solution of a game that he’d been working on for weeks. Last night I had to play one a few times before I got it, and BF was watching. He asked me if I was stuck, and I said “There’s a solution to every Freecell game.” He thought for a moment, and then asked me if this had actually been proven. I didn’t know. Anecdotally it was true; I’ve played hundreds of games of Freecell and have eventually won every one.

Until now I’ve found it somewhat comforting, my ability to solve every Freecell game I’m confronted with. It makes me feel that the same may hold true in life. Picard said in an aliens-kidnapped-me episode that there is an answer to every puzzle, no matter how long it takes to find it, and truly the first thing I thought of when I heard this was Freecell. All of life’s puzzles can have the answers to them teased out, too, I believe. You just may have to restart the game a few times.

Unfortunately, the metaphor collapses when confronted with Wikipedia. BF went to the other computer and found out that, in fact, Picard is not correct when it comes to Freecell. There is a single game out of the 32,000 numbered games of Freecell that is unwinnable. I don’t believe I’ve happened upon this game myself, but if I ever do, boy, will I be pissed.