If you want to buy any Amazon things through me do it now.

Specifically before or on October 6th.

I'm somewhat fuzzy on whether or not my agreement allows me to give you details of why, but the agreement becomes void on  the 6th so, if anyone is interested, I can definitely tell you on the 7th.  Until then, if you want me to get a cut of your Amazon purchases use the search box on the upper right hand side of the page to make them.  And do it soon.

Marvel's Agent of Shield, impressions written down as things were happening.

Impressions of Marvel's Agent of Shield (spoilers of course, though quotes are probably not exact):

A woman doing voice over.

So far the only characters other than her with speaking parts are a black man and his son.  Perhaps this won't be as white as feared.  And he's a superhero.

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White guy fights people.

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Agent Hill.  I like agent Hill.


White guy who fights people: "I'm clearance level six, I know Agent Coulson died before the battle of New York."

Agent Coulson walks out of the darkness. "Welcome to level seven." Beat. "I'm sorry.  I couldn't help myself.  The corner was dark and... I think there's a light out."

Shepard Book is in the show.  A doctor in this incarnation.

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"With great power comes... a ton of weird crap that you are not prepared to deal with."

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"You're really just asking me to drive the bus?"

Coulson "I'm not asking.  But it's a really nice bus."

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So far I count 4 women and 5 men as characters.  That's a Firefly ratio.  Of course there's no way to tell whether they'll stay in the series and so far no woman has spoken to any other woman.  Random white guy who fights has spoken to both Coulson and the tech support team which includes a guy.

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Hey women do talk to each other in this show.  It only took half an hour.

It took less time than that for them to kidnap someone with the black bag and everything.

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Coulson just injected his own guy with a truth serum and is letting the person he kidnapped interrogate him [the guy Coulson injected, not Coulson himself] so that she'd be able to judge for herself if they were evil or not.  Which is seven kinds of wrong but also a fun way to get someone to trust you if you take into account that it's a fictional world where not everything is meant to be taken seriously.

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And fuck.  Black guy played by Gunn from Angel is definitely not going to turn out to be a regular on this show after a scene like that.  I mean there are ways, but that's generally not how you introduce a regular.

Which drops us to 8 people who may be sticking around with equal representation between genders but the question of whiteness is still... yeah.  Because of those eight Shepherd Book and Maria Hill look like they'll be in the background, meaning that of the main six there's definitely a lighter skin tone even if not strictly Caucasian.

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And if Shield doesn't find a miracle it's going to turn out that the black guy does die first.

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And we're having a decent, "The American dream turned out to be a lie," speech.

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And the black guy died first.

Wait.  No.  But he's still not going to stick with the show.

Coulson's car is from Back to the Future.

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And as a final note, I stopped recording too early.  I didn't miss anything of great value, just the next time bit and the credits that ran concurrently, but I record the credits as a matter of principle.

I thought the "Mutant Enemy" thing ran after everything else was done.

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And, also, the lone hacker who can punch through any security system with a laptop ze won on a bet is, in fact, someone with superhero level powers.  She'll be a regular.  The show has:

Agent Coulson: Badass Bureaucrat who, by all appearances, is going to stop being a bureaucrat to run the team.  At least he still understands that guns aren't usually the solution and thus should be saved for last resort.

White guy who is antisocial and fights people.  Also may have grandmother issues.

Recently hired --as in she accepts the job sometime after the episode ends, but less than ten minutes after-- woman with the superpower of HACKING!  Yes the capital letters and exclamation mark are necessary.

Former agent who retired from field work to be at the place where Coulson speculates that the red tape is made.  She's the one who he got to drive the bus (which turned out to be a plane.)  She does not end up standing on the sidelines.

Tech support.  A man and a woman.  Both geniuses.

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Agent Melinda May, the formerly former agent, played by Ming-Na Wen is the only non-Caucasian in the main six.  (Mane six?  Could these be ponies?  I don't know enough about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to really know.)

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If I have many more posts on TV series I'm going to have to stop sticking them under the "movies" tag and make a "tv" tag.

Fucking money; I don't have enough.

My left shoe blew out today.  Now when I walk my left heel starts to slide out the new hole in the side of my shoe.  I have shoes that can work nicely for inside or short distances, but no other shoes that work for the hour long walk into school and the hour long walk back.  I can't afford to buy new ones either.  I'm going to try to see if I can play amateur cobbler.

I think I'm just going to continue noting that I have negative money as a result of my tooth (so if anyone who hasn't yet could donate, I would be extremely appreciative) every post in hopes that maybe someone else actually can donate.  Slim hope, but it's pretty much all I've got at this stage.

I also have the expense of university to think about.

And other stuff.

And while I still don't have an exact value of how much, at least I finally know when the expense of staying in this house will go up: January.

Fucking money; I don't have enough.

The Appalachian Trail hiker who is deaf-blind

Last night I went to a small meeting in the library at my university that was intended to celebrate the end of the hike of Roger Poulin and Roni Lepore.  Poulin was born with a condition that affects hearing, vision, and balance.  He is deaf, his balance is apparently bad enough that police officers think he's drunk, and he describes the vision he does have --extreme tunnel vision in one eye, no vision in the other-- as allowing him to see an area about the size of a softball.  Lepore is deaf and serves as Roger's special service provider.

(To be able to see what Lepore signs Rodger has to hold on to her arm at the wrist so that he knows where he needs to put his softball of vision.  Of course there's also tactile signing, which is effective even in the dark.)

Unfortunately Poulin wasn't able to complete his hike.  About two miles from the top of Mt. Katahdin he, Lepore, and some people who had joined them, were forced to turn back due to conditions and daylight.  Everyone, especially Poulin, was disappointed.  As he pointed out in his remarks, two miles from the top is within sight of the goal.

He'll be returning to do the end of the trail next year in June or July then the daylight lasts longer.

He got the idea when his brother (one of his brothers? I had some trouble following things) was planning for an attempt at the Appalachian Trail which never materialized.  In 2007 he met Lepore at the Helen Keller National Center in New York and told her about the idea.  In 2008 the two began taking classes to prepare.  By 2010 they were ready to start.

Poulin at first thought that he could hike the trail much more quickly than he was actually able to.  He measured himself against the hikers who were passing him, mostly sighted hearing people with no balance problems, and Bill Irwin, author of the book Blind Courage (the only blind person to hike the entire trail without human assistance.)  That meant that he was hoping to finish the trail in less than a year.  That... didn't happen.  Once he accepted that he needed to go at his own pace it seems like things went reasonably well although using protective equipment apparently required a fair amount of soul searching because of childhood bullying about such equipment.

Poulin isn't all that young.  Bullying can have effects that last a damn long time.

On another note, a large proportion of men can't smell male body odor, it seems like Poulin might  be one of them.  Lepore had a lot to sign about his stench.  That had to be one the more humorous things they discussed.

If you're interested in more about this, see their blog.

You ever have one of those days when you just can't think?

I've been having that a lot lately.

Part of it is no doubt that I have money problems.  Remember the dentistry?  Remember how I asked for money because I didn't have enough to pay for it?  I am grateful to those who donated, and I have nothing against those who didn't (I'm sure you all have better things to do with your money than give it to me), but I never did get enough to pay for it so I'm still under that debt as well as others.  That leaves me in a near constant state of "I have to make money" but never actually doing anything toward that end because I freeze up.

I had hoped that getting on disability would allow me to not be in financial distress which would in turn allow me to actually accomplish things rather than freeze up which would in turn (it's like dominoes, each thing sets up the next) allow me to get off of disability and support myself.  Instead I almost immediately had the root canal thing hit me and all of my money and more is accounted for.

Part of it is no doubt school.  This semester most of my classes (three out of four) are me retaking things I've already taken in order to replace bad grades with better ones.  On the one hand this means I've been exposed to the material before.  On the other hand... it means I've been exposed to the material before.  There's this one homework assignment.  I have to do it today.  I thought it was due last week so I've had it on my mind for quite a while and the fact that it's not done as of last week should show you how the pressure of a deadline isn't helping me much.

The problem is that it requires me to watch and respond to a video that I've already seen.  The video was boring and somewhat painful the first time.  It's about how not to fuck up as a hearing student of sign language interacting with deaf people.  It does this mostly by showing situations and three possible ways to respond to them, thus two fuck ups for every one thing right.  It's like cringe comedy without the comedy.  And I say that as someone who never found cringe comedy funny in the first place.

In addition to being painful to watch, there's the added problem that having seen the video before I know on some level (less than a thing remembered, more than a fleeting feeling) what the right answer is.  So it's hard to have a reaction to it.  Of course it's the right answer.  What is there to say beyond, "Exactly what I thought it would be, for the reasons I thought it would be that"?

Also I'm ineligible for further financial aid from the government.  I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, so I'll recap.  Everything checks out except the number of credits I've already tried to earn.  It's too many.  If not for the classes I failed on account of mental health it wouldn't be, but it is.  So I have to pay for school out of pocket and I haven't done that and I don't really have a way to do that.  Just sort of a hail Mary that maybe I can scrape the money together (and pay the late fees) somehow before the semester's end.  So more financial distress.  Yay.  But school pays for my psychologist and psychiatrist and I need them both.

Part of it is no doubt sleep.  I haven't been getting it nearly as well as I should be.  I'm going to have to talk to my psychiatrist about that because one of my medications causes utter insomnia in me (and is the only thing in the history of ever to deal with my depression) while another one counterbalances it in both theory and practice but hasn't been doing it as well as it should lately.  (Without it I don't sleep at all, but lately with it I don't sleep well.  So suboptimalness there.)

After that we get into things that do have doubt.  Only three no doubts.

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I'm sorry that I haven't been posting new material.  I'd really like to.  But that requires making it first and I've been kind of failing on that score.

Whedon Stuff Post

For those interested in discussing such things in a place called something other than "Placeholder Post"

The topic so far has been phrases you wouldn't know were references to Firefly without appropriate context (which the universe rarely provides if you have not seen the show.)

Placeholder Post

This post has no content.

It exists solely so that the last post, about Buffy and Angel being on sale, won't be the most recent post when it ceases to represent the truth.