Backburner update

These projects are all jockeying for status on the front burner, some more than others.
1. Crocheting. I'm on row 15 out of 48 (give or take) of a market bag for one of Melinda's youtube subscribers. One more person on the waitlist after that. Then I have to make Melinda a crocheted cardigan.
2. Post 5 crochet hats on my Etsy shop. (Coming soon. You'll hear about it!)
3. Music. Still need to record "Lonesome Valley (of Pterodactyls)" and post it on youtube. I need to practice the bass part, or decide to do it without instruments.
4. Brazen Hearts. A. Polish and record "The Franco-Sadie Wars." B. Write chapters 13-18, assemble and submit to publishers as a novel.
5. Rafter shelves. Nail the old "laths" from our busted out kitchen ceiling across sections of the basement rafters to make shelves for storing books. Should be low enough that Melinda can reach it.

Over the weekend, my crocheting was enhanced by watching some cool sci-fi shows that I can only see free on-demand.

Being Human. I might have ignored this if it was just about vampires and werewolves, but this show is about a vamp, a werewolf and a ghost trying to make a go of it as roommates. It sounded like an interesting combination. I'm glad I gave it a try. They're listing it in the free on-demand section even if you don't subscribe to BBC America.

I knew Torchwood: Children of Earth was spunoff from some other BBC series, but luckily I tried and enjoyed two or three episodes before they mentioned "The Doctor", or before someone said it Welshlessly enough for me to understand it. (I was watching Season 3, Eps 1-3? "Children of Earth".) There were some silly bits where a temp in a high politician's office is given access to a top secret email account where she discovers the govt plot to kill our heroes, then takes it upon herself to contact and warn them. This happens in her first day on the job, no less. Otherwise, it's pretty good and thoughtful and makes me reconsider whether the newer Doctor Who series might be worth watching too.

SPOILER: Among all the govt conspiracy and aliens and sci-fi and investigation at the end of an episode, two co-workers in a tense situation share a passionate kiss. The tense situation is that one of them had a bomb implanted in his stomach while he was unconscious, excuse me, while he was dead. And that's two guys.

I laughed my ass off, but felt proud that sci-fi sorta broke another barrier. If I remember correctly, the first major motion picture inter-racial kiss was between Charlton Heston and Rosalind Cash(?) in The Omega Man. The first inter-racial kiss on tv was between Shatner and Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek. (Correction: Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Nancy Sinatra on a tv special before the Shatner-Nichols kiss. I assume it wasn't as passionate as the one on Star Trek. Also Shatner kissed a Vietnamese actress in an earlier episode, though she was in alien drag, I mean space alien. Island in the Sun might have set the earlier precedent for big movies in 1957. Darn. My pop culture civil rights history turns out to be myth.)

I'm sure there have been boy-on-boy kisses on regular tv before. This seemed to break a weird threshold because it's not a show about relationships (like thirtysomething, first US tv show where two men were shown in bed together IIRC), or a show where one character's gayness is built into the premise of the show, ala Will & Grace or The L Word. It's not a comedy where the kiss was played for laughs like SNL. It's a sci-fi show, and lots of sci-fi stuff was happening, and then in the course of developing the characters, the two that fall in love or lust happen to be men.

I was thinking more along the lines of Sci-Fi Civil Rights pride, not Gay Pride, but take it however you want.

Finally Warehouse 13 is good enough to keep me watching. It would seem a little more realistic if there wasn't some famous person who had invented or messed with every artifact they come across. It occurred to me that there are two broad interpretations of the show. Either the artifacts they collect have powers that can't be explained by known science at this time, or magic is real in a way that can never be explained by science.