trixtah: (Servalan)
Trixtah ([personal profile] trixtah) wrote2006-12-21 07:45 pm
Entry tags:

Geek boys and conspiracy theories

Over the course of this week, I attended the RedHat course that is the last one for achieving the RedHat Certified Engineer qualification. I won't be doing the actual exam any time soon, since it has been the most difficult course I've done as an adult. While I had no problem with the concepts (except for bloody SELinux, give me a break), carrying out the lab sessions was an exercise in frustration. Even when I followed some solutions line by line, they were still frustrating - ie. they didn't work. The instructor couldn't figure out why some things didn't work. Not one of my happier weeks. Although getting the email working was a breeze, hah.

Anyways, we all had lunch together, and of course I was the only female in the class. Within half an hour of chat, they all got onto their outré theories as to the origins of 9/11. I really don't have patience with conspiracy theories on that matter. Anyone with any brain can see how the towers collapsed. The planes were most definitely civil aviation planes. If you have the slightest inkling of how aviation systems work (and my own inkling is very slight), you know just how easy it is for an air traffic controller to lose a particular plane when there are thousands flying around, its transponder is turned off, and it's not where you expect it to be. ATCs manage sectors. If a pilot doesn't update the ATC of his/her location, and flies into another sector, that unidentified blip on the radar screen could be anything (assuming that sector has full radar coverage). My boss, who should know better about the aviation side, is another one of these conspiracy idiots.

Ranting aside, I've decided that conspiracy theories fulfill the same mechanism for a certain kind of geek boy that those schmaltzy "you're a special person, forward this on to 5000 people and make a wish" chain emails sent by certain females do. It's a kind of bonding thing. Both things drive me absolutely insane. What happens if you get a conspiracy geek-boy making babies with a glurge-letter chick? I'm sure the resulting offspring would be slaves of Cthulhu in short order.

Oh, and to the uber-nerdboy who couldn't eat with his mouth shut, and who thought Torchwood was too much with the sexiness, because you know, there has been "lesbian kissing"? Get a fucking life.

[Wine and eps 8 & 9 of Torchwood are starting to make me human. Just as well.]

[identity profile] saluqi.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 10:40 am (UTC)(link)
There was a man complaining about lesbian kissing? That's something you don't hear every day.

Project for the New Year: Trix gets permanent employee status.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 11:22 am (UTC)(link)
I know, about the lesbian kissing! I was so flabbergasted, I couldn't summon up a witty come-back. Mind you, given his looks and, er, social skills, I think his own kissing experience is fairly light. Maybe seeing it on the screen with hawt chicks made him feel strange things.

As for my New Year's project - yes, most definitely with you there. :-D

No, really, 9/11 was arranged by the US governements in a bid to screw everyone else's date system..

[identity profile] buddleia.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
Terry Pratchett paraphrased:
"It continued to amaze him that a government which was regularly credited with the inability to manage its own affairs, grasp simple concepts or organise a piss-up in a brewery was also supposed to have concealed an alien invasion and sustained a long-term conspiracy over the moon landings..."
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Re: No, really, 9/11 was arranged by the US governements in a bid to screw everyone else's date syst

[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
*chortle* Exactly!

Mind you, there must be some fairly sophisticated rigging apparatus around, given the baboon who is the current POTUS. Those conspiracy theories, I have a lot of time for.

And thank god I'm not the only person with a pet peeve about the US date order. There really is no justification, and it drives me wild that every computer installation in the universe defaults to it. If they defaulted to the ISO standard (YYMMDD...), I could cope. Feh. Don't get me started on ASCII.

*off to watch Ep 10*

[identity profile] ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 12:08 pm (UTC)(link)
:::brainless Servalan swoon commment:::
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Servalan is teh hawt. I'd be totally happy to head over to the dark side with her - "Ok, you'll shag me after you blow up the rebels, if not the entire universe? Sure, hon, go to it!" ;-)

[identity profile] ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
:::laugh:::

I getcha.

Me being me, I have complicated fantasies involving Servalan, Avon or both, upside down and sideways, and always did!

Too, too D/s :-o

I shall draw on my Servalan imagery when creating a meaner scene ;-)!
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:20 pm (UTC)(link)
It's funny how she inspires such thoughts. Not.

But any Evil Empress (http://nift.firedrake.org/EEmpress.htm) requires an Amazon Horde, so I'd be happy to head that one up. And give Avon some of the treatment he so eminently deserves. Heh.

[identity profile] ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I can't be a minion of either..but I can be subversive!

and I have saved that link ;-)
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-22 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
Subversion is good. Especially when it gets people to save evul links. Hee! ;-)

[identity profile] epi-lj.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)
You know, all the "you're a special person, forward this on to 5000 people and make a wish" chain emails that I get are from men. (Well, from one man in particular most of the time.)
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Good lord, really? The only things I've gotten mass-mailed from guys are Jackass-type vid clips and more-or-less lame lists of jokes (although I find the latter is fairly gender non-specific).

I've managed to mostly train the several chickies who send me glurge mail not to, but they slip occasionally. I suppose it's like the electronic equivalent of a Hallmark card - saying "I'm thinking of you", but without having to come up with meaningful content.

[identity profile] epi-lj.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm lucky in that I've trained most people who have my e-mail address out of forwarding me things, so that's part of it. A small part is of course that I've established mailing lists for our social circle, so a certain amount of the linkage and so on go to the list (which does serve as an editing factor to some degree, because the list membership is diverse enough that people think twice about whether everyone would appreciate a given thing or not). At work, people don't usually forward me much at all. I know they forward it to each other, but I seem to have gotten left off those lists, thankfully. Once in a while I do get "Hug someone today!" powerpoint shows and stuff, usually from this one guy who works here. He's been on site for about three years now, so maybe he's lonely.

The only guy I generally tolerate the forwarded stuff outside of work from is this one guy I'm sort of perpetually not-quite-involved with. He's really sweet, but EXCEEDINGLY forward-happy. I think the biggest thing is that I have to teach him that I'm not keen on gender-based "humour", especially of the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus / How the world Would Be Different is Men / Women did X / Y, Hey aren't Men / Women Stupid! sort.

It's probably somehow telling that the only person I *haven't* attempted to train out the habit is someone I'm still sort of hoping to have sex with again sometime. ;) Then again, I think the bigger part of it is that it's just so much the sort of thing you'd expect him to do -- such a part of his character -- that I don't know if you really could reasonably change that.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-22 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
Heh, it's interesting how tolerant we get of certain stuff when we find someone sufficiently cute. :-D

As for the "men are from Mars" crap, I've also firmly squelched that one, including from a few of my nearest-and-dearest. One of the guys at work sent me one just yesterday, and was taken-aback that I didn't find the "all men are dorks just waiting for women to manipulate them" thing funny in the slightest. Because, you know, us big butch feminists are supposed to feel as much contempt/resentment for men as unreconstructed idiots of either gender feel for the opposite one.

I suppose one could look at it as being a sign of "progress" that there is equally offensive sexist material flying around at the expense of men as of women... but, funnily enough, I don't see it that way. :-/
ironed_orchid: watercolour and pen style sketch of a brown tabby cat curl up with her head looking up at the viewer and her front paw stretched out on the left (Default)

[personal profile] ironed_orchid 2006-12-21 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
There's nothing wrong with being a slave to Cthulhu.

I've heard a bunch of geekboys complain about the emotional and sexual stuff on teh new who, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to find them a little stunned by Torchwood. Actually, if all he saw was was lesbian kissing, I suspect he only watched the first two episodes and then gave up. Idiot.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-22 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
LOL! Cute icon! :-D

Yeah, re the geekboys freaking out at having to deal with stuff that requires them to have an emotional maturity of greater than age 12, it's irritating. I'm glad that I don't have to work with any at present.

I think you're right about Mr Geekboy only watching the first couple of eps. He said that it was no wonder it was shown so late at night. Yes, because it's a (admittedly escapist) programme for adults, dork.

I for one am glad that the powers-that-be are slowly waking up to the fact that not all sci-fi fans are socially-inept pimple-faced adolescents (not that all of those labels haven't applied to me at one time or another... or still, heh).
ironed_orchid: watercolour and pen style sketch of a brown tabby cat curl up with her head looking up at the viewer and her front paw stretched out on the left (Default)

[personal profile] ironed_orchid 2006-12-22 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, some sci-fi geeks have grown up to become socially ept adults who aren't completely restrained by genre.

Someone said the popularity of Buffy was due to its combining of the fantasy/horror/comedy elements with emotional development of the characters, and that in a post Buffy world, there are fans who need more than whizz bang effects. I think that's probably right.
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[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-22 06:38 am (UTC)(link)
Huh, that's a very interesting observation about Buffy. It seems apt to me, too, because there definitely has been a shift in character development in similar shows since around then. I should definitely grab the DVDS and watch it some time - I haven't had a TV for a looong time.

And that icon cracks me up. Classic! :-D
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[identity profile] submarine-bells.livejournal.com 2006-12-21 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
It's good that someone likes Torchwood. :-7 Artyem and I have given up on it because it just irked us to the point where we didn't enjoy it any more... they're a Big Sekrit Above The Government Agency and they've got their name on their car wiv blinkenlites? They're doing Vital World-Saving Stuff and they put up with unprofessional idiotic behaviour from their staff on a weekly basis? Puh-leeeze. Several of the plots almost seemed as if they were going to make sense, until the Amazing Hand-waving Pull A Rabbit Out Of The Hat Solution appeared again. And if they're gonna have the cameras focussing so much and so detailedly on them waving firearms around whenever threatened, it'd really help if someone on the production staff actually knew how to use them. *sigh*

Sorry, I'll stop ranting now. :-\ I really wanted to like Torchwood, but I found that the idiotic writing got too much for me. I gather you find plenty to like in the show. If you felt like telling me what you enjoy about it, I'd be interested in seeing a different angle on it.
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Please, rant away! :-)

[identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com 2006-12-22 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
I do know what you mean about some of the deus ex machina-type plot resolutions. It can be a bit cheesy. Still, it's not cheesy enough to make me groan out loud the way that the last series of Doctor Who did, at several points. That had some diabolical writing, although the last ep blew me away (also partly because David Tennant had bugger-all gurning opportunity, thank god).

And yep, I'm not one of Captain Jack's fangirls, precisely because of his arrogant, need-to-know leadership style. However, this idol is also most certainly shown to have feet of clay. He often falls flat on his face due to this policy, and I hope that feeling about it is maintained, rather than it eventually turning out to imply that "secrets are for the best" and "I know everything and you little minions have no hope of ever doing so". That will piss me off, if it happens.

Re them turning up in the Batmobile and walking to the crime scene like something out of a Kurosawa flick, I see that as deliberate parody, so it doesn't irritate. Re the weapons-handling thing, I personally wouldn't have a clue, so it doesn't tweak me, although I can totally see how it would someone more knowlegable. I do think a cop show (which this essentially is, with aliens) should make a point of getting it reasonably right for those who do care about such things.

But what do I like about it? It's all about the PORN. Seriously. They have nookie. There are ambiguous sexualities all over the place. Gwen is teh HAWT. I like the humour in it, which is less slapsticky than the Doctor Who kind. I like the fact it's for grown-ups and not for 12-year-olds (not that I mind lots of programmes designed for 12-year-olds, but it's nice to have a change). I like the characterisations, which play around with sterotypes but don't buy into them. I like the fact that the characters are growing (as Rose did in Doctor Who, and even bloody Mickey), although if some of the loose ends are dropped or certain themes aren't continued, I will be peeved.

So there you go. It's funny how some things don't necessarily fit when you think they should. It's taken me a long time to get to grips with the fact there is very little sci-fi tv/movies I can enjoy, even though I like reading in the genre.

However, I think that what we get in the SF media is about 10-15 years behind where things are at in the SF literature (in terms of handling themes and character development), so it's no wonder I find it hit-and-miss. It is improving, and at least there is more variety to choose from at present. If all we had was Star Trek and SGA, I'd be annoyed, but we don't, thank god. Torchwood seems to be a good fit for my SF preferences, cheese and all. :-)