MOFFAT *shakes fist*

Lots of incoherent freaking out ahead. But I needed to write some stuff down for the sake of my sanity.

So, my brain for the last month in general for the last month or so, but even more so since last saturday:

DOCTOR WHO DOCTOR WHO okay at class, focusing on school, studying OMG I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING ABOUT DOCTOR WHO WHOA DOCTOR WHO MOFFAT HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US BRAINSPLOSION.

Oh, and also some probably unhealthy fixation on Arthur Darvill.

I'm pretty sure that last year, there was also high levels of "I just want to know what's going on. Now. Can't wait until next week." It can't have been this bad, though. And then for the first four seasons, I had the luxury of watching them after the entire season was out, so I could go straight to the next episode in the event of a cliffhanger.

Anyway, last week had one HELL of a cliffhanger. And the trailer for this week looks AMAZING. And we're going to finally find out WHO RIVER SONG IS. And. And. And. BRAINSPLOSION.

Right. So here's my best guesses for what's going on:
1. Amy's been a ganger since sometime during the 1st episode of this season, or possibly between the 1st and 2nd episodes (see my blog post about her clothes.)
2. It seems pretty clear that River is the doctor's wife, or at least lover, at this point. But I wouldn't be too surprised if he is the man she killed/ will kill. And Amy's baby being baby River... also possible. So basically, I'm not ruling anything out as I am too chicken to take a firm stance on anything.
3. I am pretty sure that the regenerating girl was Amy's daughter (who could also be River, again, I really don't know.) The only thing that makes me think maybe she's not is just how obvious it seems to be.
4. Rory is a sexy Roman Nurse awesomeface. I am in love with him. Also, there's a chance he's also a ganger- that could be part of the reason he had to stand away from Amy when the Doctor revealed her to be a ganger. Or maybe he's a nestene duplicate again, who knows?
5. Eye patch lady freaks me out. Seriously. More than anything.
6. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON.

Switching Shoes: clothing in Doctor Who series 6

(By the way, spoilers through the sixth episode of series 6. Also, musing at length about things that you may not think need musing at length about. You are warned.)

If you watch Doctor Who closely, or spend a lot of time around the Doctor Who fan community, you probably became aware of the Eleventh Doctor's color-coded bow ties during series 5. While in the future, he wore a red bowtie, and in the past or present, he wore blue (with the exception of the first episode and the final 2-parter, when he does wear red despite being in the past and present).

He doesn't seem to be following that pattern this year. In "The Curse of the Black Spot" he wore red in the past, and in "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People" he was wearing blue in the future. Maybe there's a new rule. Like, if Rory dies, the Doctor wears Red. Or something. He also seems to have a purple bowtie and suspenders in the first episode when he's Future Doctor. Or maybe it was just the light. I couldn't really tell.

Then there is a Doctor wardrobe plot point in "The Almost People," when the Doctor reveals that he and his doppelganger switched shoes so that everyone thought the doppelganger was the original.

Anyway, I'm not too interested in the Doctor's choice of clothing. No, this is going to center around the very plaid costume choices of one Amy Pond. First of all, to recap what she's worn so far this season:

Amy has two red plaid shirts, and she wears one or the other for at least part of every episode. Shirt Number One, which she wears for most of "The Impossible Astronaut" and all of "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People" is a little more fitted, and is a brighter red with less white. Shirt Number Two, with a little more white in the plaid, was actually first seen before the season started, in the two part Red Nose Day special, and then is worn for a part of "Day of the Moon" and all of "Curse of the Black Spot" and "The Doctor's Wife." The only other tops we've seen Amy in are a darker purple plaid at the very beginning of the first episode, and the black suit in the second episode.

At this point, you may be wondering why I am so fixated on Amy's lack of clothing variation. She did, after all, start the season by packing a backpack and running off with Rory to meet the Doctor in Utah, hitchhiking on a school bus in the process. Maybe she just ended up packing one of her favorite flannels, and then wearing another, similar shirt, and didn't bring any of the solid-colored shirts that were her standard fare last season. She had at least a couple of pairs of boots and a couple of jackets in that bag, so there wasn't much room for anything else.

Therefore, while I am hesitant to dismiss anything as non-plot-important in Doctor Who, especially in the Moffat era of Doctor Who, I am willing to let one of these two shirts slide as just a shirt and not a plot point. That would be shirt number Two, the one she is wearing during the middle of the Spring run. At this point, I am willing to admit that it is only a shirt.

Shirt number One, however, does have some significant plot significance, as do the cropped skinny jeans that she wears with it.

Starting from about two minutes into "The Impossible Astronaut," Amy wears shirt number One, the cropped jeans, and brown sneakers.  In one or two scenes she adds a tan jacket. She wears the same clothes through that episode, and is still wearing the same outfit at the beginning of the next episode until they all meet up and get back into the TARDIS, about six minutes in. Then in "The Rebel Fresh," she's wearing the same shirt and jeans, but this time with some tan ankle boots and a black leather jacket. Since, like most Doctor Who episodes, the entire two-parter takes place in the span of several hours, she's still wearing the same outfit through "The Rebel Flesh."

But.

At the end of the episode, after everyone is seemingly out of danger and they're out of the cold, drafty monastery, Amy changes her outfit a bit- she is now wearing shirt number One, those cropped skinny jeans, no jacket, and brown sneakers instead of the boots she had on earlier. And that is what she is wearing when the Doctor reveals to her and Rory (and the audience, of course) that Amy isn't actually Amy, telling her, "You haven't been here for a long, long time," and sonic-ing her into a puddle of raw Flesh.

Okay. So why am I so fixated on what she was wearing at that point?

Well, it didn't specifically show every article of clothing she was wearing, but she had a perfectly duplicated outfit from the first episode at that point, and that from what we could see, her clothes went all Flesh with the rest of her. This indicates to me that she was wearing clothes that were made entirely of Flesh at that point- gangers can and do change clothes (especially since Amy didn't know she was one), but if she was wearing clothes that were the originals, she would have dissolved and left her clothing behind.

Gangers are created wearing whatever their original was wearing when he or she was scanned, so it seems to me that Amy must have been replaced while wearing that outfit- ergo, sometime during episode one or between episodes one and two. This is supported by the fact that she first sees eyepatch lady in the middle of episode two.

So there we go. My take on Amy's clothing in series 6 and it's significance. I kind of want to buy a red plaid shirt now.

BEDA 30!!!!!!!!!!

My last BEDA post! Wow!

Today, I spent about 8 hours at the Santa Barbara Red Cross getting certified in Adult/Child/Infant CPR/AED/First Aid. Yeah, I got 5 separate certifications. Pretty good for a day's work. And I can save babies now, or whatever. Not the most interesting way to spend a saturday, but not the least either (traffic school wins /that/ award).

Now I'm watching Starship. It's pretty darn good. Not quite on the level of the Potter ones, but it's fun. I never actually got through all of Me and My Dick. But anyways, this show is pretty darn awesome, and I'm only halfway through. Lauren Lopez is awesome in it. And of course, Joey Richter. I love Joey Richter. Maybe I'll write a non-BEDA post sometime in the next few days and do a more complete review.

So yeah. DONE WITH THE BEDA!!!!!!

BEDA 29: Almost Done!

I thought for a second, "Wait, I didn't blog yesterday" at about 12:05, then I was like "wait, I blogged twice." Haha.

So, I blog once during daytime today/tomorrow, and I will have officially done 30 blog posts in the 30 days of April. I haven't done an actual every day for the last week and a half, but I've done pretty well. Better than I did on NaNoWriMo, but then, that's a lot of work, while BEDA is exactly as much work as you decide to make it be. MY blog posts are mostly short and pointless musings that take 15 minutes to write. If i'd done the vlogging option, it would have been a much bigger commitment.

That said, I might do Vlog every day in August. Depending on what I decide to do in august. I guess there's a very real possibility that I'll either end up doing absolutely nothing, making it difficult to find things to Vlog about, or I'll do too much, and end up away from reliable internet or too busy to want to blog for days at a time. Oh well, I have time to figure that out.

BEDA 28: Finally registered for Annual Gathering!

My big news of the day is that I finally got around to registering for the church conference annual gathering that I'm an official delegate for. So I get to go to San Diego the first weekend in June! I'm kind of excited. I've only been to San Diego once, for like a day, during christmas break last December. I guess now I kind of officially live in Southern California, though.

Have I talked about this on my blog? I don't think I have. As of probably this June, my parents will no longer be living in Oroville. My dad has already been down in La Habra, CA (the northern edge of Orange County, for those who care) for about 5 months, and my mom is moving down there once the school year is over. My sister's staying up north, and I'm staying here. My brother's presumably moving down with my parents. So I'm officially going to be a SoCal person. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I've been in Santa Barbara for a year and a half, but that's just at college, I can still consider myself a NorCal person, and Santa Barbara is like the top edge of what you can call SoCal anyways.

So right. Church meeting. I like church meetings. Well, the business part is inevitably boring, but at least I get to vote. Going to church business meetings and not being able to vote is both boring and frustrating. I don't know how it works in all kinds of churches- I'm pretty sure a lot of them just have a few head honchos who decide everything- but in the UC, everything is very democratic, everyone gets their voice heard, and they argue about pointless stuff for hours on end if they are allowed. But the rest of everything is a lot of fun. :)

BEDA 27: I need ideas...

4 more blog posts this month, including this one. And I don't know what to write about. Maybe I should just go to bed.

And yes, I'm counting this as a BEDA post. Get over it.

BEDA 26: I was kinda a jerk to Alex Carpenter

We can add "jerk" to "stalker" on the list of "qualities Kara exhibits toward youtubers, specifically ones named Alex Carpenter."

Okay, I don't think it was that bad. I don't think he thought it was that bad. But he made me feel bad. Basically, he posted a kind of ranty VEDA last night about how people think he's in MoM and that his song "Don't Blink" is either a cover or just inferior to the Chameleon Circuit song, "Blink." Oh, and he said Charlie McDonald instead of Charlie McDonnell. Twice. Yeah. So I had to give him a hard time, because I always give people a hard time. I commented, saying "Defensive Alex is Defensive", and that if he was going to call Charlie, "Charlie Mcdonald" I would call him "Alex Carpenterd."

Then he responds to my comment, with the Remus Lupins channel for some reason (I'm guessing because he just logged into that channel for whatever reason then went to check comments on his veda without switching back to the veda channel). He leads with "Attacked Alex is Attacked." Then goes on to say that he knows what Charlie's name is, and some bs excuse about his problem being bad sentence structure. Thanks, now I feel like a meany.

So in my defense, I posted this comment at about 1:30 AM, while taking a break from studying for my Environmental Studies midterm (which went quite well, thank you), and I was in a bit of a bad mood because I was tired and tired of studying. And I wasn't trying to be mean. And I didn't realize until later that I was kind of calling him a turd (Alex Carpenterd? yeah). Don't know if he, or anyone took it that way, but it could be interpreted like that. It wasn't aimed at any particular pronounciation or anything- if Jason had misspoken in the same way, I would call him Jason Mundayd. Luke would have to lose a D on his name, to become Luke Conar.

Alex probably doesn't care. He probably isn't going to lose sleep thinking one of his fans is a total bitchface. I just feel sad because I like to come across as a nice person. It generally makes me very happy when people respond to my comments on their videos. It doesn't make me happy when I feel like I've been mean to them. Not that I was even trying to be mean. I was teasing him a bit, maybe, but not being malicious. I was being snarky. I do this with my friends. And even though he doesn't know me, I feel like I know him pretty well. There's a lot of youtubers that I feel that way toward. Maybe I should try a little harder to remember that the feeling isn't mutual?

I dunno. Probably blowing this way out of proportion.

I think I'll do another blog post later, work on getting caught up before the month ends.

BEDA 25: It's birthday day. Still two days behind.

So it's actually the 27th? You know what that means? It's international Kara's friends' birthdays day. And this year, it's actually international, because 2 of the 3 friends in question are out of the country at the moment- Jessie's in Spain, and Kristen is in freaking Gambia. Cool Caitlyn is still in Oroville, though, so it's not all international. Though, I guess, America is a country.

Um, duh, Kara. Anywho.

Yeah. I have 3 friends, who I met at completely different times of my life in completely different places, who have the same birthday. And a few acquaintances that I know have birthdays today, too. Yay.

BEDA 24: Still behind... this is something I've been working on.

Um.. spoilers for season 24 of casualty. If you care. You probably don't.

Anyway, I made a visual map of the various multi-episode story arcs in the 24th season of Casualty. I'm not done. There's some major ones I haven't put in yet. But yeah.

Season 24
1	12 September	Establishing Lenny, Yuki, and May
2	13 September
3	19 September
4	26 September				Nick's brain cancer
5	3 October
6	10 October		Ruth's abortion and it's fallout
7	18 October			Zoe's stolen zipdrive
8	24 October
9	31 October
10	7 November
11	14 November
12	21 November					Shona pt. 1
13	28 November					Noel does Christmas	JAFA
14	5 December
15	12 December
16	19 December
17	27 December
18	2 January			Adam and Jessica's car accident massive angst.
19	2 January
20	9 January
21	16 January
22	23 January					Shona pt. 2/ Charlie's Pulmonary Embolism
23	30 January	Yuki and May. Also known as, May is a manipulative liar who doesn't deserve him.
24	6 February				Dixie's dad's cancer, and her wedding to Jeff
25	13 February
26	20 February			Kieron and his daddy issues
27	27 February
28	6 March
29	13 March
30	27 March
31	3 April
32	10 April
33	17 April
34	24 April
35	1 May
36	8 May					Shona pt. 3 (Charlie's really going to be a granddad)
37	15 May	Cryptococcus and Yuki and Lenny's budding bromance.
38	22 May
39	5 June
40	12 June
41	19 June
42	26 June
43	10 July
44	17 July
45	24 July
46	31 July
47	7 August
48	14 August
49	21 August

BEDA 23: I'm a couple of days behind...

And I don't really even have an excuse. I'll have to do a little catching up, I guess.

So how about them 49ers? (AAAAHHHH 49ERS AHHHHH) Yeah, that's a bit of an in-joke. But no one actually reads this blog, so it's okay.

I should probably do some reading. I finished my book for Environmental Studies yesterday, but I still have quite a bit of reader to read. Boo.

BEDA 22: How to get rid of a cold.

Yesterday, I felt like I had the beginnings of a bad cold. You know, that weird feeling in the back of your throat that comes a day or so before you actually get sick. So I took a bunch of vitamin C, and had like 3 cups of this tea that supposed to be good for not getting a cold (which is, by the way, also delicious). It seems like it actually worked, too- at least I'm only feeling like I have a little bit of a cold.

I think that willpower definitely factors in here too. In February, when I went to Gallifrey one, I went from full-blown cold on friday to barely sick at all on saturday to having a cold again on monday. I have control over my immune system. One of my many superpowers.

Anyway, I'm leaving in a few hours to see my family people for Easter weekend! Yay!

BEDA 21: What happened to April 20th?

I just realized that I didn't blog on Wednesday.

I don't even have the obvious excuse. I'm not really into the obvious reason not to blog on April 20th. The obvious reason gives me a headache just when someone has it in the next room.

It took me a while to figure out why I had a headache for most of the weekend two weeks ago. Yeah.

Anyway, I had a midterm and a lab quiz wednesday. We'll call that an excuse.

BEDA 20: Glee and AcaDeca

Do people at other schools call it AcaDeca? I'm sure at least some people do. Anyway, this week's Glee prominently McKinley's Academic Decathlon team, which is entirely made up of Glee Club members. Their portrayal of Academic Decathlon was, however, almost entirely inaccurate. They used the name, Academic Decathlon, but then showed something entirely different. As someone whose High School years were more or less defined by AcaDeca, I found this somewhere between annoying and offensive. So let's clear a few things up:

Things Academic Decathlon is:

Academic Decathlon is a competitive academic High School club, which is ideally made up of nine members, three in each of 3 defined GPA ranges, though a school can compete and win with as few as six members.

Academic Decathlon consists of ten separate subjects, nine of which are subjective (Math, Science, Social Science, Economics, Literature, Art, and Music), and three of which are objective (Essay, Speech, and Interview). Each is equally weighed. The subjective parts are all multiple-choice tests. Speech and Interview are done in closed rooms, with only the competitor a few judges, and maybe a timekeeper present.

The material tested is set for each subject and revolves around a central theme each year, with each individual subject having something to do with that theme.

Academic Decathlon has competition on the county, state, and national levels. A school generally has to get first place to move on to the next level.

Things Academic Decathlon is NOT:

Academic Decathlon is not a quiz show, with the exception of part of the super quiz (which alternates between Science and Social Science each year). Even that is multiple choice, with all competitors answering at the same time. No one gets buzzers.

Academic Decathlon is not a test of random knowledge. Those who do well are usually those who study the most, not those who know a lot about some obscure topic. It's also not something you join at the last minute and expect to be much more than a placeholder.

Anyway, if you are an author or scriptwriter and want to have your characters do Academic Decathlon, you should probably speak to someone who has done it. Or, alternately, you could call your high school game show thing something else. As it was presented on Glee, it really didn't need to be called any kind of Decathlon.

BEDA 19: Blood and TV

I donated blood this afternoon. Now I feel kind of run down. Kind of just want to lie in bed and watch more casualty (season 23 now- meaning no Lenny or Yuki, but at least there's Toby). But I really do need to study for my bio midterm tomorrow. I usually feel fine after donating blood, too. The only time when I've felt sick afterward was the one time I didn't drink enough beforehand and almost passed out. But this time I was fine while I was donating, and it was only an hour or two after I left that I started feeling not so great. Oh well. Studying doesn't require too much physical effort.

My arm hurts too. I don't think I'm getting a bruise, though. It just hurts to move it.

Oh well. I'll be fine in the morning. Stupid 8AM midterms. I think school should just start at 9:00. It isn't a problem getting up for my tuesday/thursday 9:30 class. But 8 just feels so early. Less so now that it's properly spring and the sun comes up a bit earlier, but still. (Was that last sentence kind of british? Too much Casualty, methinks.)

So, speaking of casualty, I find myself comparing a lot of characters to particular youtube people. Like "Dylan has the same accent as DoctorBenji." "Keiron is like Alex Day, but less hot." I love this show. :)

BEDA 18: I should do a video some time this week...

It's been a while since I've youtubed. I'm really bad about that. And I've been putting my creativity, such as it is, into blogging. And like, Twitter. Most of my thoughts can be summed up in one or two, 140-word statements.

I'm sitting in the UCEN right now. I came here under the pretense of it being a good place to study for my bio midterm in 2 days. Then I turned the youtube on, and decided to write a blog entry. Well, I would have had to do this sometime later anyway, hence the every in blog every day. Anyway, I'm listening to a Casualty episode in one ear, and the music they have playing in the UCEN in the other. Do people actually like Nicki Minaj? I don't really get the point of her. She doesn't actually sing that well.

Oh and now they're playing mm Whatcha Say. Which of course reminds me of one excellent SNL skit. Okay and now, more Nicki Minaj? They played 2 Nicki Minaj songs with one song between them? I'm not sure how they choose the music in here. Maybe it's requests, and people are weird and like this music. Silly people. Or maybe I just need to listen to her more. I tend to like a song more after I've heard it ten or fifteen times. Heck, I've even gotten to the point where I kind of enjoy listening to Friday.

BEDA 17:

I think I'm losing steam on the whole blogging thing. I don't really feel like writing.

Yesterday, I didn't actually get a blog in before midnight. Maybe that's why I feel unmotivated now. It's like I've already failed at the whole blog EVERY day in april thing, and now it doesn't matter so much. I guess I'll keep going. 14 minutes after midnight doesn't count as a complete failure. I'm doing better than a lot of people in the world, I know.

I got exactly halfway through NaNoWriMo last November, staying right on schedule, then gave up all of the sudden. I seem to have an attention span of about 2 weeks when it comes to writing projects. Kara= unmotivated.

Speaking of which, I need to study.

BEDA 16: NOOOOOO!

I missed a day! It's after midnight! It's the 17th! I haven't blogged every day in april! I'm a failure!

I was busy studying ochem. Then I was watching Casualty. Which here means, yelling at my computer because May sucks and she does not deserve Yuki and grrr.

Yeah. 3 midterms in the next week. Church in morning. I should go to bed pretty soon.

BEDA 14:Random stuff day

2 weeks into BEDA! Wait, that means it's also 2 weeks into April. Stupid year going so fast. My birthday's in about six and a half weeks now. I'm going to be super old. 20 is super old. Except, you can't actually do anything new at 20 that you can't do at 19.

I need to find my nail clippers. I think I put them somewhere when I moved my room around, and I have no idea where.

Okay, I just went and found them. Typing is slightly easier now. Yay.

I think today is going to be another rambling about nothing in particular day.

Um... I like Casualty. Good show. I could waste a whole lot of time on this one. I talked about it content-wise the other day, but let's talk about how much time I could possibly waste of my life by watching this show. The show's been on since 1986. That's 25 seasons if you do the math. Plus, the last several years, they've been on a pretty much year-round every week schedule, with twice as many episodes in a season than your average American show.

I think I might go to bed before super late times tonight.

BEDA 13: Fungus

We looked at all kinds of fungi in bio lab tonight. It was kind of fun. And a little bit smelly. Actually, every lab this quarter has been smelly. This quarter is all about phylogeny, and we've gotten through bacteria, protists, and fungi so far. Which means lots of looking through the microscope at wet mounts of things that were growing in petri dishes.

I don't mind it though. I'm getting pretty darn good at using the microscopes too. Not that I couldn't do it before, but now I'm even better at it. Yay biology lab. If I'm going to be an EEMB major, it's probably good to be good at microscopes. I'm also very good at plating samples. That's of course due to my time in microbiology at the Oroville Hospital lab. My medical ROP class I took junior year may not have solidified my career plans, but I did learn two nice concrete skills- I can take an accurate blood pressure without too much difficulty, and I can plate a culture and make it pretty. Yay.

I've used both of those skills in biology lab this year.

BEDA 12: Another fun TV show, and new shoes.

First, I would like to say that my nose itches. Like the outside of it. My eyes have been itchy lately too. Not my actual eyes, like my eyelids. I dunno. Is that weird? Am I allergic to something? Is it dry skin? Am I going crazy?

Second, I have been watching a lot of Casualty. Good show. Combines two of my favorite things: medical dramas and British people. Basically, my thoughts on the show can be summed up simply like this:

1. Nick is awesome. He's like Giles, but a doctor.

2. I think I saw an episode of ER like this once.

3. Why can't there be more Yuki? WHY???

4. Yay accents! Especially Lenny's Scottish one.

5. Actually, yay Lenny in general.

6. I definitely saw an entire half a season of ER like this once.

7. Oh, Ruth...

8. The English people! They're so English!

9. I now speak medical show in two languages: American and British. They're quite different.

10. I love this show!

If you've never watched casualty, half of those probably mean absolutely nothing to you. But yeah. Good show.

Also, I went down to State Street to buy new shoes this afternoon. My converse are wearing through the insoles, and it makes my feet hurt to wear them too long. So I now have pretty black and grey vans with purple laces. They make me happy.

I also walked through the farmer's market they have down there. So many fresh fruits and veggies. It made me wish I had a kitchen to cook in. Next year, when I'm no longer having my tastebuds bored by dorm food, I'm going to do a good part of my shopping at farmers markets.