I spent the day building book records in our system, running profit and loss calculations and researching competing products, doing a lot of data entry for some new proposals, with an eye towards contracting a couple of these books before the year is out. Or at least sending the contracts to the authors before I shut down my computer and put up an away message for the last two weeks of December. If you’re imagining the glamorous life of a book editor, chances are, this isn’t what you’re picturing.
But it’s Friday, which is always nice. The week went by weirdly fast, especially for a week that started off really slow. I guess it’s that whole “time is relative” and “eye of the beholder” thing again, but I had to stop a couple of times during the day and just confirm that it was indeed, truly the end of the week. Even now, I’m a little unsure. Am I going to wake up tomorrow only to discover I was supposed to go to work after all?
Well, until then, I’m acting under the assumption that it is, in fact, the weekend. I can always claim delusion afterward if I’m proven wrong.
I don’t have any real plans for the weekend, beyond maybe getting a haircut. I’d like to do some more writing, which I’ve been slacking off from recently, and there are a few things I’d like to read. Right now, I’m a little more than midway through Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, which I’m really enjoying a whole lot. But it is a long book, and it seems to be taking me quite a while to get through it. I’m only at 39 books for the year, and that’s including some novellas and graphic novels. I try to aim for at least 50, and I’m worried with only a few more weeks left, I’m not going to hit that target. And while you’d think two weeks off from work would leave me plenty of time to read, it also leaves me plenty of time to slack off and not get any reading done, which I am all too prone to. But I’m going to try.
This evening, though, I mostly just watched last night’s episode of Community, which may have been my favorite ever, and certainly one of the sweetest the show’s ever done. My geek brain nearly exploded when Abed started talking to guest star Paul F. Tompkins about Farscape.
Congratulations. You are the first person to actually make me want to watch Community. (My friends did make me watch one episode, which they insisted was terrific. It didn’t do much for me. Far too sitcommy.)
Come to that, I remember The Years of Rice and Salt not doing much for me, either, for reasons I am still unclear on. But it was ages ago that I read it.
I find Community pretty anti-sitcommy for a sitcom, but your mileage may vary.
This past Thursday’s episode didn’t feature a long conversation about Farscape, but it also wasn’t just name-dropping. The character Abed has clearly seen the show. (And many, many more times than me: “And the fourth season, when you watch it the fifth time…”) A lot of why it worked for me is my deep fondness for the characters.
But here, if you just want to watch the scenes in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwPxPgZAJQw
I still really recommend the show as a whole, though. Seriously, next week’s episode? Filmed in Rankin-Bass-esque stop-motion animation!
Thanks for the link! I have to admit, that was pretty awesome. And I like that guy! I would happily sit and talk about Farscape with him. His ideas are intriguing, although I am curious as to how he reconciles them with certain indications to the contrary in the canon. 🙂
And, you know, I think that’s the only reference to Farscape I’ve ever seen on another show, except for the Stargate parody thing. It’s not exactly a hot cultural reference. Alas.