My guilty pleasure: popular television shows.

I know, I know. I’m supposed to only like obscure scifi. (I do, really! Lexx is great fun!) Or say in a haughty voice that “I don’t really watch television–I prefer radio as a medium.” (”Of course, I get all my news from NPR. Did you catch yesterday’s This American Life?”) Maybe I should maintain that the best show on television is the Wire. (Well, I’ve seen a few episodes with my roommate. It’s not bad.)

Yet I can’t help falling into those all-too-popular traps. Mostly this happens on vacations, when I actually have the time to watch television, or indeed do anything but read Latin and write papers and go to rehearsal and the myriad of other necessities at school. Last year during winter break, I watched the entire first season of Lost at TV Links, back when it was working. This past winter, I did the same thing with Heroes. And now that I’m out of school for the summer and have free time again, I’ve fallen back into the second season of Heroes, and the rest of Lost is waiting in the wings.

Now, don’t let my tone fool you. I’m not about to say “But I only like them ironically” or anything of that ilk. Someone (I can’t remember who, unfortunately) once wrote an invective against claiming to like something because “it’s so bad it’s good.” If you like it, said this person, then just say it’s good! Don’t be embarrassed and try to over it up!

In that line, I really truly like these shows, no matter what people say. They’re engaging, and fantastical, and have all sorts of different fun plot lines (too many, if the critics are to be believed). Some of my like for these shows probably comes from A. my very clear love for scifi, and B. my secret attraction to conspiracy theories and secret societies and such things. Yes, I certainly did take that book out of the library and read about the Thugs and the Freemasons and the Illuminati before I got to the KKK and got bored of it. Oh yes, I suspect that there are all sorts of secret plots behind things. In fact, this item B is probably responsible for item A. All the “real world” scifi–Stargate, X-Files, etc.–tend to have some elements of the conspiracy theory in them.

And apparently I’m not alone in this interest, given the popularity of these shows. So when the plots of Lost get ever crazier and more all-encompassing and the people pulling the strings get more puppeteer-like, it’s great to watch. When we watch Heroes and get hints of the group of specials running things behind the scenes, we love it.

Are these shows great television? Do they have any larger value? Do they address any of the fundamental questions of humanity? I don’t know. Maybe. That’s something that will be collectively decided once they’ve finished their run and we can look back at them. But they’re certainly damn entertaining, and for that, producers of Lost and Heroes, I doff my hat to you. Even if writers’ meetings do actually look like this.

Whew. Greek is done, after a meh final this morning. It could have been worse, but it was by no means great. Now I just need to study Latin enough to do decently on Wednesday, and I’m done.

I downloaded Quicksilver recently, after reading about it somewhere or other and checking out reviews of it. I can see that it’s useful as a launcher, and probably saves me a little time over wading through the Finder, but it doesn’t seem like a true godsend, which is how people seem to characterize it. Then again, I haven’t gotten into most of the features, so I’m sure there’s a bunch that I’m missing. I could be convinced.

I’ve also continued using Akatoo. I’m mostly rating others’ answers, and answering questions myself only occasionally. One can get enough IKU points from rating answers (indeed, that seems to be the main source) to stay easily in the top 20 (and thereby presumably therefore be one of the contest winners at the end of the month), but it does require a certain amount of time spent reading and rating. Whether there’s worth in it beyond personal gain, I’m not sure, especially if I’m not contributing much of my own anyway. My questions of copyright and reproduction issues are still there, though somewhat muted–I’m certainly not saying anything particularly genius in my use of the site, and I don’t think most others are either. I inquired about the project mentioned in the ad that originally brought me to the site, and it looks like the project is to recruit more people and see what they think of Akatoo, and report that feedback to the company. I’ve never been a fan of the whole “get more people in and you too could win big!” marketing schemes (You know those people who post spam links in facebook groups and forums? I hate those people.), so I’m pretty hesitant to sign onto this.

In recent life news, I’ve agreed to assistant direct a (pending Drama Board approval) production of select plays from 365 Days/365 Plays, by Suzan-Lori Parks, next fall. More on that as it develops.

My roommate did acquire a soldering iron. I had expected to have to go into the electrics lab with him and maybe, if I was lucky, be allowed to solder. But the lab instructor just handed over the soldering iron and the accompanying business to Bevan. He brought it back to the room, and after setting up a workstation of a slate tile to keep from burning the wooden floor, he proceeded to teach me to solder. We followed an excellent guide I found for changing a headphone plug. We differed from it on only a few points–the wiring in my headphones had tension relief material in it, which looked like tiny threads, so we had to separate that from the actual wires and cut it out before doing anything. Each “wire” (left channel, right channel, and ground) was actually made of a bunch of small wires wrapped around the tension relief, and each of the small copper wires had some sort of insulation painted onto it (except for the ground, which was uninsulated). Filing was working to get it off, but going very slowly, so we resorted to touching it to a flame, using pliers a little way down the wire as a heat sink, and that burned it off quite quickly. After that, it was a matter of getting tiny wires through small holes, soldering all of the connections, and screwing the pieces of the plug back together. I now have perfectly working headphones, and can proudly say that I fixed them myself (and with Bevan, of course, who had all the knowledge and did much of the work.)

Never having soldered before, the thing that surprised me was how quickly the actual soldering went. Touch the iron to the wires and heat them, touch down the solder, let it draw in, and then the connection is done. What did take a long time was setting everything up. The iron has to heat up, and the insulation has to be stripped, and the work station prepared, and proper lighting acquired, and a helper to hold the work (If you do not have, as we do not, a soldering stand), and every time you put the iron down for a while, you need to clean and tin it again. I suppose that like everything else, it’s all in the preparation.