Drinking Game: Stargate Atlantis

So, I've just watched the entire series. So much for "I'll only watch an episode or so" a while back.

Although the series is good, the Television Without Pity education rears its snarky head every time I watch a series by now. Which inevitably leads to me discovering certain, amusing, patterns. Thus, the drinking game. No, I don't drink. It's still funny. So, without further ado:

Spoilers for the series, DUH!

Drink a shot everytime:

• the Atlantis crew dooms the entire galaxy by their stupidity or to save their few piddling people
• Rodney shows his massive ego
• Rodney's ego is causing shit to explode
• Ford has a line
• Ford's line could be cut entirely, and nobody would notice
• the team is waking up in a Wraith holding cell
• Weir: "I cannot allow that to happen."
• the Athosians and/or Teyla are accused of something
• the Athosians and/or Teyla are proven totally innocent later
• Rodney hacks into a computer/network/replicator/whatever
• Rodney: "j-just---give me a minute!!"
• Rodney: "W-wh-wh-whoa-whoa-wait!!"
• Rodney states something is utterly impossible in a given time frame
• double if he achieves it anyways
• there is an explosion in the control room
• Teyla: "blah blah - my people!"
• Teyla has nightmares
• Teyla and Wraith mind-control each other
• Teyla is left in charge, even though there should be a coordinated command structure
• the A plot is caused by someone blundering into yet another secret lab of the Ancients
• the danger in the A plot is entirely Rodney's fault
• Ronon uses his gun
• double if it's in the nick of time, just as a team member's about to get killed
• Ronon is captured or kidnapped, and miraculously gets his gun back afterwards
• Sheppard is totally ignoring his orders
• double if Weir secretly couldn't care less
• Teyla is blatantly running around with her offspring, just to show that the brat's hasn't been eaten by dingos yet
• the team temporarily allies with the Wraith
• the team is totally surprised when the evil zombie vampire aliens who eat humans decide to screw them over
• double shot if Todd's doing the allying and screwing over
• the Pegasus Nazis - pardon, Genii - make an appearance
• double if Kolya's involved
• triple if Sheppard swears he's going to kill him next time for sure
• Mr Woolsey is inept
• Mr Woolsey is socially inept
• Rodney is socially inept, but gets what he wants anyway
• the gal of the episode is totally into Sheppard
• double if he's oblivious until it's pointed out
• a Stargate SG-1 member appears
• double if the SG-1 member is at odds with his Atlantis counterpart
• triple if they value each other by the end of the episode
• if SG-1 already encountered the same (plot) device previously
• nobody in the goddamn stargate universe remembers that Earth has zillions of livestock animals that could be used to feed the goddamn Wraith

Enjoy. All over-intoxications, hangovers and/or waking up next to strangers will be your own damn fault, however.

Language musings

My work is stressful. Usually, when I get home, the first thing on my mind is "everything but thinking". Which invariably ends with me parking my ass on the couch to watch the telly.

It seems, last friday, my brain did not appreciate this kind of "switch brain on, switch brain off" behaviour. Plus, the stuff in the tv was even more brain-cell-killing than usual, so I guess my brain started working in pure self-defense.

It started off as one of those musings about "yeah. I wanna learn new languages someday." You know, one of these half-assed things you tell yourself you'll do once you have "the time", "the money"? Like rock climbing, doing sports, calling your great-aunt? Yeah, if you're anything like me, you'll never do any of those things.

I lazily surfed the web for some good vocabulary trainer. byki seemed like a good idea, what with the shared lists and stuff. Then I found Rosetta Stone software, which I found awesome - until I saw the price tag attached, that is. Because as much as I like to learn Spanish in a very natural way, I'm not paying 699 US $ for it. Because for 699 $, I fully expect this software not only to teach me foreign languages, but also to shine my shoes, wash my car, and do my taxes.

Conclusion: I'm either too cheap or too poor to learn languages. Plus, I'm lazy. Time to reevaluate my assets. How about a quick-and-dirty-method? You're a programmer. Not a particularly good one, but it's enough to draft together a little app to teach yourself. By combining the list idea of byki and the "learn-by-show-and-tell", and some easy vocabulary lists, some stuff that means the same in every language. Can't be THAT hard.

Yeah, that's the point where the linguists in my readership probably burst out laughing. You know, if there actually were linguists in my readership. Or if I HAD a readership, but anyway.

The thing is, I wanted some basics, to make yourself comprehensible in a foreign country, a kind of Pidgin, if you will. For example, "[Ich-sehen-rot-Auto-vorn-links]" (=[I-see-red-car-front-left]) is not correct German, since you lose all the conjugations and stuff (It would be something like "Ich sehe ein rotes Auto (da) vorne links"), but people would be at least able to communicate simple concepts, such as "Can you point me to the airport", or "help, I need to find a police officer!". Or at the very least, "Where's the bathroom?" - because, do you really wanna take a dump in the middle of the Champs-Élysées just because you can't figure out how to get people to point at the nearest loo? I mean, tourists have a bad enough image as it is.

The problems, however, start at the very core of the language, with such as words as "to be". Because, "I am in the garden"/[I-be-in-garden] translates easily into German as "Ich bin im Garten"/[Ich-sein-in-Garten].
But: "yo soy en el jardin"/[yo-ser-in-jardin] won't work, since to a native spanish this would imply "I am the garden." So unless you don't want some Spanish to think you're trying to invent a new verse to a certain Simon & Garfunkel song, you have to use the correct verb "estar".

So, essentially, to get a list of common simple words that won't have a double meaning. Well, that's a necessary database approach. This bloats your entries however. Plus, you lose stuff, since if you don't learn that "be" means both "estar" and "ser", you won't use it, and get confused if the natives do. So you'd need links. This all combined with the original idea of using simple pictograms so you'll learn the word naturally instead of simply translating it. And this is not even counting pitfalls like double meaning or false friends....This might need a teensy bit more work than I thought it would.

Meh. Now my head hurts. See, kids? This is what thinking will get you.