This is your brain pre-drugs

[anagramofbrat]

Odd things cross my brain pre-caffienation:

• I dreamed that all my and cell23's clothing had vanished out of our closets. Just a bar full of haphazard hangars. What the fuck.



• I woke up with "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" firmly stuck in my head. [barrowman] 30ROCK! [/barrowman]



• While I blearily shuffled and groaned my way to the coffeepot, a voice in my brain decided it needed to point out that almost the entire Muppet franchise, with the possible exception of "Sesame Street," fails the Bechdel Test. It most definitely fails if you eliminate the human guest stars. I mean, really, have you ever seen Piggy and Janice talk to each other about anything?

All of the above made me weirdly sad for various reasons. And then I had coffee.

In other news, Rock Band 3, oh holy crap, I'm going to fall over and die from awesome. The game itself is tighter and sharper, and demands more out of you. And keyboards. Gnnnrrrarrgh keyboards. With the exception of "Need You Tonight" (trust me, everyone will be able to play this one on expert pro keys) that shit is not easy. I found myself having the usual issue I do with guitar hero and rock band where I can't really anticipate what I'm doing fast enough to actually hit things and when you throw black note keys into the mix? aaaaaaaaaaaagh. Also I finally encountered the "Rock Band vs Actual Instrument" cognitive dissonance where the music is going in a completely different direction than my hand is. Okay, I finally get what the guitar/bass players have been fussing about all these years. Still. Nice that they added an instrument that I actually gravitate towards other than vocals. I'm just a little sad that I won't have all that much opportunity to practice. On the other hand, it's making me want to haul out the synth and start playing again. Music is good.

ETA: aha, I just realized what probably was fucking me up so badly on pro-keys, or at least what would have helped a ton - a key signature of some sort. It's a moot point on regular play because you only have five keys to worry about; when you have two octaves worth of chromatic scale to deal with? oh fuck no. When you have regular sheet music you have some warning before each section what keys you're going to need in general, and I think most piano/keyboard players default to C major (no black keys) if not told otherwise, so spontaneous black key wandering down is going to mess you the fuck up. Something for Harmonix to think about for #4?

Raining and warm, looking forward to another day of SVU and being utterly crushed/demoralized by my to-do list. Le Sigh. One paw in front of the other, right? Oh! wait there should be Sons of Anarchy, yes? All right, today doesn't seem that bleak. :) And there's bells later.

Comments

[cell23.livejournal.com]

So basically, the point of the test is to see if a form of media passes the test, yes?

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

The point of the test is to point out how few things do pass, and to codify this very basic level of representation. I don't think there's any way to make a test that something has to pass to determine whether or not it's feminist. The Bechdel Test is like, the lowest threshold for gender representation and a good place to start discussion. We can use it as shorthand to point out that the Sex and the City movies usually *do* pass, but what does that mean? Yay women! Boo stereotypes!

I agree that there are some problems with the test (which, to be fair, Bechdel neither named or meant as anything more than a pointed joke and commentary on media in society) if someone uses it as the end point of discussion, rather than the jumping off point, but I do still think it's incredibly useful as a discussion tool.