Prometheus, and my Macbook victory!

Sorry I didn’t get a chance to post about yesterday’s blog tour stop. Yesterday was my birthday, and No. 1 took the day off to spend with me, so I did NO WORK, for, like twenty-four hours. So if you missed the blog tour stop, it can be found here.

I had a great birthday–thanks so much for all the well-wishes! I slept in, and No. 1 woke me up with coffee and sweets from Starbucks, then we went to see Prometheus, which I was really looking forward to. I wanted to love the movie, but I just didn’t. I feel almost guilty about that, but it’s true. I love horror movies, I like sci-fi, and I’m a huge fan of the Alien franchise in particular (it even gets a couple of mentions in the Soul Screamers series) and while I liked all the Alien franchise connections (the morally ambiguous android with the white “blood,” a line reminiscent of “Marines, we are leaving!” and the tie-in at the end), the movie itself just didn’t do it for me. After discussing it for more than an hour afterward, No 1 and I couldn’t come up with a logical reason for “scientists” to have taken off their helmets (thus exposing themselves to biological contaminates) in an unknown environment or to ignore obvious signs of infection and to generally laugh in the face of common contamination protocol. Nor could we find a logical reason for the inclusion of Charlize Theron’s character. She just wasn’t needed.

PROMETHEUS SPOILERS BELOW

We were able to guess (very early on) about the mission’s financier, but we cannot understand why the main question of the movie (why were we created by a giant race of ancient humans, then why did they seek to destroy us?) wouldn’t be answered in the film, rendering the whole movie entirely pointless. Nor could we figure out why a race of super-intelligent giant human aliens would try to destroy earth (and their own progeny) with a needlessly complicated biological weapon (which wound up destroying them instead) instead of just blowing it out of the sky, Alderaan-style. Vader had that one right, people. Simple is better.

I really liked the gruesome scene with Shaw in the surgery pod (that was great horror!) but I take issue with the fact that after a major operation, she can not just walk (she did dope herself up with a lot of painkillers) but run for her life across an alien ruin, an alien spaceship, then an alien planet, not to mention hoisting a two hundred pound (my estimate) android down to the ground from a significant height. Most people are bedridden for at least hours after that particular surgery, and NONE of them have ever been known to participate in an alien-horror triathlon in the hours following the procedure.

END SPOILERS.

So, there you have it, for those who’ve asked. That’s why I didn’t care for Prometheus, even though I loved the rest of the franchise, including the AvP installments.

But watching disappointing movies seems to have become a tradition on my birthday, so even that was worth the time and money, because No 1 and I got quite a good discussion out of the problems we had with the  movie afterward, which is always fun.

The rest of my birthday, however, was awesome. No 1 gave me the accessories necessary to hook my MacBook Air (closed) to my PC monitor, which means that I can now run my MacBook as a desktop, with my big, easy-on-the-eyestrain monitor, then simply unplug it and leave the room when I don’t want to be chained to my desk. This is the most awesome thing ever!

It looks like this:

I’m keeping my PC in case I run into something that can’t be run from my Mac, but for the most part, I will only be using the MacBook from here on out. Yay!

Also, I had ice cream cake!

So, overall, I had a great birthday. But now it’s time to get back to work on the WITH ALL MY SOUL rewrite, so I can turn the book in. Wish me luck! And don’t forget to enter the current contest!