Clone Wars -- "Water War" (Ep. 4.1)

-- When destiny calls, the chosen have no choice.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

"Water War" gives us our introduction to Ackbar, as a Captain rather than as an Admiral. I believe this is the first canon view of the Mon Cala homeworld, Mon Calamari. Mon Calamari is home to two sentient races: the Mon Cala and the Quarren. While the Mon Cala are peaceful-ish, the Quarren are... not so much. The two peoples, however, are mostly unified, right up until the death of the Mon Calamari king, who happens to have been one of the Mon Cala. The Separatists use the death to stir dissension between the two groups.

As a complete aside:
The Mon Cala are a lobster-based life form [the Quarren are squid-like]. Now, think about all of the lobsters you've ever seen and tell me, by sight, which are the males and which are the females. You can't, can you? (I'm not looking it up, but I think it's a size difference.) So we see our first female Mon Cala in this episode and she... well, she has breasts. Um, why? These people have exoskeletons; how exactly can you have breasts that way? Yes, it bothered me to notice this. It just did.
Aside over.

This episode also introduces us to Riff Tamson, a shark-like being from the planet Karkaris. He's the Separatist ambassador who is stirring up trouble. I'm annoyed by this character, also. We already have sentient lobsters and squids on Mon Calamari, and they felt the need to bring in a sentient shark from some other planet? And he's the bad guy. The whole thing just feels too cliche to me. Not in a "I hate this" way, but it's certainly noticeable. Like a crack in your windshield that you learn to ignore but know is there.

The story itself is okay. Adequate. It's fairly standard in its setup with the Mon Cala siding with the Republic and the Quarren wanting to side with the Separatists. It, of course, leads to a great undersea battle between the clones and the Separatist droids. Right up until the introduction of the "invincible" jellyfish droids of the Separatists. [Yes, at that point, I found those annoying, too. I mean, why is that everything in this episode has to have some sea creature origin? There's actually no logical reason for the droids to look like jellyfish within the context of SWU itself. It's just there because of the arbitrary design scheme of the creators.]

Kit Fisto also makes an appearance, which is cool, except that he doesn't do much in this episode.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fine episode. Totally watchable. The stuff that annoyed me are not likely to annoy other people and have nothing to do with the story. Which is fine. Really.


"Today, you learned the hardest lesson a commander can learn: how to live to fight another day."

The Pocket Problem

Here's something I bet you didn't know:
Where the pockets are placed on the back of the jeans you're wearing affect how your butt looks. Now I bet you're trying to look behind yourself at your butt, aren't you? It's okay, go ahead. Mostly, I suppose, this is not a thing that matters to guys, though it's probably no less applicable to them; they just don't really care. But women... Well, women care about their butts.

Wait. That sounds wrong. Let's try again:

Women care how their butts look. You know it guys. What guy doesn't dread the question, "Do these jeans make my butt look fat?"

Let me give you some background:
A while back, my wife needed to buy some new jeans. For most people, that means going to the store... Okay, wait a minute. For most guys, that means going to the store going to the jeans section, grabbing the right size, and paying for them. There may not even be any trying on of the jeans. For women, though... well, I'm not even going to explain the ordeal of buying clothing. If you're a woman, you know what it is; if you're a man, there is every chance you don't have a clue. You have an idea of women liking to shop and think that answers the question of why they spend so much time trying to figure out what clothes to buy and, while it may be true that any given woman may like to shop, that has nothing to do with why it's so much work for them to buy clothes. Just... you know, get her to explain it to you. Seriously.

Anyway...

My wife needed to buy some jeans, and my wife is not one of those women who likes to shop; in fact, she pretty much hates it. So what my wife does, to cut down on the actual shopping time, is research. Which is where I come into this. My wife wanted me to help her with the jeans selection, which started online. But, first, she had to explain to me this whole pocket theory thing, which involved her showing me lots of pictures of women's butts. Before I go on: There are whole websites devoted to this issue of pocket placement. So she showed me scores of pictures of opposing views of women's butts: bad pocket placement vs. good pocket placement. You know, so I would understand. And, then, the question: Tell me which butts you think look good. Yeah, okay, it's not a question, but I'm sure you understand.

And I bet you guys out there are shouting at your monitors in your best Ackbar imitations: "It's a trap!"
Don't get me wrong; that thought crossed my mind. But just wait; it gets better.

So we went through all of these pictures until I had it down what to look for in regards to how back pockets should be on the pants, and then we went out in public... It was a festival-type thing. You know, lots of people. We let the kids go off and do their thing, and my wife and I sat down, and she said to me, "Help me look at women's butts, and make sure you point out the ones that look good." I know! I know! IT'S A TRAP!

But it wasn't a trap. We sat there or walked around for a few hours pointing out butts to each other and determined that, on the whole, women do not do a good job of purchasing jeans. Older women, especially, were prone to jeans that sagged off the butt and left the butt looking rather formless. Younger women liked pockets with lots of bling; I suppose to draw attention to the butt, but that usually was a bad thing. Those women tended to have pockets that were either placed too far apart or were too long (going past the butt down onto the leg), both of which flattened the butt out, leaving it looking like a board.

'Cause, see (and now we get to the point), the problem is that there is no general pocket solution. No one pocket fixes all, which is, of course, what we want. We want THE pocket that we can just slap on any butt and SHAZAM! THAT BUTT LOOKS AMAZING! But all butts are different, and each butt needs pockets that fit the design, so to speak, of that butt. Which can make it difficult to find just the right pocket. And, guys, that's just a small insight into why it takes women so long when they're clothes shopping.

But, of course, this doesn't just apply to butts. It applies to writing and, well, to EVERYTHING! There are very few, almost no, easy solutions in life. No magical fixes. No simple set of rules you can follow to success or whatever it is you're after. It all takes work, research, some trial and error, mistakes, wrong roads, right roads, errors in judgment, missing the target, getting the bulls-eye, tripping, falling, getting back up, trying again, all to get to the the thing that fits you. That set of pockets that makes your butt look good. That turns heads and makes people whistle. Whatever.

Just to let you know, my wife found some awesome jeans. As she said, there's no reason that, just because she's a mom, she should have to wear "mom jeans." I agree. Figure out what fits you and makes you look good. Do the research. The work. Put in the effort. There's no need to settle for a saggy, shapeless butt when you can have, instead, "Now that's an ass!"

It's a Lego Christmas (with a dose of Doctor Who) -- Part Two

Before we get to the BIG Lego events of Christmas, here is the first of the Lego sets that I got. These were sort of consolation Lego gifts because the Lego set I really wanted became unavailable. And was, actually, too expensive, but my kids had this plan to combine their money and buy it for me. That's actually a longer (and unimportant) story. As it turns out, though, that set was on its way to retirement, so there was no re-stocking of it as places ran out of it, and my kids waited too long to try to fulfill their plans. So I got this, which was pretty cool (and approved by Mr. Bunches):

I want to point out that Admiral Ackbar came with a beer mug. I have to assume it's a beer mug, because it's  not like the cups that come with other sets that are clearly coffee mugs. Ackbar comes with a space beer mug, and I don't really understand why. Han comes with his blaster, which makes sense, and the pilot comes with a large wrench (as seen in Han's hand because the pilot is busy about to take off), which makes less sense (because why would the pilot need a wrench?), but it makes much more sense than the Admiral and his beer mug. Unless Ackbar has a problem that we've never been privy to? What makes less sense than that, though, is why Han comes with an A-wing fighter. It's like they had an extra batch of Solo minifigures lying around so they just threw them in with the A-wing. And Ackbar. But Ackbar doesn't have his own ship, so I suppose they needed to put him somewhere. The A-wing is really cool, though, so I'm not complaining.

I also got

Okay, that's not actually true. My younger son got it, but he already had this one, so he gave it to me. It was part of his new planet Lego sets. That is not an A-wing, just so you know. Here are all of this year's planet sets together:

My daughter's Lego Advent calendar for this year:

After the fact, that is. This is the little Christmas party she made from what came in it.

Which brings us to the big Lego project for this year. My younger son, the most devout Lego enthusiast in our house (and at his school) got

the Republic Gunship! Here are some in progress shots:

But the BIG Lego event was actually a contest. My younger son and I actually received a duplicate Lego kit, so he challenged me to a race. I just want to make it very clear that I don't spend a lot of time putting together Lego kits at this stage of my life. In fact, I can't remember how long it's been since I've put one together. Probably half a dozen years, at least. But I couldn't very well say no. So we got set up:

I prepared with... tea. He prepared by sorting all of his pieces out so that he could find them more quickly. Clearly, my lack of recent experience in this worked against me. Our first time stop for progress pics:

That's my son's stuff right up front there. You can see mine to the upper left. He is clearly already in the lead.
The second time stop:

That's mine at the bottom, this time. My son's is at the upper right, and you can see that he is still in the lead. Can I come back for the surprise finish and win the race!?
Actually, no.

My son's model is finished, and mine is... well, not finished, as you can see from the picture. It wasn't as close as it looks from this shot, either. I had something like 15 more minutes of building to go. Or more. I don't remember, exactly. What I remember is that he finished way before me. But here are both Mandalorian Speeders sitting next to each other once I did get mine finished.

Clearly, I need more practice at this if I'm going to pose any kind of threat to my son next Christmas.

And that's our Christmas, or most of it, in a nutshell.
My daughter is already counting down to this year's Christmas. yea?