Firefly - 15 episodes of awesome

Recently, Nadia and I started watching Firefly… It’s her first time through the Verse, and probably my fourth. A great little show – if a bit hard to explain to new comers – it was cut down in its prime, and resurrected only long enough to give us an amazing movie.

But I’m not talking about the movie – not yet. We’ll wait until Nadia has had a chance to see it before we talk about it, eh? That’s right – No f’ing spoilers.

It’s been a lot of fun watching this with her. She’s gone from scrunching up her face in mild confusion (and possible displeasure) at the idea of a “western in space” to actively demanding we watch another few episodes. We are rapidly running out of episodes to watch (damn you Fox, and your cancelation of this fine show) and will quickly have the whole thing wrapped up.

It’s been fun getting another opinion on the show, another take on the characters and how they interact. It’s made me appreciate the show all over again.

I have no idea what to watch once we’re done with this. I’d say Middleman, but the DVD’s won’t be out for another month… and we need those subtitles, dang it.

But how?

The object of this “game” – such as it is – was to survive by not touching the floor. Maybe you had to get out of the room (volcano/jungle/spaceship), maybe you just had to stay put for rescue (a lonely prospect for only children), and the only way to move about the floor was via climbing furniture, jumping from thrown cushion to cushion, or even stepping on stuffed animals that might be cluttering up the room.

I probably didn’t have to go into so much detail – this game seems pretty universal, but I wanted to be sure terms were clear before I got to the meat of this post: How, and where, did this game start?

It seems odd to me that something so simple, with the same basic rules and the same basic guidelines, should manifest itself in a large number of children without outside influence. Regardless of race, age, class or national origin – everyone knows this game, most have played it, and most deny “learning” about it – it just occurred to them that it might be fun.

And, it was fun… But why does it occur so commonly? Is it some throw back to some ancient time, so prehistoric survival skills buried deeply in our DNA? Is this one of the few strong ties to our genetic forebears that we just won’t understand?

If so – do the primates “play” in such a way, or is this something unique to humans (cats, too I suppose. Watch them run around the house – they, too, know the dangers of the floor)?

This is something that would make for an amazing study, and although it might not cure anything or even make the world a much better, brighter place to be in, it’d give us a much greater insight into our own species, the collective psyche.

And, maybe, help us figure out where that damn lava keeps coming from anyway.

I might consider getting one again, if they ever update the damn UI and make it not suck. It really is like using the internet in the 90′s! It’s Geocities/Angelfire all over again.

Craptastic gifs, horrible design, loud music… Oy!

Still, it could be worse… It could be LiveJournal.