The Temerity of the Tibial Tuberosity

I actually learned about the Circle of Willis the other day in class! I was excited. In case you're wondering, it's pretty much a loop o' blood vessels that carry blood to your brain. I will not explain further because 1)I'm on headache medication and that would require thought and 2)I have to study anatomy and physio a whole shit ton this weekend and don't want to waste that section of my brain on stuff I won't be tested on yet. Also, see number 1.
 Will you ever get TeleTARDIS Part 3? Yes, yes you will because sooner or later I want to get these screenshots off my desktop which is where I've been storing them as a constant reminder to myself to get on it.

This is what my Desktop looks like:

 

Is it the coolest thing ever? Yes. Yes it is.

That background image is a painting Julia made for my birthday.  In case you've somehow managed to avoid me shoving my nerdtastic obsessions DOWN YOUR THROAT and have no idea what the hell it is and why it is the coolest thing ever, then I pity you. I pity you deeply.
It's actually  a little odd that it took me so long to get into Doctor Who because I've been utterly obsessed with The Prisoner for a number of years and though they may seem totally unrelated, there are a stunning number of connections between the two shows. Maybe I'm the only one who really sits down and ponders this at great length.  It probably speaks well of humanity if that's the case. Time for a list because oh man, remember the headache meds? Yeah. Those.
1)

*****RANDOM SIDE TANGENT******

The original idea of this post was to get into just how nerdy my desktop is, so this is kind of relevant, but not really.
I take opiates for my headache.  We learned the other day that opiates can cross the blood-brain barrier which I recently learned is an ACTUAL PHYSICAL BARRIER. I don't know why I found this so awesome but I did. Anyway, if you're chilling in the CNS (central nervous system- brain and spinal cord) unless you're all up ins a choroid plexus, the things forming the blood-brain barrier are neuroglia cells called astrocytes. My teacher was showing us them the other day and was like, "and I always remember its shape because I think it resembles that crystalline [entity] in that episode of Star Trek." About four or five of us started laughing because IT TOTALLY DOES.

Crystalline Entity aka Omnomnoming Everything

Astrocyte aka Those "feet" are the blood-brain barrier!

 Okay, let's get back to the list thing.

1) Both shows were on BBC in the early 60's
2) The Prisoner features amazing writing, acting, cinematography, sets, Patrick McGoohan running around being AWESOME, occasional Leo McKern, and an episode with the guy who plays the head of Scotland Yard in Help! (that episode also features a brilliant split-screen sequence where No.6 is trapping a pigeon in a box and Kosho: the strangest sport ever which apparently McGoohan just sort of came up with. Not both at the same time mind you, but still). Also McGoohan was kinda hot back in the day.
3) Early Doctor Who does not particularly feature any of these things, but it did start moving in that direction as the years passed and it did rank high on the WTF?!!! quotient that was such a defining hallmark of The Prisoner (I mean, a police box that travels through space and time? Wut? Oh hai cavemen! Wut?! Out actor's leaving...let's write in that his character has the ability to change EVERY CELL IN HIS BODY so we can continue the show without interruption. Wut??!!!)
4) Though I hear it's not so much the case with the first or sixth doctors (look man, I'm slowly slowly starting to get a broader exposure to the vast canon. Give me time), for the most part the Doctor is portrayed as an incredibly intelligent individual who would rather solve problems with ingenuity and reason rather than brute force. Who does that sound like? Oh wait: how about Number Six?! (Patrick McGoohan was actually the first choice for James Bond, & if you ever watch Danger Man/Secret Agent, you'll understand why. They actually approached him twice with the role & only after the second rejection did they ask their second choice, a dude named Sean Connery. McGoohan's reason for refusing the role? He didn't like the violence & copious gunplay and he didn't like the way Bond treated women.  Though Number Six gets into several scrapes, the only time I can think of guns being used is the episode where his REFUSING TO WEAR ONE is a major plot point. Yes, I am in love with 1960's Patrick McGoohan. I will admit it. Anyway, in terms of a main character avoiding violence, I'd say the tendency for the Doctor to run rather than incite or fight is nicely summed up in a certain song by Chameleon Circuit.  The point is, both shows glorify intelligence over force, something one does not see very often in television or even movies. I realized my third obsession, a certain dude named Sherlock Holmes is EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. One of my few real gripes with the Downey Jr. Holmes movie is that a defining characteristic of Holmes is that he almost never carries a gun. He's always asking Watson to bring along his service revolver, but I'm not sure Holmes even actually owns a firearm. [Edit: Duh Hannah! Of COURSE he owns one. The VR on the wall attests to that!] Like Number 6, Holmes tends to resort to fisticuffs.
The point is, you usually see wealth or looks or athletic/fighting prowess glorified in the main character. It's relatively rare that extreme intelligence is portrayed so favorably. It's a little hard for me to express exactly what I mean.  The other thing is that though these characters try to avoid violence, it's clear that all of them would be willing to kill (and probably have).  In fact, it's possibly because they have the potential to be such effective killers that they do their best to avoid violence. Though the more contemporary character of Agent Pendergast tends to be slightly more violent than the other three, he's still much the same, and guess what: I'm pretty obsessed with that character too.  Something interesting to note: they're all men. It always seems to come back to the fact that if I didn't identify so strongly as female, I'd totally be a dude.  Also maybe someday I'll talk about how I am an extremely violent person which is the entire reason why I work so hard to not be.
5) Remember that whole list thing we were doing before I went off into insane rant land? Let's get back to that.
6) An esoteric and intensely nerdy thing to have noticed: Ron Granier composed the fabulous opening theme to The Prisoner; guess who composed the original Doctor Who theme. Granted, he was co-composing the latter with a woman named Delia Derbyshire, but still: Ron Granier FTW!

Maybe someday I'll share with you the things that are scattered on that desktop. In addition to the screencaps for TeleTARDIS Part 3, there is a picture of a Dalek Christmas tree, patterns for Star Wars snowflakes, a print-out Ewok mask, an episode of a Wil Wheaton podcast, an image of an Owlbear, an Olde-Timey add for Kraken Rum, this mash-up of extreme nerd, and MORE!!!!!  Nerdtastic overload? Oh my yes.

Be Seeing You

Boil Update:
We skinned out, eviscerated, and boiled a rather stinky raccoon last week. Today I spent about five hours straight taking most of the flesh off of two of her limbs (it's a subadult female- we can tell age b/c the epiphyses of several of the long bones aren't fully fused and actually came off the shafts). Also I've started helping to inventory, curate, and eventually develop teaching modules for the random teaching collection of human bones the Foothill Anthro department has. Where did the bones come from? NO ONE KNOWS. Not sketch AT ALL. There's a lot of sketchiness to the history of that department to the point where it's kind of hilarious. The point is, once a week I get to spend two hours working with real human bones. I adore it. Holding a human (or really an animal's) bone is like holding a child but in reverse: the child carries the potential of a life story yet to be told, while the bone carries a life story that is over and may never be changed.