I’m a regular viewer of the Stargate series. Or is that serieses? Both of them, I mean—Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. I love the original Stargate SG-1 with Richard Dean Anderson, Christopher Judge, Amanda Tapping, and Michael Shanks. I watch the original motion picture with Kurt Russell every chance I get. I like the newer Atlantis series almost as well as the original, but it’s darker, with less humor. Or is it just those Wraith scare the hell out of me?
I said to my husband recently, while watching SG-1, “Have you noticed Sam eats a lot of blue Jell-O?” Referring of course to the character Lt. Col. Samantha Carter Ph.D., played by Amanda Tapping, and to blue gelatin. Jell-O is a registered trademark. You knew that, right?
Now, my husband watches those shows as much as I do, and he even reminds me when they’re on. Yet he responded to my blue gelatin question with one of those “What planet is she on now?” looks. So I did a Google search to find out whether I was imagining the preponderance of blue gelatin.
There appears to be an entire sub-culture out there of series fans. I haven’t found myself falling into many of the behaviors on this list of symptoms yet. But number 51 seems oddly familiar, and my cat is prone to temporary personality changes that make me wonder if she’s possessed by a Goa’uld. I had to check my spelling of Goa’uld just now, so I can’t be too far gone, right? By the way, that’s pronounced Go-ah-oold.
If you’re a regular viewer, you might be interested to know you can converse with like-minded souls at an SG-1 discussion forum. You can also read a transcript of the episode in which the blue gelatin phenomenon first appeared, or a transcript of the live chat in which Amanda Tapping talked about blue gelatin with her fans.
So it’s not just me, see?
For those of you who’ve only read down this far because you love Jell-O brand gelatin desserts, here’s a link to the Jell-O museum. Thank you for your patience.
Maybe I should check into those series (serieses). I’ve never seen any of the episodes, but I do enjoy good stories.
Are there any serieseses?
According to the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on my PC, both the singular and plural are spelled “series”—but that doesn’t look right to me. I never noticed before that it didn’t look right to me, likely because it’s a word I haven’t used much in its plural form—for whatever reason.
My current novel in progress is the first in a series. So I’d better get used to that word, hadn’t I?
Quotes from the 1989 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) unabridged follow.
1797, Encycl. Brit. “These different heights of tide are observed to succeed each other in a regular series… This series is completed in about 15 days… Two serieses are completed in the exact time of a lunation.”
1730, A. Gordon, Maffei’s Amphith. “Among the many and particular Series’s collected by him, he has 800 Medals of Colony’s, 1500 Greek Coins, and 1200 Egyptian.”
1889, Pall Mall Gaz. “Of all these serieses the ‘Men of Letters’ has, suppose, been the most popular.”
Geesh. I just thought it was a tupo.
And ‘Two serieses are completed in the exact time of a lunation’ - Sounds like an equinox gone mad.
The blue jello? My grandbabies love it!
Hmmm. Maybe it’s the blue yogurt they like.
My mind isn’t very dependable these days. For example, I have lost count of the number of times I have typed the secret code into the URI box and then spent many minutes scratching my head.