The Guardian makes the mistake of asking readers to direct their questions towards “ethical skin and body care products firm” Neals Yard Remedies. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.
(Via Mr Eugenides.)
In an alternate universe May 30, 2009
…I’m apparently a British actress who’s appeared onstage with David Tennant in Hamlet.
That’s why when people ask me why I like science fiction I tell them “because it’s not as bizarre as real life.”
Please tell me this is some sort of hoax May 30, 2009
According to this report, the US Embassy in Baghdad is hosting a “Gay Pride” themed party, complete with a drag-costume contest. There’s a photo to the right of the article of one of the fliers for the party which makes me hope it is some sort of joke, because the flier looks like a sort of amateurish slapped-together thing; one would think that the US Embassy might have the capabilities of putting out something more professional-looking. I’ve seen fliers for illicit raves in abandoned warehouses that look classier. But if it isn’t… does the Obama administration want to start yet another war in the Middle East? As is pointed out here, one thing Muslims really, really don’t like is public debauchery. You can talk about how they should be more “open-minded” until you are blue in the face, it won’t make any difference. And it’s their country. It’s one thing to invade a foreign nation because its government has been fomenting terrorism and war outside of its borders; it’s quite another to decide that you have the right to force cultural change on the people of that country. I can’t think of a clearer example of us Americans “forcing our culture” (all the worst parts of it too) on foreigners than something like this. Thanks, Obama voters! Not only is our government under your man doing its best to destroy the country from within, it’s also making sure that we’re not just a laughing stock, but a source of decadence and rot that the world is better off without.
I really hope this turns out to be some kind of sick joke.
(Via Kathy Shaidle.)
Things that irk me May 29, 2009
You know that standard scene in tv shows where some guy blurts out something about how “oh, that’s sexywebsite.com” or “hey I have that edition of Boobs Magazine” and the woman he’s talking to gives him the stare of contempt: “OMG you look at PORN??” and he’s all “…uh, I clicked on a pop-up by mistake/I read it for the articles” etc.
I’m really tired of that scene. Especially the “virtuous dismayed womyn” part of it. In this day and age any woman who pretends to be outraged by the idea of guys looking at naked lady pictures is… pretending and should be called on it. Especially considering what she’s probably been getting up to when he’s out at the strip club playing poker with the boys.
Anyway, I’m here watching an episode of Bones, a show I don’t really like because it’s got too many cutesy “relationship” moments mixed in with the gruesome rotten-flesh autopsies, but it happens to have Stephen Fry playing a guest part as a British psychiatrist, so I’m watching it for that.
Various things May 29, 2009
(I was going to call this post “My Gleanings” but didn’t think anyone would get the joke.) Anyway, first off — it looks like I’ve disturbed the peace of mind of one of my readers. He expressed especial concern over my health, so without further ado, here is an in-depth account of the state of my hemorrhoids. Seriously, what the fucking fuck? This person claims to be one of my regular readers from way back, but he doesn’t seem to know anything I’ve been writing about for at least the past year. I especially like his admonishment to “take it easy.” Son, if I took things any easier I’d be six feet under. Oh, sorry, was that too depressing? Gee, I really care. I also like his claim that he’ll give me money to write something “cheerful.” God, how I hate those people who come up to you when you’re just sitting there thinking and bellow at you, “Smile! Cheer up! Don’t be so depressed!” See, you were feeling at peace with yourself and the world but because you weren’t grinning like a loon some busybody clown decides you’re on the brink of suicide. Note to future nosy assholes: demanding someone who isn’t your own small toddler to act happy usually has the opposite effect. I’m not shucking and jiving for anyone. Update: the commenter has apologized. I hereby proclaim the feud over.
On to more important things. Such as — my sekret password-protected wireless connection got all wonky (as in it just disconnected me and wouldn’t let me log back in), so I went ahead and disabled wireless security. I’m only going to have the cable for a few more days anyway so I don’t care. I only actually did that to make sure my USB wireless thing hadn’t died or something. I’ll probably just disconnect the router and put it away; I don’t really need it at present.
And in entertainment news: what dvds I watched tonight. The first was the next installment in the Sally Lockhart saga: The Shadow In the North. This one was better than the first episode, Ruby In the Smoke. Sally’s character was more fleshed out, giving Billie Piper the chance to act a little more. (In Ruby she mostly stared and occasionally frowned.) I’m still not sure of Piper’s acting skills — she was good when she was a regular companion on Doctor Who, but in her later “guest” appearances she seems to have had something sucked out of her. Maybe she spent all her talent on that series where she played a call girl. Who knows. The plot of Shadow in the North involved mysterious deaths, prophecies, rich guys selling their daughters to villains to pay off their debts, and the building of a (mysterious, of course) steampunk-nightmare deadly weapon. In other words, standard Victorian mystery stuff with a touch of fantasy, rather like Sherlock Holmes only the fantasy elements (here, the prophecies some of the characters have) are left unexplained by Holmesian logic and are obviously meant to be accepted as real.
But then the Victorian England that the story takes place in is not quite the Victorian England you’ll find in the history books. For example, about half of the actors in this episode were black. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… only their skin color was totally unremarked upon by anyone in the episode, which is pretty much not the way it would have been in the late 1800’s in England, where there was plenty of prejudice to go around. Yes, the British got out of the slave trade a lot sooner than we did over here in the US of A, something they’ve taken great pains lately to remind everyone. No, that didn’t mean Victorian British society blithely accepted black people in all facets of their society as this program seems to be implying. But I don’t think that’s what was intended — I think what has happened is that in order to show how not-racist they are the British entertainment industry has decided to give out acting parts regardless of the skin color of the actor, and regardless of setting or period. They seem to think that this is the way to promote “color blindness” and cure (or prevent) the dreaded curse of racism, which is now more feared than any merely physical disease. That being said, I have nothing much against the practice — I can suspend my belief for a play — only I know that I’d better not hold my breath for a blond, blue-eyed Othello.
The production had some other anachronisms that jarred me a bit out of the story, most notably the Sphynx cat that one of the characters cradles; that type of cat didn’t appear until the mid 1960s. The joyful acceptance of one of the character’s unwed pregnancy by the other characters, however, didn’t seem as implausible, since these characters were already presented as being eccentric and out of the mainstream of society. Billie Piper is given a cheesy speech to utter towards the end to the villain, but then there was a scene of a satisfying explosion to help us move on away from that.
The next offering from Netflix was the second installment in the “classic” Doctor Who E-Space trilogy, State of Decay. This is the one with the giant vampires, which here are not sexy and alluring like it’s been fashionable to portray them lately, but hideous and evil, the way they should be. The Doctor and Romana (and Adric, though they don’t know it yet) are bumbling about E-Space, and decide to explore a bit. They find a planet with just one settlement, a medievalish place around a tall tower that turns out to be an ancient marooned space ship. The space ship came from Earth (damn the show — go to another universe, still can’t get away from frickin’ humans) and was drawn into E-Space by guess what evil entity. The tower is ruled by three of the original crew, who have been turned into vampires by guess what — oh all right, the giant evil vampire under the tower-ship. It seems they were the scourge of the universe until the Time Lords destroyed them all in a bloody war that made them “sick of violence forever.” (I guess they got over it for the Time War.) Only this one guy escaped. The rest of the crew were kept as peasants, not immortal, their descendants periodically culled for new tower guards and bodies to feed the vampire.
This one has the Doctor knocking out a guard to get him and Romana away, and he kills the vampire (via crashing the sharp, pointy space ship into it) without anyone complaining to him that he killed someone oh noes! Then again, there were no little vampire babies unless you count the bats and the transformed crew that turned into dust upon the death of the giant vampire. The explanation for the vampires was at least as good as the one for the Racknoss. Some of the special effects were that cheap-o cardboard-on-cardboard stuff, but the sets were well done. I especially liked the interior of the thousand-year-old space ship control room: it looked really moribund and decayed. Though it’s hilarious that the advanced futuristic computer terminals looked just like junked Telex machines from 1976, and old tv sets. Romana’s outfit this time was a modified Edwardian-looking suit in a beige sort of color with these bizarre stripey stockings, though for some reason when she’s about to be sacrificed to the giant vampire they put her in a flowing princess dress. As for the Doctor, this was his dark red scarf phase. Adric was not too annoying this time, though we get to see the first of his “I’m treacherous and am going to betray you no not really see it was all a ploy to rescue you” shtick that they had him pull out for almost every episode he was in.
Spaced out May 27, 2009
My perpetual state of being… anyway, in the all-important Doctor Who news category, apparently “work is starting” on a Doctor Who movie, though of course no one is guaranteeing that David Tennant will be in the movie naked the movie will be released anytime soon or won’t eventually be shelved because, at least according to the mostly-appalled reaction of the fangirls, the viewing public is too stupid to handle offshoots to the “canon” or the “continuity” or something. Never mind that the movie industry does shit like this all the time (cough new Star Trek movie “reboot/alt-universe” cough), and it still gets bums in theater seats, which is all that really matters, right? Also getting David Tennant’s pants off you didn’t see me type that lions and tigers and Daleks oh my. Just so long as it’s not — FFSWTFBBQ — with Rose. Leave Billie Piper in her alternate universe please. I’d rather see the Doctor and Captain Jack get it on, so sick I am of Wose the Doctew’s Wun Twue Wuv.
Anyway, enough of that. Yesterday I saw the first episode of the old “classic” Who “E-Space Trilogy,” where the Doctor and Romana end up stranded in another universe (not an alternate one, just another one). This first episode is called Full Circle. I don’t remember seeing this one in the long ago though I may have. It starts with Romana being very upset that they’ve been summoned back to Gallifrey. Since she doesn’t come from wonderful Earth and homey old England she doesn’t want to go home. Also she’s been having fun traveling with the Doctor, duh. Anyway, the Doctor says something about how “you can’t fight Time Lords” (unless you’re Russell T Davies’ revamped Daleks, I guess), and she says “you did” and he says “I lost.” Fortunately a convenient disturbance sucks the Tardis into E-Space and they land on the planet Alzarius. It’s inhabited by humanoids who live by a river and there’s some business about fruit and insects and the leaders of the humanoids says something mysterious about “mistfall.” In the meantime a band of humanoids who have left the colony sneak up and try to steal some fruit but they are seen and chased off.
I’m not going to describe the whole episode. A synopsis is available on the internet. This is where we are introduced to Adric, one of the Doctor’s least liked (by the fans) companions. In his first episode, though, he’s not really that bad. He’s trying to prove himself to the little band of outlaws, because his brother is one of them. They don’t trust him because he’s an “elite,” and he wears this star-shaped badge for “mathematical excellence.” (Keep in mind that like most television shows Doctor Who was written by people who were probably not mathematical geniuses — I might write a post someday about the difficulty of writing about a character who is much smarter than the author — say, a scientific genius, or an alien with an unimaginable store of knowledge like the Doctor — and how one works around that.) In the meantime, mistfall is happening — mists form over the water and mysterious “marshmen” rise up from the depths to create havoc. The humanoids themselves are trying to repair a “starliner” so they can leave the planet, and they seem to have been doing so for generations. Whenever mistfall happens they need to seal themselves inside the ship. This time there’s the added complication of the Doctor arriving on the planet, and hilarity, as they say, ensues.
This episode does not seem to have had too many items lifted by the new series. Here Tom Baker reminded me a lot of David Tennant’s take on the Doctor — well, after all the latter grew up watching Baker. But certain expressions — like the way Baker’s eyes bug out — Tennant has down to a tee. Another thing that reminded me of the current Doctor is the way Baker gets to yell at the humanoid leaders as they are about to experiment on a captive marshchild’s brain. He is not down with the injustice at all. And this time the Doctor doesn’t kill anyone, or even punch them out. (Which Tennant’s Doctor hasn’t done so far, alas — I would really like to see him punch someone out. I can handle the no guns and the general pacifism but ye gods the man just won’t fight back! Ten’s motto seems to be “He who yells and runs away… gets to fight Daleks in perpetuity.”)
Anyway, all ends more or less happily, and the Doctor and Romana leave Alzarius with the (as yet undiscovered) stowaway Adric on board. The next episode should be coming from Netflix in a couple of days — State of Decay. All I remember about this one is it’s about giant vampires. By the way, Romana’s bedroom on the Tardis is hilarious — it’s every teen girls’ dream bedroom from 1979, complete with a lamp made of dangling shell pieces (which are back in fashion — you can’t get away from the things), and a big brass bed. Lalla Ward’s costume is based on God only knows what — a red velvet jacket and skirt with a big lace petticoat and big black proto-Ugg boots, and a flat straw hat. But at least she’s not wearing that schoolgirl uniform…
Ecstacy May 27, 2009
Yes yes yes! I am finally able to connect to my password-protected wireless network with my laptop. I have had no trouble connecting to open wireless connections, but for some reason I couldn’t figure out Ubuntu’s wireless login screen for my password-protected home network. Which right now consists of just the laptop — but this is mostly so I can work on the laptop from bed, which is across the apartment from the cable connection. As if I’m not lazy enough. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave my wireless access available to all and sundry, so I put up with a network cable that kept coming loose from the back of the computer and disconnecting me. Until now.
Of course, I’m turning off the cable this weekend and after that will only be logging in from wherever I can find free wireless access until I find a new place to live. But it’s nice to get this one thing done that’s been niggling at me. (Now, just watch some software glitch undo everything. Oh shut up, brain!)
Comments Off
Non-Stormy Tuesday May 26, 2009
There will probably be storms this afternoon, but right now the sun is out and the sky I see out my patio doors is mild and only slightly hazy. Yesterday, after a day out with a friend of mine, I started to feel one of my skull-crushing headaches coming on. So I made my way home (she lives all the way in Oviedo with her daughter) through the first of the afternoon storms, but it didn’t really start to get bad until I reached my apartment, when the skies opened up. It was a most spectacular storm, complete with thunder so loud and close that it was like getting bombed. For a wonder the lights did not go out, though they flickered a little. But my headache had reached full-force (I think it was one of my migraines), so all I could do was go to bed — which is now just a futon on the floor, but it’s quite comfortable). I’m still feeling the headache, so I’ll probably not be doing much today.
Whoops — I forgot to say, thanks everyone for the Happy Birthday wishes.
Have a safe Memorial Day May 25, 2009
I’ll be out and about for a while. Pray for me driving on the streets of Central Florida. It’s currently not raining, but that’s supposed to change later today. Anyway — the lady who bought my bed finally was able to come and get it, so now I’ll be sleeping on the floor (on the futon) for a couple of weeks. No biggie, I’ve done that before. I also sold her a couple of my lamps, so extra profit was made! I still have a bunch of stuff to get rid of, so I’ll be having another sale this weekend. And then — I’m gone for points north! I can’t wait. (PS: feel free to donate to the moving fund by going here. Thanks so far to everyone who has donated — every penny helps!)
Comments Off
Hapi Burusdei tu mi May 24, 2009
It’s my birthday today. Forty-six years ago I was born, to either the sound of harps and the scent of flowers, or a blast of sulfuric smoke and the bray of discordant trumpets as if from the bowels of the earth, depending upon which account you hear. I say it’s lies, all lies, and that I was developed in a vat in the underground labs of the Sisterhood of Doom, but as all the records were destroyed in the last Time War I have no proof.
So, I can haz cake?
No! You ate mah cake!
