Subtractric

I'm so glad Adric's finally dead. I'd heard some time ago that Adric was to die at some point--though I hate spoilers, some are unavoidable. He has by far been my least favourite companion on Doctor Who. He seemed so sloppily put together, and when he started taking initiative late in his tenure, it was annoying because I felt like he hadn't earned the right. He was just too blank. He started out as just "The Boy" before at some point they decided he was a math wiz. And since I recently watched the two surviving episodes of The Wheel In Space, it seemed to me like Adric was robbing Zoe, a companion of the Second Doctor, of this distinguishing characteristic. And I won't stand for that. Zoe was the math wiz first, had that trait from the beginning, and was much cuter than Adric to boot.



Otherwise, "Earthshock" was an exceptionally good serial. The Cybermen are really menacing and I love the feeling of boundless movement as the characters move from a story in a mine to a story in a cargo spaceship haplessly threatening Earth. And even though I didn't like Adric, I appreciated the way he died not being a hero, just trying to be one. I can tell the show runners hoped to raise the stakes by having a companion die, and it worked. Though a similar mindset was probably also behind the destruction of the sonic screwdriver in "The Visitation". I read on Wikipedia it was because the producer felt it was too easy for the Doctor to unlock doors. Which, to me, is sort of like saying the TARDIS makes it too easy for the Doctor to travel through time or his legs make it too easy for him to walk. If you don't want him travelling through time, make something go wrong with the TARDIS, if you don't want him to walk, paralyse or restrain his legs, and if you don't want the sonic screwdriver unlocking a particular door, make it impossible somehow. It was done on many occasions. There's no limit to what you can do when your job is to make shit up.

Like, free your mind, man.



It's starting to bug me how similar the Cybermen are to the Borg. Even the name--it's like each one took a different part of the word "cyborg". I think originality is overrated--every good show or movie took at least one or two things from something that came before. But the Borg are so exactly like the Cybermen the term I want to use is "rip off". I feel pretty certain the Borg wouldn't have come into existence if Doctor Who had been better known at the time in America. Even the Doctor's reasoning as to why human emotions are an advantage--that they enrich life--is better than Picard's when the question was put to him--he didn't even explain why human emotions were a strength.

But Star Trek: The Next Generation is the one I grew up with. I feel sort of like I found out one of my favourite grade school teachers had a money laundering scheme on the side.

Here are a couple screenshots I forgot to post from the mermaid section of Second Life's Fantasy Faire;

A Titan's Translucent Shadow

I finally had a chance to watch the last two episodes of Sym-Bionic Titan yesterday. They were both good episodes, though it was frustrating knowing they were the last--I guess we'll never know the identity of the mysterious character introduced in the final episode. But I loved the bleak, "on the run" mood of "The Steel Foe". I was really happy that Kimmy was given a great deal of screen time, and a lot of the tension comes out of wondering if she and Octus are going to get back together.



I also liked and was somewhat fascinated by the Ilana fan service shots, which had been gradually increasing for several episodes. This sort of thing is old hat in anime, but pretty rare in feverishly chaste, modern American cartoons. It's really nice to see, and also served as an indicator of the show's target audience of teenagers and young adults. I fear that, more than anything, this was what sunk the show. It's in a niche America doesn't quite seem to have yet, despite the popularity of anime. It's not kid stuff, and it's not Adult Swim, it's somewhere in between.



I'll miss this show a lot. There's a facebook fan campaign to get the show a second season, but I fear Sym-Bionic Titan is likely to join Farscape, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, and Firefly in the ranks of genuinely interesting Sci-Fi shows that were cancelled pretty much for being genuinely interesting.



Twitter Sonnet #251

Speeding monkeys burst in banana flame.
Spinning horseshoe crabs break the wooden post.
No-one mentions the ghost luchador's name.
Gumby masks just insult the orgy's host.
Golf in underwear prevents wrinkled suits.
A broken gallery conceals John Cleese.
Intense cat feet vanish in her rain boots.
Time loops in the interest of keeping peace.
Terse pincushion hands keep eyelids open.
Liquid ham oozed around a stale cookie.
Tailors stand waiting for pants to happen.
Gummy Bears bounce away from the bookie.
White bands solidify a false asset.
Humans demand mirrors have one facet.

Will You Stay In Our Continually Repeating Lovers' Story?

I went at least two thirds of a year believing I was 32. Discovering that this is actually my thirty second birthday is actually kind of a good feeling. I feel like I get to do-over a year.

For my birthday yesterday, I went with my family to see Source Code, a perfectly decent Science Fiction film. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but I don't feel movies always need to be. It's the second feature by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, and the first with a big studio budget behind it. Which is probably why Jones didn't decide to do anything too crazy--one senses the pitch to studio producers; "It's Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day." Fortunately the film resembles the latter more than the former. Also, unlike Groundhog Day, it invokes quantum physics, as Captain Stevens, the protagonist, actually repeats the same moments in parallel universes, rather than experiencing exactly the same moments, which provokes some interesting questions about how Stevens perceives the people he meets. He may save someone in one reality, but does he at all bear the weight of all the other versions of that person he didn't save?

Howard Stern had said the movie felt like a Hitchcock film, and he's right. I think there are several deliberate references to North By Northwest, particularly in Chris P. Bacon's Bernard Herrmann-ish score and the visuals constructed with the silver passenger train. Not quite as blatant as all the Hitchcock references in 12 Monkeys, but it's there.

Who wants pollen?



The recent days of heavy rain followed by hot, sunny weather seem to have produced, among other things, a sort of daisy apocalypse in a nearby field;
















And here's a daddy-long-legs from my bathroom a few nights ago;

Humour Me Before I Have to Go

No time for a real entry to-day, I'm going out to a dinner and movie with my family for my birthday, which is technically to-morrow. I'll be thirty three, which, according to Billy Corgan, goes something like this;


The Smashing Pumpkins - Thirty-Three by EMI_Music

Okay, actually I'll be thirty two. So I forgot my own age, so what?

You is Right in What You Says Last Week

I rather like Keith Olbermann just posting video whenever he feels like it. I wonder if his new show on Current TV will have as much of an audience as his blog.

“I believe the teachers in New Jersey in the main are wonderful public servants that care deeply. But their union, their union are a group of a political thugs” (If you’re going to criticize educators, Governor, at least make sure your grammar works. “Is” a group, Governor. “Is”).

Elsewhere in the world of grammatical glass houses, to-day Judith Flanders tweeted this comment on a recent letter to a New York Times editor by Donald Trump;

best bit 'Her storytelling ability and word usage...is not at a very high level' They isn't is they?

I feel like I've probably made mistakes like these one or two times myself. Which is why I generally reserve my criticisms of other people's grammar to those instances when they fail at grammar while in the process of criticising someone else's. Well, that sentence was kind of a grammatical loop-de-loop in itself, wasn't it?

So I don't normally mention the spelling and grammar errors in the Sirenia Digest, even though most of its issues are filled with them. Anyway, the quality of the writing generally elevates it well past the place where bad grammar and spelling are but the green water mark of a castle's moat. But it's kind of something one has to consider in the newest issue which seems to contain several errors that appear to be intentional. Written in the form of a diary kept by Caitlin's fictional painter, Albert Perrault, it quite reminded me of William S. Burroughs in its experimentation with narrative. And bits like Perrault correcting himself when he writes "allude" when he actually meant "elude", point to the use of spelling and grammar to indicate the mental state of the fictional writer.

Actually, I remember accidentally using "allude" when I meant "elude" myself a couple weeks ago. If Caitlin still reads my blog, I'd have to consider if she was trying to tell me something, though what, I can't say. When looking at the other errors in the piece, like when one of the characters accidentally refers to Jimmy Page as an American, I actually think to myself, did I accidentally refer to Jimmy Page as an American at some point?

Anyway, the story, "Random Thoughts Before a Fatal Crash" isn't bad. One of my favourite bits of possibly intentional grammatical error was when Perrault accidentally writes "His knees" when referring to an otherwise female character, a subtle nod to Perrault's fluctuating sexual orientation.

Twitter Sonnet #250

Trader Joe's sells triplets in brown paper.
Phoney chocolate clogs an almond trombone.
Styrofoam chokes a blue alligator.
A skinny swordsman sadly returns home.
Razor sharp yams destroy the plastic bag.
Real magic sees that the rain blinks at night.
Smiles become shapes when they start to sag.
Rectangles too many for squares to fight.
Circles resolve into wreaths of milkweed.
Doubled horse heads shake on the right column.
Red bleeds in blue on a tacky fake steed.
Empty paper rain leaves the bats solemn.
Sparkly ink contaminates a new law.
Stones are gobbled by red faced Phil McGraw.

A Mer Moment

My anthropology teacher last night told the class that he had accomplished astral projection. And he wasn't joking.

Moving into the subject of magic and religion in various cultures, he talked about how they functioned, how they were means by which human beings attempted to control things in the universe they otherwise had no means of controlling. Then he asked if we wanted to know how to do real magic.

He told us about an author named Ophile, but warned us not to try anything in his books unless we really wanted it to happen. All this takes some of the kick out of when he makes fun of Republican presidential nominees for being creationists.

He talked about the anthropological perspective on supernatural beings, too, and said they come in one of three varieties; 1. Major deities 2. Ancestral spirits/saints 3. Non-human spirits. As I happened to be doodling a mermaid in my notebook at the time, I sort of wondered where mermaids fit into that list.

I was really into mermaids as a kid, which is probably why I've been getting such a kick out of the new mermaid tail and animation override I got in Second Life about a week ago;




I found there are actually a lot of underwater places to explore in Second Life, including the very impressive Blake Sea which, being several connected sims, actually feels sort of like a sea, with a surprising amount of detail in the underwater areas considering the Blake Sea is apparently mainly devoted to boating. I liked this partially submerged plane I was able to explore;



Which had me wondering, why hasn't anyone made a good mermaid video game? Or maybe someone has and I just don't know about it. The last good one I remember playing was the one for the original Nintendo system based on the Disney Little Mermaid movie. Unlike most games based on films, then and to-day, it wasn't a lazy, cynical exploitation. It wasn't a really great game, but it had great physics. They borrowed liberally from Super Mario Brothers 2 and Bubble Bobble, but I loved how you could catch items you threw if you were fast enough, I loved how you could swim at two different speeds, and I loved how you could flop around outside the water.

I thought this review/walkthrough was kind of funny;



I love someone reviewing a Disney game saying something like, "Listen to what I'm saying here, a fucking fish disguised as a ghost."

The Mercurial Hand of Friendship

George Takei's in trouble with his husband after this incident on The Howard Stern Show yesterday;



We should all hope we're so much fun at 73.

I don't want to go to class to-night. There's a test, but I know I'll ace it. I just don't want to sit for five hours. It doesn't help that I didn't sleep very well. I had "Wild Mountain Thyme" stuck in my head. That song is like a crazy hell loop; "Will ye go, lassie, go, and we'll all go together, to pick wild mountain thyme, all around the blooming heather, will ye go lassie, go," and it keeps going like that.

One of the places I play chess in Second Life has a Celtic music station playing all the time and I heard two versions of "Wild Mountain Thyme" yesterday. When I was lying in bed and that bit started chanting in my head, some little switch triggered in me and asked, "Isn't there a reason you don't want to think of this song?" And I remembered--yes, I have an mp3 somewhere of Sonya singing it. And the moment I remembered that, the song was stuck in permanent cerebral hell loop. Since she and Caitlin are so into sirens, maybe she'd appreciate it in a weird way, though I'm sure if she gave me any thought at all it would be to be creeped out that I thought of her still, years later.

I'm angry that I'm not still friends with her, I'm still ashamed of being an asshole when things were falling apart between us, but, then again, if we'd just gradually gotten bored of each other, I doubt "Wild Mountain Thyme" would hold any particular significance for me now. Oh, wait, am I saying that's a good thing? My masochism, I suppose.

Now Connecting

Twitter Sonnet #249: Videodrome Edition

Transmissions of clay beam from William Pitt.
Blondie apparitions doze on the screen.
Savage pizza overcomes a man's wit.
Pistol veins mar a tense studio scene.
A microwave lounges on a vexed brain.
Pastel surrounds glitter for eye glasses.
Maenads think couch potatoes are insane.
For flesh, on screen, Oblivion passes.
Slowly, shadowed lips emerge from blue snow.
Channel basement holds a flirty pirate.
Beings of refracted light are hard to know.
Public spheres are the ultimate private.
Luminous arenas have lots to eat.
Sleeping viewers devour glassy meat.

Lately I've been watching This Simpsons while I eat dinner. I started with the second season, as I recalled that was when the show really started to become itself. Though I haven't watched the old episodes in at least ten or fifteen years. I remember discussions about the season premiere, "Bart Gets an F", when I was in fourth grade. It was still a time when it wasn't strange that everyone had watched the same episode of the same television show. And there's actually a lot in that episode for fourth graders to relate to--told from Bart's POV, the episode contains a lot of insightful little moments, like the bit where, to prove Bart hasn't read Treasure Island for his book report, his teacher asks him to name the pirate and a list of famous pirate names runs through Bart's head until he says with conviction, "Blue Beard".

The point is to further establish Bart as a kid trying to pull a fast one on his teacher. I was struck by how different that is from the closest modern equivalent show, Family Guy. Family Guy would probably have gone to a flashback of the kid throwing the book at a giant rabbit or something. But all animated comedy is more firmly ironic now, we're more comfortable with it. There is heart in Family Guy, but it's almost by accident. I was thinking how appropriate it was that Stewie Griffin's voice is modelled after Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady because Stewie started off being supposedly villainous and gradually he simply became something like an average adult in the body of a child--much as Harrison's performance isn't particularly evocative of the character he played.

I remember, too, all the controversy surrounding whether or not The Simpsons was a positive influence, an argument that seems so incredibly quaint and obsolete now. I think now and then you hear someone complain about Glen Quagmire raping someone, while there would be a national uproar if Bart used the word "hell".

Critics argued that The Simpsons showed the terrible behaviours of Bart and Homer as acceptable, while defenders argued that the show, as satire, actually poked fun at crass American behaviour. Three episodes into season two, it seems to me the show does both. It identifies the behaviour as bad, but loves Americans anyway.

It seems strange to me now that we don't have massively popular mainstream shows digesting our collective self-image anymore. Watching the old Simpsons episodes, it strikes me that western culture is sort of drifting in a cultural chaos, or is more sharply divided into thousands of subcultures.

The Semblance of Flesh

You may all rest easy now, for it seems Natalie Portman's butt is indeed seen in Your Highness. Though I, unlike the author of the article, don't discount the possibility of Portman's face digitally attached to another actress willing to show butt. A "Natalie Portmanteau" if you will.

You're welcome.

In any case, I'm starting to look forward to this Your Highness movie, despite the fact that I think James Franco and Natalie Portman are the two blandest actors working to-day. Last week, Howard Stern compared Your Highness to Ghostbusters in a way that really piqued my interest, saying that despite the fact that it is a comedy it does take its own world somewhat seriously. So it's more Princess Bride than Men in Tights.

You know I'm a big fan of fantasy that's comfortable with itself and with sex. I love how the villain's ritual to obtain power by having sex with a virgin is called "the Fuckening." There's something Monty Python-ish about that, calling some self-important traditional or mystical whatsit by a name that suggests the puerile thing it actually is.

Yesterday, wandering Second Life's Fashion Faire, I spotted this great thing;



The person or people who made it may have meant it to be a reference to the Burning Man festival but I recognise the Wicker Man when I see him.

Sorta Kinda

I finished watching "Kinda" yesterday, a Doctor Who serial I'm a bit on the fence about. On the one hand, I like the English interplanetary explorers in pith helmets who take hostages from the peaceful natives because it's standard procedure. I like the mythological elements, the look of the dream world where the Satan snake comes from, and how the snake possessed Tegan and seduced one of the innocent natives by dropping apples on his head. I didn't like how annoying Adric was, taking initiative and somehow dazzling the suddenly a bit dim-witted Doctor with coin tricks. Apparently everyone forgot or didn't know that the Third Doctor did magic tricks.



But I was pleased by the distinctive culture given to the Kinda, the natives (pronounced "kin-duh"). Having learned in my anthropology class that the Western standard Eskimo kinship system is actually relatively rare, it was nice seeing the Doctor encounter a culture with a different one, apparently the Hawaiian where a child considers all male members of the older generation to be fathers and all females of that generation to be mothers. Though I didn't like how shocked the Doctor seemed by it. It's interesting how, in trying to expand the scope of Doctor Who in terms of alien culture, this writer actually made the show's scope seem improbably small.

Here are some pictures from the past few days;

My Blog's Apparently Becoming About Sexual Politics

I just chopped an onion for the first time in my life. I love all the layers and tears involved.

Roger Ebert on Twitter to-day linked to this NPR column about Wonder Woman's costume. It's a slippery slope, as my colleagues across the aisle would say. First you give Wonder Woman pants, then people will be wanting to give her a long sleeved shirt, probably body armour and a helmet, and we'll end up with a space suit.

What we have is sexual inhibition enabled by a lack of imagination. The premise of the article is "You can't fight crime in that outfit." Well, how practical is Superman's outfit? Tights? Bright blue and red? The point of superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman is that they're so powerful that they could be naked and still do what they do. Their outfits are the wardrobe version of thumbing a nose at the criminal element--to say, "Not only can I kick your ass easily, but I can do it in a costume apparently made from part of a flag."

The columnist says to Wonder Woman, "I am all for you being gorgeous. I am all for you embracing your right to be a sex bomb and a crime fighter at the same time . . ." But I'm not so sure.

Apparently Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder's latest film, is borne of a schizophrenic idea about female empowerment and its supposed conflict with female sexiness. My friend Iain wrote about it in his facebook, and a couple of reviews on Ain't It Cool News seemed to echo his reaction, that the film is composed of two aspects that each damage the other--rampant fan service and sequences designed to make you feel guilty about rampant fan service. I hope people are finally starting to realise what a shallow meathead Snyder is.

This culture and sex, oy vey. Let me just put it plainly for you folks; in fantasy, women can be hot, naked, and kick ass. In fantasy, anything can be anything. That's what fantasy means, you geniuses. Don't make Dejah Thoris cry.

Twitter Sonnet #248

Ice cream sandwiches evince true love's scope.
Lizard spies send dull reports from Utah.
Bigamists deplete Patrick Henry's hope.
A teepee held a conical outlaw.
Iroquois tribes enslave or scalp Na'vi.
Alien apples attract the Doctor.
Some hares are seen only by the savvy.
Most people can spot a helicopter.
Green boats of old dragon gravy drift past.
Lactating cashews feed the farmer's brood.
Wise bots know to make mark piñatas last.
Pixie states fell into grain interlude.
The old soil is full of moody men.
George Washington won't speak to me again.

The Disquieting Absence of Ugliness

On Wednesday night I watched My Fair Lady, which is in many respects a good movie. One of its virtues is a flow of narrative that's very smooth, despite a great deal of fat--in particular, I think Eliza Doolittle's father could've been removed almost entirely and I don't think his songs contribute to the play at all. But my main complaint with the film is Rex Harrison and possibly George Cukor's direction of him.



It's important to remember that Henry Higgins is a misogynist and not merely a product of a time that saw a great deal less equality for the sexes. He shocks his contemporaries with his treatment of Eliza--his colleague, Pickering, and even his housemaid venture to chastise him for the way he refers to Eliza as consummately "low" and "dirty". Yet it's only through dialogue and the lyrics to some of the songs that we know Higgens is a misogynist--it doesn't come through in his performance at all. He acts like abusing women is the most natural thing in the world. There may well be some people who are like that, but I don't think someone can maintain that worldview without accruing some psychological damage when every one of his family, friends, and servants thinks the way he treats women is just short of monstrous. Higgins needed to be played with more layers--he needed a darkness that was visible bubbling up in him, either from a hatred of women, from resentment because no-one agrees with him about women, or both.

The problem becomes most achingly apparent in the pivotal scene after the ball where Eliza has managed to fool the English aristocracy into thinking she belongs to a higher social class than she was born into. The song in this scene relishes in Higgins taking all the glory for himself, and it is, quite naturally, the last straw for Eliza, prompting some of the best dialogue from the play in their confrontations in later scenes. The trouble is, Higgins seems genuinely unaware that he's so gratuitously failing to give Eliza any credit for her reformation. It makes him seem absurdly stupid, and hits a broader note of comedy than is appropriate. Better in the role, I think, may have been someone like Christopher Lee. Someone who could inject the right amount of pointed bitterness in all that self-congratulating, a real meanness, that at the same time is subtle enough to make a person's sense of propriety unsure if it's even there.

Actually, the performance that would've been perfect was Cary Grant's in Hitchcock's Notorious--though of course Grant's accent was too idiosyncratic for Higgins. Perhaps it's Hitchcock's willingness to see the genuinely discomforting things that take root in the human heart, causing compulsively destructive behaviour, that makes his films hold up psychologically so much better than others.

Of course, I detested the ending of My Fair Lady, which deviated from Shaw's play. Not only because it's even more sexist this way than Harrison's performance already makes the movie, but also because it means Eliza doesn't end up with the character Freddy, played by Jeremy Brett. True, Freddy's not all that exciting, but he's Jeremy Brett. I fancy Brett shared some of my complaints about the production from a rather curious moment in the latter portion of the film. When Eliza goes back to the part of town where she grew up, after her transformation, she runs into her father. She's escorted there by Freddy, who's totally smitten with her, but upon meeting her father, he doesn't say a word to him. This was all wrong--in the period when this movie takes place, Freddy would've spoken to Eliza's father before he'd have come calling on her. He'd certainly make some remark on meeting him. It's the subtle, unaddressed look of shock on Brett's face every time Eliza calls the man "Dad" that makes me think Brett wasn't happy with the oversight, either.




But otherwise, I mainly liked the movie. I loved Audrey Hepburn's performance, even though her cockney didn't seem entirely natural. The scene at the race track, where she has all the right vowels but is given away by her slang and sordid family drama, is absolutely perfect. And beautiful, with everyone in white, black, and grey and Hepburn in this fetishistic white sheath with what looks like black duct tape. It almost looks like she's wearing part of a set from 2001: A Space Odyssey.



Watching the rather lousy 1947 Alexander Korda adaptation of An Ideal Husband a few weeks ago was what put me in the mood for My Fair Lady as both films feature Cecil Beaton as costume designer--I can at least say My Fair Lady is the better of those two films, and a better showcase for Beaton's work. As in An Ideal Husband, Beaton's dresses make copious use of flowers, which is carried over into set design and overall look of the film. My favourite is the pink dress Hepburn wears at the end;

Lost Lizard Questions

Now that it's hot again, I've been seeing lizards all over the place. There's one trapped in the garage now--he dashed behind a cabinet before I could get a picture. He's missing his tail, I suspect it was most likely captured by Snow. I did get a picture of a lizard at school last night;



I guess it hardly seems worth posting when I've gotten much better lizard pictures in the past. In case anyone's wondering, I did submit two anonymous sex questions I was "afraid to ask." The teacher read them along with all the others. They were;

When my girlfriend and I are having sex, I like to call her "Klondike Bar". Does this mean I hate women or does it depend on what I'm willing to do for her?

And

I had sex with Lars Ulrich backstage at a Metallica concert. He kept calling me a "dirty little Napster" and he kept my underwear because he said he wanted me to know how it feels. Is it okay if I still download music?

I got a good laugh from the class, which was nice. I love when I get validation for my pranks.

I finished "Four to Doomsday," the Doctor Who serial, yesterday. I read on Wikipedia that the showrunners were trying to take a "back to basics" tact, attempting to avoid much of the humour or the horror elements of the Fourth Doctor serials in favour of more straight Science Fiction. And so far it has felt slightly like watching First Doctor episodes, though what I'm appreciating most right now is Peter Davison's performance. It could be my imagination, but it seems to me that there's a subtle, organic evolution to the Doctor's character. Each regeneration seems to retain something from the previous incarnation that hadn't been there before--the Third retained the Second's warmth, the Fourth retained the Third's ease of manner, and the Fifth seems to have retained some of the Fourth's, I guess you might call it, affable silliness.

I love how he chewed out Adric for being such an easy turncoat. That's something I don't think I've seen since the Third Doctor. I also liked Nyssa's trick with the sonic screwdriver and the pencil.