Twisted Spinster

Okay, this theme is a little easier to read than oddly space white text on a gray background.

This isn’t important to anyone but me… but I knew I had seen a certain episode of Doctor Who ages ago (that is, before the current hottie, before Eccleston, before affordable — at least for me — videotape machines), and had a certain scene stuck in my head, and I couldn’t remember which episode it was. The scene wasn’t an interesting one either, just a random bit of filler between crises, don’t ask me why it stuck in my brain. Anyway, now I know which one it was — frickin’ “Snakedance,” where Tegan of all people got possessed by the titular evil spirit. Of course it hasn’t been released on dvd yet. (Maybe I’m not the only one who finds the pleasures of Peter Davison’s Dr. No. 5 seriously offset by the irritation that is Tegan.)

This is important, people. What?

While this brief burst of creativity lasts…

I spent this past Saturday at a friend’s house, and she wanted me to see Man of the Year, a movie starring Christopher Walken Robin Williams. I’m a big slave to Mr. Walken fan of Mr. Williams so of course I assented. Here is my review in brief:

There were some amusing lines, but Williams seems mostly squashed, a bit intimidated, by the very idea of the presidency. This attitude is at least preferable to the current notion that certain people (cough certain  aggrieved “minorities” cough) are somehow entitled to the Oval Office and red phone access, and is a bit of a reminder that as a nation we still somehow take our governing bodies seriously. The day may yet come when when the country is run by an analogy to Pirates of the Caribbean if the crew of the Black Pearl had been real psychopaths instead of actors hired by Disney and if they were all at the opposite end of the spectrum in handsomeness from Johnny Depp, but we have not become a superpowered version of Zimbabwe yet. Someone please tell CNN and the BBC.

Anyway, for most of the movie, except for an underpowered paranoid subplot involving a cute blond programmer and buggy voting software, was just like how I and my friends would have reacted if one of our crew had by some fluke gotten elected PUSA. In other words, we would have tooled around town in our limos, chaffered with our new, ironically bemused secret service detail, visited with the current prez and found he was not such a bad (or as this movie had it, stiff, boring, and unimaginative) guy after all, tried to help beleaguered friends in trouble (the cute blond programmer), and so on. Oh, and Christopher Walken walked away with the show in his pocket, as usual. Christopher Walken is a kind of god.

One last thing: this film featured Jeff Goldblum as a baddie. What intrigued me about his performance is the fact that he played this bad character (an evil lawyer working for an evil software company, natch) with the exact same mannerisms he uses when he is playing a good guy in other films. This is true of every film I have seen him in. And he somehow manages to be convincing both as a baddie and a goodie using the same facial, vocal, and bodily mannerisms. I can’t recall another actor being able to bring this off. It’s a unique talent, whatever else you might think of it.

Mark Shea has the same problem with the BBC’s Robin Hood series that I do. The only difference is he seems to actually watch the show, and I bugged out after being presented with a scene of modest medieval maiden Maid Marian traipsing through a village market wearing a short-sleeved shirt and capri pants, both of diaphanous material that in a real girl of the period would have been confined to a scarf or headdress. I don’t care that it stars that cute guy from that Doctor Who episode (“42”) either. I’m not a stickler for complete historic verisimilitude (I love the film Gladiator, for one thing), but this is more than I’m preparing to put up with. I’ll stick with the New-Agey pagan nonsense of the 80s “Hooded Man” version starring Michael Praed.

Oh yeah — and what he said about our culture being degraded compared to that of our so-called primitive ancestors is something that I’ve been thinking for quite some time. What is always funny to me is the way people start bleating on about “dentistry” whenever someone brings up the strange fact that people in the supposed “Dark Ages” seem to live in an atmosphere steeped in enough rapturous poeticism to give a million goth kids orgasms, but when faced with the actual fact of having to go to the dentist reveal just how skin deep is their love of our sophisticated medical tech. (Full disclosure: I hate going to the dentist, and have a mouthful — well, less than that, actually — to prove it.)

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Next day update: a thought did occur to me, though, that made me question Mark Shea’s Absolute Fandom response to the music and poetry of ancient culture. And that thought was: just how do we really know that our ancestors were more completely steeped in excellent song and story — just because our culture seems to find those fragments which are all we have left of the long ago to be somehow better than what we produce today? It just might be that we think everyone in, say, old Babylon wandered about their society doing nothing but singing and dancing and so on, but how do we know that what they sang and danced was what we found on the clay tablets? What if “Gilgamesh” was just some “official version” of a hero story, sponsored by the local rulers of the time, which the actual bulk of the populace had little interest in, and we only have the tale because the songs and poems people really liked were only passed on orally, no one bothered to write them down. Oh, and all those popular songs and poems were about the rich bitch down the street having sex with her uncle’s goats, songs about drinking and farting, and fair similar in content (or, well, lack thereof) to the more sophisticatedly presented junk we get on the E! channel.

Another thing is life in the good old days was really hard except for the very rich, who could afford to sit around all day listening to beautiful poems about Ra. Most people didn’t have time for singing and dancing, and would have looked at you funny if you asked them about weird modern concepts such as “art.” “What do you mean do I think the songs in praise of the gods are artistically pleasing? I’m not singing just to impress folk — if I didn’t praise the gods I’d end up in the underworld having my heart eaten by a jackal!”

Concerned Reader Nigel, who must have just been banned from Tim Blair’s new site the way I apparently banned him from Tim’s old site (I banned so many, their cries of pain merge into a unified scream of horror in my memories… ah, good times, good times), is worried:

Hi. I was interested to read your comments above regarding moderation and convenience.

I’m just wondering if you will be publishing the personal email address of people who register – the way you did to me (with associated abuse) on Tim Blair’s blog in 2006.

If so, perhaps you should let people know of this possibility.

Since the post he left that comment on is ancient, I’ll reply here: let’s just say, Nige old buddy, that I’m keeping all possibilities open.

Sorry, folks, I’ve been PMS’ing like mad since Sunday — in other words, I’ve either been totally possessed by incandescent rage or slumping under the weight of apathetic depression, or is it depressed apathy… I’m feeling a little better, though, so my hormones must be getting themselves back under control. Still, my condition means I can’t read anything on the internet lest I break more of my good stuff (victims so far: one of my good wine glasses — I can’t have nice things — and a coffee cup that was fortunately one of a pair). So naturally I’ve been reading the internet, or as I’m thinking of calling it now, the Retardnet.

I’ll be back when the red light fades from my vision and people stop crossing the street to get away from me.

It would look lovely in the entrance hall to my Secret Mountain Lair: Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine is finally built. (Warning: link is to a video that starts automatically.)

Via Ace of Spades, taking a break from politics and sex.

Hi kids! I went to see the fireworks in my town last night. It’s held over this lake, so it was sort of like Bilbo’s birthday party on steroids — and without a fireworks dragon, alas. Otherwise it was a great show, suitably loud. It was also extremely crowded — it took my friends and I nearly two hours to get out of the parking lot. I think it might have been extra crowded this year because a lot of the communities around here are not having July 4th weekend celebrations due to budget cuts or something. Anyway, I had a good time, though I was also reminded of 1) my age, and 2) why I don’t go to concerts anymore.

Anyway, I plan to get rid of this rather boring blog theme as soon as I can decide which of the ones I downloaded I like, so there will be that to look forward to. There is no new Doctor Who episode tonight — SciFi is taking the 4th off and is showing a Twilight Zone montage instead. Confession: I never really liked The Twilight Zone — I always found it either too depressing (so many of the characters ended up basically insane; also every episode that was set in outer space seemed to have a “leaving the Earth is hubris” theme), or too preachy (atomic bombs are bad, mmm-kay? Oh yeah, and people suck too!). Give me cheesy old Star Trek (the original series) episodes any day.

When they came for the dogs, I said nothing, because I owned two cats…

Seriously, could this be the point of no return in Blighty? As long as they kept to questions of human behavior the Muslims were safe, because the British have made one-upmanship on bending over backwards to prove they are the most polite nation in the world a national sport. But now Muslims are attacking not only dogs — which many residents of the sceptered isles love more than their own mothers — but Scottish dogs. You know, it’s time the Scots remembered they aren’t English — and aren’t famous for being polite.* And the English thereby might remember the Saxon component in their own makeup… (I base this not on the standard weak-kneed response from the police constabulary, but from the comments to the article, which so far are 100% behind the dog.)

Via Kathy Shaidle.

*I had this sentence in my entry last night and somehow in editing and correcting my spelling etc. it disappeared! I told you I was tired…

I’ve just been busy. Getting used to the new job, etc. Well, mostly that — from sloth and sleeping all day to a full time day job that starts at 7 in the morning is quite a…

Something — I forgot what I was going to say. Well, I’m tired too. More later, when I get some rest.

PS: thanks to everyone who has contributed to my donation links. I don’t get paid until next Friday, and that will only be a temp’s wages until I get officially hired, and I don’t know when that will be, so every bit helps.