| (no subject) |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|04:24 am] |
Too... much... Doctor Who...
I've got to stop mainlining this stuff. |
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| Huh. |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
Apparently, Michael Moorcock is going to write a Doctor Who novel.
It won't cross over with the Eternal Champion stuff (I hope!), but I can't help thinking...
Is the Time War another manifestation of the Conjunction of the Million Spheres? Because it sure seems like it. The Doctor is a Time Lord hero responsible for the destruction of his people. Since Romana was supposedly retrieved from E-space and made some kind of Time Lord mucky muck, there's room to posit her as the Ermizhad figure....
(Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion novels, which include Elric and almost everything else he's ever written at this point, rely on a cosmology that, frankly, I can't even sum up. If you're curious, try Wikipedia. Or Google. That's what I'd do.
There's always a tragic hero figure, there's almost always a woman who sparks a betrayal of someone/herself by the hero, and all the tragic heroes and the women are manifestations of the same "persons" playing out complicated, predestined schemes. Occasionally, the gender roles get swapped, so we get a tragic heroine and a hapless boy. Most of the time, the hero destroys the world. It started out as an attempt to write pulp fantasy as unlike Conan the Barbarian as possible, and it's better than I make it sound.)
I bet there's a Black Sword of Rassilon. :P If so, the Doctor should run away from it, fast and far. |
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| Doctor Who: Journey's End? |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|02:53 pm] |
I watched Journey's End again. There are a lot of references in there to "the end of time."
Did Journey's End really see the fulfillment of all the "prophecies" Dalek Caan made?
Have we really seen the only reasons Donna Noble's "timelines" were so freaky and anomalous?
Knowing Russell Davies as I do- maybe I should say, knowing his work as I do- I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes" on both counts. Which is a shame.
There's this thing that happens on TV shows where "smart" characters get to make airy-fairy conjectures about the nature of time and space and being and reality, and speak with authority about situations no one has ever encountered, and always be right. It really bugs me.
I know the Doctor is the hero. But there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of even in Time Lord philosophy. Or, at any rate, there should be. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 4th, 2009|05:45 pm] |
I am not inclined by nature to be a "good soldier." I try not to be a jerk, and I will compromise when I need to, but there comes a point when I just can't do that anymore. I think I have that in common with a lot of people.
( Politics )
I'm trying to cut down on the politics posts, I swear. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 18th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” -- New York Times.
Oh, Nino, no.
"There's no precedent for this!" is a stupid argument, especially in this case. You're arguing that someone should be executed for your procedural convenience. (Roberts actually gave you a pro-snuffing precedent, but that opinion was fucking stupid.) We can walk back through a long line of things the Court "never held"- until it did. One of the things the Supreme Court is for is overturning precedents, and you know it, and you've done it. It's amazing how much precedents matter to you when you agree, and how much they don't when you don't.
Oh, well. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and maybe precedent should be revered. But I'm getting off the train when the argument is, "hey, wait, the fact that this guy is innocent makes bureaucracy uncomfortable."
Nino Scalia, ladies and gentlemen. What a maroon. |
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| SDCC |
[Jul. 27th, 2009|12:35 pm] |
1. EPIC FAIL: I managed to set up meetings with precisely no one from my friendslist. Maybe next year. :(
2. Joss Whedon's excursions into sophomore philosophy are boring. "THE CORPORATIONS OWN YOU OMG!!!" But the rest of the Dollhouse panel was cool.
3. Navigating through the Exhibit Hall in a wheelchair is one of the lesser known circles of Hell.
4. I saw plenty of Phoenices and no Emma Frosts.
I mostly stuck to comics panels, which was a coincidence but made me happy.
It seems like I should have more to say about specific events, but I don't. It was fun, though. |
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| Etiquette Question |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|02:03 am] |
Suppose I am reading an LJ and a commenter (not the journal owner) says something really pretentious and stupid. The correct thing to do is to keep my big trap shut, right? It's not polite to start flaming a commenter in a third-party journal?
That's what I thought.
Le sigh. |
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| Fic Excerpt (Doctor Who) |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|12:40 am] |
When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
I wanted to write The Rani drunk.
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|08:05 am] |
Okay, no politics here for a while.
I don't like being cranky, but not liking it doesn't actually make me less cranky.
ETA: My pants are on fire. |
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| So, who wins? |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|07:34 am] |
A cube hovers in front of a saucer:
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own."
"EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
( The answer? ) |
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| From the WSJ |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|06:07 am] |
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124700261179807839.html
This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy.
Let. me. get. this. straight.
Sarah Palin. Was chased out of office. By FOIA requests??!?
The prospect of having to tell people what their state government was up to was so daunting that the governor had to quit. As opposed to hiring two new college-educated minions to deal with the massive onslaught of documents.
Look, having to deal with discovery-as-harassment sucks. I admit this freely. But this woman, who has the First Amendment exactly backwards, gets none of my sympathy. The government is accountable to the people, period, end of story. If it took her this long to realize she'd be subjected to more scrutiny as a governor than as a private citizen...
... Sweet Zombie Jesus.
I await the inevitable chorus of FOIA baad!, led by the usual evil suspects.
Karl Rove acknowledges the unusual battering Ms. Palin has endured in recent months, but told Fox News that GOP leaders are still puzzled by her decision. "If she wanted to escape the ethics investigations and save the taxpayers money, she's now done that," he said. Unfortunately, he added, her decision "sent a signal that if you do this kind of thing to a sitting governor like her, you can drive her out of office."
Oh, gee. Karl Rove has an opinion about this. Shock. |
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| Fanfic: Smile of the Rani |
[Jun. 27th, 2009|01:44 pm] |
Title: Smile of the Rani
Characters: Donna Noble, the Rani
Spoilers: Mild through JE
Rating: PG-13 (cursing)
Summary: The Rani needs a consultant.
Cursing her hangover and whomever it was at the door that had the extremely poor taste to be knocking, Donna Noble wobbled up to her peephole and surveyed her front walk.
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 27th, 2009|12:04 pm] |
Everybody- meaning most of us- has written a love letter, and they're almost uniformly mortifying. Needling someone over their crushed-out mushiness is perfectly acceptable and hilarious; reading someone's love letters out loud, as though the reader himself hasn't written letters just as stupid, is stomping on the Bro Code. |
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| Selected Verses From The Koran |
[Jun. 27th, 2009|01:21 am] |
(Translator unknown)
2.62: Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.
2.195: And spend in the way of Allah and cast not yourselves to perdition with your own hands, and do good (to others); surely Allah loves the doers of good.
4.93: And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell; he shall abide in it, and Allah will send His wrath on him and curse him and prepare for him a painful chastisement.
5.77: Say, O followers of the Book! be not unduly immoderate in your religion, and do not follow the low desires of people who went astray before and led many astray and went astray from the right path.
5.98: Know that Allah is severe in requiting (evil) and that Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|03:51 am] |
"5.77": Say: O followers of the Book! be not unduly immoderate in your religion, and do not follow the low desires of people who went astray before and led many astray and went astray from the right path. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|01:33 pm] |
I gotta stop paying attention to the Supreme Court.
It turns out you can't actually constitutionally strip-search a 13-year-old girl if you suspect she has prescription-strength ibuprofen (!) in her undies. So that's good. But, if you're the girl, you can't sue the bastards that did it, because the law is unclear on the issue.
Jesus. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|04:35 pm] |
Okay, get this
My sister, who is coming out of the Nerd Closet, insists we must go see Revenge of the Transforming Robots in IMAX. She bullies a large group into the 7:45 show. The fancy-pants theater is an hour and half away. So far, no big. Everyone hustles to be ready by 5, we basically are, and all is well. But no!
At 4:15, she calls to say she has an "important project"- which apparently sprang from the sea-foam like Aphrodite, sometime in the last two hours- and we're going to the 11 PM show.
I love my sister. But... |
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| In Case Anyone Is Curious... |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|01:03 am] |
The word "Allah" is the Arabic word for "God." Muslims use this word to refer to the "God of Abraham." Arabic Christians use this word to refer to God- "Allāh al-ʼAb" means "God the Father", and that construction is used to distinguish Christian from Muslim.
I don't know this because I am some great scholar. I looked up "Allah" on Wikipedia, that's all.
I am posting this because every time I hear someone say, "They don't worship God, they pray to Allah!", I want to slap the taste out of that person's mouth.
There is plenty of room for doubt and mystery in pondering what god, goddess, or whomever there might be. If you are an atheist, a pagan, or whatever, good on you. But I never again want to have to sit through a conversation with my ignorant neighbor, who thinks that to refer to God in a language he doesn't speak is to refer to a different God.
Jesus Christ. |
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