The Den of Inadequacy

Jared Versus the Machine (Or Foecus Ex Machina)

2011-12-16T11:59:00.003+11:00

Like a man stranded on a desert island, reduced to eating boilet coconut skins, I feel the need to send a message to say where I am stranded to somebody... anybody....

The house I'm renting is driving me insane somewhat. I'm letting a room in a house with a Chinese family. I don't understand a lot of what they're doing and their English is virtually non-existent so I can't really work it out. I feel uncomfortable around people I don't know so I spend a lot of time in my room because I don't want to run into them in any of the shared areas.

My room is also like that of a serial killer. There is no decoration, there aren't any adornments. Everything in the room is simply a surface for stuff to go on. This is my fault, but I think it ties in with being turfed out of my first sharehouse - I didn't decorate my second room either. I think I don't see the point. I don't think I'm capable of thinking of Sydney as any kind of home.

I spend most of my time on my computer, even though I have nothing to do on it. I'm killing time like the Hitler of the temporal realm. I don't know why this is. I'm living a weird half life, I feel like I've just given up on real life as a whole. I attempted to turn my RSVP page into a massive rant at the cold hearted superficial and above all boring bitches who populate that site but, typically, I got a notification that it exceeded a character limit (how appropriate) and so it languished on my FaceBook as a note too long for anybody to read.

It almost seems like when I go out I get divinely punished for wanting to do something. Last party I went to ended with me locked in a carpark and some friends getting hospitalised. Next one I attempted to go to I was thwarted at every turn until I collapsed virtually unconscious at home.

I feel like I have lost all control over my day to day life, and now I can understand why people believe in God. When it comes down to it our choices only get us so far. For much of our existence we are nothing but corks bobbing on a tide. Of course, you want to believe that tide is meaningful and benevolent. The alternative is to go completely fucking insane, as I am.

In the midst of this rant, I haven't even mentioned the game I was working on. I was grateful to have a project, that invovled working with other people that would keep me occupied in the wake of losing my job. How wonderful then that they kick me off within a couple of weeks of presenting them with all the code I'd written. Just like that. "Oh, wow, great work! This is excellent, we thought this project was dead. Now fuck off!" That was, believe it or not, a big chunk of my life that got torn out. I had something to occupy me, to keep me sane after everything with any meaning got taken away from me, so of course that had to go too.

So, I become addicted to video games. There, at least I have control over what happens. I can kill whatever motherfuckers I want, drive where I want, do what I want. I can play as Commander Shepherd and watch the whole world fucking burn just because I can. I can play as The Dovakhiin and do the same thing in another world. Or I can play Engie and giggle with glee as an army of scouts run straight into my whirling chainguns and missiles...

To this end I must give a big thank you to Childish Things, developers of International Cricket Captain 2005 for possibly saving me from these doldrums by making the most frustratingly bullshit game I have ever played, you cocksuckers.
It's the kind of non-engagement required game perfect for when I come back from work and need background noise to quieten the soft voices imploring me to kill small animals. Because it has no sound I frequently play while listening to a podcast or a full-cast audio drama penned by my vastly talented friend.

The idea is wonderfully simple - you play a County side in the English domestic competition, possibly turning them around from zeroes on the tables into a winning outfit that can slaughter all comers, and if you do so well enough you'll be picked to captain the national side.

I did well enough. I took Yorkshire, who weren't even in the First Division of the competiton, played them to be runner ups in both one day competitions and nearly take the Second Division title, then in my second season took the County Championship without losing a single match!

Oh, how fun (of a sort) it was to meticulously pick and train my electronic bits to scurry out onto the field and kick arse of whatever feeble offerings Surrey and Glamorgan threw my way. We few, we merry few, we band of brothers that did battle, their names, familiar in my mouth as household names - Phillip Jaques, Joseph Sayers, David Wainwright, Adrian MacGrath, Guy and Hoggard, Lumb and Silverwood shall in my orange juice be freshly rembered, unto the ENDING OF THE WORLD.

This portion of the game was nice and pleasant, because it all made sense. I pick the 11 that looked the best, or possibly gambled a bit more, I get results that make sense. I coach and select others and train them to get better results. They follow my batting and bowling plans.

The problem is... I got the England captaincy.

This is where the game proves itself to be, as I alluded, COMPLETE BULLSHIT.

I could pick the All-Time XI of Wisden Almanac, on a fucking concrete pitch in the sunniest day of an Australian Summer and they'll be all out for 65. Logic doesn't factor into it, other than the computer saying "I have a brain the size of a planet, fuck you meatbag".

I honestly feel more than any other time, the computer is a malicious cheating bastard, glad that it holds the die and the rulebook for this game. I just tried to play the same Test match three times, and every fucking time I get rolled. The reason I replayed the first time is I assumed that I misunderstood the conditions, as it looked like a good batting day but apparently the weather suited the bowlers a lot more. Okay fair enough, I won the toss and bowled.

Ha-hey, Windies all out for just a hair over 300. That's good. My first two batsmen make 115 before anybody's out. Awesome! I'm going to roll these... then every other batsmen gets out for minimal scores, I'm all out for 275. The match goes on to the last day, I need 245 to win. Damn, that's a lot but I give it a go. Strauss gets out for 150 eventually, I need a hundred to win with ninth man Hoggard but bowling all-rounder Swann who's looking damn good on 28 and might just win me the game. I specifically tell Hoggard not to score singles so that Swann is kept on strike.
Hoggard hits his first ball for a single. His next ball he is bowled out.

THEY DIDN'T EVEN GIVE ME A CHANCE! Yeah, I would've lost anyway but the game just IGNORED MY INPUT ENTIRELY!!!

Out of protest, I play it again and this time pick a better team because my two spinners approach went badly. Good, good GOOD first innings. I bowl Windies out for 270, however there's just one over left in play. Obviously I need my batsmen to survive, I tell Strauss not to play at anything.

He plays. He's out. 1/0. Of course.

GAAAH

Ah, well, I send in a nightwatchman, he survives the day, how bad can things get.
Next morning, second over, nightwatchman gets out. Fair enough, that's what he's there for. Then.... Pietersen gets out first ball. Fuck. Then FLINTOFF gets out first ball. I told all of them NOT to play.

What the FUCK computer??? You can just give yourself a hat-trick whenever I'm in the game? Where's my 'bowl a hat-trick' button? I don't fucking see it! I mean I'd like to get your three best batsmen out for fuck all but I actually need to use strategy and patience to fucking do it!

It's like.. the fucking script was written for me to lose the game and the computer was just bending the game's reality to make it happen. Jesus Christ! It's meant to work off statistics in-game. So how come the game says my bowlers and batsmen are better but they can never ever EVER play better than YOURS?

This isn't just griping about one match. The game went even further into 'fuck you' territory before this. England's one-day team was ranked 5th. India's 2nd. I was playing them in a triangular series with the Windies, I'd lost all my games against India but then won the last one before the final. Haha, I think, now I get to go into the final with good form and might just steal away their trophy...

No... the games telling me that I'm not playing the final. Hmmm. I got a test match. Okay, maybe the final's scheduled later...

I look up the calendar. The final has already been played. But not by me. And what do you know, India won by 22 runs.

...WHAT THE FUCK COMPUTER? When I start to win, you don't even let me play the game???

Then before THAT, when I was in The Cricket World Cup. I was third in the Super Eights, so I was going through to the finals. Awesome. I see my next match is against New Zealand, and because they're a team I've beaten three times by then I think "That's cool, I can play a second string team so I have players match-ready in case of injury".

I lose the match. Ah, well, that was always a chance and... yo, what the fuck. I pretty much get a pop-up message saying "Way to lose the World Cup, dumbass."

See, that game was the first in the knock-out matches. It was the quarter-final. Only absolutely nothing in the game told me that.

... please, computer, in the name of all fornication help me understand your motivation.

If I have a child, I should lock him in a room with nothing but this game and a hammer for days. When he gives in and smashes the game with a hammer, I set him free and tell him "You have passed the test. For sometimes, the obvious test IS the right one."

Then get arrested for child abuse.

Anyway, guess what's getting uninstalled right after I press the 'post' button?

EDIT: Sadly, the uninstallation wizard doesn't have a "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" option

So the Season Break..

2011-08-10T12:21:00.003+10:00

EDIT: Apparently, if I press enter when I've written the title it publishes a blank post and makes me look like a dick.

Aaaanyway, would you say the mid-season gap is doing it's job? I'd say if the idea is to make me not give a fuck, then it is definitely working?

I'm actually reminiscing about RTD's style. Sure, people make a big deal, and I often did too, about certain crazy aspects that got thrown up - women who like having sex with preserved heads in robot bodies, giant evil ceiling nipples of the Hadrojassic Maxorodenfoe, robot Santas who had highly questionable reason for existing... but the idea was that all this stuff was deliberately bizarre.

In Moffat's Doctor Who, the idea is that the Universe is so random that all this stuff is everyday. I can't think of "A Good Man Goes to War" as anything but 45 minutes of insanity, a strange kind of inverse world-building where the object is to say "You think you know this place but it's more messed up than you could ever understand!" This is also combined with a strange quality where Moff seems determined to show us how clever he is every single episode.

I'll chalk that up as one of the big pros of RTD. A man who gets referred to as part of a 'holy trinity' of TV writers and gets his job due to the fact that the ENTIRE SHOW ONLY EXISTS to ensure that he is head-hunted away from ITV... a man like that is secure with his legacy, his identity and everything else and doesn't need to impress anyone with these scripts. (Also, doesn't need to take any crap from people online which is why he gives us so much shit - it's understandable really)

I'm not saying that Moffat is hungry for that kind of position but, I'm going to put my neck on the line and say that it's safe to say he's using the show to sell his name more - and why not? It'd be crazy to say that Jekyll and Sherlock haven't come off the back of Doctor Who and these sort of projects are where he wants to be. So the barrage becomes endless.

I was alienated massively by the opening of this series because there was no sense of a new adventure, of carefree abandon like we've been used to - he get smacked in the face with a soggy story-arc right off the back which will hang over the rest of the series - WHY??? Why this, right after The Big Bang which was a massive agglutinative ball of Timey-Wimey that coalesced to the point where THE UNIVERSE HAD TO HIT THE RESET BUTTON to recover.

Straight after THAT, the Doctor goes and creates three divergent realities by messing with the past of Michael Gambon. WHY??? Then, after that, he performs a Xanatos Gambit we still don't understand by allowing himself to be executed in front of his best friends by an infant River Song.

...why? WHY? WHHHHHY?

Is it too much to ask for the Doctor to not insane plan for a few days? To make an episode that's nice and straight forward? I mean, due to the fact that I don't remember the clusterbag of random shit that happens in the massive season finales these days I completely forgot that we had no explanation in the first place for who destroyed the TARDIS to try and kill River last year and didn't get to see the Silence fall... which I guess happened in this two-parter...

..in which we get no explanation for who the fuck The Silence are anyway. I mean, another Alien race shaping mankind's destiny....

WHY???

Ugh, I couldn't manage a real review because in a way it feels like The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon or whatever it was wasn't a real story. It did the most work in just piling up questions upon questions to kickstart this series and not answering many of them. The Silence are a cool idea and are handled quite creepily - the Orphanage scene was brilliant, along with many other great moments, and I also have to say that the Doctor's plan to destroy The Silence was admirably clever... even while being gigantically out of character in terms of ruthlessness (and, erm, what happens to all the bullet-riddled alien corpses?)

To see how meaningless some of the cleverness is look no further than episode 2. We're treated to a 'Three months later' or whatever it was cold-open where the entire TARDIS crew is being hunted down and then executed by Canton. Of course, since we've already seen Canton at the Doctor's funeral as an old friend (Jesus, it hurts to type this stuff) we know it isn't real and of course it's a triple-bluff to get them all (including the body bags for some reason..) inside a Dwarf-star alloy cell (sigh) which somehow Canton has gotten the cloaked TARDIS inside. Because they can't be monitored there.

..yes, this is true. They also cannot be monitored inside the TARDIS. Which they had handy when they encountered The Silence. And to hatch this convoluted plan, which they have lost a hell of a lot of time in setting up, they would have had to discuss in a situation where they COULD be monitored. Furthermore, it's never suggested that the FBI or CIA are infiltrated by The Silence, and even late in the episode it's made clear that they still have Nixon's support. In short, the entire sequence makes no sense whatsoever and exists purely to provide a twist out of thin air.

WHY????

(I'm suggesting that this, the follow-up to Season Fnarg, be dubbed Season WHYYYY????)

Gack I'm losing energy... it isn't even so much about it being difficult to follow (though it keeps getting tricky) but failing to convince me that it's worth the effort of following it in the first place. The arc involving Amy's pregnancy is distinctly strange and doesn't make a heap of sense - why doesn't the clone know whether she is or isn't? It's a plot device but I think we're entitled to one that makes more sense. When was the real Amy kidnapped? Wait, in fact, nevermind that - when do we get to have an inkling for what ANY of this is in aid of?

You know what I have enjoyed this season? The episodes that are barely related to the arc. The Rebel Flesh and Curse of the Black Spot were, incredibly, fun! Remember that? Characters out on wild adventures for the hell of it? Oh, what a wild, retro idea. I could even write reviews for them, I liked them so much.

I keep hearing The Doctor's Wife was good. I might actually watch it some time.

Anyway, it all comes down to A Good Man Goes to War... an issue I have with this is a recurring them developing of Moffat liking to be epic within his budget, and the Universe has to bend for this to be logical. Rory fights Cybermen to get the info on Demon's Run. Why? Because they have plenty of Cyberman costumes. The Doctor doesn't bring an army of Sontarans, or Draconians, or Alpha Centaurians or anything so logical - no, his rank and filers are almost all Silurians. Why? Silurians have cheap costumes, clearly, because there was also a heap in Pandorica Opens. The Doctor's deadliest enemy is.... The Catholic Church. WTF??? Well, they have the cheapest costumes of all, so they can have two thousand of the fuckers in a scene.

The budget really seems to be writing the plot in that episode, along with ridiculous plot twists. There were nice moments, in much the same way I'm sure there are nice moments in bad acid trips. After the family watched it, none of us knew what to think. What the fuck had we witnessed?

River Song is... after we were abruptly told that there was a mystery about her identity when her first story couldn't have made it any more clear-cut and self-evident... Amy and Rory's daughter.

As noted by Mad Larry this incredible development... doesn't change anything whatsoever. Except make me feel a little more sympathy for Amy's plight. And mum was hoping she'd turn out to be Romana, naturally.

So the mid-season break hits and... it isn't like SGU I can definitely say that. Ahh, the small part of me that was worried that Robert Carlyle was gone from the show, and the other parts hoping that if he came back it would be badass enough.

But this? It became so baffling it's made me question the value of the show. Is it too much, asking for some coherence in a story arc now 20-episodes deep? Are we going to get any relatable, enjoyable simple adventure stories in the last 5 or is it going to be all Silence, Headless Monks, Lesbian Silurians, Canton, Time Loops, Dual River Song action? Instead of looking forward to the new series there's just apathy and a little trepidation. I'm really looking forward to the final so that hopefully this tortured and nonsensical mess can be behind us and the series can move on to... well, anything else.

To close off this rant, a bit from what was going to be my Impossible Astronaut review, discussing my issues with River who is unfortunately becoming a more important character.

"Then... River Song. It's definitely easier for me to think of her as a walking grab bag of memes than as an actual character. Like... every bad aspect of Joss Whedon's characters - the unbearable smugness, the lines that sound soooo over-written, the poorly executed Crowning Moment of Awesome - that only rub you the wrong way occassionally in, say, Buffy or Dollhouse - are relentlessly present in everything she does. A character trying too relentlessly to have get their Crowning Moment every 2 minutes and just coming across like a horrible, relentless grinning-and-wisecracking Mary Sue from Hell.

Oddly enough, Captain Jack had something of a similar genesis as another time travelling human from the 51st century who was effectively a lot like the Doctor but with slicker tech and a vaster quantity of gadgetry and street smarts and no qualms about popping a neuron ray in yo' ass, along with the smug attitude. I guess the difference is that Jack, being a fellow Alpha male was in contest with the Doctor, and because his name isn't in the title he was destined to either get smacked humiliatingly down or become a villian or BOTH. It wasn't enough for the Doctor to reveal Jack was responsible for the monster of week and turn him into his latest bitch, then RTD and Chris Chibnall devoted 13 weeks into wearing down Jack into a completely irredeemably worthless incompetent fucking buffoon before deciding he was due any more dignity.

Sadly, River Song is now the producer's personal Mary Sue and has annoying contractual immunity due to the fact that she dies in the past of the series, which is her future yadayadayada. So she continues to pilot the TARDIS better than the Doctor does, wisecrack better than the Doctor does, travel through time better than the Doctor does, leave messages through time better than the Doctor does... really, why don't you just save the Universe yourself, you lazy bitch? No? Just want to tag along with the guy who actually wants to but show him up every chance you get? Fuck you."

Jared reviews The Doctor's Wife!

2011-05-25T19:55:00.005+10:00

..without actually having watched it.

So, this is the big thing from Neil Gaiman? The greatest genius since Carbohydatus, the ancient Greek inventor of sliced bread? The TARDIS becomes human in the form of a Helena Bonham-Carter wannabe being all 'weeeehheeee oi'm stark raffing bonkers!!!' at the author's admission, just so she can say "I always took you where you were needed"

Okay, just to back up... Neil Gaiman felt he had to dedicate his entire story to something the fanbase has been pretty well aware of since, say 1967. I mean, I actually haven't read anything by the guy other than a bizarre Cthulu tribute in a comic fantasy collection he wrote, but I keep hearing about how if I'm in the room I'll be crushed under his brain the size of a planet [OR disgusted at his superhuman efforts to molest schoolgirls by one dubious source...] so seems a bit of a letdown.

Apparently this is reason enough for DWC to dedicate fifteen minutes to letting him read out his own stage directions in a stately monotone - he's just THAT bloody good!

I mean, really? Most writers don't even get a mention, but the bloke who wrote Sandman and Good Omens gets this kind of sickening ultra-fellatio treatment? It's nothing against him, but the sycophancy of society today. Say 'Neil Gaiman' to the average person on the street and they will have NO IDEA who you're talking about (especially since we're in Australia) It's similar to 2005. I kept hearing about what a MASSIVE NAME Christopher Eccleston was. Yep. Sure he is. aka that bloke from Cracker. Get real tree huggers!

That was a fascinating argument wasn't it - Paul McGann v Christopher Eccleston for the title of most famous. Cracker versus Hornblower! Whitnail & I versus Elizabeth! Gone in 60 Seconds versus Aliens 3! One of the many things that makes me ponder the cult of celebrity and how many people there are who really, when it comes down to it, care. Outside of the industry and the fringes...

I mean, when it comes down to it, the treatment of Robert Carlyle in SGU by the cast is quite stunning. Yes, he's a great actor... but is he really that massive? Americans seem to either refer to him as 'Begby from Trainspotting' or 'that guy who played Hitler'. They never got the wonders of Hamish McBeth! (Or Gunpowder, Treason and Plot more seriously, which was a mini-masterpiece as far as I'm concerned...)

COOM ON YOU REDS!

Carlyle should have been the Ninth Doctor, actually. By virtue of having once stabbed Ecclestone to death...

So anyway, The Doctor's Wife...

Erm...

111/10

Yeah, I decided to go with binary. Arabic's getting old.

Good God (or Jared Explodes)

2011-05-09T21:51:00.004+10:00

Two posts.

Did I read that right?

Two posts?

Two?

Deux?

Ni?

Dos?

2?

II?

ii?

10?

TWO

POSTS

IN

THE

YEAR????

REBOOTING

Okay... what's happened with Jared? I tell you what's happened with Jared. He got kicked out of a sharehouse that consisted of an English girl who seemed to barely know how to put shorts on judging by daily attire, an unemployed English painter/surfer who left his banking details in my room more than once, a sloshed Kiwi chef who had difficulty following the plot in shithouse Australian police drama here] and a leviathanic intellect shat out of Europe's Nether Regions who deduced it was safe to loudly badmouth me in the kitchen, as we were separated at the time by a wall nearly three millimeters thick.

For the record, Mister Simon Jongenotter, I did not always say hello to you NOT because I am inherently anti-social but because you are a completely worthless cunt with no redeeming values whatsoever and the only regret at you being entirely out of my life is that it has robbed me of any opportunity to enact grievous bodily harm on your not in considerably wide person.

I followed that up with getting led on by a completely psychotic girl for the better part of a year, getting STOOD UP by a girl who appeared to have been Australia's first personality donor - TWICE!!!, getting snubbed by a giantess, getting ditched by a woman who appeared to have no facial muscles whatsoever (or possibly I ditched her, I got confused), denied the existence of said girl to friends inadvertently, then failed to recognize her at all when talking to her at a distance of one foot at work (sorry Rebecca!) and capped off my romantic forays by borderline sexually assaulting a Finnish girl in a G-rated way. FOR SCIENCE!

Leaving that behind me I moved into another sharehouse, where I found it completely in-fucking-possible to get any sleep. None. Zip! AAARHHGHGHGHAGH. This is probably the main reason I'm still out of commission mentally - my sleep patterns are fucked. How many more weeks could I have taken of waking up at 4 am???? .... zero. That's how many. Zilch.

Living on that sleep, I'm amazed I didn't kill a man. Or, to be more accurate, many men. At least the Peruvian couple. Ooooooohhh the Peruvian couple I was sharing with. In a normal, chemically balanced existence they could have been nice company. But this... THIS? I was on edge worse than a HIV-infected junkie at the firing range.

Every sound of them SMASHING their retarded spoons into their retarded bowls of cereal, every weird show they watched, everytime they screamed 'GOOOOOOAL!... and the washing up. My God. The instant they were done with a meal they did a washing up. And look at me pointedly for not washing my sole plate and knife. TWO PIECES OF KITCHENWARE? I'M MEANT TO RUN THE HOT WATER FOR THAT???? Why can't they leeeave anything? I LIKE DOING THE WASHING UP YOU PRICKS!!!

At the same time as this is going on I find out that I'm losing my job, and a certain poisonous voice in my ear gloatingly tells me that she knew for MONTHS, but didn't tell me because I once allegedly looked at a co-workers amply displayed mammary glands while she was juggling them about in my face like a surreal act at Cirque Du'Solei.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? I LIKE CIRCUSES! AND THE FRENCH!

Circuses? So weird it isn't circii. What doofi came up with that pluralization?

So, yeah, get this I get asked what the single most program I use is prior to the interviews as my boss has no idea what the fuck I actually do, and tell her. The successful applicant, who I get to train in the space of THREE DAYS, has NEVER heard of it. The program? Microsoft Access. How does he describe it?

'A simpler version of Corel Draw'

....

Well that's barely legible. Glad I put the fucking effort into that. Way to fuck up a punchline.

I was thinking of a complicated gag where I zoom in on the impossibly-large mouth of cult rapper Wax to reveal that logo with a banner underneath saying "Insanity - Sneak Preview" but put the kibosh on that as too much effort from the guy who does all his work in MSPaint. Also, enjoy another cameo from 2004 Fat Jared? By god would I trade this dearth of lard for that fine of hair, though...

So anyway, yeah, no job. The farewell where it's illustrated that people don't care about you THAAAT much but enough for a cake to be involved and while a few complain about you leaving status quo is quite clearly god, like a terrible TV series. I'm so keen to escape my sharehouse I actually arrange to move out the morning after my last day at work as if there's a fucking zombie apocalypse in the area. Though, now I think about it if I could text all the women I went out with in that period and they all miraculously showed up I could stage a pretty good fucking zombie apocalypse OOOOHHH

(Barring one or two shining examples of ladyhood. Phew. Will that keep me covered? Okay, what if I specifically say 'Not Letitia'? Wouldn't mind some more of that white-but-kinda-polynesian-around-the-eyes sugar.. Otherwise I got RSI from typing on shitty dating sites for NOTHING)

Since moving back in with my parents.... man. I moved a piano. Kinda tried to learn the drums. Bizarrely stopped writing altogether even though I've got tons of time on my hands. Did more work on my adventure game project I'm not allowed to talk about and definitely look like getting kicked off any day judging by the fucking massive wealth of passive aggressive remarks directed towards me. Applied for a few jobs. Watched pretty much all of the Venture Bros and devoured Portal 2 with BBQ sauce and a side of chips. Got some kinda YouTube addiction going on.

Frankly, the questions of whether my brain's entirely burnt out I had from the last post still stand. I don't know if I just need sleep, if I need focus... what. I feel almost like going to a monastery. I feel like... thinking anything I'm trying to divine from a bowl of custard. And not the good kind, lumpy custard.

Where has Jared been? He's been waving from the other side of the brink of insanity while the OTHER Jared rapes the life preserver instead of throwing it to him. Who IS the other Jared? I don't know but I want to beat the shit out of him.

Hoped that writing a blog post about it venting wildly like a shot spleen in a Sam Peckinpah movie would help. Did it? NO IDEA.

Leave your creative or funny responses in the comment section BEEEEEEEELOW. I'm Jared Peter Hansen and I approve this message HAHAHAHA

Not quite dead - thoughts from a scrambled brain

2011-03-08T07:36:00.003+11:00

I'm doing alright, really. But I seem to have established my identity as one of the world's great pussies as it seems like my body reacted to a fortnight of commuting to Sydney from the Central Coast in much the same way as Frodo's did to his arduous journey through Mordor. Paradoxically every night I feel like sleeping at around 8, but end up going to bed around midnight.

I find driving a remarkably stressful activity. It was humourous that I was reading Hunter S. Thompson's incredible Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the same time, as I could see some parallels between our sociopathic behaviour. When driving every day, the sole expedient matter of importance becomes time. And therefore speed. For this reason you never, ever want to follow the Pacific Highway to the Wahroonga exit as people have continually been telling me to do. The road appears to have more traffic lights then there are grains of sand in the ocean (humourous slip - I'm leaving it in!) and nearly fucking destroyed my car. There's nothing like seeing 8 km distance on the GPS next to the next turn signal, and see this tick down by a matter of meters for the next half an hour to settle your frame of mind..

So to actually get home it's a matter of a rabbit warren of bad and good small jumbled roads through St Ives to Mt Colah, that it is an undying joy to navigate. Well, it's become straightforward enough now but there's always SOMEBODY who doesn't get the idea, that we should always endeavour to FUCKING MOVE. Road rage has always been surreal to me, as a passenger. But as a driver, it seems to be the ideal substitute for sanity. Every thought becomes absorbed in getting into the correct lane in time, overtaking this arsehole, what time is it, how many ks, speed up here, how much fuel - thousands of small anxieites piled on one another.

It probably doesn't help that it was only in this fortnight I discovered that my car is terribly uncomfortable to drive in. Oh, sure, it's perfect for a 25 minute jaunt to the train station or shops. But if you drive it for around 2 hours a day. EVERY day. Dear fucking God is it hellish. The seat doesn't sit upright unless you're some kind of reverse-hunchback, so I need to be leaning backwards. So I need to lean forward to check my mirrors, use the gearstick etc then lean back to be halfway comfortable all throughout the trip. By the end of the week my back was in agony, another little fire burning away at the cauldron my brain was in.

I need my iPod on at all times to anaesthetise the rage and stress, but it can only do so much. Hence the peculiar scene that could often be seen at the merging lane of Forest Way to Warringah Road, where a young man with his earbuds in sings like an angel in his car...

When the night, has come
And the land is dark
And the mooon isAWWW COME ON YOU CUNT! YOU COULDA FUCKING GOT INTO THIS LANE 20 MINUTES AGO! I AM GONNA FUCKING RAPE YOU! I AM GONNA MEMORISE YOUR PLATES, HACK INTO THE POLICE SYSTEM, FIND YOUR FUCKING HOUSE AND I AM GONNA FUCKING RAPE YOU AND ANY WITNESSES YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!
Just as long as you stand
You stand by me
Oh darling, darliiiiin'...

I was most worried by two incidents in my last trans-coastline adventure. Firstly, the freeway - I'm going along at 115 in the slow lane, as I like it, and need to slow down because somebody is actually going slow. Fair enough, it happen- no wait, this guy is going really fucking slow. Really. Fucking. Slow. He's doing 50k. Why the fuck is he doing 50k. He could fucking kill me. Middle lane is fucking packed because people don't move back once they've overtaken. Not a single gap. I need to slow down to 50 too.

On the fucking freeway.

Good, there's a gap in the middle lane. There's some shitty range rover a few ks before me and then a solid wall of cars behind that. I can do this, I just need to accelerate like fuck. I get my car to 80/90 in a matter of seconds into the middle lane, right where I need it and at a position where I can actually get back to "Do this and you don't get killed" speed and get back into the slow lane soon ahead of that stupid truck doing 50 what an arsehole, best bit of drivi-

The fuck. Range rover beeped his horn at me. Shitty range rover beeped his horn.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU!

I fucking floor it, soon I'm doing 160 and weaving between cars wildly, even though my exit is up in a matter of minutes, so I can catch up to those old farts in that range rover, just for the brief pleasure of screaming the absolute loudest tirade of abuse at them that my lungs are capable of, which given my voice is actually pretty fucking loud. Sadly, there was no witticism on this occassion. If you were to program a random word generator that used "Fuck" "Cunt" "Maggot" "You" "Arsehole" "fucking" "stooge" "arseclown" "the fuck" "what" "why" "where" "your dick" "belgium" and "grand rape reprobate" you would come up with something much better I assure you.

I was quite stunned at the violence and sheer insanity of my behaviour, even when I did it. This is why I question my sanity. That is not something I would sit down and decide to do. I mean, if that was part of the RTA test and option c) was "exceed the speed limit by 50 km/h in order to drive parallel to the vehicle and accuse him of being the worst human being since Chris Lillee" I would not be clicking c in a million years. It's fucking dangerous and stupid.

20 minutes later I nearly managed to drive through a red light but slammed on the brakes just in time to shear whatever rubber was left on my nearly-bald tires.

Then broke down crying.

That was now precisely two weeks ago... but it hangs over me. Am I unfit to drive? I don't know. It's possible. I definitely know I'm not the good driver that I thought I was. I'll probably be going to the Coast again this weekend and the prospect of the trip is something I'm silently dreading. The end of the journey is oh-so-rewarding. But to get there is 105 minutes of hell.

Other random thoughts:

* Working in a library as a young man is like getting a dozen-and-a-half surrogate mothers

* When I'm bored with the TV to myself I discover I like more shows than I thought. Miranda and Laid are quite entertaining.

* England you fuckers, you're not meant to win games! Stop it! Stop it right now!

* Ireland, though, you fucking rock!

* A fart never sounds louder than it does in the library

* There's a reason I hate posting about relationship stuff. A lot of reasons....

* A corollary to Clarke's law would be "Having enough IT knowledge is indistinguishable from being an accomplished sorcerer". In this case, 'enough IT knowledge' is 'enough to see the monitor isn't connected to the actual computer'. Yes, the bar is set low.

BANN"D

2011-01-11T00:04:00.003+11:00

I've been kicked out of the sharehouse. I need a new home in a month. Those are the salient facts, and the remainder of this post may be significantly less salient because frankly, I'm pissed.

This not purely by design. I was given, unusually, some vodka for Christmas by my brother. I have no idea why. But tonight seemed as good a time as any to crack it open when I was invited for a drink, but the problem with me and alcohol is that I'm a goody-two-shoes. I never partook until I was of a legal age to do so. The problem with this, is you're left with a pressure to drink but a complete dearth of background knowledge, so when I make a screwdriver from HAMMER UND SICKEL mixed with budget breakfast juice, I have no idea what the proportions are.... save with the power of hindsight I am now applying.

That said, I didn't expect the conversation I got. Which was "We don't like you, we want you to fuck off" worded in a myriad of more flattering ways such as "It's clear to use that you're really not that happy here..." and other blatantly false bullshit. As I point out, I'm suicidally depressed. Where am I going to happy? On the bridge of the Millenium Fucking Falcon when it's been refit as a brothel?

The lies were so disgustingly transparent that for about ten minutes I felt no obligation to reply. I mean, really, what is the fucking point? I know what you're saying, you obviously know what you're saying, what is the value of me saying anything in response? Because of this I did nothing but drink in reply. And hence my brain cells were treated like Soviet peasants. Oh, how the typoes and vitriol flows!

To be fair to my Dutch lease-holder, he then made me join him for another drink so that we could part on more civil terms... which is nice to a point I suppose.

.... I don't know why I figured I'd be able to write a blog entry four sheets to the wind when I've been consistently unable to do it while sober throughout the entire year, but I'm in the middle of it now, aren't I? It turns out that my flow-of-consciousness style doesn't work well in concert with a steady intake of fermented vegetable roots designed to erode at the sensibilites of consciousness. If only I was a Doctor of Medicine I could have worked this out before hand.

The point is... I'm fucking depressed. I guess. In as much as there's a point to anything. I was hoping this would be a good year, what with me going into it with a job, a house, a purpose and new friends - now two of the four has been cruelly and suddenly cut away. What am I meant to think? When things are going well my mind still wanders to "Why don't I just slice them a little and see if THAT improves things?" for shits and giggles. Am I meant to take this as a sign everything else will be bettter?

My contract at work is up in the air. I have no idea where I could be going to live. I have no idea if I can get a job anywhere else.

...but really, the idea that *I* of the Holy Trinity of Complete Arseholes that has occupied this accursed ant-infested domicile is the worst is what wrankles the most. I get told I 'never do any work'. The knowledge that every single fucking fortnight that I cleaned the bathroom, every day that I did the washing up and drying, every time I hung out Simon's fucking washing counts for absolutely nothing, the times I bought ant poison and laid it, that I did the shopping, that I put my money into a party were for nothing and the money I could have saved by doing absolutely nothing during the time.

I mean, where's the award for being a selfless person when you get treated like a complete prick at the end of it all anyway? That's been the problem with the Universe. No fucking Karma.

God damnit, this is why I related to Salieri a frightening amount when I watched Amadeus. You act like a complete prick and you still get the glory. Ergo, I should strart poisoning people I don't like. Logic isn't always your friend, I guess, and especially so when you're drunk off your tits.

Wondering about what I do from here? Do I become the total cunt I'm meant to have been, or keep up my nice guy behaviour, even play it up? Definitely drawn to the former at the moment. I mean, what are they going to do? Kick me out of the house? Oh wait *SINISTER MAWFUCKING LAUGH*

Option c is murdering them all. I haven't been thinking about it that much, really. BUT his ex-girlfriend is co-holder of the lease so I'd get to see her again and she's pretty hot. Plus doesn't seem to mind me. What better conversation starter than "You know the guy who ripped out his spleen and fed it to him? I'm close to him. REAALLLLY CLOSE."

Never rely on the kindness of internet strangers. They're pricks.

JARED REVIEWS DOCTOR WHO THE BOXING DAY SPECIAL

2010-12-26T22:10:00.003+11:00

To make sure I actually get a review done, I ought to write it immediately after watching it... I've already buggered that one up, haven't I since it's 2 hours after the fact. But I'm not slowing myself down with the sort of pointless research that would see me actually know what the name of the episode is or any such extraneous details. So...

DOCTOR WHO AND THE KILLER SONG SHARKS OF GING SENG

Steven Moffat in an odd way is now the off-spring of RTD in the world of television, in spite of the fact that they're roughly the same age and RTD is also a homosexual. Succeeding as he has, growing under his wing and Oedipally toppling his predecessor by destroying him with the critics as his knife and going on to seduce Julie Gardner, his mother he is now uncontested in his adulthood and mastery of the House Doctor. To paraphrase Laurence Fishburne in Predators THIS IS HIS FUCKING HOUSE!

Moff has stamped himself all over his opening season as we thought, and some of us were surprised by the amount of suckage (nil after episode 2 more or less) in the undercurrent of the tide of self indulgence. He has been a proud and majestic feline, dedicated to his craft to the point of making sure every inch is covered in his own distinctively fragrant urine. More to the point, he has set out to out-do RTD in every turn of event bigness, which everyone thought was impossible. But he did a bigger finale. Now he sets out to do a more Christmas-y Christmas special.

I was concerned by this idea. After all, even RTD was giving up on the idea of making Christmas actually relevant - frankly it just got in the way of The End of Time and was introduced by a sneering Timothy Dalton referring to it as a 'pagan ritual' (Hang on... side note.... who the fuck was Timothy Dalton telling the story to when he was narrating? Have people stopped thinking about the logic of these narrations? Was he telling the High Council what had happened as though it was a bedtime story or something?) Centering on the idea of Christmas seems a backwards step to the progenitor of this dubious sudden tradition, The Christmas Invasion...

Moffat outdoes that, though as you would have suspected from the trailer which basically was "HEEEY, we're doing A Christmas Carol.... AGAIN!" and left me with no real enthusiasm, by making Christmas spirit a central theme... kind of the whole point of the story. The entire moral is a little.... esoteric in the way it's handled. In this case The Christmas Spirit takes the form of being arsed to flick a switch and save 4300 people from certain death, which I think we can agree sets the bar fairly low BUT I guess that was necessary. The Doctor spends 60 minutes convincing Ebenezer Scrooge to give Tiny Tim a ham roll you'd start to wonder why he has nothing better to do, and why the sanctimonious git doesn't give him one of his Tim Tams.

Moff's promise was also "it's every Christmas movie you've ever seen". This could well be true, if you watch the movies edited down to five seconds then spliced together on a television set submerged in a fish tank filled with fluorescent paint and glitter whilst upside down on peyote. The last ingredient being the most important. In terms of "How could this not have been written on drugs?" this story scores very highly - the random combination of elements makes me wonder if Moff is starting to nick ideas of primary school children. So... to try and describe the baffling plot....

The Doctor is on the planet Steampunkville, which for reasons unknown is the destination of the liner Rory and Amy have stowed away on to have kinky cosplay sex during their honeymoon and is now about to crash. Unfortunately, Michael Gambon in a Fake Beard rigged up all the clouds in the planet under his control in order to become King of the Flying Fish when he was done freezing people for protection money. His son, Michael Gambon Without a Fake Beard, has inherited the apparently lucrative business and is thus the only person who can save Rory, Amy and the other unnamed characters' lives.... if you ignore the fact that the TARDIS should be able to either land onboard and shuttle everyone out or at least tow the bloody thing to safety.

See, that's the trouble with elaborating on the TARDIS' powers. This thing was already fucking powerful BEFORE 2005, now it's God on wheels. BUT not in this particular story. Well... not in THAT particular part of this particular story...

Because the Doctor reacts to Gambon being a prick by reenacting Christmas Carol (although the scene where he decides to do so suggests it is as much a laugh as anything else) deducing that what Mickey really needs is to get laid when he's younger by a cute blonde who charms avian-marine life with her freaky opera singing. But, wouldn't you know it, the stupid git picks the girl who's got 8 days left to live, so we're back to square one as it leaves Gambon as bitter as I was in the immediate aftermath of Kaylagate.

So.... you know stuff happens whatever. Eventually the day is saved when cute blonde does some Murray Gold karaoke boosted through the Gambon family antenna, using a scientific-ish explanation that was far more confusing than the end of The Pirate Planet to me, but by this stage I'd kind of given up working what was going on. Following this story was starting to seem like a bad trip, and really a bit too sweet for me. Okay, somebody is definitely dying in the form of Abigail (whoa, just remembered a character's name) so it avoids the ultra cheery disposition of that awful Cybermen story... but I think the problem may well be that I just don't like A Christmas Carol that much.

I mean, really, why is it so celebrated? Isn't it a bit... basic? The moral of the story is "Don't be an arsehole!" Everyone knows the plot, not everyone believes in the message.... do we need another version? Even one about flying fish that was written on cheap smack by a sweater-wearing Scotsman?

To not lose perspective... special effects are good and solid. The dialogue was possibly too good, as every line that wasn't a snappy line seemed to be a set up for one or a call back to another snappy line, and the cast were excellent. We were spared any of the like of Jackson Lake's horrifically cute and androgynous.... son? in favour of young Gambon's that looked human, continuing the trend of excellent young actor casting in Moffat's era that began with the very first guest cast to appear on screen. Design is also good enough... I mean they asked for a Victorian London world were every second person wears cool glasses to make it Steampunk, I imagine it's difficult to fuck up.

One of the problems is that this is one of the stories where, in his own way, the Doctor (and the TARDIS) is overpowered. Remember when the TARDIS could barely land anywhere so there'd be no question of "Why doesn't the Doctor just hop back 20 minutes and press the other button", whereas Moffat's vision seems to have that option as a centrepoint. How long can this stay fresh? Don't get me wrong, I laughed girlishly when the Doctor travelled forward 50 years to hear what numbers Gambon was yelling at the screen (though it beggars the question of how he reached the TARDIS..) but I do believe so far Moffat's tenure has averaged five onthological paradoxes per minute and the rate looks set to rise...

In practical terms, where would we be if the Doctor was always this fluent? If he just travelled into Davros' past to save him from his disfiguring injury? If he popped back with tea and scones to smooth over the Osirians split with Sutekh? And if he'd called Child Services before Tekker's father had molested him? Ohhhh the possibilities for dully resolved stories is limitless, but it's one of those things where the Doctor's done it now and the question will hang over every episode - why doesn't he just go back in time?

Maybe he finds it a little confusing, as he seems to create three different versions of Michael Gambon Without a Fake Beard's life and he remembers all of them, but doesn't make a big deal about it for some reason.

I guess another problem is the absence of a companion character. Sure, we have Amy and Rory but they may as well be locked in a room for the whole story as they only speak to the Doctor in passing once during the action... and Gambon? When the Doctor travels back in time, as he does for most of it, he gets reduced to being a viewer rather than a companion in a way reminiscent slightly of the Trial scenes and Cal in Silence of the Library. Something else in Moff's bag of tricks, eh? A character becomes a viewer, making sure it's a metaphor of sweet FA when he happens? The closest companion roles are the young actors, but Child Gambon is a fleeting presence and Teen Gambon is, understandably, only interested in getting his end away.

Anyway, it all lumbers towards a happy ending with a magical sprinkling of snow predictably and then we get to see that Moffat is quite serious in his dedication to trailers it's difficult to get excited over crammed with guns. Obviously nothing could have excited me less than the promise of River Song in PG13 nudity. I WANT NIPPLES OR YOU CAN PISS OFF, WHORE!

The real question this episode leaves us all with is... why doesn't the Doctor get US laid?

6/10

Oh, yeah, in the cold hard light of the next day I realise I didn't elaborate much on the fact that with its relentless sitcom-y humour and the Where's Wally-esque struggle to follow the writhing pants-snake of a storyline gave this a definite wadge of entertainment value. Hence a positive score.

ALTHOUGH some people take issue with this. Such as my housemate, when she pressed me to give the cousin she wanted to set me up with a score out of 10 I gave her exactly the same as this episode, and was further angered when I gave her OTHER cousin (who incidentally I would quite like to engage in intercourse with) an 8. Well, SORRY, but I'm a literal person! A 10 is a fucking 10 - that's 100%! Perfection! That is Scarlett Johansson carved out of... something... and covered in honey and or crackling.

So... how bad was the Force Unleashed? That's like 2/10. YOU GOT ANY PROBLEMS WITH THAT, NAOMI???

I don't know WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID.... post something in the comment section if you want me to write one...

AAAAARGH - the story of an Australian cricket and music fan

2010-12-26T14:19:00.004+11:00

Actually, I don't want to talk cricket. It's too depressing. Basically, it's a non-stop marvel at the incompetence of three people who apparently know nothing about what makes a good side doing their thing, as they are continually hornswaggled by a pack of useless players who prove unable to contribute anything over an entire year of cricket being once more unable to contribute anything at the crunch time a month later.

Just.... the Australian team should be thus:

1. Chris Roger
2. Shane Watson
3. Usman Khawaja
4. Cameron White
5. Michael Hussey
6. David Hussey
7. Brad Haddin
8. Mitchell Johnson
9. Nathan Hauritz
10. Mark Cameron
11. Ryan Harris
12. Doug Bollinger

And a preferable selection panel would be

1. Dame Edna Everidge
2. Bernard Black
3. A 2 litre bucket of pigs vomit

Suffice it to say, the cricket has been turned off in this household today because the Boxing Day morning has been the time of morning that crushes childhood dreams of sporting heroics under its heel, then brews the dust into coffee with the addition of hellish urine and throws the brew into the faces of every orphan in the country while filming it before sending the results to Australia's Funniest Home Videos and somehow escapes justice.

The tragedy being just a week ago we had one of the great of the great cricketing victories.... that I was THERE to witness! Yes, I was in Perth last weeekend! The guy who barely ever leaves his house, went not only to another house, but to house in another state! What's more, it was a PUBLIC house! And I still didn't get laid.

Ah, were those the finest 50 minutes of my life, seeing the majestically and disproportionately large-bottomed Mitchell Johnson along with Ryan Harris, seemingly a parallel universe version of myself raised by wolves to eat chips and kick arse (there was a severe potato shortage in W.A that weekend...) tear the English two new arseholes and an extra mouth, because if a job is worth doing it is worth overdoing. The roar of the crowd when Jimmy Anderson's middle stump went cartwheeling was amazing, all the moreso because I was in one of the smaller grounds of this fair country. The only downside was being forced unwillingly to cut short my improvised soliloquy on the astronomical amounts of inbreeding within Graeme Swan's veins by the standards of his backward nation when I remembered I was surrounded by English supporters, including one who was especially pissed off apparently due to being too pettily annoyed during the auditions for Grumpy Old Men.

The real purpose of the visit to WA was to see the [second] greatest live act on the planet!!!! Who are Muse, by far the best three-man meterosexual Queen tribute act to make the Billboard charts on a regular basis. Aha, I jest - their music is the stuff of Triple J sad-acts somehow given ascension into the forms of angels with unlimited talent. And, yes, that is actually a compliment.

Their tour, I believe, cost them something in the area of $155 million to setup and you can see every cent lavishly being wasted before your eyes. If film isn't being projected onto a surface, a strobe light will. Anything that can explode into anything will, and also into something else. If there is any oppurtunity to transform a guitar into a 2 billion candle power spotlight whilst somehow playing it like an air-raid siren, it shall be taken and use to violate a special member of the crowd. Speaking of the crowd, they are video and displayed at various times on the walls, on the instruments, and on Matt Bellamy's junk. All of this only happens after the band has descended using pneumatic elevators from 20 foot high towers erected in the stage. I believe that the eletricity is all generated using a furnace that runs exclusively on dodo souls, on sheer principal of badassery.

This is quite nice to look at. But I wouldn't say the experience was entirely positive. Firstly, the events staff went out of their way to be dicks. Because the cricket ended so early, we were there at Bassandean quite early - about five hours early. We weren't the only people there, though, because most of the population of Perth is unfamiliar with this 'music' we have on the East Coast and is keen to see what all the fuss is about. I was #77 in line, a number I remember because I was instructed by staff to write it on my hand as the first 100 got in early, and something extra special.

What was it, I hear you ask me. What, Jared? Did you get to meet Matt Bellamy? Did you hold his hand? Did you get his phone number? Can *I* have his phone number? Does Dom want to watch? Is he allowed to join in? Enough of this!

The answer, is ..... nothing. Like the confectionary in Valve's Portal, it was nothing but a lie to keep us docile.

But because I thought we were getting in early, when security told me that opened drinks were not allowed I left my 2.0 litre bottle of vanilla coke unmolested as would be logical, keeping it by my side for four and a half hours UNTIL the line started moving (or at least people were told to stand up and jerked around further) when I was helpfully told that we weren't allowed to bring in anything but water and it would have to get thrown away.

Keep in mind.... this is fucking Perth. It's hot. I've had a glass of water and a Sprite all day. Now, I skull what of the Coke I can in a few minutes, because I'm told we're going in any minute.....

40 minutes later, we get in.

1 hour after that, we get to see the support act.

1 hour and FIFTEEN MINUTES after THAT, comes the actual act.

Because my friend always wants to be at the front, that's where we are. Because Perth never gets any concerts, and because they've been left to wait for a ridiculous amount of time, the crowd of human beings has devolved into a rabid pack of fucking dogs and the Mosh is out of control. And by poor herd instinct, there is a baffling scenario where all the middling-to-well-built shirtless guys are to the right of the stage, and all the fragile teenybopper girls are to the left. Helpfully, I'm standing on the frontline and get pressed into a makeshift and incredibly sweaty shield-wall midway through the third track.

Incredibly jumping along to the music along with all the waiting gets me dehydrated and soon I'm only held upright by the crush of half naked sweaty men... insert 'business as usual' joke here.

To make things even more heavenly 20,000+ people need to get out of the grounds through three ever-narrowing gates WITH TURNSTILES that act as the most brilliant bottleneck ever. Colonel Richard Sharpe would be having wet dreams about us as a French army if he'd seen the lumbering approach to the exit, imagining a single company of redcoats station by the ticket window who could utterly destroy us.

Luckily the British hadn't declared war on us that day because we had to get to the airport in FIFTEEEN MINUTES.

Ugh.

The moral of the story is stay the fuck at home and listen t music on an Mp3 player. Guess what I got for Christmas? Coincidence? I think not...

Preserved rants

2010-09-28T08:14:00.003+10:00

That was the title I chose anyway, about ten minutes ago when I decided I was going to essentially blog about all the things that 'grind my gears' that I haven't mentioned over the past three months.... then I get on Blogger and I can't remember what any of them were. Am I losing my fucking mind? This was literally ten minutes ago! But I'll play this by ear....

Publicity for Robert Downey Junior's Sherlock Holmes: Yes, this is going back a bit, but come on. This film was quite a fun romp where they expanded on throwaway lines in the book about Holmes being a former amateur boxer and mastering some obscure form of Kung Fu just in case he needs to throw a criminal mastermind off a waterfall some day. Other than that, it was surprisingly faithful. Watson was still the real action man of the two while Holmes was an affectionately bumbling 'survival' hero, and it was just a matter of script writers conspiring to have shit blow up AROUND our heroes to get cool stuff to put in the trailer. The exact same move was pulled in Without a Clue in London, one of the best Holmes movies ever made.

But, saying "Hey, we're doing a Sherlock Holmes film" apparently isn't good enough, won't get enough attention. Instead the approach needs to be "Guy Ritchies is bitch-raping a beloved classic to make Lock, Stock and Four Orange Pips and there's nothing you motherfuckers can do about it!" This nearly put me OFF the film entirely, then it turned out to be quite good and made me recommend it to my mum who was regarding it as a war crime level offense from the trailers and other publicity.

This wasn't helped by the writer doing interviews, where he bragged about what an awesome job he did deviating from the usual means of adaptation... ignoring the fact he was doing what everyone else has been doing since Basil Rathbone. Oh, what's that? Watson isn't going to be a bumbling idiot? Good Lord! Oh, you're going to do an original story because most of the canon works involve Watson and Holmes visiting a series of drawing rooms until they have enough info to solve the case? Radical!

The film was faithful enough to even have suggestions of Holmes being a user (alluded to in the vaguest possible way, naturally, this coming from Hollywood), showed his 'master of disguise' routine and mentioned Watson's service in Afghanistan. Oh, and I like Irene Adler. The actress wasn't the best casting, but I don't believe any nationality was mentioned in the books. The only downside to the film really was the fact that it was set at a stage in their relationship when Watson was sick of Holmes' shit and felt the need to express this with every single line of dialogue...

Brief WTF tangent Okay, NineMSN is telling me that Katy Perry will appear in a live action segment of an upcoming Simpsons Christmas special performing with puppets of the main cast and will show her tits. This makes so little sense I'm going to assume that window of Internet Explorer is a hallucination.

Mad Larry How long since I went off about Mad Larry? I don't know, nobody reads this blog and I'm included in that. But seriously... is there anyone who takes him seriously at this point? For those keeping track he hates..

* The entire BBC books range
* Pretty much all Big Finish
* All Hollywood productions
* Every new DW ep not written by RTD, plus half of those ones
* Every DW ep written by Steven Moffat a second time over
* Sherlock, Jekyll, anything else written by Moffat
* Neil Gaiman and everything he's involved with seemingly on 'principal' of the fact Gaiman is able to pick up chicks.
* Simon Pegg
* Robin Hood
* The Tudors
* The Mighty Boosh
* Nigel Kneale
* The cast of Blakes 7
* coffee shops
* The Radio Times
* actually watching the episodes that he's reviewing

What are the few things he mentions as being beyond reproach?

* The original Star Wars trilogy
* The Star Wars prequel trilogy
* The Clangers
* His own work

... I mean, fucking really?

Alan Stevens Yes, the other guy who came onto my blog to slag me off. Possibly. I re-read his stuff the other day and it occurred to me an analysis of how poorly he attempted to argue anything is tempting, but I really can't be bothered. This is the guy who thinks the entire point of Doctor Who being broadcast was to tell us that a tokenistic gold-faced alien monster that appeared in 78 was God, after all.

Sky Television How can these guys keep announcing shit that doesn't happen? Why tell us you're making a new Blakes 7 when YOU HAVE NO MONEY? Did you even make anything over the course of those years? I got the distinct impression from the articles I read that you were maybe halfway through pre-production. WHY DID YOU ANNOUNCE IT???

On that matter... screw the people getting me excited over the idea of a film version of Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt. I heard a film version in the works... no. There's a script. You know how many decades there was a script for Hitchhiker's Guide? And much the same for the people getting me excited over a movie of David Wong's John Dies at the End, which in this case is actually the author himself... but, really he bought the rights and you put up a massive newstory and links to 'THe movie'? The rights to nearly everything are floating around, do you not know how this business works?

Girls on RSVP specifically the ones who send me the automated reply "I think you should read my profile more carefully" I ALWAYS read the profile all the way through. For this reason I dearly want a "Fuck you, you witless fucking harpy, I know more about you than you ever will, I have looked into the darkest corner of your soul and seen an obsidian heart that has felt not love, not hope nor any kiss of light in its existence, a heart that is hollow and pathetic and not worth my time. I bid you a miserable existence in wont of me" automated response I can send back.

This goes double for the ones who say this with a profile of "Oh hey im like ur averge gurl i like to party out night in with dvd lol i really lik having fun want too here from u boys!"

But then that does raise the question of why I'm attracted to halfwits....

The Dee Why Hotel bugger me sideways I haven't posted about that shithole. Okay, I haven't been to many clubs but this one is staggeringly bad. Terrible music playing as Dylan Moran would say at a volume to make the chairs bleed. In spite of this nearly inch of ground is occupied with massive tables, that are large enough for everyone to have a giant plate of food, in spite of the fact that they didn't seem to sell any meals. There also seemed to be a thoroughly enforced ban on single women in the premesis'. What better place to get stranded on a Friday night?

This blog entry Dear God I have trouble thinking of things to write. I mean that last entry could have been a lot stronger. I didn't even go into detail about chatting up that girl while her possibly-boyfriend-possibly-flatmate in a shirt two sizes too small danced like he was on E shouting loud nothings at her across the room..

It is fascinating that I still feel an odd duty to write here, though, even if it isn't the stuff I've specifically said I'm going to talk about..

Also I'm writing this on a laptop right now. And laptops are the reason I hate The Cleveland Show. See, there was a throwaway line in one ep about 'those guys who get cancer in their balls from using laptops all the time'. Now I can't use a laptop at all without thinking of that line. I swear I can feel the radiation leaking into those little guys right now...

HOW CAN I LIVE KNOWING I'M JUST ANOTHER HARVEY KRUMPET WAITING TO HAPPEN???

On that note, have a nice day.

I,m writing this on a an iPad

2010-09-17T15:38:00.005+10:00

Oh wyes, how uncharacteristic of the new head of the Holy Order of Armed Luddite bastards to do, but apparently in my work I Need to stay up to date wih the evolutionary cull-de-sacs of technology . So here begins then this particularly typo-ridden entry tint the annals of my bolo rem .... Eeeerm blog.. Please stop predictive texting me Mr Jobs. Just stop.

So, when I am no longer being a pretentious wanker with remarkably non-useful technology when I'm meant to be working what can we looek forward to? well not altogether that much , brut her,s a sneak peek

! Jared turns himself into a cripple emotionally AND phsyically playing laser tag!

! Jad watches some old Doctor Who DVDs and bitches about Malcolm Hulke"s grasp of drama. Jared also does something similar.

! Jared finds himself to be cast in the role of Tim from THe Office by God!

! Tim From The Office finds himself cast in the part of Jared by a BETTER GOD in the New Sherlock Holmes!

! I fess up about having watched the Robert Downey Junior New Sherlock Holmes ... And qute liking it!

! I sit on my are and watch stile more TV!

......... Jared writes quite a long and effortlessly witty post, then proceeds to lose it all due to the fact that the iPad has a massively ineffectual touchscreen that believes that when I say "Pubslish post" I smear for it to DELETE EVERYTHING, Steve EJobs.... Yosu are without a doubt the weakest, most spineless dog ever to attach 1s and 0s together in semi meaningful clumsps. YOUD Mke me ME SICK!!!! DON,T EVER DESIGN A LAPTOP AGAIN!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAaAAaH!!!!! DOUBLE THE FIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... Oh, wait a minute, its still here.. This thing that just can't frigging scroll. Ah well... Back to our scheduled programming...

! I fuck up an annoying running gag by ceasing to refer to myself in the third person!

! I recount wanting to starting to write a suicidal blog entry about Internet dating literally minutes before it started to work!

! Jared conspires to cock-block his indefatigable Dutch housemate!

! Jared conspires to commit copyright infringement!

! Jared is wrongfully arrested and then ritually acquitted of child pornography charges. Wheile NAKED!

! Jared almost seems to subconsciously wish to be fired since he's typing this.... On. A work computer no loess!

! Jared stars in the most tepid film of this summer. Maybe!

! Jared fails to overcome writer,s block!

! Jared contemplates going into Young Adult writing because they'll clearly buy any old rubbish!

! Jared gets a haircut!

! Jared goes "ZOMG SGU COMING BSCK!"

! Jared notices that there has actually been a critically Fellated new series of Doctor Who and passes some form of unnecessary commentary riddled with needlessly lowbrow humor and homophobic slurs against Messrs All&

Wanker's Cramp (Or Blogger's Block, if you will)

2010-08-18T09:27:00.002+10:00

"Dude, I'm like, fucking, Valedictorian at Harvard." - Jason Mewes

I have nothing interesting to talk about at all. So... you know.

When you're just wandering from working day to working day, to massive depression on the weekends and whenever you're at your house there's a massively demanding dog that isn't yours wanting you to throw a cong endlessly and you're still trying to work off a four-hour sleep deficit from the last night you felt like killing yourself there really isn't much to say.

I don't want to blog about my housemates, because it seems impolite and they're nice people. (And I've already been impolite about them on FaceBook)

I don't want to blog about the dog because I don't like him very much and he's much like any other dog, just stupider and with much worse ADHD.

I don't want to blog about why I'm depressed because as often happens when you have depression there's only 200-odd small reasons rather than one good one that just makes you sound like a dickhead.

I don't want to blog about TV shows because there isn't really anything on. I mean, IT Crowd was funny but definitely not mindblowingly so and Futurama is much the same.

I don't want to blog about the new Doctor Who season because I've got all the shit I wrote at home, and I need to watch most of the episodes again. And I don't want to watch them again because I suspect they won't be as good as I remember and I'll get more depressed. That and the fact that again, retarded dog taking up most of my free time.

I really, really don't want to blog about my upcoming birthday as it may be #1 on aforementioned 200 small reasons countdown.

I can't blog about any games, because I haven't had much time for playing them but also the computer I'm using can barely play a podcast and surf the net at the same time.

I would like to blog about Inception but sadly the film is inextricably linked to something that depresses me now.

I don't want to blog about my best friend's birthday, because they were a few of the 200 reasons there (The ones with tits) and that was also the night that made me want to kill myself that I mentioned earlier. Nor do I want to blog about my other close friends upcoming birthday because I uninvited myself, afraid that the same thing would happen again.

I also don't want to blog about the unusual coincidence therein that three of us have birthdays three weekends in a row, because it went from being a cool "Hey, we'll be getting fucking wasted this month" aside to a horrifyingly macabre paranoid theory of "Somebody up there desperately wants me off this fucking mortal coil".

I don't want to blog about the one thing there is to say about my 'love life' that I'm handling rejection well now because along with everything else in my life it feels over half a decade too fucking late.

I don't want to blog about work because I have a friend who got fired for that very reason. Interestingly, work is the only thing I'm actually enjoying right now.

Oh, I also didn't want to blog about my best friend because we ended up having a massive screaming match over absolutely nothing on FaceBook, presumably because we're both on edge. Though he doesn't tend to tell anybody so I figured he was just being a complete dick.

I don't want to blog about the Federal Election, for reasons that really apply to everything else, because everything I have to say has been said by others better.

Basically, I don't have anything to say because I'm massively depressed, which I guess stands to reason.

"I don't like watersports at the best of times. And these aren't the best of times." - Kerr Avon

Eulogy or Jared Goes Emo

2010-08-02T03:06:00.003+10:00

I guess 3 am in the morning, when I am only on the computer in order to listen to the thumping electronica bass of Sir Kele Okereke and thus block out the noise from my crippling indiscreet housemates fucking is the best time to pen an utterly depressing entry.

I spend a lot of time as a closed book, and I'm not sure if it's because I do not wish to share or because I assume nobody else will be interested in what I have to say. Recently I've been feeling that I don't say enough, however, and so I want to chart the course of my relationship from innocent beginning to equally innocent but bastard-flavoured ending. So, yes, this is a heap of emo shit. How about I open with a poem, just to make it even worse?

Hazel eyes, black hair
Then she dyed it.
She texted me, over there
And I died. Shit

EXCELLENT! Now I just need some black highlights in my hair and to closet myself some more.

Anyway, I think I've referred to a girlfriend ambiguously in this blog once or twice, and in some of my half-written reviews even gave her a nickname - 'Little Miss Paradox', a smug knowing gag of the type I love and devour about the odd state of our relationship at the time of writing. Now, like all good jokes this one turned out to be founded a lot more in truth than I thought - the end was just a resolution of that paradox quite definitely. And I can say there's nothing worse than opening Schroedinger's box and finding that the pussy is nowhere to be found.

She does have an actual name though, and that name is Kayla. We were set up by our best friends who happened to be dating, and such a concerted effort to get two people to fuck I have never seen before. It's as if I was Ric Moranis and she was the love interest in Ghostbusters and our friends were Zuel. (Remember that? I am the key master, I am the gate keeper? No? Cool....)

To their frustration we just talked for five hours, because the amount of common interests we had was really quite amazing considering that we were only introduced because she liked the New Series. (Yes, really. It's not rare enough to justify that kind of thing now..) Though eventually when we were penned into a bed by our friends we did end up making out and, somehow, deciding we were an official couple and swapping contact details.

This is when I became pretty much the worst boyfriend ever, as I only got in touch by email (though to be fair getting her on the phone was fucking impossible) and didn't make a massive amount of effort to see her since she was in Sydney and I didn't have a car at the time. At the same time, so full of myself for actually finding a human female willing to consider sleeping me I was riding high on my confidence and fighting off the urge to drop the term 'my girlfriend' into every second sentence I spoke.

With no exaggeration whatsoever, I can say we probably saw each other 6 times when we were 'going out', (this is over the course of a year or so) something I now question if we even did. And, crucially, we never had sex. Which for those of you following at home, means *I* have never had sex, something I generally refrain from mentioning (but my mate Daniel seems to enjoy bringing up as often as possible in mixed company) but of course if I'm open is a big part of my issues.

The irony is that I had sweated blood to NOT have sex when the oppurtunity presented itself the second time we met. I must have old fashioned ideals, wanting it to be special, and didn't think that it would be so if we were both half paralysed from drinking a river of Jaegerbombs and so restrained myself after the first hurdle and then awkwardly spoon for the night.

Please note... never, ever do this. The Universe will go out of its way to make sure there's no opportunity for sex ever again and it will just fan speculation about your sexuality / genital wellbeing.

The fascinating thing about a relationship is how your intelligence seems to evaporate. If anybody else had been in such a half-arsed effort and told me that they got a break-up email after 10 months or whatever it was I'd have shrugged and said "What did you expect?" I was genuinely surprised. Why? I'd taken her for granted.

A big part of this was probably the fact I was in what I know refer to as my peak physical condition, 79 kilos with a hint of toning on my blinding pale pecs after a year at the gym and I wasn't yet uncovering more of my bald pate every day. From my confidence levels you'd think I'd been voted Sexiest Motherfucker Outside of Hollywood by Time Magazine, furthered when I was hit on by a girl at a party for the first time ever. (A different girl who was interested in dating me for precisely three days. Fucking narrow windows..)

Now, Kayla I would describe as unconventionally beautiful and at the time slightly overweight (but with a thickset build in general, which I seem to find strangely attractive - a chunky girl with a nice face gets my attention quicker than a thin girl with the same face would). If any female reads this by freak chance, I need to explain that guys operate on appearance to a ludicrous degree so I believed there would be little competition, and that she would be happy to have me even if I wasn't always around.

I know. I was a prick.

BUT I saw the error of my ways and knew I should make up for it. I decided to take the 'let's be friends' line at face value, and kept sending her emails as she went through her HSC (oh, didn't mention that did I? According to the legal experts in my TAFE class I belonged in gaol..) to comfort her and asking how things were going, etc.

It's probably a good idea not to do this, either. I mean, it doesn't seem directly responsible for bad shit happening but I don't trust causality right now...

She did find my emails very comforting and so we got back together and made out, thus getting ourselves into our undefined relationship status and my Little Miss Paradox was born. Tragically, I managed to forget she changed her email address so looked like a G-rated wham-bam thank you ma'am type until I looked back through our correspondence and saw the discrepancy. I got back in touch, and we were kind of back, ambiguous as ever.

Again, intelligence seems to vanish utterly. Though we were effectively going on dates, she stood me up, cancelled, and refused to spend any credit on me, along with providing any feeble excuse for me not to see her. It was apparent at the very least she wasn't head over heels, but the part of my brain shouting this information out till its throat was raw was cushioned under a euphoric feeling of 'heee boobies' that clouds my mind when I'm with any female with any suggestion of attraction.

Last Monday was the end. It's a shame because it happened right after watching Inception with her, which is an amazing film. When watching it, I spent 10% of the film thinking of things to write in a blog post about it (no, I'm serious). I spent 100% of the time AFTER leaving the cinema thinking of killing myself, though, which really threw the evening out for me. Simply put, we said a very weird and stilted goodbye. How weird? How stilted? Hmm, okay I guess I am an analogy kind of guy... imagine a ventriloquist dummy and K9 talking about the themes of Waiting for Godot in strict Iambic pentameter.

Forever.

After she left I felt the need to text her and ask her what the deal was. THAT was when I wanted to kill myself, not when I got her response which was pretty straightforward I can tell you. The simple fact I had to ask gave me the answer and I had one of the rare epiphany moments in my life. I'm not sure if I want another one.

Again, she said she wanted to be friends. Maybe my reaction wasn't justified, I don't know. I suspect I may be the arsehole through and through all of this, but I made my intentions apparent over the last couple of months and she did nothing to do so... wait, why didn't I just write 'leading me on'? My argument is that friends are honest with one another, friends give, and friends try to understand one another and she did not do these things so I can't count her as a friend, a case I made in a very long email that I impressed myself with by not using the words 'fuck' and 'cunt' at all in. I then set about making a break as clean as you can without a lightsabre - blocking her email, deleting her facebook and erasing her contact details from my phone.

I think I've made the right decision when I consider the paranoid theories I have about virtually everything - in this case I imagine that she was setting me up for heartbreak while wringing as much money out of me as she could, as a revenge-best-served-cold for being such a crappy boyfriend to her. The thing is... I prefer this alternative. Malice is relatable to me, and it's proactive. The alternative is self-absorption, or cowardice.

Now, I figure when the idea of your ex-girlfriend being a James Bond villain in the way she handles her relationships cheers you up... I'd say it's a good thing to break it off.

This is all extra reasons why my tolerance for my housemates fucking is pretty low, as you'd imagine.

The annoying thing is that in the story of my own failed relationship I don't get to be the good guy. I like to consider myself a good person, but there are times like this when I question it. I think I do take too many people for granted, and that I'm too selfish for my own good at times, and I question msyelf so much to the point that I even wonder if I've ever had depression in the first place or if I'm just a wimp who needed an excuse to not try harder.

Even this blog post, the fact that it exists, marks me as a twat. This is just me venting, writing things I need to write to feel better. It's so selfish. And everytime I do anything selfish I hate myself.

Sorry, 4 am now and my wheels have falled right off. I'm meant to be working in five hours, and I think my funny gland's completely exhausted. But I suppose I should end this rambling post with a word I don't use nearly enough...

Sorry.

MEANWHILE on the Northern Beaches

2010-07-14T18:29:00.002+10:00

DOCTOR: Jared... does it ever bother you that your life makes no sense?

JARED: What do you mean?

DOCTOR: Your job.

JARED: What about my job?

DOCTOR: You have no experience and only patchy qualifications. How did you get it?

JARED: I did the best storytelling read that they'd ever seen in a job interview.

DOCTOR: Oh. And your job involves reading stories to children?

JARED: No. Oh... I see what you're getting at...

DOCTOR: Also, you live in Sydney with no car.

JARED: I lent it to my brother.

DOCTOR: Why?

JARED: Because he wrote his other one off and lied about the fact afterwards.

DOCTOR: Okay. You realise that that's pretty retarded on your part, yes?

JARED: Definitely.

DOCTOR: And somehow, in the space of a fortnight, you earn yourself a profitable job with a Municipal Council and move into a beach house in Sydney. Practically OVERNIGHT. Your only skills and experience being excessive masturbation and bitching about sci-fi shows, some of which you haven't even SEEN.

JARED: Yes.

DOCTOR: And you think you're too busy to review my new adventures?

JARED: ... is that what this is about?

DOCTOR: Yes. Come on, I've had my best bloody year. What are you doing? NOTHING!

JARED: I'm working eight hours a day. And it's my first ever job!

DOCTOR: How many times do I have to tell you cloth-eared apes? Your job is irrelevant! You need to sieze the day, do what you love!

JARED: When I was doing nothing but updating my blog I was suffering sporadic depression. The clue's kind of in the name, in fact.

DOCTOR: Okay. Do something you love OR tell me how fantastic I am.

JARED: ... you're a bit of a dickhead.

DOCTOR: Yes. I am. That's my gimmick this time. The last bloke had short temper and tried to eat his own chin when he spoke. So I'm rude. You Antipodean twat.

JARED: I'm getting that. Where are Amy and Rory?

DOCTOR: Amy's been kidnapped by the Sposh of Naq'Toon and Rory's dead.

JARED: What, again?

DOCTOR: He'll be back.

JARED: So why are you here?

DOCTOR: I need to face my greatest nemesis..

JARED: Holy shit, The Master's in Dee Why?

DOCTOR: No. No he's dead for real this time after Sutekh punched him in the nads. I probably used the wrong term. Definitely not my GREATEST nemesis. More, sort of, my most pathetic - but my most irritating. By some margin.

JARED: Oh... the Raxicorricalfallapatorians, who keep irritatingly keep getting referred to as Slitheens out of context?

DOCTOR: No, but you've reinforced what I was talking about.

JARED: Wait... is it me?

DOCTOR: Yes. You and ever prat like you. Now come on, all you do is bitch that my adventures suck. THEN when there's one's you can't deny the quality of, what, you shut up shop?

JARED: Not deliberately. I've been busy, man.

DOCTOR: Oh, look at me! Mr Busy! What do you do exactly? What do you DO?

JARED: I scan boxes full of foreign language books into the library system and then distribute them between four branches.

DOCTOR: Oh, wow. THat sounds so difficult. To think just this morning I LOST MY BALLS TO A ROGUE JUDOON BOUNTY HUNTER WHEN CHASING DOWN THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF THE DRASHIGS!

JARED: Bloody hell.

DOCTOR: Luckily he preserved them in a pickle jar in the 51st century so River was able to re-attach them. Though the Selachian warship made things difficult.

JARED: I'm not sure if we can live by your standards.

DOCTOR: And why not?

JARED: Well... you're kind of fictitious, you know?

DOCTOR: And you aren't? You're 50% invented online persona!

JARED: Irrelevant point.

DOCTOR: What was that?

JARED: I pointed out that your point was irrelevant, and nitpicking... oh God.

DOCTOR: Aha, now you see. Why you're one of my many nemeses. You're a gestalt. When you stare into the abyss does the abyss not stare back into you?

JARED: Scandalous suggestion!

DOCTOR: Within you, is every aspect of every online user. Every hypocrisy. Every ridiculous theory. And oh so many rape jokes.

JARED: How can I expunge this evil?

DOCTOR: By updating your blog saying how awesome I am.

JARED: ... this makes very little sense...

DOCTOR: You think THIS makes little sense?

(A walrus falls on them)

JARED: Ow.

DOCTOR: Don't be a baby, it's mostly made of jelly. So, are we sorted?

JARED: I guess. Fuck me.

DOCTOR: Maybe later, still not worked out this body's sexuality.

JARED: You too, huh?

DOCTOR: Yup. Anyway.... ooh, I was going to say 'allonzee'. Can't do that, can I? Need to be original....

JARED: SKip to the end.

DOCTOR: Oh, alright...

The Vagina Triumvirate : A Success Story

2010-06-24T15:45:00.003+10:00

As of today, Ms Julia Gillard is the 27th Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. This is a monumental event for Australia. Firstly... we've beaten those fucking Yanks to the punch once again. Aha! Secondly, there is a now a Prime Minister of this proud nation that I would have sex with, which as I have state on FaceBook, has not happened for 65 years. Yes! Not since Jack Curtin.

It's a respect thing, not a physical thing you understand. And I realise he wouldn't be into it.

Anyway, this is quite a good thing, though, centre-of-left pinko scumbag that I am, I shall miss Tin Tin Rudd, who failed at every turn to be the Steel Rudd that we had hoped for. To the average Gen-Y'er who voted for him he became disappointing by not supporting the policies that seem no-brainers for us, like gay marriage, and advocating policies that Yahtzee Croshaw would call 'pants on head retarded' - the extremely under-trumpeted plan to censor all the internet to make sure no man, woman or child anywhere in Australia will be able to see a penis. Plus he never stood up for the Chaser, even if the ABC got some more cash.

He also lost most of the gains he got from his home state of Queensland, because while the policies above were at least pink-necked, his neck was never fully scarlet. He actually had views on the environment and climate change, and was willing to pursue them no matter how faded the curtains should get as a result.

Astonishingly, for a PM that seemed like a Julius Caesar of Web 2.0 in the lead up to the election, Rudd showed a dire misjudgement of the media and how to handle it throughout. Vitriol was drummed up about the ETS left, centre and especially right for the sake of selling newspapers and the facts were lost - the judgement was that people didn't care about this toss and a double dissolution would be a complete disaster. Bizarrely, he announced the idea was to be shelved until 2013. The shelving was questionable. Putting a date on it was downright suicidal.

The double dissolution is not a conservative strategy for sure, but that is why it was brilliant. Ironically a fine column in the equally fine Syndey Morning Herald described Rudd in the lead up to the election as reading up on George Washington's famous Valley Forge campaign, where the general crossed a near-frozen winter at the height of Winter to attack three near-impregnable forts and then march on the city the British held right afterwards. Surprise was his only weapon, but so powerful was it that the victory is among the finest in history. The writer summed up Rudd as learning from history and practising such bold tactics in his political campaigning.

Sadly, this sort of verve evaporated when he took the office. Apparently it is quite true that courage is much easier when you have nothing to lose.

The situation further proves how perverse indeed politics can become - the ETS did not even fail because of the mindless hatred of the Liberal party to planet Earth, but rather of Bob Brown to other politicians. The Greens crushed the bill utterly, and all credit should go to them for the fact that the Federal government has no climate change policy at the time of writing. They would not accept anything less than an absolte plan, and so got nothing, like that fucking dog trying to grab the bone in the water we keep hearing about. In spite of this, when Labor flagged, where was their vote going? The Greens. The most 'do nothing' party out there.

This would actually mean that Tony Abbot would become PM. If you recall his climate change plan, labelled 'Thunderbirds are Go! Direct Delta Action Team Act NOW!' is to pay the country's biggest polluters millions of dollars, creating a "Please don't pollute anymore" credit scheme which is a slush fund for the CEOs who donated the most money into the party. The Greens say they support this. Because it's better than Labor's now non-existent policy. The policy THE GREENS FUCKING DESTROYED!

Ahem, nevertheless, this issue fades into the oblivion of yesteryear's politics now. When it became clear that our erstwhile PM could not actually sell the no-brainer of taxing the most disgusting money-grubbing wastes of oxygen in the country of a few extra percent of the 4.9 billion dollars that they are making right now while tearing up our country, he was a shot bird. Rudd is gone.

In some terms this is a good thing, definitely for the labor party which is, after all, why it happened. He was only a wild card candidate, grudgingly accepted by the party because they could see the potential for some short-term voter appeal and that he offered them in spades. And most of the people I have talked to have wanted to see Julia Gillard as PM in the first place, a view I certaintly held, and were wondering if she would actually have the chance given that Rudd's position, prior to this year, looked quite unassailable.

After all, let's not forget the fact that Labor did lead Australia through (well... that's the current HIGHLY optimistic line laid down) the Global Economic Crisis as one of the only Western nations to not officially go into recession. Is that not worth anything? Not really. In an election year, after all, everything is the present.

The present would definitely seem to play into Gillard's hands as well - she is already a popular and charismatic politician with only a limited amount of the electorate even aware of the minor controversies she has undergone as Education Minister, especially this is but one of three (!) portfolios that she has held. She has a strong basis and will furthermore undergo a honeymoon period, against an opposition leader who is well into the broken-crockery-and-black-eyed-spouse period.

Ah, Tony Abbot. With an unarguable human being at the other end of the debating table I can only hope that people begin to look harder and realise that you are just a Terminator-style robot under a thin synthetic layer of skin sent back in time by the Catholic Church to battle the Atheist's time travelling robot. (Hint - he's one of the Mythbusters, and he's not in the Scooby Gang)

If we lose this election I may just cry tears of blood. However, Gillard could still have the Double Dissolution card in the sleeve, though nobody would dare advise that move at this stage. But clean leader, clean slate? Force the race as soon as possible and leave an opposition unsure of how to hit a girl in public unsure of how to find their feet? Insanity, but it could be worth a shot. Or it could be all the Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged I've watched on YouTube getting the better of my strategic understanding. (Throw the tortoise at the flying castle, damnit!)

What struck me as I drove home, though, was that no matter which way you cut it, Australia has a female head of state. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Oh, it's the head of the Royal family? Elizabeth II. No, the Governor-General? Ms Quentin Bryce. No, screw that you say? The PM has the real power? Well that's ME JULIE! It's Fem-TAS-tic!

As I was saying, I see this as evidence that the much-touted Glass Ceiling is no more. Yes, I know there are articles saying that it still exists, but these articles hinge on one or two things...

1) There are men who have high-ranking positions who hate women

Really? Isn't that bloody surprising! There are men shovelling shit who hate women, too. I'd go so far as to say there's no shortage of them, for various reasons, most too deep to go into but I'd dare say things aren't helped by some perceived inequalities around now and attitudes of many bratty young ladies around.

Put in its simplest possible and most justifiable sense, that there is active discrimination in the upper echelons against female employees this is the thousandth case of the obvious fact that you cannot change the perceptions of an entire population overnight. If it can be proven the bodies are out there now to address the issues on a case by case basis - as fair as anything else in life at least.

2) There aren't enough women in the top jobs!

Now... it may well depend on how you define 'enough'. As far as I'm concerned, more than one should be enough, as it will demonstrate that it can happen and not be a fluke. As it is we get dozens of stats that the average board of, say, 20 members will have 1 female member, the small number of female CEOs, figures on middle management positions. The key assumption being that women WANT these jobs, and I have seen little calls suggesting this. It's also focused on areas male-dominated, instead of say, the number of female library managers and principles around...

A suggestion I see worryingly often is for set numbers of women in positions. This is a system that was around in the 70s, often with very patchy results - my dad lost his position as a groundskeeper at a university to a paraplegic woman, because the staff hit on the genius idea that she was two minorities for the price of one. She was also completely incapable of actually doing any work, so my dad was re-hired as the asssistant groundskeeper. Basically he did the exact same work for a lot less pay. Good times.

All such a system results in is in so-called 'positive' discrimination, in which the best person most likely does not get the job as the actual highest priority becomes what minority is represented by the candidate, as this is something that now has actual legal representations.

I think the dark days are well and truly over for the movement, with the proof being in the pudding. I mean, right now we have a G-G, a PM and two premiers without a single testicle between them. And this wasn't true just six years ago. It's quite remarkable. And I think something to be proud of.

The only possible downside is some issues down the road with selecting the Prime Minister's XI...

Oh, fuck, I just read she was born in Wales. IT'S A SLITHEEN!

Jared Reviews Time of the Angels (Kinda)

2010-06-22T20:37:00.005+10:00

Okay.... now where's that load of crap I wrote about the episode a couple of weeks ago? Ah, here we go....

Well.... at the time of writing it's currently a week since I got a copy, nearly two weeks since it was shown and I've just got my copy of the NEXT episode and I still haven't watched Fanwank of the Angels, so it's clear that I have no real enthusiasm for the prospect at all.

But Jared, you ask, are you not swayed at all by the squeedom of all other fans? No. I am not. My entire online persona, after all, is based upon a near-certain delusional belief that I am better than all other fans, those fools who believe The Seeds of Doom is somehow genius television and demand at knife-point where the fuck I get off putting The Greatest Show in the Galaxy in my top ten. If these people are jizzing themselves screaming that "this is the single greatest ever story in the history of the show since Midnight!" then it's all the more reason for me to assume that it's terrible.

Dear God the prospect of pressing the 'play' button in Windows Media Player rests like a sack of rocks upon my shoulders. But I have to bite the bullet... I must do this, not for my own entertainment, not by a long shot of heroin in the arm, nor for vindication and not for the chance of being proven wrong, but for the sake of the 1.5 people who read my blog on a semi-demi-pseudo regular basis. I must do this. And I can.

I can.

I totally can.

....awww, fuck it, I'm watching Farscape.

FARSCAPE: 1.18 DURKA RETURNS

His name's John Crichton, he's an astronaut, radiation hit and he got SUCKED THROUGH A WORMHOLE! Now lost in some distant part of the Universe in a SHIP a LIVING SHIP surrounded by STRANGE ALIEN CREATUREShelphim being chased by an IINSSAAANE military commander. Doing everything he can to find a way home, apparently. About on par with Alex Drake in that department so far...

That was a pretty good episode. The Aussie painted blue and speaking in an American accent this week was Tiriel Mora, best known as Martin DiStazio from Frontline and the bloke who swears a lot over his photocopier in The Castle, with a surprisingly unrecognisable performance. He's an emotionless mindwiping alien who talks like Truman Capote (or at least Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Truman Capote) who arrives with two prisoners - one of whom is the Durka of the title, and the other of which is new crewmember Chiana (not to be confused with the most memorable Ben Chatham character ever written), who seems thus far to be a sociopathic and whorish version of Vila from Blakes 7. That is to say, she's nothing like Vila at all, aside from the fact she's a thief.

The episode's name had me confused for a while, given the fact that no villain named Durka had appeared. It turned out that he had actually.. for about five minutes eight episodes ago in a flashback Rygel had set near a hundred years in the past. So... yeah. It turns out this dude's been kept alive by super-duper-advanced alien technology from Blueman Capote and had all the I-want-to-torture-frogs-yeah! code wiped from his mind to be a peaceable and productive member of society. Naturally he starts killing people and takes over the ship. And the good guys win, with barely any of the usual going crazy and trying-to-kill-one-another that occupies a lot of time in Farscape. Unless we're counting Chiara as part of the crew already, in which case her default mental state seems to be batshit insane and she tries to kill three people.

Man, I like this show.

Anyway... Doctor Who...

After I finish listening to Ben Folds. I love this track. It's Fair, btw. Just coming up to the cool drums bit. Oh, yeah, there we go. Now there's something in the background that could be synth or cowbell, grooving really well. It's the final bridge, where Ben keeps going "I'm lonely and I'm right." He just said "Yeah!" in that really cool way, so now we've got a minute of honky-tonk. Go you good thing. Soon it's going to fade out, though and we're left with the weird ending were it's just the bass and the drums going on their own. I'm assuming it was the last track on the album. Erm... not that I would not know that because... you know, I purchase the albums and stuff because I like... legal music so much. And Ben's one of my favourite artists, after all. Obviously I would support him. WHY ARE YOU ACCUSING ME????

Now some Tom Petty cranking. "So if I come to your door, let me sleep on your floor, I give you all I have, and a little more". He does sleep late Down South. I love the random function. I wonder who the hell Samuel Clemens is and why exactly Tom Petty would pretend to be him? Does he have the same girlishly long hair worn about a decade after it's time to cut it shorter? No offense to Tha Pett but he makes Bill Bailley look extremely well groomed and non-frightening. Last time I saw him anyway. Or maybe the time before that. One of the times he had giant glasses and a bandana on. Looked like he could be halfway towards being The Invisible Man. A stoner 70s Invisible Man who liked playing piano.

Bah. Beatles. There's nothing funny to say about them. Well, I guess except for the fact that I only realised there was a pun in their name a couple of years ago. Those bowl-headed fuckers had me mispelling 'beetles' for years.

So...Doctor Who...

After some porn.

No, I'm joking. It really is Doctor Who time. Though pornography has seen me quite pre-occupied lately.

As an added twist with this review I will be adding and subtracting points on the fly, as this episode has to win my respect before I deem it worthy of having been made. Now, the initial thought that I had was to give it 1/10 to begin with because obviously something is better than nothing and especially the fact that I have continuous new Doctor Who and have had for the past 5 years... BUT the fact this episode is proving popular makes me reset it to 0/10, because the happiness of others irritates me. Ha! This is my blog. MY RULES!

I'm so lonely.

Now time to press play..

0:07 Seven second establishing shot? Jesus Christ are we back in the Lovett Bickford era? Has the world gone fucking mad? -1

0:32 Drugged out dude gets action and pisses off butler. A situation we can all relate to. +1

0:40 Oh, hallucinogenic lipstick. So River's an even bigger manipulative slut than I thought. -1

0:40 Christ, I'd forgotten for a glorious period this episode has RIVER FUCKING SONG in it. -2

1:12 ...'12, 000 years later'? Once again Moffatt is being unnecessarily cute and smug in presenting something weird. Unless this comes back in a cool way -1

But also +1 for seemingly turning River into Kate Tollinger. But that's also a -1 for inconsistent characterisation oh you cannot win my porridge loving opponent!

1:24 The Doctor taking a companion to a modern day museum? This is exactly how EVERY Ben Chatham fic starts. -1,000 going by previous efforts.

1:31 Okay, so it's an alien museum. +999. But -1 for making me look bad and -5 for having yet another 'biggest thing ever'. What is Moffat's obsession with bigness? Is the Doctor going to take Amy to see __ somewhat-proud owner of the world's biggest penis? (13.5 inches before you ask) I'm going to assume yes and that's -1 for just plain inappropriateness.

Also +1 for no reason so you can't claim I'm writing the most unfair review ever.

2:24 Yo man what the fuck Stevie Wonder? You keep telling us you don't like the Time Lords and the backstory bullshit... well, first of all you give the Doctor more baggage than he could ever fit in his fucking Narnia wardrobe by plonking a Sarth Effriken wife on the poor bastard (who only sounded South African in one scene but I like saying that a lot) which incidentally still counts as a -1 2 years down the track but FURTHERMORE you have Old High Gallifreyan in the FOURTH EPISODE once you're in charge. What the Hell, Hero? -1. Could be points back if it's cool.

2:37 Oh, here we go the writing is going to be "This way up" or something similarly unimpressive. OR 'cum and c mi sweetie love Prof Song Snog Bunnybuns"

2:41 Second try, not bad though I say so myself. How much does River Song suck? -1

3:26 The Doctor can HACK into security camera footage from a 12,000 year old spaceship. -1

4:27 You can't hear it through the vaccuum clearly, but the butler dude is currently saying "You know, this rapidly depressurised airlock doesn't suck quite as much as she does at least!" HA! +1

4:57 Oh? The 'follow that ship' bit from the trailer was meant to be the hook? FUCKIN LAAAAAAAAAAME! -1

Incidentally, why go through all this bullshit when River's meant to be able to send the Doctor messages on the Psychic Paper? It's not as if the fact that things ended up so bad the last time (what with her actually getting the wrong Doctor and then BEING DEAD HAHA (+1)) since they haven't happened yet would stop her. Besides she was shown to enjoy the lottery effect of getting maybe the right Doctor and maybe a wrong one. Presumably from a pool of two. No... make that hopefully. I don't want to see her as a recurring character for years and years to come. Oh God no. Especially considering the fact that bafflingly every appearance from hereon in will have to be her at a younger age than when she first appeared.

That's a -1 I just hate River Song.

5:32 You know they say every story with 'Time' in the title is crap? -1

6:01 River knows the TARDIS better than the Doctor. Who the fuck she think she is, Romana? I want Romana bitches. -1

6:11 Although if the idea is to actually give people the ability to talk in the TARDIS without falling all over the place then THAT is cool. +5

6:16 "You call that flying the TARDIS? HAH!" Yay, grouchy Doctor ftw! +1

6:32 Cue revolting Mary Sue-ishness. -200 points for Slytherin

6:52 Fuck you Moffat, it makes the noise. It makes the noise all night long. There are tons of stories where you don't hear the dematerialisation noise from inside the ship! Infact, clue's in the name, motherfucker DEmaterialisation. It plays when the ship takes OFF the planets for the most part - how can he have the 'brakes' on then? -500

7:08 Heh, kind of reminds me of the wonderful environment check from Destiny of the Daleks, one of my favourtie Tom Baker moments - "Ooh, look, rocks!" Hehehe. Sadly I'm still annoyed about that diss of the Radiophonic Dept's fine work. -500

7:27 Okay, I just dissed River for being a Mary Sue but the Doctor's being a God Mode Sue. -10

7:36 "It's a shame you were busy that day" Jesus Christ, River Song has been taught the ways of the TARDIS by THE MASTER???? I guess it explains why she has the cooold, dead eyes... of a killer. +1

8:13 "She's the future... she's MY future..." Okay, hold the phone... is there some little fight going on here between RTD and Moffat? I thought the Doc said basically in a throwaway line in The End of Time that he met River properly inbetween that story and Waters of Mars. Now he claims not to have met her properly? I CAN'T STAND THE CONFUSION IN MY MIND! -1

8:39 I guess I have to grudgingly admit that getting Amy's first alien planet after 3 eps is impressive, though. +5

10:11 I still hate River Song. -1

12:40 So... the Doctor's saying the Weeping Angels are the most malevolent and dangerous and evil and powerful lifeform ever? So this Moff admitting the Doctor just says that about anyone and hence Vashta Nerada and the Daleks do suck balls. FanTAStic! +10

13:12 Take THAT, motherfuckers! You dare tell me River Song being the Doctor's wife isn't explicit? Fuck you! Fuck you! I was right. You are wrong, so very wrong every retard fuckcake on IMDb and Gallifrey Base that insisted she wasn't the Doctor's wife I LAUGH at you. I bet you didn't get Klein/Utterson on Jackal, either, and didn't realise Benjamin was a bad guy but still felt legitimised in guessing that I was too dumb to watch the show. You mouthbreathers are the stupid ones and Moffat has just smacked you down. You all suck. Everybody but me with an IMDb account sucks the balls of Atlas himself, and furthermore are too stupid to even know who Atlas was in mythology so deliciously are unaware of the insurmountable horror of being condemned to suck his balls for all eternity when you are sent to the circle of hell reserved for Fucking Morons. +400

13:39 We're in the 51st Century again? -1

15:43 Sorry, took a break to watch ABC News. Now I'm going to listen to a badass shred-metal cover of Beat It.

Twice. Awwww, dat was metal.

Okay back... now I'm confused. Amy's just seen the angel move but didn't River Song say it was just a tape she filmed of the angel on loop?

16:03 Oh, okay, so they're addressing it..

17:11 Incidentally, this is another Moffat script where TVs behave in a magical way...

18:14 That was an oddly convenient bit for the Doctor to read out seeing as it didn't really answer his question. Also the fuss about pictures seems pretty odd considering the fact that we have adjectives and such and not a lot of writers also draw. -1 Ha, I'm a harsh marker today!

18:24 Wow, gee, River, I think it may mean that if you have, say, something that is an image, and this image depicts an Angel... then that's A FUCKING ANGEL! -10

18:42 Okay, and the Angels have been boosted up nu-Dalek style for this story with the ability to manipulate the physical world? Hmm, right...

19:56 If the Doctor DOES tell her what the Angel does then it's a let down because she just vanishes into Time. Which, you know, ain't grand but she LIVES. And he may be able to find her if random shit that the TARDIS can do keeps getting introduced. But he's just grabbed the book so I'm sensing retcon. -1

20:09 And... yes. Going by that the Angels are now able to possess people...

20:40 That escape sucked. It can 'deadlock' the entire ship, including IT'S WIRES, but can't stop the remote's pause function? Not buying it. Not even looking twice at the packet. -1

22:19 The Bish just commited grand-theft voicebox to poor old Paul McGann. -5

23:02 So River's a serial rapist. Finally some justification for her apparent mental imbalances. +10

Bored now. Watch the rest tomorrow...

So I didn't watch the rest tomorrow... instead I watched some more Farscape...

A HUMAN REACTION continues the theme of the series of making sure nobody at all bar John Crichton get a decent swag of screentime or contribute too much to save the day which gets mildly irritating. To assuage this the story decides to fully embrace just how fucking Aussie this series is by entering it into canon that John's mission didn't take off from Cape Canaveral as it appeared in the pilot but rather from somewhere in the general vicinity of Sydney. And so the guest cast needs even less effort than usual in disguising their accents.

For a parochial person this bring obvious benefits - Sydney (or possibly even Gosford in an early scene) scenery that you can recognise and the hilarious sight of John introducing Aeryn to beer as they share stubbies of VB of all things. Some oddities follow, such as John insisting that even if you're an Australian you would have to know who won the Superbowl, apparently ignorant that we of the wide brown land give not a toss for whoever should win the first-grade comp in a sport nobody else on Earth bothers to lower themsleves to. This one's made even worse by the fact that it's apparently a clue to the truth of the scenario.

Yes, it could not be more obvious that Crichton cannot simply go home than in this story and when his crewmembers start being dissected by the evil strictly-surname-basis ocker jumpsuited goons that are apparently Crichton's former allies it becomes even clearer that this is a dreamscape made by evil aliens. Specifically the sort of evil aliens who just copy and paste from Crichton's mind people's he's met onto Bondi so he's able to work it all out when he thinks to the strange fact that every single person he's met he already knows, and every 'extra' on the streets of Sydney is somebody he knew with three-four degrees of separation. Fucking lazy aliens.

Though, to be fair, the twist is that they aren't REALLY evil aliens. And the episode contains some great sequences where we hear Zahn, Dargo, Rygel and Aeryn talking in their 'native' accents as Australia, as with broadband, is well behind when it comes to getting neurally-implanted translating microbes. I think this ep demonstrates the strenght of the show, nobody does filler like Farscape...

Unfortunately THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS goes on to demonstrate the possible down side is nobody else seems to do as MUCH filler as Farscape, though the story contains some character development as well it's time for the "Oh shit we've got no budget!" ep where the script writers panic and scramble for a bottle episode using nothing but the main cast and the standing sets. Results seem tedious as all fuck to being with, as Pilot tries a sudden Star-burst to show off and soon has left the whole cast sprawled around the dinner table and they all make like lambs to the kebab shop as they each go through the doorway even though the first person who does glows bright and then vanishes and results really don't vary. Then we get a ton of time taken up by Crichton finding Aeryn and them both shouting visibly while the audience gets nothing but white noise. It all feels so much like a rejected B7 script that it staggers belief.

Things pick up when it's revealed that the ship stalled mid Burst and is now spread across 4 parallel Universes, and furthermore has earned the ire of a creature that lives in the void naturally. The crew themselves have spread across, and broadly the alternate realms assault the senses - Dargo is in a world where everything is blinding, Aeryn in one where there is constant deafening noise, and Rygell in one where everybody laughs like complete fuckwits at EVERYTHING. It's all quite fun. Once it got into it's stride it's all very, very well scripted and tightly plotted, the one downside for me being the fact that the actress playing Chiana can barely do an American accent and says half her lines in a completely Aussie accent. Is the character meant to be vocally schizophrenic?

Then.. A BUG'S LIFE. It's pretty cool. Crichton puts on a kind-of-convincing British accent and some black leather to make out like a Peacekeeper when the badass commandos who cameoed earlier comeback, only this time with the monster from B7: Killer they have somehow managed to capture. And so grey-chick and Rygell break it open to set it loose as soon as possible. Everybody but the heroes die, especially the dude who has the audacity to set him up as a potential love interest for Aeryn. You Sebaccean n00b!

*

AFTER THE FACT EDIT: Holy shit, just re-read that for the first time. Was I on something? Incredibly hostile, and unusually I didn't acknowledge where I was plain wrong - I'm sure at that stage they made it clear that the Angels have been upgraded from 'conscientious objectors' to 'insta-kill machines', also a retarded read on my part of the video scenario. Strangely I left out my biggest quibble....

...okay, let's take a moment. Using its magic bubble technology the Angel is able to 'deadlock seal' an entire shipping container basically. It generates a power source for the TV so it can't be unplugged. It does... something to the wires on the outside. But... it cannot stop a cheap remote from beaming a 'pause' command to a future-y VCR? That solution bugged the hell out of me. Come on.

Anyway, here's the stuff I wrote tonight which is mildly sane...

Now, then.... the irony of this weird and pathetic excuse for a review is I managed to stop writing at the precise moment that the story actually got good. But unfortunately also at the stage where not much sticks in the mind about it a month or so after the fact. Because I never did actually watch the second half until it came on television...

And... well, pretty damn good actually. As demonstrated in Jekyll Moffat is extremely gifted at turning on a dime from comic to scary and intense. This episode was not particularly scary but set all the pieces in place, and led to a good cliffhanger, albeit one that was driven by the annoyingly predictable stupidity of bit-part soldiers.

If you ever find yourself leading a battalion of soldiers in the Whoniverse... never assign two of them to do anything, EVER. If The Sontaran Stratagem did not make it clear, nor the hundreds of Pertwee stories in which it occurred then you'll never learn clearly. When faced with any potential danger they will inevitably walk straight into it, because when there are two soldiers you will have one who is timid and sensible, and another who's boisterous and fucking retarded. That said, they'll both be equally adept at exchanging middling-to-entertaining banter about their predicament.

Don't think for a moment this rule is universal, however. In Stargate, for example, if you leave two soldiers on their own, the odds are that they'll be either O'Neill and Teal'c; Scott and Greer; or possibly Shephard and forgettable young black guy, and those dudes are indefatigable killing machines. If their name contains a '#', though, forget it.

Incidentally, after writing two paragraphs on the subject I can't actually remember if there are even two soldiers who get eaten by the Angels or maybe three. Anyway, the story ends up feeling a little bit to me like Moffat secretly read my blog and thought to himself "Fuck, I need to win the one bloke on Earth who didn't stain his trousers over this crap I wrote while high and have no memory of to once again be Crown Prince of TV-Writery!" because he brings back another element and makes it more reasonable, and actually disturbing..

Unlike the unbearable tedium of "Hey... who turned out the lights" droned by a hung-over accountant and then played on a loop like this is the lead in to a Chemical Brothers track, we get the spooky disembodied voice of .... god, I so vaguely remember this...

..sorry, I'm going to go to TARDIS Wikia. I never do this normally...

BOB! So, yes, we get the spooky disembodied voice of Brother Bob, once again speaking through a walkie-talkie (scientifically proven to be the most disconcerting form of communication), this time without a contrived explanation about walkie-talkies having a psychic link to the people who use them even though they still press buttons to transmit etc. Furthermore, given there's only one female guest character it doesn't serve as support for the famous Moffatian paper Sitcom Eugencis: Quantumn Correlations of Porkability & Mental Retardation. What I love is the brutal simplicity of the explanation - Bob has had his vocal chords torn out and the Angels use them for their own sordid ends.

What makes this genuinely frightening, as opposed to what sounds like a toneless wav file that just won't stop frigging playing (THE DOCTOR TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS!!! HE KINDA MENTIONED IT!!!) we get the viewpoint of somebody ruthless and cruel, expressed with the voice of somebody gentle and naive. An awkward discourse that, fascinatingly, even seems to suck in the Doctor a little bit as he's prone to chat with the disembodied voice of 'Bob' in quite amicable terms.

Really, the episode doesn't lead to anything special - the crew just gets cornered as has happened in so many recent cliffhangers. But it's a taut, well-written journey.

But, seriously, fuck River Song.

7/10

Oh, yeah, I ditched that whole running score joke.

Incidentally, the score for this excuse for a review is

0.5/10

WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID

Jesus Christ! First time I go to Gallifrey Base in ages and I find a giant disembodied pair of Tennant's eyes staring at me. Bloody scarier than anything in this ep...

Crack fuelled TotalSciFI Response: Steven Moffat must like a challenge. His multi-award winning season three story Blink is widely regarded as one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time; a haunting one-off that left us with a distinct sense of unease around statues.

(You fucking serious?)

Crack fuelled IMDb Response: I believe that to be a red hering. River Song said she was trained to fly the Tardis by the very best, but told the Doctor he was busy that day. Now we can assume that she could be talking about a future verison of the Doctor or maybe it was someone else who can fly the Tardis. If Memory serves there were six people before who flew the tardis. Remeber A Journey's End. Dona tells Jack Harkness that he is best one. Jack and River are of the same time 51st Century. He would be considered a hero by many many people. I may be a million miles off with this thoery but like they say "time will tell".

Crack fuelled Gallifreybase Response: Taught to pilot by the best... The Master? Oh man want to know some spoilers!

(Okay, clearly time for me to get in on the act.... *SNOOOOOORT* Whoah... hey, you fuckers! I drag-raced TARDII and I can say the best motherfucker for piloting that shit is Greyjan the Great! Know what this means? Season finale is sequel to THE MOTHERFUCKING ANCESTOR CELL!!!! We're gonna see sooooooooooooome SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!! Amy, naked in a Klein Bottle while Timmy Dalton gets fucked up by giant spiders. Remember - called it! ME! MEEEEE!)

Strawy McStrawman Response: If you’re really looking for signs of massive progress in the world of Doctor Who, then just compare the savvyness of Karen Gillen’s Amy Pond to the likes of Bonnie Langford’s ever-screeching Mel from the 80s.

(If you're really writing a review of the new series, try not to mindlessly bash the easiest targets outside your own genitalia.... unless it's Larry Miles. Yes, I'm hypocritical, it's my blog.)

Paranoid Response: Yet as brave, charismatic and attractive as Amy Pond is, there remains an element of uncertainty surrounding who she is and what she wants from the Doctor, which taints our impression of her.

Best Friend Response: Seriously? You haven't watched it yet? What the fuck, dude?

Ewen Campion-Clarke Response: No, seriously, it's good!

Steven Moffat Response: Why do so many people have a problem with River Song? I think she's a great character.

Observant Reader Response: Do you just find a heap of random quotes you want to mock in the space of five minutes from GallifreyBase?

(Silence!)

Next week: "Did I mention the whole 'not blink' thing?" "Roughly 200 times" "Do.... not... blink" "*Sigh* Very well..." .... there really aren't any other gags in that trailer...

The 220th decade is when everything changes...

2010-06-04T21:12:00.004+10:00

Because that is when Jared Peter Hansen esquire of Cedar Brush Creek got broadband and ALSO an internet connection in his own room. Hell, now I don't know what can convince me to leave this room. I can only imagine I'm doomed to die within the space of a week in a horrid death in my own squalor. I can think of no better way to go, except perhaps for something involving one of those new-fangled 'women' contraptions.

In all seriousness, I consider this pretty sweet, because once I'm done writing whatever is about to fly off the top of my head I'm off to watch Zero Punctuation, something I generally NEVER get to do. Zero Punctuation is basically a psychotic British man who hates everything ranting about video games over images he's made in Flash in the space of about five minutes... and it's BLOODY BRILLIANT! However it took a good hour and a half to load on dial-up and then I also needed to keep the volume on the ancient speakers of the (*spit*) family computer turned down so that my parents wouldn't be alarmed at hearing a Middle English man decrying something as 'a barrel-load of cunts in a nunnery' or something similar.

Jared, you ask, why is this so important? The ability to absorb the minutae and offal-esque detritus of society at a level of rapidity previously unavailable to you, the lack of a motivation to leave the second hand chair that is virtually the only piece of furniture in the gloomy space you call your bedroom thus contributing further to your inevitable Costanza-ish premature atrophy? Is this what you hold important? In what way are you better than the penis-measurers, Novocastrian binge-drinkers and the people who write the 2 billion words dedicated to Anime series with fucking weird names on TVTropes that you constantly rail against? You believe this is your divine purpose in life - to drown yourself in memes of absolutely no importance to anybody? After we believed in you. YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! YOU WERE MEANT TO BRING BALANCE TO THE NET, NOT HUFF IT!

My only response to this could be: woah. Calm the fuck down. Are you a crazy person?

Even if anybody would ever actually say this to me, at this moment it could not bring me down. Firstly, because I have broadband and secondly, because I am listening to Evermore's new album. Even though my quasi-ex-potential-new-girlfriend-slash-female-friend-slash-dalliance-slash-I-have-no-idea-what-to-call-her....

Okay, let's end this now. From now on the girl I hang with every now and then that is not actually my girlfriend and kind of wasn't but also kinda wasn't and kinda could be, shall be referred to as Little Miss Paradox. Anyway... she dissed the new album. WHATEVA! She also dissed K9, so I look forward to ignoring her some more when it comes to the important issues.

Now, in more seriousness (seeing as the last time I said 'in seriousness' what I said wasn't really serious at all - it seemed to be 'I like hearing British people swear!') I think this could be my year. After all, didn't Paul Kelly say 'the darkest hour comes right before the dawn'?

Okay, you say, this prick has gone right off the rail. It isn't enough that he spends half his life looking for Cao-Dai subtext in episodes of Sharpe to justify his unseemly appetite for the adventures of a hunky Yorkshiremen in tight pants, now he's seriously suggesting that a company accepting a submission for his house to receive an ADSL connection is directly due to a tilt in the balances of the Universe, rather than, say complete coincidence combined with a snail-paced roll-out of fibre-optic cables throughout the stinking backwater you occupy like a bloated diabetic toad. After everything so dismissive you have said about religious people, you reveal yourself to be equally as flighty and irrational. I can only hope that you are anally violated by Christopher Hitchins while Richard Dawkins watches on, having sex with Lalla Ward as he does so in the orgy of intolerant rationalists. THE UNIVERSE WILL FUCK YOU OVER EVEN MORE!!! And Evermore's new stuff SUCKS!

Why are my imaginary Devil's advocates so hostile tonight? Anyway, the feeling has cemented with a positive attitude of mine that has been strengthened greatly by receiving my second ever job interview... in some odd circumstances. It was miraculous I got it at all because they naively decided to contact me on my mobile which I pretty much never use living outside of any connection range, and I only get the message while drunkenly dancing in a friends' grandmothers' living room to some Muse performed on Senor Daniel's Christmas present guitar and am able to process the very unfamiliar words.

This happened to coincide with an inexperienced Telstra worker attempting maintenance on the local exchange and somehow re-wiring half the phones in Yarramalong Valley to our phoneline, possibly to set up some sort of Three's Company or Frasier storyline, and then after being barraged with complaints, 'solving' this issue by disconnecting our line entirely. This left me with no option when replying to the missive but to drive a couple of ks down the road to... and I'm serious about this... the gum tree next to the Old Mill's Gate, one of the only spots in the valley to have mobile reception.

Furthermore, when I call the woman who picks up apparently is using a headset she's unfamiliar with, that has the volume turned right down. I can barely hear a word, assuming the line is bad, and she puts down the headset to adjust the settings without mentioning it to me, so I'm treated to several seconds of completely dead air on the line. I look at my phone, and it's panel, too, is dead. So I hang up, not realising what's happened. Yes, I HUNG UP on a potential employer.

It gets worse, because once I phone back this is all explained away, so my instincts hurriedly hunt for another way to fuck this up. Thankfully, Mother Nature was watching over me and decided to start up the torrential downpour that had been going on earlier that day. Now, at this stage I have the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder, as my hands are occupied with a notepad and a pen I have to take down the details that I need. As the details are imparted, I am hit with so much water I am soon so cold that I am actually shivering and desperately trying to shield the notepaper by impersonating the hunchback of Notre Dame. She asks me if I have any questions, and I do actually have a few. BUT by this stage I am incoherent enough to sound like Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and end the conversation very prematurely.

So first impressions = mentally deficient man scarcely able to operate a phone.

Furthermore, the job is one I applied for months ago and can barely remember. All files related to it on my computer have been deleted, because even though I haven't received a rejection I assume it's been way too long to hear back. I don't even have a copy of my application. I don't really have anything to read about it to prepare...

But, well... I prepared as thoroughly as I could over the week and the interview was one of the most pleasant experiences I have had. Everyone I've described it to agrees that all the signs were very good.

In addition to this, a couple of weeks ago I had a bizarre moment where I realised that I know at least three avenues to submit a script - a friendly producer I have met and studied under in the past, a director who is married to a former agent, and a friend who goes to a school ran by several people in the industry, ignoring the people I know with friends in the ABC and other more tangential avenues. And so, I've committed myself to writing a sitcom pilot over the next month or so and sending it around. Bizarrely it's an idea I've had for at least 3 years but haven't done much about. But that's gonna change, dudes!

So... I'm pretty happy and with an optimistic outlook at the moment. And that hasn't happened too often before. Watch this space! As it remains creepily devoid of life.

Jared Reviews Victory of the Daleks!

2010-05-31T12:55:00.007+10:00

Oh, yes, this one of the old-skool efforts I wrote while watching it for the first time.

1:19 Please note, as 'By Mark Gatiss' came up on screen I said 'Fuck.' This is probably an overreaction, though...

2:03 In trying to emulate the famous cadence of dear old Winnie Ian McNeice seems to be performing all of his lines with a mouth full of licorice allsorts...

2:20 ... sorry, Amy thinks she's a genius for working out this is the war room? *Sigh*

3:27 When he starts talking about the 'Narsey' menace I begin to wonder how seriously McNeice is taking this all. I guess I'll see soon whether it's with good reason..

And I guess it takes away any wonder that this is only the third WWII story to show up on screen - in pop culture terms, which Dr Who actually does use a lot to deal with its history - even back in the supposedly much more serious Hartnell era - WWII has become comic book territory. The Curse of Fenric and The Empty Child combatted this effect by stories well off the beaten track - they mainly both used WWII as a vague context for the stories and focused on odd tangential stories. TEC had nothing to do with the army, after all, swinging the spotlight onto the terrified civilian life living through the Blitz and Fenric while seemingly improbably disarmed a lot of the typical WWII fodder by making the bad guys Russians... and then making them NOT bad guys at all!

Incidentally, what some people have regarded as the biggest barrier to finding Fenric credible, aside from the generally overlooked fact that the Doctor has to make certain that grey, mutated vampires rule the Earth in just a century's time (seriously - why does nobody question that bit???) , that the Russians would conduct a commando raid against Blighty in secret at the time when they were allies isn't as incredible as you think. I just recently read about how Polish-speaking American paratroopers were actively recruited for a top secret OSS mission, where they were to be dropped into Poland to arm and train the resistance to fight the enemy. Only, the further the men got into their briefing the clearer it became that 'the enemy' was actually the forces of the USSR. As it happened, the plan didn't go through, as the Russians advanced too quickly to contain. Makes you think, though...

Anyway, back to something that probably won't be quite as grey-on-grey...

3:45 GAH! That professor looked a little bit Gatiss himself!

3:56 .. okay, that bomb dropped close enough to illuminate Amy's entire body with it's flash and they're in no actual danger?

4:41 Sorry, small detail - they said earlier that the targets were usually out of range, indicating that they aren't now... but those planes were very close. AA should have been on them not long after first visual. Also, the planes were flying in a very abnormally close formation and seemingly quite low for a bombing run of this sort. I don't think we should give props to the Daleks at all and just pin it all on bloody suicidal Kraut pilots.

So.. how silly is the idea for this episode? How many times have the Daleks missed their targets in the classic series, dealing with blokes running not-terribly-fast over a distance of about fifteen feet max? Now they're fucking crackshots at anti-aircraft fire of distances of miles? Pretty odd considering the fact that their guns are shown to have a fairly cosmetic effects on metal and most things inorganic, since they were designed for the sole purpose of genocide of shirtless hippy blokes (or Soviet expies who didn't believe in body armour, depending which origin story we go with this week..)

5:49 Okay so this week Amy's parochial enough to insist that Bracewill's smarter than the Doctor because he's Scottish? Jesus Christ. Even when I compliment Gatiss I have to say he isn't flattering to any female companion he writes for..

6:25 "When I rang you a month ago I admit I had my doubts", ah retconning how I have missed you...

6:37 ... Winnie's in love with the Daleks because of their 'absolute hostility' and the power of their weaponry.... so he assigns them to move files around the office? Somehow this reminds me of Warbot From Accounting...

6:50 "They invaded your world, planets in the skies, you don't forget that..."

I actually was lucky enough to have forgotten that. Now there's ANOTHER reason this isn't making sense. But, of course, this line is the sound of the script editor's pen scribbling madly. Let's hear what Gazza came up with...

7:07 Oh. So we're being enigmatic, then. Lindsay Duncan remembered them...

9:00 - Incidentally, Churchill did actually go to a bunker especially set up for he and the War Cabinet during air raids in the London Underground. I know this because Billy Connolly went there. Sometime after the war I'm sure...

9:34 WOULD-YOU-CARE-FOR-SOME-TEA???? Okay, I lol'ed at that. The hostility in the sentence was very amusing. As the Daleks get more and more milked out making them say funny things has become a big factor in writing stories for them I've noticed. After all, what point did Legacy of the Daleks serve other than to have Daleks quoting Shakespeare? Or Brotherhood of the Daleks aside from Daleks singing in a Soviet chorus? Or, indeed, The Stolen Earth aside from that one scene where Daleks shouts in German, which is basically everyone's favourite bit, several listing it as the one good bit in the story. (Impressive for a 5 second scene..)

9:44 - OH YES! This is the scene that got leaked when they rehearsed it the night after Matt Smith OD'ed on mescaline and had to come in and do it on his hospital bed. Let's see how much the delivery has improved...

10:38 "Yes, DOCTAH! DEATH TO MY ENEMIES!" Change the fucking record, Churchill. Jesus Christ can we get a scene without your larger-than-life bloodlust here?

10:45 "Yes, Winston, and death to everyone else, too!" ARRRGH! STOP REPEATING YOURSELVES!

10:47 I was going to make a joke about the Dalek offering tea again... and he did it! He bloody did it! YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!

12:17 "I AM THE DOCTOR! AND YOU ARE THE daleks."

Definitely an improvement.

It occurred to me this scene would be cool if I hadn't seen and heard it around twice a year since 2005. Dear god, Rusty, what have you done?

12:52 Yes! That miniature of the Dalek ship was very shoddy! The special effects are definitely worse this year. THIS FUCKING FANTASTIC! We're getting some alien planet for sure.

13:19 Phew. Lucky thing Churchill waited so long to call the redshirts in, or they may have gotten some lines.

14:12 ... now this is looking like a generic Dalek story....

14:23 The rogue janitor is activated???? So... they're sending Neil Flynn in?

16:18 I was about to complain about the idea of the TARDIS having a self-destruct but then I realised it's pretty definitely a bluff on the Doctor's part and he's just holding a novelty-sized Life Saver.

16:45 Oh, yes, one ship survived and 'fell back through time'... seriously, who the fuck cares by now? Can't we just go back to the glory of Sawardian exposition now?

THE DOCTOR: Wtf? You're dead, I killed you!
MASTER: As if. Dying's for queers.

Ah, those wonderful days..

17:49 So far as I can follow these are survivors of the mongrel Daleks that Davros somehow made by scraping meat off his own ribcage and that makes me think on from that... what a wasted opportunity to NOT make these inbred excuses of Daleks weaker than the 'pure' deal from Time War era and The Cult of Skaro that the Doctor faced. Seriously, give yourself some storytelling wiggle space. Sadly, these fuckers are able to fly.

ARRRRGH! I still grapple with this one. Hovering is plausible, hovering and no other action - hover devices roughly Dalek size have been made but - come on! The power of anti-gravity?? It's not as if the Daleks were fucking bereft of impressive powers to begin with, is it? God they suck. Daleks suck so much. They're like a televisual black fucking hole. Times like this when I think about what god-awful super-powered suckage lumps of entertainment anti-matter they've become in their modern bastardisation I wonder why the fuck I watch this show, I really do. In fact, fuck it, I'm going to watch some Fringe...

ARRRRGH! They open with a fucking recap. I HATE RECAPS MORE THAN I HATE DALEKS. So.... I guess we carry on.

18:37 Oooh... luckily despite my not-even-really-about-this-episode rant what follows is pretty damned clever. The Daleks are actually underpowered here given their ship is on the verge of collapse and so are unable to attack. So their attack - switch London's lights on. I was about to complain about the idea because this isn't really possible but then I realised - it is.

Well... not quite possible. We don't have the technology to do it but completely plausible. Tesla had a handle on the wireless projection of electricity back round the turn of C20 and though it required an awful load of electricity that's precisely what the Daleks canonically have in abundance. (Even if I'm going off David Whittaker's notes on Daleks mentally, which is basically Chuck Norris Facts with a Find-and-Replace done in Microsoft Word)

20:34 ... wait, Moffat's even introducing new Daleks as well? Cor, was he happy with NOTHING in the RTD era?

...okay, that question was a little ironic coming from me...

Also, they had the DNA... where do they get the massive Dalekanium casings from?

22:28 So THIS is how we get to Biggles Exterminates Some Kaled Arse....

23:20 These new Daleks are pretty fat. Why did they get Michael Kilgarrif as an operator?

23:48 ...so the Daleks are just broadcasting everything they do out from their spaceship if anyone's interested in watching it?

24:43 Oh my god, the self-destruct wasn't real! Who would have guessed it eight minutes ago?

25:08 Daleks have fallen back quite a bit, haven't they? Quoting Shakespeare one day, Pauline Hanson the next..

25:28 .... remember what I said about Daleks not being able to hit guys five feet away when they were running in the classic series?

28:23 I quite like 'Oblivion Continuum' - what a wonderful tautology. I do find self aware nonsense is the best kind...

28:47 Wait.... how can these newly-born Daleks even have any memories about the composition of the Bracewill android?

29:38 ...incidentally, the problem with this plan is that currently the Daleks should know that the Doctor is returning to Earth so there is no reason whatsoever for them to honour the bargain and NOT destroy the planet...

29:56 "DALEKS-HAVE-NO-SUCH-WEAK-NESS!"

"....YEAH-I-KNOW-THAT-AL-READY"

"JUS-SAYIN"

"FROM-NOW-ON-JUST-SAY-THAT-SHIT-IN-YOUR-CE-REB-AL-NODE-MOTH-ER-FUCK-ER"

30:03 So now we know why the Doctor runs into a room and punches out a random dude!

...actually I'm not 100% sure. Let's keep watching...

30:27 Hehe, the Daleks still use Rels. Awesome. Also the sonic screwdriver has a 'dissolve Android flesh in a PG13 way' setting.

30:34 HOLY SHIT a piece of alien tech that the Doctor isn't instantly familiar with! Who's heard of that in six years or so?

30:47 "Amy, you're a female in a Mark Gatiss script. So you're not helping."

31:33 Okay... the day is going to be saved by making a middle aged man go emo against his will?

33:57 Amy has saved the day for the third time in a row, giving her a 100% success rate.... but in the most wishy-washy way ever. Come on. "Hey, I want to bonk fringe-boy here senseless!" defuses a bomb. Give me a break, that made very little sense...

35:39 ... Amy just asked Churchill "What now, then?" .... Jesus Christ. He's PM, and there's a war on. He's got some plans in mind!

35:56 "She looks very upset." Jesus Christ. Is she channelling Poirot right now?

37:38 They walk right in on Bracewill's Dr Strangelove impersonation..

39:06 ...couldn't the Doctor have just said "We aren't going to de-activate you"? Do 45 minute stories need padding now?

Nothing interesting happened in the next two minutes.

Well, annoyingly I was just reading some of Ewen's blog, so my opinion is a bit uncertain - I need to resist in future until I have actually finished my review! As it stands... well... the good outweighed the bad by some margin in this mixed bag of an episode. Being Gatiss, it was all fairly straightforward and, if we're honest, at times worryingly patriotic and insular with some flat characters. Is it possible this is the biggest waste of a celebrity historical on screen? Too fucking right it is, because Churchill does very, very, very little of note and relates very little of his character. Amy is terribly handled.

On the other hand... Daleks are handled well. Yes, that comes from me - the familiar gimmick of Daleks being weird is wound up very early on in the story, really, and once Daleks are being Daleks things are actually surprisingly well written and interestingly handled... well, in relative terms. The Daleks are defeated using logical means, no deus ex machina in sight through the use of a Chekhov's Gun against their Achilles Heel. Nobody performed any Ass Pulls. Also, get this - the Daleks lived! They are the Harry Potters of Daleks! We have a story where the alien menace is not wiped out for ever and ever and ever and ever for a change, so we can actually have a sequel where they don't just pop up and say "Doctor - you forgot to say NO RETURNS! BWAHAAHAHA!"

Now I talk myself back into it, this was pretty fun when it came down to it. And the show's on what I regard as the right track. The Doctor wasn't infallible, the bad guys got away after being defeated by a sort of weird logic. So.... I guess 7/10. Though it could easily have been improved, don't worry about that.

I guess my appreciation of this story, compared to my relatively unimpressed response last week, should prove as testament to the sad truth that the effort you put into a story isn't directly related to its quality. Because this was so under-written in comparison to The Beast Below it doesn't bear thinking about, but was just plain old fun to watch.

WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID

Casual response: My Dads a casual fan, but hes watched every episode this year so far. He thought this weeks was crap, and I dont think it won Matt any points with him either.

Authoritative fan-consensus response: By far its not the worst. Its not the best but it was still a fun romp.

Best = Rememberance of the Daleks
Worst = Genesis of the Daleks

Clean-living response: My son said he liked Churchill's "smoking thing", so it has worked as pro-smoking propaganda!

Six year-old response: She needed a bit of input throughout - we'd discussed WW2 and Churchill in preparation, but the "put that light out!" stuff and why Churchill "kept blowing into that brown stick" prompted questions.

Great unwashed response: Partner, best friend, online friends all in disappointed agreement.
PANTS.

Darkhorse response: VotD had an interesting concept behind it, but fell flat on characterization and some very iffy things like spitfires, plastic Daleks, and an android bomb that just needed a wet dream to stop exploding.

My not-sure-what-to-call-her-potential/ex girlfriend-y response: It was so crap!

Ewen Campion-Clarke response: Jesus this is shit!

Mum's response: Fighter planes in space? What bullshit.

House of literary references response: Dad, when asked, said '.... yyyeeesss' through gritted teeth. 'It was alright to a point.'

'... which was?'

'The playdough Daleks that look like Richard the third.'

Minimalist response: Do we really need another "I hated Victory of the Daleks" thread? There's already about 500 or so on here.

Pissed-off-viewer hotline response: I received more texts and phonecalls from non-whovians after this episode than any other nu-who story.
They were universally negative.

The Daleks were derided as Dyson vacuums.

They all thought the plot was non-existent.

Obviously, I can't look at the vitriolic response without realising this is shaping up as everybody's least favourite aside from me. But, hey, how many classic series guilty pleasures do I have... Silver Nemesis, Claws of Axos, and Terror of the Vervoids it's good to have a story that everyone HATES in NuWho that I can enjoy. Certainly makes a nice change. (The Long Game doesn't count. Or Fear Her. Those stories are of such quality I'm sur everyone online was joking about them sucking.)

Next Time: "Quick, name your favourite Phoenix brother!"... The Doctor bombs the Statue of Liberty... River Song asks Amy if she watched Larry Miles' favourite episode... River showcases the most boring Reality TV pilot ever... somebody steals Paul McGann's voice... the Doctor calls in the cast of Black Hawk Down... somebody hits Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in their word processor... River makes the mistake of picking up The Book of Monotonous Foreboding... and an angel statue doesn't do very much....

Jared Reviews The Beast Below

2010-05-30T18:42:00.017+10:00

Most of you would probably agree this review is a little late, even by my own subterranean (or proto-antediluvian, if you will) standards. The rest of you have forgotten that this story ever aired in the first place.

Apologies for this lapse. At least I can look at Larry Miles blog and revel in how on-the-pulse I am... now, on to this shit nobody cares about... which I started writing while the show was actually airing... notes from the modern day in {curly braces and italics.} Ironically for a review of one of the more kid-ish episodes the first word is a profanity!

Fuck it, I can't be bothered to watch this story again. But I can hear it playing in the next room... so I'll let that guide my non-linear mindstorm of a review. {They did not do a good job.}

I will say, for the record that after my Hartnell comment, the reason this review took so long for me to write {at the time of writing} was because I had the idea of opening it with a lengthy script extract written of the final scenes as the end of a Hartnell four-parter. See, it's Barbara who pressed the 'Forget' button, Ian uncovers the truth and presses the 'Protest' shocked that so few others have, the Doctor is likewise furious and railing against humanity... meanwhile Susan tries to track down one of the children she met on the upper deck, so gets separated. She finds them "There's somebody I'd like you to meet.." says the child, Susan follows them into a room and we see a worrying-looking appendage rising up behind her like a scorpion's tail about to strike...

..then when we come back after an inbetween-scene, possibly of Hawking {I don't think that's actually his name, monk-like guy with glasses} discussing the possibility of 'removing' the Doctor silently or something similarly utterly unconstructive and padding-ish yet still ably written and engaging, and see Susan and her friends playing hopscotch or draughts with the noodly space whale appendage and laughing. Another boy runs in, crying about the 'old man' going to kill the whale, Susan rushes out and saves the day in the nick of time, throwing herself onto the 'Abdicate' button. Hartnell goes furious and manic as everything seems to fall apart and the already shaky lighting gets worse - then everything's fine and Susan explains herself. The Doctor giggles merrily at being so badly wrong, and apologises to nobody.

Can't you just see it?

The thing is, that version probably would have been better, because over the course of 4 episodes things would have had a chance to make a cohesive whole.

I found it quite ironic when I watched this on the back of the unarguably brilliant Eleventh Hour, because that story had emphatically told me that everything I thought I had to worry about the forthcoming Tarkin Epoch was misleading and paranoid. Then THIS story comes around and tells me all that it's justified, if not readily apparent.

I'm not going to come flat out and say that The Beast Below is a bad story, but it has all the elements of one - namely, Silence in the Fucking Library, although I do realise that story is just about Universally loved when you subtract me from the Earth's population. Everything, EVERYTHING, functions on what TVTropes calls 'The Rule of Cool', or at least Moffat's specific version of this which involves his favourite, very peculiar elements of Doctor Who - Britishness for the sake of Britishness, a monster which has nothing to do with the plot, a screwdriver that can do anything, children in key roles and, curiously two elements not traditionally related to DW that he clearly likes anyway - guns and irrefutable evidence that the Doctor fucks around.

Okay, I guess part of me should be vindicated after my disbelieving "He just said he fucked Elizabeth!" was completely shouted down by certain sceptics as gutter-filth reading of events, but I'd actually rather it be vague or never suggested in the first place. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea, even if it's just out of fear of the inevitable tie-in novel by Gareth Roberts where we learn the unusual methods the Doctor used to dispose of the incriminating Royal bed linens.

That was me going off-topic, by the way.

What rankles me with this story is that the elements weren't really tied together. It's a Moffat mash-up and contrary to popular belief, not everything he does is brilliant. We're drawn back to the absolutely mined-out inbred quagmire of the British Royal Family, even if we're looking now into the far future descendants of these decadent ne'er-do-wells (who amazingly come off WORSE in DW than they do in actual history books and tabloids) but it doesn't make things any less parochial and tiresome. Speaking of which, isn't it kind of worrying that apparently in the far future Parliament has dissolved yet Her Majesty apparently has no actual power? Nobody comments on it so, er, maybe not. Interesting seeing as the real world looks like going the other way if anything.

But really, how is the society portrayed meant to function? How exactly do the depiction of post-war austerity style on the streets blend with the medieval monks running the city or the renaissance fashion favoured by her majesty? Why do the children have a gap-toothed mascot reading them scary nursery rhymes on elevators when the society clearly loathes children, trying to feed underachievers to the titular beast and if Hawking is any judge being quite pissed off that they are not eaten? Again, how exactly did they hit upon tacky carnival creations of all things as the weapon to put the fear of God into their populace?

Yes, to me it's The Smilers who really do it. Why do they exist other than to scare children. And not even children in Universe, but those in the audience. As Ewen has pointed out, they're pretty light on actual cruel misdeed as well, for all their fearsome reputation and the monks turning out to be half-human half-Smilers really just raises more questions, doesn't it? What the fuck ARE they? WHY do we need them in the future, considering all the fucking terrifying ways we have to run police states TODAY? How they could have engineered/found them while on the most secretive and shameful run from Earth ever is a question so big and compelling it would suggest that the UK had already devolved into some state of democratic savagery before the solar flares - perhaps it wasn't even because of the explosion that the space whale came to save the children? Hmm, hmmm?

Now I'm reading into it to make the idiosyncratic plot more sensible, though, and I'm not sure if this is sensible. The second-up story of a new companion has recently been designed to be fairly disposable (although a fair number of people on OG have praised Gridlock as the greatest story ever... colour me fucking baffled) and Moffatt does fascinatingly follow the formula (Modern day- Far future - historical) but mixes it up more than has been visible with a future nobody can recognise at all. For Amy's first trip it is a slightly odd choice compared to those of fellow travellers - while the year 5 billion did get somewhat tiresome it made sense for the Doc's first date and imparting the broad church of this crazy universe and crazier species... I mean, compare End of the World to "let's go to a depressing space ship where a pack of depressed and OPPressed dole bludgers drink recycled urine huddling in fear of sideshow clowns"

Though of course this is a new Doctor and he does indeed seem less concerned with the comfort of his travelling companions and carrying a "I'll do what I want to and you get come along" attitude akin to, say, Tom Baker. There's also thankfully been no inkling as before that the Doctor's truly trying to power the TARDIS into his companion's vag, ironically the precise opposite of what you'd expect from Steven Moffat who updated a Victorian novel into a miniseries so he could make the entire thing a warped allegory for sex. (It was awesome, though! ...even if there is the matter of every woman on the planet thinking that Hyde is the cute one. Make-up were not on the same page at all..)

The Doctor too falls back into the Moffatian pattern of being too annoyingly brilliant, but this is possibly because there is a mining magnate's arse worth of exposition that needs to be done and the Doctor does all of it when Moff has set him up as knowing next to nothing about the society. Thus fucking insane leaps of logic and unclearly made conclusions are vomited forth endlessly. Look, clean glass! THIS IS A POLICE STATE! This water isn't shaking! THIS ISN'T A NORMAL SPACESHIP. I can't feel vibration at this point when I have frame of reference for where I am on the ship or even knowledge of the ship's design nor even have seen it from the outside. THIS ISN'T EVEN A SPACESHIP! I ran my hand over this mask for five seconds. IT'S 300 YEARS OLD AND YOU'VE BEEN MIND-WIPED 30 TIMES!

Lizzie-10 is a questionable sort of character as well - a strong female heroine who just happens to be the latest Royal and in an ultimate act of whackbrained PCness is the token black character for these 45 minutes. She's meant to appeal to kids, and oddly one of the ways she shows just how cool she is is by pulling out twin pistols and blowing away those sucka-punk Smilers. This is very incongruous in a show that has prided itself in being anti-weaponry quite recently, but I suppose there are similarly "SaywhathaFUCK" examples out there.

The line "basically, I RULE!" is the most kidshow thing I've seen on the show, I think, but is cool/cheesy enough for me not to hate plus gets a little bit of love not from the moment itself, but how HATED it would have been by Larry Miles, Alan Stevens, Ron Mallet and the other bloke who's name I forget.

Incidentally, I brought up her skin colour not because I'm racist (that's immaterial) but because it's a scientifical implausibility (if not outright impossibility). Studies from Brazil, the nation with the longest interracial breeding history shows that multi-generational inter-breeding moves always towards the whiter pigments over time, to the point that ethnicity has become nebulous for many people in Brazil and there are bucketloads of white natives. So for somebody as black as Lizzie 10 to have been descended from Elizabeth II, princes will need to marry some dark-skinned temptresses (full blooded) from somewhere in the upper middle class fairly soon in several different nations, so that THEIR descendants can inter-marry with MORE full-blooded black women and also provide a large pool of black men and women within the Royal gene pools to try their utmost to provide the maximum number of ebony progeny into the limited circles of which dowager princes and princesses are made.

So... yes. Sometime this century a scientist needs to isolate, replicate and disperse throughout the Royal houses of Europe the Jungle Fever virus or we shall never have a black queen who's a bad muthafucka don't take no shit from nobody and keeps her crown in the Tower of London with 'motherfucker' written on it. Jus' sayin'.

Now... from the endless tide of negativity you probably are thinking I hate this story. No. Because the end is really, really good. It's so good I wish it was somewhere else. Hell, I enjoyed the fact that Song of the Space Whale has now effectively been made after more than 25 years... I just wish they didn't have to foist so much fluff onto it's back to make it visually interesting in an inexpensive sort of way.

The slow revelation of the whale, the relationship with the children, the Doctor's cold yet irrational rage toward all humanity, the terrible choice he thinks he has to make, the fact that he's WRONG (Yes! The Doctor, wrong, in a Moffat script!) and Amy solves it all ties her beautifully into the story and continues her journey, something that they were trying to achieve in Dalek but was much less convincing that time around, because to make the companion look good you don't make the Doctor a macho fuckwit.

It does, of course, leave more questions about how they tethered the whale, how exactly the Doctor reaches the conclusion that they will all die if it is freed, how they managed to shock its brain building the giant ray, how they knew SO MUCH about how to do this when death was apparently raining on the planet and so on and so on...

This, in my opinion, should have been the story to get one hour. Whereas Eleventh Hour was padded, this story is on crack and still only just leaves things making sense. With that said, in the attitude that it's the destination that matters, not the journey (which means it can get a hell of a lot worse for the Starship UK inmates, btw...) TBB is indeed an above average story. If only just.

6/10

A random note, making a space whale spew is one of the MORE credible uses of the sonic screwdriver. The mouth and throat are a large echo chamber and considering the power of the screwdriver it shouldn't be hard for it to emit sound at a volume to vibrate the beast's tonsils. The sound in such a case COULD also have proven fatal to the Doctor and Amy, though so swings and roundabouts.

WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID

Fucking n00b response: Kudos to Moffat for the references to The Doctor's other encounters with royalty - like in Tooth And Claw and the first episode of The End of Time.

...and Voyage of the Damned, and The Shakespeare Code, and Silver Nemesis, and The Crusades, and The Roundheads and Imperial Moon and the references to throwing a hat at Henry VIII and about FIVE BILLION OTHER STORIES. The world didn't pop out of God's birth canal in November 2005 you twat!

Larry Miles' response: No! You're NOT making me review this!

Den of Geek response: This is an episode that's set to stick in the mind some time after the credits roll, not least the moment where Moffat takes the Doctor into darker territory. For the Doctor’s solution to the dilemma of potentially killing the residents of the British ship or allowing the starwhale creature to remain tortured is to basically mentally kill it. The uneasiness of Matt Smith’s Doctor headed a little into Patrick Troughton territory at this point, and it was great to see.

Presumptuous response: What did the star whale remind you of?.. Let me guess! The Great A'tuin.. Was I right?!

My response, written by somebody else: IMHO, the reason this has happened is that TBB is a bona fide example of writing by memes, by which I mean that the writer has built the story not around a character, a situation or a dilemma, but around a disparate collection of memes (which Wikipedi defines as "a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices"). It's as though he's come up with his memes first, and then written a story to justify them (and hasn't really succeeded). So you've got:
Smiley-faced dummies in fairground booths that rotate to reveal scary faces.
A faded, post-WWII austerity Britain vibe.
Messages of impending doom being delivered in the form of a nursery rhyme.
A starship powered not by engines but by a giant creature.
A kick-ass member of the royal family who's a chav.
The whole dystopian, police-state thing.

Lexiconographically fascistic response: I rue the day that the terms meme and trope made thier way into the internet lexicon. Quite frankly I'd like them all to be killed and stuffed inside a frigging tumble dryer, because they've all become as meaningless as a Sarah Palin quote.

Then we can just get back to ideas, and whether we liked them or not.

Dan Davies response: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssss syyyyyyyyyyyyy blad!!!!

Perfectly reasonable response: What is this tendency for actors in Doctor Who to try and sound like Smithfield market porters? Thank goodness Matt Smith doesn't speak in an accent designed to suggest that he is a cabbie or was raised in the ghetto, which is a great relief after Tennant and Eccleston (though at least Eccleston enunciated his words clearly, despite his accent).

But Liz Ten was just silly, and her accent doesn't set a particularly good example to young children either.

Ouiji technician response: It was like she was channelling the spirit of Dick Van Dyke

(incidentally, isn't it uplifting that her broken-toothed accent has received much more attention than her skin colour?)

Next time: Jared forgets to write a synopsis of the trailer!

Next review in a month's time.

Nazis! At the Sex Store: An Unauthorised Biography of Your Grand Mother

2010-05-30T17:09:00.002+10:00

Let me begin this post with an off-putting and irrelevent image I designed in protest to a fellow-but-actually-better amateur adventure game enthusiast being BLOCKED from posting an image contianing the swastika on Photobucket for a possibly upcoming WWII game.

He's Jimmy the Historically Aware Offensive Icon. I tried giving him SS eyes but it didn't look good. Lovingly made in MSPaint in five minutes as with most of my artwork.

In other news, sex shops are pretty boring. Went to my first one yesterday and... well. I wasn't there to buy, dragged along by a bisexual friend (who I may have called Lady Loosepeggs in a much, much earlier post) hungry for more paraphernalia to insert into her unholier cavity so there wasn't much to do but look and frankly there's nothing there that I cannot see on the internet without creepy men in tan raincoats staring at me in a disturbing manner or an awkward female premise in the form of a pale shop girl who appeared in endless fear of being stabbed.

An obvious problem is the fact that guys don't really have sex toys, a cause that Kevin Smith has been championing recently since his podcast has been sponsored by The Fleshlight, America's Best-Selling Male Sex Toy, which as we all know (er... don't we?) is a rubber vagina-in-a-tube that to the untrained eye may indeed look like a flashlight. (It wasn't until it was discussed in Zak and Miri Make a Porno, in a discussion incedently directly quoted from Smith and his wife shopping on Amazon, that I actually got what the 'light' was referring to and suddenly the weird name made sense) For some reason there's a gigantic double standard where men are seeing as being born with the Ulimate Masturbatory Accessory (ie, a hand) and are weird for looking elsewhere for anything. A quote I heard in highschool was a disgusted 'men will fuck anything' in response to a third-hand story about blow-up-ladies, which really is ironic considering the mass of material the typical woman will lodge within themselves.

So, because this was a seemingly reputable store which didn't really sully itself with prosthetic pussies or the fabled 'real girls', 90% of the stock was nothing but penis substitutes, and frankly I'm only interested in the real deal - that is, my deal. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be involved in the most precision-targeted shark attack ever and will come crawling back to the wilting flower of a girl behind the counter and demanding the largest and most authentic member they possess.

After a cursory examination of the disappointingly small S&M stock and raising an eyebrow at the 'swinging sex harness' I turned my attention to the dingier corner where all the DVDs were, as the fictitious scenarios presented there was the only truly interesting aspect to it all. Even so, Loosepeggs was hunting like a sex-crazed truffle pig for the perfect implement to deprive of sunlight for quite some time so I effectively ended up doing an inventory check through the store. I was annoyed at myself for breaking my cardinal rule of not laughing at any titles, but was defeated early on when I saw "Hey, your grandma's a whore!" vol 18. This ended up being my second-favourite title after "Fix my Tranny: Lube Job in Rear Only".

When I relayed this information afterwards in the car in wont of conversation, Ms I-just-spend-30-minutes-looking-for-something-to-cram-in-my-anus lightly chastised me saying I'd 'Gone over to the darkside' and that I should have 'stuck to the mainstream'. This attitude, I have to say, offended me - had I done anything wrong at looking at a DVD? Am I depraved the instant I look at an image?

And now I fall back on my proud recent tradition of quoting directly from my FaceBook with no forethought needed whatsoever, as I went on to discuss this fairly thoroughly. My status post started it all, with a straightforward query:

"If you cannot browse tranny DVDs at a sex shop without being judged, then WHERE CAN YOU???"

A question I do indeed stand by. The response indicated hostility to the subject matter is fairly widespread.

AK: LOL. Is this rhetorical?

JJ: Not serious are u?

Although to be fair one of the respondents may have remembered me as being somewhat prurient in my high school days. They would also be wrong but might just think that anyway. I responded thus:

"The friends I was with today went to a sex shop. Not much held my interest aside from the DVDs - once I was finished with the 'mainstream' section I went on to browse the more interesting titles. Plus I don't see why people are put off by trannies. Those bits in their original packaging are popular, yet the combo deal isn't? By consumer logic at least it makes perfect sense."

Even though I thought of it just then, I think it's a good point. It's like transsexual porn is the result of marketing gone wrong, the old "two great tastes, they'll taste great together!" viewpoint. One half of the market likes breasts, the other half likes penis, anyone in the margins will like a combination of the two! That gives you a market base of 100% of the people in the Universe (aside from those who don't like porn - but it could just be because they haven't seen THIS shit yet!)

For this reason I conclude William T. Ford is truly responsible for tranny porn.

I totally saw about a dozen DVDs I'd have bought in a heartbeat, too.

World T20 : Three-pronged analysis

2010-05-20T14:46:00.000+10:00

EGO: Hello, and welcome once again to the mind of Jared Hansen. Something very unusual has happened - Australia has suffered one of the most embarassing defeats possible in global cricket and there has been no attached blog post. How do you reason this is even possible?

SUPEREGO: There are many possibilities. Firstly, the shock of England, a nation with the lowest level of athleticism outside of Vatican City, actually having the capability to win any sporting event at all is very powerful to a red-blooded male from another nation - this can be witnessed in the fact that nobody can remember who won all the medals in the last Olympics.

EGO: And who did?

SUPEREGO: I'm actually not sure but it must be relevant to my argument somehow. Now, that England should not only win, full stop, but win their first cricket tournament ever having only made it into the final of one such event once, nearly 20 years ago, should surprise. To a man with investment in the sport in question, it may indeed leave him in a catatonic state, scarcely able to breathe and reason in a form of life-support maintained only by episodes of Farscape and Family Guy and Heinz baked beans.

EGO: Is this especially common?

SUPEREGO: Who can say? Had England won a World Cup during the Farscape cancellation crisis we would have far more empirical evidence, but sadly that did not happen and the Claudia Black quotient of worldwide television reached all-time lows. Another possibility is that the young man, messr. Hansen could have committed suicide.

EGO: Would that not kill us as well?

SUPEREGO: It's not as uncommon as you think for people to unsucessfully shoot themselves, you know. It was precisely the fate that befell Captain Henry Sobel of the famous Easy Company from that Steven Spielberg show.

EGO: ....

SUPEREGO: The David Schwimmer guy.

EGO: I've never actually seen it.

SUPEREGO: Yes, I know, we are rather limited to what Jared actually watches aren't we? I wanted to watch Blackpool, you know.

EGO: We got one episode.

SUPEREGO: It was out of context! Anyway, I discounted that theory after it became apparent that the boy was transcribing our conversation right now.

EGO: Yes. It's a bit of a breach of privacy.

SUPEREGO: But also a display of the dextrous typing at speeds of 80wpm he keeps putting in his unsuccessful job applications. I think the most likely theory is that he is in a complete malaise and when we consider the fact he hasn't even blogged about the last five episodes of Doctor Who, his supposedly favourite television it can scarcely seem surprising.

EGO: And so... your thoughts on the game.

SUPEREGO: I didn't actually see it, did I? As nobody did unless they were willing to buy at least 5 Foxtel packages. All I have to work on are stories written on Cricinfo and terrifying footage of a grinning Graeme Swann. Needless to say, T20 cricket is a horribly unpredictable version of the game - the brevity of it allowed the un-ranked Afghani team into the contest to begin with and then to nearly win. Furthermore, Australia's team was quite imbalanced with what many would argue to be one batsman more than is favourable and a clear candidate to be de-selected from the team in the form the serious under-performing Michael Clarke. It's hard to escape the fact that even whilst thousands are saying he single-handedly lost Australia the match at the same time he registered his best score from the entire tournament with 27 from 27 deliveries - mediocre in any form of the game. You cannot argue with statistical evidence unless you are a calculator or a Scientologist, as we well know.

EGO: Thank you. That was very concise and reasonable.

SUPEREGO: My pleasure.

EGO: ...do we take the gag off now?

SUPEREGO: If you must.

ID: *GASP* Alright you slags, take off your fucking cocktail dresses because your faggot tea party is over!

SUPEREGO: We are abstract concepts, we don't wear-

ID: Okay, take off your ABSTRACT cocktail dresses you four-eyed twat!

SUPEREGO: Why do assume I have glasses?

ID: Why do you ASSUME I have a reasonable answer? Let me lay some science on you `packers - FUCK YOU AUSTRALIA! You guys were poorly prepared to go out on a Mardi Gras float, let alone the world stage! Where was your Chuck Norris powers today, Nannes? Or should I saw Nannes-y Boy? If you can't get 4 four wickets every game then WHAT IS THE POINT OF YOU? WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT???

SUPEREGO: You seem to be trying to legitimise your argument by quoting Gwen Cooper, the least-popular TV character to ever exist. A less logical course of action I cannot imagine.

ID: You don't have to imagine, because I'm about to give it to you with both barrels! ...

SUPEREGO: Okay...

ID: I WANT TO RAPE DAVID GOWER!

EGO: Woah.

SUPEREGO: A man who was not even present at the game and retired from cricket well over 30 years ago.

ID: That's how much hate I have right now.

SUPEREGO: Is it possible to direct it more logically?

ID: What is this logic you keep talking to me about, Zachary Quinto? Now, Shaun Tait - fuck you. You can get as many aerodynamic haircuts as you want, but nobody cares about your 150 kph balls.

EGO: I-

ID: NOBODY! God damnit we want RESULTS in the form of CORPSES! Johnson! ... you tan badly. Smith! ....I hate your hair, too, and you little bit like a guy I went to school with who was fucking annoying! Hussey! You've looked like a toucan who's been stretched on a rack and painted white for years but nobody has mentioned it to you! Warner! You... share a name with that guy from The Omen. And that movie SUCKS!

EGO: What exactly are you doing?

ID: I dedicated myself to say something negative about every member of the side.

EGO: But everyone you listed played well.

ID: Nobody can be spared. We need to start getting SOMETHING to go on the death certificate. Watson! ... you stole... my cat. I LOVED THAT CAT MAN! White.... you have tiny, crab like eyes. Hussey... THERE'S ALREADY A HUSSEY ON THE SIDE! What the fuck do you think this is, some kind of Nintendo game? I don't want incest on my side! I want... hot chicks! What have you got against hot chicks, David? Huh? Is it because they can BAT BETTER THAN YOU? Is that it? You been seeing Sophie Devine on the side? You SLUT! Stick to your own end of the Tasman! ...who was twelfth man?

SUPEREGO: They generally don't bother with a twelfth man in 20 over cricket, considering the entire squad is on the sidelines and the entire game is over in 180 minutes.

ID: ...

EGO: Hehe, told.

ID: Fuck you! But who WOULD have been Twelfth Man?

SUPEREGO: Ryan Harris.

ID: Ryan... you look like a fucking were-wombat.

EGO: Is it fair to lambast players solely on grounds of idiosyncratic appearances?

ID: I'm not about fair, E, you know that as well anyone. Now... Haddin... you are so ginger you make David Tennant cry. BUT this has all been nothing but a build up to that revolting baby-faced slag, the Bingle-banging, Kat-slapped, non-singing, whistle-blowing, namby-pamby stick-it-up-your Tandy, boy scout, wishy-washy, "Oh, I need to pick my game up sir but I got a note from my mum" six-packed, brain-damaged fucking 5'7 chunk of Milky Boy kid who may very well be the illegitimate son of Kevin Rudd, PUP NEMO. aka MJ Clarke. Now... oh, damnit.

EGO: What now?

ID: I peaked too early... I think I'm out of hate for the time being.

SUPEREGO: My word.

EGO: Well, that's a shame. Though I did like your impromptu Thin Blue Line homage.

ID: Well.... thanks. Anyway, Michael Clarke should be dropped, Cameron White made captain and Dougie Bollinger brought in as an extra strike bowler.

SUPEREGO: ...that. Sounds sensible. This is remarkable!

ID: Well, I know my sports.

SUPEREGO: Though personally I think Nathan Hauritz wou-

ID: Are you fucking kidding me? HAURITZ??? That Jewish mono-browed garden gnome of a thumb-twiddler...

EGO: *Ahem* We don't know if he is Jewish and that's immateri-

ID: I KNOW EVERYTHING, because I'm just like Buddy Rich, motherfucker! Hauritz has nothing to bring us except poor hygeine and comedic fielding! I'll take cancer in my pelvis before I take Hauritz! Now, back to Clarke... there's only one thing to do with Clarke to improve his batting and we all know the answer is castration.

EGO: What?

ID: YOU HEARD ME! Emergency testoctomy! His balls have gotten him into far too much trouble! Come on, how do you explain his batting falling away at the same time as he was going out with Lara, hmm? Two things that significant happening at once? CO-INCIDENCE! That would be impossible!

SUPEREGO: No, that is actually the very definition of coincidence. Two significant events co-inciding temporally.

ID: DID I ASK FOR A PHD IN FAGOLOGY? So as I said, we need to cut out his heart and give it Tezcatlipoca.

SUPEREGO: ...

EGO: ...

SUPEREGO: I am twice as baffled as you are, I assure you.

EGO: I think we're going to end this roundtable here.

ID: Hey, come on, I didn't even get to comment on the Brad Haddin bruising incident!

SUPEREGO: How do you even know who Tezcatlipoca is?

ID: He's on my FaceBook.

Ghost Train - Big Finish Disapproved!

2010-05-11T22:19:00.002+10:00

Well, obviously I'm not being published by Big Finish, because if that were the case I'd have driven the town dry. Even if my town is Wyong and by the time I'd have driven there I'd be unable to buy anything alcoholic anyway. I'd have... drunken all the castor oil or something. Gotten inventive, like in Bottom.

Anyway, now that there is no danger of it being sold for money, here is the story that I really shouldn't have submitted...

GHOST TRAIN

When Peri had stepped onto the train she had thought that her feet would stay on the ground. She was an old-fashioned thinker like that. But now she was squealing, being flung rudely through the air and buffeting against the roof. In her travels in the TARDIS she had gotten a little used to these sort of harsh Newtonian hissy fits that the Universe threw her way, but she was still expecting to come back to the floor and had screwed up her eyes in preparation.
"Doctor, why aren't I falling?"

"You are, Peri. You just happen to be falling up."

She opened her eyes, and the Doctor indeed seemed to be right - the floor was hovering gently above her eyes. She was, for whatever reason, frightened that her head might fall off so she swivelled it only slightly, allowing herself a glimpse through the corner of her eye of the revolting technicolour eiderdown that the Doctor called a fashion statement. Just a glimpse was all she really wanted.
"But why?" she asked.

"At a guess I'd say because we are travelling at a sizeable portion of the speed of light."

"...but why?"

"Perhaps this a special train? For those who are very late for very important dates? Come on, we want get answers bobbing around like anti-gravitic mullets.."
A 'special train' may well be an understatement, but intriguingly it looked like anything but. From Peri's experience of 20th century public transport the train was largely unremarkable - it had broken luggage racks, illegible graffiti, gunmetal walls, grimy windows and furniture and carpeting festooned in the most awful beiges, olives and plaids yet concocted by humanity in the arms race of abhorrent taste. Indeed, the only difference in these 22nd century trains were the occassional hologram station, the fact that there were an awful lot of more of them, and they were built to hold more people - this train had four floors, making the anteroom with the doors where they floated feel like a cavernous and slightly sinister space.
As they pawed their ways along the ceiling and walls into one of the warren of stairways and into the carriage proper, however, things did not improve. Peri found the claustrophobia much worse, especially as the tunnel between the tombstone rows of high-backed chairs was illuminated only by the worryingly faded crimson emergency lighting.

When her eyes adjusted, it became even worse.

The carriage section was, unthinkably and improbably for a train designed to hold 500 upwards in each carriage, completely empty. Not so much as a flea or louse, or any other living thing was in this space - a heavy sense not of death, but of sheer oblivion was hanging heavy in the air, along with a heavy musky smell that seemed to make the air grey. In spite of this, everywhere around them was the evidence of people. The carelessly abandoned candy wrappers and half-full drinks crowded the floor, but half the seats were littered with phones, game stations, clothes, lunchboxes, thermos, laptops...Peri looked harder, wishing she could stop and saw scuff marks in the hideous and shallow carpet, still fresh. And a window pane that was fogged up... the winking smiley face that stared back at her was all too visible.

"Doctor," Peri managed, her eyes starting to itch at what she was seeing "I really think we should go."

"So do I. But we cannot do that until the train stops, can we?" The Doctor's voice was heavy. "There's no emergency brake. And I've been looking, believe me. Very careless, wouldn't you say?"

"Unless..."

"Yes, Peri. I was trying not to think about that."

The silence hung in the fetid air. Why wasn't the air being circulated, Peri wondered? She pulled her collar up over her mouth. It seemed to be closing in, an army of dust marching against her eyes and mouth. She started pulling herself through the forest of seating with her free arm, needing no prompting to get the hell out of this tomb. The Doctor clearly thought it was a good idea, and followed her closely.

"Yes... I think a visit to the driver might be in order, Peri."

They continued to maneuver their way through the thick, hanging air until they came to the door between the carriage and the next. Before he opened it, the Doctor set about reenacting the William Tell Overture with his fingertips and frowned in consternation.

“Dwarf Star alloy…” he murmured darkly.

“Is that…. An airlock?”

“Maybe a reality lock…”

It was surprisingly simple for the Doctor to open, and once they were on the other side what they saw made Peri feel her eyes were bleeding. The world around them, outside the train was a whirlpool of… what felt like everything. If she focused on any one area she could see… every city. Every colour. Every shadow, ever person, every thought, every soul, every secret in the world. She tried to not focus on anything. But then she could feel everything. Every kiss, every dream, every death, every…

The door slammed shut. Somehow they had gotten through to the other side.

The Doctor brushed himself off, and floating further into the next carriage. “Well, at least now we know what’s outside, this won’t seem quite as bad.”

In fact, it was still dreadful. Every inch of Peri’s skin itched and she tried to look at nothing as they floating slowly through another carriage.

“Can you smell anything, Peri?”

“I’m trying very hard not to.”

“Methane, sulfur, carbon monoxide, an alchemical smorgasbord of death.”

As the Doctor clambered between the seats he snaked his free hand down to pluck up a dusty plastic skirt, and glanced at it before throwing it away to float to the ceiling.

“Everybody on this train got zapped, didn’t they, Doctor?”

“Getting straight to the point as always, Peri. Have you.. well… felt anything unusual?”

“We’re in a.. metal tomb traveling the speed of light,” Peri laughed a humourlessly, nervous laugh that the Doctor had given her all too many opportunities to practice. “Believe me, I’m feeling a lot of weird things. But – I’m happy to say none of those weird feelings have felt like I’m about to evaporate.”

“Good, good…”

Peri gave a weak smile to herself “And, trust me, I’ve been looking for that one…”
Another reality-lock, another swift two-step with death in the intervening maelstrom and another carriage with no trace of life other than that that had been snuffed out decades ago. Peri reflected on just how banal the amazing and terrifying could become – her survival instinct was so honed by now that she was completed relaxed, setting herself to be ready to tense when death itself was truly immediate and only then act. Until that moment she was a coiled spring, biding her time and letting the rest of her mind wander. Her mind did not linger on the children’s toys and shoes occasionally littering the compartment or lulling lazily through the air, but bent itself to enjoy the feeling of zero gravity – to focus on the unusual freedom and control over herself she experienced, only just reflecting that she did so on a sealed death trap far out of her control.

With her mind wandering so they made their way through four carriages, each as cavernous as the last, and each as empty of life and as full of cold, sterile and tenderly aged misery. The Doctor chattered, as he did, expounding with the force of twelve thesauri on any scrap of evidence he found indicating how exactly the train worked. Listening to every second word was more than enough for Peri to hear all the vital details – the train seemed to be built across Universes – parts from different realities, it had mostly likely worked by releasing the pent up potential energy in every passenger, a process called chronokinesis by anyone made enough to contemplate it. The whys were still highly elusive, however.

The Doctor was very disappointed when they finally reached the driver’s compartment – the door took no effort at all to open.

“Honestly, Peri, they stitch this together across 13 Universes and can’t even make a decent lock? To think I brough my sonic lance for nothing…”

Once inside, they were met with a pitiful scene. The driver alone was still at his seat, gazing through the windshield into an endless maelstrom of reality and surreality – he looked like he was an ordinary man around 2000 years ago. He was a mummy that somehow, still had living eyes. And the monstrous beehive-hub of controls that glowed a demonic read had a lance of wires thrust straight into the pitiful creatures belly, humming with a dull everyday menace. The Doctor said hello, quite politely, and then asked him a few questions. Then a few more questions. Then a few jokes and an anecdote about Winston Churchill.

“Look at me when I talk to you, man!” the Doctor’s face flushed “I have dealt with a lot of craven, talking corpses and they have ALL been a lot more civil than you are!”
“Doctor!” snapped Peri. Such was the authority in her voice that the Doctor turned to face her and closed his mouth for a moment. “He doesn’t know that we’re here,” she pointed out, as if to a child “And that might explain a lot.”

“Such as?”

Peri laughed, a bubbling release of far too much repressed stress across the past hour “Well why we’re not DEAD, for starters!”

The Doctor shrugged a little peevishly “Alright, that did have me a little confused I will admit… I suppose we are foreign to this precise spatial-temporary milieu, unlike the other poor cattle that was on this train – which would also probably suggest things have gone badly wrong, because frankly this train doesn’t seem to be designed to stop right now…”

His brow shot up and his eyes bulged. The strength of the expression made Peri hear the penny drop.

“It’s a bomb, Peri,” breathed the Doctor in wonderment. “The most tremendously insane bomb that has ever been devised..”

“Erm… okay,” said Peri, trying to make sense of it all “Is it going to go off?”

“If it could, Peri, we wouldn’t even exist. If this train were to move faster than light via conventional propulsion it would start operating in a plane of inverse physics – perpetual motion and infinitely exponential mass. With those sort of forces operating around the Earth’s entire surface… the planet would be crushed in seconds.”

“Destroy it?”

“No,” said the Doctor, still fixated on the monstrous controls “Well, yes, but mostly no. This bomb operates in eleven dimensions and across several Universes – the Earth would cease to have ever existed. Anywhere. And the chain reaction would destroy the entire Web of Time...”

Peri frowned. “What kind of freak would want to do that?”

“There are more things in Heaven and on Earth, Perpugilliam..” whispered the Doctor with a smile. He stared into the middle distance a moment before turning back to the withered creature at the controls and his face fell.

“Do you think this could be their agent, Peri – somebody who gave his life to destroy a world he despised, or just a train driver who stepped into this nightmare in the same way that we did?”

“Are you asking me just because you can’t ask him?” said Peri with a raised eyebrow.

Tentatively she stretched out her hand and brushed the man’s forehead. She could feel more than she wanted – the crackling, parchment-like skin that was stretched thin over bone that was feeling like crumbling concrete – but the man himself might as well have been a grotesque in Madame Tussaud’s for all the response he showed.
“No matter who he is he couldn’t have deserved this,” Peri said to herself sadly.
The Doctor had nodded and had pried open the wasp nest-like hub of the control panel, that was hooked into the driver’s gut. “Clearly all the train’s energy is coming from this poor soul, so…”

Peri grabbed the Doctor’s wrist fiercely “Wait a minute – have you thought about what’s going to happen once you cut that line?”

The cherubic face looked genuinely aggrieved “Oh, Peri, OF COURSE I’ve thought about it! Quite a bit, in fact!”

Peri released her grip “Well… if you’re sure then..”

“And I’ve come to the conclusion there’s only one way to know for certain!”

Snip.

The world turned into a searing, blinding white light for a moment, before all falling away, and soon there was blackness. Peri triple checked that her eyes were not somehow screwed shut without her say so, but they definitely were not – and what she heard was bewildering. 50 tons of steel flying away into the ether, a control panel exploding, a primal roar that turned into the feeble gurgling of a toddler and in the midst of it the Doctor admitting a little too calmly that this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Peri got concerned when she realised that she couldn’t feel her feet. She then got even more concerned when she realised she couldn’t feel anything else at all. When she concentrated on this, she found suddenly the world was not black emptiness, but a grungy section of 25th century railway where an inappropriately grinning Doctor was waiting for her.

“Ah, Peri, I knew I could count on you!” he lied merrily through his teeth “You popped out of reality for a moment there, had me a bit worried.”

“The train’s gone,” Peri commented. In moments like this she liked to look at the big picture first, before coming down to personal details like nearly having fallen into a parallel Universe, or the awkward realization that an explosive shower of chronons had turned the emaciated corpse of a driver into an baby which she was know holding and politely trying to deny access to her blouse.

“Yes…” agreed the Doctor on the immutable point that had been tabled, nearly speechless for a rarefied moment. “But in a way it never really existed.”

“Really?” Peri held up the babe gently “Then where did this little guy come from? Pixie dust?”

The Time Lord kicked a rock and blew his cheeks out. “I said ‘IN A WAY’, Peri! Try to be a bit open minded! If I’ve tried to teach you anything-”

“Doctor!”

“-it’s that you need to, okay, why are you running?”

This time he heard the train whistle and saw the light.

As Peri ran for her life, desperately looking for any side access tunnels in the towering concrete walls to duck into she was overtaken by the Doctor. He was not only moving faster than she had ever seen, but grinning wider as well.

“Terribly exciting, isn’t it?” he said exactly as he would have in a cinema.
Peri had to laugh. It was just another one of those days…

Jared Tries to Educate a Friend

2010-05-11T21:16:00.003+10:00

In much the same way as Michael Caine tried to educate a hairdresser in Educating Rita, but with all the abuse condensed into the space of about ten minutes... it all started as most venomous exchanges do... on MSN...

After seeing and immediately joining a group on Facebook called "Damn Daleks just DIE already!" or something similar, I was disappointed to find that it was apparently run and consisting entirely of 16 young girls (no, younger than THAT, hence my disappointment) and so I went looking for intelligent conversation on the matter, with the one person on MSN I knew was a fan, at least of NuWho.

Jared
Daleks suck

Lance
Daleks are awesome
Hell, they are the BEST thing of Dr. Who

Jared
....BLOCK'D!

Blocking him was amusing for five minutes, during which time I got Facebook support from, of all people, the Villainous AK, my old nemesis. But like all things that are amusing for five minutes they are not amusing for ten..

Jared
You get unblocked for humourous response value
Messing with you is still fun

Lance
SIF doesn't cover it

[..]

Jared
But, no, Daleks should not fly
I can accept them hovering either other (sic) small obstacles or to navigate in the vaccuum of space

Lance
yeah, but they are more awesome though if they do....

Jared
But for them to suddenly become aerodynamic to that degree is ridiculous
It is completely devoid of awesomeness

Lance
otherwise - how the hell can they go up stairs?

Jared
They are meant to be tanks
Not B52s
..read what I'm saying, please, they HOVER
Do you not realise HOVER != FLY? (*Programmer slang)

Lance
well... I do
but hovering is essentially flying?

Jared
...no it isn't
By that logic jumping is flying because you aren't touching the ground
Hovering is suspending something a fixed distance above the ground using an opposing force

Lance
yes, but hovering is never going back to the ground
and would that suspension involve in a forwards propulsion ?

Jared
Flying involves creating a greater-than-opposing force underneath an object so that it can increase its distance from the ground indefinitely

Lance
"I can accept them hovering either other small obstacles or to navigate in the vaccuum of space" how can they avoid the obstacles if they just hover? without a forwards movement? which kind of implies FLYING

Jared
And if something is suspended via hovering, the two forces cancelling each other out, in Newtonian terms it's at rest - so if it has propulsion it would move forward whilst maintaining the distance from the ground
Okay, going by the Lancian laws of physics, if I throttle a hovercraft hard enough I can get it to take off and land it in Sydney airport?
Since it moves whilst hovering and thus flies

Lance
Meh
I honestly don't really care
it is just a TV SHOW afterall (*Complete coward's defense at point where TV show is no longer being discussed)

Jared
Your ignorance demonstrates that
Well, it's also a gross misunderstanding of physics

Lance
SIF

Jared
I am quite stunned you believe that the moment hovering is not stationary it becomes flying
Do you even understand how planes work?

Lance
do me a favour, block me - before I will

Jared
I don't care

Lance
meh, too late

Jared
OHHHHHHHHHH

The argument sadly derailed before I was able to compare his ignorance of physics to Adolf Hitler's ignorance of naval maneuvres, I made a joking comment about it on his FaceBook page assuming things would be smoothed over. Instead, he demanded an apology instantly, threatening me with deletion from his FB if I refused to do so.

An apology which, of course I provided in as simple terms as possible...

I have never been more settled. That said I don't particularly care if I'm deleted or not, really. I already saved that humourous Froot Loops photo of you for future use, after all. I suppose, though in the grand scheme of things your selective un-intellectualism evidenced in your surprisingly comic book approach to Newtonian physics when regarded at the same stage as your astonishing keyboard dexterity and rapacious appetite for coding perfection and also your +10 CH stat that has seen you through life so far is a very trivial matter that I gave undue attention to, and certainly did not warrant the pilloring that I thrust upon you as if it were a thrusting organ that I had a given right to thrust onto you.

When bearing this in mind, logically the fault lies with myself, and traditionally in our society, he who is at fault acknowledges this and express regret. The traditional phraseology, as informed by 3000 years of anthropological evolution I do hereby utter: "That was uncalled for, Lance, my friend, I am very sorry for mocking you unnecessarily, and I hope you can forgive me" At the same time as I have uttered this I have entered the words onto a fairly primitive input/output device that has stored these into octal numerical vassels of 'memory', and will soon trigger and unrelated mechanism that will propel these many integers to an exchange where they shall be re-routed to a mainframe whereupon you can view them in translated form. I hope you appreciate the extra effort.

Your servant, Jared Hansen DipLIS, CIIILISM, CIVPGM (inc), Esquire

So, it seems we'll never be talking again. I found it all quite amusing and it definitely filled in the time before QI came on.

I want to write for Gordon Brown

2010-04-29T19:40:00.001+10:00

(Alternatively "Always a Frown, with Gordon Brown")

Jesus Christ, I haven't posted anything for 20 days? Damn... well, I guess I HAVE been un-motivated recently. Normal service will resume shortly, I assure you-ish.

Now, what events of great import do I have to blog on tonight? Well, a completely UN-Fistworthy scandal on the part of the media, albeit their overseas inbred cousins tonight - the English media, currently hauling Gordon Brown over the coals for a comment he made whilst unaware that his lapel mic was still on. He referred to a middle-aged bag lady who had accosted him on the street demanded that he use his Prime Ministerial power to smack down all the terrible foreigners coming into HER country, as saying "bigoted stuff". Hey, he called it as he saw it.

This scandal SICKENS ME.

What she said was, really, bigoted and not very meaningful. I didn't see any need for an apology, and really not much need for the story itself to get out. I mean, sure, the slavering functionally-literate hyenae of the press love any such moment when somebody doesn't realise they're being recorded, but a lot of the time it reveals simply that these politicians are human, and nothing scandalous at all. I mean, who could have been offended by Joe Biden saying what millions of Americans were thinking, when he proclaimed that day "a big fucking deal"? And likewise Gordon Brown revealing that, like most of his countrymen who work for a living, he gets really sick of petty shit like that over the course of his day.

From the media treatment, I was looking for a right royal slagging off from The Right Honourable Brown, and was sadly deprived of this. Here are ten suggestions that would have been far more entertaining for me personally:

10. Couldn't you give me a heads-up about meeting Pauline Hanson?

9. Whose idea was that? You know how much I hate dumplings, walking talking ones even more so.

8. I thought she was going to rob me. I looked at her face and assumed it was a sandpaper balaclava.

7. You knows... these days everybody acts like they've got something to say, but when they open their mouths nothing comes out but a heap of gibberish and what the fuck is that? It's like they forgot about Dre!

6. My guard was down. She looked so much like Silent Bob I never expected her to talk.

5. Well I know her. She was angry about that teabagging incident last night.

4. May she die alone and silent.

3. I was hoping it would be something about being a rape victim so I could laugh in her face. Before punching it in. And teabagging her.

2. Oh, you know, the bloody usual. She was talking about rounding up all the Jews in Europe and killing them. Just once I'd like to be able to say "I agree" to that one. Do you think she'd let me teabag her if I did?

1. That woman made me so angry, it made me want to team up with my old school chum Nigel Verkoff, hunt down her extended family and molest any that looked half decent after we were done sniffing detergent cut with speed and binge-drinking on alco-pops. Incidentally, I've recently taken up teabagging.

Preferred Hobby of B7 Fans...

2010-04-09T14:22:00.003+10:00

Everyone on the internet should stop making their alternate B7 casts. Right now. This epiphany is brought on by seeing this:

My Cast Is This

Blake - Micheal Sheen
Avon - Ralf Spall
Vila - Ben Miller
Jenna - Sheridan Smith
Gan - Dean Andrews
Zen - Roy Skelton
Cally - Niky Wardley
Orac - Norman Lovett
Slave - Paul Darrow
Dayna - Lenora Crichlow
Tarrent - Richard Ayoade
Soolin - Joanna Page

Servalan - Michelle Ryan
Travis - Ross Kemp

Whats Your Cast?
Do You Agree With Me?
Our Dont You?

Courtesy of a deviant named martinwilliamrandall, on IMDb at least. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming it is a joke, yet it is still all too credible. Even Dean "Ray from Life on Mars" Andrews as Gan (for fuck's sake!) isn't too amazing as Philip Glenister was suggested by an all too-serious fan for the part. The thing that made the above mind-blowing was the bloke who drew up that shit had the nerve to be hyper-critical of anything else that got posted.

At the same time, I'd like to break my own veto with a cast, that I actually wrote up months and months ago, which looking back doesn't read too well now. Ah well, I give myself permission to post it.

Blake - Rufus Sewell

Avon - Paul Bettany

Jenna - Isla Fisher.... (I was thinking of India then got sidetracked. Hey, she's faintly plausible if nothing else..)

Vila - Simon Pegg

Cally - Claire Forlani

Gan - David Harewood (well, until I hear any BETTER suggestions, people!)

Travis - Richard Armitage ... failing that wheel in Pete Serafinowicz

Servalan - ...I've drawn a blank on this one for a long while. BUT I'm going out on a limb and saying... Billie Piper. Or at least, somebody a lot like her. She can play the conceited charm, the smug entitlement, and definitely has the playfulness and I'm sure can do the sinister side. Her natural voice is just right for the part. Physically she's nearly the polar opposite of Jacqui Pearce, but I don't think that should be seen as too big a deal - to me, Servi is a much more personaltity-driven role.
Or it could just be that chick from V.

Tarrant - Ioan Gruffudd

Dayna - .. I actually have no idea, but at the same time I think it should be a complete unknown, since Dayna was around 18 as I recall. Failing that.... Freema.

I also unwisely decided to illustrate this with a careful photoshopping of what it would look like if the original cast were to travel through time, hunt down the above actors and kill them before wearing their faces around.

Yes, I know, must try harder. It isn't easy being the one guy on the net who can't photoshop, you know...

Jared Reviews the Eleventh Hour!

2010-04-07T11:17:00.003+10:00

Ah, Steven Moffat, bless. He has made us all his bitch.

I'm writing this review slightly late, but still earlier than expected because I just Ewen has already got his up. And I don't want what I write to be influenced by him whatsoever. And so, it's already off to a terrible start. I'm talking about the review itself rather than doing any bloody reviewing! In fact, I haven't even stated what I'm reviewing! What a dog's breakfast. The worst thing is I had half of what's going to ensue written in my head yesterday, but didn't bloody write it on paper or in wordpad for some reason. Absolutely unforgiveable!

0/10, that's what I give myself here.

Anyway, as I was saying, Steven Moffat is pretty damned good. Even when he writes something as unforgiveably shithouse as Silence in the Library he performs a magic act where characters throw up terrifying quantities of witty ripostes as if they've spent an evening fellating Don Rickles to distract from a plot that makes no sense at all. Incredibly it works on 99% of fandom. This, combined with the fact that SitL was his last script and trailers that were either quick and incoherent or coherent and goddamned awful, really did indicate the worst.

I mean, look at the publicity that has gone out - it has been targetted so strongly at the fans that nobody else would even know what it was. I guess it's a luxury you have to not even explain who the main character is when his casting makes the bloody ABC news, but containing no dialogue and a shitload of explosions is a very weird choice. Also, conspicuously selling his own creations back to the fans - what else are we to assume aside from "Kicking back and running this show in auto-pilot"

This also looks very possible at the very beginning of Eleventh Hour, with a quickly forgotten scene of the TARDIS nearly crashing into Westminster and the Doctor floundering about like a buttery flounder with a stupid haircut that could have gone in any story, anywhere in the last four years - it's so similar to The Christmas Invasion and The Runaway Bride it's hard to imagine anyone being excited about it. BUT Moffat flips the script - the entire purpose of this scene is to drop surreally into the new credits sequence.. and so the point WAS that the moment was pure 100,000 pound sterling RTD filler fodder. The last moment of RTDness in the show, those credits are the symbolic crossing-over point.

This occurred to me when I though "This story would have been better to me if it just started with the TARDIS crashed in the Pond garden." Then I realised the story BLOODY DID, because it only starts after those credits.. yes, the shadow of RTD hangs over the story, strongly felt by his absence. It soon becomes very apparent that, consciously or not, 50% of this script from Moffat is a series of "Things are gonna be different from now on!" moments, making this possibly the first ever piece of television targetted (albeit almost certainly inadvertently) towards The Hatedom. This makes me a little nervous about going onto the forums to see the response, because I fear it could be violent, even though the episode is brilliant.

Damn, let the cat out of the bag there. Yes, I really like it.

BUT moving backwards, the anti-RTDs... well, the camera copies that shock-zoom down into London BUT the story isn't actually set there. The Westminster shots are the last glimpse of London in the ep. Instantly the interior of the TARDIS is destroyed. Similarly the screwdriver is destroyed nearly as soon as it appears. Obviously the credits and theme song entirely changed first chance. Immediate references to 'swimming pool' and 'library' in the TARDIS, suggesting we could be seeing more and that it isn't as cyberpunk grungy as it has been. The companion already has backstory of the Doctor so there's no "It's bigger on the inside!" bullshit. Amy's family is incredibly vague and the Doctor doesn't really care. Also, the companion's a stripper rather than a slightly self conscious positive reinforcement feminine role mode.

Yes! What a moment of fridge brilliance! Oh, how we mocked when the photos of Amy were released, talking about how 'stripperific' her policewoman outfit was and speculating that the show was now going to be a glorified series of skin-flicks now that Geoff from Coupling was the producer. And it still can be! BUT the revelation that Amy actually IS a stripper had me stunned, what a good one. Oh, and she is, by the way. I don't know what the in-universe explanation for "Kiss-o-gram" would be but it is oh-so-clearly the G-rated re-write for one of those things kids aren't allowed to learn about until they innocently Google "Japanese cartoons" one day.

Also, what I see as a very good sign - the special effects were not that good.

This could get peoples back ups, assuming that I even have an audience for these mad ramblings, because in the past I have mocked strongly some of the terrible special effects failures of the last couple of years. And I don't have much of a comeback. Except that... none of the effects in this episode were amazing. A lot of the others were.

As we know RTD was loathe to do an alien planet story because the expense would be too high and made a big deal about the special effects. But look at the Multiform in that room with Amy - it's lit wrong and is pretty basic. BUT good enough to be a little scary! And those eyeball spaceships - they don't look real! In fact, they look pretty bad! THIS IS FANTASTIC! If we have a producer who says "just make what you can afford and move on" we can have brilliant storytelling, unlimited storytelling. I guess this goes back to RTD saying he'd never have the courage to write "The Doctor jumps a horse through a mirror" into one of his scripts. Moffat was the courage to write "The Doctor jumps a horse through a plate glass factory on the back of a Sycorax warship that's crashing into the sun. TWICE." and give The Mill five pounds in change to make it happen.

This is the spirit that made Doctor Who great, people. This is why my status-line review on FaceBook was "This ain't your little sister's Doctor Who!" by telling stories we can't afford in the way our American cousins would never try, we're making REAL Doctor Who.

Most people would actually be concerned with the new Doctor. Though I'd say they really shouldn't be. Matt Smith is, in spite of the "DaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrLEX!" scare a very good performer who doesn't hit a wrong note throughout the episode for my money. He hits the right notes for me as a Doctor - talks weird, acts weird and looks weird - yes, he has a horse face. Who are these people who keep complaining about the new Doctors being too 'good looking'? Eccleston was a moled-up beak-nosed cab-door ears skinhead, David Tennant was a bloody gelled scarecrow with a matching chin and a nose that could slice through cardboard and Smith has been tragically born with a second forehead. Do the English have different standards than we Australians?*

Everybody knows how a new Doctor story is supposed to work...

1) The new Doctor is placed in a situation that his predecessor would have handled ably with little difficulty to see how he goes.

2) The new Doctor is effectively out of character until the end of the story.

Moffat knows not to fuck around with these golden rules as they hold true. If Tenner were here he'd find some way to teleport into Sentrassi ships using his sonic screwdriver and Ham them into submission using his power of mad shouting. You might possibly have gotten a Short Trips story written on a napkin out of it. And, as Matt Smith says enough times, he doesn't know what's what half the time.

The other two more sporadic rules are

1) There should always be a crossover companion to ease the transition for the audience.

2) The Doctor's second story should feel like one that wouldn't have been out of place in the Hartnell era.

I have no idea what the deal is with the second one, postulated by a certain Mr Campion-Clarke but thus far it has held creepily true. We'll have to judge next week. As for the former, that has probably been discarded in this new age of companions with their names in lights..

When it comes to the character of Matt Smith's Doctor, it's hard to judge. There are more than a couple of similarities between Robert Holmes and Steven Moffat, and I'm here to suggest another one. As noted, Bob Holmes always wrote for Tom Baker... creepily, even BEFORE Tom Baker had the role. This is actually because he was script editor at the time of the Pertwee-Baker transition and so dictated the Doctor's character. I'm going to go one step further and suggest that Moffat in all his stories so far, has actually been writing for Matt Smith. Interestingly his Doctor seems a tad quieter than David Tennant, and quite a bit more mad. He's also less reliable (he leaves Amy for several years... TWICE, and once for entirely selfish reasons) and is shown to be capable of being a complete jerk. ("You're Scottish aren't you? Fry me something!!!") How these are going to balloon from here on will be interesting to see..

The story is done cleverly, within another "Take that!" of the Doctor being forced to solve a problem without the sonic screwdriver or TARDIS, as he continually points out. There's a slight cheat when you seems to use the superpower of Esper-vision in the park, but I'm in a charitable mood to forgive that - the computer virus idea is very clever and thankfully the 'corner of your eye' stuff to scare the little'uns isn't as clumsy as the "AIR PIRAHNAS IN THE SHADOWS!" bullshit. There are enough twists, involving the possessed coma patients and the Sentrassi (god is that their actual name? The eye-people anyway) to keep things interesting on a plot-based level between all the slick dialogue.

"Okay, Jared," you say wearily "You've fellated this episode long enough. Was there something that you DIDN'T like?"

As it happens - YES! I didn't like Roy. Assuming that's his name. But, erm, he kinda didn't do anything so it didn't matter much. Also I don't think we're meant to like him, the whole character came across as the 'villain' character from romantic comedies. You know, by which I mean the other boyfriends who are usually actually fiancées. Except he isn't one of the evil ones, just ones rendered evil by society for being complete users.

Oh, and the last scene went slightly too long.

No, really, that's it. Usually I'm nothing but a big bubbling ball of negativity, so this surprises me as well. So, I guess that means it has to be 10/10

Oh, yeah, there was yet another "Don't you know who the FUCK I am???" moment from the Doctor to the alien badguys. But it wasn't used to save the day. He gets a free pass on that one.

WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID

Lawrence Miles response: You know, Avatar and Lord of the Rings are fucking infantile shit because they rely on CGI. HOW CAN ANYONE RESPECT THAT? What? Yes, I did say Revenge of the Sith was one of cinema's great classics, why do you bring this up? Anyway, I watched Spiderman 3 and it reminded me of going to the cinemas to watch porn in the 70s because it's so fucking Pavlovian! You couldn't put Matt Smith on top of Dudley Simpson! Because that would be gay, and besides you'd need a time machine. BLINK SUCKS!!! Moffat kicked sand into my face in the beach. Prick. STOP PARAPHRASING ME!!!

Sparacus response: This story is drivel. We are in agreement.

Snarktastic response: Why isn't Matt Smith mugging wildly for the camera and screaming individual words of dialogue for no apparent reason? Why isn't Matt Smith wildly exaggerating his facial expressions into bizarre contortions of nose and eye the way the Doctor ought to? Why isn't Matt Smith making his Doctor obnoxious and arrogant and insufferable by speaking in a superior, condescending way to all the human companions? The bit where Smith told the guy looking at porn to get a girlfriend was delivered with such an un-Doctorishly gentle touch; Tennant would have bellowed at him, snapping at him. Instead, Smith just sounds... nice and down-to-earth and genuinely caring. Tennant would never lower himself to that. Smith doesn't even sound like the Doctor; where is the needless and distracting overenunciation of every single syllable?

Android response to the above: I take it this is a stab at sarcasm, if it is maybe a little smilie at the end, as not everyone can tell if this for real or not.

Zygote with keyboard's response: hear we go matt smith not as good as tennant after one episode lol people really need to get real tennants first episode was slagged off by people aswell you cant please everybody and in my opinion tennant was no where near as good as tom baker and jon pertwee its all opinions im just glad to have doctor who on my screens its because of people like the whingers we here slagging people off the series goes off air becasue its deemed unsuccessfull i think you just need to enjoy the programme otherwise your kids are not gonna be able to enjoy the show like the rest of us are fortunate enough to

Family response Only major down part was the trailer and a general groan at Daleks and Cybermen appearance.

Larry Miles' fanbase response: A redheaded companion who back-talks the ER and runs out on her wedding? Could it be that Moffat is creating Donna Noble Mark 2 just to piss Larry off? I would approve, in this regard.

(With fans like that, who needs enemies?)

Arnold T Blumberg response: Hey arsehole, kissograms are actually real! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissogram

ME: WHAT?????

Ewen Campion Clarke response: There's nothing remotely dodgy about a strange man creeping into a house in the middle of the night and spending a disturbing amount of time with a seven-year-old girl.

Charles Daniels response: In order to understand the 11th Hour, you need to understand, first and foremost
that Moffat is the Anti-Oliver Postgate. I first came to understand this while
drinking alco-pops and showing around my Clangers Annuals to passers by.

I would use these Clangers Annuals to entice people into a magical world of their imagination.
It was a great way to chat people up; because for the most part it failed miserably.
Yes, I was chatting up people in a deeply ineffective way.
Because I wasn't playing by the rules. Or more to the point I wasn't playing by
the standard rule book but had instead devised my own strategy.

(Read the entire post. It's bloody brilliant.)

* Contrary to unpopular belief I am Australian, as opposed to a 'humourously angry American"

Jared Reviews Sweet Fanny Adams!

2010-04-05T12:27:00.007+10:00

The new Doctor Who is out. I have not seen it.

Remember the times when the presumption would be to have not seen a TV show broadcast hundreds of thousands of miles away, a mere hour or two after the fact? We were used to shows mysteriously not appearing on TV at all, such as Black Books series 3 (for a very recent example) or half the output of The Comic Strip Presents, when the only option to watch Blackadder and The New Statesman was to tune in, bleary eyed to Channel 7 at one in the morning, the 'sexy new time' for comedy that has perservered to make sure Arrested Development has never found an audience in the country outside of complete nerds like me.

We are in a different age now, entertainment travels at the speed of information, which as Terry Pratchett tells us is in fact faster than the speed of light. (Note: this is not actually true) My friend had the new episode. He was relentlessly telling me how good it was, to a degree I wanted him to stop. He told me I would have it, along with the new Ashes to Ashes, Stargate Universe and something else I have forgotten 'soon'. This was at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. It is currently 21 hours later and I do not have it, so there is some discrepancy between our definitions of the term, clearly.

It isn't so much that I'm such a spoilt prick that I can't stand to wait for stuff - in fact I like to ration out my TV shows for as long as possible rather than watch them all in one go - but when the promise is laid out so clearly I get pretty pissed off. It isn't even as if I asked for it - I was happy to wait until I saw him next, since I have borrowed BSG season 1 and Fascape season 1 from him (though Battlestar Galactica seems astonishingly crap going by the first 30 minutes... which seems to be utterly shit soft-core porn filmed on a spinning top)

I mentioned it to mum, see, and so she got excited to the point where she was more disappointed than me to the point we ended up watching Talons of Weng-Chiang which, surprisingly we don't do too often. Bugger this 'best Doctor ever' nonsense, there's no way he can beat Tom.

Anyway, the point is I HAVE NOTHING TO REVIEW! And I should. I was getting myself psyched to make unhelpfully snarky comments. Well, 'nothing' is a harsh term. I could review, say, the trailers, the wallpapers, Matt Smith's faintly horse-like visage, Amy Pond's arse, the rest of Children of Earth or the inordinate number of films I've watched recently (Green Zone, Moon, Superbad, Irreversible, Black Hawk Down) or the overrated dross that is True Blood.

Seriously - is there a running theme going through the world? People rave about a show, and I watch it to find it's a load of shit where people are constantly angrily bitching at one another and fucking with some tangential sci-fi references? The TB pilot was nothing but 'cute chick can read minds and falls in love with a vampire. Meanwhile soft-core sex scenes happen around her a lot'. People wonder why I like Blakes 7 - because it isn't that shit, that's why!

Anyway, let's pick something at random for me to rant about...

The Terminator

When people heard I had not seen this film in high school they were horrified. Which I found very funny because, hey, it's a fucking movie. The idea that not actually realising why occassionally some mental defective in my presence would grunt "Da Termunatah - bekoz I told ya too!" could possibly serve as a hindrance in my life was truly odd, yet these were the same people who were vehemently hostile at my refusal to watch Big Brother. Ironically, when they set out to prove how out of touch this made me all they did was ask me questions about the people in the house. Not only was this flawed, as, say, Sarah Marie (remember her?) glutinous having an extra maximus doesn't really equate to Robert Mugabe's presidency on terms of gravitas but furthermore I got every question right, because of the ludicrous media over-saturation. I never set out to know ANYTHING about BB, but rather absorbed by an unwilling and unhappy osmosis.

Much the same happened with Terminator's plotline. Who doesn't know the names John and Sarah Connor, T-800, T-1000, all that bullshit which is apparently one of the 'cleverest sci-fi plots out there' if you believe the drivellous shit I read on the IMDB.

I should perhaps qualify that my fellow students offered a qualification - 'not so much the first one, but Terminator 2.' I now understand why they said this... because The Terminator is complete balls.

The thing that amazed me about this film, as some teenager who is not even a shadow of the talent of Paddy Kingsland, mucks about on his synth while a shiny, naked Schwarzenegger strides up to some guys in home-made Mad Max costumes bizarrely fighting one another over the change to use a coin-operated telescope is that this is the type of film that rightfully belongs on a screen in front of Mike Nelson, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. MST3K fodder at its finest, or worst depending on your point of view.

None of the dozens of eager glimpses into the nightmarish machine future are even briefly convincing - a series of Micro Machines are moved by strings through a Warhammer 40K gaming table. The sci-fi plot is clumsy, and imparted entirely through vast swathes of exposition that don't recieve the response they should from the characters, and there's similarly ham-fisted 'foreshadowing' - "Don't worry, in a hundred years nobody will care!" says Sarah's far-too-dumb-to-live fellow waitress, expressing a saying that has never ever existed.

Yes, the film is cheap - 6.5 million according to Wiki. But that is more expensive than any Doctor Who made in the 80s so why the hell can't it look as good as any Davison story? And I am serious. The people who mock the wobbling sets need to have a look at the pitiful cubicle the two cardboard cut-out detectives use, who complain about the small crowd scenes need to look at the way any other staff in the station only materialise when they need to get killed gruesomely, and at the aforementioned miniature shots hovering at just-above Robot level of sophistication, and the outrageously unconvincing stop-motion of the Terminator's tiresomely relentless 'exo-skeleton'. I guess all that money went into the one-and-a-half chase scenes and the exploding petrol tanker - money well spent? I'm not convinced when we have moustachioed dudes in bib and braces that look like they're from Super Mario Bros at best or a late 70s porno at worst.

Oh, and I forgot about that damned electric puppet-head of Arnie they use when he cuts his eye out. You though Zaphod's head in the Hitchhiker's TV series didn't look life-like? That was the fucking Beeb! What's these guy's excuse??? Especially seeing as this is a fucking effect you could have achieved much better with a little bit of prosthetics!

On the brightside, I understand so many parodies of brain-dead action movies - this was the type of thing they were talking about. Films completely unconcerned with any grasp on reality. On one of the few occassions were we see more than 2 extras in the police station there is media throng chasing the hero detective - bizarrely they are doing this in the heart of the offices, the type of area media would need a pass to do so and there are no policemen anywhere to even chaperone them. Thankfully, even though they have trespassed so far they are deterred at having a door closed in their collective faces and presumably hang around outside the door long enough for the D. to make a press conference right outside.

Similar oddity with Sarah's aforementioned retarded friend making a giant platter of sandwhiches for some sort of midnight post-coital banquet, she seems to carry to allow the plate to smash dramatically when her boyfriend is killed along with the walkman she uses to keep herself in complete ignorance of everything. Plus the usual minor details such as nobody remembering Schwarzenegger shooting up a bar, off-the-shelf Uzi submachine guns, and apparently unlimited ammunition in Rees' shotgun.

Plus a lethal cocktail of shithouse dialogue with some abhorrent acting from people I can only assume speak English as a 1.5th language. The policeman early on who is asked what the date is and responds "Tuesday. March. 26th." like a robot kept back in remedial class is an early highlight... this film becomes quite impossible to take seriously.

Ironically, the acting was probably the one saving grace in the three leads. Linda Hamilton just manages to turn a hackneyed damsel role with stilted dialogue into something halfway interesting and heroic, Michael Beihn is both vulnerable and strong and sympathetic as Rees and a strong counterpoint to the relentless killing machine, and Arnie is Arnie, which is just what the role requires. More films should have had him as an emotionless creature that stands around looking badass, as anything more truly stretches his capabilities.

Aside from that the film was mostly a comedy to me, with the final punchline being the kid from The Three Amigos showing up at the end, much to the bemusement of my fellow viewers who were not versed with that particular classic.

The film did make me put enough thought for how the hell Kyle Rees could possibly have not known for sure he wasn't John Connor's father, a twist that was hellza-easy to see coming...

REES: Man, it sure is lonely out here on Death Machine patrol. I'm glad John gave us all these hot photos of Sarah Connor.
SOLDIER 1: Say what?
REES: You know, those Sarah Connors pics he gave us... where's yours?
SOLDIER 2: Man, he didn't give us shit!
REES: Really?
SOLDIER 3: Yeah I didn't get no photo.
SOLDIER 4: Me niether.
REES: Wow.... am I the only guy?
SOLDIER 1: Looks that way.
REES: Isn't that fucking weird?
SOLDIER 3: It is weird.
SOLDIER 4: Pretty fucking weird...
(Pause)
REES: Am I meant to share the photo around, is that my job?
SOLDIER 3: So her tits are out in the photo?
REES: No... it's just she's a chick, you know. Why else would he give me a photo of her?

And so forth and so one.

After The Terminator had been shown the host declared that after seeing that film he HAD to put the second one on. I have to say, being an actually genuinely watchable film, Terminator 2 was quite dull for me to watch. I left before the end and didn't regard this as any sort of a big deal.

Green Zone VS America

2010-03-25T19:37:00.002+11:00

On Monday night I saw Green Zone. It is an absolutely brilliant film that I think anyone with a strong stomach should see.

Oh, the strong stomach thing isn't because it's gory, but because Paul "Digicam ft. Parkinson's Disease" Greengrass of The Bourne Supremacy fame is the director. Apparently a lot of people stumble of the cinema covered in their own vomit from trying to follow the action in his films, but luckily I don't have this affliction. Plus he's at least stopped wobbling the camera during close-ups in dialogue scenes...

Anyway, I don't know how well this film was been publicised seeing as I don't get commercial TV. It is a VERY tense thriller set a month after the invasion of Iraq in Baghdad following Agent Jason Bourne, er, I mean Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller as he searches for Weapons of Mass Destruction. [SPOILERS] He doesn't find them.

When he takes his superiors to task for the poor intelligence, he brings himself to the attention of a sinister CIA agent codenamed Mad Eye Moody who chats with Miller - he reveals he already knows the next target his team is 'hitting' in Al Mansour is bogus, and gives Miller his card. As in all good thrillers, this sets off a chain of events that ends with about 200 guys dead. I don't really want to reveal much more, other than the thriller storyline is unusually plausible thanks to the fact that half the characters in the film are modelled on real people in the Iraqi conflict and it ties in neatly with actual events.

What has been fascinating to me has been my innocent frequenting of the IMDb, the internet's own bubbling cauldron of hate. Guess what - it turns out that the Iraqi war is something of a contentious issue over there!

Also, it looks like a lot of people have kept this all repressed for years, as the release of this film has attracted a lot of vitriol - it is 'unAmerican', it is 'treacherous slander', it is 'propaganda', people who see this film 'should be ashamed of themselves'. The IMDb has actually collapsed into itself on this film to the point where it's a rare occurrence to see the film proper being discussed... let's have a look at the subject headings..

Did US use DU radiation weapons on afghanistan? Afghan censors say yes
The most right wing people on this board are not American
Judith Miller 2....one of her WMD sources was John Bolton
BIDEN SAYS 'IRAQ WAR IS OBAMA VICTORY!!!'
a british soldier speaks out on 'why are we in afghanistan'
George W Bush = hero of the 21st century
OT-Ryan Phillippe's brother...kidnapped?
Islam is the Light

And my personal favourite : 'Neocon' is a liberal code word for Jew so just come out and say it!

Okay, neocon = Jew, happy?

If I can highlight two particular threads, from opposite ends of the spectrum (and I CAN, alright, because this is my blog!) they would be one orbiting Jupiter courtesy of a 'fair and balanced' individual calling himself OriginalBigWhite - a name that is possibly slander to we of the Caucasian genus - and another that is sensible and, to me, strangely touching.

First unto madness!

This Post will Ruin Any Beliefs in 'Lying about WMDs' and Conspiracies..

This is very simple and yet it will crumple all ideas about 'lying governments' and in reality as well as making the plot of Green Zone now suddenly seem ridiculous.
Ready?

IF the US and/or UK governments were creating 'lies' about WMD's (and so many believe they did) and were creating a big 'cover-story' all to get oil then ask yourself this:

The EASIEST part of this entire scam would be to simply plant a handful of nuclear parts, a few jars of chemical weapons and a few long-range missiles in a bunker.
EASY!
Within 20 minutes a White House Spokesman announces they absolutely found WMDs and as here are the pictures and even a couple of papers showing some plans.

Hell, a few photos of triumphant Generals holding up the seized WMDs would look amazing!
EASY!
The easiest damn part of this for any liars, schemers and conspiring governments would be planting a couple WMDs in an Iraq bunker and even the French would be apologizing!
The US population would be touting Bush Jr as a genius who saved the world and Republicans would run the USA to this day.

Do you realize how stupid it sounds to believe that years of planning and some of the most complex 'lies' were hatched,
yet,
the same people did NOT pull off the easiest little lie and scheme to wrap this all up in their favour?
Very dumb.
in fact - now that you think of this - the entire plot of Green Zone and real-life accusations of 'lying' become so ridiculous you won't be able to take it seriously again.

Oh and yes.. you're welcome.

What on Earth could I have to say in response to this awe-inspiring theory from left field that looks so wrong, but feels so right? Well, I did point out the obvious flaws concerning slight difficulties in moving truckloads of biochemical weaponry and hiding them in currently-occupied sites of the enemy in the middle of a highly-volatile warzone WITHOUT the world's media or your own vast surveillance network noticing and then further complications with the fact that any inspectors would be able to determine the weaponry was actually manufactured in your own country, the destroyer captain who may remember the cargo of two hundred nerve-gas warheads he was carrying before rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and the sheer NUMBER of people you'd need to be involved into this conspiracy. The response was as wonderfully balanced as you would expect..

If you believe a whole series of agents, Bush, Blair and what would require at least dozens of top-level official created a plan to 'lie about WMDS' and this included all kinds of 'evidence',
then,
Why in the world would you suddenly become incredulous about a couple of top-level CIA guys planting WMD's in Iraq?
That would be the LEAST difficult thing to do compared to all these other complex international lies.

Heck.. just ONE single CIA agent could carry some fake 'Nuclear plans' and a handful of nuclear bomb parts and leave those in a desk to be found and in 20 minutes US media would be blasting the news "SADDAM NUKES STOPPED!!!"

The idea of Saddam making his own miniature nuclear device at his desk like a boy with model aeroplanes really does appeal, and earns him my coveted-but-actually-non-existent NUTJOB OF THE WEEK TROPHY.

And the other thread...

Most realistic war movie I have seen

OP: Now I am not saying I believe the story and this isn't a post for that crap. All I am saying is that the wartime scenes themselves and the way everyone talked to each other was flawless. They really did their research. That is exactly how it was in Iraq in 2003. They got it perfectly. The briefings, the raids, the way the sodliers talked, that was as real as it gets. This was maybe the most realistic war movie I have seen.

ANOTHER GUY: I know words are inadequate, but I want to thank you for your post, OP, and much more importantly for your service. I hope that you came back well and whole and wish you all the best.

It might interest you to know that all the guys in Matt Damon's team except one were soldiers back from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Several were expecting to be redeployed. He said he leaned on them constantly for accuracy. He said it would have taken weeks to train and rehearse actors how to 'hit the house' in that scene. With the professional soldiers there, they just talked it through and did it.

COMPLETE PRICK: service? in Iraq? How did that serve anynone other than ther neocons and israel?

OP: You are a moron. It is not about political views or religious views, it is about doing something in life. I chose to serve my country. We may not live in a perfect world, but it is our world none-the-less. Many of my fellow troops don't agree with the war, agree with the war, hate Bush, Love Bush, Hate Obama, Love Obama, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we chose to fight for our country. I was in before 09/11. I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to do something and not just sit at home and complain about things. I do what is asked of me in service to the people of the greatest country on Earth. I do what I do so some douchebag like yourself can sit behind his computer and rant on and on about nothing. Laugh and take some made up higher ground. It doesn't matter to me. I am proud of the services I have done. My wife and children look up to me and that is all that matters. To them I am a hero and that is all I ever wanted to be to my family was a man that they can be proud of.

I do love an eloquent smackdown, and it hihglighted for me the aspect that gets lost - the soliders are people who suffer from disasters like this, and can become pariahs thanks to dirty politics thanks to the way they are used as tools for dirty work. The army may function like a machine, but that doesn't make a soldier any less human, and it is something those of us in the we-hate-everything corner of the left which I fairly often occupy really should not forget.

DDD Karibbean Kibosh Kraziness! (OR Jared Rants about Pirates)

2010-03-22T13:17:00.001+11:00

NineMSN has published a fairly bizarre story about the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, specifically that actresses who have artificially augmented mammaries will not be allowed to apply for parts. The reason for this is they have plenty already. No, sorry, I just couldn't help myself...

The explanation isn't actually forthcoming. At least not a coherent one...

A former casting agent was quoted as saying: "In the last movie there were enhanced breasts to give that 18th-century whoreish look and men were pretty well padded to and no one worried."

I'm trying to remember the 18th-century whores in the previous movie, and really failing. I remember a few whores in Tortuga, but when that island was featured in the last film it was in some retarded scene where Lord Cutler Beckett was executing everybody until they started singing, which made me heckle the screen with a cry of "Get a frigging iPod!". Apparently the idea was that once the chant started then the 'call' would go out to convene the Pirate meeting.

Ignoring the fact that

a) They had already decided to gather the Pirate Lords
b) If the Pirate Lords had not gathered then Beckett wouldn't have been defeated - what a frigging retard.

Meanwhile I'm also trying to remember obviously-padded up shots of Wil Turner and Jack Sparrow's tights. I am again failing.

The 'former casting agent' I'm presuming NineMSN found in the gutter and are just play-acting knows anything about this project at all goes on to say...

"But times are changing and the audience can spot false breasts."

Oh, yes. Remember those heady, naive days of 2007...

"My word, grandfather!" we would gasp breathlessly "Look at the teets on Madame Knightley! If my baby sister, Bernadette-Louise, is to miraculously survive her shingles and polio, and eats all her porridge and bread crusts and earns enough silver pennies from work I shall give her on the icebox coach shall she grow up with such a chest of wonder?"

"No, no, young Jimbuck!" thundered grandfather in response "Not for our Ben-Lass is such ways of the decky-dance o' yon flibbertigibbet! Young Kiera, when I had watched her, o'er t'wireless, when ye was jes' a sprog in bow-legged britches what your great unlce had took off of that German in t'Great War, in her one woman play Bend it Like Beckham, why she were flatter than FDR at the bottom of a stairwell. Thought she'd only make it as a T-square, so I did."

"No! That's not possible!" I cried, mimicking my favourite moment from the family novel, Star Wars Episode V: Ye Empire Striketh Back which all seventeed of us shared around the humble lice-pit we called home.

"Hehe, Skywalker," Grandfather said "But true enough it be, ya snivellous poltroon! Doctors - like Mister Waldicott our Phrenologist/Barber/Surgeon/Veterinerean what who lives on the hulks - injected her breasts with silicone and other magical properties and they bloomed like the most wondrous flowers ever to be seen!"

Naturally I thought it was impossible, but I have read things since to persuade me that perhaps this strange fairy story... was TRUE!

All bizarre segues tangets aside, seriously, has the fake breast spotting ability grown on average? If anything, I would assume it has deteriorated given the omnipresence of artificial.. well, not even tits but EVERYTHING! I know I can't pick fake breasts. Then, that could be because I'm like Fox Mulder. I want to believe.

Now, since NineMSN brought this up I want to take the oppurtunity to rant about how much PotC 3 sucked as anything other than a gigantic auto-falltiotic whirlpool of special effects. Every character was basically derailed:

Keira became a double-talking bitch and fascinatingly seems to be pissed off for the entirety of the film going by the fact there's basically no scene where she isn't frowning, Jack is given more than enough rope to hang himself as he is now gone insane and spends most of the film talking to himself, Governor Swan takes FUCKING FOREVER to be killed off and it happens on screen, Davy Jones becomes the pathetic bitch of a pasty WASP loser, pasty WASP loser is now meant to be the big bad that we're supposed to be afraid of, comically insensitive racial stereotypes chew up precious screentime for no fucking reason, that dude from the Rolling Stones who ironically needs no makeup to look like a pirate is given SO MUCH make up he's completely unrecognisable, and Will Turner still sucks.

Ironically meant to be a minor bad guy but the favourite character of a lot of people Commodore Norrington is treated like the writers have been waiting years to write him out which beggars the question of why the fuck they brought him back in the second film. He continues his weird habit of changing character utterly at some point after the credits have rolled for each film End of film one and he has a newfound respect for pirates and Jack, and seems secure as chief of the navy. BUT, apparently he was sacked by Swann, has a burning hatred for Jack and, even though it would be entirely out of character, moved to Tortuga of all places and became a self-loathing drunk and get a chance of killing Jack. I see. After the second film ends with him selling out Jack and apparently killing him and allying himself to Beckett to wipe out pirates as a privateer. (which means he isn't under Beckett's orders) the next film shows him as an Admiral, second in command to Beckett, and with suck hatred of the plan he seems to be looking for the first oppurtunity to defect. WHAT????

It is also the worst final part of a trilogy ever. See, a trilogy roughly works like this

Part 1: Orientation

Part 2: Complication

Part 3: Resolution

Pirates of the Caribbean works like this

Part 1: Orientation-Complication-Resolution

Part 2: More Complication

Part 3: Unrelated Complications

When I watched Part 2 with it's excruciating detailing of the deals Jack made to get the Pearl back from Davy Jones I assumed I had to have forgotten a couple of lines from the first film. Then complete astonishment when I re-watched the first one - there was clearly no thought of a sequel so the beginner's precaution of a setup wasn't taken care of. Even Bootstrap Bill, who became a reeeeally fucking tiresome character integral to the next two parts and a cornerstone of the trilogy, is explicitly and emphatically stated as being fucking dead. Not missing. Not taken. Dead. I'm too tired to copy and paste the Monty Python quotes right now but you get the idea.

But, fair enough, Part 2 set up a lot. Davy Jones as the big bad, Kraken as the big menace, Beckett and Norrington are peripherary threats guarding the heart, the annoying Voodoo Chick a character who hopefully won't be in it much more. It was all waiting for a big finale...

Hang on, next film starts - we're in fucking China? Who is the guy? Pirate Lords? What the fuck? Barbossa's a pirate lord? Huh? The Kraken's dead? The Flying Dutchman's been taken over? Why aren't we rescuing Jack yet? The fucking Goddess of the Sea? So on and so on. The third film doesn't resolve the second - it introduces a heap of stuff that adds NOTHING to ANYTHING. The Goddess Calypso subplot is terribly boring and the pay off? Random voodoo lady turns into a gigantic wave of crabs. And possibly creates a whirlpool. And, wow, thank God we had all the Pirate Lords and their ships so they could sit back and watch two ships fight for half an hour.

Who the FUCK wrote that shit? Oh, wait, I have IMDB open...

Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio. Well. You guys suck and apparently do not have the power of logic in any quantity.

I bring this up because the article goes on to say...

Scenes in the new film, which is reportedly being planned as the first in another trilogy, will be shot in Hawaii.

ANOTHER trilogy? Hope you've read some books on the subjects, lads, and so know how a fucking trilogy is meant to work.

The one good thing is the dropping of Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush to just focus on Jack Sparrow. Pity it's three films too late. Heh, I'm talking like I'm actually going to see this flat-chested festival of a film...

The Summer of Malcontents, or Cricket in a Warm Climate

2010-03-11T19:24:00.003+11:00

Though I speak for myself, I thought this cricket season was quite entertaining.

Perhaps I should explain that cricket is my favourite sport, not just for the drama but also because it is the only sport you can actually watch and enjoy whilst asleep, so long as you have the radio on. In between near-asphyxiated guffaws from Kerry O'Keefe and the insane senile ramblings of Justin Langer about his fishing trips and what they told him about the meaning of mateship, the narrative is clear to follow courtesy of the golden-tonsilled past leviathans of the game.

Unless you have Gerard Whately commentating. I listened to him for around 15 minutes and marvelled that unless he has facts to present to the audience he has nothing at all to say. No conjecture whatsoever. Glenn Mitchell might say, for instance "Michael Clarke's looking like a deer in the headlights", or "Mitchell Johnson's got steam coming out of his ears!" or "That one turned like a bent ballerina on the sauce!". Whereas Mr Whately will hit you with pears such as "He's moving back in his crease.... waiting for the next delivery... Rana starts his run up... over the wicket... defended back to the bowler. No run. He looks to the site screen." It's the perfect coverage if you wanted to roleplay watching sport with fucking Rainman.

If there was one thing worth complaining about this Summer it was the debut of that big-nosed AFL-obsessed prat of the bright purple shirts who makes Offsiders one of the worst shows on television, no matter what the marvellously named Gideon Haigh might try to do in response. Luckily, for Mr G he got off because there was a lot of what was considered bullshit this Summer.

This culminated to the point where I discovered Zoo Magazine, in their one article sandwiched between the saddest not-even-soft porn I have ever entertained of ex Big Brother contestants and models they get to pretend to be 'real girls' stripping on the street, offered all the solutions to the 'problems' of cricket. Oddly, they listed "BRING BACK ROY!!!" twice, and the rest were all about more chicks with bikinis, both on field and off. Fair enough, they've already established that that is where their key interest on a purely social level lies but, fair go, if the dental floss bikini meat market is open-air at the SCG aren't they undermining their own market? Why pick up a zoo when I can get it for free?

They also insisted that the cricketers need to get themselves hotter Wives And Girlfriends, something I thought wouldn't really be possible, specifically stating that they were sick of looking at Lara Bingle (because, in this country at least, it IS compulsory after all...) Funnily enough Michael Clarke seems to have acted directly upon this complaint..

Anyway... sorry that was a tangent. Back to what was seen as bullshit...

1) The competition

The West Indies and Pakistan are well down on the figures of cricketing sides in the world and retrospectively, now that Australia has played just it's second loss-less home season since real seasons began, people are saying that there really WAS no competition and the test matches were dead boring, a further argument for the superiority of the limited overs game.

The irony being that, oddly enough, the Test Matches were the only games we looked like losing, and it was the very limited overs matches they have been championing that were bloody boring. I actually didn't watch one! (GASP) One of the Windies ones. God they were shit. The thing that made this even more amazing was that those countries had BETTER ODI/T20 rankings.

In fact, I'm going to flat out say it - we should have lost two test matches. By freak circumstances, both Windies and Pakistan let us win at crucial times? Why? I don't know, but they didn't get much out of it. It would be like if at the end of Zulu when the armies give Michael Caine and Stanley Baker the massive victory salute and show them mercy, the redcoats ran out and massacred them all. That kind of shit don't fly in sport, fools!

Because of this, I'll go so far as to say my now-laughable prediction that "Australia will get rolled by Pakistan" would have come true if Mohammad Yousuf had not fucked around and actually bowled Hussey and Siddle out.

2) Nothing happening in the matches

Again, this is retrospective bullshit. Chris Gayle hit one of the fastest centuries ever. Brendan Nash nearly became the first Aussie to hit a ton on his home ground for another country. Nash also had some hot groupies in "TEAM NASH" singlets providing some eye-candy - we need more sporting harems. Ryan Harris and Nathan Hauritz got two 5-fers a piece. Watson made his debut ton. North proved he's a useless prick. Eventful? What more do you need to be eventful? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon getting an amphibious landing craft flavoured blowjob from HENRY KISSINGER???!?

I was so emotional I had a stalk on. Sorry, now I'm just quoting funnier people.

3) Nathan Hauritz

Oy! Leave Nathan Hauritz alone, okay? He has established he's god like. When I die, I want to be re-incarnated as him and then punch out Wayne Gretzky and tell that uppity Canute that he has met his match, and if he has a problem with that he go meet me at Reichenbach Falls for a showdown. Or, Niagara Falls for a hoedown. I'm not fussy.

How about, what was actually bullshit...

1) Channel Nine

This one's quite a constant, but I think special mention needs to be made of their Winter Olympics coverage. What do the Winter Olympics have to do with cricket, Jared, you ask me curiously? Like a writing desk and a raven, absolutely nothing at all. But.. try telling that to Channel Nine.

It came as no surprise to read many, many complains about the contemptuous treatment of the Winter Olympics throughout Nine's telecast, as they had made this clear through their very first promotion. Richie Benaud and Bill Lawry in snow gear commentating. Tony Grieg with an ice hammer 'checking the pitch' in disgustingly pisspoor green screen. Mark Taylor bowling a snowball to Michael Slater, who smashes it into nothing with his bat. The revelation that this was some of the commentary team for Vancouver was entirely absurd, but not entirely surprising.

2) Channel Seven

Right, so you're the CEO of a network and you're going to boast to an interviewer that "Yeah, fuck you I can make Matty Jones' show work, rapist or not! Check out Cougar Town, rape me with a bar stool isn't that the shittest show you ever seen? But you bastards watch it by the bucketload. Why? Because I throw money at some pricks in suits and say 'market that bullshit'. Now, Matty's show is shit. But you'll watch it anyway!" Slightly paraphrased, in fact I'll wager quite a bit less paraphrased than you think.

What does THIS have to do with the cricket? Absolutely nothing. At all. I just felt I had to point out seven are also pricks after bagging out Nine. Stick with Ten and ABC, and maybe Channel Zero if you want porn or cartoons with swearing.

3) John Howard

In four years John Howard will be President of the International Cricket Council. His only qualification is that he is a 'lifelong supporter of the game', a qualification also held by around eight million people in the country who AREN'T jackasses. He was chosen over a New Zealander who had two decades of administrative experience for Cricket New Zealand.

I don't think anymore needs to be said, except that the tiniest silver lining ever is the glorious repeats of Howard's attempts to take on some Indian soldiers at the game.

Up yours, Sudoku 1494!

2010-03-04T18:31:00.005+11:00

This morning I finished a Sudoku.

I know, this really should not be a big deal. But for me, this is a Crowning Moment of Awesome. That may well reflect just how pitifully low the bar has sunk, but so be it.

When the Sudoku was introduced, around the same time that I was doing my HSC, I was briefly Tha Man in a highly specialised field that barely anybody would even bother to acknowledge and those who did wouldn't care about: finding out which number went in which box via thorough process of elimination. This was especially impressive since my parents were quite baffled by the Sudoku and more so by my affinity for them. It lead them to briefly consider me some sort of household Adric, even though I was repeatedly explaining that the exercise didn't involve Maths in any way. At all.

It made me brighten up a bit in the morning - because the Target is always a real challenge even for my vocabulary and the crossword is not only either too hard or too easy, but is the traditional territorial issue in my household. And Christ did my mornings need brightening up, because HSC year was a bad, baaaad year for me. The year I sunk into depression and my mind wandered off to the point where I was on the streets laughing hysterically for 15 minutes unable to stop myself, which I am sure was a breakdown. What made me laugh for 15 minutes? The hairdressers was shut.

Actually, that happened on Graduation Day as well... for a longer time.

It's at this point I pause to wonder about cause and effect - was it my breakdowns and long-running depression that caused me to lose my Sudomojo, or was my ability to complete a 'Diabolical' offering courtesy of the Syndey Morning Herald in around 10 minutes actually a sympton of my brain cracking under the pressure like an egg? And thus, am I back on the mudslide to The Pit without even realising?

It's interesting, because around that stage I was fairly prolific with my prose writing. I remember I wrote the prologue to a PDA I had proposed entirely in my mind called "Monsters of Europa" on the 'working out paper' after I finished my HSC English paper. When I showed it to a friend immediately afterwards he stared at it in bewilderment before asking "Have you ever thought of making money from this shit?"

Indeed I had, my friend. And got that warm glow you get when somebody confirms "I couldn't do this", ie. you do actually have a talent and simply haven't been fooling yourself for years. Moments like that, scattered months apart, I feel are the reason my soul survives.

I also wrote a fair bit of a GOD AWFUL novel entitled Robots of Love, because the favoured title Zombie Love was already taken. In a half-hearted defense, it could make a decent film or maybe comic book at a stretch, because those media seem more sensible homes for the odd shopping list of elements I was working with:

a) A love story
b) Robots who try to take over the world (at least, I think that was the idea..)
c) Two dudes who are clearly me homaging Jay and Silent Bob, swearing like sailors, who bury robots in graveyards for some reason
d) A Holmesian double-act of FBI agents named Abbott and Costello
e) An incredibly hostile and short tempered psychiatrist
f) An apparently immortal Nazi scientist who is training super-intelligent mice

Trust me, it sounds better than it was. Even if you think it sounds crap. I probably should have finished it, though, because it was just a pitch for some dude selling eBooks off a website from first-time authors. The alternative was Time Paradox with Extra Salt, an idea I worked on a little at the time which was been in my head for waaaay too long and wasn't that great in the first place.

It would be good if there was some link between Sudoku-mastery and the ability to build up a word count, because I haven't written a single word for that Big Finish entry and I do want to enter. Could sure do with some of profligactic literary prolificacy of old, as Colin would have to say when the Bakers gave him a script.

My concept of 'Peri and the Doctor are trapped on a weird-arse alien train' is becoming less convincing, and while I've been typing this my mind has wandered to 'Peri and the Doctor are trapped on weird-arse alien Fox News', showing my incredible scope once more.

Watch this space. Watch it until your eyes bleed. Trying to magic-eye it.

There's no reason, I was just wondering if you'd try it.

Now, can I conquer MORE sudoku? And, more to the point, can I achieve something this year? Results may come via this blogspace. So I guess there IS a reason to watch this space... kind of. Not really. I mean, only if you're interested in me. And blogger actually has an app so you can look at which blogs have updated from your profile. So... yeah, I was right there's no reason to do it.

Man, I go downhill so quick they should call me the Slalom.

Anyway, Peri and the Doctor on an alien train. If BF don't like it, it might be on this blog!

Must... post... on blog

2010-03-02T16:01:00.004+11:00

So... what's on my mind? Indira Varman, the woman who played Susie Costello in Torchwood, managing to only appear in the crap episodes. Susie got kind of mentioned on Facebook and it took me a long time to remember who it was. I also remembered that Indira Varman was on the cast of Broken News, which in spite of most reviews I thought was significantly better than most UK sketch shows now of keeping one joke going for an interminable amount of episodes. I believe she played Melanie Bellamy, who presenting the 'standing' news in which she endlessly walked up and down a ramp containing two small sets of stairs at one end of the studio, reciting odd headlines.

No, it wasn't terribly funny.

But what's the competition? Armstrong and Miller? I found it incredible that reviewers focused on the WWII pilots who talked like fifteen year old boys as the joke wearing thin. Really? THAT was the clever one! What about the coach and owner of a never-named football league that's clearly meant to be Chelsea, where the coach is trying endlessly to bring to the owners attention issues with the players but the sinister Russian is continually disposing of bodies in a rather blatant manner? Or the bit where it's a country dance from a Jane Austen story where they end up saying something like "I would dearly like to roger your buttocks" after a minute of dancing? That may have nearly been funny the first time, if that...

I was quite sickened by the defense I read online, that the 'expectation is on comedians to write', so they can't come up with 6 episodes of material. WHY THE FUCK NOT? Is it rocket science to type 'mad woman vomits on Kerr Avon'? Or 'Simon Pegg plays a smug man who is unable to open doors'? Okay, I guess rehearsals and other commitments may occupy them, but come on, is it asking the moon? Dudley Moore and Peter Cook wrote their own material. How many hundreds of Goon Shows did Spike Milligan write AND perform?

I do seem to have to look back that far, unfortunately. I was trying to think of modern examples, such as The Chaser, but there's at least one writer who has just about never been on the show (Dominic Knight, incidentally the member of the Chaser most likely to punch me out when we met - but then the others were Julian and Chas) and Smith & Jones doubtless had additional writers, so too have Flight of the Conchords and Rick Dee, the Lead Balloon guy. How irritating. Even The Comic Strip Presents had the cameo-only writer Pete Richens.

Damn it, I have a sinking feeling that prick on the forums had a point, even though I think comedians may be lazy. If nothing else I can take solace from the fact that one Martin Lock lost his job in this field. (AIR PUNCH!)

What the FUCK? Just read Angelina Jolie opted out of Wanted 2. Maybe because her character is dead, perhaps? Also... that movie did well enough to warrant a sequel? I mean, I loved it as I think I espoused here but... well, nobody else seemed to and more than one person speculated it could 'ruin Morgan Freeman's career'. Which, I have to say, felt slightly outlandish.

...and John Cleese, his daughter Camilla, and Bill Bailley are writing a musical version of A Fish Called Wanda? Man, all my obscure movie news is coming at once for some reason...

In other not-quite-news, a while back I've taken to listening to the podcast of cult director Kevin Smith, known best as Silent Bob, and his producer best friend Scott Mosier - it's SMODcast. They are very, very funny but also often disgustingly dirty. I only recommend them to a couple of people, and generally just listen to them on my own. They aren't all solid-platinum releases or anything, though - all are quite funny but there are entire episodes where they talk about Wayne Gretzky or how beef is processed for an hour. Kev Smith does them stoned, that could be a factor.

Anyway, comin in late as I have has been a bit awkward, because I listened to the new ones then went backwards downloading past releases - this means travelling backwards, chronologically, through the life of Kev Smith, which is a little weird in general but becomes terrible when it comes to details of Zak and Miri Make a Porno his latest film which was a box office disaster. Actually.. not quite. It was actually his highest-grossing film, nobody lost any money from it and DVD sales will doubtless turn it into a profit. BUT it was predicted as having a massive opening and brining in over 60 million.

Faced with the massive disparity between what everybody had told Smith would happen and what actually occured, he suffered a Heroic Blue Screen of Death, and retreated into what he called a 'weed coccoon'. Interestingly, this is actually what made me interested in SMODcast in the first place, as I looked up Kevin Smith on Wikipedia and it detailed his ZMMAP-related breakdown... but nothing about him recovering. So I wanted to find out if he actually still had a career.

He did, and it transpired was working on a film named A Couple of Dicks, since cunningly retitled Cop-Out when it became clear the censors like their entendres singular or not-at-all, and exceedingly happy with it over the course of several SMODcasts...

Then I see, on the day I started writing this post... that Cop-Out has done just as badly as Zak and Miri Make a Porno. Damn.

You know what they say, always end on a down note.

Talking to yourself: Intelligent conversation not guaranteed

2010-02-23T12:30:00.000+11:00

When watching the news last night

JARED: Hey, who's that actress in the photo? Looks kinda like Rachel Weisz or Liz Hurley. They're hot. Surely I'd have noticed if they were in anything recently?

HIGH AND MIGHTY JARED: ...that's Kathryn Bigelow.

JARED: Oh. Right.... so what's she been in?

HAMRED: She hasn't been in anything.

JARED: What? So why's there a photo of her with 'BAFTAs' written next to it?

HAMRED: Because she won a BAFTA!

JARED: ...but you said she isn't in anything!

HAMRED: No! - because she's a director, you fucking idiot! She did The Hurt Locker.

JARED: Ohhhh. Right. I think it says a bit about the movie industry that it didn't occur to me that a woman could win Best Director.

HAMRED: Really? Or does it say a bit about you?

JARED: What's that meant to mean?

HAMRED: I think maybe you overlook women directors entirely.

JARED: What? You crazy, motherfucker!

HAMRED: Okay, then. Name some.

JARED: Erm.... erm..... erm.... Fiona Cumming.

HAMRED: She's a TV director.

JARED: She's still a director.

HAMRED: From Doctor Who twenty years ago. That really doesn't count.

JARED: You didn't stipulate anything like this!

HAMRED: I didn't think that I'd have to. Come on, man, you only remember her name because it sounds a little dirty.

JARED: Hey, but she did Enlightenment and Planet of Fire. Those stories were pinata!

HAMRED: Okay, no more messing around, a female FILM director.

JARED: Okay... erm.... erm.... ermmm.... the chick who's done It's Complicated and I think may have done About Schmidt as well.

HAMRED: The chick?

JARED: The lady! The lady!

HAMRED: You don't even know her name or if she did that second film.

JARED: Yeah, well.... erm... there was the.. woman.. who did The Oyster Farmer. That's two I don't know the names of. Surely that would add up to one I DO know the name of?

HAMRED: Sigh, you're setting the bar very low...

JARED: Okay what about.. Kathryn Bigelow.

HAMRED: That's the one I brought up a few minutes ago.

JARED: Okay... Alice Bell!

HAMRED: She wrote Suburban Mayhem.

JARED: Yeah...

HAMRED: You expect me to be impressed at the mere fact you are able to remember a female's name in general?

JARED: Well... you put it like that you make me sound like a prick. Surely Meryl Streep has directed something?

HAMRED: You know her as an actress!

JARED: Christ! This sucks. How many people can name a heap of directors, anyway? Huh?

HAMRED: How many can you name?

JARED: Just a couple. Steven Spielberg. Martin Scorses. Francis Ford Coppola. The obvious ones, you know. Like...Peter Weir, Kevin Smith, William Friedkin, James Cameron, Woody Allen, Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, Ron Howard, Raoul Peck, Paul Goldman, Clint Eastwood, Spike Jonze, Guy Ritchie, Andy and Larry Wachowski, Michael Moore, Peter Jackson, Paul Greengrass, Ridley Scott, Michael Winner, Richard Curtis, Luc Besson, Bryan Singer, Harold Ramis, Spike Lee, David Murramai, Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Ivan Reitman, John Landis, Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Franco Zefferelli, Tim Burton, Kenneth Brannagh, Mark Joffe, Gore Verbinski.

HAMRED: You see my point?

JARED: I should have a couple of others. Oh! Sophia Coppola!

HAMRED: NOOOO! YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME! Although you only know her because she's the daughter of one of the dudes you just mentioned.

JARED: True.

HAMRED: And she stuck in your mind because she's hot.

JARED: Also fairly true.

HAMRED: I bet you can't name any films she's done.

JARED: I can too,

HAMRED: Oh, go on then! Give us a go if you think you're hard enough.

JARED: Marie Antoinette!

HAMRED: NOOOOOO! YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME ARGAHGHAGHGAHGAH... hang on, can you name any others at all?

JARED: .... maybe.

HAMRED: Go on.

JARED: ... Lick the Stars.

HAMRED: What the fuck is that?

JARED: It's... erm... a film about The Moon from The Mighty Boosh and his habit of.. licking stars on the back somehow without burning his tongue or being noticed by said stars.

HAMRED: .. that does not sound likely.

JARED: Yeah. But she did Lost in Translation as well.

HAMRED: Hang on, you're on her Wiki page, aren't you?

JARED: ...no?

HAMRED: Oh, I don't believe this. Look, her name's Sofia Coppola! AND she was an actress before becoming a director!

JARED: Yeah, well, I got Marie Antoinette off my own back. I did fairly well considering. Also, you're a real jerk.

HAMRED: Yeah, I know.

This blog post dedicated to the many female filmmakers I have never heard of before:

Alice Guy-Blaché
Lois Weber
Dorothy Arzner
Germaine Dulac
Maya Deren
Barbara Loden
Birgit Hein
Catherine Breillat
Barbara Hammer
Julie Dash
Tracey Edmonds
Dianne Houston
Nnegest Likké
Safi Faye

And others, of course.

When the robots take over [Sneak preview]

2010-02-17T18:44:00.003+11:00

If I had a blog maintained purely by spambots, it would look a lot like this. All my Facebook status comments over the last couple of months? Why? No particular reason. Well, it pads out the entries. Makes me feel a little less guilt for letting this blog rot and spread its gangrene over the web.

With added informative notes to salve my conscience over Ctrl+C blogging.

Ahaha, I now have Ashes Cricket 2009 working. BUt for some reason I am unable to avoid batting like a complete twat. Part of my brain is telling me the key is to run crazily as soon as the ball is not touching your bat and it won't shut up.

(N/B: I did score a fairly impressive 202 in a Twenty20 match. And made 120-odd in the first 10 overs of another - but in the first case this was after running out the entire top order, and the second case I then managed to lose 5 wickets in the space of an over to Kevin Pietersen's off-spin. Please note, that is very, very bad. Also, there'll probably be a cricket post soon. Soz)

*

She's so hot. She's so flippin' hot. She's like a CURRY! I want to tell her how hot she is but she'll think that I'm sexist. She's so hot she's MAKING me sexist. Bitch! I think I need a 1983 Casio DG20 Electric guitar... set to electric mandolin.. some drums -yeah.

Ha! Weren't expecting me to do that thing where people mindlessly quote TV shows into their status, were you? FOIL'D!

(N/B: Flight of the Conchords, episode 2)

*

Currently re-reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Forgot all the bits that people DON'T quote all the time, which are awesome. Best book ever to not have a plot, hands down.

(N/B I've been effectively making notes while reading it as to errors made by outspoken critics of the film version as to its un-Douglasadamishness, but was most surprised to see the strength of their case on Zaphod. In the book he is a dude who has taken obfuscating stupidity to an artform, to the point he isn't certain if he's a genius, an idiot or a madman, rather than the films Peter Griffin's brain in a hippy's body)

*

Got some musical whiplash thanks to the random function. Straight from Rage Against the Machine's "Calm Like a Bomb" to John Butler Trio's "Better Than". I recommend it to anybody.

(N/B What makes this awesome is the fact that Calm Like a Bomb is one of those songs that wraps up really abrupty, and likewise Better Than starts quickly. There's no pause. It sounds like Rage might have put the riff in the song as a joke.)

*

Also, only just realised that considering 50% of people on Facebook shove their girlfriend in front of the camera to take their profile pic, using an old highschool photo of me with my arm round a mate actually makes me look gayer than usual.

(N/B I have no idea why this did NOT occur to me)

*

I never even knew the date of Valentine's Day before getting Facebook. I let you draw your own conclusions from that.

(N/B I was playing the sympathy card. No takers. Sorry, I'm doing it again, aren't I?)

*

Not getting Channel Nine at the moment so can't watch the NRL Eugenics Smackdown.

(N/B The recent "Indigenous All Stars VS NRL All Stars" game, criticised widely for being the most racist thing since Pakistanis were banned from buying the Mein Kampf audio book read by Kyle Sandilands. Whitely lost, incidentally.)

*

Ah, Summer lawn mowing. Went for an hour in the full sun. When I was done my shirt was unwearable due to the sweat. Plus my boxers. Again due to sweat. I don't jizz when mutilating grass. Well, not all the time, anyway.

(N/B In actual fact I have never done so. It was a deliberately absurd statement to amuse others with no basis in reality. )

*

Can't get a Lily Allen song out of my head. No, wait.. there's two of them.

(N/B And I don't even know what one of them's called! They're gone now)

*

Ever seen a dude with DTs trying to move cattle lose concentration when he hallucinates being attacked by a swarm of bees? It's a scene, man.

(N/B Can't remember if I mentioned this on this blog. Sadly there isn't much more to the story)

*

Lol, I just realised who the dude named 'Rickie Pearce' is who wants to add me - one of many people who received threatening emails from me due to my zero-tolerance policy on chain emails. NB: the extensive filter system in Gmail allows you send hateful emails from you to other undeserving people, and thus create an en...dless circle-jerk of bile and fury. It was my favourite game for a while.

(N/B Hey this one already had a note in it! Guess this is redundant..)

*

Why isn't there a 'dislike' button? Is it because they know people like me would use it on EVERYTHING?

*

Just submitted my first pitch/script. Sadly this group will only send feedback to the sucessful writer so I'll have to wait a bit longer for my first rejection letter.

*

Last night I dream that the characters in Friends were all just aliens PRETENDING to be human. Somehow it made the show cool for the 8 hours I slept.

(N/B I have no recollection of this dream. I have been dreaming a lot of weird stuff)

*

Tallied it up and I've written around 6000 lines of code for the game I'm working on atm. Guess now I have to finish it.

(N/B That number will have gone up significantly - the solitary room I'm working on right now that I wasn't at that tage has over 1000 lines of code on its own, and it isn't quite finished.)

*

It was agreed last night that the most surefire way to destroy Stargate: Universe would be to reveal Dr Rush has the power to manipulate physical matter via freestyle rap.

(N/B And that's how the gets the spaceship open, see? I'm open to other suggestions for either his escape or destroying the entire show, though...)

Jared reviews the REST of "End of Time"

2010-02-10T12:36:00.000+11:00

Now here is a rare thing - a story that defies review. (Yes, that's why it's taken me so long) For five minutes or so I tried the old 'write comments in wordpad' trick, but there are some stories where that just doesn't work and this definitely was one of them. Far, far too much going on. I guess the first thing to look at is whether this story has done what it was meant to do.

Firstly, has it broken the completely untenable and banal new tradition of endlessly trumping last years finale? Not a straight-forward answer, really, as the previous finale was about a plan to destroy the Universe by Davros and this one was about a plan to destroy the Universe by Rassilon. Kind of just two sides of the same coin.

Seeing as you cannot go bigger than trying to destroy the Universe by definition, let's break it down further. One has a REAL regeneration as opposed to a really crappy fake one and the first return of the Time Lords versus the 600th return of the Daleks, and a roughly equal amount of returning cast and characters in each.

(Okay... let's see.. Jack, Rose, Martha, Francine, Wilf, Sylvia, Sarah-Jane, Harriet Jones, Mickey, Jacqui, K9 versus Jack, Rose, Martha, Wilf, Sylvia, Sarah-Jane, Mickey, Jacqui, Matron, Donna, Ood Sigma, The Master, Rassilon and Alonso. No sign of the terminally underrated Mr , nor Adam the eco-warrior who wears a lot of hats. Oh, and not even a glimpse of The Bitch on the Bus, I just realised! By my count End of Ten wins out on that front, though no doubt there's plenty of quibble room to debate even counting Rassilon seeing as he never regularly appeared on the show and that Gwen, Ianto and Luke Smith weren't on my list)

Ultimately I'd say this story puts extra pressure on Moffat if anything. Sure, it could be the awareness of the changeover on the producer's chair, but there is a palpable feeling of "Right, follow that you Scottish sweater-wearing bastard!" And given Grand Moff Steven has gone on record as saying he finds the Time Lords boring and doesn't want to write about them, bringing them back and thrusting them to the foremost of the fan consciousness seems like a mite unfair. Painted into a corner with Seals of Rassilon, anyone? That said I've seen the Series 5 trailer and the best way to describe it is very Moffat. With a lot more guns than I think anybody would have expected..

Secondly, has the story closed up the rather abruptly set up arc from Waters of Mars and validated that rather functional story? Not really. It becomes a confusing game of guesswork to the audience as to when, or if, The Time Lord Victorious is around in this one and doesn't ultimately have any bearing on the events that unfold aside from explaining the strainging-sympathy whiny monologuesplosion from Ten at the end of all things.

IF the Time Lord Victorious had been stronger, thinking to change the decision he made in School Reunion and looking at what could be achieved by rescuing the Time Lords and breaking the time-lock, there could have been a bucketload more drama in the guts of the story and not fall back on "I do this and the Universe dies" absolutism. True, it would have made things more convoluted but at least it would have a shot at filing out it's bloody running time. I guess the idea of the TLV was to make it more plausible that the Doctor would shoot either Rassilon or the Master, but it really wasn't gotten across to the audience.

Thirdly, did it address the cliffhanger? Yes. Interestingly, as with the last time in Last of the Time Lords it did it by jumping forward in time a little. Apparently if the Doctor doesn't kick his enemies arse in the space of five seconds there's no point in showing the cliffhanger's immediate aftermath. With that said there was a fascinating mini cop-out involving Donna - the cliffhanger did suggest she would play a crucial role in the story - instead she exploded in a way that made little sense, contradicted everything the Doctor had said about her until that point and vanished her out of the story. Seemingly just to stop her interfering with things.

I guess the most important question, really, is did it give David Tennant a good send-off? And that's a tricky one to answer, seeing as the story does portray him as quite a dick AND also serves perhaps even more so as a farewell to RTD leaving the series. Before I thought little of this as it seemed only a logical way for him to part company with the show and the Doctor at the same time, though part of me was disappointed that we wouldn't get to see Tennant evolving Tom Baker-like under the guidance of three different producers and inspire fans to rant for decades to come how shit his performances became under Moffat, Gatiss and Gervais.

To clarify a point, I do have a lot of respect for freakishly gargantuan Welsh scriptwright Russell Davies, because even though I delusionally enjoy referring to myself as a 'writer' it's easy to recognise when somebody has a level of talent that is beyond you. Davies has a remarkable mind for ideas and knows how to develop something infinitessimally small into a plot that can capture the viewing public's imaginations, and in addition to this he has balls - amply displayed in his quite frankly amazing dispaly of making clear political messages about what's happening in the world in what is seen as a tea-time kid show. And Children of Earth may be best described as him roaring "CALL THAT FUCKING ADULT???" at the regular Torchwood stables.

Furthermore, everytime I essentially say "This is shit" referring to his work, it is actually a lie. Everything he writes is technically sound and accomplished. The matter is a divergence of tastes, in a big, big way. Hell, I'm a dude who thinks Sharpe is among the pinnacle of great television - I like my characters somewhat understated like I am, I want to infer what they think and feel, not be told. When somebody dies I want no music, like there wasn't for Pvt Perkins or Roj Blake or Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. There's no accounting for taste and it just so happens that RTD likes everything THE EXACT OPPOSITE, which is a frustration I have not dealt with terribly well over the last couple of years.

He likes his characters to shriek out their feelings whilst crying, to hug after doing so, to solliloquize about what exactly somebody means to them. Guardedness and emotionlessness are generally signs of a villain or else somebody who the Doctor will not get on with (Bloody hell, I wonder what RTD would make of ME?)

This is a very big issue in this story, for me personally because this story is very much RTD's last hurrah and as you would imagine there is nothing particularly subtle about this fact. The episode functions as something of a distillation of the entire RTD era, which I imagine would account for some extreme reactions to this episode.

It also doesn't help, as previously mentioned, that as a combination of a celebration of RTD's time at the helm and also an unashamed attempt to one-up the already off-the-fucking-planet Stolen Earth it becomes a complete fanwank extravaganza.

A publicity campaign for this could have spoofed that of cinematic speutum Saw III with a ventriloquist dummy in a Cyberman mask saying via tape recorder "Oh, yes... there will be squee." (Can you guess which word I decided to replace in that sentence?)

For my own part I think the central drama wasn't quite strong enough. RTD has done vanishing tricks too often and to believe that the Time Lord storyline could be concluded would be ridiculous. Any dilemma that could be involved in the Time Lords returning is defused by the fact that if they return a) Earth is annhilated and b) The entire Universe is ALSO annhilated. Obvious questions like "Erm, why can't they end time in their own timeline instead of transubstantiating themselves upon an entirely different planet?" aren't really addressed. It's a foregone conclusion of a few.

What we're to take away from the Time Lords' race is a bit garbled. They've gone from the pompously powerful yet idle beings into pieces of walking mythology, Shakespearian archetypes who sway between relying upon haggard old crones to cackle out meaningless 'prophecies' and bad-ass dudes with Sonic Mittens capable of 5,000 amazing tasks (2,800 of which are entertaining ways to kill people) The suggestion that they have also devolved into genocidal maniacs is also a bit confronting. Some questions are begging to be asked - if the Doctor was involved in the war effort for longer than the Master, apparently on Gallifrey until it's final hours then how did he not hear about the Master's resurrection and eventual escape? Also other questions such as if the Doctor was on the planet, why didn't he rescue any other bloody Time Lords?

The most likely explanation could be that he only convinced the Meddling Monk to come with him and completely disowned him as a useless wanker after weathering the storm in a parallel universe, trapped for weeks with his Matt Lucas incarnation.

Yes, I am now allowing Ben Chatham parody fics into my personal canon. Alyson Hannigan gets to be a companion if nothing else!

It's interesting that the response has firmly been that the Time War should not be depicted but gradually we are straying into that territory and it seems like everyone has had a good point. If they're going to throw up confusing details people will only want more answers and then it really WILL get crap. After all, consensus seems to be that the top and tail of the books' Time War were strong, and the inbetweenies were on the weak side, especially the one known as Lawrence Miles Kills All the Characters (including Essay on how much the Doctor sucks). (retitled Interference for it's North American release so I heard) Naturally with that said Alien Bodies may be the finest written story ever to not have an ending, and The Ancestor Cell is a fine third act to a story nobody was arsed to write. If only they operated like an Al Jaffee fold-in.

But now, back to the future. One great strength of the story is that the Master effectively takes on something of a companion role through the drama alongside Wilf... somebody needs to a sans-companion story where the Master takes the role utterly because it's a terrific setup. There have been many cases of the partnership in the classic series, the terrific Claws of Axos being the first to leap to mind, but not involving the hyper-unpredictable John Simm half Time Lord half insane zombie persona, a Master with a lot of bite. And with Wilf for support - what a team. The cast is terrific, Timothy Dalton added some much needed gravitas to a role that would look quite one-note on the page.

The annoying thing is that for a story that by modern telly standards is quite arse-numbingly long, the setup, although supersized in presentation, is really small-scaled. The entire point of part two is concerned with two set-piece moments involving a handful of characters. The big moments of "Oh no, what happens next??" drama are entirely defused. Firstly, Donna is in absolutely no danger at all and the Doctor apparently knew this, I guess feigning pissing his pants just as a ploy to make the Master look like a right git. Secondly, when the alien spaceship is disabled and the Doctor is in space, he is completely un-stranded and... just feigning being at a loss to make the green aliens look like complete gits. Is he that insecure at this stage he needs others to look stupid?

If you think about it, the course of the story wouldn't really have changed if Wilf and the Doctor never made it out of those chairs they were tied up in. They would have been there when the Time Lords showed up, the Doctor would have gotten the gun (the details aren't important, he would have) and BANG. There you are. First setpiece.

Performances are good but.. ultimately it's strangely dull. If you think for a moment that the Doctor is going to blow somebody's brains out with a six shooter under Julie Gardner's watch I think you're late for your methadone. There is no more foregone conclusion than the Doctor taking a third option that nobody has even alluded to and so he does. Albeit after receiving the information in High Gallifreyan Eye Braille from his mum.

To get to that point, though, we DO get to see Wilf gunning down the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States from the Millenium Falcon , of course, and John Simm beating the shit of Rassilon as he vanishes into what amounts to a gateway to hell. It's hard to think of any cooler moments of padding in the series history. Definitely beats the accumulative half hour we got of Davison wincing quietly as his companions insulted him/said something retarded.

Immediately after that, the second set piece comes - I was about to say one that the show amazingly hasn't used, but then my mind reminded me of Caves of Androzani and pointed out how fucking stupid it would be to forget that. Especially since it makes this story and David Tennant in particular look distinctly unimpressive - when your competition is the absolute best of the best, though, what can you do?

The scene seems to be heavily controversial - for my part I thought it was very well handled. The ego of the Doctor has grown too large and his outbursts in this scene are to show us that it really is time for him to go, and that his anger and bitterness have kept him clutching on to life. Gradually we see his true colours taking over, defeating the resentment he feels at his pathological need to do the right thing - the length of time that he argues the point with himself clearly betrays that he does not believe his argument at all, though the darker side of his mind tries with all its might specifically to believe it.

Apparently the scene was to originally feature a complete random scientist who had had no dialogue at all up to this point in the story, to drive home the fact that the Doctor was giving up his life for a nobody. That would stick closer to the theme, but I think the version as is is more effective. For a start, Bernard Cribbins' performance is brilliant as always. Second, we have the element that Wilf is old, has lived a full life and does not want the Doctor to lay his life down for Wilf. And finally - it is so utterly in character for Wilf to be the one to save the random scientist in the midst of all the chaos, without even thinking of the consequences.

The third point, which I think is very important, is to show that the qualities the Doctor possesses are not just his, to reinforce his companions are chosen for a reason, and that we can be like him. Wilf does what the Doctor knows he shoud do, without thinking. He is ready to die for the sake of somebody he has never met, and is willing to die in place of the Doctor. This does quite a bit to bring the Doctor down to size, from his demigod status...

..which is a bit of a pity because the rest of the story doesn't make much of an effort, does it? He knows the Time Lords' entire plan, already knows the flaws in it, can apparently defy the laws of physics utterly when jumping from speeding spaceships and continues to know more about the working of said spaceships than their owners. A bit of consistency would have been nice.

Also, from my recollection I've reviewed about half of the story. The second half is disgustingly self-indulgent. And the main reason for my lukewarm response - in the finest traditions of clip show television the Doctor goes back to visit all his companions giving the viewer little. Aside from baffling revelations such as two characters have hooked up based purely on their own skin colour and fan judgements upon their acting abilities and decided to run around the abandoned factories from B7 shooting Sontarans as an optimum use of their medical and computer hacking talents. Was there no other way to say "These fuckers will NEVER be part of Torchwood!!"?

On that note I thought the sequence started especially poorly with the Doctor first saving Martha and Mickey from being shot and Luke Smith from being run over by a car, like he's re-enacting the end of fucking Groundhog Day. These losers are his heroic companions? Rushing like lemmings to get themselves killed! How did they ever survive without him! Thankfully the conceit is dropped suddenly, though in the process it's distinctly jarring. The Doctor goes back to his reliable unjustified wish-fulfilment ways.

Oddly the only sequence from that I enjoyed was probably the most self-indulgent - meeting the Matron's descendant in the book shop. But I liked it because it was clever and did very little to talk down to the audience and make it clear what was happening. Took me a moment to remember who she was, actually, which I'm not used to. Of course it's also one of those things that makes less sense when you think about it because it would be more logical to leave the ethnographic present for a few moments and look at the ACTUAL woman you fell in love with as opposed to Daisy Steiner, struggling writer and convenient identical granddaughter.

Once the obligatory Rose Tyler appearance is over, complete with all the "Awww, she's just like us but simultaneously so much better than we could ever be!" nonsense it's time for the Doctor to actually pop his fucking clogs, just as he would have done in the smouldering wreckage of Joseph Naismith's (or Rairf Kcut, if that joke hasn't overstayed it's welcome) lab, alone and friendless, save for the last companion standing to hold his hand and be bewildered if we were in the good old days. But there's nothing without closure now.

He gets an entire bloody day to travel through the time vortex, looking for moments where his companions lives were emperilled enough for him to look cool by rescuing from there own pigheaded foolishness, or else running into hotties that he'd encountered for all of 30 minutes on a previous adventure and so could hook up on a wing and a prayer. Yes, the Doctor enjoys acting as pimp for sole survivors of horrific interspace disasters. Is this the grey morality the character has needed? But anyway, after all this it is at least semi justified as the Doctor gives a self-pitying solliloquie to make sure everyone in the audience is over his shit where he whinges it hasn't been enough, to the bemusement of those half-awake glancing at clocks, and that his audience figures will never be so good again, not even if ITV go on strike again!

Such is his refusal to die that the Doctor effectively DESTROYS THE TARDIS. What a prick, but at least it gives Smithy an excuse to redecorate. And speaking of Smith - no fucking idea. He's on screen for ten seconds and gets to yell nonsense. Nothing to analyse at all, not even to excitingly email your friends and say "See! He ISN'T A SHIT ACTOR HALLELUJAH!" as some may have.

This story and the RTD era are one - it is both awful and brilliant.

5/10

Here's what I had left from my very brief attempts to write a review while I was watching:

Motherfucker, this goes for an hour and twelve minutes? It's like they haven't even put the pausing-it-every-ten-seconds demographic in mind at all!

2:01 - Isn't it interesting that the first story to feature the big-ass wooden collars worn by the Time Lords, Bob Holmes' The Deadly Assassin of course, made it clear that they were

a) Purely ceremonial wear
b) Only worn by members of the High Council, apparently during important ceremonies only
c) Not particularly well-loved by the Time Lords

and all three of those details have since been ignored in just about every Time Lord appearance since. (Although it only shows up once in The Five Doctors, I noticed - at that time worn by Chancellor Flavia bestowing emergency powers upon the Doctor which does rather make sense)

2:16 - Aha, so this is a prequel bit... how many scenes that RTD would never ever show us does that make now? I guess I shouldn't complain - they've all been about stuff we wanted to see anyway...

2:22 - Man... the council standards have dropped a bit. Is this Compassion in her later days?

2:42 - FLAVIA!!!! .... or just some random.

3:17 - THE HAND OF OMEGA!!!! .... or just a death-glove.

4:13 - Two survivors? Locked in time? The enmity of ages? Hey, that old tart's just ripping off unfilmed Eric Saward scripts.

...man, now I've got a bad feeling about this... are they about to pull out the contracts?

Also, any votes for most annoying Oracle ever?

5:00 - I was about to ask how the Master got Wilf out of the tube... then I remembered that this is the bloody Master, the Doctor's intellectual equal, so if anyone should be able to find a way it'd be him.

6:40 - "It was this thing the Doctor did... he did it to her..." Hehehe

6:51 - "He loves playing with EARTH GIRLS *ugh*!" Well, nice to see a return to high camp from the Master but could that be seen as slightly hypocritical from a guy who was recently maried to one and asked her to put a lesbian show with a maid?... or did I just imagine that scene? Was she just a rubbish beard after all?

8:06 - ..like a lot of fans, I am sure, I'm hoping at this stage that Donna's apparent ability to fry Masters in a time-fuelled EMP blast is a freak effect and she is not to be turned into a walking weapon by the end of this story..

9:02 - Wow. The Doctor is verging on obsequious groupy here. What a bizarre thing the Doctor-Master relationship has turned into...

48:57 - See this is the bit I have the bad feeling. It looks like the plot has been resolved and there is nearly 30 minutes left. This had better not be a trademark RTD ending that's as long as the actual storyline...

*

Radar does not actually detect energy - it detects matter. Shutting off the ship's power would achieve absolutely nothing, nor would keeping deathly quiet.

*

Did RTD cameo as a guy running in panic down the Nobles' street?

*

"You weren't there - in the final days of the war?" ... I got the impression that he WAS...

*

Something that will amaze nobody who knows me - when Luke Smith appeared on the phone to Clyde I said "Aww, fuck off!" quite loudly to my computer screen.

*

I also am imagining at the time of writing that the note that Captain Jack has gotten from the Doctor will read "Don't go with the goat man, he'll fuck you up so bad you'll look like Bob Crane." Jack will then write a note back saying "No, I'm into that. And stop reading my Facebook in the future you git." And then the Doctor will write another note back saying "Why the fuck haven't you added me as a friend?" and the scene goes for a very uncomfortable ten minutes.

*

Wait... when was there any suggestion Alonso was gay?

*

FUCK YEAH! Cameo from... okay, it isn't India Fisher she just looks and sounds ever so slightly similar... Spaced Girl? Is that her name? Erm... no. That would be unlikely. She'd be all like "Hey, Simon, I want to do a show." and he'd be "Really, Spacey? What are we going to call it?" and she'd say "You name it after me, you arsehole, because I'm writing it! I bet you'll take all the credit for it on the internet though, as soon as it has been invented because this is the early nineties even though the year's actually around 1998." and Simon says "So THAT'S why they call you Spaced Girl."

In writing that I actually remembered her name is Jessica Heinz nee Stevenson. And doesn't detract from the awesomeness, unlike Invaders from Mars.

Needless to say I noticed her name was Verity Hussain Nation-Newman and approve.

Oh, and I just remembered that other thing I used to do, where I post responses to all aspects of a story from all manner of folk...

WHAT THOSE OTHER LOSERS SAID

Ritalin Response:

Another thing that confuses me and another fan mentioned it before stolen earth when the doctor goes to davros the entire war is timelocked when the doctor mentioned the timewar he said his planet was gone forever how did that change or did the writers decide to change it to timelock?
why is timothy dalton voiceovering events on end of time part 1?
am i right in thinking in the timelock the events go round and round in circles so they never truelly die they just cant change it they just keep dieing over and over again? if this is the case i think thats neat cause it shows oneday they maybe able to escape the timelock there not extinct just in endless death.
If im wrong how and why are the timelords alive now is it because dalek khan went into the timewar and saved davros which enabled them to have a second chance?

TVTropers Response:

But the worst of all was The Doctor's 'Why Me?!?' speech bemoaning his fate to die regenerate. Not only was the rant unbearably whiny, self-centered and completely OOC, it also came across as RTD using The Doctor as an Author Avatar (" Look at all the wonderful things I've done! It's not fair that I have to leave!"), perhaps suggesting that his own departure isn't entirely voluntary. If the only reference to the Doctor's reluctance to regenerate had been Tennant's final line (" I don't want to go."), the whole premise, while flawed, would have had so much more impact. Instead, we get this drek combined with the most maudlin, cliched and drawn-out series season finale scenes I've witnessed in a long, long time, which sadly had the accumulative effect of making me almost RELIEVED that Tennant and RTD are done so we can move past the sentimental claptrap and get back to having fun. YMMV, of course

TVTropes Response to Love & Monsters

There is the fan theory that Elton is meant to be an Unreliable Narrator and was driven a bit nutty by losing Ursula so now he's just imagining her as a piece of pavement. Note how we only see her face from his point of view, while his camcorder only sees the back of it... Which means that the Doctor has left Elton to go completely insane in the privacy and comfort of his own home, with a slab of concrete to obsess over. How is that any better?

(The idea of Marc Warren fucking a lifeless concrete slab for the rest of time appeals to me. I don't know what that says about me..)

Lawrence Miles Response:
If you can survive the sentence "a two-part story about Professor River Song and the Weeping Angels", then nothing in life will ever be able to harm you again. What's that Hansen? Stopped paraphrasing me? HA! I AM INVINCIBLE!!

Moral Guardian Response:

Exactly. Gay men are so shallow. It's all very well going for superficialities like looks and shaggability but they're going to look pretty silly if they decide they want to have children and only then discover that they're genetically incompatible. The relationship is doomed!!!

Paranoid Etomologist Response:
Someone on another forum just pointed out that, just as "Mister Saxon" was an anagram for "Master No Six", "Wilfred Mott" is an anagram for "Time Lord WTF". Add to that the incredibly unsubtle "Donna Noble", and my theory that there's at least one and possibly two silver fob watches hanging around in that family is confirmed.

Alan Stevens Response:

.... the bit where somebody looks down at the Earth and is amazed has been done before.

(Okay, how can the dude bag me out for reviewing audios from 2001 when he/his missus uses the blog to review relevant cinema hits such as Catch-22 and The Deer Hunter when DT's last ever story is out there and all he's done is written it's a bit similar to Space: 1999?)

Sir Kelsea of Chelsea Response:
I said earlier this year that if Martha ended up married to Mickey, it would render her awful character a billion times worse - she does come across as a Rose Tyler stalker. And the terrible way her character has developed from medical student to Lara Croft in a catsuit!

It's like that husband and wife detective series Hart To Hart except in their case it's Hart To Tart

I just love how The Doctor didn't bother speaking to them. He just appeared and walked away.

Paranoid response:
Did Tom turn into Mickey like everyone else turn into the Master

Spock response
Personally, I thought getting together with Tom in the first place was the odd bit. Time had been "rewound" back to a point before Tom met her. Why would she feel the need to pursue a man who had no idea who she was?

Tinu response
waiting for the fanfiction so it can make sense for me

Cameron J Mason response:
Maybe [Tom Milligan] found his calling in Africa?

(Okay, not mind-blowing, I just rarely see a post from him and thus get excited)

eFXBarry Response:
Martha the heart breaker.

Noel Clarke Response
Mickey Smith has had Rose and Martha. whooop whooop

Nicknacks Response
Seemed a bit like a case of pair the spares. Either it was cheaper for the two characters to have their sendoff in the same scene, or it was because Davies was feeling a little uninspired and thought he'd just shove the two characters together. It's just... problematic. And have the two of them spent any time on screen talking, at all?

Clutching at straws response
Maybe when she said 'you shouldn't have married me' she meant Mickey was a priest

DIE FOR OUR SHIP response
I PREDICTED IT. Really, I've written two post-JE fanfics and RPed Martha/Mickey at www.votesaxon.org.uk

And I like it. It works. Way I see it, Tom was too cocky with the Daleks and got zapped... Or was guarding the tunnel in PotD and got zapped. Or was in the building with the 456 and got vapourised-zapped. Or was investigating Naismith and got zapped. Or it was in one of those many many alien threats that happen off-screen, and got zapped.
Really, in a show like Doctor Who, do you really NEED to LOOK for a way of getting rid of a minor character? No! He was Third Corpse on the Right.

And Martha love(d) the Doctor, who love(s) Rose. Mickey love(d) Rose, who love(s) the Doctor. Martha/Mickey + Rose/Doctor = Happy world, happy fandom, unangsty clean slate for the Moff/S4 of Torchwood.

poetryG response:
Why do you think Mickey hugs Martha so tightly? He's already had one woman taken away from him by the Doctor. The Doctor scares him. And you can see from Martha's expression that she still has feelings for the Doctor.

Charles Daniels reponse:
... man what the FUCK??? [paraphrased]

ME: But Martha was meant to be married to the medic dude from The Last of the Time Lords - am I the only guy who remembers this? The result was more propaganda about how white guy-black girl interracial relationships never work out - just like season 4 of Scrubs! They made up for it by bringing back Jessica Stevenson for a cameo, though.

AK i just got the impression that russell t davies just wanted to wrap up everything nicely and quickly. 2 be honest i didn't mind that they were married.

ME How's about this - David Tennant goes to Martha's house "You still married to whitebread?" "Yeah!" Tennant goes to Mickey's lair "You still being co-erced into gay sex by the former Blue Peter host with ultra-gelled hair in Paris regularly?" "Yes! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP" "Allonzee!" That's about 30 seconds of screen time and would have been much ... See Morecheaper to film. Why do you want that dude from Last of the Timelord's fictitious life to end in horrible heartbreak, Ashley? First his wife does a face-heel-turn then he's rejected for MICKEY SMITH of all people. That dude was probably jumping off a bridge right as the newly-weds rutted disgustingly in front of their mighty swag of festering Sontaran corpses. You think that is a happy ending? A man DIED! You make me sick.

NTR - No, i picked up on that too, i thought it was weird that the medic guy was gone and mickey was the husband, and speaking of which, how many interracial couples are there in the whoniverse? Jack and whoever he is putting it to don't count, he's a different species

AK - jack loves everyone bless him. but coming to think of it there was only mickey and rose, but we know how that all ended. and jared i think you've either had to much coffee or not enough sleep, lol. yes i do remember she was married to someone else, but lets just think he couldnt handle her alien battling ways, got divorced, she and mickey had a few... See More adventures and fell in love. and furthermore who said anything about mickey being co-erced by the gay ex blue peterhost from the parallel world. him and rickys relationship was a deleted scene, hardly enough to justify your allegation of gay coercion to mickey.

ME - Sigh. I thought you guys were fans. Donna and Lance, Donna and her new hubby, the young couple in Gridlock, Ianto and Lisa, Owen and Tosh, Mia and Yuri, Martha's cousin at Torchwood Tower and some random due and buckets of others I'm sure... did they mention if 'The New Doctor' and his black prostitue companion were doing it?

NTR - First of all, I'm talking about successful relationships, not those that are a) brought about by a need to infect the other partner with huon particles, b) settling for someone because you can't remember the fabulous adventures you had with the Dr, c) half human half cat, d) confined to semi robotic status for the rest of her miserable existence (... See MoreIanto and Lisa just confirm that white guy/black girl relationships don't work, not the other way around), e) unrequited. I will give you Mia and Yuri, but Martha's cousin... All those I would not call great interracial relationships

ME -Well, you should qualify a little further in future. I thought you just meant people who had relations with one another. And with regards to Gridlock I was talking about the couple who kidapped Martha rather than the cat dude from Father Ted.

NTR - Ok, so, of successful interracial relationships in the whoniverse, can you name me any besides Mia and Yuri? Cause I'm struggling to find one that doesn't involve the kidnapping of innocent bystanders or alien sleeper agents that end up killing their partners

ME - So you're not accepting that the kidnapping was done purely out of love? Just as well I DIDN'T put Yana and Chant'tho on my earlier list... erm, now I can't think of any more from the top of my head. Martha's sleazy dad and that blonde chick who's the same age as his daughters? There's nothing to suggest that they're an UNhappy couple. [/baiting]

NTR - ut not a successful couple either, she walked out on that birthday dinner in a huff and who knows what happened after that. And Yana and Chant'tho- what part of different species do you not get? He hated her anyway. I think secretly RTD doesn't like the chocolate/vanilla swirl, and it subconsciously leaks through to the shows

AK - chocolate/vanilla swirl, love it lol :) i dont think rtd didnt like interracial couples, if anything he tried to show love and acceptance between everyone hence the multitude of different people getting together. but of course in such a chaotic universe as doc who i doubt many same race relationships would last as well. its just to improve the characters and move the plot along

ME - Yana liked Chant-tho, Nadia - it was THE MASTER who hated her. Heh, I find it funny how seriously you seem to have pursued this discussion - it was just an offhand joke from me to start with. You sound like you're an even bigger supporter of Tha Swirl than I am!

NTR - Mate, i love the swirl! I'm a fan. But i still contend that rtd is not a fan, and furthermore, you know you can't bait me bout this! Take you all down! :)

Man, that was a big one. And I didn't even touch on the whole "Rassilon?!? What the FUCK??!?!" aspect...

Febuary and Nothing to Talk About

2010-02-05T19:28:00.002+11:00

I've been oddly uninspired. Soon I'm going to need to talk about that blog post I've written and subsequently decided was too shit to post, maybe that one relating my adventures in PC cricket games that I thought was too disturbing to post, actually finishing my review of End of Time which bafflingly was more difficult for me to write than a bit, maybe talking about the now 6-part novel series forming in my head, which is essentially Sharpe transplanted into a very un-fantastical fantasy world where Roman-expys enslave the 'Fey', kick arse and it turns out the Elves are the badguys, or maybe just try and work out who Robert Lindsay was a dead look-a-like for when I just glanced at the telly and saw it's a gimmick episode of My Family set in the future with Clive "Mr Copper/Jobel/Richard Bucket" Swift in it.

Was it Ian McKellen? Richard Gere? That old bloke from Wild at Heart? A combination of all three? Dave Allen? Dudley Moore in that sketch where he plays Roger Moore's housebound father? Robert Lindsay with talcum powder in his hair? HENRY KISSINGER???

Hmmm... what else? Oh, I can't get a Tax File number because I don't know where the fuck my birth certificate is. Better yet, it's apparently MY fault, even though I was never the one who stored it anyway. If I can't get a Tax File number I can't work and I guess I'll just starve to death in my own filth.

I've been working on a game. A lot. That's why I get distracted. It's not a project I want to talk about because of slightly possible legal issues and I also shot my mouth off in an unwise manner late last year only to get quoted verbatim on a podcast. Thank Christ it was the sort that nobody listens to do.

I played through The Tales of Monkey Island a way back and it was incredible but nobody will really care.

I've been working on another game, barely at all. That one I can talk about - Secret Agent on Roller Skates. It is completely retarded, and I hope it will give it enough charm for people to like it when/if it is released. Hint: the secret agent is on roller skates so I don't have to animate him walking. In spite of this the game contains a far minor character who DOES walk around, and a muppet like automaton who I had to animate tearing a hole through reality and climbing into existence, which was significantly tougher to draw. No logical explanation is offered for why exactly he works in an art gallery while apparently inhabiting another dimension.

But for all of that, it suddenly struck me that I never ranted about Hollyhood - the worst TV show ever created. A bizarre oversight but then a lot of stuff I have meant to rant on has gone by the wayside. Remember when my music video reviews were meant to be a regular feature? No? YANA.

This springs from the same font, back in my gymasium days, forced to watch whatever bilge was on the TV screens a nightmare made worse when the Weird Foreign Guy was around who did not know how to operate the TV and was convinced there were only three channels on Foxtel.

To rate what was on offer -

MAX a station that shows music from MORE THAN ONE DECADE. This was the true meaning of awesome. Something of a mixed bag in the offering, especially with their "Lunch on MAX" sessions where they play one band/artist for an hour. The Bruce Springsteen one wasn't too enjoyable, but then they did Icehouse. Fuck yeah. Videos MAX gave me that nobody else had the balls to: I Can't Dance, Karma Chamelion, The Street Cafe, Song For the Dumped, and Take On Me.

V2 came next, being nearly entirely music videos. That mightn't sound too appealing, but really the alternatives on pay TV seem far less entertaining. I don't remember ever having to watch a horribly produced and braindead show on this channel, just occassional ad-breaks and 'special presentations'.

V the ORIGINAL, you might say. Channel V that is. Nothing to do with aliens or mask-wearing anarchists. Nearly all the same clips as V2, played with less frequency, more stupid shows. I don't remember any of the shows being THAT bad, though, and often thankfully brief. The inclusion of James Mathison, though, can bring anything down to subterranean levels. He is the man with the world's most punchable face.

MTV in spite of its reputation, nearly no music videos AT ALL. One clip between every 2 20 minute shows. What made this excruciating was not only the quality of the shows - Jackass was the highlight, in contrast to Cribs a show where people in the arse-end of celebrity show you how much shit they've got in their house and how it relates to their own superiority to you personally - but the fact that they play six episodes in a row for the one program, to make sure any enjoyment potential gets syphoned out of it.

The Lifestyle Channel - endless armies of orthodontically manufactured Americans who laugh at everything going around the world to embarass themselves in front of far more dignified locals. Highlight was a transatlantic fuckwit angering a crowd of Frenchmen by destroying the first bottle of wine from their vineyard and effectively destroying the ceremony. Lowest point was predictably awful Blair Witch parody when one of the hosts stayed at "The most haunted castle in Britain" Leave parody to those without congenital brain disorders.

National Geographic - you would think, given their magazine, this would be top of the list. Smart, informative, painstakingly researched, economically presented... no. The better name by far would have The 24/7 Steve Irwin experience. I mean literally nothing but Steve Irwin. At least give me some fucking Mark Strickson or even Naomi Robson!

MTV nearly gets on the bottom because of the nightmare day I had when the show MTV were playing nonstop was Hollyhood. Looking at Wikipedia is a bitter-sweet experience. Firstly, I see that this awful show only lasted for 8 episodes in 2007, heartening news for this show looked like the nadir of humanity to me and it's good to know we're metaphorically climbing out of the slime having cancelled it, but it also frustrated me that clearly I happened to be at the gym when MTV was showing THE ENTIRE RUN back to back.

Hollyhood was a 'reality TV show' following a household of complete wankers, as most of them do. The wankers in this case were a hip-hop group apparently called Three 6 Mafia who we are led to believe homo-erotically live together in a mansion draped with disgusting status symbols and are never seen doing anything vaguely close to work or music.

Annoyingly my mind is fogged by the mists of time as to the true extent of the shows awfulness, but I remember clearly the first disturbing episode was 'Juicy J's morbidly obese person IT manager proposing to his even-more-morbidly obese love interest, whilst being stalked by the other members of the group and their 'crew' in a black van with CIA-esque surveillance equipment, pissing themselves laughing. After the proposal went successfully we were treated to infared night-vision footage of the two in bed, a disturbing enough prospect as is, that managed to become more so when it appeared that 'Computer's woman was dishing out some good ol' domestic violence.

What. The. Fuck.

That's a summary of what was going through my head during my bicep reps exercises and for hours afterwards.

The thing that really disgusted me about Hollyhood, aside from sheer awfulness, the stereotypical behaviour (or 'cooning' if you like Uncle Tom parlance) and ludicrous attempt to make rap video world seem even close to reality, is the fact that it is one of so many American shows that wear the badge of a 'reality show' as an excuse to feature shithouse writing, shithouse acting, shithouse production values, shithouse editing, shithouse direction and a shit house full of shit people.

The second episode I had to watch, where a Doctor with ludicrously hot and barely-attired nurses who had no problem having his entire check up of DJ Paul fimed in spite of the fact there's such a thing as Doctor-patient confidentiality informed Paul he'd need to go on a diet with the delivery of Chip Jamison on his death bed. The plot was that somehow Paul was to convince his crew that the Doctor had told them ALL to lose some weight. This makes no sense at all, as you realise because of your functioning cerebral cortex. And so there was a competition, forming the 'plot' of the worst sitcom ever.

Incidentally, 'Computers' the morbidly obese IT guy won the compeition. He had to, right, because the fattest guy will always win. Presumably his prize was to get the spy cameras removed from his bedroom for the night.

I thankfully got to leave the room before the horribly Three's Company-looking episode in which Juicy J asked out Ashton Kutcher's PA and presumably would have a date that went horribly wrong, possibly with his crew monitoring from the command vehicle.

Possibly the worst thing is that I'm sure there actually dozens of shows just as bad out there on satellite television and I've just been living in blissful ignorance.

It will be funny if the Hollyhood fanclub find this post and take me to task for mixing up the details of their favourite show.

And, yes, I recognise the irony of a blog post entitled 'Nothing to talk about' which actually goes for 1600 words. My fingers hurt.

Jared Dreams your Dream for you - he KNOPFLER'D YO ASS!

2010-01-31T11:43:00.004+11:00

Forgive me for the unprecedentedly baffling title, it made me laugh.

It seems that it's my turn to dream filmed media after bouts of far too much time spent in a sleepless state. Sadly, I'm not anywhere near as good a transcriber as my friend Ewen nor do I dream with an equal amount of clarity. What follows may be baffling, if my own reaction is anything to judge by.

The inspiration at least is clear, having just read Ewen's review of a film almost claiming to be a Blakes 7 sequel which would have possibly been more aptly titled "Nigel Verkoff vs The X-Men". Yes, that title also doesn't fit the story, but fits it better is all I'm saying. In fact, I started writing this in response to this very post but I could start to hear the text box groaning at the seams.

Anyway, last night part of the weird dreamscape I fell into (the only other bit I remember was it being revealed that the characters in Friends were all aliens impersonating humans which made the show suddenly cool) involved a REAL sequel to B7...

Essentially, I imagined my friends and I somehow making a BBV-style ultra-cheap but copyright-evading film called "Gauda Prime" with a weird split narrative structure. The "rebels" names were erased from the record, officially so they couldn't be martyred and are known only by fairly lame titles - The Leader (Avon, who I got to play because it was my dream), The Thief (Vila, obviously, who was played by YOU(Assuming that you are Ewen)) and The Gunslinger (These are kinda obvious, aren't they? She may have been my mate's cousin, not sure).

Details... were pretty vague. Each had a Pulp Fiction-style narrative that began with their name coming up with as a titlecard like Tarantino often does - I think Avon came first, as it would have been the first chronologically, and this was just my dream-consciousness plagiarising from that post-GP script Ewen started writing, where Avon wakes up in an abandoned missile silo-thing and is found by an enigmatically acting Vila and Soolin... except Vila and Soolin were replaced by Tarrant and Dayna... who turned out to be robots sent by Servalan. I'm not entirely sure if some kind of Logic of Empire stuff followed or not, but I'm sure it ended with Avon in a cell, laughing hysterically.

Soolin was doing the showgirl/hooker gig Ewen describes from a fic (I know, I'm so original!) and.. I don't know, kicked ass after that. The usual action girl stuff. Killed people while looking oh-so-sexy and buying herself a shuttle she could fly out of there.

More thought went into Vilas - he was after enough money to 'buy his own planet' as he had hinted at in the series and live out his days in luxury, putting it all behind him. When he gets involved in a planned raid on the mining facilities. Once again he's with a group of idealists out to fight the Federation (possibly a splinter cell left over from Blake's bounty hunters) but all he's got in his sights are the automated shuttle-containers that have the ore - hijack one of those and he'll be set for life.

Somehow Avon catches wind of this (the audience presumably wondering whether it's the real deal or a duplicate) and finds Vila in a pub. Vila is extremely sceptical that Avon would even be alive, but Avon manages to convince Vila he's the real deal (and presumably Vila would be the hardest person for him to convince). He goes over the details of Vila's plan, marking out positions with beer glasses, lamps, napkins, darts to the point Vila is getting a bit sick of it all. After carefully examining the pattern, Avon asks if Vila's intel is reliable. Vila says it's fool proof before giving Avon a datapad to check for himself.

Avon agrees, before pulling a complete SHERLOCK HOLMES on VR's ass, when he points out that the containers of ore head in to the facility and empty ones come out. The only conclusion to reach is that the area has been mined out and somebody in the Federation is 'seeding' it. (This is a plot twist I believe is stolen from the Dudley Doright movie - now there's embarassment for you)

This plot twists reveals... erm, not much because I remember very little after that. Avon does his trademark unnerving smile and tells Vila not to expect anything to be straight-forward. During the raid the genuine rebels discover ...erm... bad stuff in the secret facilites that have been hidden in the bogus mines. Possibly a next step of evolution in the Mutoids that Servi is planning to use in a coup to take the Presidency once again... or defeat the Helot resistance, could go either way.

Predictably it all goes badly, but Vila does get his container shuttle full of ore. More predictably, this turns out to be not so good. Upon course deviation a signal to the Federation orbit station has been sent, and it can only be de-activated from the inside. The lock system is one that Vila, to his disbelief, has never seen before. And what's more, he suspects that it's booby-rigged with an explosive device that will kill him instantly and render it sealed. At this point Avon does an appear-out-of-nowhere routine and bluntly tells his friend to stop expositing to thin air.

Avon pulls out a Giger counter and reveals that the material inside is extremely radioactive - whatever it isn't, this isn't what Vila wants. He calmly points out, though, that with a lethally radioactive payload and an ignition system, they've got the makings of a fine bomb on their hands. All they need is a target. Cue unnerving smile.

Obviously this is followed by a narrative strand entitled "The Commissioner" focusing on Servalan, now calling herself something else again, that ties everything together and explains just what the fuck Servi is up to, what Avon is up to, what happened to Soolin and how all the threads come together into an ending that justifies audience perserverance, presumably killing off Servalan once and for all and thematically capping off the entire series that inspired the idea.

Unfortunately my dream self decided to leave the theatre at this point and watch some porn on his laptop. Sorry about that.

Anyway, is the vaguely-proposed film above "Gauda Prime" better at least than "Recon 2023: The Guada Prime Conspiracy"? You tell me!

Things I learnt from Stargate: Atlantis

2010-01-28T21:16:00.003+11:00

* Hair gel increases your wise-cracking power

* Guys who carry around guns tend to have wildly unrealistic expectations of what balding scientists can achieve single-handedly

* Connected to the last point, amazingly balding scientists' cognitive abilities and genius DO increase when confronted by furious men shoving guns in their faces

* When you travel at the speed of light into a forcefield... you get fucked up. Not an amazing fact but something I'd never thought of

* The spirit of Terry Nation lives on in American sci-fi

* If you're going to have a badass knife-fight between two female characters do not get a couple of over-excited pornstars to provide foley, as this may well ruin the effect.

* Scotland is a separate nation from the United Kingdom.

* Connected to this fact only person not from Canada or the US should be allowed to speak per day.

* Also, it's fun spotting flags.

* Too much hair-gel decreases wise-cracking power, but the mind may not be aware of this deficit.

* Guys who play chess in high school know how to make nuclear weapons

* I've no idea really who she is, but Torri Higginson is quite hot. To me personally, anyway.

* If you ever complain that a black guy in the main credits gets no lines and does nothing, the next episode he will get a ton of lines and reveal himself to be a complete arsehole.

* The Amish are evil.

* Hyper-glycaemia is HI-larious.

* Insert joke about black chicks with wigs here.

* The best way to make use of your resources when you have a 300-500 strong crew on a base is to send the same 4 people on a mission every single time. Just make sure one of these guys is a genius who is entirely indispensible to your operations with no self-defense, oft-professed cowardice, has said several times he's willing to sell everybody else down the river. If Dr Smith from Lost in Space is not available settle for Rodney McKay.

* If the final wisecrack of an episode is actually piteously unfunny, make it hilarious by showing the characters around the crack-ee shuffle around awkwardly, shake their heads before just walking out.

(NB: According to the commentary they actually showed past the end of the take because they had to fill for time. Which if nothing else explains what the fuck was going on)

Suffice it to say I am really enjoying the show a lot.

Machines v Humans

2010-01-24T13:23:00.003+11:00

I'm really curious as to why it is that Spambots congregate on the lesser-used areas of the internet. You think it would make more sense to, say, post a bizarre message with a link saying "Hey, I've found a place to download Avatar" on a site that regularly gets 10, 000 visitors than, again hypothetically, in a comment on a blog post I made a year ago about a nightmare night out that made me really hate Guitar Hero.

It makes me wonder if the mythical 'spiders', described to me as 'software-coded robots sent out by search engines' to follow links and find matches for our search queries, eat them somehow.... I don't know, I guess I don't like simple explanations. You heard it here first, what we are seeing is the rather underwhelming aftermath of a decade-long war between robot spiders and ... robotic Nigerian clones. I like the dystopic future sci-fi vibes, seeing as this blog is already firmly entrenched in the grungy gutter of cyberspace.

Essentially I'm just posting to ask the question are we just going to sit around, crying into our keyboards or are we GOIN TA DO SUMFINK ABAAT IT? Basically I was getting mildly annoyed at the Inbox messages I get in my account from threads over a year ago, where some spambot's saying "thank u this really helped with my school project!11" in a post where I accuse Paul Margrs of buggering my goats. WHAT SCHOOL DO YOU GO TO YOU SICK BASTARD??

So I was wondering about a word-verification thing on the posts, but I realise that could be seriously annoying. Let your thoughts be known here. Or not.

Incidentally, are you ever amazed by people online who attempt to turn any topic of conversation around to their pet hates, regardless of the yawning lack of relevance?

Take this Callahan fellow, responding to news of the controversial... wait, everyone thinks that the idea sucks... the ultraversial proposed Torchwood USA series:

"As long as SyFy Channel has NOTHING, WHATSOEVER to do with it. Those Morons would turn it into a blasted Soap Opera, oops, I'm sorry, I forgot to use their Fanboi code word for Soap Opera, Character Driven Drama Series.

Bleh."

He is one of the legion of fans furious, FURIOUS, about the way that Stargate: Universe dares dedicate screen time to anything other than aliens getting shot the fuck up with M16s and guys in glasses making wisecracks about it in the background, with the idea that people scared and alone in a spaceship halfway across the fucking universe with no idea where they are or of any hopes to actually get back to Earth could be scared, uncertain, emotionally frail and feel any need to express any of this. And so, derides it as a 'soap opera'. How many soap operas involve sapient sand mites, chest-bursting space maggots, time travel, crashed alien spaceships and body stealing technology? Aside from Passions. That's what I thought.

What makes this funnier is that FOX is not known for supporting sci-fi in any form - it is probably best known for cancelling them, along with plenty of original shows that yield marginal ratings at best. Because of this, a layman like me would assume that Fox has no dealing with SyFy (shudder, love the shows, hate that fucking name..) and what do you know - I'm right! SyFy is a property of NBC.

Congratulations Callahan, you win the Golden MLock this month for Complete Ineptitude at Online Communication.

Meanwhile, ten years ago...

ME: Hey, you never know, anything is possible.

SOME DUDE: Well, obviously not everything is possible.

ME: Like what?

DUDE: Like... finding a unicorn.

ME: Unless there are unicorns. They could be like they say bigfoot are - if something unobserved you don't really have evidence that it doesn't exist.

DUDE: Okay, fine. But - jumping into the ocean and coming out completely dry.

ME: If you happened to jump through the open hatch of a submarine you would.

DUDE: Yeah, not in a submarine, though, because I said in the ocean.

ME: A submarine's IN the fucking ocean. Ergo, you're in the ocean.

DUDE: That doesn't count!

ME: Why not? You are in the ocean!

DUDE: You're in a submarine that's in the ocean! So it's not possible.

ME: Yeah it is.

DUDE: How?

ME: Maybe you're in a wetsuit that's charged with electricity, and at that moment the ocean is also charged equally and so you repel each other. And when you come out you're dry.

DUDE: ...what like a fucking forcefield? That's just retarded!

ME: Perhaps. But it's possible.

DUDE: Okay, so you jump into the ocean completely naked -

ME: Organic tissue can also be charged, you know.

DUDE: - WITHOUT a fucking magical bullshit forcefield that comes out of nowhere, into the ocean and STILL come out dry?

ME: You're putting too many constraints on this. You're being too negative.

DUDE: What do you mean?

ME: You say something isn't possible, then I give you two perfectly good examples and all you do is change the argument. That's negative, you're LOOKING for a negative answer.

DUDE: Yeah, well, you can't think of anything, can you?

ME: Maybe if the ocean's got cornflour in it-

DUDE: IT DOESN'T HAVE FUCKING CORNFLOUR!!!

ME: You see! Maybe that's really what the expression is. Anything is possible - subclause: so long as you don't go looking for more and negatives.

DUDE: ...

ME: I mean, you want to go through life constantly thinking "It will be impossible to get a job assuming I don't get a haircut, don't shave, don't wash my clothes, don't get offered any work as an extra, don't become a male prostitute, don't consider collecting trollies at Woolworths a 'job', don't have any empathic eccentric millionaire relations I don't know about so why even bother?"

DUDE: ...I hate you.

ME: Yeah, I get that a lot.

DUDE: Buy Ciaris now mega hot babes shall be cumming for more COCK!!! Viagra discounts, onlly n Nigeria.

ME: NOOOOOO! IT'S A FUCKING VIRUS!!!

DUDE: Hot teenie b1tch3s take b1g loads!!!! You w@n+? buy w0m3n n000wwUuu!!!11!

(A gigantic spider crashes through the wall and eats the dude)

ME: Oh, man, thanks.

CYBER-ARAGOG: Everybody gets one, fleshman. Everybody gets one.

Lest I forget... The Race of Sham

2010-01-13T21:23:00.005+11:00

Something I have strangely not ranted about at this point is... John Safran. I know, I'm well behind the times here. But hear me out - I watched an episode of John Safran's Race Relations... okay, not quite an episode, maybe two-thirds, and there was nothing in it to make me laugh. So why is it exactly that The Guide was hailing him as Australia's best comic genius, rating him head and shoulders above the Chaser, who ended up having their funniest year by some margin.

To sum it up... John Safran wants to find out why he likes Eurasian women. Maybe talking to sociologists, psychologists, people in modelling and plastic surgery and other people with knowledge to the cutlural construct of 'beauty' would make sense. Exercises in assessing what aspects he finds particularly attractive, cross-comparisons with his peers as to what they find attractive, etcetera. Sure, it would only last 30 minutes at best and wouldn't make any headlines, but it would address the issue.

The truth is Safran wasn't interested in the slightest in actually answering the question. He came up with a button to press - the big race card for people all round the world - and wanted to jump up and down on it. He didn't have a reason so instead he settled for an excuse. No matter how hard they try, even the people who avidly watched his show, could make no logical progression from "I'm curious as to why I find Eurasian women attractive" to "I'd better dress like a ladyboy, make out with the mothers of past girlfriends, crucify myself and encourage my cameraman to masturbate over videos of Barack Obama" It cannot be done. And without that logic you're left with the world's most deranged sketch show.

A sketch show that... isn't funny.

The episode I saw was possibly the second most infamous stunt of the show, where Safran used Hollywood cosmetics to 'transform' himself into a black man. The interesting thing was the episode showed the genesis of the idea, when Safran was talking to a white American culture expert about the race issues in the United States - she in passing mentions the seminal work Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, in a specific kind of you-should-read-this-because-you'll-never-do-anything-near-as-good.

The book is very famous for the fact that the author, without the use of Hollywood, transformed himself into a black man (er, superficially - he was not able to re-write his genetic structure and nor was he a superhero) and travelled the deep South of the US for six weeks and just wrote down all of his experiences - the absolute unbiased truth followed.

The interesting thing is that this idea is so well known it has already been duplicated in massively unsuccessful form - I can't remember the title or author but a lesbian woman disguised herself as a man and worked in a car factory or some such for a month. The review I read of this book was absolutely scathing of both the deliberate angle for marketing and the fact that all the effort was wasted - she understood so little about men that the only 'revelations' she included was stuff about men 'being less outwardly emotive'. MY GOD, SURELY THIS CANNOT BE SO??? Anyway, back to TV land..

Safran took this as his cue to say "SO, you're saying I should do that - I should become black just like he did??" Causing the talking head to mirror the audience's reaction by staring at him for a moment and saying "No... why would you want to do that? It's been done already..."

Cut to Safran walking around as a black guy. First stop - a black militant headquarters! Specifically the friendliest black militants in the world. Who show up the problems right away as a) one of them is an amateur anthropologist who is saying within minutes that Safran looks "almost like a white guy who's painted himself black" and b) Safran is the worst interviewer ever. Or simply the fact that what results is an interview in the first place.

He makes no effort to connect, to actually talk and try to convince them that he is a genuine black person - using the fact that he is from Australia as cover to not even do anything with his thoroughly nasal Jewish-Australian drawl, and asks clumsy question after question starting with "Do you find, being a black person", making no effort to segue at all. He also shows that he has no quick wit at work at all - every attempt at a joke comes via the post-production voice over. Which is itself not funny. The only faint whiff of humour comes from the two black guys presuming that every black dude on the planet can freestyle resulting in a truly embarassing display.

Following on from this Safran decides he needs to experience racism. A logical course of action, to me, would be to just walk around for a few days as a black guy. However, he clearly only has three or so days to work with and this is television - you don't WAIT for things to happen you MAKE em happen. His idea of experiencing racism, and understanding it, though was truly embarassing. Go to a hotdog store in New York famous for tensions between the black staff and the white customers, encourage the woman behind the counter to abuse the customers more and more, until one guy says variations on "Shut up", "You're so ignorant" and "Are you actually cooking food here or what?" and drops the N-word as he goes to leave.

Safran is like an eagle onto a lame mouse as he practically jumps the counter and races to the guy, demanding "Why are you so racist??" and "Why are you calling us niggers???". The scene is awkward because this is barely even a racist display and small fry for this story which has a well-established reputation for it. The white guy he attempts to button-hole for his accusations looks worried that Safran will break into tears if he doesn't apologise, such is the whining nature of his voice in the scene.

Then Safran went to a black people-only speed dating night, and spent the night, with his usual subtlety, asking every woman why they didn't want to sleep with white guys instead and what they thought about interracial relationships. Jesus.

The biggest problem was that the show offered glimpses into an interesting culture that is alien to we of the isolated white middle class, and these remained only glimpses because some tit with pretensions to either comedy or journalism kept getting in the way with bloody stupid questions. Not only was he spoon-feeding the audience facts, he did so without a message. And without any jokes.

For me, John Safran's Race Relations was The Worst Show of 2009.

Sorry, I actually found TVBurp to be a guilty pleasure. And do bear in mind I don't watch much TV...

Jared Reviews "The End of Time"

2010-01-04T21:15:00.002+11:00

I've gone back to my thing where I just write in a wordpad file when a thought comes to me. As such this is more a collection of snarky comments than a real review. At the moment I'm not entirely sure what my opinion is, so it's probably just as well. Also this contains an abandoned running gag about Australian hip-hop in addition to the usual unnecessary profanity.

Holy shit, Bernard Cribbins finally gets a massive block capital "AND BERNARD CRIBBINS!" just like I joked about some time last year. This is a little surreal, especially with the raft of guest stars in this story that I have heard about.

*

In case anybody was in doubt that The Time Lord Victorious is a complete arsehole he shows up on Oodsphere and immediately details the missing adventure gap to prevent BF or anyone else running away with that time and brags about how he went back to pop Queen Elizabeth's cherry for shits and giggles.

It's a little bit difficult to believe that there would be no royal history of Queen Elizabeth getting married. Seeing as she's fairly famous for NOT doing that. But then I guess we could be in parallel universeland right now...

*

"Last time I was here you said that my song would be ending soon... and I'm in no hurry for that." A remarkably un-Doctorly thing to be saying, as he has traditionally espoused sacrifice and certainly didn't take similar stances in Planet of the Spiders or Logopolis - both those cases were his fault and his 'death' rectified them, yes, but the suggestion definitely is that this is the case here. Another sign of Time Lord Victorious' egocentric attitude?

*

Jesus Christ "I... locked it like a car. That's funny." The act of explaining the joke excruciatingly to a non-reaction from a bit character is giving me flashbacks to The Love Guru, although Ten isn't laughing hysterically at the time helps it. Maybe the fact that Sigma lives on a planet where there apparently aren't cars could be the problem, you 21st century centric prat?

I may be seeing shadows at every corner, but to me this seems like ANOTHER mark of Time Lord Victorious (I'll call him TLV from hereon in, eh?) trying to charm his way through in a forced and stilted manner. Possibly also a mark of this being the CHRISTMAS SPECIAL which comes with a contractual level of jollility expected.

I like just how pissed off they were able to make Sigma look in response, though.

*

Like the Ood city. Wouldn't mind a story set in an alien place like that, but budgetary reasons could still be preventing it. Should be grateful for brief miniature shots eh?

*

"Something has accelerated your species far beyond the normal" It's a weird assessment to make so quickly. 100 years is a long time, and they had a culture of their own prior to their enslavement. With the three parts of the brain united you'd think the Ood would have a lot of racial memories restored, and the union between them would mean that they would naturally evolve faster than humans - afterall, they would share roughly 60% of all knowledge that there is in their world between all of them. That and the humans left a lot of high technology gear behind. TLV's being a disingenuous prick!

Sorry, this episode probably should be watched two-thirds sloshed with two kilos of turkey sitting uneasily. I'd probably have let that past in that state.

But... come on, travel back to Federation, go to Edmund Barton and say "Hey! Comb-over! I can phone a motherfucker in Mongolia and it will cost me 5 of your pence once you adjust for inflation, I can get a photo of your house in ten seconds with my ADSL3, with enough money I can buy me a holiday IN FUCKING SPACE and I can look at girl's ankles ALL DAY LONG!" Okay, that's asking a lot on my part. But assuming he isn't confused or violent, he might himself say "That's impossible - evil powers are affecting humankind's evolution!" if he was very good at interpreting this sort of needlessly confrontational dialogue - and he would be wrong.

OR WOULD HE????

*

If that last piece was especially erratic it was halfway through writing that that I had dinner, and when I came back I had a quick round of Shane Warne Cricket 96 and listened to Moby for a while.

...what? I'm only five minutes into this thing???

*

Hang on, the Doctor talks about Sigma reaching back into 'the 21st century' - wasn't WoM set in the 22nd? .. nope, stand corrected there. Just checked the .avi.

*

The Ood oracle doesn't sound alien enough to me. Okay, he's got his own voice but he sounds just like... a guy. Which makes it look uncomfortably like a guy in a latex alien head. Also, I thought that the natural born Ood didn't really have the power of speech, communicating through song instead. Sigma definitely did the talking in the last story..

Mind you, given my track record there's going to be a piece of dialogue explaining these complaints away any second..

*

It's somehow a funny notion that everyone in the Universe should be freaked out so badly by some garishly-lit footage of the Master laughing in a somewhat camp manner. Reminds m of Pertwee's nightmare in The Time Monster.

*

"Doctor.. you gotta do one thing for us... get... Friar Tuck."
"FRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAR TUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!"

..it's a Simpsons reference. It's funny. Because... yeah, Simpsons... Doctor Who... funny? No?

...that was a throwback gag. Throwback? Because.. never mind.

*

I usually hate those touches, but I'm actually glad they dubbed the Doctor saying "The Master's wife" over the footage of Lucy Saxon because I really had no idea who it was. Especially since I was expecting either Donna or Martha for some reason.

*

Oh, kay, NOW we're in the type of recap I hate... erm, wow complete with some extremely jaunty jazz clarinet work by Murray Gold. Man, you always get me before I make any statement like "Murray hasn't put a foot wrong for a couple of years, has he?" That was damned surreal. Reminds me of Death to the Daleks... am I going to be reminded of a lot of old episodes here?

LMAO at the seamless transition between "I held him in my arms, I burnt his body!" because it sounds like the Doctor's about to say "Just to make SURE the motherfucker was dead!"

*

Okay so ... it was just some random that picked up the Master's ring. Because the Doctor was not burning his body on Whatever the Last Planet in the Universe Was Called as most of us thought but just in some random quarry in the UK. Leaving the obvious question of... is this guy a fucking idiot or what? No, the Master won't return from certain death. He's only done that... let's see... The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken, Castrovalva, Planet of Fire, The Mark of the Rani, Survival, Doctor Who: The Movie / The Enemy Within and Utopida (surviving the BLOODY TIME WAR). Oh, let's throw in The War Games as well (cos it's him) but let's leave comics and novels out of this. So that's nine times previously. Do bear in mind that two of those involved stealing the bodies of nearby people.

*

"Events that have happened... are happening now..."

"Yeah... like... we're all happening. And we all have happened. So... it's us."

"Whoa... totally deep, man..."

*

There is no aerodynamic reason to suppose that gritting your teeth harder will allow you to run faster.

*

..the Doctor unlocked his TARDIS remotely? So it wasn't just a joke? How did he upgrade his TARDIS in that way in the gap between stories? He seriously spent a large amount of time building a new security system that would allow him to remotely unlock his TARDIS like some fucking prat yuppie? Could THIS be the anti-capitalist message that Mad Larry has been yearning for - TLV's pigheaded interest in decadent extras for his 'ride' is responsible for the downfall of the entire Universe as he ignores the clear and imminent danger? It's practically Ben Eltonian...

*

Lucy Saxon seems to be imprisoned somewhere in Medieaval times, seeing as the governor's office looks like an ossuary and is illuminated by candlelight...

*

So she kissed him a few times three years ago and the 'biometric signature' is still on her lips? Okay, hard(ish) to argue as I don't think anybody's written papers on the transference of biometric signatures through oral contact between hominid inter-planetary relations, but seems a little far-fetched. I mean I kind of bought the one involving Martha because that was only a few minutes after the fact...

Also, the longer this scene goes the more it feels like "Hardcore Lesbian Basement Coven 6". And I should know, having watched the original.

*

Good to see no directors asked John Simms to tone his performance down. Either that or they did and we're seeing him do a Richard Briers..

*

Okay... what? The guard just happens to be a secret agent of the Anti-Secret Book of Saxon League.. I'm betting whatever McGuffin Lucy has just pulled out is completely useless and the Master put it in the Book of Saxon as a laugh.

Hmm.. might have called that one slightly wrong..

*

Meanwhile, Friar Tuck calls Christmas off because it's a load of Pagan bullshit and Jesus was born in July.

*

Fascinating - the way Wilf shouted his lines to a completely unresponsive house suggests to me they didn't want to infect the series with any more Sylvia Noble than was necessary. Let's hope I'm right.

And thanks to popular demand even more Cribbins dancing! Will he go on to do some encore performances of his memorable spoon-selling days?

Man, some real Dad's Army stuff shaping up here. I wonder if Arthur Lowe's still alive to make a cameo...

*

LMAO! A dude drops out of the sky behind you, specifically a freaky Aryan-looking bloke in a blackie hoodie with his angry face on, and you smile and say "Somebody's lively on his feet!" Probably the funniest moment of the year.

For unrelated reasons I am watching the rest of this scene at least with Hilltop Hoods' The Hard Road (Restrung) playing in the background.

*

Is the idea that these two blokes are of the recently homeless? Knowing RTD it could well be, and that could be the reason for their vague awareness of politics and the economy. Just otherwise I can't see a pair of homeless guys running away in terror at the sight of a dude who is just crazy - in their positions the amount of mentally unbalanced people you'd encounter would be very high and they'd learn a number of ways to humour, disarm, charm and evade them without alarming them. These two guys basically scream "FUCK THIS!" and tail it. Which, incidentally, would have made more sense at the stage when he DROPPED OUT OF THE SKY behind them.

...

Okay, when he starts talking like The Karkus and transforming into Geoffrey Beavers it makes more sense to freak the fuck out. I like the way that this scary moment is being nicely underscored by Stopping All Stations.

*

The revelation that the Master has eviscerated the lunch truck has to be one of the least alarming twists in the new series, but I guess it would have freaked some kids out. The superman performance afterwards does kind of go against the Master and the concept of him being a yang to the Doctor's ying with comparable powers, but I guess it isn't the first time that he's gone and gotten himself ridiculous superpowers.. because HE CAN.

*

The Doctor arrives on the scene surprisingly quickly in terms of plot ... considering I don't know where the hell we are but I'm guessing that it's the site of the prison explosion for it to have relevance. Interesting that his arrival should be accompanied by Conversations from a Speakeasy (ft Omni).

*

Hmm, clearly not the site of the prison. Could there be a deleted scene revealed later that fills in a gap?

I would have liked more moments in the Classic series such as the moment where the Master senses the Doctor's arrival and starts playing the beat of the drums on the nearest ..well, drum .. but so far the episode seems to be a little flounder-ish in terms of actual plot. I'm still just getting 'bad stuff is going to happen' in the real scheme of things, even if the chase scene was well shot.

*

The Doctor is molested by geriatrics. There's no joke attached to that, but it didn't feel right to let it go unremarked upon.

*

25:15 Man, I haven't seen dubbing that bad since Bladerunner. There is the slightest movement of Wilf's lips as he moves into the cafe, though apparently laughing and delivering a line at the time. And this is a closer mid-shot from the front! Is this a Chekhov's Gun moment for Wilf's powers of ventriloquism to save the day?

*

Surely the Doctor never saw Wilf with the paintgun?

*

Wait.. now there's ANOTHER reason that the Doctor and Wilf keep meeting? Christ, they've been fated once already! The Universe wants the two of them to shack up clearly. This is just like when Peter Davison was Doctor and the Time Lords kept setting him up on awkward dates to evil alien monsters.

*

Donna Temple-Noble? There has to be a pun in there, surely?

*

"He's making do."

"Aren't we all."

"Fuck you! You have a magical fucking time machine! Cry me a river you spiky-haired bug-eyed Scottish prick!"

*

The scene seems a bit muddled - Wilf wanted the Silver Cloak to catch the Doctor so they could catch up and an off-chance of convincing the Doctor to make some effort to undo the somewhat contrived circumstances that left Donna as an abrasive human timebomb. Which I guess is understandable but doesn't entirely fit in with what he's done in the story so far - his primary worry did seem to be the Master.

If nothing else, though, I strongly support the fact that it's now effectively canon that Donna is Ten's favourite companion even if Rose was the one he wanted to boink.

*

30:47 - Okay... overly portentous narrator who is telling me very little is apparently Robson Greene playing the Celestial Toymaker?

*

Aaaaand the revelation that the Master is unable to hit an exceedingly slowly walking man with his newfound lightning powers at a range of twenty odd metres somehow does not make me fear him.

*

Okay, what the fuck? The Master and the Doctor had homo-erotic day trips gambolling on his father's estate? They met at the Academy, and the suggestion is that they didn't know each other excessively well - the Doctor's certainly more familiar with Drax than the Master, doesn't even remember him (In his first incarnation) in The Five Doctors. Saward may have pissed in the salad with a suggestion that the two were brothers he chucked in for no reason, but I haven't seen that idea toyed with outside of fanfic, even in the EU and it doesn't bear up with anything else that we know about them. (Such as the Master not knowing who the Doctor's parents were in the TVM ... okay feel a backlash forming now, nevermind that argument...)

Aisde from that, a good scene, largely thanks to the performers - a bit odd that the Master says "All these years you thought I was mad!" referencing the drumming, which the Doctor learnt about for the first time not even two years ago. Okay, the Doctor thought he was mad at various times prior to that, but that wasn't what they were discussing. Wait, I turned negative again. A good scene, John Simm is very, very good, and the gimmick of the Master and Doctor working together doesn't seem able to ever get old. Well accompanied by Monster's Ball, as well. (Should I stop doing these jokes? Eh, I'll stop when the album stops...)

*

Christ, even when he's about to die people can't shoot straight at the Doctor.

And.. he's grazed by a bullet for the six billionth time in his life.

*

Aww, fuckit I just saw Sylvia in the background. I hope for the love of God it's just a stand-in and she has no dialogue.

Interesting that somebody gave Wilf a copy of Fighting the Future and Corrupt Figures of Authority With Guerilla Warfare by the mysterious Rairf Kcut. They sense the story arc is strong with this one...

*

NOOOOOO! She speaks! Please no I prayed this day would never come!!!

She's saying something is lovely, though, which is unusual. I find it strange.

.. ah, there we go she's being a bitch in the same breath I KNEW IT!

*

Ah, Wilf, you soddled old staunch monarchist.

Hang about... seeing as Wilf is so keen on the Royal Family and Donna does seem to live in the same house, how is it possible she doesn't even know what Thin Lizzie looks like? I know RTD likes to have goes at the Royals at any oppurtunity but come on...

*

"You never killed a man" I wonder how strict that definition is, seeing as Wilf is a former airman.. maybe I'm misremembering here but wasn't there the suggestion that he fought in The Battle of Britain?

Another nice touch to Wilf's personality that he is proud of this fact.

*

42:05 - Wilf, use the Chekhov's gun to shoot Sylvia down! You're out of shot now, you can do it! It'll be just like Lindsay Duncan again - it can be pre-watershed!

She's your daughter? Yes... what's that got to do with it?

*

"Well you're not leaving me with her!" "Fair enough"

w00t! Finally a signal that RTD recognizes what a tremendous noxious tart he has created..

Hehe, and "I thought it would be cleaner." There is a reason he is known in fandom as Wilfred "Made of Awesome" Mott...

*

Okay... he needs to check some important equipment in the basement for some reason... he needs the hottest chick in the office to carry a clipboard for him to do so... right, I'm hoping this is a storyteller's double-bluff and these two are part of a resistance. Because otherwise, with this and Doomsday it looks a bit like alien interference in scientific installations leads to workers wanting to bang each other senseless ..

Ah, aliens themselves. Is cool. The actress looks familiar... very experimental music. Go from a jazz drum beat-y thing to some techno riffs when they transform..

*

Wait.. is Rairf Kcut talking about Torchwood One, Two or Three? Sigh, why even bring them into it - hasn't this story got enough stuff in it to muddy continuity?

The Master ignores all this, though and asks for a slice of The Other Black Meat.

*

Okay, Rairf Kcut is a complete nutter. Can he be so eager considering that the last project Saxon was involved with about immortality ended up with a Mark Gatiss-shaped scorpion trying to eat everything it found? Is he that ignorant of events in post-11th century Britain?

*

"And don't swear."

Fuck you, Doctor! Did you ever smack down Ace and Benny when they were F-bombing you across the galaxy, you crukking funt?

*

There is only one legal private army in the world, and it is the property of the Duke of Athol in Scotland... I know, doesn't really count as an error as such.

*

Clearly these alien scientists aren't as clever as they think they are - she says the Master's 'triplicated' the whatsit doodalimatrices (I wasn't listening that hard) when triplicated ISN'T A FUCKING WORD. You 'treble' if you don't 'triple'. If you fall over in precisely the same way you did earlier you might 'triplicate'.

*

"Now please don't imagine I'm a slave driver - because that would be well racist."

*

Okay, my first guess is that the Master has EVIL-RIGGED this thing to kill whoever walks through it. That or the gateway is for invaders to come to Earth. Or, maybe both at once and whoever goes through is instantly posessed...

If Rairf Kcut is up to his old standards he will send the Master through first.

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Heee, Skeletor!

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On ya, Kcut, you know you can't trust him! But now I know he's second-guessed you (Because he's the motherfucking Master) and bad shit's about to go down..

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I am totally unconvinced by that totally unconvincing stand-in playing Barack Obama. Okay, it's from the back but is it too much to ask for a stand-in to have the same HAIRCUT as the guy he's meant to be, seeing as it's the ONLY THING we effectively see in the shot? Flight of the Conchords got a good Obama-lookalike!

I do like the way the US newsreader calls it a 'worldwide depression', demonstrating that Americans are complete tools with a lack of nomenclature. Aside from any who might be engaged to people who occassionally read this blog. (Hullo Miles!)

Maan, they've even got some sound-bites of him! This is becoming faintly less unconvincing..

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"At arms!" cries Rairf Kcut's Camp Butler and Sergeant-at-Arms in one, sounding as though he is a recently castrated thespian from Blackadder, causing me to giggle at him.

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Oh, so the Master uses the gateway to infect everyone with... Master-ism... I'm kinda liking where this plot is going. Just the right side of Unnecessary Epic Bigness thus far..

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LMAO at Wilf calmly pulling out his revolver by mistake when his phone's ringing. Incidentally, I am quite worried for old Wify here. Traditionally it has not been good for companions to get locked in glass tubes close to a cliffhanger...

Oh, yes, and Donna isn't infected because she's half Time Lord! Clever throwback, RTD!

Meanwhile emos are revealed to have especially low Masterism tolerance..

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Erm.. okay. Wow. I take back all of compliments. The entire planet is going to Innerspace into John Simms. Fuck this.

*

Yes. He's EVERYONE. I get it. Stretch this out for two minutes, will you? Am I going to see some John Simms snowboarding off the Opera House any moment? A John Simms pissing on the Taj Mahal, a John Simms abseiling down the Sphinx etc? I'm currently being entertained with the mindblowing special effect of editing together a series of shots of John Simms giggling like a loon whilst wearing different jackets and shirts. This kind of radical SFX clearly deserves a lot of airtime.

Oh, got Mephisto back to do the credits?

It was pretty clear that dude was a Time Lord from the way he was dressed so that hasn't amazed me. I don't know, you think I'd be a little excited but... naah. This is filling the very familiar template of an RTD finale. There is a chance that the Time Lords could actually stick around after this story, though, for a change - because that would bring the mopey Doctor arc to an end which Moffat has already said he would like to do.

Looks like Donna could end up okay, though, which would be kind of cool but.. man, seems like RTD's stretching a bit with this one. Almost seems like we got a season's arc in the first half of the episode, in fact, with the sudden revelation that there was a cult complete with sacred texts dedicated to Harold Saxon, Lucy's fate etc - would this not have been more effective worked over the course of a season? Okay, perhaps not because you'd know the Master would be in the finale - but it's not like he was a surprise HERE, is it?

The story has gotten so blatantly in-your-face, amazingly in the last minute or so, I have little hope for the finale. But, hey, it could be as good as Last of the Timelords, the only finale I unequivocably liked (Bizarrely the one everyone else hated, as is often the way). And I must admit I went into this expected to be disappointed and, up to 53 minutes in I was hovering on the 'pleasantly surprised' line.

I guess if nothing else, the very last episode promises more Wilf and Donna. And very little Sylvia, seeing as she no longer exists. So roll it on, DJ!

*

Oh, it was Timothy Dalton. Bugger, should have recognised him from Hot Fuzz.

...what the FUCK??? Brian Cox as the voice of the Ood Elder???

Also, Silas Carson played Ood Sigma. Better known as Ki-Adi Mundi from the Star Wars prequels.

...yeah, I know, that was a lesser bombshell. Ki-Adi's the coneheaded bloke with the beard in all the council scenes. He tripled-up, actually - if I remember correctly Carson also played the pilot of the Republic ship Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan take to the Trade Federation station in Episode 1 as well as Nute Gunray (leader of the offensive coward yellow-peril aliens aka Nemoidians).

For some reason I still get a little freaked out when I see Gary Russell's name in the credits. Is it just the knowledge that he buys and sells 20 fanboys like me a week?

NEXT TIME: In the episode everyone aside from that one arsehole in Australia has already watched...

John Simms bugs out his eyes unnecessarily! Timothy Dalton paints his fingernails! The Time Lord Victorious is constipated! John Simms is ANGRY! Timothy Dalton works on his pimp walk down some corridors! The Women keeps making portentous prophecy ad fucking nauseum! Donna looks to her left while making a phonecall! John Simms laughs! Larry Miles claims they're ripping him off! The Doctor isn't really a Time Lord! (or... something else relevant) John Simms relieves himself into his trousers before blowing up his playstation! Wilf packs heat! The Doctor willingly takes a gun for the first time since Saward's typewriter exploded! John Simms still bugs his eyes out! The Doctor tells the bang-thud-bang-thud-bang-thud joke!

Now I'm going to watch some Stargate Atlantis.

Late Christmas Stocking Post of sorts

2009-12-30T14:07:00.006+11:00

I think I may have some filing problems when I look at my Wordpad recently added files, and see that I saved the lyrics to the song 'The Candyman Can' in my 'Blakes 7' folder. Ah, well, it can stay there for now...

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I haven't posted for some time, I'm not sure why. The blog muse is a fickle creature, and it isn't as if there hasn't been stuff for me to post about. I did a quick search the other day to confirm I never mentioned the trifling matter of Monty, our prized boxer dog (former pup, now deadly behemoth) being found with his little mate Chester throwing an Eastern Brown snake between them up the hill. And then, when being called, failing to catch the EB, getting bitten by it and very nearly dying. As the EB is the second deadliest snake in the world.

Nor did I chronicle that same EB coming back to terrorise our house like the dude Ed Harris played in A History of Violence by appearing in the rose garden, the retaining hall, the chook house and near the water tank until we forcefully evicted it. FROM THIS MORTAL COIL!

It has been Christmas, though, which is generally a notable time of year. I was thinking about it again when my brother casually mentioned that Tony Martin has two books out and my dad expressed amazement at this revelation, causing me to irritably point out that not only do we have one of them, I bought it as a Christmas gift last year that he never even looked at. He was disbelieving until I rooted the book of the most unreachable area of the coffee table, behind the National Geographics and buried under cheap, musty paperbacks liberated from the second-hand shop in town. He's since been reading it through and pissing himself laughing at the incredibly nerdy childhood antics of everyone's favourite ex-pat Kiwi comedian not named Cal Wilson, and I've been the getting the latest ever satisfaction from a present that has been enjoyed.

The haul for myself this year was quite good, as my brother and his semi-defacto-possibly-fiance girlfriend went on a bit of a present shopping spree. No extra gig of memory, but that's cool I let it slide y'all. I have *drum roll*

A mobile phone, as the course of this year revealed it could actually be useful for me and there are circumstances where more than one of us are out of the house and so the family one doesn't quite cut it.

Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Siege and Battleflag - two books so well chosen you'd have thought that I was actually there with mum in Borders pointing out the two that she'd need to get me at her request.

A copy of Rome: Total War as an early present, from a close friend now working at EB (Electronics Boutique, not the Eastern Brown snake shop) looking for any games marked well below $20 that would cost him about 10 dollars with his staff discount which I also picked out, given that Ricky Ponting's International Cricket 2005 was slightly too expensive (WHY does it always cost more than 2007???) Having played the game briefly I need to say it is fun and engenders feelings of megalomania in those who play it, as all strategy games should.

Two seasons of Scrubs on DVD which is kind of interesting as I borrowed all the discs from fellow student Nadia this year and watched through them, but the show is of so high a quality this could in no way danger the enjoyement that can be reaped from them. In fact, it's slightly embarassing that I came to the show so late (in it's sixth year!) because my viewing habits were so dependant on what my parents wanted to watch throughout high school. God bless Torrents.

Nothing Doctor Who related which was a minor surprise, but cool with me.

A watch, one of those presents that made me stunned by the keen abilities of others to pick up what a good gift would be. When cleaning up the 'other' house on our property - the temporary shack we lived in for, ooh, 16 years while the 'real' house was being built (for about 12 of those years only in theory) I found my old watch which I really liked. It had buckets of sentimental value as it was a present from my now-deceased grandfather, beautifully engraved and has a lovely leather band that fits perfectly. Unfortunately, it's quite cheap and basically stopped completely, needing to be fixed, every fucking time it rained. When I found it, I casually remarked how much I liked having a watch to check up on and before you know it I've got a genuinely classy one. Boss.

A box of Junior Mints, though one was given to everyone in the household by my brother because he has a source and we're all a bunch of hopeless Seinfeld fanboys essnetially. There are episodes I can probably quote in their entirety if I was to try.

A box of Lynx deodorant and shower gel and this one seems to be an annual gift from the pseudo sister-in-law, the obvious implication being that I have truly offensive BO and need to get something done about it. I feel half like taking offence at it, but if I did then I wouldn't get any more free cosmetics and as is, thanks to my Scottish-inherited Hyper Frugality I can make one of those deodorant cans last more than a year. Before long I'll be set for life. (Seriously, there's more in a can of deodorant than most people realise)

A USB flash drive which is completely unexciting, but handy because I lost my old one and I'm not even sure how I did it or if it had any precious porn on it at the time.

The Chaser Annual, which I'd forgotten about until I just saw it - I should check that out. On the subject of the Chaser, and though this is something I have been advised about saying by absolutely everyone I have said it to, I think the Cancer Kids sketch was just plain funny. I maintain that. No, not the 'Why go to all that effort, when they're just going to die anyway' line, but before that when we see a very eager Andrew saying "So, I understand you wanted to meet Zac Efron, is that right? Well.. how about this stick instead?" That fucking killed me. Even typing it just then I had a big smile on my face.

Come to think of it, I don't even know if I posted anything about that. I thought the media beat-up was completely ludicrous, and vindicating wack-job women who are apparently capable of getting so outraged by TV shows that they say they lose their breath and claim to suffer the symptoms of a heart attack isn't giving them any credibility in my book. As has been said, if you concern yourself with the most sensitive people that's where censorship starts. If you were to just ask people on the street, then you'd get a more logical answer.

Those people did answer, and so ultimately the skit crossed the line (whilst still being HILARIOUS) and they didn't cross the line again. Whilst still being HILARIOUS. I didn't think the nutjobs needed such a thorough airing, including whichever AM shockjock it was offering a prize for anyone who could get him the Chaser's home addresses, a 'brainsnap' somewhere in the vicinity of Alan Jones' "Let's Break Australia's Record for Race Riots This Sunday!" promotion.

So that's Christmas covered somewhere in that rant.

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I've recently gotten the image of a racist-cum-neo Nazi, ironically on purely racist grounds as a fellow library student, I might just name Ashley Kasturnen who I got on fairly well with enjoyed starting arguments with me on entirely baseless terms. Because he's half-Turkish or round-a-bouts, so visibly either foreign-ish OR a guy with a bit of a tan he infrequently decided to identify as black, and claim that I was racist for any comment about any culture, because I'm pale and have blond hair.

To play with the idea I often made some genuinely insensitive comments, albeit facetiously. This backfired a little when I put a swag of amusing errata from my harddrive onto a disc for another classmate, and happened to choose a little video some people online operating under the name 'The Whitest Kids' entitled 'The Hitler Rap'. No, it is exactly what it sounds like. When she watched this one in the middle of class some people interpreted this in certain ways..

Now I'm feeling especially awkward as I'm using all the multi-billion dollar power of Google to try and find out whether cricketer Nathan Hauritz is Jewish. I know, there is no savoury reason to want to know this! Well.. except one, kind of, as I read somewhere before that he was and I've casually described him to other people as "the world's greatest Jewish off-spinner" because it is a sport decidedly seen as non-Jewish if only explicitly. But then I tried to remember where the hell I'd read this because I've seen it nowhere else since.

The answer - possibly my own mind. The most helpful match (and that is VERY relative) I came up with is a thread called 'Jewish Current XI' at site named "Sport Taco'.

Herscelle Gibbs
Jimmy Maher
Mark Butcher
Jaques Rudolph
Darren Lehmann (c)
Chris Harris
Andy Flintoff
Andy Bichel
Chris Nevin (wk)
Jacob Oram
Nathan Hauritz

They could beat many of the Test teams.

This response, incidentally, wins the award for Jared's Christmas Spirit Post of the Year:

Presumably by occupying the pitch, and then shooting the opposition players on suspicion of wanting to come on the pitch and attack them. Now go away, you nasty little bigot.

I doubt Lehmann, Oram or Hauritz would endorse such behaviour, being fine upstanding players but I can imagine Flintoff endorsing it. At any rate, no proof was offered and the general consensus was that the thread was a rather racist presumption that everybody with, erm, Jewishesque names was the real Dradl, when they might just be a bunch of Alan Aldas. Hmm, how could I put that in as tactful a way as possible?

have you been looking in the players showers after the game, I wonder

Thank you, person from that thread. Some more fine work. If nothing else the 'research' made me feel less racist.

Now, turned to Wikipedia and NM Hauritz is not listed in their section of "Jewish cricketers" a very helpful category. As Wikipedia is the repository of all knowledge I'm taking this as wrote that I was completely wrong about our beloved offie and hope no offense is to be caused (HAHAHAHA!) by this little piece.

How did this even spring to my mind? Because Hauritz kicked arse by taking FIVE MOTHERFUCKING WICKETS against Pakistan awww yeah!

*

Yes, there's a new Doctor Who story out there. Of course I haven't seen it yet - I don't have any bloody broadband. I have no options here! I just need to sit here, unquiet and slowly going mad in the gloom while the 'net just EXPLODES. I already know too much - the Master's in it, Donna's in it... the mother from Ab Fab is in it! I think.

Yes, that is too much for me, I am not a Doctor Who Mag guy.

Everything I've heard though suggests to me that I'm not going to like this episode at all. Everytime RTD has planned a story with a raft of elements from the past, often not actually from the past at all but really self-indulgent and recursive obsessing over his own small patch of the canon, the result has ranged from underwhelming to complete shite - with The New Doctor at the underwhelming end of the scale and Journey to Stolen Earth of Donna gets Fucked Over on the obvious end.

Similarly, everytime RTD does a big "This plot has ended. It's ended!" moment and then goes back on it, I've been similarly unimpressed. I didn't even like Rose's exit in Doomsday to begin with, but at least it had finality. The comeback in TSE was limp and shallow, and not even terriby interesting, if anything forcing the Doctor to go backwards a bit in terms of character development.

Likewise the Daleks have gone through a series of fairly impressive diminishing returns to the point I think they are hands-down the most boring enemy in the show, taking the role of Batman in internet nerd talk. (That's a good question, though - who wins a fight between Batman and the Daleks? Kleenex sales?) And I guess similarly if it was possible for the Cyberman to be less Cyberman-ly than in AOG they managed it when they appointed some random feminzai as their God and found she kicked their arses.

Did I rant about that, by the way? Okay, I can understand Daleks beating Cybermen. I don't like it but it's definitely understandable. But random chicks in the 19th Century played by an actress so hammy she'd give a Rabbi a heart attack smacking them down and making them her bitch? Come the fuck on. To come back from this The Cybermen need to win. They need to royally kick arse on the Doctor. Earthshock II. Followed by Earthshock III and IV before the Doctor can finally get one over them in the season finale. Then they might have some credibility again after this fucking debacle. God, as if Silver Nemesis wasn't bad enough!

Ahem, what I was getting at is that RTD bringing back stuff that he has killed and buried and napalmed the grave off has not gone well and I'm expecting it to be worse when Donna comes back. Even if it's just dream sequence, there'll still be the baggage and I'm hearing everyone else is coming back too... god damn.

The closest template I have is The Stolen Earth, the other time that RTD's combined "modern Five Doctors" with "event bigness special!" and dear God was that one of the many contenders for 'worst story ever' we've had served up in a short period. Bad Wolf and Last of the Time Lords showed that he can write good finales, without even being ludicrously mind-bendingly massive, but when he feels the need to start a whirlpool of recurring figures joining the Doctor left-right-and-centre everything goes to pot. This is Tennant's story, and even though all we've had as a sign of what's to come is a solitary Ood, I doubt it will be terribly low key.

The irony is that I'm writing speculation for it at a time when everybody else has stopped because they've seen the bloody thing. Interestingly somebody I know seemingly deleted their review after I changed my status on Facebook threatening death to anyone who gave me spoilers. It's okay, Ewen, I saw the massive spoiler warning in red font you made.

Now... when the hell am I going to be able to get a copy? Been waiting for contact with my source for a couple of days now...

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Phew, nearly forgot to delete all those "Is Hauritz Jewish" searches from Internet Explorer's history..

It may also be possible that I've grown out of Ben Chatham. Or the stories are becoming increasingly more childish.