Mostly Harmless

I'm off to Italy this evening, as seems to now be my yearly tradition at some point every summer. As has also become tradition, it means I'll be working far from home on my birthday. Seriously, with my kind of work, I haven't celebrated a normal birthday among friends around home since I turned 19. Every year I seem to be traveling and in the middle of a production.

Still, Italy is not exactly a bad place to spend your birthday. I'll be there to sing Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi, one of the Puccini Trittico operas (on which I pontificated extensively on a couple of years ago here). Gianni Schicchi is the comedic one, so it's going to be a lot of fun. It's also got one of the most difficult arias a tenor can sing. I seem to be making it my business to sing the most difficult tenor repertoire lately. Anyway, it's the first time I've sung the role, and I'm looking forward to it.

I arrive a few days before rehearsals begin, and that will leave me a few days to relax, which I'm really going to enjoy, particularly on my birthday. I plan to spend the day on the beach and drink a lot of good wine. ;)

It seems to me that fandom is mostly reacting the way I predicted in my first post. There are plenty of people who loved it, and these are the people who didn't go into it with an agenda of expectations on what they were going to see. Most of them generally like RTD to, but then IMHO, the RTD haters mostly hate him for not writing Doctor Who the way they see it, and have nothing to do with real critique of the quality of his work. Interestingly, I've seen a lot of people claim that on first viewing they hated it, then they watched it a second time after banishing expectations of what should happen from their minds, and ended up loving it.

The ones that didn't like it are mostly going on about how they would have done it better. Some of their ideas are good, some really bad, but none that I have seen is actually better than what we got in the actual episode. So, the way I see it, we get a lot of fans who feel entitled crying just because RTD didn't do it their way.

Also, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what the episode was meant to be. Sure, there's plenty of people complaining that the Science aspect wasn't very plausible, the usual people who mistake Doctor Who for Sci-Fi when it is quite properly fantasy. They also miss the point that it is meant to be a break neck paced, absurd, fun romp (with a few really wow character moments for the Doctor and Donna). Like most of these types of RTD scripts, there's talk of lots of plot holes. Of course, the answers to these holes are there if you want to see them, RTD just doesn't have time with this pacing to stop everything and do a bunch of heavy exposition as they would have done on the old series. So, the people who don't want to look for the answers will just slag them off as plot holes.

Ah, well. At least they're not complaining that the Sonic Screwdriver was used too much this time... ;)

Ok. Before I go to any forum.... Before I see what anyone else has written... Before I see just how joyless fandom can be, as they doubtlessly pick the shit out of this episode, with exclamations of OMG RTD destroyed regeneration, or RTD ruined the finale, or RTD can't write a decent finale, or two doctors yuck.... or any of the other bullshit individual fans are no doubt going to lob at this thing for daring to contradict their own personal, inflexible, rubbish little out look on what Doctor Who should be...

Let me just say I loved the shit out of that.
( Spoilers )

Happy Fourth of July! Ironically, on the day of my Countries independence from Britain, I'm mostly concerned about what is about to happen on my favorite show tomorrow across the pond!

Looks like the UK is going crazy over Doctor Who's big cliff hanger last week, being resolved in the series finale tomorrow. It looks like a whole "Who shot JR" thing over there, from what I'm reading. So, what do you all predict?

Will the Doctor regenerate into David Morissey?
Or into a fully human and a fully Time Lord double of Ten?
Will Seven and Five be showing up to save the day? (three fold man, lol)
Will Donna turn out to be Romana?
Or the Rani?
Or the Master?
Will Davros confess that he really is Adam after all?

Tomorrow can't come soon enough!

New Air-conditioner arrived this morning. It has a 230 volt plug. A plug which I have no outlet for. It has to go back. The one I really need won't be in stock for a week. Kill me now.

Day two. No air conditioning. Am dieing here....

Major heat wave here.... which is the perfect time for my air conditioner to decide to die. Replacement arriving thursday, three fucking days from now, just in time for the predicted end of the heat wave.... Life sucks.

It's getting up to 101 today!

Just wondering if anyone knows who this is... Give it till 1:17 *laughing my ass off*

Via Steven Novella's Neurologica blog, Ben Stein in an interview on the Trinity television network:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.


Really? Seriously, Ben Stein, Fuck off.

This is all, of course, publicity for the documentary Expelled, currently tanking at a theater near you (or more probably not), in which Mr. Stein stars. It is a documentary attempting to highlight flaws in Evolution, and how "Scientists" that don't believe in it are being repressed. One would most likely ask how a person who didn't believe in a theory with so much evidence backing it up, and no serious evidence contradicting it could be considered a Scientist, but there you go. One of the central claims of Expelled is seriously that believing in Evolution leads to NAZIism, in the mother of all appeals to Godwin. Needless to say, the claims of the documentary are patently absurd, and you can learn more about it's disingenuousness at ExpelledExposed.com. Also, Six things Ben Stein doesn't want you to know about Expelled.

If you're like me, your chomping at the bit over the return of Indiana Jones to the silver screen for the first time in about twenty years later this month. If you're really like me, you looking forward to hearing John Williams new score for this film as much if not more than the actual movie. The sound track for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is slated to be released on the 20th, a mere four days before the actual film. No birdies have arrived at my doorstep with the goodies yet, but there does seem to be some screeners out there. There is a translation of a glowing French review of the soundtrack available online. In addition (squee!), Amazon
has the CD listed along with 30 second samples of all of the tracks! Of particular note are tracks 19 (full out Marian theme) and 6 (a quote from Raiders pertaining to the Ark). Just from these samples alone, the music seems to be the closest to classic Williams we've heard in quite some time. If the French review is to be trusted, there are a few more classic quotes in the full score than can be heard at Amazon, including more interesting development of the Ark theme in track 6. God, I'm looking forward to this movie!

So, my sister Maureen (who used to be around these parts as modotbanshee) and my friend Joey, who have been dating for, oh, years now, are getting married (probably next febuary)!

WESTON, Wisconsin (AP) -- A couple who prayed as their 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes will be charged with second-degree reckless homicide, a prosecutor said Monday.

The defense is going to argue that the parents were practicing their freedom of religion when they decided not to pursue the necessary medical attention needed to save their daughter's life. There are many such cases occurring every year, whether it be children who die of diseases they would have been immunized from had their parents had them properly vaccinated, or similar cases where children die of illnesses that medicine is well capable of treating them for. Such parents are reprehensible, and I'll be happy to see then sent to jail. An Isaac Asimov quote comes to mind. He said, "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."

Meanwhile, are you following this situation with the Mormon Fundamentalist children being taken away from their parent's compound by the authorities? I can't believe some of the awful things that are coming out about this... Allegations that the young girls were being raped by their fathers under the auspices of "learning how to become wives..." Teenage boys being banished from the compound with no money when they come of an age that they might become a competitor to the older patriarchs for the younger girls. Such boys, who are apparently all over Salt Lake City are called "The Lost Boys." One former member of the compound is coming forward with stories of rape by the patriarch when she was a little girl, along with the story that they were taught that if one is faithful enough, one won't become pregnant when they get raped by their fathers. As punishment when they do become pregnant, they perform abortions without anesthesia. MSNBC is reporting that 31 of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are pregnant or already have children. Check out some of the videos in that story from Dateline NBC on the case, in particular giving the Mother's point of view on having their children taken from them. I think they're being victimized as well, but I could never support putting children back into such a sickeningly abusive environment. In fact, "sickening" is about the only work I can come up for to describe this situation

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

This is what happens when you let religion get involved in education, particularly where science is concerned. You hear me, John McCain?!

...and I really hate it. Don't get me wrong, I love the spring, but all of this swinging back and forth between freezing-cold-icy-winter weather and tulip-blooming-fucking-birds-doing-what-birds-do weather is only getting more and more people sick! The Flu plague seems to be everywhere.....