A Word or Two On Steven Moffat's Who

So, my first posts on this blog came about a year ago, on the subject of Doctor Who.  That wasn't my original intent.  But after the semi-hiatus of the split series, the excitement of the 50th anniversary, and the prospect of a new darker Doctor, to be played by an older actor, in a throwback to Hartnell, my anticipation was very high.  And the 2014 series frankly...sucked.  Instead of plunging this new Doctor headlong into new adventures, Steven Moffat squandered an entire year's worth of Doctor Who on pointless psychodrama and an utterly uninteresting love-triangle of sorts between the Doctor, Clara, and fuckin' Danny Pink.  Clara (a character who had already outstayed her welcome, Moffat having inserted her egotistically into the backstory of every single Doctor) started out in the first story childishly whining about the Doctor looking old and having wrinkles, and it took a whole series, before she got over her hangups with the Doctor's change, and before we had the chance to even start on proper stories for the Doctor's new actor, one Peter Capaldi.  Granted, the series did have its good moments here & there, but overall, for me, there was much more bad than good, and the whole thing is something of a write-off in my mind.  And then that fucker Moffat backtracked on the plans to write out Clara Oswald, more than a year too late already, with the Christmas-special, which I otherwise quite enjoyed...

A whole years' worth of Who down the toilet.  The show turned into a parody of itself, with the already over-hyped companion elevated to primary prominence, and the Doctor at one point reduced to the figure of a whimpering child, needing Clara's comforting hand to help stanch his tears.  Vomit !

Fast-forward to 2015, and this last series has been...yes...better.  With Danny Pink out of the picture (maybe), less focus on Coal Hill (don't worry, Moffat has a whole spinoff in the works for all of the five or so fans asking for that) & on Clara's psychological hangups, we almost got a decent series.  Of course, Moffat still did way too much of the writing himself, and much of the writing was sub-par.  Of course, Clara was still the egotistical greedy bossy attention-whore she ever was.  And a move away from single-episode stories was marred by the fact that the second story almost always inevitably fell short of the promise of the first.  But it wasn't wall-to-wall shite...

I watched last year every Saturday, desperately hoping & praying that the series would finally start to come together, and every time disappointed.  This year, I had much lower expectations, but still couldn't avoid those hopes, avoid getting emotionally invested in the outcome.  And if nothing else, I had Clara (finally) getting written out of the show to look forward to.  The whack-you-over-the-head foreboding of Clara's leaving was dragged out story after story, till finally, finally, in 'Face the Raven', she died.  But actually, no, Moffat lied to us.  Just as he did last year.  Just as he always does.

No, we find in the finale of the 2015 series, that Saint Clara cheats death after all.  A final fuck-you from Mister Moffat to all of the Clara-haters.  Alongside a fuck-you to all of the critics of the idea of a female Doctor, as he sought to finally enshrine the notion of gender-swapping Timelords.  And a fuck-you to all those who criticised the centrality of Saint bloody Clara, and the diminishment of the character of the Doctor, as we watched the Doctor ready to destroy the entire fucking universe for the sake of fucking Saint bloody Goddess of all Fandom Clara fucking Oswald, the Almighty !  But we're to believe that the other Timelords (including a resurrected Rassilon, brought back for fuck me if I know what reason) are the real monsters, right ?  Not the terrorist who is willing to destroy all of creation in the name of Clara the Exalted One ?...  Oh, and by the way, that crap about the Doctor + Clara being the hybrid teased throughout the series was one of the cheapest copouts ever.  Are you fucking me Moffat ?

I like Jenna Coleman.  I like Peter Capaldi.  I used to like, and still have some smidgen of respect for Steven Moffat.  But the man should have been gone years ago.  His ego has run wild the last few years, as he has rewritten the entirety of Doctor Who canon in his own image, largely via his alter-ego, the vastly over-rated and ultimately underwhelming character of Clara.  He's attempting to box in future 'show-runners', writers, and producers into his vision of Doctor Who, and his alone.  Not that of the older fans, not that of the younger, not that of all the producers and writers who came before (including Saint RTD, he of the ill-conceived idea of a 'Time War'), and not that of any who come after.  Doctor Who henceforth is to be Steven Moffat's Doctor Who™, and anyone who disagrees can go to hell.

And he'll get away with it.  Already is.  Already has.  Most of the fanboys daren't criticisise him.  Most of the actors, writers, producers, etc. who worked on Who in the past dating back to the 'sixties won't criticise him.  For that matter, they rarely, if ever, have the courage to criticise any aspect of Nu-Who or related projects, such as the works of Big Finish, whatsoever.  For many of them, it's their bread & butter, so in that regard, I can't blame them.  And many of those who were most critical of Moffat and his ridiculous elevation of the Clara character probably stopped watching last year (did I mention the ratings ?), or if they watch still, don't care enough to complain or criticise any more.

I'm rapidly falling into the latter category, already was in fact before this latest series.  This whole rant here is, I suppose, a matter of catharsis, more than anything else.


The Five Stages of Grief:

1. Denial  Split series, Anniversary*
2. Anger  Last year
3. Bargaining  N/A really
4. Depression  Last year to this
5. Acceptance  Current moment

And why should I care really ?  When the show came back in 2005 under Russell T Davies, there was so much I didn't like/disagreed with, and I was so much more invested in the Who of Big Finish (before much of their output went to shite.  Yeah, I said it), that I was willing to write off this new Who as a different product for a different generation.  Even as David Tennant took over from the ill-cast Eccleston, as some of the writing got better, as the show got closer to its roots, and further away from farting aliens and the likes of Cassandra (ugh,  Zoë, you deserve so much better).  Even as RTD, he of the ill-conceived idea of a 'Time War', finally left, to make way for a new 'show-runner.'  And then that evil bastard Moffat introduced me to wee Amelia Pond, and her 'Raggedy Man', and I wanted to believe again.  Fucking shite !

Here's my (generous) off-the-cuff ratings for the stories this year.  Probably the first time I've ever done this, and, almost certainly the last.

1. The Magician's Apprentice (6/10)  Great imagery, Missy was superb, sets up an intriguing cliffhanger.  Enough already with the fucking guitar !
2. The Witch's Familiar (7/10)  Needs more Missy !  Clara in the Dalek-casing closest I ever got to caring about Clara, since probably when she was a governess.
3. Under the Lake (9/10)  Closest to scary as the series got, great suspense, chilling ending.
4. Before the Flood (4/10) And then this utter shite.  Absurd monster, comedy alien, and all the nonsense about bootstrap-parodoxes aside, makes no logical sense whatsoever.  Even the Doctor basically admits as much at the end.
5. The Girl Who Died (4/10)  This idiotic nonsense would be the throwaway of the series, except it gets us invested in the idea of Ashildr, the ever-hyped 'Hybrid' of the whole series.  Except...she isn't.
6. The Woman Who Lived (3/10)  Ditto.  The question of fitting infinite life into finite human memory was clever & poignant.  Otherwise, this was pointless utterly missable filler.
7. The Zygon Invasion (5/10)  Well, the whole idea of Britain voluntarily admitting masses of Zygons was nonsensical, every single character behaved irrationally throughout, and the thing reeked to high heaven of political correctness, but it was well filmed and augured well for...
8. The Zygon Inversion (3/10) The Doctor in a Union-Flag bedecked parachute a la James Bond !  Should have shut off then.  And the Doctor's great speech ?  Preachy pablum and platitudes.  I struggled to stay awake, it was so boring.  Supposedly, this was the moment that Capaldi came into his own as the Doctor.  Bullshit.
9. Sleep No More (8/10)  Didn't care for or fully understand this on first viewing.  It rewards a second viewing, and I applaud Gatiss for the experiment.  Didn't quite work out in practice, but one of the boldest efforts of the series.
10. Face the Raven (5/10)  Who the fuck actually wanted Rigsy back ?  Really, who are you ?  And Why ?!!  But we got to finally see Saint Clara die ! (kinda, sorta, not really...)
11. Heaven Sent (8/10)  This is the kind of experimental story that really belongs in fan-fiction, or an audio, rather than on the teevee.  Interesting, but not entirely original idea.  Bit too obvious premise, and dragged out to anoyance towards the end.  Capaldi excellent as always, almost no Clara, and best CGI of the series, the moving walls of the castle aside.**
12. Hell Bent (3/10)  Very cinematic direction and effects.***  Liked the parts w/Peter & Jenna in the diner.  Otherwise, this was the very epitome of everything I hate about Steven Moffat and what he has done/is doing to Doctor Who.  Perfect end to the series in that regard.  Managed to refrain throwing my remote.

* I liked An Adventure in Space and Time.  Moffat to the best of my knowledge had nothing to do with it.

** They made this work in Harry Potter, and the rest of your CGI is excellent.  Why was this so ridiculously fake ?

*** Meant to say something here; can't remember what now.  Aw, fuck it.


Update: xx. The Husbands of River Song (4/10) Greg Davies was cool, Matt Lucas alright, wrapped up some of the threads of River Song's story, and had some decent one-liners.  Other dialogue was cringe-worthy, story was shit, made no sense, and bored me to tears.  More useless filler, justified largely on the basis on fan-service, rather than telling compelling interesting stories.  Next...

Pre-Hu Rant

Part of me avoids saying what I might about Nu-Who if only because its audience is largely that of millennials & younger, even if created by those my age and even older.  And fuck, they already outnumber us...

But, this 'Class' nonsense....MUST DIE !!!

DIE NOW !  IN A BURNING INFERNO !

Unless it has been thought up solely as a project with which to totally remove one S. Moffat's attention from Doctor Who (with a properly appointed successor in play) and/or it includes the involvement of one J. Whitehall and one M. Gomez.

And I Do Not Want to Hear that the several Coal-Hill-based eps. of the last dire series were in fact wilful pilots for this nonsense.  I hate Mister Moffat quite enough already thank ye much.  I need no reason to further despise the Barstard.  I was in fact trying to work my way into seeing a redemption in the latest series, till the bastard BBC dropped this latest turd on ev'ryone's head.  Fuck ev'ryone involved in this shit !

An even-worse companion than Clara ?

À Propos of Nothing

I can just about accept Reagan pronounced as Ray-gun, and Cheney as Chainee, but Koch is not pronounced 'Coke', Boehner is certainly not pronounced 'Bayner', and Loesch sure as fuck is not pronounced 'Lash'.  At least the latter admits it.  When the hell will Republicans/Right-Wingers own up to their actual names and stop mispronouncing them ?

* Yes, I could just respect people's choices to pronounce their names as they see fit.  In the case of the right-wing scum aforementioned though, fuck that.  I'm not sure I can manage any respect for even the star of Bedtime for Bonzo**, never mind those other arseholes.

** By which, I mean Ronnie obviously.  Totes respect the chimp.

A Calm and Considered Request for Closure

Had a post half-written a fortnight back on my attempt to re-watch the first episodes of Nu-Who (G-d it was awful), but thought better of posting it.  But with the news that Jenna Coleman is finally (two years too late) leaving Doctor Who, I just have one thing to say to Steven Moffat:

CLARA OSWALD MUST DIE !

No seriously, give us a death-scene.  Something horrific preferably.  It's the least you can do.

Possibly an even worse contribution to canon than the 'Time-War'.

* I suppose it's theoretically possible that the character will improve with the new series.  But I can never un-see that last squandered soap-opera of a series*.  Such a waste.

** Check out that original title in the URL.  Drama-queen much ?

Well, Now the Political Cartoonists Have All Had Their Say

Nice.  The foto of that dead kid face-down in the surf is so shocking, we're going to build a sandcastle-version of it...and force our own kids to pose by the same...*

Our culture being what it is, how long till someone comes up with a way to make a halloween-costume out of this dead kid's fucking corpse ?


* I know, Gaza...Open-air prison...Those monstrous Israeli's...  Wonder what direction the two younger kids are listening to off-camera as the older child looks dutifully at the lens.  How old are they, and already being used as political props ?

** Intentionally looked for the largest version of the pic. I could find.  In this case, judging by the resolution, it could well be the original dimensions from a DSLR or the like.  But, since Blogger appears to restrict the max. width, you'll have to click here for the original.

Does the Grauniad Only Exist to Piss Off Non-Wankers ?

So, a British Olympian tweeted his disappointment in the new kit for the Brits...

Well this isn't right... Where's the Union Jack!?!? @BritAthletics (this is the kit for worlds) pic.twitter.com/RAVoi6yRex

— Greg Rutherford (@GregJRutherford) August 13, 2015

I was inclined to agree with him, especially given the inclination of the government to shit over both the flag and other traditional designs in recent years.  And given the recent (although increasingly due to DC & Co., sadly seemingly temporary) vote on Scottish independence, why not celebrate the flag ?  But no biggie, really.

So, how does the Graun. respond to this shit ?  Why by having some asshole shit all over not just 'Team GB's kit, but the Union Flag itself...of course...As one does.

The trouble with the United Kingdom’s flag, when you come to think about it, is that it is really quite ugly. I have every sympathy for the designers who removed it from the British athletics team’s vests for the imminent World Athletics Championships in Beijing. Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford has complained that “it isn’t a British kit any more” because it hasn’t got the union flag, but the decision makes sense aesthetically. The new vest is an elegant flowing dance of red, white and blue – the flag’s colours, remember – and has Great Britain written on it in big letters. It just doesn’t have that jagged, explosive, aggressive flag.

So, your problem with the Union Flag is an aesthetic one, right ?

I don’t mean the union flag is aggressive because it embodies an imperial arrogance or a coercive union that keeps Scotland in its place. No, it just looks as if it does.

Nothing to do with divisive politics then...Go on, do say...

Look at it, if you can bear to. With its cluttered burst of both right-angled and diagonal radiating lines, the British flag is heavy and overbearing, forceful and strident. On a battlefield it would make sense. Sure, this virulent standard served to rally regiments at the Battle of Waterloo. But today? At sporting events? It looks crap. Instead of suggesting unity, its sharp-angled divisions imply fragmentation. In fact, the relentless dynamism of its design evokes the shock and shatter of a cannon ball smashing into a French ship at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Who wants a dynamic flag, with any sense of urgency or purpose, huh ?  And those 'sharp-angled divisions' sure as hell put me in mind of a 'cannon ball smashing into a French ship at the Battle of Trafalgar'...wait, you meant that as a...bad thing...right ?  So, anyway, go on with your aesthetic critique...

This was fine when Britain ruled the waves but its military hysteria makes no sense nowadays. To see how visually repellent* the union flag really is you just have to contrast it with a truly great national flag, that of the United States. The American flag is beautiful, as the artist Jasper Johns saw very clearly when he made one out of collage and waxy paint. The stars and bars** are soothing and reassuring to look at. Those layers of repeated lines have a quality of minimalist art, although they date from long before such art was invented. Perhaps America’s flag has had a hidden influence on all its art movements, not only on Johns. The bars hang there in harmony and peace, and the stars float majestically in their blue ether.

You.Have.Got.To.Be.Shitting.ME.!!!  The American flag, scraped hastily together out of scraps of its own forebear ?  That stripey-assed Waldo-esque remnant of centuries past ?  I'll acknowledge that there are in fact worse flags...by far...but, as a symbol of the supposed leader of the free world, the US flag is a joke.  I could take your argument seriously if you acknowledged just about any other iconic flag but that one...

...The same goes for the French tricolour, another of the world’s most attractive flags. Its simple rectangles of colour are bold but beautiful. No wonder it has been imitated by so many other nations in varying colours.

Erm, yes.  Yes, indeed.

You don’t see many other countries imitating the British flag.

Wha...wha...what ?  Never mind how many flags explicitly incorporate the Union Flag directly, such as a certain US state, or are otherwise symbolically based upon elements of the Union Flag, such as the flag of the United States itself, or use similar motifs such as Jamaica.  Just WTF are you talking about ?

The flags of the United States and France are the results of 18th-century revolutions that gave their creators a sense of starting afresh. No ghosts of the past or compromised histories influenced the design of these revolutionary standards. On the contrary, they needed to be totally new, to symbolise new constitutions, new beginnings. 

Bull-fucking-shit !

...Perhaps Rutherford’s objection to the British flag’s disappearance from the national British athletics team’s kit reflects an anxiety about insidious anti-union propaganda, as if in the age of SNP triumph it is becoming politically incorrect to sport unifying British symbols too proudly. But I would argue it the other way around. Perhaps the union flag itself is a psychological boost to nationalists who want to break up Britain. Its sheer pompous ugliness unconsciously damages the image of the union.

Fuck you !

So here is an idea to save the United Kingdom as a political, emotional and cultural entity. Let’s invent a new flag. Let’s visually forget the history of internal compromise and external violence this flag so unattractively embodies. A new flag for a new Britain might help us love our – whole – nation again.

Like you give a flying fucking shit about the union...I just shat all over the evil emperialist entity that is the English, and would much rather see the damn thing dissolved, but yeah, let's fantasise about a new 'Union Flag' that we could all celebrate after we finally killed the beast...  Not that we need bother given said arsehole's fondness for the flag of the United States of America:

US Flag with 51st star for additional state, such as Puerto Rico

One single solitary identical star added for each soulless entity added.  That's it.  That's your glorious national identity right there.  Inspirational, isn't it, that slight adjustment in the field of stars ?...

Far far more inspirational than a simple symbol of the union of three*** nations thus:

I've said it before...I'll say it again... I hate the fuckin' Guardian.


* He actually said this; If he said this in, and regarding the country whose flag he apparently worships, he would likely be shot dead on the spot.

** You really do not want to use that phrase regarding American flags.

*** The Welsh were fucked with the flag, I will admit that much.  And the flag would be much cooler with a dragon.  No...Doubt.

Slate/New Scientist on Obama's 'Bold' Climate Plan

Obama wants you to think his climate plan will be bold. It’s not

US president Barack Obama's much-heralded attempt to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations is nowhere near enough

Later today, US President Barack Obama will unveil the final version of the centrepiece of his climate legacy: the Clean Power Plan.

It is designed to speed up the retirement of coal-fired power plants – the most carbon-intensive way of generating electricity – and could more than double the rate of their closures by 2040.

In a video preview, Obama called the Clean Power Plan “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change”. While that may be true, it’s not saying a whole heck of a lot.

As I wrote last year when the details were initially announced, many states are already well on their way to achieving the required reductions, thanks in part to a recent boom in cheap natural gas and the Obama administration’s choice of 2005 as the basis year for cuts, which was close to America’s all-time peak in carbon emissions. Obama’s plan is significant, but it’s not bold.

A previous version of the targets, announced last year, would have required states to begin implementing changes to their power-producing mix in 2020. The final version, to be announced today, gives states and utilities an extra two years. The targets will vary by state, depending on their current energy mix, and states will have flexible ways of achieving emissions reductions, including an option to join an interstate cap-and-trade scheme.

All this will be a heavy lift for some coal-intensive states, like Wyoming, but it’s being heralded as largely “business as usual” for some states, like Minnesota, that have already made significant efforts to shift their energy mix.

...

It has been calculated that the plan would shave just 6 per cent from US carbon emissions by 2030. Climate science and international equity demand the US cut emissions 80 per cent by then. We’re nowhere near that pace.

Still, this plan is not nothing. In its coverage, The New York Times includes this hopeful gem: “But experts say that if the rules are combined with similar action from the world’s other major economies, as well as additional action by the next American president, emissions could level off enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.”

That’s a lot of hedging on which to base a climate legacy.

In fact, when compared with the climate plans of his would-be successors on the left – Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley – Obama’s ranks last in terms of ambition.

Clinton, who has frequently aligned herself with the president on climate, announced a preview of her own climate plan last week. It’s fractionally more ambitious than Obama’s, but it essentially just kicks the can forward another few years.

...

Last week, former NASA climate scientist James Hansen, fresh off a dire new warning about global sea levels, had harsh words for the slow, incremental progress that’s formed essentially the entirety of American’s climate ambition to date. “We have two political parties, neither one of which is willing to face reality,” Hansen told the Guardian. “Conservatives pretend it’s all a hoax, and liberals propose solutions that are non-solutions.”

“It’s just plain silly,” said Hansen, speaking specifically of Clinton’s planned renewable energy push. “No, you cannot solve the problem without a fundamental change, and that means you have to make the price of fossil fuels honest.”

In the end, our climate won’t care about how we fix this problem. But it’s clear that time is running out. If Obama truly wants to go all-in on climate change, he should meet Republicans where they are – as painful as that might be – and negotiate a way to pass a carbon tax.

...

If Obama really wants to make a lasting impact on global warming, he can work across the US political divide or across the Pacific in Beijing, to work toward implementing a meaningful, economy-wide carbon tax as quickly as possible. Just because such a breakthrough feels impossible doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. 

Nice change from the coverage in most outlets, including, sadly, the BBC, which seems to have framed the discussion of Obama's plan solely in terms of his Republican opponents' view (ie, 'Radical Enviro-Nazi Obama and his War On Coal; Let's debate the two sides...'), whilst ignoring those who would argue Obama's legacy-burnishing proposals are at the very least too little, and quite likely, too late.

<Rant below the fold:>

Clickbait

Indeed.

Doesn't help that just about every major news-site, up to, and even including the BBC, seem to be adopting the format of all content replaced by a series of squares or rectangles wherein an image is overlaid or captioned with a line or two of text, in a manner that just so happens to be almost indistinguishable from their 'promoted' content, be it from Taboola, Outbrain, their own in-house system, or the devil himself.

Our brave new online world has much to recommend it at times.  But more often than not, it just sucks.



And then the effect bleeds into the offline world as well, what with all those full-page ads. in magazines that just so happen to look like news-stories, till you start to smell bullshit, look down, and notice: 'Sponsored Content' in microscopic font.

Never mind the effect on commercial television, which seems to think that having a bunch of himbos & bimbos standing around a laptop watching cat-videos constitutes 'news'. 

Fuckin' Internet...

River Song Returns

Alex Kingston to reprise River Song for new Doctor Who audio plays

By Morgan JefferySaturday, Jun 27 2015, 5:00am EDT
River Song (Alex Kingston) will cross paths with the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in a new series of Doctor Who audio plays.
Kingston will reprise her role as the time-traveling archaeologist in Doctor Who: Doom Coalition 2 from Big Finish Productions.

Best known for their audio plays based on the classic Doctor Who series, Big Finish have recently begun branching out into new series material with the upcoming box-set UNIT: Extinction starring Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart) and Ingrid Oliver (Osgood).
Doom Coalition 2 will be released in March 2016 - with Kingston joined by McGann, plus Nicola Walker and Hattie Morahan as the Doctor's companions Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair.
River will then return later in 2016 with her own spinoff series - Doctor Who: The Diary of River Song, a four-hour adventure which will again feature McGann in its final installment.
Further 2016 efforts from Big Finish based on the new series will include Doctor Who: The Churchill Years - with Ian McNeice reprising his role of Winston Churchill to narrate a four-hour saga, recounting the indomitable Prime Minister's unseen encounters with the Doctor.
Meanwhile, Doctor Who: Classic Doctors, New Monsters will pit the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors against creatures invented for the new series.

Well, I for one welcome the return of River Song, although I understand why some might not like the character.  And interesting how they're slowly slipping in elements of the new series.  Not so likely to get Eccleston of course, but maybe in a one-off recording one day...

<rant>Only thing I don't like about this is...blasted box-sets again.  It's such a stupid format for a digital era, hasn't exactly encouraged the best writing in the past, and accelerates the splintering of BF's offerings to such a degree that it's difficult for fans to keep track of it all, never mind afford them (single-releases, at least they can dip in and out, one manageably long story at a time).  But Briggs & Co. have made it clear that the box-sets are where everything's going, like it or not.</rant>

“The idea of River meeting previous Doctors was actually proposed by Steven Moffat,” says producer David Richardson, “and it's just irresistible, isn't it? Alex embraced the idea of returning to the role, and so she will be starring in no less than two box sets next year. And yes, we are still pinching ourselves!”

Yeah, lucky buggers.

We Are All Collectively Insane

U.S. might deploy missiles in Europe to counter Russia

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is weighing a range of aggressive responses to Russia's alleged violation of a Cold War-era nuclear treaty, including deploying land-based missiles in Europe that could pre-emptively destroy the Russian weapons.

The Russians' violations of Cold War-agreements huh ?  You really want to go there ?  Really ?  No, no,...really...?

This "counterforce" option is among possibilities the administration is considering as it reviews its entire policy toward Russia in light of Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea and other actions the U.S. deems confrontational in Europe and beyond.

The options go so far as one implied - but not stated explicitly - that would improve the ability of U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory.

Yippee !!!

Wait, what weapons exactly are we talking about here ?  That word, pre-emptive...I don't like that word.  It calls to mind another era, in a very very bad way.

Ceeping up with the Konsonants

Caitlyn, not Kaitlyn: Jenner decided against Kardashian tradition

NEW YORK -- Choosing between a "C" and a "K" for her new name was no small task for Caitlyn Jenner, considering her famous K-heavy family of Kardashians.

...Jenner went back and forth about how it would be spelled, deciding it was best to break the Kardashian tradition.Jenner, formerly known as Bruce, was married to Kris Jenner and step-parent to the Kardashian clan. Her daughters are also named K-names -- Kylie and Kendall.

Wait, so that's why I've been seeing headlines about the spelling of Jenner's new name ?  Not being remotely a follower of the reality-teevee 'celebrities', that never even occurred to me.  Huh.

Well, I'll just say this...

Fuck the letter K !  Damn ugly angular pretender to the throne that rightly belongs to the letter C !  If it weren't for the bloody Normans and their insistence on redundantly using the letter C in place of the letter S, we'd have had no need for the redundant consonant that is K (Yeuch !), and would have a simpler more elegant alphabet.  I mean think about it: how many strokes does it take (in non-cursive writing) to write the letter K ?  Two minimum.  For most, probably three.  And the letter C ?  Just one simple elegant curve.

C > K

'Nuff said.


PS, don't get me started on Þ & Ð.

Well, It's the Weekend, So We Can Just Phone in any Random Crap, Right ?

Time to read the Telegraph...Referendum, booooring.  Global realignment of power between the US and China...pass.  Tom Cruise...ew.  What's that fourth item ?

But, but, surely that's...That's...The general election was just...

Why the hell am I looking at a photoshop of the former Deputy Prime Minister and former head of the LibDems with his wife & the Camerons over the caption "I'll be there for you..." ?

Is this some shit you had hanging around from before the elections, and you couldn't be bothered to update ?

Okay, okay, the 'content' will explain, right ?  <Reads the utterly unfunny pointless drivel that follows>

Nope.  What follows has nothing to do with Friends, nothing to do with the Cleggs, nothing to with 'SamCam', and is in fact nothing more than some cheap stereotypes and cliches seguing eventually into a bolted-on mention of Sepp fucking Blatter.  Please tell me you didn't pay Mister Thomas for this shit.

More importantly, please tell me you stole that image off the internet.  No, wait... Please tell me that your unpaid intern from Albania stole that image off the internet.

I mean, you do want to be taken seriously, don't you ?  You've only been running an online presence for over twenty years now.  You were fucking pioneers on the web !  We were still using the Mosaic web-browser when you launched the Electronic Telegraph FFS !

Aw, whadda I care ?  Go ahead, keep shitting all over yourselves Telegraph.  Think those cheques are going to keep coming in from the Tories indefinitely ?


Oh, in case you actually wanted to read this shit (their shit, not mine, not that my blather isn't that), and didn't believe me about how bad it is.  Well, sure: Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Dear Amazon

Dear Amazon, thanks ever so much for re-downloading, without asking, huge swathes of my music library, creating massive duplication, and sucking up precious disk space.  That was just oh so awesome and thoughtful of you guys.  The geniuses that created your new downloader app. deserve a payrise, really they do.  Kiss kiss and hugs to all...

Amazon MP3

Tried downloading some new music from Amazon for the first time in a while; Oh G-d, what a mistake.  Experience as painful and complicated as I've ever experienced it, prices way up, the new resource-intensive downloader rife with examples of everything that is wrong with that trendy evil of  'flat design', and then, this crap with the Prime Library, wherein Amazon will gracefully give subscribers access to oh so many tracks, so long as they now and till the end of eternity maintain their payments to Amazon in order to access what they quaintly may have once seen as 'their library.'  Da fuck ?

Like people can't use Pandora and their ilk ?  Like most music isn't available for free on YouTube these days ?  What's this shit about having to install & run special apps. to play Prime tracks ?  Free is worth what you pay for it and all that, but the idea that people should pay you a premium to create a library, that is held in thrall to the temporal products of a company that could just as well choose to close up shop (or individual service -- like that's never happened in recent memory) tomorrow ?  When they could get the same for free elsewhere ?  Or buy and own* from other services ?

After iTunes held back the market for years on .mp3 sales with their over-priced DRM'd garbage, the introduction of relatively cheap DRM-free .mp3 tracks on Amazon, was the reason I finally took to seriously buying music by the track for the first time, having previously relied largely on CD's and on DRM-free subscription services like eMusic.  Seems likes we're moonwalking backwards here.  Fuck the cloud, fuck flat design, and fuck Amazon.

*(Oh hell, not going to get into the legalistics here of how the corporations will simply determine that they own content from now until the end of eternity, and that you are simply renting it from them.  Cough.  Microsoft.  Cough.)

The Arquettegate Intersectionality

So, Patricia Arquette made some comments backstage at the Oscars, à propos of her call for pay-equality for women, that were perhaps not best calculated, and apparently people took it badly, and argued about it on Twitter, as people will.  Whatever, don't care, move on.  Having read a transcript of Arquette's comments, and not following Twitter, I naively assumed that the cause of offence was the implication that somehow the fights for equality for racial minorities and the 'gay community' were already and fully won, and that now it was the time to focus on women.  But, no.

Being fool enough to listen to a certain podcast (rhymes with rib lime), I am reliably informed that the problem was 'Intersectionality'.  Okay, let's take a look-see on the old wiki, and ah, fuck me.  Scroll, scroll, scroll...'a Marxist-feminist critical theory'...ugh.  I'm remembering now why I never liked liberals when I was younger.  Yeah, I get it, the experience of a black lesbian is different from that of say a black man or a white woman, and people can be oppressed along multiple axes of identity.  Yeah, no shit.

Buzzcocks: I Believe

Da fuck ?  I put in the video URL, of the service that Google owns, and duh-huh, can't find it...  I edit the HTML manually, and it takes the audio, but for some reason throws up an error on the image.  Another video URL, again from the service that Google owns, and duh, somehow, can't find it.  Edit the HTML manually again.  Fucking tossers !

Don't believe boys & girls in shiny tech. companies that promise the earth whilst drooling over thine own data.  Fuck 'em all.

Dear Supermarkets/Grocery Stores

Could you please stop going out of your way to make shopping at your locations even more actively painful than it already was ?  Is it not bad enough that you go out of the way in the physical geography of the shops/stores to maximise the time customers have to spend per visit, with the most frequently bought items physically separated by the greatest distance ?  Not bad enough that you intentionally place products like tooth- and brain-rotting sugary products at children's eye-level ?

Is it not bad enough that your customers have to deal with a) persistent understaffing at peak hours, b) annoying Christmas music for several months of the year during the 'holiday season', c) carts/trolleys for 'junior shoppers/customers', so that other people's spawn can take up that much more of the aisle space as they weave this way and that with their mini-carts like drunken octaganerians (on the positive side, at least they're not then rushing backwards and fowards down the aisles, like they're in some kind of carnival competition), d) the persistent under-provisioning of the more useful smaller carts, as if every shopper represents the cast of Just the Ten of Us, e) shitty parking structures, that force one to enter/exit and park at awkward angles, f) persistently malfunctioning self-service machines, g) those EVIL EVIL EVIL 'loyalty' campaigns, that impose artificially higher prices on those unwilling to sell their souls to Marketing Satan, and so many other nasty horrible evil practices ?

But no, every aisle has to also be blocked with a cart filled with discounted produce, with a special advertising display, with a stupid cardboard cutout smiling inanely at us.  We have to put up with already congested aisles being reduced many times to the width of a single cart so that you can prolong our shopping misery that little bit longer in the vain hope that we'll spend that little bit more at your evil establishment.  Well, FUCK YOU !

And while we're at it, no I didn't find everything I was looking for today, but, no, I'm not going to tell you about it, because a) You don't give a shit, b) You can't do anything about your establishment's stocking policy, c) the reason I couldn't find the product has nothing to do with any magical advantage you have in locating products on the shelves over me, and d) Fuck you, leave me alone !  I know it's not you.  I know it's your evil Fascist cocksucking corparatist overlords.  That's why I lie when you ask me if I found everything I wanted today.  Why I lie when you ask me how I'm doing.  Why I'd lie about just about anything that wouldn't get in the way of my getting my fucking purchase done, and my arse out of your wretched establishment a second earlier.

And to think, our right-wing establishment politicians would have us believe that the 'free market' is all about efficiency, and that it smoothly and effortlessly rewards and punishes players according to the best accordance with customer needs and demands.  Well, if you keep in mind that the only 'customers' that truly matter are those making purchases in the millions and billions, perhaps.  Otherwise, pull another one.

Cable Tee-Vee

'I remember when MTV used to play music videos' has become a cliche of the same sort as 'when I was a kid we had to walk to school, uphill, both ways,' but at some point the generification of American cable networks becomes something of a sad joke as cable continues to die a slow death.  Perhaps the internet would have inevitably killed cable TV anyway just as it seems to have killed off not just much of the print media, but most of the field of journalism outright.  But could it have been different, if instead of giving their customers an ever more crowded field of hundreds and hundreds of mostly pointless stations, the cable companies had given in, and acceded to long standing demand and offered a la carte programming ?  If stations got a cut of the profits based on subscription numbers rather than relying so much on maximising ad. revenue ?

Fuck, I remember a time when A&E (Arts and Entertainment originally of course) used to show opera and ballet instead of the endless marathons of Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars they have now.  When at any time of the day, any day of the year, I could turn on CNN or Headline News and get actual news, turn on the Weather Channel, and see a weather forecast, watch documentaries on the History Channel pulled from the pages of history rather than those of the supermarket tabloids.  And what the hell happened to what used to be The Learning Channel (TLC) ?  At least when The Nashville Network gave up the fight for country music fans to their lesser competitor CMT they were honest enough to change their name (from TNN to Spike) at the same time.  With their main competitor gone, you'd expect of course that CMT today would be all Country all the time.  Well, no, of course it isn't.  Even the networks that seem to vaguely adhere to their original remit during business hours, turn into a vast zombie wasteland after hours and on weekends.  I know someone must watch the cold case programmes on HLN and the endless prison documentaries on MSNBC, but how many episodes of this shit are there, and how many times can you watch them ?

It would be some consolation to think that at the end of all this, in our Netflix and Hulu futures, we could at least be rid of wretched companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast, but they retain their internet monopolies of course, and, since the asshats at the FCC apparently saw no possible conflict of interest in letting Comcast buy up one of the nation's biggest and most famous broadcasters, now they're a content provider.  Comcast.  That Comcast.  The one who tried to rebrand their Internet service, as their name is so universally loathed.  Fuckers.

/rant


Now, negative infinity points for originality: The Boss.  Fifty-seven channels.  I remember when it was that many channels.  It was heaven.

The Clara Oswald Hour

Below was originally written some weeks ago, before the 'Christmas Special.'  After which I feel no reason to rewrite or retract any of the same...

Some few weeks ago, a lot of hot air was vented about the trailer for the New Star Wars movie.  Now personally, I think the controversy over a black stormtrooper is just about equally as stupid and ridiculous as putting lasers on the hilt of a light sabre, but then again I never actually watched the trailer...or any of the post-ROJ films for that matter, and nor do I intend to.  Fact is I don't really give a shit about Star Wars, or even Star Trek for that matter. I like them well enough, but I don't really have any emotional investment in them. Doctor Who is a different matter.  Like so many, I grew up with Doctor Who. It was a part of my life as long as I can remember and it was an established cultural institution well before I was born. I still resent the fact that the BBC cancelled it, and I still see as an act of cultural vandalism the wiping of tapes that took place in the sixties and the seventies. When Russell T Davies brought the show back in 2005, I didn't care for many of his choices, but I stuck with it, and it got better as David Tennant was brought in, as we lost the chavvy companion, as old enemies returned, and as writers like Steven Moffat gave us the occasional compelling stories like Blink.  I was initially sceptical of the casting Moffat chose as he took over the reins of 'showrunner' from Davies, but little Amelia Pond quickly won me over as did Karen Gillan as her older self, Arthur Darvill as Rory, and Matt Smith as an impossibly manic childlike Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed Moffat's early tenure and even as the writing faltered over the two previous half-series, I wouldn't want to miss an episode.  And then we had the fiftieth anniversary (with ridiculous number of special this, that, and the other) , followed by the revelation that Moffat was to give us a new darker more alien Doctor, played for the first time in decades by an older actor in Peter Capaldi, a throwback to William Hartnell's original. Brilliant !  So why, so long after the 'eighth' series of Doctor Who ended back in November can I still not get over how impossibly shite it all was ?

Not everyone would agree of course.  Some people loved it.  Many, more I suspect, hated it. It was if nothing else...divisive.  So what you may ask did I dislike about it so much ?  Was it Capaldi ?  Nope.  Jenna Coleman or Sam Anderson ?  Nope.  Was it the crap opening sequence (Hey, how can we symbolise time in a way that will be culturally relevant to millenials ?  I know, antique clockwork timepieces, geddit ?!) or the shit theme tune ?  That's not it.  The cheapo budget, the almost total lack of multi-part stories, the refusal to use any of the characters created by Moffat's predecessor ?  Not really.  The writing, it must be the writing, right ?  No, at this point, the substandard writing goes without saying, though this series did certainly produce some real stinkers (thinking of you, Kill the Moon).  I know, it was Clara, right ?  You think it's been turned into 'The Clara Oswald Show, guest starring the Doctor' ?  Well...yeah, but it's more than just that.

See, I believe that as a rule, if you want an audience to invest emotionally in a character of yours they have to be either a)Interesting, b)Likeable, or preferably c)Both.  Having created a character in Clara Oswald/Oswin/whatever that previously served merely as a sort of cipher, or arguably even a Macguffin, Moffat faced a lot of criticism over the lack of depth or character development in Clara.  And he decided to follow up by making the next series of Doctor Who ALL ABOUT CLARA...ALL THE TIME.  He turned the show into a sort of soap opera, with a central cast of just three (four, if you count Missy, blech), revolving around Clara Oswald and the conflicting relationships she had with the two men in her life: her new boyfriend Danny Pink and the Doctor.  Forget spending more time exploring this newly mysterious and unpredictable Doctor, forget the monsters and the adventures, what we really need is a thorough exploration of the thoroughly toxic relationships between these three characters who spend much of the series lying to one another, threatening and insulting one another, and generally being assholes to one another.  Moffat took a character in Clara Oswald who was ('Impossible Girl' not withstanding) not particularly interesting and mildly likeable, and gave us a character who was still not particularly interesting, and over the course of the series increasingly actively unlikable.

Last Christmas: It was all a dream, again, and you're stuck with Clara Oswald, and me Steven Moffat, like it or not, losers...

Please God, no !?  That asshole Steven Moffat has determined to afflict us with another year (or more ?) of Clara fucking Oswald ?  Against all odds, I tried again to give Moffat 2.0 Who a chance, and really really wanted to like this Christmas Special; was yet again willing to give the show a chance.  I could overlook ripping off Alien, ripping off Inception, ripping off Big Finish (hello, why do you think the show was able to come back to TV in the first place ?), but fuck !...  And I never even published (maybe I still will) my rant about how much the obsessive and soap-opera-ish focus on Clara (to the extent of all else) ruined the last year's worth of Doctor Who.  But it's Christmas, so I suppose I should say...something nice.  Well,...I really appreciated seeing the lovely Natalie Gumede as something other than the psycho-bitch girlfriend of Tyrone on Corrie.  Wouldn't mind seeing more of her as anything other than Kirsty Soames.  And hell, I dream of the day that I can see Jenna Coleman without immediately thinking of that growing stain on Doctor Who that is Clara 'Greatest Fucking Companion of all Time and Space' Oswald.  The 'Moff' just added a year or more to the date of our eventual liberation.  Damnit !