life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

I am becoming a little tired of the publicity referring to Martha as 'the first black companion'. Wo, look how enlightened casting directors are in 2007. And what about poor Mickey? He was in the TARDIS the same length of time as Jack was, and do people discount Jack as a companion?

And, no, "he doesn't count/is a racist stereotype because he's a bit pathetic" makes me wonder if the speaker ignored Mickey totally after Rose. Mickey had a far better companion's arc than Rose did! He started out a bit pathetic and became amazing; she started out pretty ordinary and became a bit pathetic.

Having said that, I shall be displeased if the TARDIS lands in Prohibition America and Martha is treated exactly as if she were white. New Who isn't big on historical accuracy (note the random French aristocrat extra played by a black actor in Girl in the Fireplace, not to mention the costuming and some of the dialogue; "We are French"? "My lover, the King of France"?? Don't even mention the Scottish ninja monks), nor was it too great at characterising Rose as not white middle-class female, but there you have your audience-identification character, and why bother making all this fuss about her being black if she's going to be levelled off to Everywoman?

What's the betting that the fact she's a medical student gets completely forgotten after the second episode, too? I want to see some science from Martha, and she's intelligent and educated, it would be nice to see her lines written that way.

Isn't there some series or other starting tomorrow night, about time travel or aliens or something? Don't think I'll bother with it, it doesn't sound like my kind of thing.


Seriously, I can't wait. I have the videotape at the ready and everything. I really want to see Martha.

For what length of time is it permissible to keep a borrowed book? The book in question is a mass market paperback of about 350 pages. I've had it for about 10 days already and I haven't had time to start it.

Ton that subject, is it just me, or are American mass market paperbacks of poorer quality than British ones? I've bought American editions of SF books off amazon, and nearly all of them have ink that smudges like newsprint (Baen Books, that's you I'm looking at), or text that is misaligned so that it's running down into the spine or off the edge of the page.

Somewhat to my surprise, it appears that the Assembly is actually going to assemble.

Well, not the whole week, but Tuesday and Thursday anyway.

Life on Mars

Plasticine Sam is cute! The Beeb should make merchandise versions. In fact, they should do a whole episode in animated format.

House

Start of episode: he walks! He runs! He skateboards! Something is not right here....Oh, he's being sarcastic, it's ok, he hasn't been replaced by an ET House-clone.

In between: Patient's family: What's that injection? Cuddy: It's magic potion. I like to call it "0 to 60 in ten seconds".

End of episode: Oh, bad House. If you were a GP you would have booted yourself off your list by now.

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a conflict of sorts between CoS and GoF?

It's those Memory Charms. In GoF they seem only to remove the memory of a specific recent event, leaving the rest of the mind more or less intact, whereas in CoS it gives the subject total amnesia—and Lockhart still has no memory in OotP. It doesn't seem to be caused by Ron's malfunctioning wand, either, because Lockhart was planning to tell the Hogwarts staff that Ron and Harry lost their minds at the sight of Ginny's body. And as far as I recall he uses Obliviate, same like in GoF.

Does that mean all Lockhart's victims are going about like stroke patients? Ugh.

So, Flint or not? Any way to reconcile it?

The weather is insane; it was snowing all weekend.

Thanks to the sainted Patrick, I have a three-day weekend. Apparently they were celebrating it on Sandy Row as well; if we could get on board the holiday, perhaps we could move on next to Irish, and then we could get rid of the whole embarrassing Ulster-Scots thing.

The new LJ layout Vertigo has been released in beta; if you like Dystopia you might want to give it a try. I can in when Dystopia was the default, so it's sort of nostalgically familiar to me.

BT have put up the monthly charge for surftime by £2. Apparently it's due to a decline in demand because of increasing broadband use.

WELL WE TRIED TO GET BROADBAND. We're about three miles from the exchange in Smalltown as the crow flies, but BT in their wisdom connect us via Townland, halfway to Largetown eight miles away. Unsurprisingly this meandering line cannot support DSL. They phoned up my dad and sold him broadband over the phone, even checking the postcode. Then they had to have about three visits from the engineer before they would accept that the fault is in their line.

So basically, we're paying more money for a poorer service that we don't even want.

I was flicking through Michael Moore's Stupid White Men today. He takes a chapter off from Bush and Co to discuss global problem children...sure enough, the craziest corner of north Europe's in there.

His contribution to the solution of all Northern Ireland's problems? Convert the Protestants to Catholicism by force.

You know, he should have pitched that to the writers of Give My Head Peace instead.

First, Protestant does not equal Loyalist or even Unionist. Ditto Catholic and Republican/Nationalist. There's a very strong correlation, but it's not 100%.

Secondly, I know it's a joke. Lighten up, and all that. But you can only laugh about it if you've lived in the mess. How come the Palestinians got passive resistance, which might have a minuscule chance of making things better, and Northern Ireland got a sneer?

Than man spent pages and pages complaining that Bush is presiedent even though he had a minority of the votes. This seemed to get him very angry. So why is he even mentioning the equivalent of waving a sparkly wand at Democrats and crying 'You're a Republican'? So what does he mean, Britain has no right to Northern Ireland? Majorities win, NI has a Unionist majority, that's why it's part of the UK.

The problem with Northern Ireland isn't the Protestants; it's the inability of people to stop hating The Other Lot, the horrendously disadvantaged areas, the bastard gun-runners who are in the drugs these days, the economy that took off (goodness knows how when 65% of all jobs are in the public sector) and left the bottom section of the population behind, the paramilitary control of communities.

You know, I'd really like to see Mr Moore, a priest and a bucket of holy water in tow, set off up the Shankill to pacify Northern Ireland. On foot, if you please. I hope he isn't overly fond of his teeth. Or his kneecaps.

There is a total lunar eclipse tonight and, happily, the sky is clear. No sign of a shadow yet, it's meant to reach totality at 2045. Apparently it won't be a dark red because there haven't been any volcanic eruptions recently, so not much dust in the upper atmosphere.