Monday, 17th April, 2006

If You're Going To Be On TV...

clothing-accident

Make sure you wear your best shorts

(Caught from the tail end of — I think — What The Chinese Did For Us)

On Lancaster, And Taking Risks

lancaster inertia

So many thoughts today. So so so so so many, all ever so slightly interelated. Let's start with wine...

Unsurprisingly, apart from the bottles of white in my fridge (plenty's the seafood dishes going to be made with that lot), I drank my last bottle of wine last night. That little hoarde that got delivered a week or two back lasted me a lot longer than I thought it would (initial estimates: 1 week), but even (I( was fully aware that it wasn't an unending stash, and duly trudged all the way to the shops to buy some more earlier on.

On the way, I was struck by just how beautiful Lancaster is in the sunshine — especially on a Bank Holiday.

(Sunshine on Bank Holidays is a rare, freakish, and unholy occurrance, that must be taken advantage of by everyone. BY LAW)

On the river, people were waterskiing and jetskiing. Couples were out walking, chavs were out, erm, chavving. In the fields behind St Georges Quay, crowds were gathered for the Maritime Festival.

I however, was on a mission.

The thing is though, as I said, sometimes Lancaster is beautiful. And even when it's not sunny — even when the rain is belting down, or an unending sky of greyness hangs over it, threatening to sap all but the tiniest remnants of positivity from its inhabitants — even then it still has a beauty. A beauty of comfort.

I've often said in the past that Lancaster is too comfortable. There's an old (erroneous) myth about a curse on the town, that forces people to stay here for longer than they expected. It was rumoured to have the highest stay-on rate of any University Town in the country (and I'm a perfect example of that, I guess)

I distinctly remember, shortly after dropping being kicked out, relaxing in the knowledge that it was piss-easy to live up here on very little money, and that there was always plenty to do.

Over the years, of course, that "little money" has escallated what with things like "mortgages" and "increased wine consumption", and the "plenty to do" has dwindled as my penchant for hanging out smoking pot at other stoners' houses has been replaced by an unhealthy obsession of writing online.

But still, even though I despair sometimes at the boringness of this city — and dream of living it up elsewhere in the country/world — there's something that keeps me here.

Part of that something, obviously, is black, white, furry and has eight legs. Another part of it is made of stone and brick and wood — my house is my sanctuary, where I can be exactly who I want to be, whenever the hell I like, and surround myself with the things that are important to me.

The trouble with having a sanctuary though, is that it only really works if you have something for it to be a sanctuary from. Granted, being able to relax after a few days teaching in my own space, dressed in voluminosity, is wonderful — but after a few days of "relax, relax, relax", I find myself itching with cabin fever and wanting to escape into a more hustly bustly environment.

Sometimes, I guess, I feel like I've completely given up on having a social life — restricting myself to one or two trips out in a frock per year, popping to the pub only once in a blue moon. And that frustrates me. I'm only 34 FFS.

So, in a somewhat 'angellicly'-inspired move, I've decided to start taking a few more risks, and doing more stuff.

See, excuse my big-headedness here for a moment, but I do honestly believe that I've got a lot of potential for things — it's just that I'm bloody useless sometimes and never get up off my arse and do them. It's partly a fear of failure (maybe). Take Second Life as an example...

I keep popping in, every now and again, and trying to think of cool things to do. But each time I have an idea, I think "yeah, but what if it turns out shite?" and don't bother.

I suppose it comes back to comfort — feeling secure in your surroundings and resting on your laurels until you realise one day that your laurels have disintegrated under your arse when you weren't looking.

...

Meh. That's not really going anywhere. Sod it though, I just bought a ticket to something rather cool, and I'm going to go and be productive in other ways...

what is black, white, furry and has eight legs

My two cats

I'm wondering if the ticket you've bought is to the same thing that I'm going to. (Is it local and soonish?)

Soonish yes, local no. I'm going to a Second Life meetup.

Superfluosity

doctorwho

So, I'm re-watching last night's Doctor Who, and I'm trying to think just why it didn't work for me.

I've come to the conclusion that there's just too much stuff in it - in particular, too many characters. In particular again, this character...

Why was Cassandra in this episode? Seriously. I'm watching through it and she served no purpose whatsoever — apart from being slightly annoying. The plot is The Doctor and the zombie mutants (and the cat-nuns), Cassandra seems a bit, well, tacked-on.

You take the bitchy transsexual trampoline out of the story, and it'd have worked just fine — so (I've been wondering) why is she there?

I've come to a conclusion with this — and it's based a little on the occurances of the friggin' Slitheen from the last series (and the books). I'm coming to the conclusion that Russle T. Davies is trying to create a 'classic' monster — in the vein of the Daleks, the Cybermen, and The Master — and emphasising them over and over again is an attempt to embed them in our behind-the-sofa minds.

Perhaps it works with new viewers, but personally, as someone who cowered behind a cushion the minute I saw two flashing lights on top of a domey metallic head, I want Cybermen. And I want them now

What do I look like? A walking doodle?

"Template"? Template?!

*pfft*

Nah — seems fine to me. Even checking it out under (urgh) Windows.

I dunno if I want ol' Boe-chops floating around the whole series though, only to turn up messainic at the end. The thing I loved about Bad Wolf was that we kinda figured it out as a Big Thing™ long before it got revealed as a plot-tatic.

This Bo-thing seems to planted to me.

(Bring on the 13 weeks of total non-trannie content BTW — don'tcha just love this time of year..?)

they were trying to create continuity between the previous series and this one. A link. To explain or soften the sudden transistion between one doctor and the next

See wait — I kinda just thought of something. If only there'd been ome kind of — I dunno — Christmas Fucking Special where they could have done that. I mean, then they wouldn't needed to have felt the need to set the tone, bring in the back story, seed the future...

We all fucking saw it. It was great. Russel, you don't need to suck just to ease us into things

We like him — we just don't like your writing.