The last time I wrote here, it was May. It is now late July, and while I would love nothing more than to claim to have been whisked away from blogging by some fascinating, adventurous and slightly dangerous diversion, I can't. I can't even claim something commonplace but legitimate, like study or a death in the family. Really I've just been terribly lazy. That's not to say I haven't found things to fill the time otherwise:
A Game of Thrones - both the TV series and, to a lesser extent, the books. That sounds wrong, doesn't it? Moving pictures before the written word. It probably is. I don't care. It's that good.
Fallout 3. I'm kind of working backwards with these games. I started out with New Vegas at the start of the year, and I've only just gotten my hands on Fallout 3, but it is most excellent. I've been playing it for three days or so, and they've been punctuated by nights filled with dreams of the Capital Wasteland.
Series 6 of Doctor Who. Of course. I await the upcoming Hitler episode with pleasantly squirmy anticipation.
Sherlock. I knew before I even started watching this show that I was going to love it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, and I was right. True, the whole 'quirky/rude but incredibly intelligent investigator' thing is a bit overdone these days - House and The Mentalist spring to mind - but let's face it, Sherlock was the original, and the modernity of this reboot does nothing to detract from his brilliance.
It doesn't hurt that Martin Freeman is made of kittens, and Benedict Cumberbatch is tall, dark and well dressed - and that voice. Come to think of it, that name.
Dirty, dirty girls, indeed.
You probably now have the impression that I'm basically incapable of tearing myself away from the TV. And you might be right. But in my defence, there has been snow and illness to keep me indoors. Judge not lest ye be judged, and all that.
I have decided that I am not allowed to buy another black or grey item of clothing (unless it's absolutely amazing and one of a kind and completely incomparable to anything I've ever seen before). I've also decided (and this was almost definitely influenced by my overwhelming love for everything Karen Gillan touches) that I can and will rock chequered shirts, red things, baggy tops, and ponchos.
I am now the proud owner of something that looks a little like this:
except it's having an identity crisis. It thinks it's a poncho. And that's fine by me. Unfortunately, it hasn't really brought me any closer to looking even vaguely like this:
but a girl can dream, right?
Also high on my fashion to-do list are shawls. Shawls! Shawls are a severely underrated item of clothing, as my recent adoration of Stevie Nicks has brought to my attention. I wore a shawl to my seventh form ball and I haven't touched one since, which is basically a travesty considering how often I long for something between a vest and a jacket that isn't a cardigan. Clearly I need a wardrobe full of beautiful, ethereal, cuddly shawls!
WITHOUT FLAWS.
People like to bitch about winter, and it has its downsides, don't get me wrong; but frankly I can't wait for an excuse to break out the wool and leather.
So how do they do it, these people for whom the naked vulnerability of the act of giving flowers creates no fear? -- who are somehow capable of thinking, 'I fancy this girl; I should let her know. Tell you what -- I'll declare it unilaterally, in the most unequivocal way possible.' How does that make them in any way sane or human?
This precious, precious man, who would no doubt object to my referring to him as 'precious', gives me hope for humanity. Even if he lacks an appreciation for coffee and New Who, he's so eloquent about his dislike that I don't particularly mind.
Having said that, this video:
does conjure a certain amount of...
before my rational mind kicks in and reminds me that
a) it's some guy's opinion,
b) we don't pick on the Classic Who fans just because they don't get New Who, and,
c) Classic Who fans do tend to be polarized over the new series.
Look at all the fucks I give.
Aside from which, he goes on to raise an interesting point about the prevalence of things aimed at children which are also accessible to adults. I'm calling it 'interesting' because unlike 99% of everything else David Mitchell has to say, I actually disagree with him on this one. Oh, not about the idea itself - of course, there are plenty of things fitting that description floating around nowadays. Harry Potter, for instance.
And as soon as the thought occurred to me, I had to admit that no, that's actually quite a generalised, and thus ignorant, way of looking at it. For the first few books in the series, yes -- for the series as a whole, not at all. By the time the last book rolls around, you are acutely aware that this is not really children's literature anymore. If anything it's become an elaborate, deeply political allegory for a number of very serious subjects including racism and war. That's not to say that children's literature can't be all of those things -- the Narnia books come to mind -- but the tone and style of the novels evolve to the point where they are unmistakeably aimed at people who are probably too old to be considered a 'child audience'. And that is just one facet of the brilliance of that series: the books grow up with you.
Of course, that may not be immediately obvious to someone who has never read them.
Another series that comment reminded me of is one which is so comfortably nestled between 'children's fiction' and 'young adult fiction' that it has been marketed as both of those things, and as adult fiction, in various countries: His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, who apparently has a bone to pick with the Church.
I remember reading the first novel of that series, Northern Lights, and finding it -- honestly, a little infantile. I was 11 years old at the time. Admittedly, I had finished The Lord of the Rings about two years before this, so my reading tastes were perhaps a little eclectic (read: snobby) for a child. At any rate, I was sufficiently intrigued to read the sequel, The Subtle Knife, which I found far more satisfying, but which was still pretty safe to describe as a very long, very meaty children's book. And then the third book came along, The Golden Compass. It contained concepts so far above my little head that I had to read it four times in succession to even begin to grasp the full magnitude of it. In hindsight there were a ridiculous number of sub-plots which made it at times very difficult to follow with any degree of coherency; and Pullman had apparently chosen this book in which to stop dancing around behind the veil of tolerance and blatantly attack monotheistic religion as a whole. That isn't to say that I wouldn't happily hand that book to a child and say "Have at it", but I might doubt how much of it they would really understand.
That phenomenon, incidentally, is basically embodied by The Simpsons. It's probably a large part of why that show been so successful for so long.
Possibly I'm the only 20-year-old who still snickers at the log.
If I go back now and watch episodes I saw for the first time as a child, I can still distinctly remember finding it hilarious and entertaining and generally brilliant, but I realize now that most of the references and a good portion of the jokes went straight over my head. Nonetheless, The Simpsons is definitely what I would call a children's show which is also accessible to adults.
Doctor Who is not. Or at least, the new series isn't. Right from Rose, it struck me as -- well, a teen's show. My 16-year-old self is still filled with glee at the mere prospect of a 12-hour marathon of soft sci fi blended with a lot of social drama and thinly veiled sexual tension between attractive people. But, and this is where I can see Classic Who fans getting tripped up, the classic show wasn't like that. It's essentially the same concept, but aimed at completely different audiences. And of course it should be; the audience of 2011 is a very different one to the people parked in front of the TV in 1963. If anything, we're simply more accepting of ambiguity in target audiences now than we were back in the day -- children's television is still very much children's television (look at Dora the Explorer: I defy any mentally sound adult to sit through it and claim to have enjoyed the experience). But we're not exactly thrown off by the idea of a show that both the little 'uns and the high school kids can watch together. Different things appeal to us now; we expect different things from the shows we watch.
And that interests me again, because really, Classic Who is what should be appealing to us -- aren't we constantly being told that these modern audiences want an anti-hero? Someone arrogant, cynical and a little bit bitchy, but clever enough to back it up. Artemis Fowl, Tony Stark, Hannibal Lecter...Someone more like, oh, I don't know, the first incarnation of the Doctor? Instead we have Nine, Ten and Eleven, all irrevocably driven to help the underdog, all classically heroic, all frightfully boring by modern standards. And I can't help but wonder if perhaps that's exactly what's so lovable about Doctor Who: it reminds us -- first as children, and now as a wider audience -- what there is to like about something that's unfashionable. The zeitgeist may lean in favour of the anti-hero, but it seems there's still something to that old concept of cheering on someone who is kind and brave and fighting for what anyone with a moral compass would think of as 'right'. It may be old hat, but put it in a bow tie and make it considerably younger and more attractive, and you might have something.
So there I am, studying studiously and being rather student-y.
And I reach a part of the assignment that just doesn't make a lick of sense.
So I say, "fuck this!" and bail. "I will not," says I, "waste my time attempting to complete an assignment that has clearly been set by an imbecile."
After several hours of Facebook and this:
I muster the courage to take another look at the seemingly impossible problem I must solve by this time tomorrow. Upon rereading, I realize it's actually quite simple, and the fault was entirely mine.
Happily, I get the entire thing done before 2am, which leaves plenty of time for more Doctor Who.
I'm watching the Bad Wolf scene, which is flawless and excellent and giving me chills, and I'm all:
because I know what's coming and it's terribly sad, but at the same time it's all coming about just because Rose is too good to sit idly and let the Doctor die. No, she has to violate the TARDIS with a truck and become some kind of all-powerful time-related goddess and rearrange time and space to create herself just so she can keep her Doctor safe. And that is why you don't watch Doctor Who when you're feeling weepy.
So I've had an extremely long night considering I'm bone-tired. Admittedly this is self-inflicted, but still. I've eaten some things even I don't feel altogether comfortable admitting to, and considering the horse semen, that's saying something. Despite the fact that I did not get a Tumblr (for this exact reason), my life has been consumed by Tumblr for the night, and I have a funny feeling I'm going to be awake to see dawn.
No doubt that dawn will be accompanied by this:
and I will be staring out my window willing some sort of blue box to appear in my garden.
I could continue to wax lyrical about how just the Eleventh Doctor's theme makes me feel like I'm about to round a corner and find myself in the middle of some wildly wonderful adventure, but instead I'm going to end this post -- in keeping with its ever-so-edgy 'addled' theme -- with a nice unrelated e.e cummings poem.
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Seriously, even if you would rather shoot yourself in both of your kneecaps and eat the resulting bone fragments with nothing but pliers and a drawing pin to aid you than watch Doctor Who, do yourself a favour and watch Blink.
Written by widely acknowledged nightmare fuel station attendant Steven Moffat, this 45-minute segment of epic nightmare fuel and exquisite storytelling is basically flawless.
But don't take my word for it. 'Blink' scored Moffat the 2008 BAFTA Craft and BAFTA Cymru awards for Best Writer, plus the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presenation, Short Form, plus Carey Mulligan received the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode. On top of all that it was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Script, but lost to 'Pan's Labyrinth' by Guillermo del Toro. Have you seen 'Pan's Labyrinth'? It's fucking excellent. Even to be nominated in the same category as that film says a whole lot of good things about this episode.
And that's it, I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking but I can guess. They're coming. The Angels are coming for you, but listen—your life could depend on this—don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink.
Every so often, I become convinced that the only reason I am not having loads and loads of rampant, mind-blowing sex is that I choose not to. Entirely at random I will start to believe that I am, in the words of Fat Bastard, dead sexy. Well...maybe not dead sexy, but at least attractive enough that I could reasonably convince one or two people I find dead sexy to climb into bed with me.
As far as I can tell there is no particular trigger for this sudden change in attitude, and in hindsight I almost always find the idea horrifying, but since I'm in the midst of one such mood swing I'm perfectly content to do an erotic dance and flirt outrageously with people I've never met before. Frankly I think all the Doctor Who has had a wayward effect on me; Jack Harkness is a terrible role model unless you really are undeniably attractive.
On an almost entirely unrelated note, bow ties have become fetish fuel for me, and I've decided that the absence of one in my wardrobe is an atrocity that must be corrected.
I had somehow managed to forget how much I love Regina Spektor's earlier, rougher, freer songs.
Thirty-two is still a goddamn number Thirty-two still counts
Brilliant. Alright, indie and pretentious, but brilliant nonetheless.
Over the last few days I have, with the mystical powers of Youtube and the internet in general, been giving myself a crash course on the most recent episodes of Doctor Who. For years I had allowed the painfully cheesy low-budget effects and patently ridiculous plots put me off what is actually a very enjoyable show, as it turns out.
Tardy to the party? Well, slightly. But I am making a heartfelt attempt to make up for that! I'm fascinated by its ability to override my rationality and convince me that even though it's blatantly trying to turn "I wear a ____ now. ____s are cool." into a much-loved, oft-quoted catchphrase, I still buy it. I'm sitting there with one half of my brain facepalming and telling me, "That is so fucking lame," and the other half squeeing and shrieking like a deranged fangirl, "Bowties are cool!" Oddly confusing, but I applaud Matt Smith for making it work, because really.
