Have actually locked in on War and Peace, lately, although I feel like my thoughts on this book are basically just going to alternate between "this idiot (affectionate)" about Pierre and "this idiot (derogatory)" about Nikolai for the next however many months. (I'm 1.25 months and 20% in, so... six months?) As it is, the narrative has briefly checked in on all characters on the "peace" side of the plot: Pierre has had his head immediately turned by wealth and flattery and been social-pressured into a marriage with the beautiful but incompatible Helene Kuragina; on the Bolkonsky family estate, Vasili Kuragin tried to marry off his wastrel son Anatole to poor Princess Mary and Prince Andrei's poor, doomed wife Lise is having a bad time being pregnant and isolated with her husband's weird family while he's off fighting the French; the Rostovs received a letter from Nikolai and the younger ones had a conversation full of dramatic irony in light of their turns of fate later in the novel. Now we're back to the War, where Nikolai Rostov has racked up debts, keeps being rude to people for no particular reason, and has a raging crush on Emperor Alexander, while his childhood friend Boris Drubetskoy is busy networking.
As a gift for Vialana I made this vid for Clue. I hadn't seen the movie until last Spring after seeing a really good high school theater production of it. I rushed to see the movie version and have been thinking of vidding it ever since.
Last year while screening fandoms for Festivids rarity I stumbled down a classic Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies rabbit hole. I methodically when through a chronological list of Bugs Bunny shorts from 1944-1963, scouring online sources for copies, adding info to a lengthy spreadsheet. Armed with a year's worth a work I had fun making this vid for tafadhali
I didn't have a very good night last night; when I went to bed I couldn't get to sleep, for no apparent reason. I might have had too much excitement right before going to bed; I went upstairs to use the bathroom there because someone was in the one down here, and when I went in I startled the cat, who was in the bath playing with a mouse. I wish someone would call an exterminator. Anyway, I didn't get much more than four hours sleep.
Something is finally happening with my Kaiser health insurance. On Friday when I checked my bank accounts I discovered that the cheques I had mailed off a month ago to cover what I hope will be my final three months of coverage had been presented to the bank. I can't believe it took them a month to do that. The same day, I received an email saying my request to cancel my insurance had been received but before they could cancel I needed to pay for the final three months. A case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I sent a quick reply saying the payment had been made and now I'm waiting for whatever happens next. I would really like this saga to be over.
The heating system in this house is weird. Apparently it's very cold upstairs in Eden and Aria's bedroom in spite of the heat being set to 72°F/22°C. Meanwhile it's warmer than I would like down here. I do think houses with more than one floor should have separate temperature controls on each floor.
It turns out Aria is quite an actor. She and Eden have been playing a game where you draw a card and act out whatever is on it. There have been quite a lot of animals, a camera, baking, etc, but the funniest was Aria being a banana. She insisted that she couldn't act out eating a banana, she had to *be* the banana.
So, originally I had planned to pump out a bunch of Doctor Who reviews at the start of the month, including writing up several at Gallifrey One. But, you know what? I have been having far too much fun at Gally to do the writing I had planned. Still, catching a few minutes between panels and other social events, I’ve been able to finalise this after reading the books on the flight over. It’s about a story that I feel strangely affectionate towards.
And if you’re encountering this blog for the first time, I write mainly about books here, and often about Doctor Who. For a sample of the more usual content, these were my top blog posts based on last year’s viewership.
To the matter in hand. When I first watched The Ark in 2006, I wrote:
Fan lore generally is pretty negative about this story; perhaps this shows that I wasn’t concentrating sufficiently, but I really rather enjoyed it.
In particular, I very much enjoyed the one thing that those who dislike this story universally single out for criticism, Jackie Lane’s acting as the newly arrived companion Dodo Chaplet (who walked into the TARDIS at the end of the previous story). I thought it was great to have an assertive young companion – the first really since Barbara’s departure (apart from the brief appearance of Sara Kingdom) – and for my money she rose to the challenge. Hartnell is on top form, and even his fluffs seem much more in character with the Doctor than with the actor. Peter Purves as Stephen has some great lines and even a mild love interest.
The other feature of this story universally mocked by the critics, the Monoids, actually seemed not too bad to me, for 1966 anyway. Certainly far far better than the forest creatures at the end of The Chase. They reminded me a bit of the Ood from The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. Their transformation from silent servitors to sinister overlords is creepy but compelling. And they supply the great punchline to episode two, when the TARDIS crew discover that the statue the Ark’s human crews were building has been complete, but with a Monoid head.
I even liked the look of it. The gradual revelation that the forest has (as we are warned in the title of the first episode) a steel sky is well done. The Roman-style costumes of the human Guardians deliberately make us think of the Monoids as slaves. The surface of the planet Refusis, and its invisible inhabitants, are well done. The scenes of planets and suns in space are, at least, not too embarrassing.
The Ark is one of those stories which I did not like as much as before, watching in sequence this time. I don’t think it’s just because we can actually see it for a change (of the 21 previous episodes, only three from The Daleks’ Master Plan survive). The fundamental idea is sound and even a bit daring, but the script is very oddly paced and yet also cliched. (A security kitchen?) It is not surprising that neither the writer nor the director did another Who story, and I wonder how much morale was affected by John Wiles’ imminent departure as producer. One thing which always tells me that the director didn’t quite Get It is that the crowd scenes are lacking in dynamism – it’s interesting to see children in Who, but it’s odd to see them and their parents all standing around with their hands by their sides. Imison does better with the Monoids, in the first half at least (and I see that the lore claims they were his idea), but the script doen’t help. Both halves of the story suffer from over-long exposition and rushed climax. Poor Jackie Lane starts quite well but seems to gradually have the enthusiasm sucked out of her.
I realised to my delight that I had not yet opened, let alone watched, a DVD of The Ark bought some time ago, and spent some time over the weekend remedying the situation. As the First Doctor space opera stories go, this is one of the few successful ones without Daleks; and I’ve always appreciated it as Dodo’s first proper appearance. The DVD is solid rather than brilliant, though the story behind the insanely complex camera work is told very well, and I had not appreciated just how short the time between filming and broadcast was; though the claim that Dodo’s miniskirt seen at the end was the first ever shown on the BBC seems rather bold. The extras include a lovely reminiscence of the Riverside studio where the story was made, with Peter Purves and the director Michael Imison (who was told he was to be sacked literally as he went into the gallery to supervise filming of the final episode), and a rather silly piece on why the Monoids never took off (which at least gets Jacqueline Rayner a moment as a talking head).
And there’s also a short documentary on the influence of H.G. Wells on Doctor Who, which seems at first an odd inclusion, though the argument is in the end very convincingly made that The Ark is one of the most Wellsian stories in the Whovian canon. This features a lot of Matthew Sweet, who has written some of the more literary Big Finish audios, and also Kim Newman, Graham Sleight and a mysterious figure credited as Dr A Keen, who looks like someone I vaguely remember from the Belfast arts faculty computer facilities in the early 1990s; I wonder what he is doing now?
(I should clarify that of course I meant academic, fan and friend Tony Keen in that last remark; also, since then I have become friendly with Matthew Sweet through Gallifrey One, which is where I am writing this up.)
Watching it again, I became impressed by the scope and ambition of the story: a generation starship! An artificial forest! And also the daring out-of-sequence filming of the last episode. Today’s viewer has to make allowances for what was possible at the time, but I think it holds up well.
The second paragraph of the third sentence of Paul Erickson’s novelisation is:
‘I’m not sure, my dear boy,’ the Doctor replied. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’
Like Lucarotti [in his novelisation of The Massacre], Paul Erickson added some extra chrome into the book version of The Ark which was, I suppose, not realisable on screen, notably the numerous different habitats on the Guardian/Monoid spaceships, and a second invisible Refusian. Also the motivation for the Monoids’ peculiar decision to send the Doctor and Dodo on an exploratory mission is (just about) rationalised. I had forgotten just how bloodthirsty the climax is, as the Monoids wipe each other out in a firefight (and here Erickson gives in to Ian Marter-style temptation to make the fighting even more vicious on the page). I felt, however, that the characterisation of the first Doctor was a bit shaky, with a bit too much use of “old chap” which is not really one of his catchphrases.
Rereading it now, I was again impressed by the ambition and scope of the story – there is a sequence where the Doctor chases all over the varied climatic regions of the Ark to cure the plague, and later on, the Refusians play chess as well as tennis. You can get it here (though at a price).
Before I get to the Black Archive, I am frankly fascinated by Dodo as a companion. Long ago I wrote a piece about her, linking also to the very small amount of fan fiction then available about her.
Philip Purser-Hallard’s Black Archive on the story doesn’t disappoint. It’s a good example of unpacking the ideas and context of the story and raising questions about the received wisdom of fandom.
The introduction reflects on how the story has dated, its roots in Wells and Stapledon, and what is known about the process of writing it.
The first chapter, “The Spaceship”, looks at the use of screens in the story, the conception of the ship itself, and the history of the idea of generation starships (including Ken MacLeod’s Learning the World).
The second chapter, “The Guardians”, looks at the concept of the far future, Olaf Stapledon on the future of humanity, the plague, and the connotations of the fact that the Guardians are all white.
The second paragraph of the third chapter, “The Reptiles”, is:
Many of the most enduring and iconic Doctor Who monsters have been similarly reptilian. The decade following The Ark produced the Ice Warriors, the Silurians and their relatives the Sea Devils, and the Draconians, all of whom have proved their lasting appeal⁶. At the time of the story’s broadcast, a few less prominent (and not necessarily hostile) creatures had been portrayed with some reptile characteristics, like the Slyther and the Sand Beast⁷. The Monoids represent the first time in the series that a primary antagonist is identified this way. ⁶ Introduced respectively in The Ice Warriors (1967), The Silurians (1970), The Sea Devils (1972) and Frontier in Space(1973), and in the first three cases appearing in many TV stories thereafter (while the Draconians have often appeared in tie-in and spinoff media). ⁷ In The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Rescue respectively.
The chapter looks at the reptilian nature of the Monoids and their relationship to the Cyclops and to Wells, at the question of what colour they are both literally and in racial terms, and at the colonial implications of the script.
The fourth chapter, “The Landing”, looks at the depiction of Refusis and the invisible Refusians, at the story’s Biblical parallels, and at the dubious nature of the agreement between humans and Monoids brokered by the Doctor and Refusians at the end (“The Covenant of The Ark” is the last of many witty sub-heading titles).
The conclusion looks at the differences between the two halves of the story, and makes the bold proposal that fan lore may be wrong about the authorship; he sets out a good case that the second half was mainly written by the mysterious Lesley Scott.
(However, he repeats the incorrect but widely believed statement the Malorie Blackman, co-author of the 2018 story Rosa, was the first known writer of colour for Doctor Who. In fact it was probably Glen McCoy, who wrote the 1983 story Timelash.)
I think that this Black Archive is particularly accessible for readers who may not be familiar with the original story, and I hope it will encourage people to watch it. You can get Philip Purser-Hallard’s The Ark here.
I’m having a great time at Gallifrey One, and if you are here, I hope you are too.
This is pretty good fun. The Angels of the Heavenly Host come up against the Weeping Angels; the Judoon and Margaret Slitheen get involved; some nice character moments for the Doctor and Missy, and to a lesser extent Bill and Nardole. Does what it needs to do. You can get A Confusion of Angels here.
I am really torn about this one. On the one hand, all the downsides I assumed when first hearing about this and when watching the trailer turned out not to be the case. On the other hand, something I hadn't expected did happen - two somethings, actually - and both to my favourite character from the original, and I'm still massively annoyed about this.
What I thought/feared: because The Night Manager had been such a success, they'd simply go for the (unnecessary) repeat sequel formula, with Jonathan Pine motivated by personal loss and vengeance (again), and the two new characters, arms dealer Teddy Santos, as a Richard Roper copy, and the sole woman focused on in the trailer, Roxana, in the role of beautiful girlfriend of the villain falling in love with our hero. This turned out not to be the case, though the first episode seemed to indicate it would be, with just enough differences to make it entertaining. Then more episodes happened, and I sat up and thought: Oh. Oh. That....is actually a really clever twist on the formula. Or several. But also, come episode 3, the first of the two things happened. And, well, I can't talk about this without spoilers....
В нашей Депеше ( La Dépêche) пишут, что Франция сильно разжирела, аж у 18% вес выше ординара. Но! Но! У нас в Окситании ничего подобного не наблюдается. И нашли объяснение. В Окситании (особенно в Тулузе и Монпелье) живут интеллектуалы. А они за собой следят.
1 what's your favourite kitchen appliance?
I never really thought about ranking them. The kettle is probably my favorite because it gets used the most.
2 do you have a collection of anything?
Random things related to Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch)
3 what's the best job you've ever had?
Probably the one I have now.
4 what's the worst job you've ever had?
Temping for minimum wage in a team that chased people up for overdue loans. I was new to the UK, so my partner and I were ineligible for all benefits, and I had a lot more in common with the people on the other side of these phone calls I could hear all day long as I was becoming The One Who Could Make the Printer Work and learning to like bananas because we had free fruit in the office and I needed the calories.
5 what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?
The green couch I bought the WonderHouse is pretty good. I can't remember where it came from; V sorted it out online of course.
6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
"Minimal effort" to me is taking something out of the freezer and putting it in the oven, which isn't a recipe. I guess in terms of things that I'd call a recipe that aren't difficult (and really pay off in how delicious it is, there's always the broccoli halloumi thing.
7 are you married or do you intend to get married?
I am not. I wouldn't say I intend to but I didn't intend to the other time either and it ended up being useful for geopolitical reasons so I wouldn't rule that out again in the future.
8 do you have kids? do you want them?
No and...I do not want to have them in terms of from my own body, and I'm fine that my life doesn't seem to have brought me any, but also if it had I think that would've been fine too.
9 are you on good terms with your parents?
...yes? This kinda came up at transgym yesterday: on the spectrum between good parents and shit parents mine are kinda...shit in practice but also... I talk to them every Sunday evening, which a lot of people would consider being pretty close and my parents consider less than the minimum to be happy.
10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?
ahahaha I have never found a good answer to this question. Do I have siblings in that I do and he turns up in anecdotes and suchlike? Or do I not in that if I say I do people ask stuff like "do you hang out with him?" and I can never hang out with him.
11 do you vote?
I vote in two countries! I just applied for a postal vote for the upcoming by election, because I can't remember if I'd done that since I got the notifications about it expiring.
12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?
Technically the mortgage on my old house but that didn't feel like a purchase. Next up is my Indefinite Leave to Remain which cost me I think I calculated about £7500 -- at the time. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, that'd be £12,828.24, and that's not counting that the Home Office has more-than-doubled the costs of those visas and applications since.
13 what are your hobbies?
Listening to podcasts, watching baseball.
14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into?
Hiking.
15 do you collect anything?
Aches, cynicism, grudges... wait, is this a question about knickknacks?
16 how long have you known your oldest friend?
I'm not really in very good touch with anyone I knew before I moved here, so probaby 18 or 19 years (despite being partners and good friends before that, neither D or I can remember what year we actually met but it was either 18 or 19 years ago).
17 are you a member of any clubs or associations?
local Queer Club. I have a gym membership lol. I don't think anything else?
18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education?
I'm a millennial, we don't get fields and careers. Not the disabled ones among us especially.
19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?
I had them all taken out at 18, I didn't want to, my dentist said I had to, they'd be causing me loads of pain. They never did. I'm still convinced he did it to get money out of my parents.
20 what's your favourite beverage?
Coffee
21 do you have any living grandparents?
I did until a year ago.
22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?
D's niblings, his sister's two kids. They are great. They're also tweens/young teens now so increasingly absent/mysterious/incomprehensible, but still such good fun when we do get to hang out.
23 what's the coolest place you've visited?
There are so many, and it's hard to compare them. At the moment my first thought is the Atomium in Brussels.
24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?
BA (Hons) Linguistics. It has been very useful to me: not in an employment sense (beyond the fact that I think having a degree made it easier to get my job), but it has been so helpful to me to be able to approach my life and the world through this lens.
25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a washing machine if you could only have one or the other?
Oh the times in my life when I haven't owned a (working) washing machine have been absolutely miserable. It's much easier to wash dishes by hand than to wash clothes by hand (or go to the laundromat even if there is one closer now than there used to be because it's where my barber was!).
26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?
We mostly shop online. D has a kind of master list that we just tick off what we need each week(ish) when we do the order.
27 what's your favourite household chore?
Mowing the lawn.
28 what chore do you hate the most?
Cleaning things I don't know how to clean/never feel like I get it clean.
29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?
We have so many, I'm so lucky. V looks after them; this is something else I would be shit at noticing in time. But I love living surrounded by them.
30 what's your living arrangement? (who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other?
I live with my boyfriend and his partner, in a suburban semi-detached house that I think was social housing? Sold in the 80s to a builder who...did things to it himself, many of which have consequences we're still living with. Technically the mortgage is D's and I'm a lodger but in practice all three of us contribute to the bills/food/household stuff.
source: Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper audio: Eels, "I Like Birds" length: 2:31 download: 306MB on MediaFire summary: Christian Cooper likes birds.
Hey, does anybody happen to know the answer to this question?
Back when Mr B and I started doing joint grocery orders, I started analyzing our budget like you do. In the course of doing so, I discovered something I hadn't realized: about a third of my "grocery" budget wasn't food. It was:
• Disposable food handling and storage supplies: plastic wrap, paper towels, aluminum foil, ziplocs, e.g.
• Personal hygiene supplies: toilet paper, bath soap, shampoo, skin lotion, menstrual supplies, toothpaste, mouthwash, Q-tips, e.g.
• Health supplies: vitamins, bandaids, NSAIDs, first aid supplies, OTC medications and supplements, e.g.
None of these things individually needs to be bought every grocery trip, but that's good, because they can add up fast. Especially if you try to buy at all in volume to try to drive unit costs down. But the problem is there are so many of them, that usually you need some of them on every order.
This fact is in the back of my head whenever I hear politicians or economists or social commentators talk about the "cost of groceries": I don't know if they mean just food or the whole cost of groceries. Sometimes it's obvious. An awful lot of the relief for the poor involves giving them food (such as at a food pantry) or the funds to buy it (such as an EBT card), but very explicitly doesn't include, say, a bottle of aspirin or a box of tampons or a roll of Saran wrap. Other times, it's not, such as when a report on the cost of "groceries" only compares the prices of food items, and then makes statements about the average totals families of various sizes spend on "groceries": if they only looked at the prices of foods, does that mean they added up the prices of foods a family typically buys to generate a "grocery bill" which doesn't include the non-food groceries, or did they survey actual families' actual grocery bills and just average them without substracting the non-food groceries? Hard to say from the outside.
When we see a talking head on TV – a pundit or a politician – talking about the price of "groceries" but then say it, for example, has to do with farm labor, or the import of agricultural goods, should we assume they're just meaning "food" by the term "groceries"? Or it is a tell they've forgotten that not everything bought at a grocery store (and part of a consumer's grocery store bill) is food, and maybe are misrepresenting or misunderstanding whatever research they are leaning on? Or is it a common misconception among those who research domestic economics that groceries means exclusively food?
So my question is: given that a lot of information about this topic that percolates out to the public is based on research that the public never sees for themselves, what assumptions are reasonable for the public to make about how the field(s) which concern themselves with the "price of groceries" mean "groceries"? What fields are those and do they have a standard meaning of "groceries" and does it or does it not include non-food items?
This question brought to you by yet another video about the cost of groceries and how they might be controlled in which the index examples were the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but, as usual, not the sandwich baggy to put it in to take to school or work.
See dozens of passionate, surprising, erotic, heartbreaking, romantic secrets and listen to poignant voicemails people have been saving on their phones from loved ones at- The PostSecret Digital Museum of Secrets
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