ChickenGeorgeVII does it again
I just find his stuff hilarious
I think Aint it cool news has declined in quality a lot in the last year or so, despite it's recent facial upgrade. But one thing keeps me popping back in from time to time... Talkbacker Chicken George.
His latest rant can be found under the story that Joss Whedon will be helming the new Wonder Woman movie.
I know three things by ChickenGeorgeVII 2005-03-17 02:13:47
one....wonder woman beter have BOOBS, TITTEES, TA-TAS, FUNBAGS, SACKS OF MILK, MOUNDS OF JOY, HEAPS OF FLESH, SCOOPS OF SOFT FUFFY SKIN, A CHEST, A RACK, A SET, A PAIR, TWO BUTTONS ON TOP OF A COUPLE OF MELONS, MAUMFLAUMBAS, AND HIGH QUANITYIES OF SOFT SERVE DAIRY.....two...SHE BETTER HAVE AN ASS.....and three...I BETTER HAVE THE NEED TO BOP THE BISHOP ON MANY TURNS IN THAT DARKENED THEATER....so fight all you want....just give me the chick i can objectify...And thus, halfway down the bottle! - - - George, The 7th Chicken!!!!
posted by Manchild at 2:30 PM
I wanted to like it
Really I did
I saw the pilot episode of the new Doctor Who during the week.
I've been a fan of Dr. Who since the mid 70's. Some of my earliest English reading material was Dr. Who related. When it was good, the show was very very good. But when it was bad, it was AWFUL.
The BBC, never one to pay good money for things like, oh, special fx or acting classes, churned out some truly awful muck sometimes. Those who wrote some real gems of episodes rose above the paltry limitations of the BBC medium. They wrote for love of the material, love of the characters, or love of the craft of writing. It was no surprise really that once those writers moved on, and were not replaced, that the show was on the road to crapness and cancellation.
This led to a period, much like Trek is heading to now, where the only new Doctor Who was being written by fans. Virgin Publishing took to printing the "New Adventures", and for a while at least, some proper SF writers took the Doctor and his TARDIS to strange worlds never imagined by any sane BBC F/X budget analyst.
Some of the better fan writers got their break writing novels under the Virgin agreement. Paul Cornell, Kate Orman and others, showed how it was possible (if you had real talent) to cross the barrier from fan-writing to published writing.
When the Dr. Who movie aired some years ago, the sticky hands of corporate ignorance were clearly in evidence on the script. Demanding broader accessibility to an unproven American market, the money-men lobbied for "changes". The Doctor would be half-human. His companion would be a love interest. There would be "smooches". And the list went on.
The American market wasn't interested. Neither were the fans, truthfully, though there will always be diehard fans who support a franchise regardless of quality.
The new series, when the rumours began, seemed too good to be true. The series was in the hands of a FAN. Someone who "got it". Someone who knew one of the largest most vocal subsets of Whovian fandom was not just the geek, but the male-gay geek. The Doctors asexual nature, and his studious ignorance of heaving companions buxoms allowed this segment to project their teenage fantasies onto this male heroic figure.
So Russell T Davies, the guy who developed and wrote Queer as Folk, a self confessed fan, was going to take the series back to the BBC. And make it RIGHT. Make it with the love and attention that a FAN should have for his beloved show. And some of Britain's finest writers signed on to write for it too. People like the funny and talented (and gay) Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen.
Truly, this was going to be GOOD. This was going to be WHO as it was meant to be.
Casting Christopher Eccleston was an enormous coup. He's an excellent actor, who gave the new show instant credibility.
Casting Billie Piper was, seemingly, an enourmous mistake. The teen-pop-queen had even less acting credibility than her ginger husband.
I'll say now, Billie was better than I could have hoped for. In acting terms, she fell right into the role, and I thought she was great. Bravo Billie.
No. The problem, crazy as it might sound, was in the writing.
How could that be? We know Russel can write. We know he's a fan. What's the problem?
The problem is, this was a super-fannish script. Too full of in-references for the long term fans, too full of unanswered questions mixed with bad exposition for the new viewers.
You never get a sense for who or what the Doctor is. Instead, we get more running around than an episode of 24, replete with loads of "We're running out of time" and "There's no time". Truly, the writers of the Southpark movie said it best when they pointed out that you don't have to have anything actually happen, if you just keep the characters looking like they're under pressure, running against the clock.
The writer treated the Doctor with kids gloves. This looked like a synopsis of a larger story, condensed unmercifully into 45 minutes. And the pace and music cranked artificially high to give a semblance of "action" when really, very little happens, there's very little action, and the plot is rice-paper thin.
As a first time viewer, I would feel absolutely
NO inclination to watch the next episode. As a fan, I will watch it. Because yeah, I'm one of those... "Any WHO is better than no WHO" fans. Maybe the writing will be better next time. And the editing less choppy. And maybe the incidental music won't be so gratingly loud and intrusive and CONSTANT. Maybe.
WHO knows?
posted by Manchild at 12:00 PM
Something to think about
When the end hoves into view
You know how it is, when a deadline approaches and you're trying to get everything on your "To Do" list out of the way? I've been feeling like that a lot, lately.
One of the things I really wanted to do was take some severely powerful psilocybin mushrooms, in an attempt to touch the numinous in life. Since I am frequently in Amsterdam, I recently took the plunge and lived to tell the tale. It was a resounding success, and I wanted to describe it here.
First, I think it's worth pointing out that I don't do drugs as a rule. I gave up smoking almost 18 years ago. And although at least 3 of my friends do cocaine on a semi-regular basis, I have never indulged.
So when I made the decision to take the mushrooms, I researched the living hell out of the topic first, to make sure I understood the risks and dangers etc... It's frankly amazing how much bullshit information is out there concerning such a relatively safe pastime. I had envisioned myself booking a room on the ground floor of a hotel for my "trip" in case I tried to "fly" out the window or something. Utter nonsense, of course, as my research pointed out.
So feeling much less tense about the whole thing, and with a copy of some super chill-out mind-expanding CD's in my bag, I flew to the 'dam for a trip of a different sort.
I'm putting it here, because I felt it was important to do so. It's hard to describe. I know, looking at the words on the page that they seem drab and two-dimensional. Lifeless. But when I think about the concepts, and the images they represented... my memories... I can't explain the feeling that there is something TO them. That I was on the verge of some real insight. Some new understanding. I doubt this is it, because it has an air of familiarity to it, even though I don't remember ever seeing something like his before, with the possible exception of the StarMaker by Olaf Stapleton. Anyway, here goes nothing.
I can't honestly remember the order or sequence in how thoughts came to me. Instead, I want to try to describe what I "learned" and what it represented to me.
In thinking about Blogging, I realised that many blogs are simply people passing on stories or jokes which they have seen on other blogs or in the news media, or something like that. And that there might be a trend towards those sorts of blogs, which pass along stories/jokes and which are then picked up and passed along. Evolution applies... important stories are passed on, unimportant ones are dropped. Most bloggers contribute very little "new" to this flow of information. They simply pass along what they weigh as important, and trim what is not.
This is very similar (but on a vastly different scale) to how the neurons in your brain work. A signal arrives and is passed on to the next neuron, and on to the next. Sometimes dying off, sometimes changing, and sometimes firing across different branches. Most of the neurons act as transfer points, only rarely adding some new impetus. And from this, thoughts and memories arise.
Before consciousness forms, before memories can be stored, the links between the neurons are weak, but are strengthened through repeated or continuous use. Eventually consciousness "emerges" but the individual cells do not know this.
There is something instinctive in man, when it comes to communication. Before email and instant messengers, people faxed each other those stupid chain letters, or jokes of the day on a Friday. Go back further, and we had the tendency to gossip. Juicy gossip (or the things we thought were important) survived and was passed along.
There is a certain amount of unthinking action in all of this. Just as when new technology becomes available, man grabs at it, almost instinctively. We are self-organising around forms of communication, and we network. Socially network.
DNA is made of 4 nucleotides, in countless variations. The cells in your brain do not "know" you exist.
And I wonder if we are simply self-organising "cells" or even "nucleotide" analogies for some global life form. Some form of life beyond our capacity to imagine. The internet and the speed of the connections it gives us between people/nodes are like a brain. Information is passed on, stored, retrieved, and destroyed. And the links get stronger or weaker, according to our own needs which even we do not fully understand.
But maybe even that global consciousness is not the end.
Like a cell, dividing, we are driven to go out to places like Mars and beyond, taking our networks with us, and establishing links and ties between them.
Maybe we are not the neurons or the cells in the final product. Maybe we are the nucleotides, and the planet-brains are the like the nucleus/brain in a cell. And the final life - form is some unimaginably larger entity.
The universe is clustered on so many levels; galaxies are just the next step beyond.
And if the galaxies could be linked, before the stars die out and entropy consumes everything in a freezing isotropic homogeneity, is our entire universe nothing but a cosmic egg, from which the ultimate life form will emerge?
You have trillions of cells in your body. Many die every day. Even the valuable brain cells, the ones that "matter" in your grey matter, die. And we treat their deaths lightly for the most part, sometimes even killing them in vast quantities with alcohol.
Why? Because the whole survives. The individual cell does not matter. Another will take its place and take up the job of passing on signals to the next node down the line, and occasionally, adding a new note of its own to the symphony.
And that is why it is okay for a man to die. If we have done the task that was ours to do well, why should we fear death? The brain cell may have some deeply primitive awareness, but it is nothing we would recognise as intelligence or life. And if it could, for a second, understand what it is a part of... it might realise that you could not call such an existance "living".
Man has so many things in the world to occupy his mind and interact with... he can spend no time in quiet contemplation of the trillions of individual cells that made up his being, or the nucleotides that make his existence possible, or all the cells (now long dead) that gave him a start in the womb. That first cell (Earth) that first divided, and sent him on his way.
In the cosmic scheme of things, we as individuals are meaningless. But we have a job to do. To bring forth something greater than ourselves. And when our time has come, to fade into oblivion with no complaints and no regrets.
Link. Listen. Speak.
It might be possible to learn something about the global end result of our community building. Let us take a look at the two most well known polar opposites, socialism and capitalism.
On the one hand, socialism/communism call it what you will, believes that everyone should be treated equally. The "we are all equals" philosophy. What does that lead to? A uniform grey mush. A man-sized stem cell. Not what one would call a viable life form.
And capitalism, look at this: There, we push man made ethics aside for a moment, and say "there will always be people at the bottom, and people at the top. There is a form and structure to society and everyone has his place. The few, rich and powerful on top, the many, poor and oppressed underneath."
There is something to this, the structure that is so necessary when we see what "total equality" would lead to. But unfortunately, rampant capitalism involves small segments of society taking resources/power/information and consolidating them into small groups, for personal gain at the expense of the whole. Like the saying goes, a capitalist is a man who would sell you the rope with which you will hang him. And like the environmental damage caused by oil companies and big-business, profits and power are prioritised by those who hold controlling interests in companies to grow into malignant transnationals.
I use the word malignant, so that you will make the association. Rampant capitalism is a literal cancer on the global whole. The so called "immortal" persons, (i.e. corporations) are cancer cells. And ultimately the global entity will die (be stillborn) even if the tumor survives and continues to divide.
To be fully adaptable, a fully realised life form, there must be structure, and hence inequality. But it cannot be based on capitalism. Some new paradigm is needed, and the cancer must be excised or we risk premature termination of this great experiment called "Life".
Find what your place is in the grand scheme of things, and fulfill your purpose. And then die peacefully. That is all that is required of you.
And if you are wondering what is your place, then look at the developing global body around you. What is it trying to tell you? Does a rising temperature mean it is sick? Going from chills to fevers... not a good sign. We need T-cells, the entities defence mechanism. We need more anti-bodies.
posted by Manchild at 5:30 PM 
Thursday, March 17, 2005
