Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Second Shooter

This is a random little sketch I wrote awhile back, upon learning a new vocabulary word and determining that Aaron Sorkin could probably milk that moment for a solid minute of airtime. I decided to do the job for him. I'm pretty sure I'll never have reason to use this sketch in anything, so I'll share it here.

ONE: So I was reading this book about the genealogy of pygmies in the Pacific Northwest

TWO: You were reading a book about the genealogy of pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

ONE: Yes.

THREE: There are pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

TWO: Genealogically.

THREE: Ah.

ONE: Don’t you want to ask me why I was reading about pygmies in the Pacific Northwest?

THREE: I rather assumed you were attending a midget convention in Seattle.

TWO: They prefer “little people.”

THREE: I prefer supermodels, but we can’t have everything.

ONE: Well the library sent me the wrong book from the thing.

TWO: You meant to read about the genealogy of slightly larger people, then?

ONE: No, I wanted the biography of the man who invented paperclips.

THREE: I can see the confusion.

TWO: Why does the library even have books about the genealogy of pygmy paperclip inventors? Who reads that?

THREE: He does.

ONE: No one does, that’s why they’re in the book thing.

TWO: The book thing.

ONE: The book depository.

TWO: Are they all planning to assassinate John Kennedy?

THREE: That’s repository.

ONE: What?

THREE: Texas Book Repository. The word’s repository, not depository.

ONE: No, I think it’s depository.

THREE: No.

ONE: No, it’s depository. It’s where you deposit books.

THREE: No, it’s where you reposit… Well okay that doesn’t make sense, but that’s still the word.

TWO: Actually, it’s both.

ONE: What?

TWO: I just looked it up. Depository and repository are synonyms.

THREE: Who thought that was a good idea?

TWO: Probably somebody got it wrong once and was too embarrassed to correct it.

THREE: So he declared the other word a synonym?

TWO: Yup.

THREE: I didn’t know you can do that.

TWO: You can’t. This guy had enough books that he needed a freaking deposit-reposit-thing, though, so he was probably pretty important.

THREE: You know what I’d like?

TWO: What?

THREE: A book suppository.

ONE: …ew.

TWO: Well, you could more literally tell someone to shove a book up their ass.

THREE: And it would certainly make it easier to cram for a literature exam.

ONE: Frankly I prefer the old-fashioned method.

TWO: Studying?

ONE: Osmosis. Now excuse me – I need to go take a nap on top of my copy of Pygmies Of The Pacific Northwest.

THREE: Okay, but if you try my way? Don’t return it to the library.

Monday, November 24, 2008

To thy jubilee throng

Excerpted from a letter I wrote to Quentin this evening (so, Quentin, don't read this or I'll have wasted 32 cents. everyone else, go ahead):

As you probably gathered from the date line, it is the Sunday of Harvard-Yale weekend. I shall spare you the gory details of the concert and the Game, as by the time you read this you will probably have been filled in on the Wookie, the 703rd rendition of "If You Could Only See," and the thorough if wholly uninteresting trouncing of the sons of Eli by the Glee Club.

That sentence's syntax got away from me a bit there - the intent was that you had been updated by members of the Glee Club, not that the sons of Eli had been drubbed by the same. But if you would prefer to imagine the combined forces of the Glee Club storming the gridiron with crimson in triumph flashing, then I won't hold it against you.

Suffice it to say, at this weekend's tailgate I learned that contrary to popular wisdom, you will not become magically warm if you try to combat the freezing cold by getting drunk - you will just be freezing cold, and drunk. As both involve compromising the ability to feel your feet, it should come as no surprise that combining these states makes a most admirable and praiseworthy accomplishment out of the normally mundane task of remaining perpendicular to the ground. I am pleased to report that my tailgate was a success in this regard, barring an unfortunate twenty minutes spent in Gordon Track trying to make my toes wiggle through sheer force of will.

The weekend also served as a reminder of what exactly I enjoyed about college life. Not the crowded and sweaty parties that I no longer feel remotely obligated to pretend to like; nor the social events filled with old friends who I would love to talk to for hours but who, when in a parade of obligatory five-minute catchups, inspire attacks of my usually latent social anxiety; nor, shock of shocks, the football.

Rather, I was happiest this weekend sitting in a Leverett common room with a pair of RCSers and their blockmates, watching a movie, and each of us on a laptop or knitting or otherwise going about our business in each other's company. It's that sort of background socialization - having friends in the same room to comment at occasionally without necessarily having a full blown conversation - that was a constant element of my college days, and that is almost entirely absent from my life in New York.

In short - I miss my roommates.

Follow up: Errata

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Thoughts on 45 years in Time and Space

Had my second piece in io9 today - a news story on the recently released BBC documents detailing the creation of Doctor Who, 45 years ago. You can check it out here: The BBC Tried To Ruin Doctor Who - Before It Even Began.

45 years ago this Sunday, the first episode of Doctor Who was transmitted in Great Britain. This was the day after the Kennedy assassination - which is to say, by some measures, the first day of modernity. The beginning of The Present Day. Death of innocence and all that jazz - and no doubt the tendency of public school editions of history textbooks to cut off right around the Kennedy assassination has something to do with this as well.

For me, though, the dividing line is not about the socio-political implications of 1963. It's just the dividing line, that's how it is. Before 1963 is the past. After 1963 is the real world. And Doctor Who, fittingly enough, straddles that hazy line between yesterday and today.

Watching "An Unearthly Child" for the first time as strictly a 2005 revival fan, it's not immediately apparent that this is the same show we love and obsess over now. Sure, there's a police box in a junkyard, and a young girl is calling an older white dude "Doctor." But the control room is unrecognizably groovy, and William Hartnell bears little resemblance to our modern Doctors in both appearance and performance.

And more importantly, it just feels different - the pacing, the direction, the slightly horrifying moment when you realize that this Doctor prefers to kidnap his companions, rather than politely ask them aboard. It's old and creaky and dreadfully British. It is, essentially, alien.

But then this man called the Doctor hits the dematerialization circuit. And the moment you hear that unmistakable, unchanged groan of ancient engines - the familiar and fantastic thrill of the TARDIS, our TARDIS, in this program broadcast half a century ago - it feels just a little bit like time travel.

Friday, November 14, 2008

5 Things I Learned About Women From James Bond

My first post on IO9 ran this afternoon! I am rather happy with it. Do check it out!

5 Things I Learned About Women From James Bond

Monday, November 3, 2008

Ceci n'est pas une blog

This is not a blog.

Well, technically it is. But not really.

Due to popular demand (okay, scattered but persistent demand), I will now be providing reading material of the online variety with some regularity.

I have resisted traditional blogging my entire internet-life, for the simple reason that I know myself - I'll get way too into it. (cf: my away messages, in general) Also:

me: here's what my blog would end up being:1) stuff about bbc shows
2) transcripts of our gchat conversations
3) whining about my under-employment
Jenny: ...you say all this like it's a bad thing

So this is not a blog. This is digital, public storage space for stuff that I write. And by stuff that I write, I mean anything that I think is a bit clever and want to share, ranging from essays and sketches to emails and drinking games. What there won't be is a play-by-play of my life. Because who the hell wants to read that?

Enjoy! And just because this isn't a blog doesn't mean you shouldn't leave comments. :)

The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into a Voting Booth

I'm interning for io9, Gawker Media's science and science fiction blog. After a new-hire probationary period of a month, I was finally assigned my own story. But after three complete re-writes, everyone came to the conclusion that the assigned premise didn't work, and my piece was cut. I'm not devastated, because I agree that it was a silly premise, but I still put a lot of hours into trying to make it work, so I'll share the final draft here.

If published, it would have included embedded polls after each entry.


The Doctor, The Middleman, and Sarah Connor Walk Into A Voting Booth…

We learned last week that Doctor Who is the favorite program of the Republican party, but which party is the favorite of Doctor Who? If Dr. Horrible whipped up an anthropomorphism device that transformed Life on Mars and The Middleman into registered voters, would Obama or McCain become the president of Scifi Land? We've broken down the politics of nine of your favorite shows to help you decide how each program would cast their ballots on Tuesday. Vote – it's your civic duty.

Doctor Who

When you look at the Doctor, do you see an anti-gun, bleeding-hearts gay icon with a massive guilt complex and a meddlesome need to make people better? Or do you see an old white man in a suit, who uses his power and privilege to cavort with young girls and topple governments that annoy him? It gets even more complicated if you try to compare individual regenerations. The Doctor of "Genesis of the Daleks" refuses to make a pre-emptive strike, but the Doctor of "The Christmas Invasion" will bring down a regime as punishment for the same - "Do I have the right?" vs. "I can take down your government with a single word."

Firefly

What do you get when you put the veterans of the losing side of the Civil War into space? You get Firefly, the show that mixed left-wing social values and right-wing economics with a heavy dose of frontier libertarianism. True mavericks Mal and Zoe fought against the ultimate big-government of the Alliance, and now try to live under its radar, stealing from the rich and selling to the poor. Individual freedoms are paramount to the crew of the Serenity, of both the traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative variety; all that matters is that they be left alone by the government. You can't take the sky from Mal – you'll have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands.

Middleman

The Middleman fights evil so you don't have to – big government hand-outs in the extreme. His apprentice Wendy is a struggling artist and her roommate Lacey is a tree-hugging animal rights activist who would be less likely to vote in a polling booth than to turn it into a vampire-puppet theater. But a conservative could easily latch on to the Middleman's Eisenhower-era stylin's and emphasis on modesty and propriety. The Middleman is constantly ribbed for his old-fashioned ways, and yet these ways are shown to be pretty darn effective at saving the world. Are the Middleman's values a parody or sincere?

Torchwood

Let's just get the obvious point out of the way. They're bisexual. Everyone, the entire cast. Nay, the entire city of Cardiff. All bisexual. It's good times. But there are also a lot of big honking guns that get waved around willy-nilly – none of the firearms skittishness of the Doctor's liberal side here - and Captain Jack and his crew have a tendency towards conspiracy and cover-up. Did I say Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? Silly me – here, have some Retcon. And Ianto truly embodies the spirit of the Republican DIY bootstraps work ethic, working his way up from the mail room (and into the boss's bedroom).

Life on Mars

The progressive reading is pretty clear here. Sam Tyler, 21st century liberal, wakes up in 1973 and rails against the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the Nixon era (as well as his colleagues' ignorance of computers). But although the viewer is supposed to agree with Sam that these retro ideals and heavy-hitting police tactics are best left in the past, a conservative viewer might note that Sam's weak-handed, suspect-friendly techniques are often shown to be less effective than Gene Hunt's tough-on-crime approach. Additionally, if Sam is in fact in a coma in 2008, then the series makes a pretty compelling argument for not taking people off life support.

Dr. Horrible

Dr. Horrible thinks the world is a mess, and he just needs to rule it. He scoffs at Penny's community-organizing on behalf of the homeless, and his solutions include a Freeze Ray that will stop the world – conservatism taken to a literal extreme - and good, old-fashioned world domination. The antagonist superhero, Captain Hammer, is a handsome meathead who uses his muscle to bully people – sound like any nation you might be a citizen of? But in the end Hammer's bullying and posturing are intended to root out horribleness and evil. A League of evil, in fact. You might even go so far as to call it an Axis. Think of Captain Hammer as George W. Bush, taking down the bad guys while remaining someone you'd like to have a beer with, and Dr. Horrible as Al Gore, kind of dorky and trying to save the world through inconveniently extreme methods.

The X-Files

The X-Files placed a huge emphasis on first amendment rights and freedom of information – secrecy and conspiracy are huge no-nos. Scully was a devout Catholic, but religious issues were drawn with the same brush as supernatural phenomena. Plus, Mulder really liked porn – big plus one for the right to privacy. But the show also featured a deeply ingrained suspicion of big government, and of course our heroes were all strongly against alien immigration. And come on: the guy's name is Fox.

Sarah Connor Chronicles

SCC is all about the guns and the militia training – second amendment rights are pretty strongly supported by all involved, and pre-emptive strikes against threats to the Connor clan are sometimes warranted. On the other hand, Sarah Connor herself is a single mother – a demographic catered by the Democrats. But the future U.S. Military created Skynet, a massive defense system that would eventually gain sentience and destroy mankind, all in the name of homeland defense - Sarah certainly does not welcome these new robot overlords. And let's not forget the franchise's connection to the state of California and its Republican Governator.

Star Trek: The Original Series

So you had your interracial, interspecies cast, complete with interracial, interspecies canoodling – daringly liberal for its time. And that Prime Directive thing is basically the antithesis of the Bush Doctrine. But then again, Captain Kirk did have a tendency to ignore the Prime Directive when necessary. And since Kirk never trusted a Klingon and never will, he also retained some of that Cold War paranoia into the post-Alliance era. It must also be mentioned that, depending who you ask, a couple members of that romantically liberal crew may have been just a wee bit closeted.

Feel free to rail against io9's political agenda in the comments while you predict the vote of other fine citizen-series. And remember, if you're not happy with the results of the real election tomorrow – you can always move to Scifi Land.