30 Sep 2003 C.E.
Birthday Celebrations @ the TARDIS: Part V
Entered 11:47:38 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
But whatever was the Terminator doing there at the end? Still, spectacular final set piece notwithstanding, it would have been more fitting for a character like Montana to end up dead in a pile of his own product before the assassin's bullet could even reach him. Ahh, all in all, it was a wonderful birthday indeed... from Alien invasions to martial arts soccer and the depraved lives of Cuban drug lords, I truly have seen it all.
Simply Excellent.
Birthday Celebrations @ the TARDIS: Part IV
Entered 09:36:30 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
That... was perhaps the most incomprehensible movie I have ever seen. Sadly, the fact that Joel and the Bots were riffing it live, with no pre-prepared script, meant that there was nowhere near enough non-stop levity to make the movie tolerable... thus I am in considerable pain. MST3K in the early years really was about films that could do people harm. Moreover, (although in retrospect this was probably a mercy) my viewing was continuously interrupted by unwanted visitors. Usually, visitors on a birthday are a welcome thing, however none of the visitors were for me. And to add insult to injury, some of them joked "Pizza Delivery Man" at the door, without actually bringing Pizza. Being one of the necessary food groups, I take my Pizza very seriously, and was forced to prepare and consume a small personal pizza in order to make up for the psychological trauma of the non-pizza delivery. So it is that I come to the bottom of the barrel of my birthday film surprises... the last one for the night appears to be "Scarface" with Al Pacino.
Having never seen this before, I anticipate it eagerly.
Birthday celebrations @ the TARDIS part III
Entered 05:52:02 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Shaolin Soccer was as good as I remembered it, and as I said, there's no room for calling that movie "bot fodder". Speaking of which, another shiny "new" present reveals itself unto me this day: a genuine KTMA Episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 called "Humanoid Woman". Someone must have used the TARDIS and nipped back into the past for a quick recording session in order to procure this little obscure gem. Hmph. I am informed that this title was selected because I "need a woman." Very funny. Bah. Time Lords have no need for romantic entanglement. And if I want to reproduce, I'd simply clone myself. Why taint the perfect genome with 23 chromosomes that have been Omega-knows where? Still, it's always interesting to watch MST3K when it was in such a primitive state...
Vengeance for the pathetic joke, will, of course, come in the fullness of time.
Birthday Celebrations @ the TARDIS: Part II
Entered 02:19:01 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Game of Death II. Good grief, it would be a passably decent movie if it wasn't so hilarious... First of all, trying to anticipate Forrest Gump by about a decade, unused scenes of Bruce Lee from the original Game of Death were used, intercut with a fairly bad Bruce Lee lookalike in order to set up the premise for the movie. The fights were exceptional, lookalike notwithstanding. However the intercuts were painfully obvious, and I believe the director knew the whole movie couldn't succeed if this kept up. So, the director solved the problem by killing "Bruce Lee" off by having his lookalike get fatally shot by a poison dart, falling from a helicopter whilst trying to retrieve a stolen coffin. I wish I was making that last bit up, but the rushed flashback scenes of Bruce's real-life funeral as well as the overly sentimental background music only served to drive salt into the wound. The great Bruce Lee, his great legacy sullied for all time in the name of a farsical plot point.
So the movie, now unencumbered by its need to work the deceased Bruce Lee into the plot, is free to introduce Bruce's I wish I was making that last bit up as well. (Where are Mike and the Bots when you need them!?) Hmm... as I watch it doesn't look as if the peacock-loving Afro_Jesus is the real Villain... or it could be misdirection... And of course there is a James Bond-meets 1980's Buck Rogers-style secret HQ in the ancient tower of death... And now a feral martial artists who goes to the same tailor as Fred Flintstone... Need... Mike and the Bots... Stat... Then the Shaolin monk who guards the supercomputer and the map of the world... Oh dear... "I might be a Kung Fu Expert... BUT I NEED CASH! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Unbelievable... I mean, it's believable... but it's... it's preposterous.... And the BGM is the SAME.. continuously repeating... if it wasn't for the fights this movie would be irredeemable. How kind of him to open his own coffin before he falls in it dead. Game of Death II: Because all drug-dealing Kung-Fu masters have high tech computer centres that rival the starship Enterprise. A more shameful exploitation of Bruce Lee I cannot imagine... with a bit of fine tuning this movie could have been fine on it's own. I shouldn't lie. No it wouldn't. Bruce was the only genuinely good thing about it besides the fight choreography. THIS WAS A 1993 FILM?! BY RASSILON! -sigh- alright, time to move on to the next one... I know this one won't be bot fodder... From the lovable resident sports maniac-- Shaolin Soccer... uncut!
Time to play some ball.
Birthday Celebrations @ the TARDIS: Part I
Entered 01:23:00 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Hmm, first from my favourite Eschatonian comes a copy of The Tenth Planet, the last William Hartnell Dr. Who episode... and the first appearance of the Cybermen. My word the Cybermen look utterly ridiculous and sound worse. Of note is the fact that they actually have names at this point in their history (Krang and Jarl, for the record-- say, didn't I know a bulbous pink disembodied brain by that name?) and they are vulnerable to simple radiation. Moreover they are rather sprightly creatures, despite their cyber-status... I wonder if the shielding they don later slows them down (I assume it's shielding, for they become invulnerable to just about anything save gold) And, of course, at the end, the famed regeneration scene-- I wonder what the audience back then must have thought of it... seeing the Doctor suddenly change into a seemingly different person. The only thing more painful than the Cybermen's ddddrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaawnnnnnn ooooouuuuuuutttttt ssssssssssinnnnnggggsssoooonnngggggg voice was the abominably bad attempts to ape American accents in this episode... only one actor pulled it off, and even he slipped at the end... the British simply have a way of pronouncing certain syllables that they don't seem to be able to shake... and no American says "miss-aisles", they say "miss-els"... now I know the pain the British must feel when they hear Americans trying to emulate their accent.
Next up, from the more Martial side of things, I see here a film entitled "Game of Death II" ostensibly featuring Bruce Lee...
Should be interesting, to say the least...
Birthday Celebrations @ The TARDIS: Prelude
Entered 10:50:36 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Hmm, what have we here... a box of gifts! Mainly movies and such... oh my, what a variety, and some rare ones too...
I wonder how much I can get through today...
A Birthday with Davros
Entered 09:55:47 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Ahh yes, what a perfect way to start one's birthday. I've just finished listening to "Davros", one of the latest Doctor Who audios from Big Finish productions. This audio adventure was excellent, in my opinion, even moreso than their usual work, which is of generally high quality itself. From the very beginning, we are led into the very mind of Davros, and see the motivations that shaped this mad scientist into the man who would give birth to the Daleks, the greatest evil the universe has ever known. For once, in my view, the Doctor is completely upstaged by the villain (not to say that Colin Baker's performance is anything less than stellar, he's at the top of his form-- the interplay between the Doctor and Davros, especially in the beginning and end of the story, are simply precious). Davros here is a fully fleshed out being, not the ranting parody of himself that the character has generally been in every episode following "Genesis of the Daleks". His introspective moments are chilling and well-balanced by the ominous background score, drawing the listener deeper and deeper into the twisted labyrinth that is the mad scientist's psyche. So well written is the story that when Davros finally finishes his self-evaluation, the conclusion he reaches is perfectly logical and consistent-- at least in the context of his newly-revealed persona. One could see how this man would be a product of his time, his body ravaged by war, and cast aside by his people and expected to die as he was-- and one could pity him for it. But, one also sees the rise of a sadistic psychopathy that had nothing to do with the times, or his experiences-- a heart of darkness coming into its own. Interestingly enough, even though the menace of the Daleks looms over the tale like a dark shadow, they are nowhere to be seen or heard. Davros himself is the danger here, and he carries himself quite well. I didn't miss the Skaran Pepperpots one bit.
I want to call this "Silence of the Lambs" meets "Doctor Who"... I really do. It is quite exceptional and I recommend it heartily. Now I wonder what they'll do with the Master, and I've yet to hear what happened with Omega...
12 Sep 2003 C.E.
An Apple a day keeps the BHA away
Entered 07:22:24 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
From a comment on metafilter: "Astronomer Carl Sagan also complained to Apple when they starting using 'Sagan' as the internal code name of a computer that became the Macintosh 7100. Apple stopped using his name, but instead started calling it the 'BHA.' Sagan supposedly sued Apple anyway for trademark infringement, defamation and invasion of privacy, claiming that it was well known that Apple used 'BHA' as an acronym for 'butt-head astronomer.' The Judge reportedly threw out Sagan's case." BHA indeed...
I went to the same high school as that man (for one year, anyway).
08 Sep 2003 C.E.
Thank the Romans for Indoor Plumbing
Entered 07:55:42 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
One of my late father's more unfortunate decisions was to invest in rental properties. While some would have you believe that landlords sit back and get filthy rich off the hard work and sweat of the tenants, please allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now. The vast majority of landlords just end up getting filthy. My entire day was spent in an apartment. Its former occupant had graciously neglected to pay the rent, go incommunicado, and then wait for two notices of eviction before leaving... and trashing the apartment utterly. Please keep in mind that a little over 7 months ago, this apartment was tendered to the tenant in perfectly clean condition, with all fixtures in perfect order. They were a bit old, but perfectly serviceable (save for the oven, which was brand new). The apartment reeked of death (or more precisely, rotten eggs and salami which had been stuffed into the pipes and left to rot)... the walls were full of scribbles and pockmarks, and the bathroom walls were half rotted out because the tenants were too good for shower curtains (so the drywall got suffused with liquid and disintegrated). Cockroaches and ants had been encouraged to begin their invasion of the premises in earnest, and half the lightbulbs had been stolen. The kitchen oven had apparently never been cleansed throughout the tenant's entire tenure. Wall switchplates and covers had been smashed and outright stolen. I spent my time disassembling toilets so that we could get to the drywall and replace it. My face was stuck next to pools of fetid human effluvium for hours at a time as I worked to remove the latrines. My person became coated with filth of one kind or another. Liquids soaked into my skin--liquids that gave no ground to the application of absorbent towels or repeated wiping. I was coated in plasterboard, insect detritus, dirt, and other substances my mind refused to classify in order to preserve my sanity. Sadly, most tenants here in Florida leave the same way-- first failing to pay rent (saving that money to make a deposit somewhere else) and then sitting out the legally permitted 8-day (3-day eviction notice + five days after Sheriff serves notice) before they finally leave, decimating the apartment as a parting gift before they leave. And Law enforcement is useless. When they were called in to see the devastation left by the tenants, (with proof to show that we did not hand over the apartment in that condition) we get fined for having it in "unsanitary condition". Never mind no one was living in it at the time and we had been trying to preserve evidence (for all of a day). (And I say this not as some mindless "cop-hater"-- I am technically an officer of the court, myself.) So getting home, I was never happier to see a shower in my life. The Romans really did the word a favour when they invented indoor plumbing. And I have to go back tomorrow and do it all over again.
My Joy is Boundless.
07 Sep 2003 C.E.
Marriage Trap, Indeed.
Entered 11:55:00 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
MSNBC on Laura Kipnis' new book, Against Love: A Polemic: " [According to Kipnis,] marriage is an insidious social construct, harnessed by capitalism to get us to have kids and work harder to support them. Her quasi-Marxist argument sees desire as inevitably subordinated to economics. And the price of this subordination is immense: Domestic cohabitation is a “gulag”; marriage is the rough equivalent of a credit card with zero percent APR that, upon first misstep, zooms to a punishing 30 percent and compounds daily. You feel you owe something, or you’re afraid of being alone, and so you 'work' at your relationship, like a prisoner in Siberia ice-picking away at the erotic permafrost." Then they quote the ever-incisive Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld: "[Marriages are] prisons! Man-made prisons! You’re doin’ time! You get up in the morning — she’s there. You go to sleep at night — she’s there. It’s like you gotta ask permission to, to use the bathroom: Is it all right if I use the bathroom now?"
Is it any wonder I have never felt the urge to get settled, pair off and breed?
Signatory 85400 for the Star Wars Kid
Entered 09:29:30 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
There is a petition online to get the poor "Star Wars Kid" into the upcoming Star Wars Episode III. I have just made myself signatory number eighty-five thousand, four hundred to the cause.
Because we've all played Jedi with a broomstick at some point in our lives.
Snopes Beatdown
Entered 07:52:14 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Snopes: seemingly the sine qua non of "conspiracy theory" debunking. Well, it's nice to see they can own up to their mistakes once in a while. After viciously ripping into Michael Moore (Google Cache, may vanish at any time) regarding his assertions that the United States allowed members of the Bin Laden family to fly during the general flight ban post 9/11: "Some folks play fast and loose with the facts when they've an axe to grind, however, and in Moore's case his axe is 'the dastardly Republicans and how they're responsible for every ill ever visited upon the USA.' In this case, inventing a bin Laden jet that secretly flew out of the country while the rest of us were barred from the skies, and peopling it with folks who were spirited out of the FBI's grasp by a U.S. president intent upon paying back some unnamed (but darkly hinted at) favor, is a handy way of reinforcing the stereotype of Republicans as callous and greedy politicians whose paramount values involve money, not people." Now, after the mainstream (UK, not US, unsurprisingly) media has done more and more digging to prove that this was in fact the case, Snopes has changed its tune, abandoning its previous right-wing certitude in favour of a more pragmatic approach: "Part of Mr. Moore's statement has since been proved to be correct — during the ban on air travel, some Saudis (including members of the bin Laden family) were transported by air to assembly points in the U.S. in preparation for their leaving the country. In an earlier version of this article, I ranted and raved about his avowing bin Laden flights had taken place while no one was allowed to fly. Yet some did, at least within the U.S. " It's not everything, but it's something. Of course Snopes is still trying to "spin" the PR damage to the establishment... when quoting the former head of the FBI's counter-intelligence division, who stated the Saudis "were not subject to serious interrogations", they immediately try to mitigate that statement by saying "(and one always has to be wary that former government officials often have axes to grind and frame their statements in such a way as to make their former employers look bad)". Yes... and one also has to be wary of spin doctoring as well. Deliciously, the final paragraph begins: "This page should be read for what it is: an analysis of some of the commonly-circulated claims about a complex issue (many of which are factually correct or misleading), not a denial of the larger arc of the story." In other words, "we're hedging our bets". New words I've encountered recently: Milque·toast: n. One who has a meek, timid, unassertive nature. [After Caspar Milquetoast, a comic-strip character created by Harold Tucker Webster (1885-1952).]
Meconium: n. A dark green fecal material that accumulates in the fetal intestines and is discharged at or near the time of birth. [From the Latin "Meconium", or poppy juice.]
03 Sep 2003 C.E.
A portrait of insanity
Entered 09:47:37 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
I am always fascinated by the vagarities of the human mind... the endless permutations in its operations, the myriad manners in which thoughts can slide down the slippery slope from sanity into the chasm of madness... but rarely have I ever seen the phenomenon so clearly depicted as in the case of Louis Wain. In the early part of the century, Wain, an artist, produced "cute" paintings for storybooks, cards and calendars featuring cats and kittens. However, later in life, after the onset of schizophrenia, Wain's work became significantly more disturbing (or dare I say, more interesting from a scientific standpoint). Therein lies the visual record of a shifting mind, its ever-changing view of the universe committed to fragmented memory in surreal snapshots of paint and canvas, fixed and frozen forever. Do you know the latter paintings of the cats remind me of a four-dimensional tesseract (as in hypercube)-style representation of a three-dimensional object... what if Wain, in his sickness, was able to literally see the universe differently, the filters of everyday perception torn away by insanity, a forced gestalt begotten of madness?
Just something to think about.
But I thought they were Irrelevant, Mr. Bush...
Entered 09:10:44 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Via the agonist: "U.S. President George W. Bush has said that he wants to increase the role of the United Nations in Iraq. Bush directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to negotiate with the U.N. Secrurity Council on a new resolution that would authorize the creation and deployment of a multinatonal force in Iraq. Bush's decision to support greater U.N. participation in Iraq represents a change in U.S. strategy." I should certainly think so. Far from brazenly declaring the U.N. "irrelevant" and in danger of fading into permanent obscurity as Bush was doing back when he so naively thought Iraq would be a walk in the park, our Glorious Leader TM has finally come back to them-- and why? So that someone other than U.S. soldiers can do the dying for America's latest exercise in hegemonic expansionism. With more American soldiers dead in Iraq after Bush confidently declared the war over than before, there desperately needs to be some sort of external army there to do the dying so things don't look bad come election time next year. Kudos to the U.N. for not immediately acceding to this shameless request, even after the interestingly-timed bombing of their mission in Iraq. (With regard to that, Qui Bono?, I ask... certainly not the Iraqis, by any stretch. Shades of the Lusitania come to mind.)
You know, if these hypocrites weren't actually in charge of the most powerful military force on the planet, and directly capable of ruining everyone's lives irrevocably, I would actually be laughing at this point. Instead, I sit back ad watch in shock as they run roughshod over common sense, all in the name of little green pieces of paper.
The pain of polling code... and Modern Society to Boot
Entered 06:37:14 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
I have just spent the better part of four hours trying to implement a stupid polling system over on the Suburban Senshi website. First I attempted to use a PHP solution, but the PHP simply wouldn't refresh so that poll results would be visible. So I attempted to use Perl-- but that was far too onerous (and yes, I set all my permissions correctly, etc. etc.) In the depths of despair I even sought a Javascript solution-- but that was nowhere to be found(!). Eventually I had to settle for a remotely hosted polling service. I dislike remotely hosted services, as I have no direct control over them-- should they choose to vanish, so too does a portion of my site. However, to be frank, I cannot justify the effort involved in taking the time to code a custom solution. I had had enough of that already for the day, hacking (literally as well as figuratively) a PHP script so that the Suburban Senshi site could poll this one and retrieve the latest headlines (the solution was inelegant to be sure, and is easily broken, but it works), and before that I converted a bandwith-heavy random quote script to something much easier on the end user. I look back upon these accomplishments and the bile rises. All of this done, and yet I cannot secure a job because I'm not a "pro" at scripting and databases. Nor can I even get a learning position because the shattered economy has left all but the most experienced webmasters at a strong disadvantage. While I am an incorrigible geek, and love learning for learning's sake, with the death of my father, I have to admit that I am becoming more mercenary in my outlook on matters-- the time when I can freely expend my energies on "non-profitable" exercises such as this is rapidly drawing to a close... and I find that distressing. Whoever said "Money is the root of all evil" was correct, but perhaps not only for the reasons they imagined-- ponder this for a moment: The quest for green paper dictates how we are to live our lives, forcing us to genuflect to those of questionable managerial skill (cf. the Peter Principle and its corollary, Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB)) in order that we might earn our daily bread and be glad of it. Why is it that I should have to sacrifice my intellectual curiosity that I might develop a skillset suitable for me to present to some "boss" who can then dictate the structures of my life, that I might "earn" some pieces of government-approved paper in order to procure housing and nutrients sufficient to sustain my biofunctions hat I might be well enough to report back to work again and perpetuate the cycle? Why should I purchase a few more days of physical sustenance at the price of my creative, independent spirit? But such is the nature of the "modern" world, where technology was to have freed us of all this drudgery by now. Working to eat in the 21st century? Hmph!
Enough! It is the evening, and I am irritated by many things. I shall ponder the gross inequities of human materialist society no more this night.
Nineteen more months of pain. Joy.
Entered 02:15:12 PM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
I have been, for the past few months, observing the slow-motion "trainwreck" that is SCO Corporation's attempt to extort money from Linux users the world over. Now, someone has pointed out the government timetable for the SCO Group vs. Intl. Bus. Mach. Inc. case:
All the inital dates are for 2004. Feh. This nonsense will drag out interminably unless SCO either goes bankrupt (very possible, at the rate their executives are cashing out) or they get bought out (unlikely, as even an infant knows their claim is spurious, and IBM has enough money to not mind putting the legal "smackdown" on SCO). Yes, as a Time Lord I suppose I could nip forward and take a look to see how things all turn out, but the TARDIS temporal regression circuitry is a bit testy, and I wouldn't want to be stuck in the future, unable to see next week's edition of WWE Raw in "real" time (whatever that is). However, were I to prognosticate, unless the judge and jury are utterly befuddled by creative use of technojargon, SCO will lose, its claims found to be baseless. Then they will be sued for fraud and refunds by those companies who licensed a product from SCO that SCO had no right to license, their stock will "tank" and the executives who have up until this point been solely cashing out their stock will come out millions richer, while the hapless investors who came in lured by promises of lawsuits rendering them lucre beyond imagination sit back and watch their funds vanish into the ether.
As I said, a slow motion train wreck of a thing.
02 Sep 2003 C.E.
There are no limits, are there?
Entered 10:40:03 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Here I sit, scouring the internet in preparation for setting up an online auction on eBay, using Google to dig up some pertinent information, when I find this amusing little tidbit on offer:
"Free Bonus Gift #5: Using NLP on eBay!
Oh yes. Neuro-Linguistic Programming as the gateway to online auction success.
-sigh-
On Professional Wrestling as mirror of Contemporary Social Structure
Entered 07:16:29 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Over the centuries I have received much jocular "ribbing" for my appreciation of the "sport" that is Professional Wrestling. Many have asked me how I could be so "smart" and yet watch something so "fake." First of all, I like to examine everything I enjoy in minute detail, so I am well aware that wrestling is fixed (note my diction carefully). While the outcomes of the matches may be predetermined to a great degree, the amount of athletic ability, sheer physical endurance and--let's face it--bravery required to perform in the wrestling ring is second to none. I dare any one of the armchair bound, academic "critics" to attempt to survive five minutes in the ring sustaining even the most rudimentary of blows from a trained opponent--to say nothing of taking a hit from an opponent crashing down from fourteen feet above--and still come out of the experience preaching the falseness of the event. Lest you think this is some form of low-brow, uneducated anti-academic sentiment on my part... rest assured that as an academic myself, I can easily match wits with any of these so-called "experts" who routinely sate their critical appetites by indulging in self-gratifying exercises of superficial, smug judgementalism . Professional wrestling in America (as opposed to Japan, where it is taken more seriously as a representation of pure athletic sport) is a mass spectacle of pomp, pageantry, and yes, bloody violence-- it is the "Bread and Circuses" of Roman fame, with the exception being that in this Circus, all the performers are expected to come out of the performance alive. Contemporary themes of good and evil are explored in a superficial, "common man" friendly format, with subjects as diverse as racism, insanity, infidelity, heroism and even international politics used as the backdrop for the fights, which usually see these themes worked out in a most dramatic fashion. Now this is not to say the exploration of these themes is the primary raison d'etre of wrestling-- it has been, first and foremost, always about the fights-- but in later years, as the audience grew tired of watching authentic, technically sound grappling matches, these themes were needed to provide a justification and incentive for the audience to keep looking. Mr. J___ tells me I should "shut up and stop makin' excuses fer [my]self" and simply say what I wanted to say at the outset...
My, wasn't RAW good last night? I can hardly wait for Goldberg to exact his long-awaited revenge on that smarmy Triple H and finally ascend to the pinnacle of the industry where he rightfully belongs! (Of course, Triple H being the backstage insider that he is, I would be very surprised to see him drop the World title, but I doubt the WWE would dare to lose one of the few major stars they have in Goldberg, so we might yet see a change-- for a false sport, wrestling certainly is hard to prognosticate at times.)
01 Sep 2003 C.E.
Time Lords shouldn't have to Touch-Type!
Entered 10:22:04 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
So it was a race against time, trying to penetrate a heavily-encrypted Sydonian Databank before a deadly computer virus could freeze all the systems and bring the entire planet's network infrastructure to a halt. And the only means by which this heroic intervention could be accomplished was via the cobbled-together TARDIS console, which featured as its primary mode of direct computer access a Terran "Compaq Presario 2100 US" Laptop machine. And I, of course, being a Time Lord used to Atron-based telepathic interfaces and single-key macronic megaEXEC codepage morphologies, could only "peck the hunters" as Ms. A___ so malapropistically put it. Apparently I could not "peck the hunters" fast enough. The Sydonians had a backup system, as I knew they did, so I considered the matter closed. unfortunately, no one else in the TARDIS seemed to think so--for what did I see on my main terminal screen in the morning? No, not the venerable Seal of Rassilon, the heraldic crest of all Gallifreyans. No. The TARDIS terminal was proudly displaying the opening screen of "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing".
The sheer indignity of it all.
A new month, a new purpose
Entered 02:32:34 AM Terra, Sol-III Mutter's Spiral
Hmph. With the advent of September, which is my birth-month, I find that things around here are as boring as usual. Even computer gaming bores me. This condition, however, is not some kid of faux-existential angst, which I see bandied about all too often on the internet, in diaries like this (although I dare say that when I'm through no one will say there is another diary quite like this one). No, no-- this is a real, palpable dissatisfaction with the state of the cosmos as it is, and a recognition of the fact that changes must be made in the face of this inequity. Unlike others who sit and whine and bleat for perhaps a moment's fleeting insincere attention, I have neither the desire nor the inclination to debase myself for a few moments of faint praise. No, I say... with the dawning of this month a new dynamic shall be forged-- the universe in one corner, myself in the other-- or to be properly Zen about it all, the corner will be in the "one" of "us". And if I think that last sentence made proper sense then the need for sleep is made all the more clear to me. Sleep. Useless waste of precious unrecoverable time.
Hmph.
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"The matter of why Doctor Xadium's Time Capsule is fixed in the curious shape of a 'beverage vending machine' from late 20th-century Earth [Humanian Era 607934] is a subject never broached in polite conversation. Ever. Whilst some have scurrilously posited that Xadium cannot properly effect the repair of a simple Type 60 Chamelionic circuit, it is generally accepted that these disgraceful innuendo are slanderous and utterly unfounded." - Lord Sendrilmetavanskastaron, "The Gallifreyan Renegades", thirty-eleventh ed. D O C T O R 
"Doctor Xadium was an errant Time Lord whose overactive sense of humour at High Council meetings earned him a more or less permanent holiday from Gallifrey. Stuck on Earth trying to cobble together a new TARDIS-- but equipped with nothing more than the technological equivalent of bear-skins and stone knives (as well as some metal tape)-- he decided to use his time to follow the myriad trends in Terran society, studying their crude, primitive laws and laughable attempts to improve themselves scientifically. Aproximately 26 Earth-years into his exile, in order to offset his growing frustration with the 'self-involved, short-sighted, bombastic ape-monkeys with delusions of grandeur"', he took to irregularly recording his more sardonic-- or dare we say even cynical-- views on the ever-progressing devolution of 21st century human civilization (not to mention his own petty irritations) in his 900-year diary, excerpts of which we have extracted from the data core of his notoriously insecure Terran 'computing device' (which in terms of function is slightly less advanced then a Gallifreyan child's first number line). It is almost refreshing to note the ceaseless amazement he displays at the Terran propensity to supress any information, be it political, archaeological or scientific, that gets in the way of their pedestrian, self-absorbed world-view. It is for this reason that historians have labeled Doctor Xadium 'The Discoverer of Obvious Truth' - Lord Sendrilmetavanskastaron, "The Gallifreyan Renegades", thirty-eleventh ed., WHO IS GOING TO GET SUED ONCE I GET BACK TO GALLIFREY BECAUSE HE DOESN'T REALIZE MY SUB-ETHER NET CONNECTION STILL WORKS AND I CAN SEE THE ABSOLUTE RUBBISH HE'S SPEWING FORTH OVER THERE AT THE OPPOSITE END OF THE GALAXY T H E |