Perhaps.
geekdom
Sarah Brightman wants to sing in space
Sarah Brightman wants to be the first professional singer in space:
British singer Sarah Brightman is to travel as a space tourist to the International Space Station.
The classical recording artist, once married to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, will be part of a three-person crew flying to the ISS.
After completing a tour in 2013, Ms Brightman will embark on six months of preparation at the Star City cosmonaut training centre in Moscow.
She will be the seventh space tourist to visit the ISS.
Once there, she says she intends to become the first professional musician to sing from space.
I say we let her do what she wants, as long as she sings this song:
What my day has been like
Can best be described by my Twitter feed, from noon to eight o’clock in eighteen beers (and one unofficial one not tweeted) all drunk at the Bodegraven Beer Festival:
- Haandbryggeriet Fyr & Flamme IPA 6.5 abv
- Narke Rainbow Warrior
- Undressed bordeaux Flemish red sour ale 6.9 abv
- Gänstaller-BräNaturtrub Zoiglbier 5.8
- Burton Smokey and the bandaid 7.5 abv
- Evil Twin Danbic Gooseberry lambic alike
- The Evil Twin Danbic cranberry version 5.0
- Jester King Funk Metal 8.2 abv sour stout
- Emelisse Earl Grey IPA 6.8
- Imperial Brown Stout London 1856 from Kernel
- Christmas Eve in a New York hotel room 2011
- Whisky Barrel Rodeo, a co-op between Jester King and Mikkeller, 12 abv
- SpontanDoubleCherry 1 year from Mikkelle 8.5 abv
- Rasputin Laphroaig BA 11.4 abv
- Narken Macpeat 7.something very very peaty
- Cuvee de Montagne 14 abv
- Narken Black Golding starkporter
- SpontanDoubleBlueberry 8.5 abv from Mikkelle
*Hiccup*
Rape should not be inevitable
It’s not always good for readers to get to know what their favourite writers really think, but the other way around can be painful as well. Seanan McGuire found this out the hard way when one of her readers asked why none of her female characters had been raped yet:
My response: “None of my protagonists are getting raped. I do not want to write that.”
Their response: “I thought you had respect for your work. That’s just unrealistic.”
Verity is the bastard daughter of Dazzler and Batman. Toby is what happens when Tinker Bell embraces her inner bitch and starts wearing pants. Velveteen brings toys to life and uses them to fight the powers of darkness. Sarah is a hot mathematician who looks like Zooey Deschanel but is actually a hyper-evolved parasitic wasp. The unrealistic part about all these characters? Is that they haven’t been raped.
It’s the ultimate thriump of grimdark fiction: rape is no longer optional, but mandatory for a certain type of fan. It’s the inevitable consequence of the increasing use of rape as a cheap plot motivator, either to threaten or traumatise your heroine, or to get your male hero something to avenge, to make your mediocre urban fantasy extra gritty without having to think about it too much. Rape has become the modern equivalent of giving your private dick a knock on the head at a convenient point in the plot.
But of course rape is different from a knock on the head, because it so gender unbalanced, both in real life and (much more so in) fiction happening mainly to women, can be much more traumatic or triggering for readers, while there always is that prurient element that creeps in, that makes rape look glamourous or sexy.
Rape can be used as a plot element, but not if it’s done lazily, if it is now just a checkmark for your urban fantasy construction kit.
I feel the need to who-viate
Of course Doctor Who is no more than it wants to be, light Saturday evening sci-fi entertainment for the whole family, glitzy and fun, good enough for the hour it takes to watch it. Worrying about whether it should be anything more than this, at this point in time, is useless; it’s pretty clear its creative staff isn’t really interested. Therefore this post is really only for my own amusement, a short examination of what’s wrong with New Who without any expectation that it will ever change.
Last night’s episode was emblematic of New Who’s failings. It had an intriguing premise (little black cubes show up in their billions all over the world simultaneously, then do nothing. The doctor is intrigued, then bored, buggers off to go gallivanting across the universe, leaving the Ponds to deal with Real Life as opposed to Doctor Life, then almost a year later Things Start to Happen and the alien invasion really starts, only it turns out to be more of a weeding than an invasion, with some new alien baddy wanting to get rid of the human plague. In other words, starts off interesting, ends up being yet another overtly complicated alien plan easily spoiled by the doctor waving his sonic screwdriver around for a few seconds.
It’s also fairly incoherent, as the promise made in the trailer above, of the doctor coming to stay for a year just isn’t true, while the plot depends on some fairly big coincidence (the human transmitter needed to boast the signal from the alien ship to the cubes just happens to hang around the very same hospital as Rory works) to resolve itself and some of the bad guys’ actions (kidnapping people into their ship) just don’t make sense if their aim was extermination in the first place. All the fx, banter, witty asides and clever touches do only so much to cover this up even when watching.
In that regard it’s almost the opposite of the old Who, which for the most part was stodgy rather than glitzy, with low budget wobbly sets and cardboard monsters being made up for by good writing and acting, as well as more room to tell a story, not having to depend on just a one hour show to tell it, but being able to take four to six half hour episodes instead. that way the suspense of the little black boxes could’ve been build up and resolved more gradually, more in the background while the doctor went on other adventures, dealing with life on Earth while waiting for them to do their stuff…