The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
It REALLY ain’t easy writing this way.
As soon as I heard the news that Matt Smith is stepping down as The Doctor (on Doctor Who, you buncha non-geeks), I, like everyone else, started thinking about who should be the next Doctor. My first thought was Chiwetel Ejiofor, best known as Peter in Love Actually and the Operative in Serenity.
But I have now changed my mind, because it occurs to me that the Doctor is always shown as a fairly tall fellow.
And to that, I say, bollocks.
Is there a height requirement to being a Timelord that I don’t know about? Because if not…it’s time for a short Doctor!
Really short!
So, for the role of the Twelfth Doctor, I hereby nominate:
Warwick Davis!
And you know what? I am pretty damned serious, the more I think about it.
Linkage!
For the Cabin Boy and Cabin Girl, the blackout was an adventure; for me, it was a reminder of what my world of adventure is really like.
:: Personal responsibility is cool if you can afford it. (Anyone who says that they did it themselves, with no help from anyone especially the government, is so full of crap that they can be discounted automatically and completely.)
:: There are places you can go where you can escape discomfort. There are places you can plug in machines to pretend weather doesn’t exist. There are people who will tell you that humidity is a horrible thing and should be avoided at all costs. Do not go to those places, avoid plugs when you can, and never believe a liar. Because there is nothing more beautiful in this angry, scary world than a hundred fireflies in the dark of a lightening-kissed sky. Nothing. (I like the sentiment here…but I also find heat and humidity loathsome and soul-crushing. Your mileage, and all that.)
:: As much as Will Smith wishes it, he cannot WILL his son into being a movie star.
:: So why did we accept Archie Bunker?
Because Edith loved him. Because the person with the kindest heart on the planet knew he wasn’t really hateful, he was just railing. We loved her and if she loved him then he couldn’t be so bad after all.
:: Funky Winkerbean very, very rarely focuses on the positive. Still, the message I’m getting from today’s strip is: if your father was killed when you were a baby, maybe it’s just as well, because maybe he was an asshole you would’ve hated. (The current storyline in FW is unimaginably bad, even by FW standards. If it didn’t take five point seven seconds each day to read the thing, I’d be embarrassed that I’m wasting the time I am upon it.)
More next week. If you’re nice. Harumph!
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: This one’s a bit depressing, but it really trips my weird circuit, in the way priorities are so misplaced
The G-8 nations are meeting in Northern Ireland, near the town of Enniskillen, and David Cameron wants to make certain everything looks rosy for the world leaders coming to discuss economic matters. Trouble is, Ireland has been hit hard ever since the bottom fell out of the financial market a few years back. A lot of shops have been abandoned; they sit empty, signs pulled down, naked storefront windows showing bare shelves… Well, we can’t have world leaders confronted with visible signs of the disaster they continue to enable — they might become concerned or even shift to non-stupid policies. So Cameron’s government has decided to make Enniskillen prettier. Those storefront windows have been papered over with photos of stuff that would be on sale if only the store was still solvent.
I do hope I live long enough to see what historians end up having to say about the austerity-fetish that’s dominating economic policy across the world.
:: On a cheerier note, Cracked.com has a look at what they say is the greatest issue of Uncanny X-Men ever. Issue 137, you might think? The one that concludes the “Dark Phoenix” storyline? Or maybe #141, which starts the “Days of Future Past” tale? Nope! Their pick is…issue 183. In which Peter breaks up with Kitty and then gets dragged off by Wolverine for a stern lecture about heartbreaking.
What’s funny is that back when I became a big comics fan in the early 1980s, the very first issue of Uncanny X-Men I ever read was that same #183. As intros go, it was a pretty easy way in: the only characters who display their powers are Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Rogue (in a brief Danger Room exercise). I hadn’t read Secret Wars yet at that point, so I learned in the opening pages that there was this big thing that went on and it changed people on the way back. And it had all the soap opera stuff that was always the best thing about The X-Men — I still remember one commentator back then referring to the book as “Dallas with capes”. Anyway, it’s pretty cool seeing something like this remembered almost thirty years later.
More next week!
So far, this book has been a much different experience than the first. I know just about all of what happens in this one, except for most of the third act. Which I just reached. Oddly, I know how the third act ends, but getting from there to the end is a bit troublesome right now. But I’m confident that the Muse will show up and toss some ideas at me out the window of his crappy car; I’m learning to just keep showing up to do the work, and trust the Muse to offer what help I need, when I need it. Hell, just yesterday he handed me the solution to a plot element that I’d been wondering about ever since Chapter Two.
Anyway, the work goes on. Keeping my upper limit at 180,000 words, I need to produce 78,000 words (roughly) between now and July 31. I can do this, absolutely!
As for May, specifically: I only had eight out of thirty-one days where I fell below 1000 words in total output. But I also offset those with eight days where I was over 2000 words for the day. My lowest output came on the 17th, with just 515 words; the evening that day was taken up by some family obligations, though, so that day’s output was just what I managed to cram in during my early-morning, pre-work session. My largest day of output was the 28th, just this past Tuesday, when I cranked out 2680 words.
So now, on to June and the third act of this book. My new quota is 1300 words a day, which is a bit more than the 78K words I need to reach 180,000 by July 31, divided by the 61 days in June and July. I set the quota high so that every time I meet it, it puts me a little more ahead of the game. Now all I gotta do is figure out what happens over the course of those 78K words.
As always, Zap! Pow!
I keep looking through Tumblr for artwork that puts me in various states of mind as I work my way through Princesses II: Back to Rydell High (not the actual title). Here are a few recent instances of such.
Apropos of yesterday’s discussion of country music, here are the Dixie Chicks with “Travelin’ Soldier”. This is what good country music sounds like!
One thing I’ve been thinking of late, with regard to Buffalo’s eternal quest to reinvigorate itself (or just stop the bleeding), is that folks in this area are too convinced of Buffalo’s inherent unique and wonderful nature, and that all we need to do is keep shining the already-existing facets of our little diamond and one day the rest of the world will see how shiny we are.
This seems to me…complete nonsense.
Buffalo has loads of notable architecture. But what city doesn’t?
Buffalo has a vibrant arts scene. But what city doesn’t?
Buffalo has potential for waterfront development. But what city doesn’t?
Buffalo has lots of local colleges turning out fine students. But what city doesn’t?
Buffalo has a long industrial tradition. But what city doesn’t?
About the only thing that Buffalo has that is genuinely unique among American cities — minus a handful — is its proximity to an international border. But Detroit has one, too, and it’s not really helping there, either.
There are a lot of cities in America. Quite a few of them are doing very well, and some, like Buffalo, are not. If all the things we always cite as reasons we should be doing better aren’t getting it done, what does that tell us?
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
