“You people are so tiny. And petty.”

Couldn’t resist a Thor quote, there. Well strictly speaking it’s from The Avengers, but Thor said it so whatever. And it sums up what I've been thinking about the last place I lived, so it's all good.

I’ve moved. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I now live in the Republic of Mancunia and I’m slowly getting used to things. I shall expound upon these things thus:

Artics - them great huge things as haul all your shit up and down the motorways? They’re called wagons.

Tea - as in, do you want a cup of one - are now exclusively referred to as ‘a brew’ at all times, not just when you’re tired or hung over.

Big light - as in the ceiling light in the room - is still called the Big Light. I’m thanking my grandparents for calling it that early on in my childhood.

“Are you right?” - I am now fully justified in saying this, as it’s how it’s said up here. Because that’s normal, so everyone who’s been telling me it’s been wrong for the past decade or so that I can remember is actually and in every way wrong. So there.

The drive to work - now only 30 mins, not 60, and actually it’s easier when your part of the M60 is the bit other people don’t know exists. Love you, junctions 22 to 24.

However, that being said, some people use the motorway like it’s a tiny A road through the arse end of nowhere and that’s just dangerous. Please start doing more than 45 mph in the (otherwise empty) inside lane, fuckwits.

The people at work - capable of higher awareness yet tempered with a kindness for absolute strangers that is both baffling and a wonderful thing. I’m almost beginning to see what the Doctor sees in humans. Almost. I mean, they put on a buffet with a superlatively broad array of choices to cater for people with religious or biological food needs without thinking twice - that is so hard to get across to most people, but near a city it’s almost second-nature. It’s great.

At the same time they’re not just nice to your face then talking shit about you once you’re not in the room; if they have a problem they’ll tell you. They’ll just be careful how they say it. It’s refreshing.

It reminds me of why I wanted to move to be within city limits in the first place. I’m nowhere near the centre, but at least I’m within its range, so I still get the ripple effects without having to be in the expensive postcodes.

And on that note, I’m off to see what’s on the 2 cinemas near me this weekend.

Peach and lube, people - peach and bloody lube.

TV home from home (III)

This post is all about the HK drama I’ve just finished - ‘Inspector Gourmet’ (2016) (為食神探). Or as it should have been called in English - ‘What a Carry On’, ‘Carry On Cooking’, or ‘The Quick and the Deadpan.’

Plot: Chu Sau-Nah (nicknamed ‘Big Sister Nah’) is in charge of a detective agency which still bears her husband’s name - but they’ve been separated for 2 years and the date for signing actual divorce papers is fast approaching. To complicate matters, her estranged husband has set up a rival detective agency with a new name right across the corridor to her. Galling, but what can you do? Her younger brother, Yeung Dak-Hei (nicknamed ‘Bill Gei’ as a piss-take on ‘Bill Gates’) is a chef in a restaurant, but constantly solves tiny mysteries like his idol Inspector Pineapple Bun (a comic people, a comic) and frequently daydreams - and has no filter on his mouth. When he gets framed for snapping his boss with his mistress, he gets fired. To make ends meet he ends up working for his sister Nah and her detective agency. Business is not exactly booming, so after another ex-copper of a detective crashes one of their investigations, Nah forces Bill Gei to get the bloke on their team. This bloke, Mak Sai, is also a self-taught gourmet of any and all food and frequently stops everything to eat. Add to the mix a woman who’s a village mob boss, Ah Kiu (a play on the English word and triad ability to ‘kill’ those in their way), who can out-drive, out-fight and out-surveil anyone. Finally we add a woman who joins the agency as a young up-and-comer, Ga-Ga. Unfortunately for anyone without a sense of humour, Bill Gei suffers love at first sight and the consequent gags, near-misses and dating shenanigans keep the background plots going as the agency takes on all kinds of cases. There are so many subplots and complicated situations it’s impossible to go into them all here, but suffice to say, they’re all gripping and all work toward the final showdown. Food is also a massive theme the whole time - but as it's mostly HK food, what’s not to like?

Tone: this is first and foremost a comedy, a pastiche of detective shows in parts, a feel-good drama, a mystery, and a show about family, no matter how they came to be. As such it’s high on laughs and scenes that border on slapstick, as well as something Stephen Chow termed ‘mou lei tau’ a while ago. This basically translates as ‘came out of nowhere’ or ‘no real meaning’. Decidedly low-brow and depending heavily on puns in Cantonese as a result of cultural or societal standards, they can be hard to crack for foreigners and hard to subtitle. However, this series takes a pretty good stab at it and when they get it right, it’s priceless - and downright hilarious.

So characters, then. First of all, women. Let’s talk about the women. Nah is portrayed as a penny-pinching miser who charges high rent to her younger brother Bill Gei to let him move into the company flat, who doesn’t let anyone claim expenses for stake-outs from the company, and generally seems a right battle-axe. What the others don’t know is that she’s struggling to keep the company afloat and bring in new clients - but she can’t tell anyone because she can’t be seen to fail. Sound familiar? Sister Kiu (‘Kill’), the mob boss, only actually got into it to protect her mother and younger brother from typical street triads, and keep the family out of poverty whilst her dad was out gambling and drinking away all the profits from the family shop. It’s a shock later on to find she’s in her mid-twenties but has accomplished so much. Other gangs fear her, she’s competent at everything she does, and she has the ability to change when she realises her assumptions have been wrong. Most importantly, the gags at her expense are mostly remarks about her being ‘a tomboy’, ‘butch’, and ‘not girl-shaped’. This is because she’s confident and doesn't give a shit what people think about her - and the social commentary here is turned on its head a few times.

Ga-Ga, the new person and target of Bill Gei’s complete and utter worship, begins the series as a young, naiive woman who has a gap in her past and memory, who is easily swayed and can find herself intimidated. As she helps with cases and see Sister Kiu tackle anything with absolute confidence and a lack of shits to give, she gradually begins to assert more of a personality. A massive break comes halfway through and from this she turns into a self-motivated, decisive and capable character. Although a lot of the show is played for laughs, the basis for their actions and situations is set up well and always comes out of reasoning and tempered emotions. They are not air-headed, simple people without back story or reasons for behaving the way they do. It only takes a few hours of prep for writers to set characters up properly but few shows bother; this one gave them complicated motivations that drove them to be who they were and gave them so much to work with.

The men - ah yes, the men. We have an even split of good guys and bad guys here (as we do with the female characters). Mak Sai, commonly referred to as ‘Mexico’ (Mak Sai Goh - ‘goh’ being brother in Cantonese, but Hak-sai-goh being Cantonese for Mexico), has a complicated and tragic past that takes half a series to uncover. It’s nothing half the audience hasn’t realised, but he does come with a few shocking secrets of his own and when the show does finally confirm fan theories, it’s done in a way that makes you wish it weren’t true. Louis Yuen is a very good acting choice for this character - wily but always hungry, smart and efficient, with an ability to plan ahead that would make Hannibal Smith jealous. He’s quick with the banter and bang-on with his come-backs, providing a lot of the ‘mou lei tau’ humour by being so quick and so deadpan.

Casting Kenneth Ma as the equally wily yet easily distracted, flippant Bill Gei was also a good move by TVB. He’s proficient at Puppy Eyes, the Evil Jaw-Jut of Anger, and will literally do any role you throw at him. The fawning figure of Bill Gei in love is ofttimes hilarious and cringe-worthy all at once. Throw in the fact that he’s nearly 6 feet tall and has to keep stooping to fit in the frame with shorter co-stars and you have some built-in gags to tease and infuriate the audience in a good way. He’s often the foil for Mak Sai’s witty lines, turning what should be a one-liner into a volley of wit and clever puns that often made me laugh out loud (a few times I actually had to step it back and watch it again). The secret I think is that these two actors have rehearsed the shit out of this and they put their backs into it - the acting was awesome all-round, but these two did very well with the sharp wit and reactions.

Highlights of this ‘mou lei tau’ include Mak Sai protesting that Nah wants him to take a case for no money - by shouting ‘YOU ARE NOT A HORSE’ in English at her. Leave it barely a split-second, in which everyone concerned (not least of the all the audience) wonder wtf he’s talking about horses for, and then in steps Bill Gei with ‘mh hai a ma?’ (唔係呀嗎?) This is Cantonese for ‘wtf / you’ve got to be joking / no way’ etc., but it rhymes with the Cantonese for, you’ve guessed it, ‘not a horse’. That’s the level of humour we have here. I nearly spit my tea out when the gag dropped and I’m not ashamed to say I’ve used it since at work when I can't swear out loud.

Pair lines like “what are you talking about?” with the come-back “for Cantonese, please press 1”, and the running gag (that Bill Gei starts but then spreads to other characters) of using shocking Chinglish but prefacing it with a supposedly smart, learned comment: “1 word: hou-jyu!” (HKers frequently adopt English words, and anyone who has watched a police drama or film will have heard someone shout ‘hou-jyu!’ at some point. This is the borrowed word ‘hold’ - meant as in ‘stop’ - but with the Cantonese particle on the end, hence ‘hold’ = ‘hou-jyu’.) This phrase gets played more and more for laughs, like “3 words: perfect!” etc. The trick is to deliver it with such a straight face that I swear Kenneth Ma needs a TV award for Best Actor. He did win a 2012 Best Character Award for ‘The Hippocratic Crush’, but that’s hardly enough. He was one of TVB’s favourite character actors for years, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that he started getting main and then leading roles in dramas. This is meta’d during the scene when he’s professing his undying love for Ga-Ga, and she says ‘Wow - you looked so sincere just then. Almost as good as Kenneth Ma’, to which he replies ‘He’s just an extra - I’m one of the leads in this drama, thank you’.

Another highlight for me personally was the occasional patterns of words that would lend themselves very well to being indie band names. We had things like ‘green tea lava waffle’, ‘pak choi fiasco’, ‘scumbag militia’, and ‘sleazy boss with a side of vegetables’.

There were serious issues here, such as women drugged and then possibly molested, murder, adultery - all the usual fun. But all the issues were treated with respect. They may have made fun of the situation, but never at the expense of a victim and never to trivialise the gravity of the issue or the potential damage done. It even reminds the audience at times to cherish their own loved ones, that you shouldn’t copy TV shows simply because they look cool, that movies lie (my personal favourite), and that when the shit hits the fan, ask yourself if you actually saw it happen - i.e. not to fly off the handle until the facts are in. Bundle this up in Carry On style bawdy jokes or stunningly witty wordplay and you have a series that I will probably end up watching again at some point.

Verdict? 9/10 - would definitely recommend. The tone may not be for everyone, and your mileage will certainly vary where the humour is concerned, but for me this was a spot-on laugh riot that really cheered me up after the emotional investment and devastation in the wake of ‘The Hippocratic Crush’.

So peach and lube, everyone. Go watch some fun telly and be good to yourself.

Labels

We’ve often been told that labels, in the context of putting people in boxes, is bad. Mostly true. As in, when we then use those labels to profile or segregate people. But labels in general? What did they do wrong? Isn’t it more the people hearing those labels, and the reactions they have to them, that are the problem?

For example, I say “the employment contract you signed says ‘don’t do the thing’ and you did the thing; why would you not expect consequences?” at work and I’m called ‘harsh’, ‘rude’, ‘not how the department should react’. I’m not at all bothered by what people think of me; what I’m more angered by is the fact that this person will get away with their actions because they put on some false anger and do the Storming Off In Indignation routine. And now it’s put down to ‘you handled it wrong’. When I ask how, I’m told ‘you should have been more tactful’. No, I say calmly, the person should not have tried to do the opposite of what he agreed to when he signed the contract. End of: level 1 disciplinary offence, case closed, move on. I’m told ‘it doesn’t work like that’, and now he’s ‘upset’.

*sigh*

Like I give an unidentified flying fuck how he feels; he broke a contract. Deal with him, get this done, move onto the next problem. This is why our department spends all our time in lengthy, drawn-out debates that take weeks to settle. That particular problem could have been solved in 10 minutes in a private meeting between Arsehole, his manager, and someone from our department. But no. Apparently ‘our way’ is dragging everything out.

Which brings me back to labels.

Arsing about on Tinternet this week has caused me, not for the first time, to stumble over the Myers Briggs personality test (or MBTI). In a rare case of ‘is it actually me and not everyone else after all?’, I took the test.

Basically it sorts everyone into 16 personality types (or labels). This in turn gives you insight into what inner forces drive you to act and speak as you do. I’ve done a few simple traits tests and associated tests before (including MENSA), but this one blew me away in terms of how accurate it was.

My label was INTJ. Or, in terms we can all understand, someone who is introverted, intuitive, thinks and judges. (Not in a judgey way, but in a weighing-up way.)

I’ve read a few different sources on what an INTJ is supposed to be like, and to be honest it’s scarily accurate. It also explains why there is so much frustration at work and on social platforms, and especially in areas that matter like who’s running a country and why nothing’s been done about it. For work purposes, it exposes a massive issue that has always been bubbling under the surface for me, but I never knew it was A Thing and therefore needed to be sorted. Now it’s been waved in my face, in apparently true INTJ style, I can work out what to do about it and then just do it.

It also explains why I get so pissed off when colleagues say things like ‘you shouldn’t say that out loud’ or ‘you need to be more professional’. I AM THE MOST PROFESSIONAL PERSON IN MY DEPARTMENT, UNCLEFUCKER. When was the last time I checked my phone during work hours? When was the last time I showed any emotion at all to someone asking stupid questions? When was the last time I held a grudge against someone because of their behaviour or general stupidity? When was the last time I gossiped? When was the last time I had anything on my web browser that wasn’t work-related? When was the last time I wore something inappropriate? When was the last time I was late, or fucked off early, or didn’t deliver my objectives, goals, or projects? When was the last time I didn’t do a handover, or communicate my research findings, or prepare for the latest oncoming storm?

I see these things going on around me all the time, and it staggers me. However, I keep a lid on it - because apparently calling people out on their lack of professionalism is frowned on - yeah, let the irony of that sink in for a moment. I channel my inner Spock - or rather, my inner T’Pol, seeing as she was completely alien and trapped on a ship full of either idiots, incompetents, or people of less insight and ability to think things through, or of much less life experience. I get shit done and I tune out everything that annoys me. And for this I’m called ‘unprofessional’ because THE ONE TIME I don’t manage to do this and say ‘FFS’ under my breath, my colleague hears it and assumes I’m thinking of resigning.

Yes, resigning. For some reason, she believes I am unhappy in my job. She believes that after one bad day you want to leave. I don’t understand - I genuinely don’t. Whether you enjoy the job or not, you still get paid to do that fucking job, and moaning about how much you don’t like it isn’t helping. Do the job or don’t - but don’t pretend that you didn’t know it was going to be like this when you accepted the offer of employment. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I joined the company, and I still know exactly what the place is, perhaps more so than others. The idea that I would want to leave because of one bad hour (not even an afternoon or day) is to me extremely immature. It also tells me that for some reason, she thinks I’m not enjoying my job. I asked her outright: Does my face tell people I hate them or something? Do I seriously have a Resting Fuck Off Face? She said that my face changes when I speak to people, from FUCK OFF into OH HI HOW CAN I MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER?, but she worried what others thought when they saw my concentrating face.

*sigh*

Like I give a shit what someone thinks of an expression on my face WHEN I’M BUSY WORKING. What in the actual fuck? What is this, the Face Police? Can’t they all just get on with their work and stop gazing round the room and FINDING things to worry about? I’m pretty sure that’s not in their job description and - you know what I'm going to say next, right? It’s not PROFESSIONAL.

But anyway. Being an INTJ is apparently not an easy life, but now I’ve read things about how non-INTJs react to INTJs basically INTJing all over their workplace, I can see more of her side than before. The problem is the very basis of being INTJ is not really caring about people’s opinions toward you because it’s not quantifiable evidence that anything is ‘wrong’, and anyway, what’s ‘wrong’ with ‘wrong’? How many people in history have been ‘wrong’ at the time, but then later proven right? And not just in terms of facts (Galileo for example) but attitudes themselves (Star Trek, David Bowie, etc.).

It’s tiring being an INTJ, I’m not going to lie. It’s exhausting tuning out all the inane shit that people ‘small talk’ about, exhausting having to adhere to long drawn-out processes when you can see the logical ending and just want to skip to it. It’s tough to keep my mouth shut when I just want to say ‘can you not?’ to people trying to stop me from working through trying to be sociable or generally distracting. I don’t get nearly enough recognition for the number of times I stop myself from saying, calmly and quietly, ‘fuck off’.

I think that’s this week’s rant mostly out of my system. I’m sure there’ll be more, but now I know the root cause, I can make adjustments. And they won’t include spades or plastic sheeting.

Soopytwist.

OK vs okay: I’m so tired of this war, it’s not even funny

Many people write. Many people use their favourite version of this word. I’m constantly told that I’m wrong, using ‘OK’ (or ‘ok’) instead of ‘okay’. 

Three words: FUCK. RIGHT. OFF.

Reason? When I was small and I went to school, it was only ever ‘ok’. Having grown up and continued writing stories, and then going into fan fiction - and now trying journalism - I’ve stayed with ‘ok’. Why? Because, like everyone will tell you, you CHOOSE ONE SPELLING SYSTEM AND STICK TO IT.

I favour the OED. I make no apologies; I’m English and I’m probably one of the few people who regard it as the last bastion of standard, regular, proper British English. Everyone else can use what they want; it doesn’t matter to me how other people spell it, because they’re from a different background or upbringing or education system or continent. It’s completely fine, whatever they choose to use.

But do not tell ME what I should use. I’ve chosen to keep with (my own country’s) English spelling system and there’s not a single thing you can do about it. Telling me I’m wrong whilst trying to make me change to YOUR idea of what’s ‘right’ is about as effective as trying to tell me atheism is bad for me because I’m going to burn in Hell. Yeah, think about THAT statement for a moment. Because yes, people have actually said that to me. You can imagine my pithy response.

That is all.

Tags:
~ writing ~ grammar

Running for your life from Shia LeBeouf!

If you haven't got this song, or you're not humming it round and round, then you're missing out:

'Shia LeBeouf' by Rob Cantor


You can actually buy the entire song for a single, solitary one US dollar by going to Rob Cantor's website. It's that easy. And it makes him money for coming up with such a twistedly funny viral song.

I'm sorry, Mr LeBeouf, but it's funny and it's all in jest. It's so random and odd that it's made my top ten songs lists this week, alongside The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails. I'm not even going to attempt to work that out.

Tags:

Shia LeBeouf

song of the week

This has been stuck in my head all frelling week.

Help Is On The Way

by sixx.am

Hey hey

Well I'm a paralysed soul

And I don't know where to go

Well I should open my eyes

Yeah I should open my eyes

I'm a left out only child

The attention gets me high

And I'm so unafraid

I like fortune and fame

And when I hear the sirens coming

And my temperature begins to drop

Am I so unaware

That my heart's about to stop

Hey everybody needs somebody

Wants somebody

Hey everybody cracks and bleeds

So hit your knees

And pray that help is on the way

Everybody pray that help is on the way

Well I can sypmathise now

Cos I'm finally breathing out

But this is not over yet

No this is not over yet

Even though we're damaged goods

I would love you if I could

But you are so unalarmed

By my unfortunate charm

And now I'm screaming bloody murder

As my temperature begins to drop

And my life is going numb

As my heart's about to stop

Hey everybody needs somebody

Wants somebody

Hey everybody cracks and bleeds

So hit your knees

And pray that help is on the way

Everybody pray that help is on the way

And sometimes I wish you were dead

And I'm not even joking

I'd put a gun to your head

And when your world crashes down

You'll see it's not so funny

What will you say to the press

Hey everybody needs somebody

Wants somebody

Hey everybody cracks and bleeds

So hit your knees

And pray that help is on the way

Everybody pray that help is on the way

Earworm. Bastards.

Universal Translator

Something happened today that reminded me of a similar incident a while back. The first one went something like this:

I go to see a mate at her place, get in the lift, and then realise someone’s behind me. I keep the doors open and an elderly Hong Kong gentleman shuffles in. Conversation (in Cantonese):

Man: Thank you for waiting for me.
Me: No trouble.
Man: 18th floor, please.
Me: 18th? Done. [Press button, then one for my floor]
Man: Thank you, you’re very helpful. [Pause] Do you live here? I don’t think I know you.
Me: No - just visiting a friend.
Man: I see. Have you come from Kowloon? You don’t sound like Kowloon, you sound like Hong Kong Island.


That was when I realised he was blind.

Me: No, I’m not from Hong Kong. I’m from England.
Man: England! Oh, that explains it.


Whatever ‘it’ was that was explained, I’ll never know - the lift stopped and he left, thanking me again. I carried on up to the floor I wanted, but I knew I’d be thinking about him all day.

Skip to today, Monday. Approaching the door at work, I get my keys out ready, and just as I’m fighting to get the lock open, someone comes up behind me and starts talking. I pull the headphones out of my ears and turn around to find an older man looking at me. Conversation (in Cantonese) went something like this:

Man: Excuse me miss - do you know where tower 2 is?
Me: Tower 2? I didn’t know we had towers. Is it an office?
Man: No, a learning centre.
Me: Uhm… Maybe that way? [Points] Sorry, I’m not sure.
Man: Thanks anyway.


Off he goes. And so do I. And then I’m thinking, either I’ve got ‘I speak Cantonese’ written on my forehead, or perhaps he was too fried by the 32 degrees C and 86% humidity to really pay attention to what I looked like. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is a little heartening.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
~ Hong Kong

Just because

You can dance if you like

You can sing every line of every song
No, you don't have to steal the show
It was your show all along
As the orchestra plays
The people take their seats
There's no room left in this house
It's only you and me
And if life is your stage
I'll be watching--


Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me, oh!
I'll be watching


Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me, oh!

And I'll be watching you
Everything that you do

As we start, rehearsing every scene
The words to everything
We realise that the crowd is listening
And then the tears, fall down on your face
In exactly the right place
As the people start to stand up in the aisles

You can hear the sound of violins
On every street tonight
You can see all lovers dancing around
I'll be watching--


Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me, oh!
I'll be watching


Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light for me, oh!

And I'll be watching you

All things you see
End up where they should be

All things you see
End up where they should--

Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light
Cos I’m loving you
And I’m loving this

Hold up a light for me
Hold up a light
Hold up a light for me

Hold - up - a - light
For me
I'll be watching you



Tags:
~ Take That

This is no shit Sherlock

“Poor devil!” [Stamford] said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my Afghan War misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”
“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”
“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”
“And who was the first?” I asked.

~ A Study In Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

Yes, it’s time I delved into this whole BBC does Sherlock thing and offered my two bob. I mean, I’ve done Doctor bloody Who to death, so now it’s time to move on. At least until Supernatural, Burn Notice or Doctor Who start up again proper…



So where do we start? How about… what went before? Yes, that sounds good.

First off, I’m a Jeremy Brett fan. Oh yes. I saw the new Guy Richie film, and yes, it was a rollicking good time, but it was someone else’s Holmes, someone else’s take on the books. And that’s ok - in my head, all three Holmes can co-exist side by side. It’s fine. I’m a sci-fi fan, it works.

However, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Jeremy Brett was in fact the real Sherlock Holmes, but they just billed him as Jeremy Brett so no-one would know ITV (Granada, thank you arsey regionator) had nicked the TARDIS from the Beeb and transported the real Sherlock through Time to star in a series about himself. Yes, it’s all true. Watch the old series and you’ll see it too.

So anyway, I heard through Tinternet - and by that I mean I was dimly aware - that the Beeb had dusted Sherlock off and made a new series about him. I have to confess I wasn’t much bothered, and made no effort to watch it in any form. It was fine without me.

Then I went back to Blighty for Christmas and my lil sis gave me a DVD she’d recorded offa telly, containing all three episodes (at time of going to press) of the new series. When I got home again, jet-lag and good strong tea made me think I could watch the first episode from the luxury of my sofa. Not realising it was in fact ninety minutes and not the expected one hour, I sat through all of it, merrily tweeting away how great it was and how much awfully good fun it all seemed to be. I went to bed, started back at work the next day, and got on with life. A few days later, I watched the second part, and then the third. And then I put the disc on the shelf and didn’t think about it.

And yet… and yet… A few evenings later (jet-lag conquered), suddenly and blindingly I wished there were more, but five minutes of Sam-Winchestering Google told me there were no more. After exclaiming ‘Bugger, balls and bollocks!’, I went back to my sofa, pulled out the first episode, and watched it again - with friends.

And so, ineluctably, here we are. What did I make of it? Well then… It’s all new, obviously. Except it’s not. Messers Moffat and Gatiss have gone about this the right way - taking the characters and their details and not actually changing the broad strokes all that much. Moffat does a very good job of writing a script designed to stick to the original characters (and the original short, ‘A Study In Scarlet’) while bringing them to life at a modern pace. Much of the dialogue, at least to begin with, is comfortably familiar in its similarity, and the details of the people’s personal lives are consistent. We are introduced to Watson first of course - as it should be - and it’s through his eyes that we discover this bigger world as he gets sucked into, amongst other things, the weird and wonderful sitting room at 221B.

“Observation to me is second nature. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan.”
“You were told, no doubt.”
“Nothing of the sort. … The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.’”

~ A Study In Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

Sherlock: “When I met for the first time yesterday and I asked you ‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’ you looked surprised.”
Watson: “Yes, how did you know?”
Sherlock: “I didn’t know, I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says military. Your conversation as you entered the room - ‘bit different from my day’ - said trained at Barts, so army doctor: obvious. Your face is tanned, but no tan above the wrists; you’d been abroad but not sunbathing. Your limp’s really bad when you walk but you don’t ask for a chair when you stand, like you’ve forgotten about it, so it’s at least partly psychosomatic, and says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic; wounded in action then. Wounded in action? Suntan? Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Watson: “You said I had a therapist.”
Sherlock: “With a psychosomatic limp? Of course you’ve got a therapist.”

~ A Study In Pink, Stephen Moffat (BBC), 2010

One thing I do very much like about this new series are the moments where the actors are allowed to get their teeth into it. Martin Freeman is a funny man - because he’s normally the butt of the jokes, the straight man - the Everyman - who is instantly endearing and amusing when dropped into an alien (pardon the reference) or new environment - so as Watson finding out about Sherlock and his queer ways, he should be the same. But he isn’t. There are moments where, quite frankly, Watson seems so downtrodden and ready to hit something with his stick that I fear we’ll never see the poor man smile again. I particularly liked the moment where Mycroft is trying to pump him for information and he suddenly blurts ‘Who the Hell are you?’ before his manners return and he looks down. And again: the moment Sherlock is going off on one, demanding to know what people scream for when they think they’re dying, and Watson says - in a way everyone misinterprets as deadpan - ‘Please God, let me live’, and Sherlock replies ‘Use your imagination’… Of course, then you realise Watson is not taking the piss at all as he shoots back, with a very cold air of superior harrowing experience, ‘I don’t have to.’ It’s these moments that make me love Watson, side by side with moments of him saying ‘We can’t giggle; it’s a crime scene!’, and gems like ‘~~But he wasn't a very nice man. And quite frankly, a bloody awful cabbie.’



And so, then, to Sherlock. Who is this Benedict Cumberbatch and where did he come from? Never heard of the bloke - but he fits the bill. Stringy, pale, hair askew because who has time to keep the hansom clean?, breathlessly able to deliver lines so fast even Doctor Ten would have to concentrate to keep up… But is he as good as Jeremy Brett? He is. So is he a better Sherlock? No. He’s not better, he’s just different. Anyone who’s ever pondered the ‘better’ James Bond, Dax or Theta Sigma - or original Granada Watson - can relate.

The point is, you put these two actors together and you get some excellent scenes. The ‘dinner’ in the restaurant was just priceless. Entire inner monologues given away by the eyes, and some gurning David Tennant would have been proud of, and you don’t need dialogue so much as a wider lens. These two are brilliant in the same shot, and they certainly work well together as HLP.



The character of Sherlock is just the same. He has his nicotine patches instead of his pipes - hence the new ‘three pipe problem’, and he texts voraciously rather than stare out of the window for inspiration. But he still has his violin, still has his weird experiments (‘Are these human eyes in the microwave?’), and he still gets petulant when life ceases to stimulate him sufficiently. And he still loves it when Watson tells him how clever he is.

“My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words [of praise], and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.”

~ A Study In Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

Watson: “That’s fantastic!”
Sherlock: “Do you know you do that out loud?”
Watson: “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”
Sherlock: “No, it’s… fine.”

~ A Study In Pink, Stephen Moffat (BBC), 2010

Is it me, or does Benedict Cumberbatch remind you of someone when he looks at the skull on the mantelpiece and says: “A friend of mine. Well I say ‘friend’…” For just a split second, it felt like the most understated impersonation of Brett I’d ever seen. I could be completely wrong, but on second viewing, it happens again. Just me, perhaps.

Speaking of which, quite ironically, there was a plethora of good one-liners in that first episode, and a whole host of excellent, sharp-witted scenes to boot.

Watson: “That… was… amazing.”
Sherlock: “Do you think so?”
Watson: “Of course it was. It was extraordinary. It was quite… extraordinary.”
Sherlock: “That’s not what people normally say.”
Watson: “What do they normally say?”
Sherlock: “Piss off.”


Watson: “That was ridiculous. It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done!”
Sherlock: “You invaded Afghanistan.”
Watson: “That wasn’t just me.”


And I did like that they kept in references to darker, more dangerous recreational substances that may or may not have been in Sherlock’s possession at the time of Lestrade’s ‘drugs bust’. I hope they do continue to allude to his attempts to stave of the boredom with variations on a seven percent solution - or at least, not write out it out completely. Having re-read ‘The Sign of Four’ just recently, I prefer it left in, as it gives more insight to the entire problem he has just living in a normal world - being a higher-functioning sociopath.



So, Sherlock and Watson and Mycroft and Moriarty… Interesting enough. Speeding through to the third episode, it wasn’t my first choice for Moriarty, but if they were looking for someone completely unexpected and apparently ill-fitting, they found them. He makes an excellent Moriarty because he’s wrong. He shouldn’t be shorter and Irish and squeaky and off-kilter - but that’s what makes him believable (if he’s not pretending anyway at the time). Something in my head went ‘nah, look at him. You’d never think he was--. Oh. Right. Got it.’

Adaptations? Not quite. Using original works as springboards for more fleshed-out, more wrapped-up tales? Quite. I’m not going to go into how telly today needs more answers than works of short fiction published one hundred and twenty-four years ago (when that work of short fiction was nowhere near as complete as some people remember). I’m just going to say I liked the way they ‘used’ the ending of ‘A Study In Scarlett’, but didn’t. It translated very well and it bodes well for future endeavours. The other episodes I’m not too sure about, having not read those particular stories so many times, but for now, I’m quite happy with the ‘new’ Sherlock and I’m very happy to know, via Mark Gatiss himself on Twitter, that three more episodes are slated to begin shooting in May this year.



Now, where’s my ‘Oh what now? I’m in shock - look, I’ve got a blanket’ t-shirt? I can see I’m going to have to spend an evening on Cafepress.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.



Tags:
~ BBC ~ Sherlock ~ Sherlock Holmes ~ Martin Freeman ~ Benedict Cumberbatch ~ Stephen Moffat ~ Mike Gatiss

Christmas 2010 - Doctor Who style

So I was about to go off on one regarding the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special before - but ran out of space. Well, ran out of a will to put every single Doctor Who thought in one post, is more like it. Anyway, here we go - and yes, it may well be spoilery.

Danger! Danger! Spoilers, Will Robinson! Do not read this post if you have not yet seen the 2010 Christmas Special!



So, easy start then: I loved it. Not a lot could detract from the excitement and sheer whacky good fun of Eleven running up and down, breaking laws of being a Timelord and basically making Christmas a bloody good time on telly. I loved the fish, the timey-wimey slant, the little quirky jokes and the fact that it didn’t have a Hollywood ending. Woah, let’s back up and qualify all that.

Breaking Laws of Being a Timelord:

“Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks.”

Yes. Ten said it, all incarnations of the Doctor know it, but Eleven decides to conveniently subvert his own ideas of what’s ok and what’s not and simply go back and rewrite Kazran’s memory. Nice. He did it with style, to be sure, and no doubt he can justify this to himself by weighing up the amount of ripples made to the space-time continuum as a whole versus four thousand lives on a spaceship that hadn’t yet died (except, fourth-dimensionally speaking, they had already not yet will have died). Quick question - was it the 4,000-odd people on the ship, or the fact that his two friends were aboard - and he had put them there as part of some honeymoon thing? And I noticed he referred to the people on the spaceship. I think I’m right in saying not once did he say he wasn’t going to let the ship crash because his Companion(s) was/were on it. Hmm. Anyway, as a catalyst, the spaceship plot was a good idea - and it did keep Amy out of the way, so I was particularly glad about that. I think he gets away with it. (And I’m reliably informed that Amy and Rory in outfits was rather like Rodney and Cassandra in ‘Only Fools And Horses’.)

Fish:

“It’s going to eat us!”
“Well perhaps we’ll eat it - but I don’t like the odds!”

From fish using fog to swim in the air, to the female shark out to lunch, it was all typical Doctor Who - take the norm and skew it just enough to make it cool, and slap on some skience to make it passably believable. Or, in a word, ace. We know fish, we know sharks, we can relate to them. Put them in the hands of Stephen Moffat and you get anarchy in the physics classroom that amounts to excellence in the ideas department. Weaving all that around the delta-wave patterns of some bird singing her Welsh heart out and you have a heart-warming tale of consideration. But not too thickly spread. Again, good stuff.

Dialogue:

“Father Christmas. Santa Claus. Or, as I’ve always known him: Jeff.”

Oh, it was rich. It was snappy. It was Stephen Moffat writing Eleven at his best - respectively. Just sheer bloody fun. I doubt there was a sentence in there that Mr Moffat didn’t pore over and adjust twenty times to make it just that little bit more amusing (or was gazumped by Matt Smith ad-libbing, perhaps). As a script, it was genius. As a mechanism to show how fab the Doctor can be when he’s not hindered by an annoying Companion, it did very, very well. No words can describe how much fun it is to listen to Matt Smith going off on one as if he’s the victim of the universe’s largest sugar rush, and yet coming off like some absent-minded professor who’s just dying to show something fab to his class because they’ll like it. Some of my favourite lines:

“A big flashy-lighty thing, that’s what brought me here. Big flashy-lighty things have got me written all over them. Well actually, give me Time. And a crayon.”

Doctor: “Clever old Mrs Manto - she only went and won the lottery.”
Kazran: “There isn’t any lottery.”
Doctor: “I know! What a woman!”

“Do you know, there’s a thing called a Face Spider. It’s just like a tiny baby’s head with spider legs and it specifically evolved to scuttle up the backs of bedroom cupboards. Which… yeah, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned.”

And then the follow-up gag which wins above all others, simply for the way Matt Smith delivers the fatal line:

Kazran: “Are there any Face Spiders in here?”
Doctor: “Nah, not at this time of night. They’ll all be sleeping in your mattress.”

And then there was the one that made me go out and make a t-shirt because I loved it so much:

“What do you call it if you don’t have any feet… and you’re taking a run-up?”

And little in-jokes, perhaps regarding a certain other Timelord bird (Timelady?):

Kazran: “I kiss her now?”
Doctor: “Trust me, it’s this or go to you room and design a new kind of screwdriver. Don’t make my mistakes.”

Even the lines that were perfectly ordinary get turned into a prompt for out-and-out laughter when they are spewed from the Doctor’s mouth:

“Marilyn! Get your coat!”

Timey-wimey:

“People think that Time is a linear progression from one thing to another, when in fact it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, uhm, stuff.”

Hard to forget those words. Said by Ten, written by Stephen Moffat. Of course. Which is what Stephen Moffat does best - playing with Time. He can jump backwards and forwards, he can write stories that rely on the wibbly-wobbliness of Time to work - with his stories, Time isn’t so much a backdrop for the Doctor, it’s another character in the play. As it should be, with someone who fannies about in the fourth dimension for fun. So many of the Doctor’s stories forget he’s a time traveller, once the actual landing has taken place. It’s a real treat to get Moffat screwing with timelines and using Time to the story’s advantage, and I hope he has more of these ideas on his laptop.

This is not the Hollywood ending you’re looking for:

The Doctor let her die. He did. Because there was nothing he could do? No - he didn’t even ask, didn’t even check. Because it was the right thing to do? Perhaps. From someone’s point of view, somewhere. Then again, ‘many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.’ (Thanks, Ben.) We’ll never know exactly why he didn’t bother to try and help Abigail - but perhaps we don’t need to. It’s One Of Those Times. It needed to be left. And anyway, he gave her a good way to go. How many other people can get back in touch with a very close friend to ride a shark-cab on their last day? Not bad.

I think I’m all done. (Except for - woah woah woah, Eleven - isomorphic controls? Didn't the Master use them on his laser screwdriver? Just asking...) All I can say is, this was a great episode and it more than made up for the rather lacking latter half of series five. I can only hope that series six is as good.

That’s shallot. Onion. I’m off. Probably back soon in my usual vitriolic mood.

But for now - peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.



Tags:
~ Doctor Who ~ BBC ~ David Tennant ~ Matt Smith ~ Stephen Moffat

Two words

Denny. Crane.




Tags:
Boston Legal ~ William Shatner

The post in which I lose what little dignity I had left

So we’re watching ‘Supernatural’ episode 3.14, or ‘Long Distance Caller’ to give it it’s real title. And we’re having a great time, expecting John Winchester to roll up at any moment. No wait, calm, down, I’m not here to Spoilerise anyone. I’m here to do my Happy Dance of Ultimate Victory (or Smackdown Carnage Conga of Triumph). Why? Why? Well let me tell you, as was once sang in, er, Rocky Horror, I think…

Sam. Dean. Sam and Dean (guffaw! Nice ‘Dr Badass’ joke there!) go undercover in cheap suits and Head Office guise to ask some pertinent questions – and as usual they use aliases. Now I know Dean thought of these – I just know it. He’s come up with some good ones in the past: Detectives Bachman and Turner, Detective Robert Plant, Mr John Bonham, Nigel Tufnel (!), Agents Ford and Hamil (cue huge ‘Star Wars’ sporfle!) and even Dean J. Mahogoff.

But these two names take the cake and the tin. He’s outdone himself. He’s earned my eternal admiration and deepest respect as a film geek. Dean Winchester, if you weren’t a deity (major, people, major) before, you certainly are now.

Oh right, the names. The aliases. Get ready to dance. Or squeee. Or hell, do both like I did. Ready?

Mister Campbell and Mister Raimi.

Yep, you read that right. And anyone who references The God Who Is Bruce Campbell and/or The Slightly Lesser God Who Is Sam Raimi, gets much geeky film love from me. Much. Very much. Lashings. (Hmm… Dean Winchester… lashings…)

See? I have no shame. I’m actually admitting I whooped, jumped up and danced round me front room when those aliases came out. I need help, I know. What I’m actually going to get is some more Butterballs down me, then go to bed. Cos I have work in about… nine hours from now. Fab!

Night everyone! And remember, you must not read from the book!


Tags:
Supernatural ~ Dean Winchester ~ Sam Winchester ~ Jensen Ackles ~ Jared Padalecki ~ Evil Dead ~ Bruce Campbell ~ Sam Raimi

Bummeration

Good news – flying out to L.A. in about eight hours’ time. Bad news – t-shirt shop lied about the time needed to produce my most amazingest creation ever, and now I won’t have the damned thing in time to take it with me (yes, you do have to be a bit of a ‘Supernatural’ fan to get this t-shirt gag). How upset am I? Put it this way, I’m smiling now, but someone will be crying later…

So I go to work, battle through some tedious compositions and some downright rude students, buoyed by the fact that I’m leaving on a jet plane later. Get home, sort my life out and pack it, and get down to the airport check-in to find that my particular airline does not do check-ins after midday. Riiiiiiiiight. So now I have to turn around and get my suitcase back home again, and come back in roughly six hours – 5.30am. Nice! Just how I want my holiday to start. Still, at least I have one. Just hoping everything will go much more smoothly once I’m there…

Finally finished and posted the fan-fiction I was worrying over. It’s done now, though. It’s another ‘Supernatural’ one (my penultimate, I think), it’s called ‘Bad Company’, and it’s available here. And yes, the very last chapter explains the above mentioned t-shirt gag.

All that remains to be said is that I hope everyone gets by without me, and I’ll be back soon, just in time for ‘Doctor bloody Who’ series four, over on BBC1 at the earlier time of 6.20pm. If you’re int UK, which I’m not. So I’ll be watching it Sunday tea-time, then…

I’ll leave you with some great resources for the Gene Genie, otherwise known at Sir Gene of Hunt the Eminently Quotable’s best and brightest Huntisms from ‘Ashes To Ashes’, the last episode of which I shall miss due to being with the lovely Winchester boys from ‘Supernatural’ (Do you really think I’d fly all the way to L.A. for anyone else?). There’s also the Gene Genie’s witty reposts from Life On Mars, too.

That’s it. I’m blowing this pop-stand, folks. I’ll see you crazy kids in about ten days.


Tags:
Supernatural ~ Doctor Who ~ A2A ~ Life On Mars

Two Doctors in Same TARDIS Shocker

It had to happen – we’ve had rumours of this since August, I believe. And we do love the god that is Russell T. Davies, but he does have a habit of dredging up or playing up to sure-fire winners when it comes to writing or producing ‘Doctor bloody Who’ scripts. He pulls heart-strings and mashes canon and fandom with gay abandon, and that’s why he’s produced some of the best episodes we’ve seen.

And so to Friday night’s Children In Need mini-ep. First off, who didn’t find this the biggest pile of squeee since the series ep ‘Utopia’? It were positively made of squeee, there were absolutely no denying that. They packed more into them few minutes than I could have hoped. There were a few things I noticed through vision blurred by much too much girlie enthusiasm though:

David Tenninch Tennant’s name appeared before Peter Davison’s. Hmm. So we’re not going in alphabetical order? Or even chronological? I see. They did well blending the middle bit into the beginning and end already used – but wardrobe? One minute he’s in a black shirt and freakishly blue tie (with short hair), the next a burgundy/purple-thing shirt and long(er) hair. Ah well. Not that it matters, eh. For his hand in the jar was ever-present.

Onto Definite Points of Squee, or Bits I Loved to Bits:

80’s synthesizer Five music!
“Crickety-cricket-stuff!”
Ten’s “sorry Doctor” then teeth-snap. Oh he does that so well.
“There it is – the frowny face – I remember that one!”
Ten being all gangly and doing that thing where he stands with his hands in his pockets, wiggling round with excitement. Fucking magic.
“It would really REALLY help if some skinny idiot wasn’t ranting in my face about everything he sees in front of him!” THAT’S the old Five!
“What’s this desktop theme, ‘Coral’? It’s worse than the leopard skin!”
“Brainy specs! – You don’t even need ‘em, you just think they make you look a bit clever.”
“Decorative vegetable” ~ ingenious!
“That was me actually, sorry… Your TARDIS and mine collided and wheur, there you go, end of the universe, butterfingers!”
“I’ve never found anyone who could fly the TARDIS like that!” – “Sorry mate, you still haven’t!”
“Does the Master still have that rubbish beard?” – “No. No beard. Well, a wife!” ~ How rude a gay joke was that? And they got away with it! Bloody marvellous!
“And my trainers! And my glasses – snap! And my voice still goes squeaky when I shout – still does that, I got that from you!”
“Hey, I’m the Doctor, I can save the universe using a kettle and some string – and look at me, I’m wearing a vegetable.”
“Wibbly-wobbly ~ timey-wimey!”
“Thank you – I’m very welcome!”
Five being typically breathless and astute, as if the entire universe hangs on his every feathered utterance of theories of impending doom.
“To days to come” – “All my love to long ago.”

Now that last bit (and the next one) nearly had me in tears. So much time had passed between Five and Ten, so much shit through the U-bend. So tragic, and yet so fucking ace that it’s all happened and the show’s been going so long and everyone will get more in-jokes that I could ever spot and.... and.... and... and then Ten drops a bombshell:

“You were my Doctor.”

Well fuck me. If that wasn’t the moment I nearly died. I’ve been through this already, and no doubt close to twelve million fanboys and girlies have too. We all know what camps we’re in, Doctor generation-wise. And I thought Five was mine. I think it was the last half of series two that ma brain went all sub-conscious and elbowed him smoothly aside for Ten, without even telling me. And then series three I knew it was Ten after all.


So there we are. I’m all squeee’d out, I have to have a little lie down now. Just come back from watching the Hong Kong Singers’ rendition of ‘The Full Monty’ stage show, and yay, it were fab. Story relocated to a brassic mining town in the USA, but all translated well and the actors were fan-bloody-tastic.

Proper tired now. Have a lovely week, and I’ll be going to bed now, a small smile on me face.

Peach and lube, people.

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ BBC ~ David Tennant ~ Peter Davison ~ Hong Kong ~ Children In Need ~ The Full Monty

Semantic stuff

So I asked the kids what the capital of France was, a while back. The answer? Yeah, you’ve guessed it, ‘F’. Nice. There then followed a semantic debate about whether that could actually technically be the answer to that particular question. Then I asked a class of four-year-olds to tell me the name of public transport that flew. The answer? A bus. To which I replied, “no mate, buses don’t fly.” Laffs and giggles all round. But he wouldn’t be put off. “Yeah they do, if you throw them really hard,” he says. A little ping went off in me head and then some loud Italian sports commentator suddenly shouted “Goooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaalll!” I’ve still no idea why.

Anyway, got me arse totally and completely kicked on that “Is it ‘and on-sy’ or ‘allons-y’?” debate. Well and truly. In his corner, matey cites the ‘Doctor bloody Who’ episode ‘Doomsday’, and a conversation about the Doctor wanting to meet someone called ‘Alonzo’ just so he could say “Allons-y Alonzo”. So obviously I lose Big Time. Which still doesn’t explain why he clearly said ‘and on-sy’ during that series three ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ episode. Ah well. What’s life without a little mystery, as Remington Steele once said. Anyway, doesn’t really matter, cos I managed not to include the phrase in me latest ‘Doctor bloody Who’ fan-fic, ‘Take Two Companions and Call Back In The Morning’. That’ll be number eight, now. And I thought I were only ever doing the one…

And finally to PCCW, then. Which, contrary to popular belief, does not stand for Pacific Century Cyber Works, but actually Poxy James Blunts and Conniving Wankers. Or rather, it would do if anyone over here knew what that meant. Basically, I’m trying to stop my phone contract of four years. I’ve called three times, the bloke as set up the contract for me has called twice, and still they can’t work out where my contract is cos they couldn’t find their arses with both hands and a Maglite. I give up. I’ve decided I’m going to stop the AutoPay (DD) and chuck the fucking SIM in the harbour. Then we’ll see if they can suddenly magic up a record of me having a contract. Something tells me they will.

Thinking of going to Hutchison Whampoa and getting a 2G but fancy phone (Motorola, me thinks). One as lets you have yer own ringtones as message tones, too. And has a nice big screen for me Wallpapers of the Week, which, by a startling coincidence, I’ve just updated this very evening.

So that’s yer onion. No, shallot. I’m off to look up fab phones on Tinternet and look up alternative network providers.

Peach and lube.

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ fanfiction ~ Hong Kong ~ teaching ~ students ~ PCCW

That’s not a word!

I do not believe it. I literally Do. Not. Believe. It.

You know when you think yer right, but the entire Universe is saying yer not? When you privately believe you’ve the right of it, but have to bow to popular pressure and concede that this time, you just ARE wrong and everyone else is right?

Guess what happened to me, then.

I’ve written a load of fan-fiction fer ‘Doctor bloody Who’, that’s no secret. But I were using the phrase ‘and on-sy’ fer them bits where the Doctor decides it’s time to do some stuff. However, heaps of people told me I were wrong, and it should actually have been ‘allons-y’ (as in the French).

Now I believed I were right, thinking he were just doing his normal thing of taking words and adding ‘y’ ont end (‘monky-monk-monks’ / ‘Mickity-Mick-Mickey’, anyone?). But seeing as everyone int known Universe were adamant I were wrong, I accepted the fact that this was one of them times you have to realise that you will never see the other’s point of view, and just put up and shut up.

So I trawled through about four fan-fics and changed all the ‘and on-sy’ bits to ‘allons-y’. Sorted.

Or so I thought.

Skip forward in time (snerk) to Friday night, and a much-enjoyed re-watching of the series three ‘Doctor bloody Who’ episode ‘Evolution of the Daleks’. Skip to the bit about… ooh, Martha’s just roasted all them pigmen int lift, wi help of wee Frank and Tallulah (three ‘l’s and an ‘h’), and the Doctor’s legged it up there to find they’re all alright. And then he instructs everyone to get a wiggle on.

He’s turned mostly toward the camera, and the position of that famous Scottish inverted-cleft tongue is clearly visible. And then he says, as if to twist the knife in me purr wee RSI-suffering wrist, ‘and on-sy’.

No tongue. No ‘l’. Not even a suggestion. There’s an unaspirated ‘d’ though. Oh yeah. Right there, clear as day. But I’m not feeling vindicated – more confused, due to the following:

i) Why did I not trust that I were right int first place?
ii) Why has it taken me this long to stumble over the place I probably first heard it?
(I thought it were actually in the series two episode ‘Girl In The Fireplace’, as some of them were set in France, and it’d make sense – but on second watching, he dunt use the word at all.)
iii) Is this really important in me life anyway?

Well, clearly it is, cos I’m blogging about it now. I think it’s the MOP (Matter Of Principle) thing, and of course the ‘why don’t I ever listen to meself?’ thing. And I’m not ruling out the ‘I’m just upset cos I’ll have to go back and change all them bloody fan-fics again’ thing.

Anyway, that’s about it. Nowt else really on, accept I’ve now discovered that the Motorola thing I wanted int nearly as customisable as it should be. So it’s off me Christmas list. What is on me Christmas list is a Life, so if anyone wants to make me a very happy geek and send one over that’d be great.

Soopytwist, everyone.

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ fanfiction ~ phonics ~ Martha Jones

Me cookie’s crumbled

I’ve finally found a bloke I really like. He’s thoughtful, helpful, knows how to really make me laugh, suave when he wants to be, clever, and not afraid to give me a big Doctor bloody Who style hug if he thinks I’ve missed out on one today. And you know what’s coming next, right? Yup, he’s leaving.

He’s been here just about a year, I think. We didn’t get on at first – always the way, eh? I’d tell him to sit down, he’d run around. I’d ask him his favourite colour, he’d tell me it were ‘ice-cream’. I’d tell him to finish his colouring and he’d jump up and bite my arse. And over time we developed our now famous ‘I brought you a biscuit but I ate it’ routine. Ah, good times.

But that’s it. Today’s his last day. Then he moves from the kindergarten class year 2 to year 3 – but not with me. He’s moving house to Kowloon, and that means a new school will have to get used to and play with him. It’s just not fair, I tell you. He’s my friend, and I want him back.

Anyway, my suffering aside, I do have a few good things to mention this week. I’ve seen the kinda new iMac and really, really, really want one. It’s fucking lush. So yeah, I want one, but it’s HK$9,500 (around GBP 594), so I’ll be saving up fer that int next six months.

Then me and Flatmate went and watched The Invasion last week. Apart from having to tell the two US girls on holiday next to us to shut the fuck up wi their bloody moaning, it were really good. Well, we enjoyed it, anyway. Two US girls just moaned about how they couldn’t follow what were going on. I’m reserving judgement on their inability to follow a coherent story line longer than two minutes long, but you can pretty much imagine me response, I think. Anyway, Daniel Craig were fab and Nicole Kidman were really cool. Clap of the week goes to the wee boy as played her son though – what a bloody hero!

And then to a hidden gem which you lot in Blighty have probably seen about four times already on some arse-end of an ITV channel: Secret Smile. Sat through parts one and then two straight after, and thought it were cracking. Really, really enjoyed it. Always thought David Tenninch Tennant were a small boy on red Smarties, but now I know he’s actually a full-blown fucking James Blunt* evil bastard psycho – when he wants to be on telly. Gawd, he’s good.

And then we had a phonics class at work, an’ I asked all the wee’uns to write down all the words they knew that had a ‘spl’ in it. So they did. Now, I ask you, what the fuck is ‘spleeful’? We had a great time, her trying to justify the word (‘it means you’re full of splee!’) and me trying to stop laffing long enough to ask her what it were all about, Alfie (‘so what is ‘splee’ then?’). A quick conflab wi me Flatmate later via SMS (she were working int other branch) and she put forward the idea that ‘spleeful’ is how you feel after watching either Captain Jack Harkness or Doctor number Ten do summat particularly characterly. I disagreed, ont grounds that that were actually ‘squeeful’. The debate continues to rage.

And that’s yer onion. No, shallot. I have to try and hammer out this latest ‘Doctor bloody Who’ fan-fic. Oh, almost forgot: latest Wallpapers of the Week are up too. A student request this week – a looooong story, my friends.

Soopytwist.

* James Blunt = cunt (rhyming slang)

Tags:
Hong Kong ~ teaching ~ students ~ iMac ~ The Invasion ~ Daniel Craig ~ David Tennant ~ Secret Smile ~ phonics ~ fanfiction ~ Captain Jack Harkness ~ Doctor Who

Simm’s to be The End

To borrow from Jerry Maguire: you know when you’re not completely miserable yet, but you glimpse next week’s misery? That’s me right now.

We moved. How can you cover so many events and so much time and energy expended with just two words? ‘We moved’. Makes it sound so easy. Anyway, we’re all in our new flat and yay, it is fab. To celebrate the fact that we had accomplished all this within twelve hours of opening the new front door, we sat down quite late last night and watched ‘Doctor bloody Who’ episode twelve: ‘The Sound Of Drums’.

First thoughts? Bearing in mind this is probably the only time I’ve actually slept on an episode before writing one of these? Well, where do we start – John Simm is fab. He’s fabber than fab. He’s out-Doctor’d the Doctor – almost. It’s like they’ve swapped roles: the Doctor’s got his serious face on, and the Master’s just out to crack as many jokes and gags as possible, lampooning everyone and everything with red-Smartie’d enthusiasm. After all, if you’re going to destroy the world, you may as well have fun doing it, eh?

Best lines? [Upon seeing Jack and Martha:] ‘Oh look, it’s the girlie and the freak. Although I’m not sure which one’s which…’
The Doctor to Martha, shamelessly dancing on the divide between cruel tactlessness and teasing rudeness: ‘Oh, I know what it’s like! It’s like when you fancy someone and they don’t even know you exist. That’s what it’s like.’ (And then Jack’s look at Martha and the consequent: ‘You too, huh?’ Aww! Poor wee Jack! And Martha – how amazingly rude was that of the Doctor? Ok, Ten, you can stop pretending you don’t notice any more. She told you, remember? Back when you both agreed to pretend it was just a ploy to wake you up?
Prime Minister Saxon: ‘Thank you one and all, you ugly fat-faced bunch of wet snivvling traitors.’ Nice! I half expected him to call em all ‘nonces’ too – although I did nearly have heart failure when the ‘W’ of ‘wet’ came out – for some reason I thought he were going to say a completely different W word. But that’s not ‘Doctor bloody Who’.

The ‘opening of the door to check she’s still screaming’ had me in stitches, as did his ‘happy’s like THIS, and ‘not funny’s like THIS’ routine. Pure Morecambe and Wise gold. And then his ‘Britain, Britain, Britain’ when addressing the nation – oh how we laffed, wondering if Tom Baker were chuckling away at this at home. And jelly babies – Mr Saxon eating jelly babies! He’s offering the bag to ‘his wife’ (the one he found downt side of the sofa?), and I’ve just looked at me flatmate and went ‘those better not be -’
‘Jelly baby?’ he asks.
We squeeeeeeeeeee’d.

And so to Things That Make You Go ‘Hmm?’:

Those perception devices, then. Made / grown fromt same material as the TARDIS, are they? Which has a knackered chameleon circuit and as such is physically unable to blend in any more. Hmm. Anyway, skip all that – why is it when you hold the device in yer hand, it dunt work, but when you put the (I’m guessing quite normal) chain around yer neck, suddenly it switches on? Ah, I see – it’s Time Lord Skience. And we Do. Not. Mess.

Did you clock that Martha’s telly were supplied by ‘Magpie Electricals’? So someone took it over after Mr Magpie was deadified by Maureen Lipman as The Wire in series two’s ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ then? The son of the family, maybe? He was jolly handy wi those replacement valves…

But didn’t the Master take a bit of a risk, blasting Ten wi his laser screwdriver (‘Who uses sonic, anyway?’)? After all, he said he used Professor Lazarus’ work to do that. Is he sure he’s not about to produce some mutating, DNA-throwback Time Lord by accident? Really?

Did it seem that Ten took to the Master’s return really quite easily? ‘Oh, hi Doctor, I’m back from the dead, I’ve been resurrected to Make War but I ran fer it instead. How’ve you been then?’ And purr wee Ten just goes ‘Not so bad, yourself? Do us a favour, mate, stop all this warring nonsense and join my gang. We’re good people, and after all, we are the only two Gallifreyans left…’ For some reason I thought he’d be a little more gobsmacked. But then, when you’ve seen everything Doctors One – Ten’s seen, I suppose there int much left to surprise you. And, truth be told, if any Time Lord besides the Doctor were to survive, you can bet it’d be that one. Git.

And then Martha – ooh, she’s a rum’un. I’d watch her if I were you, Doctor… Young girlies wi studyin’ and common sense get angry and vengeful when you arrest, intimidate or otherwise upset her family. She’s already gone against so many pieces of advice and orders given by the tall Gallifreyan, and dunt even seem to see Captain Jack as the shiny shiny beacon of all that is gung-ho arse-kickery (which she should). I think the Master has a lot to fear there. You mark my words, she’s going to make sure he gets what’s coming to him – and we’re not talking about sneaking up behind him whistling ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.

And now to why I’ve been miserable for the last thirty-six hours since watching it: it’s looking like The End of Ten. This Doctor’s had a damn fine run – a damn fine run, but it looks like the next forty-five minutes of episode will be his swansong. Why do I think this? Martha’s been introduced to the concept of regeneration, courtesy of Jack’s quick exposition at the beginning of this episode. And just like the entire premise behind ‘Moonlighting’, now that the cat’s out of the bag and just about everyone in the universe knows that Martha’s got a thing for him it’s all about to get shaken up again. Like the plot of the best Cardassian plays, we already know who and when, we just need to confirm why and exactly how it’s done.

So there we are. I’m already in mourning for the End of Ten, and am not looking forward to next week for two reasons: we’ll have to say goodbye to the world’s favourite incarnation of the Doctor (or second favourite, after Tom Baker’s Four), and it’ll be the end of series three. Double bummer, as me American mate would say.

I know it’s entirely possible I’m wrong. I know this is all in me head. Possibly. But then there’s ‘possible’ and then there’s ‘likely’, as a wise man once said. Bruce Campbell, I think.

And damn this comms black-out! I’m using me Mac that’s sitting int empty bedroom of me old flat, wi no furniture of any kind and no electric save the air-con (thank Sean; it’s been 30 degrees C recently). The broadband man’s coming Thursday. Then I can safely relocate and catch up on all Tinternet shite I’ve been missing.

That’ll do then. I’ve got to go – I’ve got some miserying and being sad to do.

Oh, and Wallpapers Of The Week are here.

P.s. ~ PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WEEK! I AM AVOIDING ALL SPOILERAGE AND WILL HAPPILY GUT THE FIRST PERSON AS 'INADVERTANTLY' DROPS ANY HINTS OR CLUES! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ Martha Jones ~ Freema Agyeman ~ BBC ~ John Barrowman ~ Tom Baker ~ John Simm ~ Little Britain ~ Morecambe & Wise ~ The Master ~ Cardassian