Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-6

Okay, I lied. This is the kind of leg that must be hard for the editors to make look interesting.

On the one hand, I thought it was a very well-designed Road Block. It was a needle in a haystack challenge, but one that didn't rely purely on chance--the racers could, if they had paid attention back in China and remembered the taste, scent, and color of the tea they had drunk the previous day, solve it very quickly and easily (as Ron did. Yes, I know, Ron is not completely useless! We are all equally amazed here, including Christina.) But if they just swigged down the tea and ran for the plane, and they didn't remember what it tasted like, well...they were going to be drinking tea until they cried. Literally.

At that point, it really just came down to "Is this a NEL/double leg?" Because the Detour was not hard enough to give the last-place team a chance to catch up, and that meant that unless it was a NEL, Margie and Luke were screwed. And we found out that it wasn't a double leg pretty early on, and we haven't seen any plan NELs this season. So we spent a whole lot of time suspecting strongly that Margie and Luke were screwed.

At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the final three will be Zev/Justin, Jet/Cord, and Gary/Mallory. All three have been running strong races leg after leg, and while it does take just one bad leg to put you out of the running (as with last season, where Gary/Mallory just got epically lost and washed out), they don't seem to be prone to that. Whereas everyone else has been kind of trying to come in "not last", it seems, which only works as a strategy for so long.

Next week, no Race, which means no Race recap. But in two weeks, more Race! And Zev apparently gets annoyed by loud noises. Oooh.

I Do Not Make Friends Easily

Recently, in my capacity as guest commentator on Mightygodking.com, I posted a review of the novel Ravenous that was, to put it lightly, not positive. In the comments section, an author named Steven Spruill took issue with my opinion of the novel, suggesting in no uncertain terms that my lack of enjoyment of the novel was due to my inexperience with the written form, and that Professional Authors such as himself knew better about its quality. A lively discussion ensued from there.

(It should be noted that the actual author of the novel, Ray Garton, has not involved himself in the discussion, presumably being far too classy to get into a dust-up with every person who gives his books a bad review. One rule I've learned, over a decade or so of reading and writing in a medium that allows fans and creators an unprecedented opportunity to interact, is that it is never a good idea to respond to a bad review in any way other than saying, "Thanks for your feedback." You will not convince people that your book is better than the reviewer says it is, but you will convince them that you are petty, small-minded, and unpleasant.)

(And for the record, no, this is not my opinion of Steven Spruill. I think he's possibly being a bit overzealous in defense of his friend, and his attempts to throw his weight around as a Professional Author are faintly pathetic, but I don't think he's a bad person or anything. He just has a few lessons to learn about how far your reputation will take you in Internet discussions, and I think he's learning them now.)

But one thing he said did have weight, and I wanted to address it here. He pointed out that it was unfair of me to call Ray Garton an "inept" author, based solely on a single novel out of the sixty-plus that Garton has had published. In this, at least, he is absolutely right; it is unfair to judge Garton's talent on the basis of one novel. The only answer I can give is: Life isn't fair.

I don't mean that in a trite, dismissive way; I mean it in the sense that the reader of a story is not in any way obligated to the author of a story. In fact, it's the exact opposite; the author is asking for the reader's time and (frequently) money, and is obligated to the reader to provide an experience that is worth that time and money. Authors don't get to put a little note in the front of the book that says, "Look, this one is actually an old manuscript of mine that the publisher dusted off once I got famous, but it's really not my best work, so don't expect too much out of it." They don't get to sit down and tell the reader before he/she starts reading, "Oh, this one? Man, I totally locked up on the last forty pages. But deadline was already two weeks ago when I got to that point, and so I just pushed through and got something down on the page and called it good. Really sorry, but it's going to disappoint the hell out of you." They do not have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a second chance--heck, they don't really have the luxury of expecting the reader to give them a first chance. Every opportunity to impress a reader is a precious gift, and should be treated as such.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-5

So when last we left Kent and Vyxsin, they were in last place with a second leg coming up and a missing passport. Could they find their passport? Could they make up the missing time on the second half of the double leg? And who would be penalized for breaking Race rules?

As it turned out, the answers were about as anticlimactic as you can get, at least for the first two questions. Kent and Vyxsin found their fanny pack and made it to the Pit Stop, only to find that they were still racing and that the next "task" involved going to a train station where the producers had arranged for some truly spectacular bunching. And I mean truly spectacular. Even Kent and Vyxsin didn't stand a chance of missing this one.

Don't get me wrong, I think that bunching (the practice of giving teams that are behind a chance to catch up by putting everyone on the same train, plane, bus, boat, et cetera; or arranging hours of operation for the location of the next task so that everyone has to wait for the place to open in order to start the task) is necessary sometimes. If you never bunched, you'd have a situation where the really good teams would wind up with an insurmountable lead by the sixth leg or so, to the point where Phil would have to sub-contract eliminations to a second host while he went on ahead to check in the leading teams. But a double-leg is supposed to be a continuation of the previous leg, an endurance test as well as a chance for teams that are behind to make up ground. Starting every double-leg with "go to the train station/airport and wait fifteen hours" turns something that should be difficult into a glorified non-elimination leg, with the added benefit that the last team doesn't get a Speed Bump. I'm actually pretty disappointed in the way this turned out.

That said, Kent and Vyxsin did earn a thirty-minute penalty for taking the wrong flight. (The rule used to be that your penalty was equal to the time saved by taking alternate means of transport. If that had happened here, Kent and Vyxsin would have jumped forward several places due to penalty.) The producers were at least maintaining the pretense of double-legs being challenging, so instead of serving it during the meaningless Pit Stop, they were informed that it would be waiting for them at the end of the next leg.

After an inconsequential-but-adorable sequence of the teams waiting for the train (they played three-on-three, with a Globetrotter on each team and Jaime and Cara acting as cheerleaders) they moved on to the next destination, all nine at once. They then had a second detour, which was a memory challenge on one side and a lift-and-haul-heavy-things-then-assemble-them challenge on the other side. Oh, and there was a Double U-Turn (also known as "the only fair U-Turn") waiting at the other end of this one.

Surprisingly, it wasn't much of a factor. Perhaps this was because several teams got spectacularly lost between the Detour and the Road Block (the two teams that got U-Turned actually wound up in sixth and seventh, ahead of Zev/Justin and Gary/Mallory--they tried to follow Ron/Christina instead of getting directions themselves, and their cab drivers turned out not to be that good at following.) Perhaps it was because the memory challenge didn't throw many teams; I was assuming we were going to see lots of slow, sad head shakes from the guy with the clues, but most teams seemed to get it fairly quickly.

The Road Block, on the other hand, was a major challenge. It involved assembling a giant 3-D dinosaur puzzle (actual dinosaur size, in fact) and all the teams were working at it when the last team arrived. Said last team was Gary/Mallory, who promptly assessed their odds and said "Screw it, we'd rather use the Express Pass than get eliminated." It was a wise idea; even skipping the Road Block, they still wound up in second. (This is a bad sign, actually; when Gary and Mallory got eliminated last time, it was due to major problems with navigation and not any issues with the tasks. If they got lost twice on this leg, it means they haven't gotten rid of that weakness, and they don't have another Express Pass to help them recover.)

In any event, the dinosaur assembly turned out to be harder than expected, mainly because they were all working off of one picture of the finished product and half the teams didn't do a good job checking their work. When it comes to lifesize puzzles made of very big chunks of heavy wood, the last thing you want to find out is that you put the hips on backwards. Lots of teams had problems, but in the end, it was Jaime and Cara whose problems turned out to be insurmountable. They reached the Pit Stop exhausted, grumpy (Jaime actually said that "things never go our way", which is a pretty impressive statement for a team that finished second in their first race and a respectable ninth in their next attempt) and, of course, last. They were Philiminated, meaning that I'll thankfully never have to see another Jaime-tantrum again.

Next week, India, where Luke seems to be having terrible difficulties with the Road Block. Which means, given my theory on Amazing Race trailers, that they are the one team safe from elimination next week. See you then!

Someday They'll Get the Cybermen Right, Right?

I'm still waiting for a really good Cybermen story on Doctor Who. (On TV, that is. "Spare Parts" got it right on audio, in ways that I'm about to explain.) Oh, sure, we've had lots of stories where the Cybermen show up, and even some where they do somewhat interesting things, but it says a lot that the coolest Cybermen story I can think of is mainly memorable for them getting their butts kicked by the Daleks.

The problem is that nobody really seems to understand what makes the Cybermen work, and I include their creators. The horror of the Cybermen isn't that they're tough, or that they have laser blasters, or that they have a cool catchphrase (which, apart from anything else, they don't. "DELETE!" sounds like the off-brand Dalek knock-offs.) The horror of the Cybermen is that what they do makes perfect sense. They want to convert every human being into a Cyberman because they genuinely know--not just believe, know--that it willl improve their existences, and they will never stop because they know they're right. The horror of the Cybermen isn't, "DELETE DELETE DELETE", it's "You will become like us."

But everyone writes them like big stompy villains who sneer and boast and preen and strut. For bad guys who aren't supposed to have emotions, they certainly seem to get upset a lot whenever anyone challenges their worldview. Instead, they should be calm, remorseless, and entirely certain in the rightness of their attitude. To the Cybermen, human beings are suffering from a mental illness that makes them irrationally attached...to irrationality, ironically enough. These poor people believe that their brain disorder somehow gives their life meaning, and need to be forced to undergo conversion for their own good. It's unfortunate that they can't understand how much better life is with a superior body and none of the distractions of emotion, but they will. Once they undergo the process, they'll understand just how much sense it makes. And then they'll help to convert others.

My idea for a Cybermen story involves a small group of Cybermen setting up shop on a space station, promising that they will not use violence or force, and simply asking people to volunteer for the process--convincing them, through the logic of their position. Yes, being a Cyberman means an end to joy, but it also means an end to fear, an end to rage, an end to misery and suffering and pain and sorrow and all the weaknesses of the flesh. There are some people who would gladly give up their flesh and blood if it just meant the pain would stop.

Their endgame plan, of course, would be to convert the unwilling by force once they had enough recruits. Because deception, while again unfortunate, is sometimes necessary when dealing with the irrational. It's like dealing with a madman, sometimes. But the Cybermen have a cure for that.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-4

I suspect this one must have been a difficult one for the editors; it's always tricky when one team gets way behind the others. Do you try to use clever editing techniques in order to make it seem like the lagging team is closer than they are, or do you just go ahead and acknowledge that there's not going to be much suspense in this episode and show how far behind they really are?

In the case of Kent and Vyxsin, the team that pretty much dominated this week's episode, the situation was complicated by some major bunching that kept them at least theoretically in the race long after what should have been sheer, unmitigated disaster. Driving a full three hours in the wrong direction and missing the flight that every single one of the other teams was on should have meant doom, full stop. (Especially since the subsequent flight wasn't for five hours. You do not want to spot everyone else a five-hour lead on the Amazing Race.) But when everyone else has to wait for an 8 AM bus, suddenly some of that lead gets eaten away, and it's worth focusing on the drama of whether or not running one of the worst legs in Race history is enough to get Kent and Vyxsin eliminated.

And it was a spectacular trainwreck of a leg. Vyxsin starts by insisting the theme for the day is "Positive Mental Attitude", then proceeds to get lost, sob into the map, scream at herself, stare into space, sob at the map some more, give up, lose her passport temporarily, and then berate herself a lot more while attempting the Road Block. Kent, meanwhile, has decided that the best way to deal with a partner who's having difficulties is to stare into space and wander around like an automaton, then say to her, "Well, I was just doing what you told me to do." (In case I haven't made it obvious yet, Kent's checking out was just as bad as Vyxsin's freaking out.) Oh, and then he loses his passport for good measure.

Next to all that, everyone else's mistakes seemed like amusing larks. Ron had his bizarre food cravings (I get that he's a fan of the local cuisine and doesn't get to eat Chinese food this authentic very often, but the man was actually stopping on the way to a Detour to smell the fish frying. I think if Christina had one of those toddler leashes for him, she'd have used it.) The Globetrotters didn't know what sign of the Chinese Zodiac they were (they've never gotten bored at a Chinese restaurant?) Mallory screamed, Jen admitted that there's really no way to feel good about yourself after calling a deaf guy a bitch, and the only racers who had any real trouble were Zev and Justin, and even they were way ahead of Kent and Vyxsin by the end.

(Assuming penalties don't come into play. Kent and Vyxsin might get a penalty for not taking the mandatory flight, although to me the penalty should be the five hours they had to wait for the next flight, and Justin might get a penalty for throwing one of his charms in the grass when he found out it was a duplicate, thus making it potentially harder for Vyxsin to find hers. Oh, and Ron and Christina might get a penalty for flinging themselves out of a moving trolley and throwing rocks at a bus to get it to stop instead of going back and taking the bus all the way like the clue said. No, really. They actually did that.)

And then, of course, we find out that the end isn't the end after all. Yes, for the first time in Race history, we get two double legs! (Which has led to some speculation that there will be no non-elimination legs, only double legs. That's a pretty big advantage to the teams at the back--no Speed Bumps!) Which means that Kent and Vyxsin are saved for another week. Even better for them, next week's leg includes a Double U-Turn (the only fair kind, in my opinion--being U-Turned is such a huge disadvantage that the only way to keep it from being "automatically eliminate one team" is to make it a double-team penalty)...and frankly, given how inept Kent and Vyxsin were this week, nobody's going to see them as enough of a threat to U-Turn.

Boiling It Down

The United States government collects money in the form of taxes, to "pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States". That's a nice, vague, catch-all term, made deliberately vague by a group of men who wanted their government to be flexible enough to adapt to a number of future situations; the general point, though, is that there's a lot of United States, which means there's a lot of taxes and a lot of people who need their general welfare provided for...which means that there's a whole hell of a lot of money that the US collects and spends.

A small group of wealthy private citizens are bribing politicians (predominantly Republicans, although there are certainly a few guilty Democrats) to take a large chunk of that money and hand it over to those wealthy private citizens in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and similar. The politicians then use the resultant budget deficit to justify cutting spending for the purposes that the money was originally collected for--in essence, looting the public treasury with both hands through the use of creative book-keeping. Those wealthy private citizens, in turn, skim off a chunk of the money that the Republicans have embezzled for them and pass it back to the politicians in the form of "campaign contributions", thus completing the circuit and starting the process again.

This is not fiscal responsibility. This is not austerity. This is not good governance. This is a small group of wealthy criminal masterminds who have figured out that if you make the laws, then what you're doing can't be considered illegal. The Republican party has been almost thoroughly co-opted by these crooks, and they are stealing from widows, orphans, the poor and the sick in order to get a cut of the loot. Don't listen to what they say--heck, don't listen to what I say, either. Follow the money, and look at where it goes and who it comes from. Because that's the only thing that really matters.

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-3

Another week, another week of "The Amazing Race"! This time, we're off to Japan...well, eventually we are. The first half-hour of the show this week was really "The Amazing Hang Around Airports and Discuss Strategy". Not that I minded one hundred percent, because it was actually kind of interesting to see some of the strategizing involved in the Race. Basically, for those of you who missed it, the Racers had a choice of two different flights. One had a connecting flight in Hong Kong (not a tight connection, but a connection nonetheless) but got in at 6:00 AM local time. The other was direct, but didn't get in until 6:15. The question was, is it worth risking the complications of a connection for a fifteen-minute lead?

Long story short, no. It wasn't. The "leading" flight got seriously delayed, putting the five teams who tried to get ahead pretty seriously behind for the entire Tokyo leg. Which was a shame, because some of my favorite teams were on that second flight, and I spent a lot of the back half of the episode twitching. (Except for the time I spotted Zev's "Duck Whisperer" T-shirt, which was just pure awesome.) (It's a reference to their first time on the Race, when they had to herd ducks. If I ever go on the Race, I am wearing nothing but obscure geek reference T-shirts. "I'm Bill Pardy" for the million, baby!)

The next big chunk of the episode was, "Who can drive around Japan best?" This was not Jaime and Cara, who actually took the sideview mirror off a local's car. This was not the best team to be involved in a minor traffic fracas, given that the first time she was on the Race, Jaime expressed her frequent anger at people who had the nerve to speak only the language of the country they lived in. So getting into a car accident, even the most minor one, with someone who spoke no English and wouldn't just accept a wad of bills from a strange woman. (Not even one who said, in sing-song, loud, slowly spoken English, "Maybe if we give you some mon-ey?") Oh, this also featured one of the two...interesting editing choices of the episode. Jaime is explaining that they have to stop, "because..." and it cuts ahead to her already out of the car. Now, I'm assuming that they were editing out some sort of technical explanation of the rules on how Racers interact with local laws, but why keep the "because" then? Oh, well.

Finally, we do get to the Road Block, which is one of the "do as I do" variety. Racers performed a little samurai kata, then fired a bow at a target from a very short distance. (While being spun, admittedly, but still a very short distance. If anyone missed, they didn't show it.) They did show lots of people failing the kata, though. Repeatedly. This provided much of the excitement of the episode, giving many teams a big chance to catch back up.

Then they drove to the Detour, a choice between another "do as I do" task (this one involved performing a purity ritual under a freezing waterfall) and a "needle in a haystack" task, which involved rooting around in mud for a small ceramic frog, while being pelted with more mud by locals. Surprisingly, only two teams opted for the freezing waterfall. Yes, I understand, I wouldn't want to have to stand under a waterfall for a full minute in 45-degree water, shouting strange Japanese phrases either. But you know what? There's a little rule I have about the Amazing Race, which is, "If you can do something that's not a 'needle in a haystack' task, don't do the 'needle in a haystack' task." Because sure, you can find the frog quickly and be out of there in five minutes...but you can also spend two, three, four hours rooting around in cold mud until you get hypothermia and have to stop, and then another team passes you by and gets the frog. Hypothetically speaking.

Still, since just about everyone did the frog task, it wasn't such a big deal. Zev and Justin took first, the Globetrotters would have taken third but for an after-the-fact penalty involving them accidentally taking another racer's stuff...which resulted in the second interesting editing choice. See, when the Globetrotters checked in, the Race judges didn't know they'd done it. So they didn't have to wait out a penalty, as rule-breakers usually do. Instead, Ron and Christina showed up at the Pit Stop complaining about the Globetrotters, and Phil announced that he would give them a half-hour penalty as a result, putting Ron and Christina into third. Or, at least, he seemed to...but we don't see his face while he's making this announcement, and Ron and Christina are distinctly unmoved by their good fortune. Almost as if he actually told them he'd look into it, and the decision to penalize them was made afterwards and dubbed in. Could it be?

In the end, it's Mike and Mel who get the hypothermia instead of the frog, and Jaime and Cara who slip by them to avoid elimination. I'm sad, because Mike and Mel are genuinely class acts (and Phil clearly agrees...he doesn't choose favorites, but you can usually tell from his body language who he's having fun talking to and who makes his job more of a job than usual)...but on the other hand, I did not expect Mel to get far at seventy. The Race is intensely physical, and even a fit, athletic seventy-year-old is going to have trouble with that.

So now we're at nine. Next week, China, and what promises to be an epic tantrum from Ron!

Probably Unfair CNN Post

As I mentioned on mightygodking, I've been watching a lot of CNN at work lately. (While working--it's not like I just sneak off to the breakroom and veg out all day.) They've been covering the Libya situation, and while I can appreciate that there's a case to be made for intervention, I gotta say, it really does seem like CNN is pushing like hell for the USA to go to war ASAP.

Which makes a certain amount of sense. Let's face it, CNN made its rep off of Desert Storm, and they're probably best known for their determined, courageous war reporting. To CNN, a war might mean dead soldiers, tragedy, and the failure of everything fine and noble about the human spirit, but it also means ratings, Emmys, and the very real possibility that one of their reporters will become a sex symbol as he bravely reports from inside Tripoli as the bombs fall. And that's a trade I feel like CNN will take any day.

I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, but when you hear their tones of voice as they talk about "establishing a no-fly zone", or "arming the Libyan rebels"...they almost sound eager. It's a little creepy, especially for an outfit that prides itself on its non-partisan, non-agenda'd reporting. Democrat, Republican, the important thing at CNN seems to be, "So when are you going to start the shootin' match?"

Amazing Race Round-Up, 18-2

Sorry for the lack of a Thursday post, but I got sick with a fast-moving virus Thursday morning which I'm just now recovering from. While I was too sick to write, move, or do much beyond sit on the couch and play "Plants Vs. Zombies" (my Tree of Wisdom is almost 600 feet tall!) I decided I'd devote the Monday post to the current season of "The Amazing Race" while it's in season, because a) I like the show and like talking about it, b) it means I have to only think of one vaguely clever thing a week, and c) why not? (Those of you offering up, "Because I don't care about 'The Amazing Race'" as an answer to c) can be comforted with the knowledge that there will still be one post a week that is not Race-related.) The post will be a mix of recap, discussion, and snark, blended according to mood.

I discussed the first episode on Mightygodking last week, and it left off with a big cliffhanger: The teams checked in at the Pit Stop had already discovered that they were on a double-leg, so they had to keep racing with no chance to rest! And Jet and Cord, the only team who hadn't yet made it to the Pit Stop, were falling further and further behind as the Road Block continued to stump them!

And this episode, we see that the next challenge...was to find the place to sign up for the charter flight that left the next morning. I have to say, I was really disappointed, and not just because I'm rooting against Jet and Cord because they're homophobic idjits. After a first episode that established quite well that this Race was going to be tougher and more grueling than usual, due to all the seasoned Racers, bunching them all up again essentially turned the double-leg into a non-elimination leg, rescuing Jet and Cord from a spectacular foul-up without even the penalty of a Speed Bump.

The Detour did somewhat make up for it, though, being a well-designed choice between a fiddly detail-oriented task that would take a while and reward staying calm under pressure...and something that sounded kind of icky, and could be tricky, but could also be completed very quickly for those willing to try it. (Which was exactly one team, and them only because they had to. But hey.) Pretty much everything we'd already seen of these teams was on display again; Ron and Christina bickered non-stop, Flight Time and Big Easy took everything in good humor, Jaime and Cara got frustrated easily with people who weren't helpful even though said people weren't there to be helpful to begin with, et cetera et cetera.

After the Detour, we had a very good navigation task--I like that the destination was expressed in the form of highlighting elements on the Periodic Table and forcing the Racers to figure it out. Of course, nowadays that just means stopping a passerby and asking to borrow their smartphone for a moment, but let's face it, that's the world these days. It's just about impossible to keep the Racers away from the Internet, and honestly, I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. Without the Internet and sympathetic passers-by, about half the teams would wind up standing around for hours, arguing about whether or not Hg stood for Hydrogen. Which yes, does separate the men and women from the boys and girls, but makes for boring television.

Oh, and they all had to find the intersection while wearing kangaroo costumes. Probably didn't make it that much more challenging, but a lot more amusing.

Then it was just a race to the Pit Stop, and despite my hopes that we'd see a swift exit for Ron and Christina (well, Ron, at least; Christina could stay, but Ron was being rude not just to his own daughter but to Mallory to boot) ...it was Amanda and Kris who made the exit. So basically the U-Turn again proves to be fatal, which is why they should use the Double-U-Turn from last season instead. As it is, the presence of a U-Turn almost removes all the suspense from an episode.

On the one hand, it's a bummer that Perfectly Nice Couple Amanda and Kris went home while there are at least four teams (Jet and Cord, Ron and Christina, Kisha and Jen, Jaime and Cara) that I'm actively rooting against. On the other hand, I can at least take some comfort that none of the teams I'm actively rooting for (Margie and Luke, Flight Time and Big Easy, Kent and Vyxsin, Mel and Mike) went out, especially given that Mel still looks like he's about to collapse in a heap at any second.

Next week, Jaime and Cara appear to run someone over. Presumably, Jaime will get out of the car and berate them for slowing her down. And then berate them again for not screaming in English.

The Problem With the Tea Party

Their rhetoric talks about "taking back government for 'we the people'," but their platform is more about "I the person" than "we the people". The whole idea that government was founded on, that of people uniting to do important things that they can't do by themselves, is conspicuous by its absence. Which almost certainly wasn't what the Founders intended; after all, the very first line of the Constitution talks about forming "a more perfect Union".

Not busting one.

The Grim Truth About "Atlas Shrugged"

Nobody would notice or care what happened to John Galt, because the world runs perfectly well without a rich douchebag telling it what to do.

And within about a week, he'd be dead, because rich douchebags like him are so used to people doing things like washing their clothes, cooking their food, and cleaning their houses that they wouldn't know what to do without them.

The book appeals to rich douchebags because it validates their egotism: "Of course I'm harder-working, smarter, and more important than everyone else! Otherwise, how would I have gotten so rich? I should be allowed to do exactly what I want, and answer to nobody but other rich people, because civilization depends on me."

When in fact, they depend on millions of people that they don't even notice. Their whole existence is an exercise in ignoring all the people that enable their lifestyle, and the people best suited to do that are not the brilliant, but the sociopathic. And in fact, when you look at the actual plot of the story, John Galt fits the part perfectly--his primary goal is to destroy human civilization as punishment for not recognizing his achievements, and he's presented as the hero. Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for.

Bad Super Bowl Joke

This is the problem with having such an overachieving quarterback on your team. Ben Roethlisberger was trying to see if he could be the MVP of both the Steelers and the Packers.

(In all seriousness, it's not so much that I was rooting against the Packers as it is that Packers fans tend to be insufferably smug about their team even when the record doesn't justify it. I hate to see what they're going to be like when they've actually accomplished something.)

(On the other hand, it is nice to see Aaron Rodgers stick it to the overrated, over-the-hill Brett Favre. Guess we'll call it a wash.)

Rhyme Assistance!

There's a song I've been hearing a lot lately at work. (KDWB--your place to go for one of up to six different songs!) It's a gentleman who's quite upset about the lack of emotional support he's getting from his girlfriend, relative to that which he gives her. He claims he would "catch a grenade for ya", and "throw my hand on a blade for ya", but after that he runs out of good rhymes and needs to resort to "jump in front of a train for ya" before claiming that she wouldn't do the same. (Incidentally, two points on this: One, most women care more about whether you'll run out to the store at 2 AM to get them donuts than whether or not you'll throw yourself in front of locomotives; and two, if you have actual first-hand knowledge of whether or not your girlfriend will catch a grenade for you, her lack of commitment is the least of your worries.)

In any event, I've decided to help the gentleman out by giving some other things that he would do for her. Such as...

"do time in a stockade for ya"

"drink some pink lemonade for ya"

"spray a cockroach with Raid for ya"

"put my hair in a braid for ya"

"wear a garlic pomade for ya"

"get pets neutered or spayed for ya"

"perform at Farm Aid for ya"

"take a nap in the shade for ya"

"lose my shirt in a trade for ya"

"sing a serenade for ya"

"dodge, parry, spin and evade for ya"

"freshen my room with Glade for ya"

"get all my clothing frayed for ya"

"score a high passing grade for ya"

"carve a statue of jade for ya"

I hope this helps. Although I understand that it makes it even more likely that she would not, in fact, do the same.

My New Corporate Whistle-Blower Law

Originally, I had intended this to just apply to employing illegal immigrants, but I found I like the idea so much that I want to apply it to every corporate crime. My idea is that if a company violates the law (such as by polluting, employing illegal immigrants, OSHA violations, et cetera) then the company is fined, on a yearly basis, an amount equal to 100% of the salary of the person or persons responsible for the violation as long as they stay on the payroll.

...AND...this is the important bit...they are also fined, on a yearly basis, an amount equal to 100% of the salary of any persons on the payroll who are accused of complicity by the person or persons responsible. (And once those people are accused, they count as "persons responsible", so if they in turn accuse someone, those people become responsible too.) Note the phrase, "accused", not "proven". The corporation is proven guilty in a court of law like normal, but their fine is determined solely by how many people point fingers.

The logic being that too often in corporate malfeasance, there's a sort of passive "things were done" atmosphere to the whole event. The blame is shared in such a way that everyone has just enough of their fingerprints on it that nobody can really say no, and nobody really does say no because nobody wants to be the one to step in front of the slow, ponderous juggernaut that is corporate decision-making and put their career on the line when everyone else is going along to get along. This way, the momentum is reversed: Everyone has a very good incentive to speak out to stop a corporate crime, because if you don't say anything and someone gets caught, the dominos can topple all the way up to the CEO and bankrupt the company (or get plenty of upper management fired.)

Is it fair? Probably not. There's a strong, deliberate incentive for witch-hunts and backstabbing. Disgruntled former employees can always choose to simply shaft their bosses just because they're mad about being fired. But you know what? That means that maybe those bosses have one hell of an incentive to keep a close eye on the corporate practices of their subordinates, instead of turning a blind eye to them because hey, profits are up and expenses are down. It would change the culture of large corporations, something badly needed in a climate where corporations have all the rights of people, but none of the responsibilities.

Review: Doctor Who - The Forgotten Army

As wonderful as it's been to see the return of Doctor Who to our television screens, it's difficult to argue that TV's gain hasn't been print's loss. Whereas we used to get classic novels like 'Transit', 'Human Nature', and 'Set Piece' (to name just a few of the many, many classic novels released during the fifteen years that the series was off the air), now we get empty wastes of space like 'The Forgotten Army'. Although honestly, it's an insult to the other empty wastes of space that are the current book line to lump 'The Forgotten Army' in with them.

For one thing, it's pretty clear that Brian Minchin didn't have a chance to see an episode of the new season, and is working entirely from the writers' bible in his portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. This is a bigger problem than it sounds like, because an actor's portrayal changes the way the character actually behaves, not just in the subtle ways (Karen Gillan's portrayal softens Amy's rough edges and makes her more charming and likeable) but in overt ways, as the writers see the way the actor plays the character and adjust the scripts accordingly. So an Amy Pond that's written just from the initial concept of the character comes across as startlingly unlikeable, while an Eleventh Doctor written just from a quick glimpse of the writers' bible comes across as a spastic idiot obsessed with bow ties. (Yes, yes, I hear you in the back. Shush. Matt Smith is sodding brilliant.)

But even if you account for that, this still is a pretty terrible book, because it never feels like Minchin is trying. The idea of little teeny aliens invading Earth by hiding in a woolly mammoth (that they think is perfect camouflage) should be the start of a hilarious romp, but Minchin never gives the aliens any personality and the whole thing winds up feeling terribly generic. It's as if he feels like he's "just" writing for kids, so why should he bother working hard? (And the actual children in the novel feel as though they're shoehorned in so that the kids reading can say, "Ooh, kids like us!")

When I described this novel to my wife, she said, "But it's still not as bad as 'The Pit', right?" I replied that I wasn't so sure. 'The Pit' might have been bloody awful, but I felt like Neil Penswick went out and wrote the best novel he was capable of. On reading 'The Forgotten Army', I felt like Brian Minchin went out and wrote the worst novel he thought he could get away with.

Pet Peeve of the Day, Shockingly Mundane Edition

(Rooney)

You know what I hate? It's when you go to a store, and instead of giving you the best possible price, they give you a slightly less good price and offer to make up the difference if you join their "free customer loyalty program". Call me crazy, but I don't think that I should have to jump through extra hoops and essentially sell you my demographic information in order to get the same price I can get just by going to your competitor that doesn't have a "loyalty program". Perhaps there's a certain irony at work there--I'm more loyal to stores that don't demand my loyalty.

(/Rooney)

A Plea For Honesty

You know what I'd really like? I would really, honestly like evangelical Christians to just sack up for once in their lives and admit they don't like gay people.

Now, I'm clearly not talking about all evangelical Christians. I know plenty of Christians who have no problems with gay people, and whose faith is deep and abiding. Which is kind of the point, actually; there's all these Christians out there who have no difficulty at all treating gay people as equals, and yet don't seem confused or insincere in their faith...and then there's those other people.

The ones who can't remember which are the Beatitudes and which are the Ten Commandments, yet have all the relevant verses of Leviticus memorized (and in some particular cases, tattooed on their flesh. Which is tremendously ironic, given that elsewhere in Leviticus, there are rules against tattooing.)

The ones who insist that they don't hate gay people, but God says they're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and really, they can't go against the word of God. (Except for the eating pork thing, because God really didn't mean all that stuff to still apply now that we know about trichinosis.)

The people who insist that they "love the sinner, and hate the sin"...but continue to vote for people who hate the sinner, too.

The people who, in short, try to pretend that they're not bigoted at all, just devoted to the Lord. In this one, specific, particular instance. What I would really like to see is for those people to stop hiding behind the Bible, quit pretending that they don't feel deeply uncomfortable around homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals, and quit wasting time pretending that this is a religious stance so that we wouldn't have to stop arguing about it. Sure, part of why we'd have nothing left to talk about is that I'd find such a stance morally abhorrent, but at least I could stop wasting my time poking holes in all their Scriptural arguments and get on with the business of confronting their prejudice. As it is, they combine all the worst aspects of being bigoted and cowardly at the same time.

So please, if you are one of those Christians (and you know who you are.) Have the courage of your convictions, and stop blaming your attitudes on God. At this point, it's just embarrassing.

An Open Letter to Zombie Story Writers

(inspired by Joe McKinney's "Dead City" and "Apocalypse of the Dead", but generally applicable...I'm looking at you, "28 Days Later" in the back, there):

Dear Zombie Story Authors,

As much as I, your reader, appreciate a commitment to verisimilitude, and as much as pseudo-scientific explanations of how a zombie apocalypse could be "real" are fun, please stop trying to explain it away as a brain disease that affects living human beings, giving them superhuman pain tolerances and a mindless, ravenous appetite for human flesh. Because you then proceed to treat your "infected" just like they were zombies straight out of a Romero movie, which drastically undercuts the very sense of realism you were trying to create.

Look, we all understand that willpower is an amazing thing, and that people can do incredible stuff when they're sufficiently determined. But I have news for you. When your femoral artery is severed in the course of a zombie attack, it does not matter how determined you are to get up and eat the flesh of the living. You're going to bleed out in a matter of minutes, your circulatory system is going to collapse from hydrostatic shock, your brain is going to be completely deprived of oxygen, and you are going to die. Likewise, mindless determination to keep moving, hunting, and killing is not going to protect you from the rigors of exposure in the midst of a North Dakota winter. Starvation, dehydration, and blood loss are absolutes, even if determination can temporarily overcome them.

In essence, the human body is a machine, like an automobile. You are trying to describe the ways this machine can malfunction to produce a specific effect, and that's good, but please stop explaining to me how it keeps going without wheels, gasoline, or a functioning engine.

Thanks in advance,

John Seavey

My Question About the Clone Saga

I recently read an old 'But I Digress' column on Peter David's website, where he talked about the Clone Saga back when it was just a crazy rumor that Marvel would never, ever do...right? And it reminded me of the Clone Saga (yes, I know, they have medication for that now...) and the big question I've had about the Clone Saga for a few years now.

Namely, who was Ben Reilly, really?

Because I remember reading the Clone Saga at the time, and Ben Reilly was the clone of Peter Parker who died in Amazing Spider-Man #149, and who Peter threw into an incinerator in #150. As we were told, he was merely unconscious, not dead, and he survived the fall and woke up at the bottom of the shaft and escaped the flames and went on to make a new life for himself as beloved Nephew Ben.

Except that a while back, thanks to the magic of Marvel's Essentials collections, I actually read Amazing Spider-Man #150. And Peter doesn't just throw his clone down the chimney shaft. He first keeps him in a walk-in freezer for a few days so that Curt Connors can autopsy the body and definitively determine whether it's a clone or not. (Peter doesn't read the results, a conclusion that Gerry Conway probably would have never written if he'd known what he was setting up.)

The clone wasn't just "a little banged up". He was dead. Even before taking a header down a smokestack, his body was frozen and cut open to see how it died. I'm aware that Curt Connors and Peter Parker have both made their mistakes when it comes to biology, but never the kind that involved storing a dead body for more than 24 hours without noticing that it was still alive.

So with that said, who was Ben Reilly? Was he just a recent clone, created with fake memories of years on the run (and, presumably, supported with an elaborate cast of back-up clones who could corroborate his story?) Or did the Jackal just create dozens of Spider-Man clones, sending them off into the heartland of America while his "best model" perished at Spidey's hands? Given how toxic the Clone Saga is to fans, I doubt we'll ever find out.

At the very least, it explains that stupid skeleton in the smokestack, though.

The Five Best MST3K End Credits

Not the actual end credits to the episodes, although they did sometimes do some fun things with those, too. ("JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDD!!") I mean the movies where the credits run extra long, forcing Mike/Joel and the bots to hang out in the theater and try to find something funny to talk about while the movie is doing not a whole lot. They frequently wound up doing comedy sketches that didn't riff on what was happening onscreen, but were nonetheless hilarious. (Which is why the otherwise-perfect ending to MST3K: The Movie, where they riff on their own names, is disqualified for purposes of this list. They're actually riffing on the credits.)

So without further ado, we're off!

5. Alien From LA. Actually not one of my favorites, but it's such a crowd-pleaser that I feel like I have to include it or the MiSTies will rise up en masse to lynch me. Crow and Mike get into a long, bitter, eventually-refereed-by-Tom argument about who is into the "femmier" movies. I kind of feel it works better as a concept than a sketch, but I know people who consider this to be the perfect gag sequence. (For myself, I prefer the argument from 'Space Mutiny'. "You and your precious 80s. It would have continued to be the 70s if not for you!")

4. Laserblast. Taking off from Leonard Maltin's rating of 2 1/2 stars, the trio go through his video guide to list all the other movies that Leonard Maltin considers to be on a par with 'Laserblast'. The list is as much terrifying as it is funny.

3. The Final Sacrifice. Mike and Crow play a studio executive and a nervous screenwriter (respectively) discussing plans for "The Final Sacrifice: The Series", as Tom sings along to the theme in the background. Not sure which is funnier, Tom singing, "This part sounds like Danny Elfman, Danny Elfman, Danny Elfman..." or Mike explaining how they should have Zap Rowsdower do nude scenes once a season.

2. Werewolf. A full musical extravaganza, as the cast uses the generic beat of the end-credit music as the backdrop of a fantastic medley that spans everything from The Verve Pipe's 'Freshmen' to 'Easter Parade'. It's not just just funny, it's catchy as hell.

1. Soultaker. Sometimes, MST3K is at its best when they go dark and twisted, and this is one of the best examples. The bots do a long, bizarre extrapolation of what must have happened after the end of the movie, which involves the romantic leads breaking up, DUIs, and straining wood alcohol through burnt toast. Mike tries to posit an alternative, only to be derided as hopelessly naive. "So that's it. It's either drinking wood alcohol in back alleys, or animals in feetie pajamas?" "Yes, Mike. Why is that so hard to accept?" Sheer perfection.

Do you have an MST3K end credits sketch you liked? Share some, won't you?