Funday Sunday

Sunday May 18th 22:00.

After a lazy, sit at computer, slouch half watching television kind of Saturday, today I've had a much more enjoyable day.

Despite the lingering fear and resentment about having to go to work tomorrow. It's been a great day.

I went to Steve's to do some filming for 'The Adventures of Stephen Brown'. It's the first time in about a month or two that I've been in any filming. Although I always nearly talk myself out of going, or get wound up about leaving the flat, I feel that it's worth while. I get to act again, and to spend some time with people.

After the filming was done, I played my quarter final match in the Beacon Pool tournament. This is the first time I have every gotten this far in the competition. I enter for fun every year, not expecting to do very well at all. Mostly I am not surprised or disappointed. I didn't win, however I had fun.

As it was a glorious day, and we'd spent five hours in a very, very, very hot studio, we played the pool match in the open air, in the sunshine. It was rather lovely.

It being early enough that I didn't have to rush off home, Steve and I then went to the Village Inn to grab a drink or two and to get some food.

And some food we did get. Having been salivating for the last hour about a beef  burger, we both decided to make the best of a roast dinner that someone else has to cook, and we don't have to clear up after. It was gorgeous. Mixed roast, beef and half a chicken. Very nice in deed.

We also did some planning for the final episode of 'The Adventures of Stephen Brown'. Spoilers kids. Spoilers.

A good Sunday indeed. Just to balance all the niceness, the cats left me two piles of sick to return to.

A working class hero is something to be.

In another time, another place.

© BBC

New Doctor ?

So they finally announced it. The new Doctor Who is Peter Capaldi. This guy that played the angry, sweary, spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker in the series 'The Thick Of It'. He's also made an appearance as the father of a Roman family who the Doctor spares from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the David Tennant story 'The Fires Of Pompeii' (ironically also the first appearance of Karen Gillan). He also appeared in Torchwood - Children Of Earth.

With a departure from the younger Doctors, Capaldi is 55 years old. The same age as William Hartnell when he was cast as the very first Doctor way back in 1963.

With much pomp, ceremony his appointment as the next man to control the Tardis was revealed to the nation on a live show on Sunday night.

Already the buzz on the internet of 'who is it' ?, or 'who can it be..I wish it was...' the endless speculation since Matt Smith revealed in June that he would be leaving the show has been replaced by two camps of viewer.

Either those that love the idea. Or those that hate it.

The internet isn't a place where people without an extreme opinion seem to get heard much.

Personally I think it's an interesting choice. It'll be good to see how he takes over, and develops the role, how the scripts change. What sort of Doctor will he be ? Will he be more like Hartnell and Eccelston, distant and authoritarian ?

Peter Capaldi. Older, not so sweet Doctor ? 

I'm sure that some of those saying they'll never watch the show again, may actually keep their word, and stop watching. The vast majority though will suck it up, and find themselves drawn in as the new Doctor takes his first strides about the console room in the Tardis. Soon forgotten their rejection of a man's performance without even seeing him in action.

The only slight disappointment for me was that I really wanted us to have a female doctor. It would be about bloody time. The doctors have all (so far) been a selection of white men.

In an interview in the show revealing the next doctor show head writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat went very clearly on record as saying that he felt strongly that it was about time for a female Doctor. After all, if we can have a female Prime-Minister, and the Americans can have a black president, it seems a bit unimaginative for us not to have either represented in the longest running science fiction show in the world.

There's also the whole argument about the Doctor only having 12 regenerations. Capaldi will be the 12th Doctor. Now, do you count the number of bodies as the regeneration, or do you count the number of times he's regenerated. Is it inclusive ?

I'm sure twisting our heads around one more regeneration isn't something we'll have to worry about, there'll be some clever way for the Doctor to 'refresh' the number of regenerations he has, or indeed for that limit to be explained away. It's all in the writing after all. Such is the nature of drama, let alone drama where you have the ability to break the laws of physics on a weekly basis. Other science fictions shows use reality breaking time paradoxes every now and then. Doctor Who eats, breathes and shits reality breaking time paradoxes.

Temporal schism ? Bring it the fuck on.

Benjamin Cook, what was it that you did ?

I am confused.

One of the people that I follow on Twitter is Benjamin Cook, the writer and journalist. I first heard of him when I was reading 'The Writer's Tale', which he co-wrote with Russel T Davies. That was such an impossible book to put down, and so fascinating to someone like me who is both a life long Dr Who fan, and interested in anything that covers the differing processes people go through when they write. Especially when they are fortunate enough to do so for a living.

The 'Twitterverse' is abuzz tonight with a mixture of both condemnation, shock, insult and support (but mostly the shock, condemnation and insult). Apparently a tweet that Mr Cook had posted has caused such controversy and reaction. Such venomous bile being spouted.

Despite trying to look, I have not been able to ascertain what it is that has been said to prompt such a reaction. In his own later posts he says that it was something bad, that he regretted doing it.

Without knowing what it was that was said it is hard, or at least it should be, to form an opinion one way or the other. Others, it would seem, do not have such reservations. It is hard to imagine what words could possibly justify such hatred. Reading some of them back, with comments such as 'you should get the fuck off twitter now. I don't want to read what you say...'. Surely, just as if you do not like the programmes on a Television or Radio, you are more than free to change the channel, or turn it off, on Twitter you can easily block or just 'unfollow' a person. This way you would not get to see their posts and get so offended by them.

Is it really possible to react in such a way to mere words ? Words are powerful, to be sure, but they are just a combination of letters. They only have relevance or energy when attached to the meaning given them by the reader. This means that the same words will have different strength and impart depending on the experiences and opinions of the reader.

We all have said or done things that we regret, wish we could change, undo. The sad reality is that we cannot. There is no choice but to go on, and find a way to learn to live with the memory, the guilt, the pain and the lesson that the mistake has given you.

Who would you rather trust, someone who has lived a pure and blameless life, or a hypocrite, a person who has made this mistakes themselves ? Give me a hypocrite every time.

Who sheds a tear for the wannabe Canadian model ?

Saturday, and the sun is out. What a lovely day it is. Ah...
Oh bollocks, return to work next week, which is the day after tomorrow,
and just like the film by the same name, it gives a feeling of impending
doom and misery and doom, and hardship, and doom.. did I mention the
doom ?
I guess we all have to earn a living somehow, and most people find that
tiresome, right ? It's not that I'd want to not have to work, it's more
that, well, I just want it to not be so....boring. Something
fundamentally soul destroying about it. Love the people. Well, most of
them. Ok. Some of them.
If you don't like where you live, and you work somewhere you're not
happy so that you can afford to live somewhere you're not happy...
well.... what's the point of that then ? Life being too short and all
that.
It's nearly the end of January. Yeah 2010. The year it all happens, and
somehow, without me noticing, 8.33 % of it is already gone !
Having left the TV on, after watching some Will & Grace, I'm too lazy to
turn off or over from 'Canada's Next Top Model'. (1st of all, sorry Rob,
but who cares about who the next top model is, let alone one in Canada).
There's all these scrawny wannabes, complaining about their 'anxiety
disorders'. Is it is disorder that you get nervous in unfamiliar
situations or places ? Wow. Never knew that before. I get absolutely
terrified when I go somewhere new, meet people I don't know that well.
But bizarrely, I'd never think of describing that as some sort of
disorder. It's not a medical thing, surely, it's just a quirk of my
personality, and my confidence (or lack of) in certain situations.
I bet they spent ages with Doctors, or psychologists, getting 'help' for
their 'problem'. Can you medicate confidence ?
Also, if you know that these things are hard for you, why would you
decide that modelling is the career for you ? I mean, great stuff, if
they are 'feeling the fear and doing it anyway' but, if that was the
case, why would you announce to everyone that's what you think, it's
like your making yourself an excuse. Which also tells another thing. If
you're telling everyone else 'I've got this problem..' is the unsaid
dialogue, '..so you should only expect crap' ? If you're saying that to
someone else.. what are you telling yourself ? Makes me feel sorry for
them actually, because it shows how painfully insecure they all are.
Irony is, of course, that perhaps they are too young to have realised
yet, that we are all painfully insecure, it's just that some people hide
it better than others. Some people are just better bullshitters.