Today's Snapple fact (taken from the lid off my bottle of Snapple, obviously):

Giraffes have no vocal chords.

Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel: "SCI FI Channel announced Jan. 12 that it will air the first season of the BBC's hit SF series Doctor Who, starting in March. The 13 episodes, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, will air as part of SCI FI Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT."

In-N-Out Lawsuit Exposes Family Rift - Los Angeles Times: "In-N-Out Burger Inc., the Irvine company known for its Double-Double and its customers' intense devotion, is embroiled in a family feud, according to a lawsuit.

Richard Boyd, In-N-Out's vice president and a board member, has accused 23-year-old heir Lynsi Martinez and others of trying to accelerate her takeover of the popular family-owned burger chain."

In-N-Out is, like, one of the only fast food restaurants I'll even consider going to any more. I certainly hope this doesn't spell the beginning of the end for them.

BBC - Doctor Who (David Tennant and Billie Piper) - News : "Billie Piper will play feisty young Victorian heroine Sally Lockhart in the BBC's adaptation of multi award-winning writer, Philip Pullman's The Ruby In The Smoke."

So I went to a Borders bookstore today, looking for the latest issue of Wolverine (all will be explained later) and because I had a coupon for 30% off a book of my choice. And they didn't have the comic book, and the store was such a mess that I couldn't find anything else. Seriously. I had ideas in mind, but I couldn't find the books.

I thought I'd see if they had any graphic novels I wanted, but the section was in absolutely no sort of order whatsoever, so any enthusiasm I might have had was sapped by having to go through the whole section just to see if they had any of the few I was looking for.

Then I thought about looking for the book I'm reading now from the library, It's Superman by Tom DeHaven, because I have a bunch of other Superman prose novels, and thought I might buy this one with the coupon. But they didn't have any of his books in the fiction section (and this is a new one), and the science fiction hardcovers were in no particular order.

And the store was such a mess, with books falling over on the ends of shelves, the comic books all mixed up and in no order, so I had to look behind each and every one to see if the one I was looking for was hiding behind another one, all that. And I just wanted to get out, because if they don't care to keep their store neat, then I don't really want to spend my money there.

Thinking about my last post, I should clarify that a lot of the problems I mentioned with the sci-fi television series formula don't actually hamper my enjoyment of the shows. TV doesn't have to be completely natural to be enjoyable for me. I think a lot of the dialogue on the acclaimed Law & Order shows sounds forced and melodramatic (and don't get me started on Veronica Mars or Joss Whedon's scripts) but that doesn't make me any less a fan.

Having said that, it's nice to see a show like Battlestar Galactica or Doctor Who that proves that a show in a particular genre doesn't have to look and feel like every other show in that genre, but can instead aspire to something greater.

PvPonline.com ? Hosted By SPEAKEASY.NET : "10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong:
1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans."

So, this past Friday night brought with it the return of new episodes to SciFi Friday. Stargate SG-1 was a little more enjoyable than I remember it being when it took its mid-season break. Maybe the new characters have all settled comfortably in my mind by now. Maybe it's just that the flaws in the formula, which had seemed so apparent as they approached the mid-season break, have been turned over and over so thoroughly in my head that they don't really bug me so much any more. Whatever. And Stargate Atlantis was pretty much as good as it's been throughout most of the season. Not counting the first half of the mid-season two-hour block, which just felt like a lame episode of Star Trek: Voyager; what's up with that?

And then there's Battlestar Galactica. How is it possible that this show is called Battlestar Galactica, spawned from the loins of the lousy 1970s version? How is it possible that this show is on SciFi? How it it possible that this is a science fiction show, even?

By that, I don't mean that science fiction shows can be good. But I mean that obviously science fiction shows, as in set on a space ship or going to other planets or whatever, so often seem made using the exact same playbook, and they all have a certain stench of cheapness about it. And it doesn't just show in the small casts or limited special effects or whatever, but in the very traditional, unimaginative camerawork, the relatively stiff acting, the humorless writing--and when there is humor, it's because someone has obviously tried very hard to put a joke in--all that. It's like most science fiction shows are afraid to deviate from the template set by Star Trek: The Next Generation almost 20 years ago. And none of it could possibly be confused, stylistically, with contemporary drama on network TV.

But then there's Galactica, which throws the rule book out the window, and dares to be compelling drama that just happens to be about spaceships and robots and stuff. And it sticks out like a sore thumb, because it doesn't have the low-budget feel that so many other shows like that have, and it isn't coy about what it is, like Lost or Invasion, with their real-world settings and focus on human drama and character over the more outre elements. (Not saying that one is better than the other, mind.)

And at the end of the day, the thing I say the most is this: thank goodness it's on.

Grey Matter

Grey's Anatomy has become one of my favorite TV shows, somehow, so this blog by the series' writers is certainly worth my attention...

Strange Horizons Columns: The Art of Entertainment, by Matthew Cheney

More praise for Rocket Science, and Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another favorite read this year.

Bookslut | SF for Kiddies: "I don't typically fall for jacket blurbs but when I read what author Jerry Oltion had to say about Rocket Science -- "If the Hardy Boys stayed up half the night reading Astounding Magazine by flashlight, this is what they would dream after they turned out the light" -- well, I had to have this book. Just the mere possibility, of combining the boy detectives with an element of outer space science fiction was enough to pull me in before the book even arrived. Once I started,and found everything that Jay Lake was able to fit into this outstanding book, I was one very happy reader."

I just finished this book myself last week, and very much agree with the review. So now I want to check out the other books the column mentions...

Happy New Year, everybody!

Hellboy Animated

How weird is it that Tad Stones, the guy behind such Disney Afternoon classics as DuckTales, Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin is the man behind the pair of upcoming Hellboy animated DVD features (and possible TV series)? It's like finding a rare EC Comics horror story by Carl Barks.

Brian Wood - DMZ 4.04.72

As if I wasn't enjoying Brian Wood's DMZ enough as it is, he has to go and stick a panda in one issue.

Ringing in the new year with sushi.

Glows in the Dark

If I had been seriously into models when these kits were being produced, I'd probably still be seriously into models. (I probably would have worked a lot harder at painting stuff well.) As it is, I had the Monogram reissue of the Dracula model (purchased at Disneyland, I believe), and I'd read about these kids, but they always remained the stuff that dreams were made of. Still do, of course, but nice to see a web site devoted to them...

Just a quick one:

Happy holidays to everyone, from myself and Penelope.

Saw King Kong today. Despite my concerns about its length (which I've talked about before), I really enjoyed it. It does drag in places, but nowhere near as dull as Return of the King. And I'm now quite enamoured of Naomi Watts, but not enough to try to watch the Ring movies.

Now, off to Napoleon Dynamite!

Shana's going away party, part deux.

BBC America - Touching Evil: "Touching Evil tracks the investigations of the Organised and Serial Crimes Unit (OSC), a crack team of special police agents. The brooding and mysterious Detective Inspector Dave Creegan (Robson Green, Wire in the Blood, Reckless, Trust) helped create this team before suffering a nearly fatal gunshot to the head. After spending over two years recovering physically and emotionally from his injury, Creegan returns to active service. "

One of my favorite British crime series, created and written by Paul "Shameless/State of Play" Abbott, with at least one episode written by Russell T. Davies. (And the basis for a lame American version produced by Bruce Willis and the Hughes Bros for USA Network. Ignore that; it was crap.)

Bush Defends Secret Spying in the U.S. - Yahoo! News: "'The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties,' Bush said. "

So this is what the president bush said in his radio address yesterday, dealing with the revelation that he has authorized secret surveillance on Americans without warrants or oversight, and the strong opposition to the Patriot Act in the Senate, thanks to the Democrats finally growing a fucking spine. And he says it's all in the name of protecting our civil liberties.

Fuckwad. Fuck him. Fuck him sideways in every orifice by rabid baboons.

(Probably just earned myself a wiretap there.)

As usual, anything I could say has been said better elsewhere, and this time, I'm going to quote Warren Ellis in the latest issue of Jack Cross, probably written more than a year ago:

CROSS: Why did you join Homeland Security?

HOMELAND SECURITY AGENT: Because we got fat. Because there are scarier people in the world than us and we should be more careful. See, it's not a global village we're in. It's a global city. And people who live in the city don't leave their doors unlocked.

CROSS: Yeah. And there was all that terrorist activity on the millennium.

AGENT: What terrorist activity?

CROSS: Exactly. You think every nutball in the world took the day off?

Intel did their job that day. Without a Department of Homeland Security. Without impacting the rights of the American people or our visitors. The world didn't sudddenly fill up with scary people on September eleventh. A race of supermen didn't suddenly fly out of a bunch of Afghan caves.

Intel blew it that day. That's all.

You can break the most sophisticated computer in the world by shoving a stick into it. That's what happened. It was the dumbest, ugliest, most low-tech attack you could think of. And it was awful, sure. We were complacent, sure. We'd turned inwards. We weren't thinking well.

But we're not supposed to be a country that instinctively hates the foreign and spies on itself. And free speech is not a terrorist activity.
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So there you go.