doctor who

Monday various

  • It probably should come as no surprise, but I’m pretty much in complete agreement with Noel Murray about last night’s Lost finale. “These are the new myths. Now it’s up to us to misinterpret them.” I liked the episode a whole lot.

  • Meanwhile, Terry Pratchett is maybe a little harsher than I would be about Doctor Who and the title character’s deus ex machinations. I’m not entirely convinced there’s real value in rigidly defining science fiction and fantasy this way. (And, unlike him, “Small Worlds” is one of my least favorite Torchwood episodes.) But he makes some good points, while still happy to enjoy the show for what it is. [via]

  • Speaking of Doctor Who, here’s an interesting take on The Comparative Lives of the Doctor.

  • Here’s a scary thought from the New York Times:

    Ask a first grader to identify Bugs Bunny and the response more likely than not will be a blank stare.

  • And finally, Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury [via]:

    So when the wind blows the fallen autumn leaves across the road in a riot of flame and gold, or when I see a green field in summer carpeted by yellow dandelions, or when, in winter, I close myself off from the cold and write in a room with a TV screen as big as a wall, I think of Ray Bradbury . . .

Sunday comes round again

So today…

I read some Kaleidotrope submissions, while lounging in the backyard with my iPad. The weather was just too nice to stay indoors all day, and that slush pile isn’t getting any smaller. I’m usually pretty good about responding to submissions within a couple of months, three at the outset, but I do still have some stories sitting in my in-box from February and March that need to be answered. That need to be read.

I watched this week’s Doctor Who Confidential. Because sometimes you just want to peek under the hood and see how these things work.

I got a propane tank refilled — or, rather, swapped out an empty tank for a new one — at the local Home Depot.

I went for a short walk. Along the way, I listened to this week’s episode of Studio 360, which was really terrific — Martha Plimpton’s Springsteen cover and Josh Ritter especially — but which made me sorry all over again that I hadn’t managed to get tickets to the live taping in Manhattan last week. I’ve been to the Jerome L. Greene Space before, for a live taping of the Sound of Young America — a taping that’s now available on DVD, as it happens — and it’s a really nice intimate venue. The show sounded great on my headphones, but I suspect it was even better in person.

I plodded away at the New York Times Sunday crossword, this week back on paper, since the slightly weird formatting of the themed answers made it impossible for them to offer the puzzle online (and through their iPad app). I’m not sure I like that theme, though I’ll admit it’s a clever structural trick. In the end, I think I find it simply more aggravating than anything.

I mowed the back lawn.

And that’s about it. Time, I think, for bed.

Saturday

Let’s see what I did today.

I mailed out a couple of issues of Kaleidotrope to new subscribers, although I can’t shake the feeling that I did so earlier in the week and just forgot to make a note of it. If that’s the case, a couple of people are getting an extra copy of Issue #6 — an issue which, as it happens, is proving to be maybe my most popular back issue thus far. It’s a good issue, make no mistake. It’s got Heather‘s short story, “Replicate Fade,” for starters, which Locus quite liked. And there’s a story in it from the very recently Nebula-award-nominated* Rachel Swirsky…who, as it happens, also has another story in the upcoming, am-I-really-doing-an-issue-in-July July issue of the zine.

I went to the bank.

I watched this week’s episode of Community, and enjoyed it enough that I decided to re-watch last week’s incredible paintball episode.

I went to see Iron Man 2 with friends. It was just like the first Iron Man movie, only less so…in a more-so kind of way. It’s entertaining enough, but it does feel a little overcrowded with details for sequels and spinoffs and other Marvel properties. They really do seem to be pushing this Avengers movie, as if it were really happening and not just a lot of talk that’s contingent on a lot of other things falling into place. Like the Thor movie doing well, like the Captain America movie getting made, like people forgetting how lousy the Ed Norton Hulk movie was, et cetera. As long as it’s got Robert Downey, Jr., at the heart of it, Iron Man is a lot of fun but I do wish they’d pared down a few of the bit players and cameos. (Except for Stan Lee’s, that is. The man does seem almost clinically insane sometimes on his Twitter feed, but I loved his very brief cameo in Iron Man 2. Excelsior!)

I mowed the front lawn.

I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who and liked it quite a bit.

And that’s about it. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot when you add it all up like this, but it was a pretty good day altogether.

* The awards are are being simulcast as I write this.

Not Sunday…yet

It feels a lot like Sunday, but I’m happy knowing that it isn’t. iPad or no iPad, I definitely made the right decision taking yesterday off from work.

Today was more of the same, really, spent playing with the iPad and figuring out what I can and can’t do with it. Google Reader, for one, seems a little problematic, at least in either of the main options Google itself seems to be offering. I’ve gotten it to work, but neither option is without its display problems. I’m also not so thrilled with the case Apple sold me, which fits the device, if only barely, but is thin enough so as not to provide much in the way of protection, and moreover which has to come off if I actually want to recharge the device. It’s an okay temporary solution, should I want to tote the device somewhere further than my own backyard, but I don’t think it was worth the forty bucks Apple charged me for it.

Still thoroughly in the honeymoon phase with the iPad itself, though. Sitting out in the backyard, reading Kaleidotrope submissions and listening to music (while Twittering about it), was a really nice way to end my afternoon.

After that, I watched tonight’s episode of Doctor Who, the second half of last week’s Weeping Angels/River Song mashup, and it was actually pretty phenomenal, easily my favorite episode since the premiere. I really do like how Matt Smith’s Doctor is madder and more antic than his immediate predecessors, but also a little more pompous, a little more…well, unlikable. Anyone still not sure why Smith was cast over all the other choices obviously hasn’t been paying attention.

Anyway, that was my Saturday, more or less.

Monday various