So I watched this year's "Doctor Who" Christmas special this morning. It wasn't fantastic, but I did find it to be rather enjoyable. It was probably the best holiday special that the current series has yet produced, though I suppose that's not saying much since the first was essentially an introduction to the 10th Doctor and the second was utterly ruined by that horribly annoying Racnoss thing. Still, I think that Russell T. Davies should stick to writing Christmas holiday episodes and nothing else -- the Doctor-as-Christ parallels are tolerable in them (see the above image), but any and everywhere else they're just bloody irritating.

I was saddened by the absence of Daleks in the Series 4 teaser.

I have begun fooling around with the light tent -- here is the result of my first round of experimentation. After having gone to such lengths to increase the exposure of the previous photos -- both using the camera's exposure setting and the white balance adjustment as well as the Xpose! plugin once I got the images onto the machine -- it's kind of weird to not need to do any of that with this contraption. I actually had to turn the camera's exposure setting down to produce this image. (I suspect that has a bit to do with Bizarro's skin tone and its apparently reflective nature -- Ravager and Slade appear pretty much the same in the shots with different settings -- but still.) And I would prefer a white background rather than the grey or blue choices that came with the tent, but that has to be ordered separately. This'll work fine until I get around to doing that, though.

As far as the figures pictured go, I've had Ravager for quite a while, but I broke her out again to pose with her dad, who I received last week thanks to De's tip about the sale over at Sci-Fi Genre. And this Bizarro is the same one I mentioned not being totally into before (or at least liking less than I like Batzarro), but this time I had a coupon that made him a bit more attractive.

Anyway, all for now -- hope y'all had a happy holiday!

Last week I had another dream that I was traveling with the Doctor! This one wasn't nearly as interesting as the last one, though, which featured the First Doctor and the lovely (young) Sarah Jane Smith. This time, I was saddled with Mickey Smith, Rose Tyler, and the Tenth Doctor, the latter two of whom pretty much stayed in the TARDIS cracking jokes and drinking tea while Mickey and I were stuck dodging Daleks and mind-controlled humans and disarming bombs throughout the city of New Haven. My own solo exploits took me to one of the dorms on Yale's Old Campus, where I encountered a number of hostile coeds that needed to be subdued by my fist and one unaffected student who had somehow been sleeping with Rose for the past several months (that whore).

Eventually we disarmed all of the bombs (and though I say we, I did most of the work even here, taking out like 12 of the 15 devices) and rendezvoused in an enclosed hangar area not unlike the boarding area of Space Mountain, only without the huge crowds of people and the blinking neon lights. At this point, the Doctor and Rose came waltzing in, arm in arm, and the Doctor proceeded to wax gleefully about how he saved the day and everything was right with the world and crap.

"What?!" I shouted. "You left me and Mickey to deal with a city full of Daleks and zombies and fucking explosives -- and I don't even know how to disarm a bomb!" The Doctor, in Tennant's cheerful and insultingly dismissive way, responded, "Wellllllll that didn't stop you, now did it? 🙂 " I wanted to punch him hard in the face, but instead I just stormed off.

Mickey had earlier done the same because he'd found out about Rose's infidelity and was pretty hurt -- I shortly found him sobbing in the backseat of the Space Mountain-esque shuttles. I hopped in the front, we shot off along the track, and then I woke up.

Speaking of the Doctor, the episode that aired this past weekend was the absolute worst "Doctor Who" episode ever. Like several of the episodes this season, it was a completely unnecessary retread of offerings from last season -- in this case, "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" -- except here the similarities were so blatant and over the top that this episode was less a retread and more an offensive ripoff and complete and utter waste of time. And what wasn't borrowed stolen wholesale from that previous episode (or from the show 24, which some fools at the Doctor Who Magazine apparently had the audacity to claim had little to do with even the title of this episode) was just ludicrous rubbish. Chris Chibnall should never be allowed to write for television again, especially considering that he was also responsible for the very worst of the "Torchwood" eps (which were also horrible ripoffs of eps from other TV shows, most notably "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel"). The guy is terrible.

FYI, the quotation is from last year's "remake" of The Wicker Man. Pretty terrible film, hence the use of a quote from it in connection with "42"! You can see some of the best and most ridiculous scenes from it in this video on YouTube. Try not to laugh when Nicholas Cage ninja kicks Leelee Sobieski in the face and knocks the shit out of another woman while wearing a bear costume. Those furries are fucking hardcore.

All for now -- I was going to add something about religion and sewing (I've been mending my trench coat and backpack and suitcase with needle and thread and had some interesting thoughts along those lines), but I guess that'll have to wait. Until I write again, take excellent care of yourselves! Ja.

P.S. Wesoteric is now running WordPress 2.2! Not that you can tell. 😉

Seriously, who gives a fuck if these twerps can spell entirely random-ass words that they would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use in actual conversation -- or, for that matter, even in writing? They just asked three words in a row that I had never even heard spoken or seen written, and I've read some pretty lofty shit. Not even Lovecraft would use these words.

One of them was "kilim". Even if one did have occasion to use this word -- say, one happened to buy a kilim -- one would likely end up having to explain that it is a rug anyway, since there's a good chance that one's conversation partner would have no idea what the hell a kilim is. So why not just save syllables and call it a rug in the first place? Useless.

And think of all of the things that these kids could have been doing instead of memorizing the spellings of multiple words -- and in multiple languages to boot! Not all of these kids are thin: they could have been outside running around and playing sports and getting in shape. Everyone can stand to be more clever: maybe they could have spent some time reading Plato or something. But then again, they're freaking kids: why not let them watch some cartoons or fire up the Xbox360 and enjoy their youth? Instead they are reading overfed dictionaries for the purpose of competing in some bullshit contest and enriching a skill that has largely been made irrelevant by the advent of Microsoft Word and the F7 key.

I have a monster headache right now. 🙁

Series 3 of Doctor Who is seriously pissing me off. 👿