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. 👿

I'd been using the WP-PageNavi 2.10 plugin on Scary-Crayon to display the number of pages and links to a set number of them instead of just the previous/next links. Now I am using it here as well! (Still need to update the blurb at the bottom of the sidebar to reflect that info, but yes.) It didn't originally do what I wanted it to do, so I had to do a bit of hacking to get it to suit my needs... hence my calling this version WP-PageNavi 2.10w. See, the "w" is for Wes. Anyway, apparently Wesoteric behaves slightly differently than Scary-Crayon (possibly a function of some of the other plugins I'm using over there), so I had to do some additional tweaks to get the plugin working over here. It also means that you may encounter some SQL errors -- please let me know if you do so I can try to fix the code accordingly. Thanks!

This is also my first trial of a plugin called Hide or Cut Post Text, which apparently works like the LJ-cut feature. Whee.

I did my taxes today. It didn't take very long -- two hours tops -- but it was still rather painful. Being anally raped by the IRS is not fun. 🙁

I shall now proceed to list some of the swag I picked up during my most recent NYC trip!

DVDs acquired:

1. The Poet
2. Demi-Haunted
3. Expect a Miracle
4. Hong Kong Spice Gals
5. The Cat
6. Here Comes A Vampire
7. City of SARS
8. The Imp

Of the films listed above, The Cat is the only one with which I am remotely familiar, as I saw most of it (I missed maybe the first fifteen minutes or so) at an anime convention a few years back. I'd heard of City of SARS... and that's about it. Only The Poet, The Cat, and The Imp (hey, I notice a pattern here) even had plot synopses in English on the backs of their DVD box covers, so I was mostly shooting in the dark here. But at 4 for $10, I had to make sure I got a decent amount to tide me over. Hopefully they won't be utterly abysmal.

Music CDs acquired:

1. Seventy-One the Beautiful by Hadley
2. East Side Drive by The Heartdrops
3. Social Misfits by The Fades

Never heard of any of these groups, but hey, the CDs were 99 cents apiece at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square! Judging from the condition of the packaging, inserts, and the discs themselves, they appear to be new, too. The Heartdrops CD kinda sucks (every track sounds almost exactly the same, bleh), but I definitely look forward to giving the others some more thorough listening time.

I also picked up some free mp3 CDs and a DVD at Pho Tu Do that I thought contained songs from a local group, but they instead contain lectures or speeches (or something) in a language that I totally do not understand. Oh well!

Toys acquired:

1. TMNT: Karai action figure
2. Street Fighter II/Darkstalkers MiniMates: Morrigan, Demitri, Evil Ryu, and Akuma
3. Kamen Rider Ohja chess piece figurine

Funny that I'd go all the way to NYC to return with a Karai figure that one can ostensibly get anywhere, but I'd literally been looking all over for this figure and had only come across it twice -- and both of those figures had exceedingly poor paint jobs, so I left them there. They had a bunch of Karai at the Toys "R" Us in Times Square, though, so I decided to go ahead and get one there. That is also where I picked up the MiniMates figures. I already have a couple of these (M.Bison and Chun-Li; you might have seen them on the new Scary-Crayon content pages) and they're kinda neat. Actually, in addition to the figs mentioned in the parenthetical, I had already picked up a Morrigan and Demitri two-pack as well, but seeing as how I paid $2.50 and hadn't opened it and that these figures were $3.99 and had two additional ones that I don't have, I figured I'd get the new pack and leave the other one unopened. So unless I end up accidentally breaking the ones I got in NYC, I'll probably end up giving the ones I already have away, either as inclusions in a gift package or as a prize in an upcoming SC contest. We will see.

In addition to the DVDs, CDs, and toys, I also ended up with a H.P. Lovecraft anthology from Dave (pretty interesting stuff so far; once I finish the first story I am determined to draw a picture of one of these Great Race creatures) and a smushed penny from the Central Park Zoo. (On that note, here is a link to Molly's Alligator Juice article entitled The Joy of the Smushed Penny Machine.)

That is all for now, then. Ja ne, minna-san!

God, seriously. It's like she reeeeaally wants to be Oprah and highlight "pressing women's issues," except she lacks the clout or exposure to attract guests who actually have problems. So instead, she has these guests who kinda sorta have a few minor issues and go out of their way to overstate them and make them look like HUGE debilitating difficulties. For example, tonight's episode is about women with body-related self-esteem issues and eating disorders (again). They say one of the guests has an eating disorder because she doesn't eat. But actually she does eat, because she's hardly a skeletal stick figure -- she just eats infrequently. She eats when she's hungry. OMFG CALL OUT THE NUTRITIONIST BECAUSE THIS WOMAN HAS NOT BEEN BRAINWASHED INTO EATING THREE SQUARE MEALS A DAY AT SET TIMES REGARDLESS OF THE STATE OF HER APPETITE! They filmed a segment with her staring at a chunk of salmon while she whined about not wanting to eat it and crap. Um, isn't that why refrigeration and Saran wrap were invented? Toss that shit in the cooling unit and come back in a few hours -- problem solved.

And now they've got this chick on there and are like OMFG SHE IS A 30-SOMETHING MOTHER OF TWO AND YET SHE CAN WEAR CHILDREN'S CLOTHING SIZES. Hello, the woman is fucking 5'1" -- she's just tiny! There would be a problem if she couldn't fit into children's clothes. I can wear children's sizes too, but I don't think that I need to be on Tyra whining about it. And they just brought on the "self-esteem and body image expert," who is clearly overweight. Not that she should necessarily have a problem with that, but if she's supposed to teach these women to gain unnecessary weight to look like her and then be pleased about it, she should lose whatever crackerjack degrees and certification she has and plop her heavy ass down in the driver's seat of a city bus. I wouldn't take any weight-loss advice from Dr. Phil, either.

Conclusion: Tyra Banks should be exterminated.