(no subject)
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. I was tagged by slytherin_pixie .
1. Doctor Who
As anyone who knows me is probably aware, I like Doctor Who. This goes back to when I was a kid, and the Doctor was a short, Scottish man with a question-mark shaped umbrella and a limited acting range. I often missed parts of stories (they tended to be made up of 4 25-minute episodes in those days), but it didn't matter- I wasn't there to watch something that made sense, merely a cavalcade of surreal and vaguely terrifying images. I remember being slightly traumatised by Whizz-Kid dying under mysterious circumstances in the Greatest Show In The Galaxy, being smugly satisfied when the Doctor told his friends that, so long as they didn't run from the Cheetah People, they wouldn't be recognised as prey (I'd seen the same thing on the Really Wild Show, which made it true), and disgusted when The Happiness Patrol painted the Tardis pink (precisely the kind of thing girls would do, I thought). And then, it disappeared. I remember the 3D bananas from the 1992 Dimensions In Time special, though, and I watched the 1996 remake, and thought it a load of shite.
Many years passed, and I moved in next door to stranger_eons and edwardrussia , who had UK Gold. That was the year I got up early every weekend to watch from Peter Davison to Sylvester McCoy, back to Jon Pertwee and to Peter Davison again. It was brilliant (well, apart from the Colin Baker era, but you can't have everything). I was pleased to discover that the Sylvester McCoy episodes of my youth really did make as little sense as I remembered, and found out for myself precisely why Tom Baker is the best Doctor ever to grace the screen.
Then, we moved to a house that didn't have digital. Ed & I decided that, since we'd already seen all the Who worth watching, there was no point shelling out hard cash for digital in the new place, so I prepared to find a new obsession. A couple of months later, and a whole new series was announced, kicking off 18 months of messing around on increasingly daft message boards and getting involved in pointless arguments. It seems odd that, back then, fans were convinced that Russell T Davies was the shining savior of Proper Doctor Who, but the main worry was that Billie Piper was in it. Plus ca change. Eccleston, Tennant, Smith. A whole new era of popularity for my favouritest SF idea ever; a Whotopia, if you will.
Why do I like this shoddy little British piece of escapism so much, I hear you cry? I'm not entirely sure, but here are some attempts. I like the heart of the series, the humour and the (qualified) optimism. It's not set in a surgical, precise utopia like Star Trek; such places don't seem to exist in the universe of Who, where the best the future seems to offer is endless corridors and tinfoil sofas. I like the flexibility of the format, and the way it means that writers can play with ridiculously absurd situations, like a world stuck in a giant traffic jam, without having to worry about how it fits in the Meaningful Story Arc. I like the pick 'n' mix tone, where comedy and tragedy often sit side-by-side. I love, love that this is a kid's series; that these wonderful stories are being aimed at children, who will accept them, take them in and remember them for the rest of their lives (in the way I remember the pink Tardis, or the man-who-wanted-things-to-stop-changing). I like it for what it's done to television; the way the industry knew that it wouldn't work, that family television was dead and that nobody would want to watch a prime-time SF show, and it turned out that, sometimes, an entire industry can be talking out of its arse. I like that it's flying the flag against reality TV crap. I like the message (which is a deep and inextricable part of the show's DNA) that aliens are people too, that being different isn't a bad thing, and that being clever often beats carrying a big stick.
So, yeah. It's awesome :)
2. London
I live here. Have done for nearly two years. It's an interesting place, and I still have mixed feelings about it.
The worst thing about London is distance. I have a lot of friends here, and I hardly ever see a lot of them, because the city is fucking enormous and the tubes stop running at a very inappropriate time. Another lousy thing is that there are just Too Many People. I mean, really. How many people does one city need? London has at least double the number. Because of this, the pubs in central London tend to be packed, and going outside central London is often not an option because of, you guessed it, distance. Ugh.
Fortunately, London has a lot of good things as well. Even though it can be difficult to meet up with them, I do have a lot of friends here, and people tend to pass through a lot, for shows, job interviews, whatever. This means I get to see people. There's also a lot to do; I poured scorn on this side of London when I first came here, thinking mainly of West End shows, which are often a) cripplingly expensive and b) a bit poo. Since then, I've discovered things like the BBC Radio Theatre, the Globe, comedy nights in pubs, comic shops part-owned by Jonathan Ross and going places for free with Andy. Brill.
3. Nottingham
Ahh, Nottingham. I spent seven and a half years here, and it still feels too short. As almost everyone reading this will know, I went to the University of Nottingham to do a degree in Genetics. Things worked out a bit weird, and I ended up doing a PhD and a LOT of amateur light opera as well. Yes, Nottingham is where I discovered the University of Nottingham Gilbert and Sullivan Society, an organisation which changed my life the day I discovered it; it is unlikely I would be the person I am now without this group of people.
Apart from that, I like Nottingham for a lot of reasons; unlike London, it's about the right size for a city. It's possible to get around entirely on foot in Nottingham, for instance, which would probably kill you if you tried it in London. Despite its size, there is also a lot to do in Nottingham; theatres, pubs, restaurants, coffee shops and a comic shop every bit as good as the one part-owned by Jonathan Ross. It's cheap as well, which could never be said for London.
4. SFX/Geekery
I'm a geek, and a subscriber to SFX. I first noticed SFX when, a roving-eyed teenager, i noticed it at the newsagent and thought it was called SEX. A common mistake, apparently (though, the editor protests, not deliberate). I started picking it up in WHSmith about twice a year to see what its reviewers thought of the latest Pratchett book; I liked the way that they would actually review each book on its own merits, rather than run off the same old hack piece about how, for fantasy, it wasn't really all that childish, and how surprising that was. At some point, I decided to start buying it regularly (interestingly, I think this was about the time my New Scientist subscription lapsed. Make of that what you will).
I still subscribe to SFX (though, since I won the Pulp Idol competitoion a few months ago, my subscription has been free). I've been quite pleased with the way that, over the past ten years or so, science fiction and other "genre" stuff has started becoming more acceptable in the mainstream; beyond the usual robot-with-a-gun blockbuster fare, SF seems to be fair play to even "literary" types these days. Some of this has been helped along by the success of Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings films; however, I think you could also describe those phenomena as being caused by the incresing acceptance of genre tropes. At the same time, there's been more of an acceptance of comics as a valid art form. All to the good, I say.
5. PhD
Between 2002 and 2006, I did a PhD in evolutionary genetics. My thesis title was "Persistence of Bacterial Transposable Elements in a Fluctuating Environment". I got the doctorate, but I think that the fact that I'm now an accountant tells you how much a life in scientific research appealed to me.
I like science, I genuinely do. As a tool for determining how the world works, I think it's second to none and, as anyone who has heard me yammer on about creationism can testify, I'm pretty keen on evolution as well. It's just... well, I think ultimately the problem is that I'm too easily distracted, and that research is very hard and under-appreciated. I'm interested in science, sure; I just don't have a burning desire to sacrifice my life to it. And it seems that, if you want to work in science, that's what you have to do. Job security lies only at the end of a very long and weary path and, to me at least, it was just never worth it.
On the plus side, my PhD gave me a lot of extra time in Nottingham to continue having student-fun. I directed a show whilst in the final year of my PhD, and wrote scripts for two others. I also made a lot of extremely good friends. On the whole, it was a learning experience, albeit one I'm still a little bitter over. I'd have liked to have been someone who could have done well in science; unfortunately, I'm not.
1. Doctor Who
As anyone who knows me is probably aware, I like Doctor Who. This goes back to when I was a kid, and the Doctor was a short, Scottish man with a question-mark shaped umbrella and a limited acting range. I often missed parts of stories (they tended to be made up of 4 25-minute episodes in those days), but it didn't matter- I wasn't there to watch something that made sense, merely a cavalcade of surreal and vaguely terrifying images. I remember being slightly traumatised by Whizz-Kid dying under mysterious circumstances in the Greatest Show In The Galaxy, being smugly satisfied when the Doctor told his friends that, so long as they didn't run from the Cheetah People, they wouldn't be recognised as prey (I'd seen the same thing on the Really Wild Show, which made it true), and disgusted when The Happiness Patrol painted the Tardis pink (precisely the kind of thing girls would do, I thought). And then, it disappeared. I remember the 3D bananas from the 1992 Dimensions In Time special, though, and I watched the 1996 remake, and thought it a load of shite.
Many years passed, and I moved in next door to stranger_eons and edwardrussia , who had UK Gold. That was the year I got up early every weekend to watch from Peter Davison to Sylvester McCoy, back to Jon Pertwee and to Peter Davison again. It was brilliant (well, apart from the Colin Baker era, but you can't have everything). I was pleased to discover that the Sylvester McCoy episodes of my youth really did make as little sense as I remembered, and found out for myself precisely why Tom Baker is the best Doctor ever to grace the screen.
Then, we moved to a house that didn't have digital. Ed & I decided that, since we'd already seen all the Who worth watching, there was no point shelling out hard cash for digital in the new place, so I prepared to find a new obsession. A couple of months later, and a whole new series was announced, kicking off 18 months of messing around on increasingly daft message boards and getting involved in pointless arguments. It seems odd that, back then, fans were convinced that Russell T Davies was the shining savior of Proper Doctor Who, but the main worry was that Billie Piper was in it. Plus ca change. Eccleston, Tennant, Smith. A whole new era of popularity for my favouritest SF idea ever; a Whotopia, if you will.
Why do I like this shoddy little British piece of escapism so much, I hear you cry? I'm not entirely sure, but here are some attempts. I like the heart of the series, the humour and the (qualified) optimism. It's not set in a surgical, precise utopia like Star Trek; such places don't seem to exist in the universe of Who, where the best the future seems to offer is endless corridors and tinfoil sofas. I like the flexibility of the format, and the way it means that writers can play with ridiculously absurd situations, like a world stuck in a giant traffic jam, without having to worry about how it fits in the Meaningful Story Arc. I like the pick 'n' mix tone, where comedy and tragedy often sit side-by-side. I love, love that this is a kid's series; that these wonderful stories are being aimed at children, who will accept them, take them in and remember them for the rest of their lives (in the way I remember the pink Tardis, or the man-who-wanted-things-to-stop-changing). I like it for what it's done to television; the way the industry knew that it wouldn't work, that family television was dead and that nobody would want to watch a prime-time SF show, and it turned out that, sometimes, an entire industry can be talking out of its arse. I like that it's flying the flag against reality TV crap. I like the message (which is a deep and inextricable part of the show's DNA) that aliens are people too, that being different isn't a bad thing, and that being clever often beats carrying a big stick.
So, yeah. It's awesome :)
2. London
I live here. Have done for nearly two years. It's an interesting place, and I still have mixed feelings about it.
The worst thing about London is distance. I have a lot of friends here, and I hardly ever see a lot of them, because the city is fucking enormous and the tubes stop running at a very inappropriate time. Another lousy thing is that there are just Too Many People. I mean, really. How many people does one city need? London has at least double the number. Because of this, the pubs in central London tend to be packed, and going outside central London is often not an option because of, you guessed it, distance. Ugh.
Fortunately, London has a lot of good things as well. Even though it can be difficult to meet up with them, I do have a lot of friends here, and people tend to pass through a lot, for shows, job interviews, whatever. This means I get to see people. There's also a lot to do; I poured scorn on this side of London when I first came here, thinking mainly of West End shows, which are often a) cripplingly expensive and b) a bit poo. Since then, I've discovered things like the BBC Radio Theatre, the Globe, comedy nights in pubs, comic shops part-owned by Jonathan Ross and going places for free with Andy. Brill.
3. Nottingham
Ahh, Nottingham. I spent seven and a half years here, and it still feels too short. As almost everyone reading this will know, I went to the University of Nottingham to do a degree in Genetics. Things worked out a bit weird, and I ended up doing a PhD and a LOT of amateur light opera as well. Yes, Nottingham is where I discovered the University of Nottingham Gilbert and Sullivan Society, an organisation which changed my life the day I discovered it; it is unlikely I would be the person I am now without this group of people.
Apart from that, I like Nottingham for a lot of reasons; unlike London, it's about the right size for a city. It's possible to get around entirely on foot in Nottingham, for instance, which would probably kill you if you tried it in London. Despite its size, there is also a lot to do in Nottingham; theatres, pubs, restaurants, coffee shops and a comic shop every bit as good as the one part-owned by Jonathan Ross. It's cheap as well, which could never be said for London.
4. SFX/Geekery
I'm a geek, and a subscriber to SFX. I first noticed SFX when, a roving-eyed teenager, i noticed it at the newsagent and thought it was called SEX. A common mistake, apparently (though, the editor protests, not deliberate). I started picking it up in WHSmith about twice a year to see what its reviewers thought of the latest Pratchett book; I liked the way that they would actually review each book on its own merits, rather than run off the same old hack piece about how, for fantasy, it wasn't really all that childish, and how surprising that was. At some point, I decided to start buying it regularly (interestingly, I think this was about the time my New Scientist subscription lapsed. Make of that what you will).
I still subscribe to SFX (though, since I won the Pulp Idol competitoion a few months ago, my subscription has been free). I've been quite pleased with the way that, over the past ten years or so, science fiction and other "genre" stuff has started becoming more acceptable in the mainstream; beyond the usual robot-with-a-gun blockbuster fare, SF seems to be fair play to even "literary" types these days. Some of this has been helped along by the success of Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings films; however, I think you could also describe those phenomena as being caused by the incresing acceptance of genre tropes. At the same time, there's been more of an acceptance of comics as a valid art form. All to the good, I say.
5. PhD
Between 2002 and 2006, I did a PhD in evolutionary genetics. My thesis title was "Persistence of Bacterial Transposable Elements in a Fluctuating Environment". I got the doctorate, but I think that the fact that I'm now an accountant tells you how much a life in scientific research appealed to me.
I like science, I genuinely do. As a tool for determining how the world works, I think it's second to none and, as anyone who has heard me yammer on about creationism can testify, I'm pretty keen on evolution as well. It's just... well, I think ultimately the problem is that I'm too easily distracted, and that research is very hard and under-appreciated. I'm interested in science, sure; I just don't have a burning desire to sacrifice my life to it. And it seems that, if you want to work in science, that's what you have to do. Job security lies only at the end of a very long and weary path and, to me at least, it was just never worth it.
On the plus side, my PhD gave me a lot of extra time in Nottingham to continue having student-fun. I directed a show whilst in the final year of my PhD, and wrote scripts for two others. I also made a lot of extremely good friends. On the whole, it was a learning experience, albeit one I'm still a little bitter over. I'd have liked to have been someone who could have done well in science; unfortunately, I'm not.