@whisht  Oh, no apologies, please!  You are addressing a champion forgetter here, so no complaints either way — though humor and music are surely always welcome (I read “painful humor” as laughing til your belly aches).

@mudlark  Thanks for the recce; I’ll check it out.  Mieville is brilliant, passionately political, and well worth his reputation, so it’s bound to be worth a try.  If Embassytown is an early work of his, it might be more attractive to me; I think Mieville, an uncommon writer, has followed the common path of writing bigger, longer, more baroque bo…[Read more]

@janetteb Deftly done indeed!  I always thought it best not to trust that Kropotkin — I bet *he* had property (I do, so I know the feeling of knowing better but being unable, for many reasons all as good as any, to do damn all about it).  Such is life here on the physical plane — impossible to perfect, or even fix up a bit, it seems.  Even th…[Read more]

@mudlark  I haven’t read the Mieville book — definitely should.  I got well into some of the later work before I realized that it really isn’t for me — way to baroque in ways that just turn me off (too many fiddly bits — I go more for stripped down, myself; it’s probably that damned impatience again!).

As for the STFU feminists, hell, maybe t…[Read more]

@arbutus   I really appreciated his cold, calm survivalist attitude in the face of Ross’s death – there is no one with whom to plead or argue, so he doesn’t waste time sobbing but takes steps to save the rest of them. I loved his absolute lack of filters. I realize that these things are what many people found off-putting, but I actually warmed…[Read more]

@janetteb  Thanks, but I’m just rephrasing the Russian guy — Kropotkin? — who said it so much more succinctly:  “Property is theft”.  He was right then, and he’s still right, for all the good it will ever do.

@Arbutus  Too sad, but that’s f**king capitalism for you — wherever the god damn super rich vultures see something that people are enjoying, they swoop in and grab that thing, suck all the quality out of it (quality is expensive, after all; junk is cheaper to make), and then sell it back to people under a new label and double the price.…[Read more]

@missy   No Tardis in sight at the con — except on t-shirts and the like — but it was fun anyway.  I did a couple of panels (one on SF/F cliches we’d like to see done away with for good, like the robots desperate to become human, the aliens who *all* fall hard for Beethoven and/or punk rock even though their entire sensory system is supposedly c…[Read more]

@missy   I love it too.  It has a for-the-kids flavor that I like just fine, still having a fair amount of kid alive in me.

@purofilion  That’s how I feel about the TL’s — good riddance.  There has to be lots more to Gallifrey than that lot, for the Doctor to give a damn one way or the other whether he ever gets back there or not, seems to me.

@missy  — no looks but admiring ones where I’m going today: local SF convention this weekend, “Bubonicon 47”, with the usual, enthusiastic DW contingent present and on the program.  Gotta go, couple of program items listed on my badge —

ichi

@janetteB

Occasionally, just very occasionally a companion needs to be killed off in order to sustain a sense of genuine danger.

Also, I think, in Clara’s case I think there needs to be a strong finish just to do justice to the character — her complexity, her willfulness, her nerve, and of course her high standing in the Doctor’s regard.  And…[Read more]

@missy  And cheers right back; no problem!

@purofilion  Nothing to apologize for, not to worry.  I just thought, “Oops, messed up again — ”  mainly because I’m still not reliably up to speed on internet etiquette, and probably never will be (too late, too LATE!).  Happy to have cues to help steer through it.

@janetteb  Phew, thanks!  But watch out for that *impatience*, y”all.  (this waiting is plain and fancy KILLING me!)  I need my running, jumping, and standing still, damn it!  Without it, there’s nothing but — but *chocolate*!  And coffee.  The nectarines have already gone off top grade.

@purofilion   Oh crap, sorry — navigating the twists and turns of spoilerism is clearly not yet a skill I’ve acquired.  I thought anything in an episode still to come was the main kind of thing to be shielded, assuming the BBC hadn’t yet alluded to it in the trailers?  Cast news, or comments by the creatives in interviews, I thought were pr…[Read more]

@lisa  And the “crazy look” — yaaaahhhHHH!  Like that, yep.   One of my younger sisters has impatience too, and I have seen that crazy look in other places than just in the mirror.  Funniest is how annoyed I get when I recognized impatience in other people — like,”yeah, in that big a hurry, are you, and how about paying attention to right NOW…[Read more]

@purofilion  @lisa   Tea, yes!  Otherwise, I’ve found a couple of ameliorating strategies, over the years: one is, meditation of the “pay attention to your immediate surroundings and internal goings-on” variety.  The other is catching myself in the middle of an impatience fit (happens a lot while driving, of course) and tell myself “Ahah, got…[Read more]