Dec 112023
 

Long story short: I’ve been a *casual* watcher of “Dr. Who” for 40+ years. From watching it from time to time on PBS back in the 80s – the Tom Baker era, mostly – to catching the revived version in more recent years, I would generally find it amusing if somewhat baffling. The fact that not only was it stories set over multiple episodes, meaning you’re in the dark if you’ve missed any, but that it was terribly *British* meant that it just didn’t quite hit for me. But still, I liked it well enough, and I respect the IP and the fandom.

But not everyone respects the IP or the fandom. This includes the makers of the show these days.

One thing I could always expect from any iteration of The Doctor would be that he was some flavor of “British Man.” Generally some variant of the Brit known as the “boffin,” a weird eccentric science type. But then came the “insufferably smug British woman” variant of the Doctor. And next up… gay sub-Saharan African Doctor, which seems to be meant specifically to annoy the long-time fans. So, yeah, I haven’t felt the urge to watch Dr. Who in a good long while. Recent events have not changed that. In fact, recent efforts by the makers of the show to gaslight fans of the show make me actively uninterested.

The latest nonsense has been the race swapping of historical figure Isaac Newton. For a British show to *intentionally* replace an important English historical figure with an Indian actor seems at best odd, at worst part of a wider ongoing and undeniable effort to replace the English within their own history. But the people behind this have themselves a new strategy to defend their decisions from those who don’t like it:

‘Doctor Who’ Casting Director Responds To Criticism Of Race-Swapped Isaac Newton: “It’s Sad That We’re In A Time Where People Villainise Minorities”

Behold: pointing out that Newton was English, or Cleopatra was Greek, or Hannibal was Phoenician, has gone from merely being a racist position to now “villainizing minorities.” If you say that so-and-so wasn’t black or Indian or whatever, you are now equating blacks or Indians or whatever with criminals. It is dishonest, it is unhinged, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s what they’ve got.

That’s their argument against those who point out the folly and malignity of race swapping historical figures. What’s their argument *for* doing this? The Dr. Who casting director says:

“It then becomes even more important to give people a voice and for people to be represented, especially for young people growing up who might be trans or from any minority. If they can see themselves on screen, then that can be a huge lifeline for some people. That can make them feel part of the world, which indeed they are.” … “Growing up as a gay man, I’m as aware as anybody else of how this stuff makes you feel when you see it. “

Uh-huh. So he likes to see his little subset “represented.” But he somehow doesn’t understand – or pretends not to – how a large *majority* of people do not like to watch their “representation” getting not just erased, but culturally appropriated and colonized by outsiders who didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it and don’t fit in it.

 Posted by at 6:27 pm
Aug 162023
 

“Our heroes aircraft is falling from the sky! Will they pull out in time to avoid a firey crash and bring the episode, nay, the entire series, to a screeching and unexpected halt, requiring not only clever writing but also difficult actor contract negotiations with the attendant risk of turning off the existing fans?”

Bah. No, of course the aircraft will pull out at the last second. Of course.

Lazy.

 

 

Those old enough to remember TV from the 80’s will doubtless *vaguely* recall any of a number of the same scene: the *enemy* aircraft, often a helicopter, has been struck. Gun, missile, onboard explosion, someone whacked the pilot, whatever, the vehicle is going down. Will it crash? Well, since these are the bad guys and, what’s more, *unimportant* bad guy characters, yes. It’ll crash. But at the last moment it’ll go down *behind* the nearest hill. You’ll know it crashed because a fireball that sure looks a whole lot like some combination of back powder and gasoline will go FOOOOM from behind the hill. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than crashing an actual aircraft on camera, and slightly less visually awful than using bad scale models or, perhaps worse, stock footage, to depict the event. But it still got to be an incredibly tired and predictable shot.

 Posted by at 11:46 pm
Jul 182023
 

This article from a few years ago popped up on Twitter today:

White people’s bland food isn’t just an internet meme. It’s a centuries-long obsession

The article is pretty much what you’ll think it’s going to be. A lot of yammering about religion, history, privilege, blah, blah, blah. The usual buzz-word salad that’s all too common in any piece that can be used to denigrate white people, white culture, white anything.

But throughout all of it, an obvious point was left unmentioned. Why do a lot of people like “bland” food? Maybe… because they *like* “bland” food. I am one such. I am perfectly capable of making a satisfying meal out of little more than noodles. *Just* noodles. Or plain rice, a mashed potato, an unadorned chunk of chicken. A fine meal can be made from mixing peanut butter with oatmeal. Is it because I like “bland?” No. It’s because the flavor is perfectly satisfying. What people like the author of the linked article don’t seem to grasp is that people’s senses are on a  spectrum. Women, for example, apparently see colors far more clearly than men do. Some people can hear a pin drop, and would be in physical agony to be subjected to the conversational level of the average Friday night at the local bar. Some people can’t smell much of anything and thus drown themselves in perfume; others can pick up the slightest hints of odor from across the room.

Foods that this author, and apparently many others, would find completely lacking in flavor would be a riot of taste sensation to someone else. Subjecting that person to a pile of seasoning  would be to simply overload their senses for no good reason.

I am comfortable in temperatures others might find frigidly cold. I like the lights turned a little dimmer than standard; a nice sunny day is blinding. Some of this is doubtless due to random chance; some of it doubtless due to the northern European portions of my muttly breeding. And perhaps that plays into food: while spices have been present in northern Europe since forever, they were not as plentiful as elsewhere. Many of my ancestors were probably lucky to survive on simple grain, mutton, chicken, that sort of thing. Their foods were likely less “foody” than people from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, Africa, etc. Thus they evolved to deal with that. That was normal for them. One might wonder if that made their sense of taste sharper, more keen compared to some others.

So if you’re like me and a bowl of mac and cheese actually sounds pretty good, don’t let goons like the author of the piece shame you. Take pride in the fact that you don’t *need* to shower your food with extravagances in order to be happy and satisfied.

 Posted by at 11:10 pm
Jul 152023
 

Photos have emerged from the next Disney live action remake of one of their classic animated films, “Snow White.” You know, the one about the Germanic princess with skin so white it looked like snow, who ended up running around with seven dwarves? Well… about all that, Disney has decided to continue the unprofitable trend of de-whitening European folk tales.

There are claims that these *aren’t* the actual “dwarves.” But given that “Snow White” is to be played by a Hispanic woman… why assume that these *aren’t* an accurate depiction? And remember, Hollywood is hardly above lying to the public’s face. Remember when Benedict Cumberbatch *wasn’t* playing Khan? Or when all the remakes and reboots of classic animated series were supposed to be faithful continuations that the existing fans would recognize, love and appreciate? Yeah… lying liars who lie have a tendency to lie.

And… it turns out that those claims of “fake” are probably themselves fake:

‘Snow White’ Set Pics Stir Anti-Woke Criticism

Asked for comment on the brouhaha, a Disney spokesperson initially told The Daily Beast “the photos are fake and not from our production” and added that the Mouse House wanted a correction from the Mail.

Hours later, however, Disney’s PR shop completely backtracked and said the photos were from the production but were not official “photos”—chalking up the earlier statement to a misunderstanding.

 

Dear readers, consider this: somewhere out in the multiverse there’s a version of the Disney corporation that decided to do a live action remake of “Snow White,” and decided to try their hardest to make it look like the original animated classic. And somewhere else out there is another Disney that decided to do a “Snow White” remake that was faithful to the Grimm tale as written. And somewhere further down the multiverse line is a version of Disney that decide to say “Fark it” and make a truly messed-up remake that swaps out all the “disneyfication” for hard-core “let’s make this thing like Germans a thousand years ago would have made it, with friggen’ terrifying monsters and death and horror straight out of Teutonic legends and myths and folk tales,” likely directed by del Toro with the aid of the ghosts of Lovecraft and Giger.

Any one of those is something I would have been interested in. *This* worlds Disney? Nah.

 

Note: the “dwarves” from Norse/Germanic folk tales weren’t just short humans. They were a different order of being entirely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(folklore)

Anyway, Hollywood is basically on strike now, with writers and actors on the picket line. I imagine this might effect “Snow White,” as well as every other movie and TV show out there. But you know what? Who friggen’ cares. Things have gotten so slow in Hollywood that people have come to expect *years* between seasons of shows… seasons with a tiny number of episodes. long gone are the likes of *good* Star Trek series where you could expect 20+ episodes every year. now… Eight? Ten? And with many shows, the gap between seasons lasting a number of years. When did season 3 of “The Orville” end? When will season 4 start… if it ever does? And let’s face it: there are a metric fark-ton of old movies and shows available for streaming, more than enough to tide most people over for the most extended of strike. And beyond even that… YouTube and the like are loaded to the gills with lone creators who are far more entertaining than quarter-billion-dollar productions. So you go right ahead and shut down production, Hollywood. if it strangles nonsense like “Snow White,” so much the better.

 

How long before I’m able to say “Hey, AI, make me a four-hour faithful adaptation of ‘Snow White’ Using the production team from “The Lord Of The Rings” and starring Marylin Monroe as Snow White’?” Because that’ll be the end of Hollywood.

 Posted by at 10:14 am
Jul 102023
 

Disney has done some amazing things with Star Wars since buying the property. In short, Disney turned Star Wars from a license to print money into a series of disappointments and flops and failures. These are generally well known… how “Solo” was the first Star Wars movie to actually lose money, how the sequel trilogy PO’ed the fans and got progressively less profitable, how “Galactic Starcruiser” shut down after only a year, how the various TV shows have ranged from occasionally quite good to generally awful.

But then there’s “The High Republic.” This was a brand-new income stream for Disney, set 200 or so years before the movies. The Jedi were supposedly at their prime, the galaxy was at peace, everything was awesome, and Disney would make a mountain of money from the books, comic books, movies and TV shows set in that timeframe. Disney spent something like a billion dollars promoting “The High Republic”

Chances are pretty good you’ve either never heard of THR, or you’ve forgotten that it existed.

The video below goes through the sales numbers for the books and, wow, they’re bad. The best seller – the first book – sold over 150,000 copies. The latest book sold less than 10,000. Now, I’d be pretty pleased if one of *my* books sold a mere 9,000 copies. But then, unlike Star Wars, nobody knows who I am. Unlike Disney, a billion dollars wasn’t lavished on publicizing my books.

Even that initial 150K seems pretty sad when you consider that Timothy Zahn’s “Thrawn trilogy,” novels published in the early 1990s which revitalized Star Wars at the time, and which were “de-canonised” when Disney bought Star Wars, have sold five million copies. Specifically, they’ve sold five million copies *since* Disney bought Star Wars. The Thrawn trilogy sold something like *fifteen* million copies before that.

The thumbnail image chosen for the video below is appropriate: it shows what I presume to be one of the main “High Republic” characters complete with a  modern Mental Illness Haircut. That’s who they marketed to, not the existing Star Wars fanbase. So they didn’t get the fanbase interested. One of the main authors actually told the potential customers that if they didn’t like her hyperactively leftist politics, don’t buy her books. “Okey-doke” the fanbase said.

Me? If you agree with or disagree with my politics… buy my books and other publications. If you like aircraft and/or spacecraft, you’ll like what I’ve produced. My politics and your politics will barely enter into it.

 Posted by at 11:22 pm
Jul 092023
 

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Introduces Another Love Interest for Kirk That Still Isn’t Spock

The whole thing is some weirdo perv’s bleating demand that Kirk and Spock be made gay, because reasons. These people are sad and pathetic, but unfortunately they often have the ears of those in charge. Consequently, they often have the power to see to it that beloved cultural icons – Luke Skywalker, Jean Luc Picard, Indiana Jones – are converted into sad pathetic wretches, their legacies trashed and trod upon. The purpose of doing so falls somewhere between “the narcissism of a mentally ill person” and “the need to see civilization destroyed.”

One of the “arguments” that is made is that Kirk was a “lothario,” a “womanizer” who was nailing any female alien who wasn’t nailed down. And that is kinda the reputation the character has. However, if you look at his actual history of romancing the women on the show, there’s a whole lot less of it than you  might remember. From HERE: a list of Kirks love interests. I’ll trim out the non-canonical stuff from the nuTrek movies:

Ruth (Star Trek: TOS, “Shore Leave”): she’s not real, but a robot made in the image of a *past* romance of his.
Dr. Janice Lester (Star Trek: TOS, “Turnabout Intruder”) : a *former* interest of his. No interest in the episode.
Dr. Carol Marcus (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) : a *former* interest of his. No interest in the episode.
Doctor Janet Wallace (Star Trek: TOS, The Deadly Years) : a *former* interest of his. No interest in the episode.
Lt. Areel Shaw (Star Trek: TOS, “Court Martial”) : a *former* interest of his. No interest in the episode.
Lenore Karidian (Star Trek: TOS, “The Conscience Of The King”) : ok, kinda
Edith Keeler (Star Trek: TOS, “City On The Edge Of Forever”) : Ayup
Miramanmee (Star Trek: TOS, “The Paradise Syndrome”) : Ayup, though his memory has been wiped. Is it really *him?”
Shahna (Star Trek: TOS, “The Gamesters Of Triskellion”) : Ayup… but is it real romance, or a means of escape?
Antonia (Star Trek Generations): his off-screen wife. Is it “womanizing” to get married?

Not in that list:

Dr. Gillian Taylor (Star Trek IV): Flirts, but seemingly goes no further than that. For the purposes of saving the world.
Yeoman Janice Rand (TOS: “The Enemy Within”): Sorta. the “evil” Kirk assaults here. So, ummm…
Lt. Marlena Moreau (TOS: “Mirror, Mirror”): Kinda. Alternate universe, he plays along with the Mirror Kirk’s relationship as a way to survive/escape
Sylvia (TOS: “Catspaw”): not really… he puts the moves on her as a way to escape
Dr. Miranda Jones (TOS: “Is There In Truth No Beauty”): Naw… he flirts a bit, but gets nowhere.
Rayna Kapec (TOS: “Requiem for Methuselah”): Ayup: he falls for and puts the moves on a robot.
Elaan (TOS: “Elaan of Troyius”): Not really… he is *drugged* and mind controlled.

So by my count, there are approximately four “Ayups” in all of Star Trek. Does getting lucky four times (and it’s not entirely clear he actually got *that* far with any of them) over a span of 20 or so years make Kirk a “womanizing” “lothario?”

But more than that: there are around a dozen and a half examples of Kirk being interested enough in a woman to do something about it. In all those episodes and movies, there are zero incidents suggesting he had any such interest in a *male.*

 Posted by at 11:44 pm
Jul 042023
 

That movie was utterly forgettable. Why bring it up? Because I was reminded of the trailer for the movie, went and watched it again, and checked out the comments. Grok.

Me after the trailer: “Life is good.” Me after the movie: “…that could’ve been better.”

 

Say what you will about the movie, but we can all admit this trailer is a masterpiece.
Whoever edited this trailer deserves a raise. I don’t know how you made that disaster look so badass here.
You can say anything about how bad this movie is, but this trailer is a piece of art. Perfect music, perfect editing, its sells the movie like no other trailer in recent memory. Two years later I still come back to it and have goosebumbs all over by body.
It’s like watching your wedding video after filing for a divorce.

 

Near the end, when the beat perfectly matched the Phalanx systems firing? Followed by Wonder Woman swinging through the sky by lassoing *lightning?* Utterly silly… and entirely awesome and badass. And then… the movie came out and it was forget-a-mess.

 Posted by at 11:42 pm
Jun 152023
 

In the appendix to the Lord of the Rings, Tolkein included a short story about Helm Hammerhand, a serious badass and one man wrecking crew who lived hundreds of years before the events of LotR. A few years ago Warner Bors annlunced that they were doing an animated film about the events described in that story… and as spinoffs of lotR go, that one made sense. it’d make a fun action flick, animated or no.

But wait. There’s less.

New Report Shows ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim’ Will Inject Feminism Into Tolkien’s Classic Tale Of Helm Hammerhand

Basically: Helm Hammerhand, main character of the story… isn’t the main character of the story. Instead, it’s a female character who was so unimportant in the story that she didn’t even merit getting *named.*

The producer, one Philippa Boyens, claims that this effectively all-new character (named Hera, because the writers are such spectacular Tolkein experts that they know that the characters in Rohan are named after Greeks, not northern Europeans) is based largely on “Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and daughter of Wessex king Alfred the Great.” OK, sure, great. It’s quite possible that a movie about Æthelflæd would be a spectacular thing. So… why not make a movie about Æthelflæd? Oh, right, because it’s easier to ride the coat tails of an existing property.

Who is this for? A movie about Helm would bring in the existing fans. This thing is likely to turn a lot of them away.

 Posted by at 8:01 am
Jun 142023
 

Maybe something like “you get what you repeatedly vote for.” In this case, Chicago repeatedly votes for the worst possible mayors (and, sadly for the rest of the state, the worst possible Governors). And Chicago suffers for it. Will they ever vote for “the other side?” I doubt it. Not until the city collapses utterly, the population drops by 90% and the survivors are replaced.

In First Month in Office Crime Jumps 38% Under New Chicago Mayor Johnson

Refuse to learn at your own peril.

 Posted by at 9:47 pm
Jun 052023
 

It seems that the issues that caused me to both ramp up use of Twitter and get the “backup blog” continue. It now appears that every weekend the servers at the hosting service get overloaded and I can’t log into the blog until Monday morning when the staff get in and clean things up. Last weekend was a three-day weekend, and the problem persisted until Tuesday. Consequently… no new blog posts on the weekend, it seems. So if you want to make sure to keep up with my thrilling adventures and opinions, this isn’t really the place for it. Instead:

https://unwantedblog.com/

The Unwanted Blog Twitter

 

 Posted by at 9:10 am