The Geek's Meow

Peter Capaldi has announced the end of his run as The Doctor on Doctor Who.

Peter Capaldi is leaving ‘Doctor Who’

He’s not the Doctor with the shortest run, by far (Hi, Christopher Eccleston, Paul McGann, and I suppose John Hurt) but he’s The Doctor I feel least connected to.  Nine’s single season still feels more robust and developed than Capaldi’s four years or so.

Maybe it’s because we have Moffat running long past his expiration date as showrunner?  Is it the way seasons are sporadic and stretched out now?  I don’t think it’s Capaldi’s lack of integration, I really did believe him as a grumpy phoenix, reborn sullenly from the ashes of Matt Smith’s giddy burn out through the ages.  There were moments Twelve shone as an echo back to our more serious, but still whimsical, Doctors.  He brought his own passions and fire, and yet those moments felt briefer than I expected.  And then we were left with so many “Really?” moments from Moffat’s execution.

Maybe if I returned to Nine I wouldn’t see him through the rose colored glasses of hindsight, but as we stand now history overshadows the present.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe I will miss Twelve when he regenerates, but I don’t feel the end of an era like I did when Ten(nant) proclaimed his reluctance to leave us with “I don’t want to go!”  I attached to Twelve faster than I accepted Eleven, he was a refreshing change of Doctor instead of a magnification of the previous incarnation, but as we face the end I don’t know that we’ve actually gotten the Doctor we were promised, that we needed.

In a way it feels like he’s already gone too soon, even though he hasn’t regenerated yet.  We never really got to appreciate him fully as we did with previous Doctors.  Glorious moments, but no lasting hand to hold as we march towards the next inevitable period of “But he’s not MY Doctor” until the new form steals our hearts in some way.  (Maybe this upcoming season will prove me ever so wrong?)

As a note, no Doctor, even Ten, will be MY Doctor as truly as Four, everyone’s favorite scarf-clad Tom Baker.

“It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for.”

I’m just a little black rain cloud… pay no attention to me…

(When I get too far into my gloomy state, I often think of myself as a little black rain cloud, even though I’m acting more like Eeyore.  I suppose I’m not nearly as hopeful as Pooh Bear is in the moment he wears his very clever disguise, but it’s my little song for depression.)

Strangely, my phobia of bees has made me unlikely to want to actually watch the clip most days, especially if I’m too deep in my head.  As ridiculous as animated bees are, there are still days they set my nerves on edge.

It’s odd how depression can set in.  Sometimes it’s a gradual, creeping feeling.  And I will say that I’ve noticed myself turning inwards, slowing down, sliding into the gray a bit for the last few days, but nothing major.

Other times it’s an avalanche of bleak, which is where we’re at now.  Today, all at once, getting out of bed was a major effort.  The things that normally make me laugh are bouncing off of me without a reaction, or worse the awareness that I’m not finding them funny is making me sink lower.

For the most part I’m doing a good job at work of wearing the mask, but I can feel the effort it takes.  It’s not even exactly sad, it’s like I’m standing outside the circle of everything I enjoy.  I feel down because I’m left out (which, incidentally, I’m not actually left out) but I also feel oddly detached.  I want to cry, not because things are making me upset, but that I’m upset I can’t feel “correctly”.

It’s manifesting in other weird ways, too.  I’m suddenly worried about the cost of living closer to work, and how much apartment I can afford on my own.  There’s no existing threat to my living arrangement, but a little corner of my brain is sure I need to find something and soon.  Oddly it’s fixating on one bedroom or studio situations, as if my husband were suddenly about to disappear and I would be looking alone.  I’m panicking over a situation that doesn’t exist.

I need to wash my hair, I have forgotten to make my February hair appointment and need to do that, I have a work project that needs love, I have personal development at work that needs attention, I’ve got gaming I could be doing… and no drive.  Not for any of it.

My rational brain knows this is brain weasels.  My weasel infected brain doesn’t care what rational brain has to say, it’s never all that productive anyway so why doesn’t it just take it’s judgmental brain-self out of here.

So I’m sure if you have any form of social media or pay any attention to the news, you have heard the term “Alternative Facts” from Kellyanne Conway (one of the President’s advisers and mouthpieces to the public) in defense of statements made by the Press Secretary that were… let’s say less than forthright, if not outright false.

Apparently, when the unvarnished truth isn’t the shade you need it to be, you can always use Alternate Facts!  Don’t get me wrong, politicians lie, flip flop, and recolor truth all the time, but for that to be the first thing you send your Press Secretary out to say, in a case where it’s easy to verify the falsehood, with the only apparent benefit being ego-soothing to the President… that’s not a good way to start out your Presidential relationship with the people in my eyes.

My theory for the next Alternative Fact:

Duff Goldman is now a verified time traveler, who ruthlessly stole the inauguration cake idea and took it back to 2013.  Cad.

(Side note, awesome that the bakery that had to make the replica cake not only came out with the details of what they were asked to do, but that they donated the fee to the Human Rights Campaign: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2017/01/21/trump-had-a-huge-luxurious-inauguration-cake-was-it-plagiarized/ )

C’mon Kellyanne, don’t let me down!

Edit:  Interesting tidbit about this came to my attention.  The Alternative Facts assertion was made exactly 40 years after one of the best observations made by the Doctor:

You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doctor-who-alternative-facts_us_58860d95e4b070d8cad3b0e1

Rather spot on, don’t you think?

Lemon cookies.

Didn’t really like them.  Not directly adverse, like I am with coconut or oatmeal raisin, but they were not something I generally chose to eat, even through my twenties.  So today, when presented with dessert options at work I could have had a sugar cookie, yummy, or a lemon cooler cookie.

Surprising, even to me, I chose the latter.  And it was really delicious, crisp citrus and a good level of creamy sweetness.  Soft cookie texture, just the way I like them.  Excellent!

Me of five years ago would have no idea that was possible.  She would have eaten it, had there been no other option and some social obligation in play, but generally would have skipped the cookies entirely if that was the only option.

Young me would have balked at the amount of avocado, rice, and moderately spicy foods I eat.  High school me would still not understand raw fish or beer and whiskey.  It’s so great to continue to expand my palate – even to include those lemon cookies today!

If you don’t play, you can’t win.  But if nobody else plays, is it really a win?

At the end of last year we had a holiday party with an ice-breaker game, you picked up a slip of paper and found people to talk to in order to discover what you had in common with them.  The weirder, the better.  Once you had done so with the requisite number of people, you turned in the slip, and who ever had the weirdest things would be declared the winner!

So I am a competitive social butterfly, this was something I had to do.  My answers were not super weird, but they at least got me bouncing around the party and chatting with different people.  So over all, pretty good.  A few people commented that they thought I was the only person actually doing this, and I joked back that it meant I won if I was the only entry, right?  But several of them mentioned getting their own sheet and starting to play, so I really thought it was a joke.

Nope, mine was the only entry received that night.  And for that, I won the Poro King:

He sits, triumphant, on my desk, declaring me the winner of the game only I wanted to play, apparently.

When I was in my teens I was involved in archery, and my favorite competitions were 3-D shoots, where the targets were foam replicas of animals instead of boring paper targets.  The awards were divided by gender and for those of us under 18 by age group.  Turns out there weren’t a lot of teen girls into putting arrows in fake critters, so no matter how terribly I shot, I always wound up with the first place trophy.  At first this was fun, and kind of funny, and let me dig in to my brother, who actually had to compete with other boys around his age most of the time, that I had clearly been the superior shot based on my first place standing.

I’m totally familiar with being the odd one, the weirdo, the person ready to play along even though I may not have the skills.  I was never all that good at archery.  My ice breaker results were okay, but mostly mundane.  In World of Warcraft I used the Arena PvP competitions to gather points just for participating, which eventually earned me the previous competitive season’s special gear, even though I was terrible at PvP.  But still that little competitive streak in me still hangs on to that drive for the win, even when nobody else wants it all that much.

Sometimes a win is still a win, even when you’re playing against yourself!

It was 1995 and we were watching the news one Christmas evening. The local segment talked about the upcoming Rose Parade float decoration.  A piece about the City of Long Beach float mentioned where it was being decorated and that if volunteers wanted to participate that’s where they should go.

“You kids want to go decorate floats?” my mom asks.  We’re on winter break, with nothing to do to discharge all this restless energy, and watching the Rose Parade on TV was always a big deal in our house.  Some years we were lucky enough to see the floats in person post-parade.  After a brief moment of being blown away that we could be part of the pre-parade activity, we agreed – so in the wee hours of the morning on December 26th I put on grubby blue jeans and layered an oversize sweatshirt on top of an old t-shirt, expecting to get a little messy.

When we first arrived, the guards weren’t sure what to do with us.  We weren’t part of a group that was expected, and nobody there knew the local news had sent out the recruitment request.  So there were a lot of messages run back and forth, while we stood out in the cold, until finally a float – not Long Beach but another group – was found that was willing to put us to work for a bit.  So we glued seeds until the area was covered, and found ourselves drifting.  Since we weren’t with the religious group, the Pedal Pushers, and we weren’t known by the decorating directors, a woman and two teens weren’t really welcomed or expected to do much.

But every time a float agreed to let us help, we put our all into it.  I was getting my jeans covered in glue.  I climbed into odd spots to ensure complete coverage, while not damaging the existing work.  Mom always had an eye for flower arranging.  My brother Andrew’s hands were black with poppy seeds.  We were all willing to do the most tedious of tasks, like prepping the mums with a dot of glue on the back of each for a tray that would be carried over to the people actually working on the floats.  As evening approached, the head decorator from Long Beach found out about us, and let us help his crew prep flowers.  So I carefully cut carnations into individual petals, taking to heart the feedback of whether I was cutting them too long or too short for the task.

Eventually the head of Long Beach’s float, a man with a grumpy face and a sharp way of speaking came over to talk to us.  I was genuinely hoping I wasn’t in trouble as he looked me over.  “How old is she?” he asked my mom.  We let him know I was thirteen, and his mouth never showed it, but his eyes grinned.  “Are you afraid of heights?”  Nope, no problem with heights.  The eyes brightened again, and I got a new assignment.

Turns out in order to go up on the scaffolding, you had to be at least 12.  I was small for my age, which was a huge asset in this case.  In order to fit the float in the warehouse, it had to be in it’s folded down configuration, which it does to pass under the bridge at the end of the parade.  This meant that the pelican at the front and top of the float was folded in half, and his front side, which had been covered in coconut before being folded down, now needed those fresh carnation petals glued on to his scarf.  The scaffolding ran under his wings, but the adults on the crew were too big to fit through the opening and sit there doing the work.  Which meant I was sent up the rickety set up, squeezed under the wing, and sat in a relatively peaceful little oasis, gluing radiantly red fluttery flower bits to look like a wind-swept scarf!  It smelled AWFUL.  The glue they used was overwhelming, the coconut is my least favorite scent as it can make me nauseous, and the little bits of everything were getting stuck in my hair if I moved wrong.  But it was great, I carefully layered the pieces, and understood why we’d cut the length of those carnation petals so carefully before, and just knocked it out.  I was so well placed, I actually had a runner getting me the petals and glue when I needed refills, so I didn’t have to leave until the dinner break.

And thus I developed a great reputation.  Meanwhile Mom’s eye for placement didn’t go unnoticed either, so the float director (and driver, we found out) made sure we would be back the next day.  And the next.  We were occasionally loaned out to other floats, but he always called us back when he could use us.  All the way through New Years Eve, being a few of the rare volunteers asked to help with the last minute touches on the floats after they were moved out to the street for judging.  Seeing all the floats at their towering heights, all dolled up with their finest and freshest flowers, was amazing.  I was a part of that.

By the way, that glue never comes off.  I swear, I probably still have particles of it stuck to my skin.  Even after you wash your hands in the diluted turpentine smelling concoction they have out back to wash the brushes in.  Never.

Reviewing the frequency of my posts, I was clearly getting back into the swing of things in November.  Not quite three posts a week all the time, but on the road back to that rate.

And then somehow December just barged in and I became a slug.  In part it was due to being home for the holidays nearly half of the month – where we have one computer right now for two gamers.  A situation that is scheduled to be resolved by early February.

OR ELSE.

(I’m kidding – my husband did order his new computer yesterday, finally, so we’re in the home stretch.)

My break of playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, Diablo III, or the latest World of Warcraft expansion didn’t happen.  Instead it was Black Desert Online (which I’m just shy of burning out on) and VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action.  The latter is fascinating to those who love a good story driven game and/or the cyberpunk genre – you are the bartender in the future, where all the various characters come to get a drink, divulge their troubles, and do business.  You know, everyone’s favorite NPC, made PC!  No dialogue choices, no actions other than mixing drinks, you just control the story by what drinks you serve.  In classic RPG blocky graphics, too.  It’s surprisingly fun!

So we’re just going to ignore that little gap in my writing as my much needed re-charge period.

Well, the web has brought me some interesting news today:

http://www.aggressivecomix.com/constantine-saved-cw/

Looks like TV show Constantine may get another pass, in an animated form?  I worry that Americans are still pretty bad at not seeing animation as a “for kids” show, so I hope they don’t dumb down the show to walk that precarious line.

I really did love the TV show, so I am highly intrigued and at the same time mildly terrified.  I think animation takes a degree of “What the hell?” away from the show that it so richly needs and deserves.  We expect weird stuff in animation that we don’t in a live action setting.  But I guess it is a comic first, so I’ll give it a try!

Provided anything actually comes of this, of course…

I used to work at Blizzard Entertainment, which meant that sometimes I had access to some pretty neat merch that might not otherwise be available.  One of my favorite items was the first offer of the plush version of the baby murloc, Murky.

Murky, in game form

Murky, in plush form

Originally these were only made for the Korean audience, so purchasing them was a rare and special circumstance.  Of course, I got as many as I could when they were offered.  I kept one and found good homes for the others with people who missed that opportunity.

Because of their adorable and exclusive nature, other people made sure that some of these items found their way to EBay – usually at several hundred dollars each.  That didn’t stop me from wanting to be able to take my cute companion with me, especially to BlizzCon.

But I was going to be working the Registration desk that year, which meant my hands would be full and if I set down my fuzzy fishy friend, it was full well likely he would find himself filched.  Even those that wouldn’t want him for themselves would be happy to make a tidy profit off of him.  So what to do?

I needed some way to attach him to me during the times I needed my hands – and rubber bands weren’t going to cut it.  But somehow I discovered my old goth collar (acquired at Petco because it was sturdier and cheaper than the human collars available at Hot Topic back in the day) from when I was a tiny wanna-goth kid with a teeny little neck.  Sure, even on it’s largest setting it didn’t fit me… but sure enough on it’s smallest placement it was perfect for a little murloc buddy!

So Murky became a little punk and proudly wore his collar (which allowed me to attach him to my belt loops while I was working, nobody was going to get him off of there easily) and I got to show off my adorable acquisition safely among the people who would appreciate it most.

The next year, of course, they started making US versions and selling them at BlizzCons, so his special status was retired.  His collar, however, was not.  To this day he sits on my desk, ready to rock!