Who what?

Everybody wants me to love Doctor Who.  It is a geek phenomenon and I don't get it.  My Facebook feed constantly features pictures of people dressed up as the Tardis, making cakes like the Tardis, or doing other crazy Tardis related artwork.  All kinds of people that I really quite like wax romantic about the wonders of the Doctor and insist that it be enshrined as the second best of all things (behind Firefly, naturally).  They keep trying to build playlists for me so that I can spend just a bit of time seeing the best of the Doctor and hopefully become as addicted as they are.

But the plots are preposterous!  Pretty much every episode is resolved via a technologically ridiculous deus ex machina, and even once you accept all the basic stuff required for the show to work like time travel and Time Lord regeneration and the Tardis and all that nothing makes any sense.  The characters aren't even compelling as there just isn't any grabby about them, no edge, no harsh reality.  The defence against these criticisms tends to revolve around the idea that many / most episodes are pretty terrible but there are a few really good ones, honest! and that doesn't seem like a strong argument to me.

Finally this week all became clear.  Val told me that Doctor Who is not an adult show even though it is nearly all adults that gush over it.  It is a children's show that adults happen to love.  Suddenly all the pieces fell into place.  The show lacks that gritty edge because they can't show swearing, sexual attraction, or violence and they are in situations where all of these things really should be happening.  The characters have personalities like those in children's cartoons - clean, sanitized, simple.  The solutions and problems are very reminiscent of the cartoons Elli watches like My Little Pony or Johnny Test.

Now that might all sound like a savage dismissal of the good Doctor but it isn't.  There is nothing wrong with shows aimed at children and nothing wrong with liking those as an adult.  However, if you try to judge Doctor Who as an adult program it is going to look ridiculous whereas if I judge it against other children's programming it looks like sheer genius.  Once you accept the norms of children's entertainment Doctor Who does a lot of wonderful things.

Doctor Who fills a very interesting niche.  It is a show loved by children who want to watch terrifying aliens through their fingers or in snatches when their faces are not hidden behind a pillow.  It is also a show beloved by adults who enjoy a world where the Doctor's odd blend of pacifism, irreverence, and genius always save the day.

I don't like it though, and you can't make me.  Hah!

Why we can't have nice things

Today I was at the library dropping off a book.  Used to be that you would just toss the book into a gigantic bin and the librarians would sort it all out but these days there is a fancy new system in place.  A computer screen tells you to put the books, one at a time, onto a conveyor belt and then the books are whisked away in the bowels of the library and a friendly green light informs you that your return has been processed.

On this occasion the person using the system ahead of me instead of following the very clear and simple instructions simply tossed her books onto the conveyor belt randomly.  The machine spit them back out and told her to put them on one at a time.  She tossed them back in and the same thing happened.  I stepped up and explained that the books needed to be put in one at a time.  Then she proceeded to get irritated at the machine and throw the books in forcefully enough that they overshot the conveyor entirely.  Finally the machine spit out a receipt showing that she had returned three books and she complained that she had returned five and that the machine was faulty.

She went inside and had a conversation with a librarian where the librarian tried to explain that the books needed to go in one at a time and the client stated that she knew that but that the machine had simply refused to read her books and that it was broken.  I left prior to the resolution of the conversation but it was clear what would happen:  The librarian would apologize for the faulty machine and solve the problem while the client stood around acting huffy.

There is nothing unusual about this of course.  People continually lie to others to cover their own mistakes and flaws even when the lies gain them absolutely nothing.  Is that librarian actually going to care if you admit you were impatient and not paying attention?  Even if they did care, is there anything whatsoever that they could do about it?  They spend all day listening to people complain about this kind of thing and watch everyone be hopelessly incompetent when using library technology.  Admitting fault here wouldn't even register on the librarian's radar.

But this is how we are.  When we fall or trip we immediately look around trying to figure out who saw us in a moment of weakness instead of first checking to see how injured we are.  We lie to people whose job it is to help us and who have no position of authority or familiarity just to make ourselves look better.  That insane, compulsive self consciousness is the way humanity is.

And that is why we can't have nice things.

They make me sad

Doug Ford, a city councillor in Toronto and the brother of the world infamous Rob Ford, talked recently about his understanding of racism.  He thinks that people are very racist against Rob Ford because reporters and other random folks spend so much time criticizing Rob Ford.  Quote:

"Racism isn't just about religion and colour and race.  It's about going after someone relentlessly on a daily basis."

The fact that the word Racism has a root word Race seems to have somehow escaped Doug.  Also:

"You can be racist against people that eat little red apples, you can be racist against people that have a drinking problem, you can be racist against people that are too fat."  

Doug is of course correct that you can be racist against people who eat little red apples, providing of course that they are people who are marginalized because of their race and you are oppressing them based on race, rather than the apples that they eat.

People talk about how awful everyone acts on the internet and how people end up in echo chambers reinforcing foolish, destructive, or evil beliefs, but what this ignores is that there are plenty of people doing the exact same thing in real life.  Somehow Doug Ford has convinced himself that despite the fact that he and his brother are rich, straight, cis, white dudes with substantial political clout that they are oppressed.  After all, when you are mayor of a major city and random people yell at you sometimes your life is pretty hard, right?

The Fords clearly have a thing going on where they stand around commiserating with one another on the hardships of having people be angry at their bad behaviour and poor decisions and then assume that this is as bad as anyone has it.  Obviously their feelings are very much hurt by all this disapproval and since that disapproval feels *very bad* then the Fords understand just how rough life can be.  Clearly all this bigotry and racism that people talk about must be what they are experiencing since those things are really bad and the Fords feel very put upon.

Humabababella thinks that Rob Ford winning the mayoral race wouldn't be a bad thing so long as he gets sidelined and ignored.  I don't entirely agree.  Ford being a political power in Toronto is constantly reinforcing the idea that his behaviour is supported by the majority.  Sadly that isn't as far from the truth as I would like but the symbolic power of him being soundly defeated is important.  I agree that the best possible case if Ford does win again is that he drinks and smokes himself into a blinding stupor every single day so nobody listens to him but I feel like a resounding defeat of this odious man would be a good thing.  It might illustrate that even someone with an incredible amount of mass appeal can be defeated by being enough of an asshole.

The unthinkable

Wendy and I are listening to a new radio station these days when our clock goes off at 7:40.  They are called The Edge and they try to come across as edgy, risque, and exciting.  This means that they try to use headlines that have some sexual content and riff on them comedically.  They are sometimes amusing but mostly meh.  Sadly this is the best radio station we have found and that is a sad thing to say about radio.

The hosts are generally pretty happy to talk about sex and use their personal experiences for chat fodder.  They talk about embarrassing moments they have had and relate to headlines using their own history.  Compared to a lot of people they definitely come off as being very open and accepting about sex and relationships.  Today they were talking about fetishes and spoke about fart fetishes, fantasizing about other people than your spouse, and other subjects designed to titillate the audience with their vaguely taboo subject matter.  It ended up making me very sad though because of the things they wouldn't say and wouldn't admit to.

First off the very idea of a sexual fetish bothers me when mainstream sources discuss it.  They inevitably group a bunch of things into a pile, call them normal, and deem everything not in the pile to be a fetish and thus bizarre and worthy of gawking.  The elephant in the room is that nobody can give me a reason why me being super turned on by unclothed breasts is considered okay and being turned on by farts is shameful.  Neither is sensible or based on any sort of objective standard - they are just random things that turn people on.  My particular set of turnons are very prevalent but talking about them as if that makes them better or fundamentally different is ridiculous.  Breasts are organs whose primary purpose is to deliver milk to babies.  Drooling over them is fine but it shouldn't be treated as a right and proper thing, just as a common one.

The second thing that got me is the way the hosts desperately avoided saying that they fantasize about people other than their partner.  It was clear that though they could talk about all kinds of things they had done it was completely not okay to suggest that they ever held thoughts of others in their mind.  I find this attitude incredibly frustrating - there is nothing wrong with exclusivity if that is what floats your boat but the idea that we all have to pretend that our domestic partners completely end other sexual desire is insidious and destructive.  No matter how you live the fiction that our partners should instantly and completely fulfill all of our desires and needs places far too much pressure on a relationship.

In the end both things are similar in nature.  Both revolve around the fiction that there is a simple, normal way to have a relationship and that people who don't follow that mould are wrong, bad, or crazy.  Neither of those things is true and the fact that they are so established in our public discourse frustrates me to no end.

Saving the world

Throughout my life I have had the recurring fantasy of being sucked into a world in which I am the hero like the characters in the book The Fionavar Tapestry.  A world where the answers are simple and where all that is required for good to triumph over evil is for me to stand firm against the evildoers and refuse temptation.  In short, a world where black and white are the colours things are painted in instead of the shades of grey that the real world is composed of.  A Softer World has a great comic about this saying that this is a fine fantasy and all but the real world needs heroes too.

I think that the willingness to confront the ambiguities and slow progress of the real world is an extremely important part of making things better.  There are plenty of people out there who want fixing the world to be easy, quick, and simple and insist that we aim for revolution rather than incremental change on that basis.  It strikes me that this is similar to my desire to be a hero in a fantasy world.  The desire to battle evil straight on, the hope for rapid improvement, and the willingness to trust in heroes to never become corrupt are all the same.  For just as one should worry about whether or not the swashbuckling, spell slinging, nigh invulnerable hero will turn evil when the villain is finally slain we should worry that those who lead revolutions will become dictators in turn.  As a cursory study of history makes plain this turn from good to evil is the rule rather than the exception.

This is particularly on my mind right now because I am playing Skyrim and am having a wonderful time marauding about the world slaying dragons, massacring evil cultists, and murdering the assassins guild.  It is a wonderful change to live in a world where I can know if a person is good or evil and those that skulk in gloomy ruins raising zombies to do their bidding have no redeeming value.  They have no children at home, no one to grieve over them, and their viewpoints are undeniably revolting.  I can stab them with no remorse and no thought.

The real world isn't like that.  We can and must do better than we are but doing that involves marching in parades with rainbow flags held high, passing laws to prevent discrimination against those who are most vulnerable, and calling out awful behaviours when we see them.  It does not involve a bloody sword raised on high, as appealing as that solution can sometimes be.  The right thing is usually the thing that takes a long time, is really hard, and makes a very poor heroic epic.

Smackticus

Awhile ago I posted about a video making the rounds where people were filmed sharing a first kiss despite not knowing one another ahead of time.  It was a cute sort of thing and it inspired many people to make spinoffs and parodies.  You know you have successfully made a viral video when the videos referencing or imitating yours become too numerous to keep straight - that is the new standard as far as I am concerned.  At any rate the kissing video inspired people to do the same sort of thing but with slapping instead.



Then we have 'the making of' video which is also pretty entertaining.


Now this might be seen as just a silly parody using violence and an established meme to get a bunch of views but I think it is a lot more interesting than that.  People have a tremendous desire to whack each other and normally we keep that pretty tightly wrapped up.  You can't just go about smashing others randomly and have society work and we need to control those who would hit others against their will.  However, slapping, pinching, and smacking during sex as a thing that both giver and receiver enjoy attests (to say nothing of BDSM) we have a broad desire to involve ourselves with violent contact with those we care about.

I remember the joy with which Hobo, Full Throttle, and I hammered each other into the ground while playing football in university.  It caused no end of pain and suffering and yet we all hurled ourselves into it with reckless abandon.  The shared desire to smash into each other and share moments of pain and violence with those who would also take joy in it was undeniable.  People love doing this stuff vicariously too whether it be through hockey fights, boxing, or football.

I have a tremendous desire to do this sort of thing myself to see what it is like.  I don't know that I will actually get anyone interested in it but it has been a long time since I have felt the particular rush that I recall from my days of playing tackle football with no gear and I wonder if I can bring back some of that in a very different sort of situation.  It kind of strikes me as odd that this interests me so much when pain in a sexual context interests me so little but people are all very random and I guess that is my particular kind of random.

I want it a lot

Recently I have seen a few different articles surrounding sexual assault and alcohol.  It is an important topic and sorting out what guidelines to give people is a very useful thing to do.  Sadly even videos that are otherwise really good end up failing on advice surrounding alcohol and consent.  The problem is that the advice of "if someone is too drunk to drive they are too drunk to consent" is presented as a useful measure.  This is a preposterous standard, as using that standard would either imply that the legal limit for driving should be increased several times or that most adults are guilty of rape.

This past weekend I went to a BBQ, had a few drinks, and had sex afterward.  I was slightly clumsier than usual, a bit loud, certainly unfit to drive, and I most certainly did not get raped.  The idea that we should think of what happened to me in that fashion goes beyond incorrect into laughable.  I was perfectly capable of making coherent arguments, making reasonable decisions, and communicating my desires.  Which in this case meant that I said that I wanted to have sex now, thank you very much.  The trouble with giving advice such as this is that you toss credibility completely out the window, especially since there is some challenge in finding a breathalyzer in the midst of a hot makeout session..

Saying "Just don't have sex when anyone has been drinking" is even worse, as it combines the track record of abstinence education and the efficacy of prohibition to create a hybrid of asscovering uselessness.  Young people know that they aren't supposed to drive after two beers and they also know that people constantly have perfectly legal, moral, consensual sex after that same amount of alcohol.  When we say these sorts of things all we accomplish is to ensure that we get thoroughly and quite reasonably ignored.  Using unsafe to drive as a benchmark isn't any better than total denial at all.

The trick is that we have to convince people that communication and explicit desire is normal and good.  The standard for consent needs to be that the person in question can and does clearly and willingly express desire.  A major roadblock in the way of that is the idea that romance and love 'just happen' and that when people click no talking need occur lest it imply that this isn't meant to be.  That isn't how real relationships work, whether they be lifelong or just for tonight.  The absolute minimum is that you hear "I want that, and I want you, right now."  I dearly hope we continue our societal shift towards those words being good things rather than an admission of guilt.