The Deadly Assassin

The Doctor has a powerful premonition about an assassination back home on Gallifrey. His attempts to stop the killing only result in him becoming the crime's primary suspect. To clear his name, the Doctor must navigate the political machinations of the High Council and thwart the plans of his own arch-enemy, the Master. The Deadly Assassin, the first Doctor Who story without a companion, is a fan favorite from the show's classic era. It's not without its detractors though, with some feeling that the story's depiction of the Time Lords was not in line with what had previously been shown. The depiction of the Master was also a bit of a departure. Because of Roger Delgado's untimely death, the Master had been dropped from the show's narrative after Frontier in Space. When he returned in The Deadly Assassin, played by Peter Pratt, the Master was essentially a rotting corpse at the end of his regeneration cycle scheming to prolong his existence. His grisly appearance (imagine a slimy Skeletor) along with a few violent action sequences raised the ire of moral watchdogs at the time. Particularly because of the climax of the third episode when, after a prolonged fistfight in a swamp, the Doctor's adversary attempts to drown him.

Rating: Typical politician%

The Enemy of the World

Arriving in the middle of a season full of monsters is the unexpected gem, "The Enemy of the World." The serial finds the Doctor and his companions arriving in the far-off year of 2018. After some folks in a hovercraft attempt to assassinate him, the Doctor discovers that he bears a striking resemblance to a political figure known as Salamander. What follows is a twisty tale of murder, manipulation and madness. A complete version of the serial was discovered in Nigeria in 2013, prior to that only one episode was known to have survived. While it wasn't particularly well received at the time of it's original airing, the serial stands out now because of how different it is from the rest of its season and the Troughton era as a whole. This type of story was more typical of the First Doctor era, especially with the lead actor playing multiple parts (see also: "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve"). And while I can understand that some people will be put off by his accent and the use of makeup to darken Troughton's skin while playing Salamander, this serial is also notable for being the first Doctor Who story to feature a character played by a woman of color. So I guess it all evens out?

Rating: See if there's any buckets and spades in the TARDIS%

Cinco De Mayo

Cinco De Mayo is __________ _____ _ __________ Mexico _____ ____ __ __ ________ battle ____ __ France _____ then ___ _____. ___ __ _ ______ Americans ___ _ ____ __ ___ always ___ _ _____ __ ___ ____ supremacy___ __ __ ______ __ identity ___ _ _____ __. ___ __ ________ _ ___? __ _____ __ _____ _____ ___ _____ _ __ __ _______ ____. ___ ___ ____ __ ___ ____ ______ __ __ ______ _______ __ ___ __________ _ ____ ________. ___ _ __ ____ _________ ___ ___________ ___ __ ____ ____.

RATING __%

Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate Homepage Photo

Kirsten Gillibrand became a senator for NY when our more popular senator got a more exciting job. I donated monies to her and now, every day or so (but usually every day, or six times a day) Kirsten writes me a special email asking me to sign a petition or to fight for my right, etc. On her homepage is this picture. And can I just say that this picture makes me feel that Ms. Gillibrand has got the bipartisan thing down PAT. Here, Kirsten positions herself at the crux of the great state of New York. To the left, a charged, exciting city filled with buildings and people and gays and culture and things happening. To her left, a vast landscape of mountains and leaves and drunk SUNY students and farmer Republicans. What one person can possibly hold us all together? When Kirsten Gillibrand grows up, I imagine she will look like a hotter Kay Bailey Hutchison. God Bless Kirsten Gillibrand! God Bless the United States of America, and God Bless New York!

RATING: 71%

The Twenty-Second Amendment

Nobody ever wanted to see a repeat of the disastrous presidency of FDR, so they decided that term limits should be set up for future presidents of the country. I guess that's a good thing, because Clinton probably could have been reelected, which would have been TERRIBLE! He lied under oath guys. Also, I'm sure Barack Obama could serve like 50 terms since he's the Antichrist and a master of devilish trickery.


RATING: 68%

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an insane charismatic douchebag who should not be in charge of a country. I'm not one to bat around Bushisms like "Axis of Evil" or whatever bullshit Jesus told W, but Ahmadinejad's regular denials of the Holocaust, assassination and torture of opponents, and constant attempts to build nuclear weapons are pretty major signs that he's a dangerous asshole. That said, take a look at this interview in Newsweek, and it becomes pretty clear that they're in over their heads. It's some kind of spectacle to see this guy totally take over the interview even as they try to get in the hard questions.

PS - Sorry to any readers we have in Iran; I guess this will be the last time you can probably read us.

RATING: 9%

Facebook Status Update Memes

People who can't even formulate two sentences in their own words about some supposedly urgent, morally profound issue are probably too lazy and superficial to be addressed as sentient beings. If you agree, please don't post this as your status for the rest of the day.

RATING: 0%

(Image from static2.thrivesmart.com.)

American Socialism

In the rest of the world, the term socialist denotes a person who believes the federal government is in the best position to distribute the wealth of the nation. In America, where people think a little differently, it's defined variously as "a compassionate person" or "a jungle bunny who wants to outlaw freedom and turn your kids into atheist potheads who have interracial gay sex on welfare," depending on whether you're talking to a Democrat who knows nothing about economics or a Republican who knows nothing about anything. In conclusion, God help us all.

RATING: 50/50, all idiots

(Image from www.freeulysses.com.)

The Twenty-third Amendment

Everybody who lives in Washington, DC is always like "Waa waa, I pay taxes but I don't get any particular person to represent my anger about those taxes to a governing body of some sort." Well, I guess in 1960 they either felt sorry for those people or wanted to shut them up for like two seconds because this amendment at least gives people in the District of Columbia the right to select electors for presidential elections. The one state to be a big dick and try to reject this amendment? You guessed it.

RATING: 61%

Identity Politics

White males have it super easy. When the ephemeral, utterly transient nature of the lives and happiness of the people I love gets me down, I find solace in what’s truly important: the skin colour of the group of clueless, struggling, suffering, slowly dying assholes I happened to have been born into, and the particularity of my reproductive plumbing. This one time the good ole’ boys in the government sent me a white cake in the mail. It was fucking awesome.

RATING: The privileged 50% of the privileged 74%

(Image from eeyore.astro.uiuc.edu.)

The Twenty-fourth Amendment

All the other amendments thus far in the countdown have been super boring, but now we finally get to a good one. After the Civil War, it was decreed by America that black people should be allowed to vote. The South was like "AHHH WHAT" so then they decided they would try to sneak around this new law by saying everybody had to pay a "poll tax" to vote, and it just so happened that a lot of black people were too poor to pay the amount (coincidence). Also, the tax would usually only be enforced when black people tried to vote, and the amount would fluctuate suddenly etc. Anyway, in 1965, a scant century later, America decided to put an end to that and passed this amendment, but you can't please everybody and Wyoming, Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and *ahem*texas*ahem* decided they'd show their resistance/dickery by never ratifying it to this day (your bad, fellas).

RATING: 89%

The Clash by The Clash

It's not exactly news that this is a great album, but I thought that 32 years after its release I would like to add "Yes, I concur everybody, this is indeed a great album." You know the drill: politics, toneless singing, guitars, etc.

RATING: 81%

Fear Of A Black Planet by Public Enemy

Everybody already knows this, but this rap album by Public Enemy is one of the greatest of planet Earth. Serious, political, and highly charged lyrics mixed with drum and brass licks that sound more like sirens in a war zone, this album is totally unlike any rap album that has been released in the past decade or so. Remember when rap was political, about change and revolution, and white news pundits everywhere were scared and talked about it destroying our culture? Well, instead rap became about why capitalism is great, Flavor Flav became star of a minstrel show, and Chuck D just looks so damned tired. On the other hand, the failure of the revolution doesn't negate the greatness of this album, so give it a listen and just use your imagination why don't you.

RATING: 91%

Bristol Palin

Who?

RATING: 15%

Fire And Ice: The United States, Canada And The Myth Of Converging Values by Michael Adams

The main problem with this book, which uses statistical analysis of social trends in the United States and Canada to examine the differences in each culture, is probably the problem with a lot of books written out of studies: it feels as though it could have been a nice, taut twenty page article that's been stretched out to (barely) book length to increase marketability. Sure, Adams' prose is entertaining, but he travels in circles for 146 pages and reuses the same analogies over and over (I think he compared American inner cities to Blade Runner at least five times). The basic message is this: American society is spiraling ever deeper into a crime ridden nihilistic society that believes self pleasure is the ultimate achievement whereas Canadian society is already a utopia in which every citizen is holding hands and doing their best to make it even more of a utopia. I agree with a lot of what Adams says in the book, but whenever he strays from numerical analysis into his own bizarre form of synthesis it sort of seems as though he's interpreting American society from the movies they make he complains are poisoning the Canadian youth. He often sounds less like a statistician and more like somebody's crotchety grandfather who wishes kids wouldn't play so many of those violent Nintendon games. Who knows, though, I haven't lived in Canada for 15 years, maybe it has turned into a multicultural heaven totally void of racial or economic strife of any form.

RATING: 38%

Peanut Butter

Man, fuck all that government FDA bullshit! I don't give a good God damn about some fucking salmonella garbage, so the only way you're prying my peanut butter away from me is from my cold dead hands. The government's always talking shit like "don't eat tomatoes," or "don't eat green onions," or "don't eat puppies," but I say they are forgetting a little old thing called the First Amendment that guaranteed us Freedom of Eats. Everybody always gets scared about sickness, but I myself am scared of a nation in which I can't eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich in peace. So chew on that 44th president, your first task is to stop fucking with deliciousness.

RATING: 89%

Frost/Nixon

I'm not in my 40's, I wasn't around during Watergate, and Nixon was dead by the time I was 12. That having been said, I thought that this was a pretty cool movie, and that Frank Langella pulled off one of the more remarkable film characters I've seen in a while. He played Nixon with gravitas, power, and sympathy...and he shook his jowls and fired off peace signs like you wouldn't believe.

As a whole, I liked the movie's cast a lot - it's hard to go wrong with Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt in the supporting roles, and Michael Sheen was fun to watch as super-optimist David Frost. And even though there weren't any explosions, car chases, or super-heroes, I got really worked up at the points in the movie where you're supposed to get worked up...which is kind of the idea behind dramas like this, I think. Anyways, it was great, and I'm looking forward to the sequel, "Frost/Nixon 2: Laser Swordfight".

RATING: 91% (which means that its better than Burn After Reading, but worse than Orange Juice)

(image courtesy of wikipedia, dude)

Milk

Milk is a movie about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in America. It is fine, but I think that everybody is giving it a lot more credit as a great movie because of its subject matter, what I like to refer to as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner syndrome. Sure, the GLBT movement needs as much support now as ever, but that doesn't automatically elevate this movie into the annals of film history. The acting is great from pretty much everybody involved, from Sean Pean to Emile Hirsch to Josh Brolin to James Franco, but it's chock full of cliches (Harvey Milk and his friends repeatedly joke about him NOT MAKING IT TO FIFTY foreshadowing get it), and it's often fakely sentimental. It's a good film about an important figure in American history, but I think it's a mistake to count it among the best films of 2008.

RATING: 67%

The Twenty-fifth Amendment

The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is another boring clerical one that basically clarifies some issues regarding presidential incapacity and vice-presidential succession. SNOOZE. What it means is that when Bush had colonoscopies he invoked this amendment to make Cheney president for like an hour. All the high-numbered amendments are tres boring. You know what kind of amendment they could make that would be one of those nice, pride inducing ones like the slavery sucks, women can vote ones? How about something about the government not being allowed to restrict personal rights and freedoms based on sexual preference? I bet that would get a rating somewhere in the nineties, Congress.

RATING: 57%

Ideological Critique: The Enthusiasms of Political Reduction

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" over 200 times. The Merchant of Venice depicts the humiliation and ruin of a Jewish villain at the hands of a Christian majority; Othello, a negro who strangles his perfectly innocent wife. The famous first line of Pride and Prejudice can be read as a blatant formula for prostitution, if one so chooses. The women of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight inspire and manipulate their men, but don't engage in any decapitating contests themselves.

It's pretty easy to point one's finger at a work of art, especially challenging art, and denounce it as ideologically unsavory in some way. Anyone can (re)apply this or that political formula (e.g. the "Woman in the Refrigerator" or any of the other 3 million ways to reduce a story to who's-doing-what-to-whom) and bandy about the -isms of the day in a denunciatory fashion. There are people with tenure right now who have made entire careers out of doing nothing but. It's a lot harder, however, to make a sincere effort to participate in an artist's world view, to try to give him or her the benefit of the doubt, to make an honest and uncompromising critique that nonetheless adds value to the world rather than merely taking it away.

I'm talking about imaginative generosity, not apologia. And I'm not always great at taking my own advice--I talk more lazy, cheap, snide, cynical shit than a lot of people I know. I'm just saying I'd rather watch Othello than Gothika.

RATING: 8%

(Image from mincer.en.alibaba.com.)