Month: December 2005

You know, I think a talking John Lennon doll is a pretty silly idea, too, but this just seems sort of irrelevant:

A picture of the figurine, patterned after the former peace activist, appears on the association’s Web site next to a bloody figurine and a picture from slasher flick “The Devil’s Rejects,” a movie about serial killers.

So they sell a variety of pop-culture figures. Are we supposed to derive some sort of deeper significance from this? Yes, so soon after the anniversary of Lennon’s death may not be the best time to juxtapose his image with those of murderers or zombies, but it feels a little like Reuters is fishing for controversy where there isn’t any.

Last night, before I drifted off to sleep, I caught a few minutes of a first-season Alias re-run, and I think I’ve put my finger on at least part of what’s been missing from subsequent* seasons, and what I liked so much about those early episodes. In the beginning, Sydney Bristow’s life as a spy actually was an alias. She was leading a double-life (within an a double-life, within a double-life, etc.), and a lot of the fun arose when those lives overlapped or interconnected and Sydney had to juggle to keep them separate. Case in point, in last night’s episode, Syndey traveled on assignment to Las Vegas only to run into her best friend and her fiancé. Espionage comingled happily (for the audience anyway) with the mundane day-to-day.

Nowadays, however, the show doesn’t have that. It seems like practically everyone knows that Sydney is a spy. Individual episodes can be fun, and I’m actually enjoying this (I hope last) season more than I expected to, but I miss what the show used to be.

* certainly everything after season two

Interesting:

But despite a roster of several hundred science fiction authors who were born here, raised here or spent formative years here…there’s no Chicago school of science fiction. Not even a Chicago style.

Which begs, I think, the obvious question: there are other regional science fiction schools or styles? If so, what are they? And wouldn’t plenty of the authors who Miller cites just as easily qualify for them as well?

Link via Bookslut.

The gist of Bush’s argument seems to be essentially this: “We can do whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want, to whomever we want, but don’t worry, we know what we’re doing and you don’t need to know about it.”

Anything goes, he seems to be saying, because, post-September 11, adherence to the so-called law and the Constitution is just going to get people killed. He drew short only of pounding the podium with his fist and shouting, “I am the law!”

Oh, but I do agree with him that “revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country.” Somebody should tell Karl Rove and “Scooter” Libby.