Sunday, August 09, 2009

Holy Golobulus!

So, Jon and I saw "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" last night. We've posted our review over at Movies Schmovies. Go and check it out!

Thursday, August 06, 2009

A pressing Who-related question

I mentioned before how much I enjoy listening to the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas, in particular the ones featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor. The series, despite lacking a visual component (or perhaps because of it) has cemented McGann as one of my absolute favorite incarnations of the Doctor, and as I'm catching up to Charley's departure, I feel compelled to begin listening to the plays where she joins up with the Sixth Doctor as well.

I'd stopped listening to the shows for awhile. I was spending less time in the car, so my podcasts tended to last longer. More to the point, I'd gotten into the season where the Doctor and Charley were trapped in another universe. While there were some good episodes in that season ("The Natural History of Fear" is a positively brilliant story that uses the audio format in some really surprising ways; it's one of those rare stories that could only possibly work in that particular medium), most left me flat (especially the bizarre "Scherzo," which failed biology forever in its headbangingly awful use of something called but bearing no resemblance to "evolution"). After "Natural History," I took a break, which I unbroke recently. I've been on a marathon run through the Eighth Doctor stories, mostly because I wanted to get out of the "alternate universe where no one had a concept of time but time clearly existed anyway" arc. Right now, I'm listening to "Time Works," which is part of the (Spoiler text) "The Doctor and Charley don't realize that C'rizz is a death-worshipping sociopath" story arc.

Anyway, the reason for all this rambling is because this episode features a particularly well-fleshed-out world called Industry, where the people are kept constantly working by a totalitarian clockwork regime. Among the many clock-based euphemisms and phrases abounding in the story is the derogatory term "clockstopper" for someone who wastes time. Now, this struck a chord (or perhaps a chime) somewhere in my memory, of the same (or a similar) term being used as part of some moderately Randian philosophy or self-help fad. Particularly the notion of avoiding people who waste your time by not working or preventing you from working. I know that's vague, but I thought maybe somewhere out there in Internet land could give me an idea of where I'm remembering this from.

And if not, well, just take a couple of hours out to listen to the story. It's pretty good.