.
So there's a British guy in my British history class. I wish I could say that after a decade of obsessing over British TV, music and culture that I'd be immune to it, but I have to admit that everything that comes out of this guy's mouth seems like a brilliant idea. I mean, objectively speaking I know that the ideas coming out of his mouth are average, maybe good at best, but this doesn't seem to stop me and everyone else in the class (including the professor) from hanging on his every word. We girls are especially vulnerable to the Brit's unintentional charms, as on more than one occasion his contributions in class have been interrupted by a swooning sigh. Frankly, if this were still the era of corsets I think half of the class would be on the floor after a British-induced fainting spell.
I wonder if other English speaking countries (apart from the UK obviously) have this problem. Are Canadians as intrigued by British accents as we Americans are? Do South Africans think people with English accents are inherently smarter and better looking? I wish I could say we were discerning connoisseurs of British English, that the bonus in the perception of intelligence only applies to the Queen's English, but quite honestly I'm pretty sure we're drawn in even by Dick Van Dyke's rape of Cockney. Were we Americans to meet the real Bert I'm sure we'd think that, in spite of his filth-covered face, he's a brilliant looker.
For all I know my classmate is considered borderline retarded in his native England, and English women find him physically repulsive, but here in Illinois with his charming inability to correctly pronounce the letter "R," this guy is an Adonis who is one comment in British history class away from being nominated for a Nobel Prize. A Nobel Prize in what specifically, I'm not sure, but we Americans would find a way to create a category specially for this dude.
Now before anyone thinks I'm some sort of pervert, just know that I've had conversations about this with other girls in the class, and they've noticed it, too. One girl even admitted to spending most of class trying to compose English-flavored pickup lines to use on our classmate who is of the British persuasion...something about buttering crumpets. So there. Clearly there's at least one girl in class who is infinitely creepier than I am.
What I really find fascinating about this guy though is the fact that he seems completely bewildered. Much like someone who grew up in poverty only to win the lottery, it seems to me that he grew up in English schools, believing his was mediocre in both brains and looks, only to come to America and find that--for some reason completely beyond the scope of his English understanding--EVERYONE seems suddenly to be obsessed with his thoughts, opinions, and comments. The look in his eyes reminds me of the moment in Harry Potter when Harry finally learns that he's not a lame, scrawny kid with glasses, but rather a friggin' WIZARD. And I bet my classmate silently swears to himself that no one in England must ever know about the jackpot that is America, because an influx of Englishmen might diminish his new-found powers.
To be honest, I'm afraid the exact opposite is going to happen when (if) I go to England. Sort of like what being in Israel was like, except at least in Israel I had the language barrier to hide behind. But I mean, if we think the English sound intelligent, then that must mean they think we're idiots. Here in Illinois when I talk I seem reasonably intelligent, but next year in grad school in England (assuming I get in somewhere), when I share my opinion in my native American accent, will my classmates silently imagine a barefooted yokel playing a banjo?
On an rational level, surely they'll know I'm from the big, hippie city of Los Angeles, but I'm not so sure that'll stop them from imagining the song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" whenever I talk. Granted, they probably don't even know that song. Oh Jesus, why do I know that song?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Being a teacher
So I'm in the process of applying for teacher training programs. No big deal. The nice thing about my university though is that many professors force students to teach class once per quarter, so I'm at least sort of prepared. Until today I'd only done this for French classes, and I gotta say that I don't remember too well how they went. In French you're too busy trying to remember which word you need and in which tense/mood/person or whatever, and trying desperately not to accidentally say something inappropriate,* so you don't have a lot of energy left to pay attention to the daydreaming, doodling, and facebooking sitting before you.
*Example of something inappropriate: Today in Hebrew class a girl said "to fuck" instead of "to identify with." Apparently I was the only kid in class who knew how to say "to fuck" because I was the only person who laughed.
Anyway, all of this changed today when I had to be the teacher for the Religion Seminar. It actually wasn't too much work. Basically I just had to come up with a couple of questions, ask the class, and then WHOA off they go, debating with each other. For the most part I hate that class because many members of the class seem to think that even choirs of angels in heaven could not compare to the beauty that is their voice. There's one student in particular who's just so arrogant, pretentious and greedy with class time that I sometimes wonder whether or not his presence in my life is the karmic result of a murder-rape I committed in a previous life. The worst part of having people like this is that you assume that the teacher probably likes them, that they must get great grades. But that was until today, when I faced the class....and realized that this guy somehow manages to be even more grating when viewed from the teacher's perspective.
Someone asked a pretty inoffensive question about Emil Durkheim's definition of religion to hear the class's thoughts. You know, it's the sort of thing where you can passionately be like, "Oh, I disagree with Durkheim's interpretation and here's why," but it's hardly the Holocaust. But this boy, draped in a large shawl with swirly patterns with the same feminine drama of a 60's film star, this asshole rolls his eyes with such overwhelming surliness and disgust that I could have sworn he was having some kind of epileptic fit.
"Call an ambulance," I wanted to cry out, "Axe-Chin is having a stroke!" (I call him Axe-Chin because he has such a strong cleft in his chin that it looks like someone took an axe to his face...which is actually what I sometimes imagine doing after two and a half hours of class in which he can't figure out how to shut the fuck up.)
Anyway....it was an interesting experience. Apart from trying to politely beat Axe-Chin into submission so that shier members of class could share their thoughts, I didn't really do much besides watch people as they either paid attention, or daydreamed (and I sort of daydreamed about what they were daydreaming about), or doodled. It was kind of surreal, thinking that hopefully I'll be doing something like this a lot more in the future. Except unlike my profs here, I hope that I'll have the balls to say, "Shut the fuck up so that someone else can share what they think, you greedy bastard." How more professors don't throttle their students is just beyond me...
*Example of something inappropriate: Today in Hebrew class a girl said "to fuck" instead of "to identify with." Apparently I was the only kid in class who knew how to say "to fuck" because I was the only person who laughed.
Anyway, all of this changed today when I had to be the teacher for the Religion Seminar. It actually wasn't too much work. Basically I just had to come up with a couple of questions, ask the class, and then WHOA off they go, debating with each other. For the most part I hate that class because many members of the class seem to think that even choirs of angels in heaven could not compare to the beauty that is their voice. There's one student in particular who's just so arrogant, pretentious and greedy with class time that I sometimes wonder whether or not his presence in my life is the karmic result of a murder-rape I committed in a previous life. The worst part of having people like this is that you assume that the teacher probably likes them, that they must get great grades. But that was until today, when I faced the class....and realized that this guy somehow manages to be even more grating when viewed from the teacher's perspective.
Someone asked a pretty inoffensive question about Emil Durkheim's definition of religion to hear the class's thoughts. You know, it's the sort of thing where you can passionately be like, "Oh, I disagree with Durkheim's interpretation and here's why," but it's hardly the Holocaust. But this boy, draped in a large shawl with swirly patterns with the same feminine drama of a 60's film star, this asshole rolls his eyes with such overwhelming surliness and disgust that I could have sworn he was having some kind of epileptic fit.
"Call an ambulance," I wanted to cry out, "Axe-Chin is having a stroke!" (I call him Axe-Chin because he has such a strong cleft in his chin that it looks like someone took an axe to his face...which is actually what I sometimes imagine doing after two and a half hours of class in which he can't figure out how to shut the fuck up.)
Anyway....it was an interesting experience. Apart from trying to politely beat Axe-Chin into submission so that shier members of class could share their thoughts, I didn't really do much besides watch people as they either paid attention, or daydreamed (and I sort of daydreamed about what they were daydreaming about), or doodled. It was kind of surreal, thinking that hopefully I'll be doing something like this a lot more in the future. Except unlike my profs here, I hope that I'll have the balls to say, "Shut the fuck up so that someone else can share what they think, you greedy bastard." How more professors don't throttle their students is just beyond me...
Monday, October 11, 2010
Glossary
I've decided I need to form a glossary of Sam-isms. I'll update as I remember more. That way I don't have to explain every time I use one:
Akimba: a state of bra-lessness. Verb: to go akimba.
A Fat Elvis Weekend (sometimes referred to as "A Lost Weekend"): a weekend in which you feel so pathetic and awful that you confine yourself to your room, sometimes with a bunch of movies, and you have yourself a nice long cry.
to Hulk out: to suddenly burst from your clothing, à la The Incredible Hulk. Unlike the Hulk, this can be intentional or unintentional.
Fart Pocket:: a random spot that smells of fart that is contained. Meaning, you can pass through a fart pocket and you can clearly differentiate where it begins and ends, unlike with a real fart. Fart Pockets are native to Evanston and the greater Chicagoland area.
Akimba: a state of bra-lessness. Verb: to go akimba.
A Fat Elvis Weekend (sometimes referred to as "A Lost Weekend"): a weekend in which you feel so pathetic and awful that you confine yourself to your room, sometimes with a bunch of movies, and you have yourself a nice long cry.
to Hulk out: to suddenly burst from your clothing, à la The Incredible Hulk. Unlike the Hulk, this can be intentional or unintentional.
Fart Pocket:: a random spot that smells of fart that is contained. Meaning, you can pass through a fart pocket and you can clearly differentiate where it begins and ends, unlike with a real fart. Fart Pockets are native to Evanston and the greater Chicagoland area.
The one in which I get really patriotic about American hygiene.
Right now here in Evanston we're in that horrible last stretch of hot weather before the final plunge into Arctic temperatures that will see us through May. Sure, it may be sunny and 78 degrees, but no one can enjoy the weather because we all know that this is the end. This is it. When the temperature sinks back down on Wednesday, it ain't coming back up. It's like that horrible moment when you're at the top of a roller coaster about to plummet down a steep drop and you suddenly realize that you're terrified of roller coasters....but, of course, it's too late, and down you'll go.
What's really frustrating about this "nice" weather though isn't just that it's a sort of depressing last hurrah (it actually makes me think of the mass suicide at Masada). The really frustrating thing about it is that it turns my French classroom into a sauna. There's something funny with the building in general in that, even in the midst of a brutal Midwestern winter, it still manages to be warmer and wetter than a Tel Aviv armpit. Normally such armpitness can be countered with air conditioning, but the AC unit is so old that it rattles and makes a noise worse than a toddler banging pots and pans together, which is obviously not conducive to language learning. And so we have to sit in sweaty, sweaty silence. I'm not entirely sure why they can't update the AC units in the building. The university has billions of dollars in the endowment fund...just sitting there...not buying new AC units.
Anyway, when I say the room gets sweaty, that doesn't fully capture the awfulness. I mean that the room has a level of heat so oppressive that you can actually taste it. Imagine that: TASTING heat. You look around and everyone is dripping with sweat, and you can barely hear the teacher because you're so sweaty that your ears feel like they're underwater. You feel like you're in the boiler room of the Titanic (well, before it filled up with water and presumably got much, much colder). It reminds me of those times back in LA when the temperature would get over 100 degrees and my dad would still refuse to turn on the AC, and so I would just lie face down on the floor of my room, spread eagle in my khaki pants (my wardrobe was exclusively khaki pants until I went to college), and I'd just pray to die, just for the heat to end. It's the sort of heat that makes me understand why corseted women of previous eras would faint all the time, because for most of French class I silently wonder to myself if I could get away with simply ripping off all of my clothing in the middle of class and nonchalantly continuing to conjugate verbs in the subjunctive while completely bare-ass naked. On my better days I wonder if I could just go akimba (bra-less), just to have a fraction less warmth surrounding me. Then I think to myself, well, if I can't take off all of my clothing, if only I could just faint at will. Then they'd have to take me to the hospital and it'd be socially acceptable for me to just wear a dress made out of paper.
It reminded me of the oppressive heat I'd sometimes feel on crowded buses in Tel Aviv or Italy, or on the London Underground, or the Paris Metro. That trapped, suffocating heat. But wait. Where's the smell?
I took a momentary break from fantasizing about Hulk-ing out of all of my clothing and instead cautiously sniffed the air. Sure, it wasn't exactly a good smell...but when you considered how rapidly pits stains were growing in that class, it sure didn't smell so bad. It was nothing like the traumatizing smells I've experienced in other places. In Israel, for example, there's the lethal combination of a water shortage and high costs for deodorant, which makes getting on a crowded bus during the summer more dangerous than if there were suicide bombers on it. And that's not to pick on just Israel. In other places, such as France, there's simply "traditional"--yeah, we'll call it "traditional"--notions about bathing, such as the notion that anything more than three baths a year is an extravagance. But G-d bless us, here in America, environment be damned, I know several people who insist on two showers a day. We throw caution to the wind and use cancer-causing antiperspirants like it's our job. We might be destroying the environment and ourselves, but damn it, at least we're not going to smell like Europeans. And so, trapped in this room of stale sweat, at least it didn't smell like sweat.
So take a good, long whiff of that, kids. That's the smell of the Founding Fathers, Freedom, and Apple Pie. That's the BO of America, boys.
What's really frustrating about this "nice" weather though isn't just that it's a sort of depressing last hurrah (it actually makes me think of the mass suicide at Masada). The really frustrating thing about it is that it turns my French classroom into a sauna. There's something funny with the building in general in that, even in the midst of a brutal Midwestern winter, it still manages to be warmer and wetter than a Tel Aviv armpit. Normally such armpitness can be countered with air conditioning, but the AC unit is so old that it rattles and makes a noise worse than a toddler banging pots and pans together, which is obviously not conducive to language learning. And so we have to sit in sweaty, sweaty silence. I'm not entirely sure why they can't update the AC units in the building. The university has billions of dollars in the endowment fund...just sitting there...not buying new AC units.
Anyway, when I say the room gets sweaty, that doesn't fully capture the awfulness. I mean that the room has a level of heat so oppressive that you can actually taste it. Imagine that: TASTING heat. You look around and everyone is dripping with sweat, and you can barely hear the teacher because you're so sweaty that your ears feel like they're underwater. You feel like you're in the boiler room of the Titanic (well, before it filled up with water and presumably got much, much colder). It reminds me of those times back in LA when the temperature would get over 100 degrees and my dad would still refuse to turn on the AC, and so I would just lie face down on the floor of my room, spread eagle in my khaki pants (my wardrobe was exclusively khaki pants until I went to college), and I'd just pray to die, just for the heat to end. It's the sort of heat that makes me understand why corseted women of previous eras would faint all the time, because for most of French class I silently wonder to myself if I could get away with simply ripping off all of my clothing in the middle of class and nonchalantly continuing to conjugate verbs in the subjunctive while completely bare-ass naked. On my better days I wonder if I could just go akimba (bra-less), just to have a fraction less warmth surrounding me. Then I think to myself, well, if I can't take off all of my clothing, if only I could just faint at will. Then they'd have to take me to the hospital and it'd be socially acceptable for me to just wear a dress made out of paper.
It reminded me of the oppressive heat I'd sometimes feel on crowded buses in Tel Aviv or Italy, or on the London Underground, or the Paris Metro. That trapped, suffocating heat. But wait. Where's the smell?
I took a momentary break from fantasizing about Hulk-ing out of all of my clothing and instead cautiously sniffed the air. Sure, it wasn't exactly a good smell...but when you considered how rapidly pits stains were growing in that class, it sure didn't smell so bad. It was nothing like the traumatizing smells I've experienced in other places. In Israel, for example, there's the lethal combination of a water shortage and high costs for deodorant, which makes getting on a crowded bus during the summer more dangerous than if there were suicide bombers on it. And that's not to pick on just Israel. In other places, such as France, there's simply "traditional"--yeah, we'll call it "traditional"--notions about bathing, such as the notion that anything more than three baths a year is an extravagance. But G-d bless us, here in America, environment be damned, I know several people who insist on two showers a day. We throw caution to the wind and use cancer-causing antiperspirants like it's our job. We might be destroying the environment and ourselves, but damn it, at least we're not going to smell like Europeans. And so, trapped in this room of stale sweat, at least it didn't smell like sweat.
So take a good, long whiff of that, kids. That's the smell of the Founding Fathers, Freedom, and Apple Pie. That's the BO of America, boys.
Mensa Madness
I'm not so sure that being a genius is all it's cracked up to be. I remember when I was on the kibbutz someone told me, while making no claim that I was a genius to be fair, that I was just smart enough to have a miserable life. That only people of average intelligence and below could lead happy lives, and that such happiness would be denied to me. I would be frustrated with people and feel out of place, but there would still be millions of things beyond my comprehension. I remember how painful it felt knowing that I wasn't smart enough to be classified as a genius, that I wouldn't be the one to cure cancer or whatever, but I was smart enough to be miserable. At least if you're a genius you get the curse AND the blessing, rather than just the curse.
Then today I met a genius. An actual, bonafide, certified and whatever genius. How do I know? Because she told me so.
She had gone on this long rant about how when she was a cheerleader she wished to be recognized as being so much more than a cute girl in a skirt. You could tell that the real point of the conversation was not all of this because of how uninterested she sounded while talking about it. Her description of her life as a cheerleader felt rushed and almost mumbled, like she was talking about something less important than what kind of toothpaste she uses. Really, this was just a set-up so that she could tell us, "Yes, and everyone thought I was just a dumb cheerleader when really I AM IN MENSA."
Maybe her voice didn't really go up several decibels, and maybe she didn't really look around at those of us gathered at the table to make sure that EVERYONE had heard the good news that we had been graced with the presence of this genius--but it sure felt like it. Clearly this girl was constantly looking for any opportunity to drop that line into a conversation, so that we mere mortals would know that this veritable Athena had graciously condescended to dine with us.
I gotta admit that for a moment I felt jealous. Why am I some retarded clown who says stupid things in class while this girl gets to be in Mensa?
But then I thought about it. What kind of life is it to be a genius? Does she really get a blessing that I don't have? She's not curing cancer. She's working in a university maintenance office. But does she get the curse that I get? Yes. She seems frustrated by the stupidity of others, except in her case I'm guessing most people are stupider than her (while only a few are stupider than I am). Even worse, she's now doomed to constantly remind others in her presence that she's not like them, that she's in Mensa.
And, well, I'm glad I can't tell anyone that I'm in Mensa. I'm glad that I'm smart enough that I don't require adult supervision but stupid enough to have moments where I silently wonder to myself if I'm borderline retarded. I'm GLAD that some things in this world are still a mystery. I'm proud of the fact that, in spite of almost a decade of working with lighting equipment in theaters, I still don't understand the concept of electricity, instead preferring to believe that in each light bulb lives a Tinkerbell. I'm thrilled that I think that the microwave cooks my food with its light bulb, and that when I'm not looking the girl in the mirror makes faces at me. Being the non-genius that I am, gravity is actually just willpower and planes only work because on every flight someone is on board constantly praying to G-d that it stays in the air (which is why I make sure to take care of that).
Yeah, I may be an idiot sometimes, but I'd rather be an idiot than a desperate Mensan. Hooray for the blessings of idiocy.
Then today I met a genius. An actual, bonafide, certified and whatever genius. How do I know? Because she told me so.
She had gone on this long rant about how when she was a cheerleader she wished to be recognized as being so much more than a cute girl in a skirt. You could tell that the real point of the conversation was not all of this because of how uninterested she sounded while talking about it. Her description of her life as a cheerleader felt rushed and almost mumbled, like she was talking about something less important than what kind of toothpaste she uses. Really, this was just a set-up so that she could tell us, "Yes, and everyone thought I was just a dumb cheerleader when really I AM IN MENSA."
Maybe her voice didn't really go up several decibels, and maybe she didn't really look around at those of us gathered at the table to make sure that EVERYONE had heard the good news that we had been graced with the presence of this genius--but it sure felt like it. Clearly this girl was constantly looking for any opportunity to drop that line into a conversation, so that we mere mortals would know that this veritable Athena had graciously condescended to dine with us.
I gotta admit that for a moment I felt jealous. Why am I some retarded clown who says stupid things in class while this girl gets to be in Mensa?
But then I thought about it. What kind of life is it to be a genius? Does she really get a blessing that I don't have? She's not curing cancer. She's working in a university maintenance office. But does she get the curse that I get? Yes. She seems frustrated by the stupidity of others, except in her case I'm guessing most people are stupider than her (while only a few are stupider than I am). Even worse, she's now doomed to constantly remind others in her presence that she's not like them, that she's in Mensa.
And, well, I'm glad I can't tell anyone that I'm in Mensa. I'm glad that I'm smart enough that I don't require adult supervision but stupid enough to have moments where I silently wonder to myself if I'm borderline retarded. I'm GLAD that some things in this world are still a mystery. I'm proud of the fact that, in spite of almost a decade of working with lighting equipment in theaters, I still don't understand the concept of electricity, instead preferring to believe that in each light bulb lives a Tinkerbell. I'm thrilled that I think that the microwave cooks my food with its light bulb, and that when I'm not looking the girl in the mirror makes faces at me. Being the non-genius that I am, gravity is actually just willpower and planes only work because on every flight someone is on board constantly praying to G-d that it stays in the air (which is why I make sure to take care of that).
Yeah, I may be an idiot sometimes, but I'd rather be an idiot than a desperate Mensan. Hooray for the blessings of idiocy.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Doctor Who Now?
I'm still recovering from this past weekend's Doctor Who marathon. It pretty much made me lose all sense of reality, and I've learned my lesson to never again watch 15 hours of sci fi or ANY one tv show, because it got to the point where I was on the verge of believing that a Cybermen or Dalek invasion was a question of when rather than if, and even my dreams were about being the Doctor. I feel more disoriented as I try to recover from this weekend than I would if I were recovering from lethal quantities of beer. That's exactly it, I feel drunk. I'm trying to counter the effects of Doctor Who poisoning by trying to read as much news as possible. I'm even trying to watch Prime Minister's Questions, even though I'm not British, because I feel that I need to be reminded that boring things happen in London, too. Things like government overspending, welfare reform and the placing of park benches... and not just massive alien invasions that put the very existence of all dimensions in the universe at stake.
Before I move on from Doctor Who, I just gotta say: I love that the Doctor is non-violent and that the most aggressive thing in his arsenal is a thing called a "sonic screwdriver," which, with a light at the tip instead of a point, is even less threatening than a plastic Fisher Price screwdriver used by small children pretending to be Bob the Builder. Having said that, however, I feel that I must also point out that it seems like the vast majority of the villains in Doctor Who are villains from previous episodes that the Doctor was too much of a pussy to kill off. And so they come back, stronger than ever and now aware that at the very worst the Doctor will blink them with a tiny, non-lethal light bulb. I'm all for giving villains a second chance, maybe even a third one, but when the Daleks invade for the gazillionth time, I think it's time to start kicking ass and taking names. I mean, for fuck's sake, the man has a spaceship/time machine. Maybe this proves that it's all for the best that I'm not a Time Lord and that I've only got the one heart, but if I had that kind of technology I'd have traveled to a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away and stolen some weaponry from the Star Wars world. If the TARDIS has towed Planet Earth in the past, I'm sure it could tow the Death Star. No Dalek is going to want to mess with a man wielding the power of Darth Vader. Are lasers too violent for the Doctor? Fine then, he has all the time in the world, he could spend a regeneration learning Jedi mind tricks and learn to choke people without actually touching them. Heck, even if the Doctor didn't want to go to the trouble of towing the Death Star or spending years under the tutelage of a wrinkly little green thing that speaks English with Latin syntax, he could still just grab himself a couple of lightsabers and start wailing on some Dalek ass. He'd like that, I'm sure, because lightsabers are kind of like his trusty sonic screwdriver, as both emit light. But unlike the Doctor's trusty sonic screwdriver, lightsabers can do so much more than just unlock shit.
I also understand that Doctor Who is a kids' show, which may explain the Doctor's reluctance to choose violence. And while part of me respects that, I also fear that the Doctor may be teaching kids to simply buy themselves time rather than solve their problems once and for all. Instead, the Doctor teaches kids about procrastination of cosmic proportions, that it's a happy ending if the threat of the annihilation of humankind is put off until tomorrow. Yeah, the Cybermen are going to come back, stronger and angrier than ever (okay, maybe not angrier since Cybermen have emotion inhibitors), but let's not kill them because we can get out of this current mess without doing so, because killing them would be mean.
I also have to wonder about the Doctor. The poor thing has to travel throughout time and space saving people from the same villains, time and time again. Sure, not all of the villains in Doctor Who are repeat offenders, but a large enough percentage of them are, large enough that the Doctor, being the clever Time Lord that he is, has probably noticed. Had he just started EX-TER-MIN-ATE-ing them after maybe the fourth time they tried to destroy Earth, or enslave the human race, or turn the population into pigs, or whatever they're up to this time, then maybe the Doctor could have retired five regenerations ago. Instead of saving the planet from Cybermen or Daleks for the umpteenth time, he could be sipping margaritas on a beach on some distant planet, occasionally coming out of retirement to defeat a new challenger who has creative ideas of how to kill the human race, a challenger who could really push the Doctor's cleverness to its limits.
I mean, who is he trying to be? Jesus? For pete's sake, even G-d smites people from time to time.
Before I move on from Doctor Who, I just gotta say: I love that the Doctor is non-violent and that the most aggressive thing in his arsenal is a thing called a "sonic screwdriver," which, with a light at the tip instead of a point, is even less threatening than a plastic Fisher Price screwdriver used by small children pretending to be Bob the Builder. Having said that, however, I feel that I must also point out that it seems like the vast majority of the villains in Doctor Who are villains from previous episodes that the Doctor was too much of a pussy to kill off. And so they come back, stronger than ever and now aware that at the very worst the Doctor will blink them with a tiny, non-lethal light bulb. I'm all for giving villains a second chance, maybe even a third one, but when the Daleks invade for the gazillionth time, I think it's time to start kicking ass and taking names. I mean, for fuck's sake, the man has a spaceship/time machine. Maybe this proves that it's all for the best that I'm not a Time Lord and that I've only got the one heart, but if I had that kind of technology I'd have traveled to a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away and stolen some weaponry from the Star Wars world. If the TARDIS has towed Planet Earth in the past, I'm sure it could tow the Death Star. No Dalek is going to want to mess with a man wielding the power of Darth Vader. Are lasers too violent for the Doctor? Fine then, he has all the time in the world, he could spend a regeneration learning Jedi mind tricks and learn to choke people without actually touching them. Heck, even if the Doctor didn't want to go to the trouble of towing the Death Star or spending years under the tutelage of a wrinkly little green thing that speaks English with Latin syntax, he could still just grab himself a couple of lightsabers and start wailing on some Dalek ass. He'd like that, I'm sure, because lightsabers are kind of like his trusty sonic screwdriver, as both emit light. But unlike the Doctor's trusty sonic screwdriver, lightsabers can do so much more than just unlock shit.
I also understand that Doctor Who is a kids' show, which may explain the Doctor's reluctance to choose violence. And while part of me respects that, I also fear that the Doctor may be teaching kids to simply buy themselves time rather than solve their problems once and for all. Instead, the Doctor teaches kids about procrastination of cosmic proportions, that it's a happy ending if the threat of the annihilation of humankind is put off until tomorrow. Yeah, the Cybermen are going to come back, stronger and angrier than ever (okay, maybe not angrier since Cybermen have emotion inhibitors), but let's not kill them because we can get out of this current mess without doing so, because killing them would be mean.
I also have to wonder about the Doctor. The poor thing has to travel throughout time and space saving people from the same villains, time and time again. Sure, not all of the villains in Doctor Who are repeat offenders, but a large enough percentage of them are, large enough that the Doctor, being the clever Time Lord that he is, has probably noticed. Had he just started EX-TER-MIN-ATE-ing them after maybe the fourth time they tried to destroy Earth, or enslave the human race, or turn the population into pigs, or whatever they're up to this time, then maybe the Doctor could have retired five regenerations ago. Instead of saving the planet from Cybermen or Daleks for the umpteenth time, he could be sipping margaritas on a beach on some distant planet, occasionally coming out of retirement to defeat a new challenger who has creative ideas of how to kill the human race, a challenger who could really push the Doctor's cleverness to its limits.
I mean, who is he trying to be? Jesus? For pete's sake, even G-d smites people from time to time.
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