Just How Many Pandas Do We Need, Anyhow?

Anyone with forty minutes to spare might want to try going through this psychological survey for my old uni colleague JayVee.  It's not exactly a fascinating experience, but by completing it, you'll be helping out at least one charity (even if that might implicitly entail shafting two others).  Plus, you can do the same thing I do every time Dr L gives me something along these lines, and try to discern exactly what the designers are trying to prove.

Update: Thanks to Chuck for pointing out my link was faulty.  I blame this morning's ice-related head trauma.

Walk Like Robert Kirkman

On to Episode 4 of The Walking Dead, the first installment to have been written by the comic's creator, Robert Kirkman.  I was curious as to how natural a fit he would be for television, partly because I think his dialogue is one of the weakest elements of the comic itself (great ideas, strong characterisation, lousy words).  So how did he do? Spoilers follow...

Radio Friday: The National

This has been rattling around my brain pan for over two days, and I have no idea why.  Perhaps posting this will dispell it.  Besides, it's an awesome song.

Just Keep On Walking

We're halfway through The Walking Dead's first season, so it's probably time to have another look at what's going on.  Once again, spoilers under the fold.

SpaceSquid vs. The X-Men #37: The Unlovely Bones

There is a brilliant moment in an episode of The Simpsons - one of the earlier ones, obviously, when the show was still skewering tired institutions rather than being one - when Homer puts down a copy of Andy Capp and says with amused fondness: "Ah, Andy Capp.  You wife-beating drunk".

Marrow could be said to inspire a similar reaction. "Ah, Marrow.  You unrepentant mass-murderer".  The X-Men isn't intended to be light-hearted comedy, of course, but arguably it's no less incongruous to include the orchestrator of a nightclub massacre on a superhero team than it is to make spousal abuse into a Sunday paper cartoon punchline.

Frankly, I don't think there's any way to consider Marrow without dealing with that fundamental problem.  Nor is it easy to solve, given the blood and violence involved.  Perhaps we can at least find a way to consider it, though, by returning to a topic we've covered before regarding both Gambit and Joseph: redemption.

Ze German Joke

Having spent the vast majority of my week in Munich either working on my X-Men classification tree or lying in bed dosed to the eyeballs with the Bavarian Lemsip equivalent (which is much nicer and more effective, but also twice as expensive), I wasn/t able to make it to the English Gardens this time around.  It was thus left to my boss to wander through them and take this picture.

It's definitely nice of our Teutonic cousins to consider how cold it gets cracking out a George Michael in November, but I can't help feeling those windows are insufficiently frosted.  Of course, one way to frost them more thoroughly would be - no, never mind.  Even I can be only so disgusting...

Risen From The Dead

Yes, I know.  Any excuse.  Shut up.

A Buffy reboot, huh? At first, I'll admit, this news left me cold.  Sure, BSG worked, but that was an update of something a quarter of a century old. Buffy itself drew to a close seven years ago.  It's pretty difficult to imagine this being sufficient time for a new iteration of the idea to, y'know, be legitimately new (it's also why MGK's comparison of those not happy with this idea as being comparable to those who hated Girly-Starbuck or Chris Pine-Kirk doesn't really work).  There is quite simply no way you can credit the idea that Moore put together the Galactica mini-series because he hoped to milk the original fan base.  The same does not apply here.

Having said that, after a little consideration, I realised I was being too gloomy.  Maybe there is some way for this new iteration to say something unique.  After all, BSG managed it by focusing on contemporary society's struggle between faith and secularism, and repeatedly commented on the war on terror and the nature of armed struggle. All Buffy needs to do is the same thing!  Drop all of that fascinating agony-of-growing-up stuff, and deal instead with one of the myriad crises of contemporary life.  For instance:

Buffghanistan:  Buffy and the Scoobies spend ninety minutes chasing vampire Taliban members around Tora Bora, only to realise once battle is joined that they've been given the wrong kind of stakes. After ten fruitless minutes of pelting the vamps with filet mignon, the Scoobies retreat, only for Xander is killed randomly by a roadside explosive. At the climax to the film, Buffy returns home only to find that no-one even knew she was out there, having been watching Spike rampage through Tikrit in a blacked-out Humvee instead.

The Color Of Blood Money: Buffy vows to clean up Wall Street when she learns the financial catastrophe was in fact engineered by a secret cabal of evil wizards determined to destroy all of civilisation in order to feed their own debauched appetites.  So a true story, basically, just with wizards.

Red Dawn: Buffy learns that the true horror in today's society is the runaway menace of yoof culture when Dawn becomes a smack-addicted vampire teenage prostitute, played by either Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan.  Or both.  Whatever.  It's Dawn, for God's sake.  How much damage can we do?

Blue Blood Runs Red: Buffy discovers Kate Middleton has been turned into a vampire by Cockney bloodsuckers just one day before her wedding to Prince William.  Buffy teams up with an irascible Duke of Edinburgh (who constantly refers to her as "That Sugar-Tits Yank") to prevent the scandal of the century.  Only 24 hours remain before our king-to-be from marries someone now swimming with commoner's blood!

Fangs For Nothing: Buffy's world is turned upside-down when President Obama pushes through legislation forcing her to work full time as a government employed slayer, and hand out her life-savings entirely free of charge.  Within six months this Commie-loving blow to the free market causes the total destruction of the United States, and Obama is revealed to be Shaitan himself, the Muslim Lord of Darkness.  Buffy attempts to leave California so as to confront Obama in an epic duel to the death in the White House Rose Garden, but is foiled when she realises the Democrats have let gay terrorists crash all the planes.  A chilling vision of an all-too possible future.

Any other suggestions?