AgPerson

bq. “The fascinating thing about Torchwood is that they’ve skipped the messy business of making the original show, and jumped straight to the slash fiction.” — Someone on a message board

A follow-up on my Torchwood review. I’m increasingly of the opinion, now that I’ve watched through episode 6, that the show was sold under false pretenses. Instead of being an edgy drama about an alien investigative force anchored by time traveler Jack Harkness, it is a cheap thrill show about the meandering moral journies of crappy cop Gwen Cooper.

The most recent episode, “Countrycide,” really turned me off to the show. Jack, lacking in all leadership skills, can’t control his team, most notably young upstart Gwen, who, between retching every time she sees another dead body, goes running off without full posession of the facts after an enemy that she knows nothing about. In the end the twist is that there aren’t any aliens involved at all — merely a crazy cannibal family — and, her worldview shaken, Gwen takes refuge, not in her loving boyfriend of several years, but in her jackass teammate.

After being completely unlikable throughout the entire episode, Gwen goes and cheats on her boyfriend because she feels that she can’t confide in him all of the terrible things she sees, even though there is *no evidence of this*. I mean, you say you’re “special ops,” this is clearly a “special op,” there were no aliens involved and so no need to fudge the story, so what’s the problem with telling Rhys about your crappy day? I won’t even get into the ridiculous plot, ridiculous cannibals, ridiculous interrogation scene, ridiculous behavior by Jack, ridiculous behavior by Owen…good grief. Not the show’s shining hour, I’ll tell you that.

Last year Greg Maletic defended Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom against criticism from Disneyland fans who think the Florida attraction is a corruption of Walt’s dream. Soon after, he published a more interesting and better essay about the meaining of Disneyland as a cultural landmark. In it he explores Walt’s original vision, not of “the happiest place on Earth,” but as a tribute to American ideals. He points out that a close reading of the Disneyland dedication plaque gives a lot of insight into what Walt was trying to achieve and how that vision has strayed over time:

bq. To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.

Think about the attractions: Main Street USA, an idealized version of small-town America; the Disneyland Railroad, a historic train ride from the dawn of man to the future; Frontierland, a celebration fo the American West; and of course Tomorrowland, a joyous look at a future of 50’s progress and limitless possibility.

I first visited Disneyland in the late 80s or early 90s, and back then a lot of the original vision was still there. Over time the creep of time and corporate planning has subtly but fundamentally altered the Disney experience, turning it into a mish-mash of competing ideas centered around “fun” more than any sense of shared values.

Like Greg, I can’t come out and say this progress is inherently bad, or inherently good. It is change, change that reflects how our culture has changed, that reflects a fundamentally different America, a different world. Disneyland has become muddled because the world is a lot more complicated, what it means to be American is more complicated, and notions of how we fit into the world are in flux. And of course many of the starring attractions of the original Disneyland experience would today be considered kitschy or starry-eyed over-the-top ridiculousness.

But despite this all Disneyland still draws me in. Shaina and I are planning a visit when we’re back in California. The place is still amazing and fascinating, even if it isn’t what its founder intended.

And, seperately, I’ve found out that I have some old frequent flyer miles that will expire soon, enough to take a trip somewhere in the continental US. I could go anywhere, some place I’ve never been before, but I’m really leaning towards the idea of going down to Florida and seeing Disneyworld again for the first time in ten years. That said, I’m not really thrilled about the idea of going alone. Anyone want to come along for an adventure?

Have you ever had a dream that just goes on and on, and gets more and more disturbing? And then, at some point, something clicks in your mind after what feels like forever and you realize it is all a dream and you force yourself awake and it takes you a while to sort out what is real and what is not? That just happened to me for the first time. I won’t go into the dream except to say that it vaguely resembes aspects of A Simple Plan, and it was pretty weird.

I thought walking to and from work each day (2 mi) would be a decent baseline exercise program, all things being equal, for maintaining my weight. Boy was that wrong. Sedentary lifestyle plus lack of kitchen (more eating out and take-away), among other things, is taking its toll. I got on the scale tonight and found out that I weighed five pounds (2.3 kg) more than last time I checked. And last time I checked I weighed five pounds more than the time before!

I’ve had a target weight in mind for years, and never been able to achive it, even when I was eating better and exercising frequently. If I start now and lose a pound a week for six months (a fairly conservative plan), I can maybe get there.

I’ll keep you posted.

Aaron Swartz, whom I’ve talked about before, is one of the people involved with Reddit, which just got bought by Conde Nast. He reflects on the strangeness of it all, especially when viewed from outside the tech bubble:

At non-tech parties, I’d have trouble explaining what it was I did. (“So you, uh, have a web site?”) Once I went far outside the city to have lunch with an author I respected. He asked about what I did, wanted me to explain it in great detail. He asked how many visitors we had. I told him and he sputtered. “I’ve spent fifteen years building an audience, and you’re telling me in a year you have a million visitors?” I assented.

Puzzled, he insisted I show him the site on his own computer, but he found it was just a simple as I described. (Simpler, even.) “So it’s just a list of links?” he said. “And you don’t even write them yourselves?” I nodded. “But there’s nothing to it!” he insisted. “Why is it so popular?”

Inside the bubble, nobody asks this inconvenient question. We just mumble things like “democratic news” or “social bookmarking” and everybody just assumes it all makes sense. But looking at this guy, I realized I had no actual justification. It was just a list of links. And we didn’t even write them ourselves.

Where I work, I’m surrounded by people who believe deeply in a lot of this stuff, this — how do you describe it — democratization, socialization, personalization, whatever, that the web is doing to our society. I’m generally more wary, slower to accept, less willing to get behind the “new” than the people around me. It’s not that I don’t see the promise and the potential, its just that I’m a bit more the wry observer.

If my American Studies education taught me anything, it is that one can strive for great ideals and fail spectacularily in the implementation. You see something like Reddit and you think, huh, that’s interesting, its an interesting concept, its a clear framework, it seems like a good idea. But where is it leading us, how does it think to shape us, and how well will it succeed?