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Watched Legion yesterday, and because I’ve been catching up on Supernatural (and read Grant Morrison’s JLA), the whole vampirization—Google it, you can’t make up words anymore—of angels wasn’t anything new, but I did have another dream I had been a recurring cast member on the old Angel TV show somewhere around the third season. Of that I was strangely quite sure. Props to Boreanaz for being the only Whedon alumnus to land a steady job, but come on, the guy cheated on her with her. Charisma Carpenter, who unfortunately hasn’t been successful enough for TMZ to care, and I were searching for evidence to nail a child-killer and thought it might be in a lint filter-like compartment behind a sewer grating. We dug through the contents, including a discarded popcorn bag, but couldn’t find an incriminating tooth among all the undercooked kernels.

A better experience had by this fellow there than I.

Before:

Now:

…marked somewhat of a turning point in my life, did it not, finally eschewing the standardized texts and being introduced to revisionist interpretations of the American Revolution and Civil War. (Hint: it was all about the Benjamins.) Or was it that episode of Doctor Who where it was suggested mankind had been used as an evolutionary vessel by an alien race? Either way, I doubt we happen upon the forks in our roads quite so suddenly, like the movie moments described in recommended reading storybooks, but there’s still an occasional revelation—to me, at least—like the original concept for the Return of the Jedi, and why it was ditched, that serves as a reminder of the direction we took. And helps close that certain chapter hearing about a first mate who stood up to the captain’s orders. Imagine the Hollywood that could have been…

I’ve dreamed about them before, but this time I didn’t make it to any actual music. Or create any of my own. The daytime outdoor concert was just starting and presumably the band was prepping their appearance from behind a large white curtain on the stage. Drumming began as shadowy images were projected onto it, reminiscent of the puppetry in that Gong Li movie I stayed up late to get through a few weeks ago, and the sticks formed to spell out their name. The spiraling “E” in the center they couldn’t get right so it was obviously animated from a film; in fact, a montage of archival footage featuring each member performing took over the light show. Then the crowd’s attention was turned to a scene in the quiet countryside, where someone was having a spoken argument with his mother but to the same back-and-forth lyrics from “Uncontrollable Urge”.

While I’m doing the Devo, I might as well look up an old track that’s been at the back of my mind—in a box in the bottom of my storage, same difference—Mecha-Mania Boy, which, as I recall, came only on a nondescript 45 from Sound Warehouse. Back then the only repositories of subculture were those we carried around in our heads and compared only with kindred fans at record conventions, so coming across an off-album B-side was like discovering alternate-universe baseball cards. But even today there’s disagreement over whether the lyrics say “now he wants to know your little mistakes” (by far the more profligated version, copied and pasted complete with spelling error, and laughably transcribed) and “now he wants to know your unit’s name.” I liked it because it sounded like every other song on Freedom of Choice, yet maintained their trademark postmodern sensibility for that transition to New Traditionalists.

Latest blood test says mine have doubled in the past two years, which somewhat corresponds to the increase in the difference between my calories consumed and spent running. Crossing into borderline ought to motivate me to get out more, because I’m determined not to change my diet. Whatever awaits me in the great beyond, it’s unlikely to come with physical pleasures, so I might as well indulge myself now. Witnessing firsthand 老婆’s 阿嬤 make the rest of her family grow sick of salmon so she can keep watching TV and taking naps indefinitely has taught me to live not only without fearing death, but so that when it does come—and it will—it won’t come as a relief to everyone. Besides, what’s living without the freedom to be treated to the occasional meat cake topped with mice?

An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day…

“In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Maybe there is something to this law gig.

From the decision: “fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

Will says women just aren’t funny, and if they try to be, they’re lesbians. Maybe there’s some sociobiological reasoning that making people laugh is an aggressive leadership quality, or that the one requires the other, which might explain Ms. Fey’s ambiguous glamor. Note that the 1-900-OKFACE clip is linked in the comments.

Was being chased by some thugs, so I got into a car with a sharp-dressed lady offering a ride. This was apparently an episode of Doctor Who I had only read about online, and the driver was a notorious character by the name of Mrs. Foster. The black car was so small (not too unusual, however, for England), I couldn’t fit into the passenger seat completely and hung out the side as she spun through traffic, literally drifting backwards while being pursued. We stopped at a small office where she took me inside to reveal her secret: there were many different “versions” of her, clones, all at different ages. One was an old woman scientist who had developed the technology, another was a mother carrying a child for an infertile couple. This was how they justified their mischief. Just then a car arrived bringing bad news, in the form of two men whom I tried to keep out by closing a folding curtain the kind that separate banquet halls in hotels. One spoke with a Gaelic accent I could barely understand and insisted on seeing Mrs. Foster. He towered over me by at least a foot but I resisted and asked if he was a policeman; the other said no, but they were on their way. In the lobby behind them sat the rest of their party, and among them was Dr. Gregory House, to whom I pleaded—what’s your take on the moral outcome here? It was the right strategy, because he began a flashback to a case with an unhappy ending for the parents.