So, let’s just have a bit of a general update, shall we?

The other day, s92a (the ‘guilt upon accusation’ clause) of the New Zealand Copyright Amendment Act was scrapped, with the government officially announcing that it would look into more alternatives. Let’s all give a great declaration of ‘Yay!’

Catherine started up another blog. On the Nightstand is a fun book-recommending blog. It’s also a shameless excuse to read as much as possible. I’ve been added as a guest blogger, so I expect I’ll have to read more books. Harder than it sounds – I love books, but recently have been reading more and more online than onpaper.

I’m still trying to get this whole avatar-in-wordpress thing to work out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

My honours list letter came in the mail the other day, which was cool. Now I’d like my Firearms information, kthnx.

I have to go and walk the dog. I’ll go to that as soon as I’ve finished with this post.

The music for the Graduation seems to be coming along nicely. Not. If anybody’s reading this and actually wants music that they think they can put up with, let me know what you want! Otherwise, welcome to my MIKA and Nickelback collections. Seriously, I actually love that stuff. I’ve also started gathering background music for the dinner itself. Inordinate amount of Beatles in there, may need to fix. I think I’ll try to sneak in some ABBA (Fernando springs to mind…) too, and a bit of Jazz maybe some Brian Wilson, and let’s see what I’ve got in my soundtracks, and ooh, classical, and hey! Doctor Who music, that’ll do it, yeah, now, what’s this stuff buried under there- Ooh it’s-
I think you get the picture.

Right. Doggie. With a woof, and off we go!

On the movie side of things, I now own copies of The Princess Bride, Wimbledon, and Repo, all of which I need to watch. The first two will probably force themselves into being inspirational notes for one of the fics I’m writing at the moment, while the last one… yeah, okay, there is another fic in the works that might well go with it. I’ve also got a few fic-behemoths that want writing, and that I’ll have to listen to musics for.

Everything is all happening all at once. And it’s great.

Wanna join? Go on…

1) due South fandom.
2) Copyright law and the Internet – or, rather more specifically, s92(a), 92(c), also known as the Guilt Upon Accusation proposed law change in New Zealand.

Which shall I pick to chat about today… But first, and out of the cut because I don’t want it to be missed:
This lovely webcomicker’s house just burnt down. Yes, really. The gal has nothing, and that’s not cool, but she does have a paypal account, and that is cool. So if anybody feels like visiting the site and helping her out, that’d be seriously awesome. Every penny helps, right?

So.
Guilt upon accusation is, in a very real and legal sense, worse than something like reverse onus (in which the burden of proof is for the accused to prove innocence, rather than for the prosecution to prove guilt). Reverse onus should not have a place in a fair legal system (hello! This is the inner idealist, and yes, I know perfectly well that there are actually quite a few laws in place with reverse onus as one of the aspects), but here is something that’s more fitting of a Witch Hunt.
Guilt upon Accusation. You have no chance of a fair trail, no chance to plead your case, no options, no nothing.
You’re an individual, you’re a business, you’re an educational institution, you’re a hospital.
You have no options.
Wireless access at a Starbucks? Gone. Airport email-checking? Not anymore. Why? Because of the fear that somebody might download something that could possibly be construed as falling under the purview of s92.
You may as well just take the entire last twenty years out of existence. Bam! goes the Internet, Bam! go computers, Bam! goes making a mixed tape for your boyfriend or girlfriend? Could be, if this goes through.
For a country with laws and ideas that are often internationally regarded as pretty liberal we’re suddenly swinging rather far into the opposite direction. One might even say ‘dangerously far’.
What’s next? Banning fanfiction? Ooh, I know, not letting DJs create music playlists or remix tunes using turntables!
Go here to join the fight against this outrageous law change.

Ethically, this one’s a bit of a conundrum for me. My chosen profession remains policing, but that doesn’t mean I’m expected to agree with every law.
I will enforce this proposed change, should it become law. But under no circumstances shall I agree with it.

And now for the second part of things for today.
I think…
-crickets chirp-
Ah, bugger.
Okay.
I feel that we’re starting to spiral. As in going around in circles. And while that’s fun on a desk chair, you get to feel all woozy after.
Okay, I fail at analogies. Let’s try again!
My dear and most awesome dS-related peoples: I think we have a problem.
Okay, take it back, I think we all think we have a problem. What we really have is a currently-missing solution. Which is not quite the same thing. No, the solution is not a baseball bat. It might just be playing chess in a park, though.
Guys, you know what this kinda reminds me of? A war of attrition. Trench warfare at Christmas. It shouldn’t be happening.
You know what happened at Christmas along trenchlines? The bombs would stop. There’d be Silent Night being sung somewhere, on both sides, in different languages.
Hands up everybody who’s feeling a little bit like the innocent bystanders of Belgium at the moment. Newbies too. Yeah, I’m a newbie as well. Your point?
Deep down, we all love each other too much – despite our differences of opinion.
A little while ago, Vee hosted a Mixer thread. I think it’s time we all went back to that and read through things.

At this juncture, I shall let it be known that Peter Davidson is awesome.

I’m actually a classic Whovian – yes, really, as in I read the books, watched the series, and knew what DW WAS long before the advent of the new season. I have a fondness for Two and Seven, and actually think that Six is marvellous. Five is Fantastic.

In other words: OMG!WANT!

-sigh-

So, I’ll be sending monies to Catherine to get me that autograph. If anybody’s around and happens to decide to snap pics like a crazy person, that would also be great. Or, you know, video.

For anybody out there who has ever watched Seachange, I highly recommend this movie (it’s an Australian Dramedy series, for those who don’t know what I’m talking about). For anybody who likes watching pretty Canadians (C6D is a fandom based on Canada and Canadians, and that’s fine by me), I highly recommend this movie.
It’s wonderful, and well and truly worth whatever it was I paid for it (one side effect of having stupid amounts of money is that I don’t keep track of what I spend on DVDs. I probably should, but after I’ve got Wimbledon, okay?).

It is entirely impossible to define. You can’t just stick it in the genre of drama or comedy or horror or anything (yes, horror, or psychological journey, whatever, there’s still a character trying to kill himself). Sometimes it’s funny, in the same way that life is funny. It’s a slow build, and it ends perfectly, because just like real life, it’s imperfect.

Callum Keith Rennie is stunning as Duck; he’s just carefully trying to make everything okay, and yes, he succeeds. Saving the world, one person at a time. Or is that changing the world? Because in the end, he’s got the beginnings of a proper happy ending. (On an unrelated note, if I could have one Canadian celebrity come into the store and buy coffee off me, it’d be CKR, and I might just faint.)
Paul Gross is astoundingly believable – sweetie, Passchendaele was great for all the battles, and great for the historical accuracy of those battles, but we’ve got a coupla notes for you on colloquialisms and usage of the word ‘Canadian’, and it’s a bit too much of a chick flick (yes, it is, it’s not a war film anymore, although I still think it’s better than dry matches), but we still love you. Anyway, Paul is note-perfect in this, again playing a Police Officer known only as Buddy, but watch his face when he figures everything out, and I think I want an icon of him in that kitchen. And the nervousness with his wife, and the fastest interrogation ever. Oh, spiffy.
Sandra Oh. Apparently, this lady went to my Canadian High School; they’ve got all sorts of newspaper clippings cut out and framed about her. Anyway, I’ve not watched Grey’s Anatomy, but if I did, I’d watch it for her.

The film itself is lovely. There are some truly amazing shots that rely almost solely upon the scenery to work, and as though the scenery gods are smiling, it works beautifully. And then the tricky shots, generally involving Sandra, I mean, just, wow (symbolism? She sees herself as almost too complex for the island – I mean, we know she’s a mainlander, right? Hrm…). Is Duck dyslexic, or is he not (um… no. Distracted?). The sheer absurdity that an island in Canada with such a minuscule population would actually have its own municipal police service, rather than being contracted out to the RCMP or whichever Provincial Police Service that happens to be available as would ordinarily be expected. Then again, maybe that’s got more to do with the fact that it is such a small, insular island; they don’t like mainlanders, they don’t like anything that’s different. And having outsiders come in and tell them what to do? Yeah, that’d be different (this is also my theory regarding Dog River and its police, although that doesn’t explain Karen, whom I suspect applied from -legasp!- out of town, but that’s talking about Corner Gas and not Wilby Wonderful, so I’ll shut up now…)

To sum up, I wasn’t sure about watching this film, but I’m eternally glad that I did. Just another reason to get a multizone player when I get back to New Zealand.

Passchendaele
Repo! The Genetic Opera My buddy is buying this for me.
Jerry Maguire
Wimbledon
Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
Updated!Return of the Jedi (the one with Hayden in the ending)
MacGyver: All seasons Have started
Red Dwarf – my own copies, curse it all!
The Princess Bride
Star Trek – all of the films
The Lion King – I, II, I 1/2
Samurai X (Kenshin by any other name, for the curious)
StarGate – Atlantis, SG-1, all seasons, all movies (not actually that much per season here…) Have started on both
Hard Core Logo
H2O/The Trojan Horse
Wilby Wonderful — got
Men with Brooms — got
FFVII: Advent Children
Boston Legal: All seasons
Saiyuki
Monkey (Monkey Magic is another name it goes by. WANT! Love this show.)
Aladdin
The Bill
Doctor Who
Torchwood
Sarah Jane Adventures
Gundam Wing/Endless Waltz
Jeeves and Wooster
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along-Blog
Shaun of the Dead
Animaniacs
Gargoyles
Firefly
Beauty and the Beast – Disney
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Morse
Lewis

Also, sometimes, I’d like to see a little bit of character development between episodes.

I’m going to take a short moment and compare this series to Sabrina: The Teenage Witch.
Okay, this isn’t terribly fair, but hear me out.
Sabrina was a program that did develop its characters. As the series went on, she grew up, she finished High School, went to College. She took on a Witch’s Apprentice, she continued to learn about her magic. She started out a simple little half-mortal, but she did grow and change.
And this was from a program that was clearly made for kids.
Lesser characters got backstories. We learnt that Salem was an incredibly conflicted character – he’s evil at heart, but he does care about people. Hilda and Zelda were both granted episodes to grow in. Harvey learnt Sabrina’s secret – and didn’t really care – he was still her friend.
Sabrina continued to misuse her magic, but always accidentally. Ignorance was her reason, and as the series continued she did shed much of that ignorance.
Yes, all of the characters were stereotyped. The best friends, the boyfriends, the confliction, the hiding, even the familiar – they were all practically expectations.
Wizards, on the other hand, does not yet seem to have these sorts of changes. Those lesser characters don’t have much in the way of backstories (best friend since forever is all well and good, but what do they really have in common?).
How did the parents meet, and when did they just know that they were right for each other? Does Jerry ever regret (even for a single second) giving up his magic to marry the woman he loves? (Also, and here I might be getting a little bit risqué, but why could they not have lived together and simply not married – would he still not be allowed to keep his magic had that happened? Did Theresa know he was a Wizard before they married?)
Why, if the father is an ex-wizard, does he still have magical items? Why does he still get magical mail? Sure, this could be explained by his teaching his children, but why are they magical if he needed to relinquish his magic?
What’s the reasoning behind the magical competition anyway, and does it happen once they’re all grown up, just as they grow up (for example, will Alex fight Justin and then the winner wait a couple more years for Max to grow up and then fight again), or do they all need to compete once Justin’s grown up (which would not be at all fair, since he’s clearly the best at the theory, although Alex has done much more experimentation in her general life)?
Certainly, some of these things may well have been answered in-episode, and I freely admit that I don’t watch the program nearly as often as I want to. It’s the work-schedule, it completely kills most fannish-watching that I can’t see on DVD.

It seems that Mightypeter is one of the people with an influence on this (really rather fun) program.
And I got an @Reply wanting to know what could be done to make the show better.
Hey.
It’s for kids, I get that. But there are ways and ways of making something work on more than just the one level – Sesame Street works on several levels, and that’s blatantly for little kids. Anything involving The Muppets too. Early episodes of Pokemon even had metaphors (I draw your attentions to the backstories of Brock and Misty). Older Disney movies (Bambi, anyone?) still work today.
The Sarah Jane Adventures is for little kids, definitely, but the moral messages aren’t spelt out in neon letters, and let’s face it, the characters are credible and changeable. Yes, it needs to slot into the greater mythos of Doctor Who, and yes some of the villains are over-acted – but there’s an air of honesty about the program, and not all of it’s down to Elizabeth Sladen’s wonderful continuing performance.
As it currently stands, Wizards is going to be a program that’s looked on with a sense of vague fondness by the kids who’re watching it today – but if it ever repeats, it won’t be seen as quite as awesome as it’s remembered to be.
Mightypeter informs me that there’ll be some ‘more mature themes’ coming up, and that the program will be ‘developing the characters more as the year goes on, have some awesome stories I hope you’ll like’. Well, I hope I like them too. But also added is ‘but we also have to stay on target for the brand’.
The brand doesn’t need to be transient in nature, and I wouldn’t mind at all if this series got some staying power.