Why so serious, Doctor?

First, a warning. I'm going to geek out about Doctor Who for a while, which is enough reason for most people to probably take a jaunt somewhere else. For those who do care and like the new series, there's going to be enough spoilers in here to filibuster a session of congress. So there's your warning.

I love Doctor Who, but something about the current season just feels off to me. Like something's missing or something's there that shouldn't be. Something that's as essential to Doctor Who as dough to pizza, or blind devotion to an Apple fanboy.

No, that's not it.

You see, every series of Doctor Who has always had this key idea or phrase that basically encapsulated the story arc for the entire series. In Series 1, it was Bad Wolf, the result of Rose Tyler traveling through time and leaving clues for the Doctor. 2, we had Torchwood, the super secret organization that would almost bring the end of the world by summoning a metric ton of Daleks. 3 had Mr. Saxon, the resurrection of The Master. 4 even had one in the whole 'stars disappearing' arc, though that ended with what I jokingly call the 'kitchen sink' episode. 5 had the ever-present 'crack' that culminated in the single biggest 'WTF' moment of the reimagined Doctor Who when they actually restarted the universe.

Series 6 has... umm...

Well, they had this cool thing called the Silence, and those guys were CREEPY. Imagine this race of faceless guys in suits that pull the strings behind every major decision in history and can never be known because the moment a person looks away from them, the person forgets they ever saw them. Cool, right? Fearsome and a worthy adversary for the Doctor? Absolutely. Would their evil plans make a great story arc for the sixth series? You bet.

Did they get their asses handed to them in the second episode? Oh. Yeah, they did, didn't they. There goes that.

"WE ARE THE SIL-- well, crap."

So much for that plot line. But wait! What about the whole thing with the girl in the space suit? Well, we already know that's actually River, and she's actually Amy's daughter, so something must OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, I don't care.

I don't care because that whole BS about River being Amy's daughter is some seriously contrived crap they threw in at the last second. Seriously, something that Doctor Who has always been good at is planting little hints here and there about the true nature of things from the very beginning. Little clues that make the big reveal totally satisfying because you finally put everything together and go, 'Aha! THAT'S what that meant!"

But this whole River is Amy's daughter thing? That was supposed to be a big deal, but they botched it because they didn't plan it. It feels like it was thrown in at the last minute because they didn't have anything else. River pre-dates Amy in Doctor Who by what, two years? And even when Amy was added to the series, there were no hints, no clues that this might happen. That satisfying moment where you realize what all the clues led to didn't happen this time because there were no clues.

How did this happen? Why did they have to resort to making up a plotline that never existed before this series? I have a theory on that -- no new doctor, no new companion.

Every series before had one or the other, if not both. And that gave the writers freedom to create a totally new character and plan these cool plots from the beginning so that we wouldn't feel cheated by the reveal. But this time the writers had nothing but existing characters, already referenced baddies, etc. To keep things interesting, they had to just make something up.

At least that's my opinion, as of right now. Who knows, the series is only half over. Maybe the final episode will contain something that will do it all -- tie this series and the last together in one nice, neat, tidy package. Something that makes sense and really was hinted at from the beginning that I could have never foreseen.

But right now it feels more like the manatees responsible for Family Guy have taken over.

"River? Pond? IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!!!"

Horoscopes are useless crap.

So I wrote my own!

Aries: Remember that parasitic flatworms favor ichthyoid hosts the next time you go out for sushi.

Taurus: Doubt is the only obstacle to success. You're a born linebacker.

Gemini: Women love compliments. Especially backhanded ones. Remember this at the bar tomorrow night.

Cancer: You probably have it. Get yourself checked out.

Leo: You are the exception to every rule. Especially the ones about public nudity.

Virgo: The ideas you have in the middle of the night are always the best ones. Don't dilute them by looking at them again in the morning.

Libra: You're the funniest guy in the room. Those are looks of awe on their faces.

Scorpio: 'Tis the season of love, and you are going to love being single.

Sagittarius: No, you don't have a ruptured appendix. It's just gas. Persistent, specific gas.

Capricorn: Guns aren't always loaded. That's just stupid. Trust your instincts.

Aquarius: Trans-fats are the secret to immortality. Get crackin', tubbo.

Pisces: Psychotic serial killers are confused by unorganized chaos. Better split up.

That took me all of ten minutes and I'd argue these are just as useful as real horoscopes, and probably less harmful.

Maybe except for the gun one. I can see where that could go wrong.

Waxing Eloquent. Watermelon.

So to recap, remember that long, pseudo-philosophical post about choices or something like that? Yeah, so I decided to take the new job and I start tomorrow. Winning!

This post isn't about that. I'll still try to make it short though because my version of 'waxing eloquent' can easily be mistaken for rambling.

I was just thinking about the concept of happiness and achieving it and how our entire society is based around the concept that happiness is a 'right.' Which believe it or not is a fairly recent invention. Most of us come off today as entitled to happiness, which strikes me as a little arrogant.

And people get really depressed when they're not able to achieve 'happiness.' To me, it kinda seems like people go about it all the wrong way -- the reason they do things is to be happy. I mean, search for books on achieving happiness and self-improvement. It's a huge industry in its own right, and the reason it's so big is because people keep writing books, because people keep buying them, which means trying to be happy doesn't work. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but if your end goal is simply to be happy, you never will be.

You can't ever do anything with the end goal of happiness in mind. If you want to be happy, you'll have a genuine, continuing passion for something. Theater, people, art, hey, maybe your life ambition is to make awesome engine parts at a factory, knowing that people will use them and appreciate how well they work. And that effect you'll have on other people is probably your best shot at happiness.

But then, lo and behold, irony of ironies strikes. If you're only doing it to be happy, you still won't be because that's your goal.

Of course, throughout this whole thing, I keep saying you when I really mean 'me.' I can wax eloquent (crap, I rambled) about this stuff all the time, but it usually just means that this is stuff I need to work on and I realize it.

Some people call that maturity. I call it 'pencil' because I like to assign new definitions to existing words.

I'm so watermelon.