Doctor Who Comics

My love of Doctor Who has been well-documented the past two months.  It's gotten to the point where I have been asking "What am I going to do without new episodes?"
Apparently the answer is to read comics featuring Doctor Who combined with various other aspects of pop culture. 

Another Doctor Who Saturday

I admit it...once again I have forgone posting about my actual life and watched Doctor Who instead.  Enjoy this little cute thing I found of Matt Smith and what appears to be a very silly message.

Dinner at Jimmy's

I stood in Jimmy's room, trying to ignore all the signs of life that I would normally find interesting.  I was on the phone with my Dad.
"Can I come home a little later?" I asked.  I figured the answer would be no, because my Grandma was in the hospital, again.  And to some degree, rightly so.
"Why?"
"I got invited to a brunch with some friends."
"Okay."
I was relieved.  I wanted to squeeze out every last drop of goodness from this trip, especially since it looked like I wouldn't be coming home to anything good.  I had a bunch of business to attend to immediately coming home. 
This trip ended up being far more stressful than I thought it would be, mostly because the problems that I had last semester (my Grandma being sick, friends needing support, my various boy problems) all flared up again.  Mostly, it made me think that for all my trying to move on, nothing has really changed yet.  It's been a disappointment, to be honest.  I steeled myself to go back out to everyone.
Luckily, no one asked what the phone call was about.  Maybe, given what they know about me, they could have already guessed. 
Paul was working on shredding cheese for our meal.  Jimmy was cutting up onions.  There was nothing for me to do (though I offered to pay for my bit of the meal), so I watched.
"That's some great cutting," I told Jimmy.  It looked like the moves you see on one of those cooking programs. 
Jimmy didn't say anything, as usual.
"Jimmy won't take a compliment," I explained to Ben, who was sitting at Jimmy's computer in the living room area.  Ben laughed.  "I'm working on him."
Ben, meanwhile, was watching YouTube videos, everyone's favorite way to blow off time.  He told us he really liked Old Spice commercials, which sort of baffles me, because there's something gross and sleazy about so many of them.  We found one featuring everyone's favorite child star, Neil Patrick Harris.



Then Paul got on my political hero, Robert Byrd.  After looking awhile, we found what I consider his best speech, where he tells people he's older.  Ben watched it and said it was a really good speech.



Once Jimmy finished the dinner, we ate.  It was delicious.  Everyone fell silent as we ate.  Jimmy said that was a huge compliment in itself.  I'd be happy to have Jimmy cook for me all the time. 

Ben, it turns out, is a fan of Doctor Who.  Perhaps someone tipped him off to my love about it, because we got talking about it.  He was telling me he had just watched "The Lodger."
"That's the episode right before the two episode season finale."  Don't be surprised by this recall of mine.  I often am the one correcting people's knowledge of the show.
They were apparently showing that first episode of the finale, which I told him was good.  He was all baffled by my geekiness.  Get used to it, I thought.
We then started on the dishes.

They Don't Pay Me Enough to Do This

My Mom, among other things, runs her own business.  This apparently means that I am required to help out with it.  Not my sister or Dad, of course, but me. 
Yesterday, I was trying to eat some thin crusted pizza, and my Mom was upset that I wasn't helping her at that moment.  I had spent the morning visiting my Grandma and taking care of her.  It was 4:30 and I hadn't had anything to eat since 9:30 that morning.  It annoys me a little that she was like that, but I decided to treat her with the sort of patience I suspect elementary school teachers use on a particularly bad kid: ignoring her as much as possible. 
Once I got done, I did start helping her with stuff.  She asked me to stuff envelopes.  She has all this stuff she wants me to put in each one, and that's fine, I can do that, but of course I need all the materials.  She flew around trying to find all of them.  I turned on the tv and watched some nature program about predators on the African Serengeti.  I'm glad no one gave me a hard time about what I was watching.
As I was working on that, my Mom's friend Elizabeth came over.  I don't really like Elizabeth.  There's something off about her that I'm still struggling to put my finger on.  I get the distinct impression she wishes she was my Mom, or at least her daughter.  She has my Mom's same terrible haircut and runs everything in her life like my Mom does. 
One of the other things that irks me about her is that she brought her toddler over.  I don't really like kids, but every time that she comes over she almost always brings her toddler over, and it doesn't matter what I am doing, my Mom plops her down in front of me with the directions to "watch her."  I hate that because they treat me like I'm at beck and call for unpaid babysitting time.  In addition to that, when I actually go over to Elizabeth's house to babysit her kid, I get paid about 2.20 an hour, which for those of you not up on babysitting wages, it's terrible.  Normal babysitting is at least seven, honestly, and when you count the impromptu time, I deserve so much more than 2.20 an hour.  So when I saw the toddler come into the house, my heart fell.  Oh please, I thought, don't make me watch her. 

Luckily, my Mom had other tasks for me.  I found myself more than happy to do those.  I stuffed more envelopes and switched to Doctor Who, which was showing the finale to season three.  I love Doctor Who, and my favorite companion (so far!) is Martha, so this cheered my up considerably.
I texted Matt, telling him that it was on (he's a fan too).  We haven't talked since last week, on our dinner that was almost certainly a date.  He told me he was out but that he'd look into it. 
Other friends of my Mom's started coming into the house.  There are very few of her friends that I like, and she seems to get closer to one's I particularly dislike.  Several of those women came in.  One of them asked what I was watching.  "Doctor Who," I answered.  They were mostly too busy with some stuff they were helping my Mom out with, including making some food.  My Dad was baking some kind of Raspberry Crumble Cake, which meant he was going to ask me three or four times if I tried it and what I thought of it.  One of the few good things about my Mom's business is that she usually has some food around when people come by, and that always means I'm allowed to have some of it too. 
After I finished stuffing envelopes, she had all these prizes she was giving away, so would I please stuff those too?  Okay.  I began doing that.  As I did, Elizabeth's daughter bounced around on our couch's headboard.  Elizabeth yelled at her a few times to no avail. 

The Time of Angels

Every once and a while I have a moment where I realize that I really am meant to work in literary theory. I was watching the latest episode of Doctor Who, and I had a great idea for a paper. I'm going to have to do a little research for it (read up on Foucault and the gaze, and probably have a look at one of my best theory books Ways of Looking), but I think I can swing it. I don't think it'll be a very long essay, but I want to write it, all the same, if only because I think it's a good idea and because I've never heard anyone apply theory to Doctor Who. I'm not up on British studies, so possibly someone has, so I'll have to do some research there too. Possibly someone's come up with this before me, but I suspect not, given the episode just aired yesterday. More likely, someone did something similar with other episodes, and I can draw on that to write a more informed and interesting essay.
These moments make me happy, make me feel like I might be teetering on the edge of genius. Even Erin, who read an early draft of the paper I mentioned a couple posts ago, was impressed with one of my observations about Toni Morrison's Sula and "Recitatif." Last night, as I was working on my paper, I felt like I was really doing this, really applying theory to a work, really creating an interpretation. I love this feeling. I love other related feelings, like that feeling of yes, I understand this and yes, I've created something worthwhile. Ta-da! I'm an emerging scholar, and an enthusiastic one at that.
Also, I cannot believe I am past fifty posts already! I feel like this blog just started. Maybe I am capable of keeping this up.

Choices

As I was walking into class today, Kelly ran up behind me. She wanted to talk about Doctor Who. Have I seen the new episode yet? No.
Mostly, I forgot that it has already premiered. I've gone so long without regular episodes that it's weird to think there are now more.
I'm still wary of this new Doctor. When Tennant announced he was leaving, a whole slew of ideas went up on the Internet, and some of them sounded like great ideas. I was disappointed that they chose Smith, who I've seen before in other things and found serviceable but ultimately not interesting enough to be anything more than a bit player. I'm also still disappointed they chose a white man instead of a woman and/or a person of color. England is not as white as so many people like to believe. It's time for its greatest tv show to do a better job of reflecting that reality.