More quotes from About Time 6

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes Dept.: "[The Doctor] had other priorities than getting the girl and looking cool..." Ah, happy days.

Er, I Need To Get Back To My Universe Now Dept.: "British Doctor Who fans love Coronation Street more than they like Stargate SG-1..." Um, when was this decided please?

Oh, So That Explains It Dept.: "Davies simply won't risk doing the things many might say Doctor Who ought to be doing, in case it goes wrong like it did in the 80s." Because, you know, doing them right wouldn't make any difference at all...

And a query for any Welsh speakers out there: I know "Pobol y Cwm" does not mean "switch off the television" (it's "something something valley," but probably not "people of the valley" as I always guessed) but is there a word "heddlu" pronounced "hethleo" and meaning "police"? The word I remember from the Welsh channel listings is "heddiw" which always sounded as though it ought to mean "today," though I may be thinking of the German "heute." It's all very confusing.

And a memory tweak

Mention in the book in question (characteristically caustic, of course) of the Golden Oldie Picture Show, a mid-80s programme in which DJ Dave Lee Travis introduced music videos made for songs from before they had music videos, reminds me that they did one for Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale which grabbed me and rooted me to the spot, and since I had had no idea that it was going to be any good I wasn't recording the programme and so never saw it again. My memory of it now, as of most things, is blurred and garbled, and presumably before they'd even finished transmitting it there was a bloke from the BBC standing there saying "hurry up, hurry up, we need the tape for Blankety Blank" so there's zero chance I ever will see it again either. Le sigh.

What was it? It was the graduation ritual for a newly trained Nyrond. Complete and perfect, right there on the screen, and I missed my chance to grab it. C'est la vie.

Okay, yes, that's worrying...

Apparently the Republican front-runner wants to amend the Constitution so that it's more in line with what he sees as God's will. Presumably he will go on to recommend that the text in all published books and periodicals be replaced with the text of the Bible, since, after all, why would you ever want to read another book?

That is (I think) a crank. That is (I think) a loony. And if that has a hope in hell of becoming President, especially after the last one, then maybe the Constitution does need amending, if only to introduce some sort of screening.

The interesting thing from an outsider's standpoint is the depth of feeling a threat to the Constitution seems to arouse. After all, it's just a set of rules written down hundreds of years ago by a bunch of old guys who didn't even know about the Internet. But I can well imagine from what I've read on the subject that some Americans, reading that last sentence, might have felt the same kind of stab of anger--how dare I!--that a Christian might feel if I were to suggest on the same grounds that the Bible could do with some creative editing to bring it into line with modern thought.

Maybe America itself--the idea of America--is even more like a religion than I thought. Maybe it's more deserving of that status than some actual forms of religion.