The Blood is The Life 31-01-2013

• “What’s Your Preferred Gender Pronoun?” | Scarleteen
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• Downing Street: high benefits mean food banks should not be needed
  Oh dear...
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• In which Laurie Penny apologises for bad wording and explains why she's apologising
  "Legitimate, useful critique is not the same as hate-trolling or censorship. I know other people have different opinions on this, but personally I think that if we are to deal with either of the extremely real, pressing problems of online censorship or of harassment and hate speech, then we also need to get used to taking ownership of our mistakes."
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• Teenage Girl Blossoming Into Beautiful Object | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
  Terrifyingly near to the knuckle satire from The Onion.
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• Google Decides Smartphone Market Share Is More Important Than Net Neutrality | Techdirt
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• Google releases detailed map of North Korea, gulags and all
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A Brief Skit inspired by the film Telefon

INT KGB office circa 1977. Dingy with nicotine-stained walls, rickety desks, black telephones. Two KGB agents are having a discussion.

AGENT 1: Well what about Ivanova? She was near Washington.

AGENT 2: No, we lost her in the first year when they showed the Rogar Corman film on TV at Halloween. Who knew they recited the poem at the start of it?

AGENT 1: Petrov?

AGENT 2: Went on a killing spree on his son's first birthday. I told you Happy Birthday was a bad activation poem for a sleeper agent, but would you listen?

AGENT 1: Prutkova?

AGENT 2: Killed everyone at her own wedding when they recited Maya Angelou.

AGENT 1: Well what about Syratov?

AGENT 2: A most unfortunate incident in a kindergarten. The Cat in the Hat is apparently quite commonly read to children...

AGENT 1: Well who does that leave?

Both start leafing through papers, looking for another name

AGENT 1 & 2 together, triumphantly: ...Karlova!

Agent 1 picks up a phone, consults the paper, dials a number, and recites in sepulchral tones:

AGENT 1: Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away...

((This skit brought to you by the incredulity caused by the idea that all those sleeper agents would have still been around in Telefon, when their activation phrase was one of THE most famous American poems of all time...))
((And not by procrastination on the Hitchcock post at all. Honest.))

Doctor Who Fandom Challenge Day 30: When Do You Become a Fan of Doctor Who?

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

This is a question that's open to interpretation. It could mean:

• "When does one qualify for the epithet fan?", or
• "what age was I when I first became a fan?"

I really don't like interpretation one. Like the ladies of the Verity Podcast, I firmly believe that the only "qualification" necessary to be called a fan is applying that label to yourself. I'm not going to gatekeep. I'm not going to say "you're not a proper fan unless you do/believe/like/know x". That's just shitty behaviour. If someone loves Doctor Who, in whole or in part, and they want to be known as a fan, that's good enough for me.

The second interpretation, then.

Unfortunately, that's harder to answer. I don't actually remember a time when I didn't watch Doctor Who. But when I was, say, three did I know what being a fan meant? I don't know.