WisCon Schedule

I have my preliminary WisCon schedule. My fellow panelists are still a mystery (I'm sure they will give out that info as soon as everybody confirms), but I'm otherwise very pleased.

Always a companion, never a Doctor Sat 10:30 - 11:59PM
After the announcement that David Tennant was stepping down from playing Dr. Who, not only was there much speculation over who would step into the role as the Eleventh Doctor, there was speculation that perhaps the role could be taken over by a ... woman? Nah! Why is The Doctor never a woman? Why did some fans feel compelled to half-apologize that they'd be "okay" with The Doctor being played by a woman? Is there something about Dr. Who that makes the character inherently male??

Doctor Who and Torchwood- “The Gay Agenda” Sun 12:00 - 1:30AM
When openly-gay writer Russell T Davies became showrunner of the relaunched Doctor Who, many tabloid papers and homophobic Doctor Who fans hypothesized that he would insert a “gay agenda” into the series as he had with his shows Queer As Folk and Bob and Rose. Now that he is ending his run as Executive Producer, we can look back on the series and its plethora of LGBT characters to see how he handled them and whether or not he truly had an overarching queer agenda in mind as he created the series and its spin-offs.

Media vs. Book Fandom Sun 4:00 - 5:29PM
Do you know what Paul Gross arms are? Has anything ever harshed your squee? How do SFF print and media fandoms get along? Is there a generational difference? Gender differences? Race differences? Vocabulary differences? Do people tend to participate in both, or only one or the other? What does each fandom think of the other? Where do comics fans fit in? And what about those crazy bandom people?

The rain falls hard on a humdrum town

It’s a dreary day. The sky weeps frigid rain. Blah!

1- I was working on a post about #amazonfail, but pnh said everything I was thinking over at Making Light this morning. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. The problem is that 999 times out of a 1000, conspiracy theories are proved to be utter nonsense. Amazon is a very big corporation. Somebody screwed up. I doubt it’s more complex than that.

2- In theory, today is the Cubs’ home opener. The rain might prevent this. After a week of baseball, we haven’t learned much. The team still looks good, Kevin Gregg still sucks, and Milton Bradley is still fragile. The one thing we really learned from ESPN last night was that you don’t make an awful broadcaster like Joe Morgan seem more intelligent by adding a bigger doofus like Steve Philips to the booth. I expect Jon Miller to lose it and jump out the broadcast booth's window by mid-July.

3- We watched the new Doctor Who special.
( Spoilers! )