Princess Leia has never been a "Disney" princess. From the very first shots we get of her are, we see her, in order:
1. Smuggling sensitive government military information to a known terrorist. (Edward Snowden, anyone?)
2. Shooting a stormtrooper DEAD.
3. Straight up TALKING SHIT to Darth "Makes Everyone Else In The Universe Crap Themselves" Vader. And then doing so AGAIN to Grand Moff Tarkin, who's arguably even more powerful than Vader on the Imperial hierarchy.
Then
later, she takes an unprecedented amount of drugs and SHAKES THEM OFF,
comes up with the strategy for the defense of Hoth's Echo Base (which
works!), helps Han and Chewie fix the Falcon, poses as a bounty hunter,
and STRANGLES AN INTERGALACTIC GANGSTER TO DEATH.
Leia Organa is about as Disney as the Bride from Kill Bill. She's a hardcore bitch who will GANK your ass.
The train ride was an eventful one. We'd been stalled in Alpine, Texas, left to our own devices for an hour, and sauntered over the hill to the beckoning lights; there, we found the city's annual arts festival, and like the strange refugees we were they welcomed us with open arms. We sat around the firelights drinking homemade cider wine and comparing stories from our lives. Joseph Campbell would have been proud.
The righteous girl (the blonde one who had broken up the impending race fight between a drunk hillbilly and a family of Mexicans) bought me dinner without prompting. I told her I didn't need it, that I had rationed for the trip, but she insisted I couldn't survive on Life Savers and instant coffee for another day. Then the train whistle blew, and we all ran like children to a dinner bell, back to the traveling motel that was our temporary home.
That night, in the cafe car, long after last call and the closing of the snack counter, the remainder of the cider wine flowed freely. The hippie girl, cradling her baby, confessed that she was on the run from the law and her husband, who had rightful custody of the child. She cried as she listened to the advice of the wise old Latina woman, who begged her to reconsider for the safety and well being of the baby. Everyone nodded solemnly.
Finally we came to Tucson. This was my stop; I collected my bags and said my tearful, wistful goodbyes to them all -- to the young hip-hop producer on his way to L.A. with a stolen laptop, a DVD-R full of beats and VST plugins, and a dream of fame and fortune; to the teenage girl on her way to a MENSA convention, eager to prove herself among similar geniuses; to the Dominican man who I talked with about Philip K Dick and Watchmen; to my good and honest friends, one and all, whom I cared for deeply.
Then I turned and walked away, and none of us ever spoke to each other again.
---
I left Facebook this week. The decision was warranted; I was becoming increasingly agitated, adversarial, foul-mouthed and inhumane whenever I used the site. Every friend's post was an excuse for me to weigh in with my usual contrarian opinions, spoiling for a debate with anyone foolish enough to take the bait. Other bad habits began to creep back into my life along with it, the door for bad behavior opened wide with invitation. I drank until I vomited and blacked out on my birthday. I spent money willy-nilly. I didn't work on my art.
I'd been noticing my slippage for months, particularly due to having made such incredible progress in the opposite direction before recently; earlier in the year I'd experimented with oxytocin, a neurochemical hormone responsible for a number of behavioral modulations, and found it quite helpful in coaxing a more compassionate, open-minded, genial version of myself to the fore. That Facebook was able to undermine this progress bothered me immensely.
For weeks, I made time in my schedule to erase my offerings on the site, going back years and deleting old content, until only a bare and present remainder of my presence there was left. No one seemed to notice, or complain; maybe in a post Graph Search world it would have been more obvious.
Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps these posts we make are only ever meant for the moment they are made in, their semi-permanency an accident of technology and commerce, half-conversations stuck in amber like mosquitoes. No one really cares what you said six months ago, or a year, or five years; particularly they don't care if you said it about things that were going on then. For illustration, 2008 was five years ago. Britney Spears has a massive neurotic meltdown; Heath Ledger overdoses; a new Indiana Jones movie opens and is heavily panned; Joe the Plumber makes his debut; Palin claims she can see Russia from her house. Nobody cares, then or now.
In any case, there were a number of people whom I felt made staying worthwhile, and for whom I'd staved off leaving as long as I felt I could. When I made my decision to go, I contacted those folks, telling them I was leaving and giving them contact information to stay in touch, should they so choose.
Out of 27 friends, I've heard from one off of Facebook since leaving. I believe I will hear from at least one more, but we regularly text message as it is, so that doesn't quite count. Leaving Facebook is leaving the train. You'll never speak again.
---
This is a grim realization: these connections that seem so important when they're right in front of us dissolve almost immediately as soon as they are not. Why should it be so? A friend recently suggested there may be an evolutionary reason, which sits right with me. Friends in far away tribes can't help you fight tigers; you need to bond with those that are around you in the here and now for survival. Out of sight, out of mind.
We see this in many places and forms. Spending an entire afternoon in the DMV will get you talking to whoever happens to be next to you, and before long an outside observer wouldn't know you haven't been friends for life. Stockholm Syndrome is a particularly extreme example, where captors and hostages are stuck with each other due to dire circumstances. School itself is a strange example, where one is cast in with other children of their age group arbitrarily; similar things could be said of boot camp, or of prison.
Some of the last people I'd added before leaving Facebook were classmates I knew from Milton Hershey School. Some were good friends, some were only acquaintances, and some I barely remembered at all. But they all added me, because Facebook gave them back what life took from them at graduation: a way to get back onto the train.
---
Which is what makes it so very sinister. Facebook, like many services before it, hijacks what was previously a useful biological process -- location bonding -- and exploits it for its own purposes; specifically, to sell advertising space. I am not near my friends in Seattle or Philadelphia; there are very few ways they can truly help me in the physical world, unless they're willing to hop on a train.
The internet is a curious beast; it emulates many of the shapes of community while offering few of the benefits. I can't say I haven't enjoyed my time in, for example, IMVU or Guild Wars; on the other hand, what has it gotten me? What can I point to on my person, in my room, in my life, that shows how meaningful those virtual interactions are? I have nothing but spent time and pretty clothing on an avatar, which can't even translate to other internet services, let alone the physical world.
Networks are not communities, and there is a dangerous precedent in equivocating the two concepts -- as dangerous as equivocating lust with love, or credit with savings.
---
Is the train all there is? Am I simply moving from one set of immediate focuses to another by leaving Facebook? I don't know. What I do know is that whatever train I was on was making me miserable. Maybe it has to do with reconnecting to high school friends. Back then I was certainly an awful, depressed mess; going back there on purpose can't have been the brightest idea I've had.
The first morning, waking up after deactivating my Facebook account, I felt a little lost, unsure of what to do now with my mornings. I felt like I had on those days I lived back in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, wandering through the pathways behind the state park, each day a strange and unfamiliar adventure, each moment a moment I would decide which way to go, which path to walk down as I listened to the mixtapes I'd assembled for the journey. Those were some of the most peaceful moments of my life. It's not a bad place to be, even if it's on my own.
After seeing the latest Doctor Who
episode, “The Bells of Saint John”, and remaining fairly sick of
the direction the show's been taking since Moffat decided it would be
a great idea to turn it from a science fiction vehicle to a kitschy
romantic comedy, I thought it would be a fun experiment to review the
rest of the episodes before I even see them. Let's see how close my
predictions are!
Episode 233, "The Rings of
Akhaten"
The Doctor and his newest companion,
Clara Oswald (whom, in her latest incarnation, is a crystalline-based
Xylok named Klah-Rahs'Wahld and must be carried around in the
Doctor's pocket) encounter a species of sapient frogs determined to
strip-mine an innocent planet to create an army of robotic
bug-zappers.
Episode 234, "Cold War"
Brrr! The Doctor and Clara (now a
cavewoman from the year 20,000 BC) return to the icy planet of Telos,
where the Cryons have been locked in a war with the Ice Warriors of
Mars. Can the Doctor negotiate a peace before he and Clara freeze to
death? Guest stars Ricky Gervais as a Lurman traveling salesman.
Episode 235, "Hide"
The Doctor and his ever-faithful
companion (now an Auton duplicate who fires jammy dodgers from her
hand-cannons) enter a game of galactic hide-and-seek, where the prize
is the universe itself! There's just one problem: they have to find
each other first, but which Auton duplicate Clara is the REAL Auton
duplicate Clara?
Episode 236, "Journey to the Centre of
the TARDIS"
It's classic Who meets new Who as the
Doctor meets his eighth incarnation, played by the venerable Paul
McGann, to stop an 800-year-old sentient pencil... THAT KILLS. Can
they find a way to stop history being literally erased, while saving
Clara (who is also the pencil)? Clive Owen guest stars as the
twenty-seventh Doctor.
Episode 237, "The Crimson Horror"
This entire episode consists of the
Doctor just straight up stabbing the latest Clara repeatedly for 45
minutes because he is so sick of this bullshit.
Episode 238, "Nightmare in Silver"
The Cybermen are back... except this
time, they're the Daleks! A new race of CyberDaleks has taken over
both factions, determined to both assimilate and destroy all of
humanity simultaneously. It's a race against the clock as the Doctor
frenetically babbles and dances around like a loon. Patrick Stewart
guest stars as Actual Goddamn Captain Picard.
Archer: I'm sorry, I don't really understand the question here. Did someone else get promoted to captain?
Chisa: Alright, stupid question. Let's try this. Who's the SECOND best captain?
Sisko: Hmm. That's a toughie.
Picard: As if. Everyone loves me.
Sisko: You? What did you ever do?
Picard: For starters, I stopped the Klingon Civil War and kept Romulus from invading Vulcan.
Sisko: No you didn't! Data exposed the Romulans supplying the Duras sisters, and Spock sent the message that stopped the Romulans at Galorndon Core. You just take credit for all the awesome things everyone else does.
Picard: Well, I met Kirk once!
Sisko: So did I.
Picard: Not before me!
Sisko: From his perspective I did.
Kirk: You did? I don't remember that.
Sisko: I couldn't really talk about it at the time. Temporal Prime Directive and all that.
Janeway: I met Captain Sulu!
Picard and Sisko: (in unison) No you didn't.
Archer: Excuse me? I'm sitting right here!
Janeway: Who are you?
Archer: Who am I? WHO AM I? I'm Johnathan Fucking Archer! I launched the first warp five spaceship! I saved the Earth from the Xindi superweapon! I signed the Federation charter! I HAVE A PLANET NAMED AFTER ME!
Kirk: Big deal, so does Harry Mudd.
Sisko: Yeah, but Harry Mudd is kind of awesome.
Kirk, Picard, Janeway: (agreeing) Yeah, he really is.
Archer: None of you would even be around if it wasn't for me! I forged the first ever alliance between the Vulcans and the Andorians, AFTER EXPOSING EACH TO THE OTHER ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS. I fought ACTUAL NAZIS in the Temporal Cold War!
Janeway: Well, I beat the Borg a few times...
Archer: Done that.
Janeway: And, uh, I traveled back to late 20th century Earth...
Archer: Done THAT.... well, early 21st century. Close enough.
Janeway: And... and I...
Sisko: Give it up, Kate. You got lost and straggled home.
Janeway: (sobs) My whole career is a sham!
Sisko: Okay, pal, dig this. I saved the Federation by going back in time and impersonating one of the most important figures in American history.
Picard: Yeah, but it was your fault for fucking it up in the first place.
Sisko: I fought on the front lines of the Dominion War for two years based out of a run-down Cardassian mining station, and I WON.
Picard: Only because you lied to the Romulans to get them on your side. You would have gotten spanked otherwise.
Sisko: (sweating) Well... did I mention I'm actually HALF-GOD?
Janeway: Oh, Christ, not this bullshit again.
Kirk: He always has to pull out the Prophets.
Picard: Of course he does, it's his trump card.
Sisko: Shut up! All of you, shut up! After Kirk, I am the best captain in the Federation!
Archer: Oh yeah? I HELD THE KATRA OF SURAK IN MY GOD DAMNED HEAD.
Kirk: Whoa.
Sisko: Seriously?
Picard: Damn, I only had Sarek's katra in mine for four hours and I cried like a little bitch. I got nothin' here, I'm out.
Archer: What the fuck have any of you done that holds a candle to me?
Kirk: (looking nervous) Uh, well, I beat V'Ger...
Picard: Shut up, that was totally Decker.
Kirk: And Khan! Twice!
Archer: Who's Khan?
Sisko: One of the Augments.
Archer: Only one? I stopped an entire invasion of them!
Picard: You know, why IS Kirk always considered the best captain?
Janeway: Yeah, now that you mention it...
Kirk: Hey, guys, stop looking at me like that.
Janeway: You fucked your way to the top, didn't you? I knew it. I've always known it, it was the sex.
Kirk: Hey!
Picard: You did do a lot of fucking.
Sisko: Way more than me.
Janeway: And me.
Picard: And me! And that's saying something!
Kirk: Alright! Yes, that's why! Because I am a manwhore! But it's all I have! And you, Archer, you never fucked anyone! So there!
Archer: Captain Hernandez, dawg.
Kirk: (quietly) ...you had sex with ANOTHER Starfleet Captain?
Picard: Holy shit. That's unprecedented.
Janeway: I... wow. Wow.
Sisko: Shit, I thought I was a stud for banging a FREIGHTER captain.
Chisa: I think we've come to a consensus, ladies and gentlemen.
The impenetrable genre once known as "IDM" (Intelligent Dance Music) has in recent years given way to far more accessible electronic forms such as dubstep, nu-disco and dance-punk. Whether or not ths is a step in the right direction is debatable, but it does have the benefit of bringing into the spotlight a form of music which was formerly, at best, the purview of ecstasy-fueled neo-hippies, and at worst an elitist enclave of overprotective aficionados. Into this fragmented cultural landscape steps Seth Haley, aka Com Truise, an upstart from New Jersey whose retro-inspired tunes, heavy with vintage synthesizer sounds and heavy drum machine loops, harken back to such 80s producers as Paul Hardcastle, Harold Faltermeyer and Sylvester Levay. The future never sounded so deliciously familiar.
Breakout track: "Futureworld"
Cults - Cults
In the shadow of its older brother The 80s, the 90s barely had a chance to stay relevent and cool, and to be fair, such awful mis-steps as Marilyn Manson, Green Day and the Spice Girls illustrate why. Yet the 90s were also filled with incredible sounds, from the emerging landscape of electronica, to the reworking of R&B into new jack swing, to the indie rock scene that spawned Wilco and The Flaming Lips. Carrying the torch for the latter contingent is Cults, a lovely little duo from Manhattan that fuses the dream pop sensibilities of The Cranes and Slowdive with a jaunty 60s flavored vibe that would make Tommy James and the Shondells flash a thumbs up of approval. Fun, romantic music for the prom you never went to.
Breakout track: "Walk At Night"
Cut Copy - Zonoscope
We've known Australia in many musical forms over the history of pop music, from Olivia Newton-John to Men At Work to INXS to Wolfmother. Cut Copy is like all of those examples thrown together in a cuisinart and set to puree: deliciously smooth, containing a plethora of familiar flavors, yet with a unique taste all its own. This is unapologetic pop music, to be sure, with all the affectations of that wide-spanning genre. But something new and exciting is here as well, which shines through in a hopeful wash of major chords and harmonizing vocals, akin to an old Beach Boys record or one of the less-distasteful boy bands of the Justin Timberlake era, with just a hint of Sun Ra's Egyptian sensbilities and a dash of The Cure's perennial heartache.
Breakout track: "Sun God"
Friendly Fires - Pala
I want to smack people who say there's no good music anymore. Perhaps in the majority of cases it requires a bit of dilligent searching, but how do you explain a band like Friendly Fires? With a vocalist like a shaman calling the masses to ritual and overwhelming tribal beats that pummel the dancefloor into submission, you'd have to be a damned fool to claim their sound is either hard to find or of sub-par quality. This sophmore album is anything but sophomoric; continuing the motif begun with their self-titled debut from 2008, the boys from Hertfordshire do not fail to deliver the unique mashup of alternative rock, disco funk and Cuban salsa that launched such tracks as "Kiss of Life" into the global spotlight.
Breakout track: "Show Me Lights"
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
Like a Dead Can Dance record played through a rotary speaker in the Grand Canyon, this debut record from Louisiana born ambient artist Julianna Barwick is seductively far-sounding, slightly unnerving, and achingly feminine. No mere New Age album, the loping repititions of heavily reverbed drone vocals and sporadic punctuating piano and rhythm quotes are like songs trapped in amber and preserved for millions of years, a ghostly reminiscence of sounds past reaching sorrowfully into the present. This is dream music in the truest sense of that descriptor, a buffet of gossamer tones like acrylics on a palette, which Barwick fluidly wields with all the grace, simplicity and charm of an episode of Bob Ross's "Joy of Painting."
Breakout track: "Envelop"
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
It was a good year for synthpop: the mainstream success of La Roux, the return of Thomas Dolby, the proliferation of chillwave artists like Nite Jewel, Small Black and Ariel Pink. It seems a perfect time for this ambitious double-album from M83, a decade after an eponymous debut brought French producer Anthony Gonzalez to the attention of the music world. Flawlessly melding electronic music with shoegazer (and favoring the latter heavily), this album is neither an abstract soundscape of ambient noodlings like Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Volume 2" nor a concept album with a cohesive narrative like The Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness", but manages to straddle a particular and refreshing line dead center of those two artistic cliches.
Breakout track: "Wait"
Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'
I first heard Raphael Saadiq in a Payless store in the early 2000s, which would have been a forgettable instance if not for my shoe seeking friend craning her head towards the speaker and remarking: "Is that a tuba?" Saadiq has picked up the ball dropped by post-"Voodoo" D'Angelo, taking neo-soul into strange new territory with a definite sense of humor and a sincerity hardly seen in modern R&B's overproduced, materialistic landscape. "Stone Rollin'" sounds like authentic vintage Motown, right down to the instrumentation, background singers and chord progressions; one almost expects their iTunes files to have skips and scratches from overplaying the groove -- and you will be overplaying it, jack. Raphael, you so crazy.
Breakout track: "Good Man"
Snowman - Absence
When's the last time you heard a truly weird record? In a post-modern age of music where Skrillex and Lady Gaga share radio airtime, and a member of the Goodie Mob can make the Billboard top ten with a song literally titled "Fuck You", the modifier seems irrelevant. But weirdness is a subtle beast; the harder you try for it, the faster you end up back at pathetically normal. Accidentally falling into the spookiest record of 2011 (which, as the reviews of Julianna Barwick and M83 show, is a close race), Snowman's heavily reverbed vocals, syncopated rhythmic idiosyncracies and unexpected song structures come off like a collaberation between Tool and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, composing a soundtrack for a sequel to Pan's Labyrith on the Day of the Dead. Haunting, beautiful, and downright solid.
Breakout track: "Hyena"
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
For ten years, Canadian sound artst Tim Hecker has been crafting sweeping vistas of nonsound far removed from the usual ilk of ambient and drone artists; his pieces always have a certain unease to them, a barely-contained dystrophy of distortion constantly raging just beneath a soft, controlled surface, like a Cover Girl with a facial tic. This 2011 offering is no different from his usual form, a trio of multi-track suites accented by several unrelated singles, each conveying a compression wave of alternating anxiety and relaxation through massive amounts of overdrive, tremolo, and sound stacking. You might be tempted to use this to fall asleep to, but like similar somnabulistic aids, Hecker's work will certainly leave you with unexpected aftereffects.
Breakout track: "Analog Paralysis, 1978"
Washed Out - Within And Without
Damn it, The Postal Service, see what you did now? Here all us electronic artists were, content to sit in out bedrooms trying to be the next Autechre, and you come along with your girly vocals about breakups over argeggios and SP1200 drum machine beats, and suddenly Owl City is on the radio everywhere. It's getting so bad that even the Deep South is chiming in! Hailing from Perry, Georgia is one Ernest Greene, the one-man band known as Washed Out, poised to take over the entire realm of pop music with his quirky lo-fi chillwave tunes that are as at home in ten-dollar mixtape headphones as they are in a Russian discotheque. Of all the 80s revivalism going on right now, Washed Out is far ahead of the pack; expect to see this cat blow up faster than anyone expects.
Breakout track: "Amor Fati"
HOT SINGLES
Carl Finlow, "Restless"
Straight-up club song reminiscent of classic Juan Atkins. You'd never know it's title, but you'd always recognize it when it came on.
The Chain Gang of 1974, "Hold On"
Cuts the difference between Cut Copy's loping electropop and Friendly Fires' agitated disco-funk, rather deftly and magically in fact.
Christ., "The BMX Kid"
Ex-member of Boards of Canada carries the torch for the surprisingly absent band. 1970s synths, 1990s hip hop beats, pure 2010s aesthetic.
Florence + the Machine, "Spectrum"
I was almost ready to give up on the "Ceremonials" album three-quarters through. And then this ass-kicking son-of-a-bitch came on and my face was wet with tears.
Kooley High, "Skyview"
I also want to smack people who say there's no real hip hop anymore. Like a Main Source apertif with a Pharcyde chaser.
Kreayshawn, "Gucci Gucci"
If you weren't bumping this song in your ride in the summer of 2011, you were living in a cave. Awesome just for the line "bitch you ain't no Barbie, I see you work at Arby's / number 2, super sized, hurry up I'm starving".
Neon Indian, "Era Extraña"
A close contender for Washed Out's total dominion over chillwave. Imagine a John Hughes movie soundtrack covered by Toto, then remixed by Freescha.
Scorn, "Shake Hands"
When I heard Scorn was making dubstep now, I hid under my bed in sheer panic. Not so much music as audio carpet bombing.
St. Vincent, "Chloe in the Afternoon"
The soundtrack from a cybernetic strip club. Oppressively seductive, with a growling bass groove like a panther that swallowed a belt sander.
Tom Waits, "Bad As Me"
It's almost unfair to include Tom Waits in any best-of list; he never truly releases a bad song. This raw, rabble-rousing crier is Waits at his most Waits-y, an off-kilter roadhouse jukebox 45 by a Bizarro Lou Bega.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Amplifier - Fractal
Bibio - Mind Bokeh
Ceephax Acid Crew - United Acid Emirates
Destroyer - Kaputt
Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost!
Infinite Scale - Ekko Location
Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow
Metronomy - The English Riviera
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Luminaries & Synastry
Nite Jewel - It Goes Through Your Head
The Doctor lies. There is no reason for me to take the moral high ground in this regard. I too will lie, particularly during the bit when I am telling him my master plan. He's just going to figure it out anyway, I'm damn well not going to make it easy for him.
Should the Doctor give me the chance to renounce my evil ways (and he will) I will take him up on the offer, apologizing to all those I have oppressed and vowing to make amends. Then, when he gets in his TARDIS and leaves, I will go immediately back to whatever I was doing before he showed up.
If it becomes necessary to kill the Doctor, I will do so without hesitation. Preferably using some method that does not favor regeneration, such as charring him into ash with flamethrowers or dropping a piano on him.
If it becomes necessary to kill the Doctor's companions, I will do so without hesitation. They're more competent than they look, and if he does end up defeating me at least I'll be able to rub that in his face before I go down.
I will not let the Doctor talk.
I will not let the Doctor press buttons. Ideally I will not have any buttons that he can press in the first place. In a universe with voice print identification and bio-recognition software there's no excuse for getting defeated because the Doctor guessed your password.
Jobs done by biological henchmen will require a robot partner, and vice versa. This will act as a check and balance against the Doctor's usual tactics: the robot cannot be persuaded to join the Doctor's cause via ethical debate, and the organic cannot be overridden by technical means. This policy will be in effect over all employment grades, including guard duty, administration, and my personal harem.
I will invest in Deadlock Seals for absolutely everything. If I can afford a doomsday device, I can afford not to skimp on security. This includes the access panels on all the robots. Especially the robots in the harem.
I will never, ever, ever imprison the Doctor and his companions in the same cell block, let alone the same cell.
I will not imprison the Doctor in anything with a door. I will instead keep him in a 50-foot pit.
My minions, henchmen, and administrators will not have identification cards or lanyards. Anyone attempting to gain access to anywhere but the cafeteria or the restrooms using a paper ID will be thrown into the 50-foot pit.
I will not try to out-science the Doctor. That never works and is utterly futile. Instead, I will keep on hand a variety of extremely low-tech alternatives for defeating him, such as a phalanx of archers wielding poison-tipped arrows, so that when he disables all of my technology I am not completely vulnerable.
I will not try to steal the TARDIS for it's technology. It's tempting, but I already have a doomsday device that I know how to use and there's no point crossing horses in mid-stream. Eyes on the prize. I will, however, have it couriered to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and dumped there. I will also keep on hand a number of standard British police boxes in random locations just to mess with him.
I will not form an alliance with the Daleks or the Cybermen just to defeat the Doctor. First, that's a tremendously stupid idea in general, and second, just look at their track record against him.
If possible, I will invest in a Raston Warrior Robot. Not even the Doctor ever beat that son of a bitch.
I will not let River Song kiss me under any circumstances.
If for some reason I am compelled to make a dramatic speech to the Doctor at some point, I will not bother trying to justify my actions or equivocating whatever horrendous things he has done. Those are rhetorical devices and I am above such petty bickering. Instead I will keep to the facts, pointing out that he always shows up uninvited and pokes his nose in other people's business and that's just plain inconsiderate and unwarranted.
Should I at some point capture the Doctor, he will be required to undergo the same thorough screenings as anyone boarding a standard commercial flight. Specifially, I will confiscate any and all items on his person that can be used as clever weapons. Which pretty much means any and all items on his person. Including his clothing. Especially his clothing. Especially if he is wearing a scarf.
At least one of my "advisers" will be someone who speaks in complete gibberish, to make the Doctor think his TARDIS translation function is on the fritz.
I will have an escape plan in case the Doctor defeats me. I am not an idiot. Putting all my eggs in one basket is just plain stupid.
