And we're sorry, but the 403 is off limits. And the 504 was unable to reach its destination.

Yup. 404 for me too.

Not least for getting through a season of Celebrity Apprentice with her considerable dignity intact. Great representation for the non-arsehole adult community.

Tze Ming covered that in a post here once:

Obvious outlet: learn how to tell warmongers and dictators to f*ck their mother’s stinky c*nts in FOUR Chinese dialects!…

At least she didn’t suffer from Aaron Sorkin’s creative ADHD which saw an awful lot of…

Yeah – I learned Mandarin at uni in NZ, which meant that I basically learned really carefully pronounced putonghua. Basically, the Chinese equivalent of Received Pronunciation. Actually getting people to understand me in…

I've always found her characters in general, and there have been many, to be all the things you might hope for, in any sense I can reasonably think of.

1) they exist
2) bonus points if they talk at all
3) and extra gold star if they're actually played by a disabled actor.

The first recorded C-bomb on TV (6:14 in)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxjnfDToQmA

Heh. It's not like I don't know the dialog in…

There’s an art to good commentary track, and most directors aren’t terribly…

Indeed, it's neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a good film, but it does measure something about…

Every time I hear some clueless "reporter" say "thuh animal" – fair makes my blood boil.

Since we are looking at fiction, then surely the question is not "did the writer/director/etc create a strong female character?" but rather "did they create enough for the viewer/reader/etc to believe that character to be strong?"

I always admire writing that allows me to see…

surprisingly well. no idea why

Great link to LeGuin, thanks for that one Krackster. As I read it I applied the memory test, with some interesting results. The Dispossessed scores well. Unfortunately, so does the work of David Eddings, which also passes…

And supposing English was still the dominant language would we understand it? Probably about as well as you’d understand 15th century English, heck I don’t understand 99% of song lyrics now :(.…

Really? Not one I've heard. The most common swear words around Beijing involve somebody's mother and an intimate part of her anatomy.

Which is actually true of real world Mandarin as it is spoken in the here and now.

Thanks, I really enjoyed that!

They are such prudes, we struggled in the south to find a polite way to ask where the toilet was – even bathroom raised eyebrows

So I took to saying "man I need a rest that coffee went straight through…

The variety of euphemisms Americans have developed for well-known phrases that usually use swearwords is both impressive and vaguely annoying…

I understand so – but really, how hard is it to be a gracious guest and learn how to say "excuse me", "please" and "thank you" in the local lingo? You can't choose whether or not to be born into any number of positions…

And if it's being spoken as widely as English, it'd be in as wide a variety of accents.

No, it's Mandarin. My Mandarin is pretty rusty these days, but much of what they're saying is pretty intelligible. There are a few points where you can tell that someone's hoping that if they…

Anzac Day in Hong Kong is going to be interesting – do I need to learn two ways to say "your donkey has eaten my passport, please direct me to the nearest lavatory"? :)

Cantonese can certainly sound very harsh, but I could learn you some fairly colourful Mandarin words if you wanted. Really don't know how you compare swearability of languages, though.

I rather hope someone involved knew which language they were translating.

Makes me nostalgic for Avatar: the Last Airbender, in which, as I understand it, every piece of written language that appears, usually Mandarin, is as…

I always thought it was Cantonese, which I gather is much better for swearing and cussing.

Actors, writers, and the show translator talking about Firefly's "Chinese". (Espenson calls it Mandarin.)

Craig pretty much nailed it: Whedon DID cast biracial actors for Firefly. (Brazil, in particular, is an excellent example of how in the future we will not all be mid-brown and many people will still hew to identifiable racial appearances…

There's some amusing pieces on the extras with the cast talking about how hard it was to be speaking these words without any idea of their meaning,…

It does raise questions about how hard is it for asian actors to get agents…

Craig wrote

“Asians” are no more homogeneous and interchangeable than “Europeans”.

Indeed. Swap "Asians" for "Chinese" and that still holds true – linguistically as well as culturally.

I guess I should find some of these TV series and find out what this random sprinkling of Chinese words…

In Whedon's defense I doubt he goes into a casting with a "look" in mind. Seems more…

I won’t presume to speak for Lucy, but I think her point (and a fair one) was that if the world-building of the Firefly/Serenity ‘verse was that The Alliance was some kind of Sino-American hybrid, would have been so difficult…

The Bechdel Test and Ursula LeGuin's much-reprinted essay, Science Fiction and Mrs Brown.

Apart from all the very salient points everyone else has made -…

Surgeon General's Warning: May Be Hazardous To Your Productivity.

That is a very funny slamdown of Plinkett's. On the money at almost every point.

Without saying that the original Star Wars trilogy is the best thing in the world, he does manage to put a strong case that it's way better…

I think that's…

I...don't think Moorcock is relevant if we're talking about bad writing...

Since we're talking about a Disney joint, 1) her costume is probably going to be more extensive than four paper napkins and a roll of dental floss and 2) "I will outage your honour,…

That is what George Lucas thinks constitutes characterisation. I can imagine the ghost of Joseph Campbell visiting him every night and intoning, howling or whatever it is that ghosts do, “That’s not what I meant!”

At least I hope so.

…

It is…

1. Effeminate and klutzy, he is...
2. Angry at times, saccharine cute, he is...
3. Seems wise and kind, but isn't, he is...
4. She is....
5. Loyal, useful, but mute, it is...
6. Bold, abrasive, but kind, he is...
7. Idealistic, brave…

(Extra points for bringing Gwyneth Jones’ Aleutian cycle into the discussion… pop quiz on Friday)

Bart, Emma, let me refer you to an expert, Harry S. Plinkett

Specifically, in his review of The Phantom Menace, he tries an experiment,…

To be a hero the protagonist has make the heroic sacrifice. In an action flick the first and most easily performed sacrifice is to lose…

Ah, the Year of The Has-bian. At Seattle Grace, Erica Hahn changed from a career-obsessed ball-breaking bitch to a career-obsessed ball-breaking…

I'm not the only person who had a lot of "what the fuck, no really... what the fuck?" angst about that. More often than you might think, you see shows doing arcs that don't work (for all kinds of reasons)…

For me my first serious waver was Angela's Disappearing Bisexuality. But man, giving every female character a child is a sign a show is going really, really well,…

Yup, me too. Plus the whole cannibal arc – blech (Not helped…

I one had a rather interesting (read: fraking bizarre) conversation about the supposedly “white-washed” BSG. Yeah, apart from the male lead being Edward…

Maybe I'm being harsh, but I don't really call slapping a Chinese name on characters played by solidly white actors who very occasionally swear in Mandarin "bi-racial". As with many Whedon things, good in concept, poor in follow-through.

Surely River is at least bi-racial.

Although that can run into a kind of dodgy place where having a mental illness is presented…

Knowing shit is hot. Spread the word. :)

Just replace prequels with nothing. Otherwise one might think you were saying there were non-terrible charcters in Star Wars.

They sort of…

NCIS doesn't really do "kinky" full stop – Abby's look may be pretty Loli-Goth but she's also a rather sweet, insanely smart, fiercely loyal to her team young woman with a hint…

I don't know the show well enough to make a call on whether they're doing "kinky = goth".

That’s why slamming Padme for being a terrible female character is so pointless, none of Lucas’ characters have any depth so what make Padma any…

If you want to mount the “chicks with dicks” argument, Battlestar Galactica is epically…

I’m pretty happy about a lot of the american TV series I’ve…

So much This!

Pauley Perrette playing Abby Sciuto in NCIS?

That's what I aspire to do in my writing. I'll have to book mark this as a reminder when…

Have you read "The speed of dark" Russell? I enjoyed the book but was never quite sure if it was "right".

Yes. I'd also like it if a poly/kinky…

Dude, WTF. I mean, are there…

This also applies to characters on the autism spectrum, who tend to be presented on screen as a grab-bag of symptoms. It’s…

Yeah, this. And it's the same with LGBT characters, and non-White characters. If you've got more than one, you can show you know they're different. Just like people. Which is one of the…