strange things are afoot @ the circle k

You want 9/11 first responders to know that before they get their chemo money for the cancer they got sifting through World Trade Center rubble in hopes of helping to identify those we lost in the attack, you have one, just last tiny loose end to tie up: we just have to make sure you’re not a terrorist.

… You want billions in bank bailout money? You get that without being cross-checked against the terrorist watch list. The only thing they wanna know in that case is, ‘Did you start the financial meltdown in the first place?’ ‘Cause if you did, here’s your fucking money!

…What kind of Republican Congressman from Florida Cliff Stearns would put a piece-of-shit amendment like this in the Zadroga (9/11 first responders health) bill? (Beat.) I’m being told that its Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns.

Never meet your heroes’ wise people say. They weren’t thinking of Lis Sladen.

Sarah Jane Smith was everybody’s hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories. But many years later, when I met the real Sarah-Jane - Lis Sladen herself - she was exactly as any child ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way.

There are a blessed few who can carry a whole television show on their talent and charisma - but I can’t think of one other who’s done it quite so politely. I once showed my son Joshua an old episode of Doctor Who, in which Lis appeared. “But that’s Sarah Jane,” he said, confused “In old Doctor Who. From years ago. How come she always look exactly the same?” It’s not a comfort today, of course, but children will still be saying that fifty years from now.