the iowa caucus as smoke detector

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Let me say this first: I actually live in Iowa. I’ve been here steadily since 2008. I’ve participated in the Iowa caucus system. And people, I’m telling you it’s worthless.

Wait, that’s not entirely true. The Iowa caucus has value…to the news/entertainment media. Why? Partly because it’s quirky and quaint; it’s basically a 19th century system. Partly because it gives the media good visuals; you get to see candidates visiting farms and small town diners and county/state fairs. You get to see photos of them eating a corn dog or standing by a cow or smiling at somebody wearing bib overalls. And it has media value partly because it’s the first contest of the ridiculous process the US has for nominating presidential candidate. The news media has made the Iowa caucus ‘important’ because it thinks…and perhaps they’re right…that viewers love this stuff.

But except as a form of news entertainment, the Iowa caucus system is a pretty shitty way to select a nominee to represent a political party in a campaign for POTUS. It’s shitty in several ways.

  • It’s shitty because it’s held in fucking January, when it’s almost always bitterly cold. That discourages participation.
  • It’s shitty because it’s held in the evening and requires people to attend physically. If you work the second shift, you can’t attend. If you have child care issues, you may be unable to attend (although some parents do bring their kids…who then have to sit through what is often a long process that’s excruciatingly boring to kids). If you don’t have reliable transportation, if you’re elderly, if you’re disabled, you may be unable to attend.
  • It’s shitty because it can take a long time. People gather at the caucus site (which might be a church or a school or even somebody’s house) then listen as somebody representing each candidate (and sometimes there are several candidates) tries to convince the attendees to support their candidate. After those speeches, people physically separate themselves in groups. I’m NOT making this up. Candidate A supporters go to that corner, Candidate B’s people to another, and so on. If a candidate doesn’t have enough supporters to be considered viable, there’s a period of persuasion in which the more popular candidate’s supporters try to get them to join. There’s a whole supporter-poaching system in place. After all that physical shuffling around is done, they physically count the number of supporters in each group, and apportion delegates based on that.
  • It’s shitty because this unwieldy process happens in EVERY precinct of each of Iowa’s 99 counties. And they’re almost all run by volunteers. In other words, this is largely an amateur hour process.
  • It’s shitty because the population of Iowa is…well, not representative of the US as a whole. There are about three million people living in Iowa. About 85% of them are white; 7% Latino; 5% Black. Do the math.

So what we’re talking about here is an antiquated, inherently unfair system that doesn’t represent the nation as a whole and is conducted largely by amateurs, but is massively promoted as important by the news/entertainment media. It’s also worth mentioning that the Iowa caucus system isn’t very predictive. Since 1972, it’s basically been a coin toss whether the caucus winner became the actual nominee. Only 55% of the Democratic Iowa caucuses winners became the party nominee; 43% of GOP winners became the Republican candidate. (I should also point out that the Iowa Democratic Party has mostly abandoned this system; they’ll still hold a physical ‘caucus’ but will also allow mail-in and early voting.)

The success rate since 2008, when I moved back to Iowa, has been pretty accurate for Democrats, but absolutely dismal for Republicans. Democratic caucus winners were Obama (2008 and 2012), Clinton (2016), and a tie between Buttigieg and Sanders (2020). GOP caucus winners were Mike Huckabee (2008), Rick Santorum (2012), Ted fucking Cruz (2016), and Trump (2020).

You’ll notice that the Iowa GOP has consistently chosen evangelical Christians as candidates. Or at least candidates who claim to represent evangelical Christians, because Trump? C’mon. What that suggests (or screams out loud) is that evangelical Christians aren’t really that interested in Christianity. They’re less concerned with spirituality and morality, and more concerned with racist and sexist ideology. It’s not about religion; it’s about willfully blind obedience to a cult leader.

Ain’t nobody painting their tractor for Biden.

My point, if you can call it that, is that Trump’s massive victory in yesterday’s Iowa caucus isn’t terribly meaningful in terms of who’ll win the 2024 election. Notice that every GOP Iowa caucus winner since 2008 LOST in that year’s election.

I’m not saying we should shrug off Trump’s win. It’s evidence that the GOP has solidified itself as an authoritarian, anti-democratic, Christianist political party rooted in racism and sexism rather than conservative principles or policies. The fact that they represent such a large chunk of the US population is fucking terrifying.

But I think it’s important to remember that Trump’s power is a product of hate, resentment, and fear fueled in large measure by a news and entertainment media more interested in marketing than in reportage. Half of his power is a media-fostered illusion. The way the GOP Iowa caucus is reported feeds that illusion.

So don’t disregard the caucus result any more than you’d disregard the alarm on the smoke detector in your home. It could be a legit warning. But it’s more likely to mean the battery needs to be changed. Pay attention to what happens in Iowa, but don’t let it panic you. It’s mostly just noise leading to anxiety.

Wait. That’s my point. I knew I had one. I’m glad it snuck in at the end.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Just another reminder that we must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the fucking ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart used to be, then set fire to the stake and burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations. Then nuke it from orbit. Then drink whiskey and have wild monkey sex.

yes, i have a thing for bollards

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I don’t know when it started, this thing for bollards. Out of curiosity, I did a quick search through my digital photographs and found a photograph of a bollard from 2007. I know I’ve shot photos of bollards with film cameras, including instant film cameras. I’ve photographed them in color and in black-and-white, in several formats (square, 3:2, 4:3), in all sorts of environments, in all manner of weather, using whatever camera I happened to have at hand. So yeah, my bollard fascination has been active for at least a couple of decades.

Why bollards? No idea. I mean, sure, I can come up with lots of justifications for why I photograph them. They’re an interesting compositional form. They’re often present in uniform groups, so there can be a nice repetitive element to them. They’re frequently painted in bright colors—and when they’re not, when they’re old and battered with weathered paint, they can add a sort of wabi-sabi aura to an image.

But like I said, those are justifications for including them in a photo. The fact is, I’ve no idea when or why bollards as a concept attached themselves to my brain like some sort of remora. What’s weird—well, one of the many weird things—is that so many other folks are aware of my interest in and affection for bollards. I’ve had friends from all over the globe shoot and photographs of the local bollards they encounter just for my interest. Do I talk about bollards that much? I guess I must.

Maybe my interest in bollards attracted the attention of other folks partly because so many people had no idea that all those banged up ‘posts’ they see everywhere every day actually have a name. Bollard, it comes from the Old Norse term bolr, meaning “the trunk of a tree”, and the suffix -ard, which generally acts as an attributive pejorative intensifier (as in ‘coward’ being one who cowers, or ‘drunkard’ being one who is often drunk, or even ‘bastard’ which originally referred to “someone conceived on a pack-saddle” (French bast), since they were used as makeshift beds).

Originally, bollards were tree trunks used by Vikings to moor their ships and boats. Over time, the term was used to describe the posts on docks used for that same purpose. By the early 1700s, urban bollards began to be used to constrain horse and wagon traffic. Now the term bollard is applied mostly to posts used to protect objects (or people) from being struck by carelessly driven vehicles.

Bollards are everywhere. The fact that they’re ubiquitous makes them almost invisible. Unless, of course, you look for them. Some bollards are decorative—brightly colored or metallic and shiny. Some are sort of disguised; there’s a small, family-owned ice cream joint not too far from where I live that has bollards shaped like ice cream cones. But most bollards are plain, unadorned, simple, practical, utilitarian. They’re not there to please the eye, but to serve a purpose.

In my mind, bollards are sort of heroic. Yes, that’s right…I’ve romanticized bollards. I find a weird, sad, lonely, powerful beauty in them. They may be weather-beaten, banged up, isolated and ignored, damaged, with chipped paint, but they’re still standing there, doing their job. Protecting stuff.

No matter how abused or battered they are, bollards provide the illusion of permanence. They’re fucking solid. But at the same time, the very fact that they’re so often damaged exposes the lie of permanence. Bollards will stand a very long time, but eventually they’ll be removed and replaced. And very likely, nobody will notice when that happens.

I’m also attracted to bollards because they’re excellent examples of the humanness of things. They’re thoughtful, deliberate infrastructure. Somebody deliberately put them where they are. Somebody decided there was something that needed to be protected, and chose a specific type of bollard to be placed in specific patterns to keep that ‘something’ safe. The humanness of things is always there, if you look for it.

So, yeah, bollards. They’re not pretty. They’re common, unrefined, even crude. They don’t need your respect. But they deserve it.

just another nightmare

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I used to have recurring nightmares. Well, I still have recurring nightmares, but they’re not recurring as often. For a few years, I’d have 2-3 nightmares a week. Like most folks, I occasionally have your basic bog standard bad dream (somebody chasing me, shit like that), but they’re qualitatively different from the recurring nightmares. I can shrug those off. I’m talking about the sort of nightmares that wake you up and sometimes leave you too jittery to go back to sleep. Or too afraid to try to go back to sleep for fear the nightmare will return, and you’re just too fucking fragile to deal with that again.

Now I have a nightmare maybe every month. Maybe every six weeks. Okay, wait…a tangent. Sort of. When I say I have recurring nightmares, I mean I have four basic nightmare scenarios that repeat themselves; the scenarios are based on actual incidents. I’m not going to discuss the scenarios or the incidents that sparked them because that would take too long. And besides, the incidents don’t really matter; what matters is the nightmares.

This is NOT my nightmare, but you get the point.

I’m writing about this because last night (well, early this morning) it happened again. I had a nightmare that woke me up. Here’s the weird thing: when I had them more often, I learned to cope with them. I was so familiar with them, I was often able to defuse them WHILE DREAMING. “Oh, right…light shining under a closed door, I know that one. Just open the door, see the horrible thing, and get on with it.”

I knew what to do when I had those nightmares. If I was too spooked to go back to bed, I knew how to distract myself so I could relax. Read for a while, maybe listen to some music, drink some cold water, eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Something mundane and ordinary to mute the effect of the nightmare.

But now that the recurring nightmares are less frequent, I find I’m sometimes more discombobulated by them. The nightmare that woke me up this morning had one of the usual recurring tropes (the sound of an empty Coke can being twisted back and forth in order to break it into two jagged-edge pieces suitable for hacking at arms and necks). Just at the point where the blood starts, I woke up; the last thing I remember was hearing a voice saying, “That’s not going to be covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee.” Which totally took the edge of the horror, so when I woke up I wasn’t so much terrified as weirdly but uncomfortably amused.

And yet, I was still too anxious to go back to sleep. None of my distraction techniques worked, mainly (I think) because my mind kept repeating that ridiculous phrase, which kept the nightmare alive in my head. Sort of alive.

So here’s me, three hours later, having had my morning coffee and read the news and banged out the Wordle (got it in four, as usual), and still nattering on about the nightmare. But now I think I can go back to bed and get another hour of sleep.

Thanks for listening.

unlikely, but possible

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So far two states, Maine and Colorado, have decided Comrade Donald Trump is ineligible to be on their state ballots. Colorado’s decision was judicial; it came from the state’s Supreme Court. Maine’s decision was administrative; it came from their Secretary of State. Two states, two different processes. In each state, the decision to remove Trump from the ballot was made by a body authorized to make those decisions.

Republicans, of course, are pissed off (SPOILER: Republicans are always pissed off.) And yet, these results are entirely consistent with the way Republicans WANT elections to operate.

Here’s a crazy thing: the US doesn’t have a unified federal election system. What we have instead is a patchwork of 50 different federal election systems. Voters in Alabama, for example, have a different set of laws and rules than voters in Utah, even though they’re voting in the very same election.

Does that make any sense at all? Nope. But that’s how the US Constitution set things up when it was written back in 1787. Of course, in 1787 there were only three states: Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Another eight states were added in 1788, and other states gradually dribbled in over the next hundred years or so. Instead of bodging together a single set of election laws to cover EVERY state, Congress just kept saying, “Welcome to the monkey house, you do what you think is right when it comes to electing folks.”

And hey, modern Republicans have loved that idea. It allowed them to control election results by deciding who can vote, where they can vote, and when they can vote. Which is a nice way of saying it allowed them to decide who they didn’t want to vote. (SPOILER: they don’t want Black folks to vote. Or Democrats.) Combine that with massive partisan gerrymandering, and you have a recipe for minority rule.

But now, that States Rights approach has kicked them in the balls. Republicans are relying on SCOTUS to save them—which is a fairly safe bet, considering that Trump appointed three of the Justices and a fourth is married to a woman directly involved in the insurrection.

Am I implying SCOTUS is corrupt? No, not the entire Court. I AM stating my opinion that there are a number of SCOTUS Justices who are openly corrupt and base many of their decisions on political ideology rather than the law. To me, the question isn’t whether or not they’re corrupt, but who they’re corrupt for.

Right now, there are a lot of big GOP donors who are, for a number of reasons (none of which involve ethics or morality), reluctant to donate to Trump. Trump is a problem for the GOP. He’s warped the Republican Party to the degree that somewhat less hateful politicians are afraid to acknowledge, for example, that the Civil War was about slavery. It’s possible—maybe not likely, but certainly within the realm of possibility—that the corrupt members of SCOTUS will take those GOP donors into consideration and will refuse to accept Trump’s appeal of the decisions in Maine and Colorado.

It seems unlikely, but refusing to accept Trump’s appeal would effectively remove Trump from contention and make way for a more ‘palatable’ hate-mongering Republican candidate. It would also allow SCOTUS to claim they’re NOT ruled by conservative partisan hacks. (SPOILER: they’d still be ruled by conservative partisan hacks.) Refusing to accept Trump’s appeal might, in fact, be the only way this SCOTUS can redeem a meager shred of dignity and integrity. In fact, it might act as a sort of historical counter-balance for overturning Roe.

Let’s face it, this SCOTUS is the most fucked up Court in modern history. Legal scholars and historians might say, “Yeah, they fucked up by overturning Roe, but at least they drove a stake of holly through Trump’s black heart.”

unqualified

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I haven’t written anything about Comrade Donald Trump for…well, quite a while. Months. That’s not because he’s become irrelevant; it’s because I’m just sick to fucking death of writing about him. But…

Trump disqualified from Colorado’s 2024 primary ballot by state Supreme Court

That was the headline run by The Washington Post last night. Try to imagine the size of the smile that crossed my face when I heard that.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, in another Colorado court, Judge Sarah B. Wallace found that Trump had, in fact, engaged in insurrection. However, she ruled he shouldn’t be removed from the ballot. Why? Because she determined Section 3 of the 14th Amendment didn’t “intend to include the President as ‘an officer of the United States.”

Seriously. It was a cowardly ruling, in my opinion; a clear attempt to dodge her responsibility as an officer of the court. Let’s look at the text of Section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Judge Wallace’s decision was appealed (by Republicans, by the way) to Colorado’s Supreme Court. Yesterday, they basically said, “Sorry, Judge Wallace, but POTUS sure as shit IS an officer of the US. Dude ain’t eligible to be president on account of that insurrection business.”

So, what happens next? Trump will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States. In case you’ve hit your head and forgotten, let me remind you that three SCOTUS Justices were appointed by Trump, and Clarence Thomas’s wife was directly involved in the insurrection. Thomas should recuse himself, but he’s not required to. And let’s face it, that motherfucker is massively corrupt, so he probably won’t. He can make bank off this case. The three Trump appointees? Well, we’re supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ll judge the matter based entirely on the law. Don’t hold your fucking breath.

As I understand it (and yeah, I’m not a lawyer), the fundamental issues SCOTUS will have to determine are 1) whether the State of Colorado has the authority to determine if Trump committed insurrection against the United States, and 2) if he’s had sufficient due process to defend himself against that charge.

SCOTUS might refuse to accept the case, but that’s really unlikely. If they did, the Colorado ruling would stand. Trump won’t be on the ballot in Colorado. The reality is SCOTUS will almost certainly agree to hear the appeal. But they could slow walk it; they could hold off on issuing a ruling until early next year…February or March…by which time Trump will very likely have locked in the GOP nomination. Then they could claim removing Trump from the ballot in Colorado would create chaos and deprive the voters of their voting rights.

Is this asshole qualfiied to be POTUS?

That’s just a guess, of course. I have absolutely no idea what they’ll do. But I want to address one bullshit argument that we’re going to hear frequently over the next few weeks. People will argue that it should be up to the voters to determine if Trump should be POTUS; it shouldn’t be determined by any court.

That’s a bullshit argument. It sounds reasonable, but it’s not. The Constitution of the US tells us who is eligible to be president. Article II places only three limits on qualification: the person must be 1) at least 35 years of age, 2) be a natural born citizen, and 3) must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years. The 14th Amendment adds a 4th qualification: a person who has taken an oath to support the Constitution but engaged in insurrection or rebellion is NOT qualified. And the 22nd Amendment added a 5th qualification: no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.

So there you have it. It’s not up to the voters. If the voters want Barack Obama to be president, they’re out of luck: he’s done his two terms. If the voters want Arnold Schwarzeneggar to be president, they’re out of luck: he’s not a natural born citizen. If they want Taylor Swift to be president, they’re out of luck: she’s not old enough…yet.

And if the voters want Trump to be president, they’re…well, they’re confused and stupid. But they’ll also have to wait until the most partisan and corrupt SCOTUS in the history of the US decides what to do.

The future of democracy in the US depends on them. I’d like to say I’m optimistic. But damn, optimism is pretty fucking hard to muster right now.

…and be there

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F/8 and be there. That’s the classic photographer’s maxim. It’s usually attributed to Arthur Fellig (better known as Weegee), though it’s highly unlikely he actually said it. Weegee was famous for what was called ‘spot’ or ‘moment’ photography in the 1930s and 40s. He made it his business for being at the right spot for newsworthy moments and being prepared to photograph them. A camera aperture of F/8 is generally considered an all-purpose aperture; it allows in enough light for a decent exposure while providing a relatively broad depth of field. So how do you get a good ‘spot’ photo? F/8 and be there.

In fact, Weegee routinely shot most of his famous photos with his massive 4×5 Speed Graphic camera set at F/16 or F/22. Not that the actual aperture he used matters. What matters is the concept is solid. Be in the right spot with usable camera settings, and you’ll probably get a good shot.

Me, I had my 12-year-old Fujifilm X10 set to F/5.6 in case I came across some random right spot. I was just idly wandering around the city when I heard the distinctive sound of a basketball being dribbled. I followed the sound. There’s a small urban recreation area in Des Moines with a single pickleball court, a ping pong table, a few tables set up for chess and backgammon, and a basketball half-court. This is what I saw when I came around a corner.

There was a guy, all by himself, dribbling a basketball, juking around imaginary defenders, shooting baskets. He was in the shade and almost invisible, but the setting itself was so stark and had such a startling red stripe that I turned on my camera and kept approaching, hoping he’d move into the sunlight. And he did.

I kept edging closer. I refused to look down to double-check the camera settings for fear he’d move into the sunlight and I’d miss the shot. He kept dribbling and juking and shooting, and every time he moved into the sunlight, I snapped a photo.

I only got five shots before he stepped into the shadow to check his watch. Then he put on a jacket, collected his basketball, and walked off. My first shot was as 12:44, the last at 12:45. Two minutes at most. Probably closer to seventy or eighty seconds, most of which was spent walking forward, camera ready, trying to maneuver the guy into the sunshine by wishing really really hard.

Once it was clear the moment was gone, I started desperately chimping* my camera’s playback, hoping I’d managed to get at least one shot that was worthwhile. In one of the shots, the guy was too obscured by the shadow. The other four? They all turned out.

Are they great photographs? No. But when you’re shooting a photo, you generally have an idealized version of the resulting image in your mind. These four photographs are pretty much what I was hoping they’d be. Pretty much. I have some niggling complaints about the final photo, but overall I was ridiculously pleased.

Photographing some random guy shooting baskets on his lunch hour is a small thing. But it’s the sort of thing that keeps photographers walking around with a camera. There’s a definite dopamine jolt when you get the shot right. It doesn’t even matter what the shot is about; you just want to recreate that feeling again. That’s exactly why I was idly wandering around the city and exactly why my camera set to my default daytime aperture of F/5.6.

I’m no Weegee, but I want to be ready when I’m there, wherever there happens to be.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Chimping, for non-photographers, is the act of looking down at the screen of your digital camera while reviewing the shots you’ve just made, and making chimp-like “Ooh ooh” noises as you do it.

in which I stray somewhat from the topic

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Jeebus fuck a pumpkin, can you believe every single member of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives voted to open a formal ‘impeachment inquiry’ against President Uncle Joe? I mean, yes, of course you can believe it because the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party, and hasn’t been for years…but can you fucking believe it?

Sure, it’s entirely symbolic. Sure, it’s just performative politics. Sure, it doesn’t change a damned thing. Sure, we’re accustomed to this sort of Republican skullduggery. And sure…wait. Hold on a minute.

Okay, here’s a thing I just learned: there’s only one L in skulduggery. Who knew? Skulduggery, of course, is a term used to describe all manner of unscrupulous, underhanded, or dishonest behavior—which makes it appropriate for the GOP. Another thing I just learned: skulduggery has nothing whatsoever to do with skulls, which is both a relief and a wee bit disappointing.

The term apparently comes from an old Scots word, sculdudrie, which referred to a certain laxity in regard to chastity—which, coincidentally, also makes it applicable to the modern GOP. The term has been described as “a euphemism of uncertain origin,” although some etymologists seem to think it may have been used as a legal term of art in the early-to-mid 1800s. And let’s face it, considering how weird Scottish law has been throughout history, that wouldn’t be very surprising.

Remember, Scotland—and particularly Edinburgh—was one of the centers of anatomical study back at the time sculdudrie would have been used in law. Dissections of human bodies were often performed in front of an audience (I am NOT making this up) made up of medical students and interested members of the public. Scottish law limited the origin of cadavers used for medical research; they could only come from suicide victims, foundlings, orphans, or inmates who’d died in prison. When legal cadavers became scarce, anatomists began buying corpses from ‘resurrection men.’ Which is a nicer way of saying ‘grave robbers.’ Under Scottish law at the time, it was illegal to disturb a grave. And it was illegal to steal the possessions of the dead. But actually selling a dead body was perfectly legal.

You can see how this might lead to some skulduggery (even though it’s got nothing to do with skulls). In fact, that’s how the case of Burke and Hare got started. William Hare owned a lodging house in Edinburgh. When one of his lodgers died, he and a buddy, William Hare, sold the corpse to famed anatomist Robert Fox. Later, when another lodger became ill with a fever, Burke and Hare decided not to wait for her to die. They smothered her and sold her cadaver. In the end, they apparently supplied a total of sixteen fresh corpses to Dr. Fox.

Burke, Hare, and both their wives (who were at least aware of their crimes) were arrested. Hare agreed to testify against Burke in exchange for immunity from prosecution. And since Scottish law prevented him from testifying against his wife, the case against her was dismissed. Burke was found guilty at trial. The verdict against his common-law wife was ‘not proven’ which is another weird aspect of Scottish law; it’s a verdict that basically says “Yeah, we know you did it, but the State didn’t prove it, so off you go.”

Burke was hanged and his body was given to an anatomist and was dissected in front of an audience. His skeleton is on display (I swear I am NOT making this up) at the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh Medical School.

Uh…I seem to have gone off on a slight tangent. It wouldn’t be very difficult to find a way to compare the GOP to Burke and Hare or to compare the absurd impeachment ‘inquiry’ to grave robbery. Hell, I could even find a way to compare the public dissection of William Burke to the trial of Donald Trump, since both of those motherfuckers deserve to be flayed in front of an audience. But I think I’ve probably tried your patience long enough.

bi-generation?

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Okay, first thing, if you’re expecting this to be about a generation of bisexual people, you can just stop now. It’s not about bisexuality. Well, not specifically. I mean, it’s about Doctor Who, so it could be argued that bisexuality is sorta kinda implicit. I mean, The Doctor (and yes, Whovians (and also yes, Doctor Who fans are often called Whovians, get over it) always refer to Doctor Who as The Doctor, get over that too) is an alien who’s been both male and female and has been attracted to both men and women, so…yeah.

I understand, not everybody is a fan of Doctor Who. If you’re one of those folks, then you might as well take a nap, on account of this is totally about one of the esoteric aspects of The Doctor. I’m talking, of course, about bi-generation.

If you’re NOT a Doctor Who fan and, for some inexplicable reason you’re still reading this, allow me to explain the regeneration business. There’s obviously a practical aspect to it. The show is 60 years old; the original Doctor Who has been dead for almost half a century. In order to keep the show going, a new Doctor had to be introduced. Rather than just toss in another actor and pretend he’s the same person, the writers introduced the concept of regeneration. When The Doctor is fatally injured or their body is failing for some reason, they go through a transformation process—their cells renew into a different physical form, which results in a new body. Their memory remains mostly intact, but the new Doctor has a unique new personality. This is regeneration.

It’s happened 13 times in the course of the show. We expected it to happen a 14th time, when the new Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) would be introduced. But instead of a classic regeneration, we were subjected to bi-generation. As The Doctor (played by David Tennant) prepares to die, he’s supported by two women, one on either side. The regeneration process begins, then…nope. It just…stops. Everybody is confused. The Doctor asks those supporting him to pull (on his arms), and hey, bingo, he splits in two. Sorta kinda.

I mean, where there was The Doctor, now there are two Doctors—one a pale skinny Scotsman (Tennant), the other a muscular Black man (Gatwa). I didn’t notice this at first, but The Doctor’s clothes are also divided; Gatwa gets the shirt, tie, shoes, and underpants. Gatwa also gets to ask the question that EVERYBODY is thinking: “Now, someone tell me what the hell is going on here!”

Putting the bi in bi-generation.

What the hell is going on is something completely and entirely unprecedented. As a fan, you have to ask, why did the writers do this? Why would they introduce a new form of regeneration? In my opinion, there are solid narrative reasons for the bi-generation business. Consider that The Doctor, in various incarnations, has been around a LONG time. They’ve saved civilizations and destroyed them, they’ve rescued billions of people and seen (or caused) billions to die, they’ve fought monsters and they’ve been monsters, they’ve loved companions and seen them die (or leave or get abandoned). Because of this, The Doctor has the universe’s worst case of PTSD and survivor’s guilt ever. Let’s face it, the Doctor is massively fucked up.

By tossing in this bi-generation, the writers have done two very important (for the fan base) things. First, they’ve given the new Doctor a clean slate. Gatwa has The Doctor’s memories, but isn’t burdened by the guilt. It also allowed Gatwa to skip the post-regeneration ‘Wait, who am I now?’ confusion that normally accompanies a new Doctor. He starts fresh, confident, eager, enthusiastic—and Gatwa’s delight in being Doctor Who is apparent and infectious.

Second (and probably more important for the fans), the old Doctor gets a chance to heal—to live a somewhat more normal life, to have something like a family, to be relieved of the obligation to fix every fucking thing that goes wrong, to just relax. There’s something healing about seeing Tennant sitting down to a meal with his expanded chosen family. It’s just really nice to know his end isn’t traumatic.

BUT (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you), I’m a wee bit disconcerted by one thing in particular. As I said at the beginning, Whovians always refer to The Doctor as The Doctor. Not just any Doctor, but THE Doctor. Because The Doctor is singular. There’s only one The Doctor.

Until now. How can Ncuti Gatwa be The Doctor when there’s another Doctor Who loafing about in Donna Noble’s garden in Chiswick? Personally, I’m more than willing to abandon the singular The and refer to the 14th Doctor as the Doctor, so long as I get to imagine the old Doctor sitting around at night with Wilfred Mott, drinking tea from a thermos and looking at stars through a telescope.