Im surprised I never made a post about this card on here yet. I pulled this bad boy out of a 2009 topps series 1 hobby box back in february or march. This card is just amazing, the picture speaks for itself!

The card is numbered 4/20, AWESOME!!! This card is not for trade, just wanted to share it with you guys! Thanks for reading!

Also, I recently joined Mario’s Wax Heaven page, you can check out my page on there by clicking on the link on my blogroll, or by clicking here (yes i know me and my friend look like idiots in that picture…but thats the whole point!)

Part I here. (aka “Previously, on Origins…”)

“An ordinary boy an ordinary name

But ordinary’s just not good enough today”

So we continued down the beach, Cokes in hand. Barely adolescent, but twelve feet tall and staggering. Awkward? Not so much. I’d lived and breathed the word “awkward”, it was intrinsic in every move I made and every thought that passed through my hyper-nervous orb. I raise eyebrows in the clumsy effort to tie my shoes. But not that night.

Clark Kent is awkward because his meekness is his interpretation of and attempt to fit in with humanity. Most people are cowardly, always frightened, and looking up for a savior. If he was Superman all the time, he’d never get a moment’s rest, sticking out from the human race like a sore, gaudy, blue, red, and yellow thumb. Put him back on Krypton with other Kryptonians in their heydey and he’s just an average joe. There’s a camouflage and peace of mind in becoming nondescript.

However, Superman was never a 12 year old human boy.

Here, now, in this distant new place, surrounded by strangers as far as I could see, no one could ever know my faults. They would never be let on to my shortcomings, for those were back there, 2,000 miles West of this boardwalk. Every single person who doubted, scorned, mocked, disdained me for everything I was to them was gone. Geography has a funny effect on the mind. My life, the bookish, sports averse, iconoclastic coward that I self-identified as was back in Nebraska. This place wasn’t like back in the parochial classrooms where my interaction with women had been with the 15 or so girls in my grade school class who had conditioned me early on from showing any interest in any of them. I had previously been punished socially, for being the “creep” who had the audacity to be attracted to the prettier girls in class.

Here, it occurred to me that not only could I act like someone else, shit, I could be someone else.

I could be me, really, and this girl sipping her Coke was still smiling when I smiled at her. And she was prettier than any of the girls in my class or any girl really that I had met before. I loved her for that.

Not only was an interesting girl interested in me, but the mere fact of her interest was a giant “FUCK YOU!” to everyone who’d ever tried to label me or intentionally or not, cast me as a romantic pariah.

We leaned on the boardwalk railing shoulder to shoulder facing the sea, and talked. In retrospect, it occurs to me now that when couples talk but don’t face each other, there’s an underlying tension causing it, for the most part. But I was 12 and she, 13. We were making up social norms as we went along. Nothing seemed out of bounds or inappropriate.

I wasn’t offended when she asked if everyone from Nebraska was a hick, and she blushed when I asked if everyone from Virginia was either in the Navy or a complete redneck.

Because music can be a huge memory cue, I remember the top 40 hits of the summer of 1994 to this day, with fairly decent accuracy. A lot of them are godawful by today’s standards, for instance “If You Go” by Jon Secada, and “Always” by Erasure. (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.) But the song that I dug the most on the charts that year was the ballad “Till I Fall Away” by the Grunge-lite Pop band Gin Blossoms. Grunge had just hit the mainstream with the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten, and it was already being diluted into top 40 by bands like the Gin Blossoms. Nevertheless, that song came on somebody’s sandy boombox, and I turned to Lauren and said “I love this song.”

She grabbed my hand again and pulled me along the boardwalk then down a waterlogged and repainted wooden ramp that looked like a repurposed dock leading onto the sand. She scurried under the thing and waved me in. “C’mon!” she ordered. I joined her and we laid back against a wooden post. The first rocket popped up, and when the charge starburst, all eyes on the beach went skyward as the show started. She closed the distance between us, whispering “I hate fireworks” with her last audible breath, and shoved us off into the warm, soft depths of our first kiss. Hearts raced, and my mind, taking all this in, was redlining. Time slowed, dilated. Entire generations lived and died throughout the duration that Lauren and I shared, but that kiss was forever and yet, we only aged about 40 minutes.

Coming back up for air, our lips parted as our hands locked. Our eyes met, and exhausted, we could barely say it.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

We dove back in.

Hello
I’ve waited here for you
Everlong

Tonight
I throw myself into
And out of the red, out of her head she sang

Come down
And waste away with me

Down with me

Slow how
You wanted it to be
I’m over my head, out of her head she sang

And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever

If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang

The night and our fervor took us a bit further, sufficient to allow me some semi-exclusive locker room bragging rights, but I’m not going to get into that now. The fireworks boomed through their finale, and we paid no attention.

The echoes of fading shots brought a sense of finality, our prize of each other obscured in the haze of blackpowder smoke like a blissful dream waking you by nightmare twist in its last seconds. People got to their feet, shook off their blankets, and like any post-event crowd, nebulously shuffled back to their boring routines without a definitive sense of purpose or direction, until the next fireworks show in the form of a rodeo, a concert, or a labor day festival complete with beer garden.

In the cliche, the silence was deafening, an inverse alarm clock awakening us to a new world that we now lived in. Love existed, but it was fleeing, and now I looked at Lauren, this girl that I had met and loved and her eyes were tearing up, head swiveling around, looking at the other people leaving. These “adults” surrounding us, her eyes coming back to me telling me that we were special. We weren’t gonna grow up to be these people. We were going to buck the world, normalcy surrounded us, and felt like a perverse abomination. But finally she said, “I have to go.”

“I know.”

“Take this. Find me someday, huh?”

She wiped tears from her eyes with the top of her wrist, and placed something small and metallic my hand. I cradled this impromptu aluminum sculpture in my hand, as for a split second, I marvelled at the artistry of taking everyday waste and turning it into an improvised symbol of love.

“I will find you, Lauren. I promise.”

“I love you, Nick”

“I love you too.”

She kissed me, walked away, and then she was gone. I looked around this new universe I had inherited with intimidated eyes. I felt scared, small, and alone. Without her in the picture, my fate destined me to journey back to a home where I was put upon. I couldn’t even play a hero in my own mind in the booby-trapped jungle of Junior High, and now I knew that I was again alone, but having known the highs of loving and loss? It felt unbearable, and I choked on stagnant air as if caged in the top half of an hourglass. My time already expired.

Granted, not the regular car we tend to see down here at Regal Autosport, but it’s well worth a mention.

A local customer was had our dyno rolling road setup services recommended to him for his Series 1 Escort RS Turbo.

Here are a few pictures and the graph that we wanted to share:

The Dyno is available to use for all cars FWD, RWD and 4WD with power runs priced at £85 per session, rolling road set-up at £120 and group/club/forum rolling road days are always welcome, please give us a call on 02380 558636 to discuss your requirements.

The end of Series 1 already?! Goodness, how time flies. And so to the first of Russell T Davies’ bombastic finales, in which the Doctor dies, Jack dies, and Rose becomes a giant ball of light. What more could you want, really?

This story opens with some lovely satire, as we have come to expect from Davies’s work, right from Aliens of London/World War Three. Our three main characters have been split up from each other (as Doctor Who writers love doing – rightly so), and each has found themself in some kind of bizarre parody of a 21st century reality television show. Ironically enough, they all suit – Jack is on What Not to Wear, Rose is on The Weakest Link, while the Doctor is on Big Brother. And yet it seems to only be the Doctor who is taking this seriously in the beginning, which seems weird. Were I teleported away from my life, I’d be pretty desperate to understand what had happened. Of course, once people start getting zapped with a ray gun, they begin to realise the situation they are in.

Of course, the use of 21st century reality television is not the point of this story – it is simply a shorthand for us, the audience, to understand what is going on. And what is going on is pretty terrifying. The people on these games are being filmed for entertainment, and yet no one seems to care. For all intents and purposes, these people are being killed on television, and no one in the general population seem to care. Davies’ view of humanity is not a positive one, and here we see why – he has created a world where no one seems to want to do anything to stop the mindless killing that is taking place for the sake of entertainment, instead content to sit around and watch these shows like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And it’s not really the Doctor’s fault, though he does have something to do with it. While Boom Town explored the consequences of the Doctor’s actions on himself and his morality, this explores what happens when he doesn’t set humanity on what he believes to be the right path. Turns out that when he booted the slug creature out of Satellite Five, the void created by the lack of media information was filled with these mindless reality television shows. Sound familiar? And everyone is happy to just sit here and watch them. Remember that this was written in 2004 (shown in 2005), at a time when reality television was arguably at its most popular. This use of reality television is Davies’ attack on that genre, but more importantly, it is an attack on all those people content to sit here and watch terrible entertainment, simply because it is in front of them. And not just terrible entertainment – entertainment that is killing people, or at least seems to be. Perhaps, then, we need the Doctor to remind us what life is all about, otherwise we end up fat and watching television.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of that last statement.

Once the Daleks turn up, though, the focus of the story shifts. Here we have a fully fledged Dalek army, that’s just a little bit unhinged. More unhinged, even, than the usual pepper pots. Because they have discovered this truly excellent thing called religion. Or faith. Or whatever you want to call it. Much of Davies’ previous work – particularly The Second Coming – has dealt with issues of faith and blind obedience. Here, he explores what it is to follow a madman (in a big jar), and what happens when someone who disagrees with said madman tries to go up against the army of followers he has amassed. The idea of giving Daleks some kind of religion is interesting in itself, and offsets the possibility of them simply becoming boring killing machines – though they do kill an awful lot here.

Just as the monsters turn up, of course, the Doctor must face his own moral dilemma, crucial to any understanding of what is going on here. He has something that can kill the Dalek fleet – a delta wave (hello, Mr McGuffin). But, he has not the time to refine it, meaning that the humans on Earth will also be wiped out. Can he do it? For a long time, it looks as though he can. But, of course, at the end, at the vital moment, he pulls out. Always the coward. And I think that’s important. It’s important to remember that the Doctor is a hero who doesn’t use violence, who doesn’t carry a weapon, who always looks for the peaceful way out. And for the Ninth Doctor in particular, I think that’s an important realisation to have. Because this incarnation of the Doctor has been racked with guilt – we see the burden he is carrying from the Time War, and this has particular resonance with his encounters with Daleks. And here, at the end of his life, he once again accepts who he is – he knows he cannot kill all these people just to kill the Daleks. There has to be another way out.

Which dovetails nicely into the third stand of this story. Rose Tyler. At the beginning of Series 1, Rose Tyler’s mother asked the Doctor one thing – to make sure her daughter stayed safe. The Doctor couldn’t promise her anything of the kind, and yet here, he finally makes good. The Doctor has come to care so much for this stupid ape, he is willing to move her out of the way of a giant explosion (along with his only way of escape), in order to keep her safe.

But of course, Rose Tyler cannot see this brilliant sct of self-sacrifice for what it is. She wants to go back. She, too, has developed feelings for the Doctor. She knows that the universe is terrifying, dangerous and scary. But the Doctor has taught her how to be a better person, a person who doesn’t just sit in a cafe all day and eat chips. And this, then, is the greatest gift of the Doctor. And indeed Rose. Both of these characters need each other, they feed off what the other has to offer, and all of this is on show in this story. In some ways, both of them make the ultimate sacrifice for the other – Rose is willing to let go of her mother and (ex-)boyfriend, both of whom are so vital to her life, in order to be with the Doctor again. And the Doctor, realising this, saves her from certain death, and sacrifices his own life. There is love here, but that’s not anything to be afraid of. It’s ok for the Doctor to love. In fact, it could be argued that it is all he can do – he loves each and every companion he has ever had, he loves life, he loves the universe. And it is out of these loves that his desire to travel, and to make the universe a better place, comes.

Special mentions must go to Christopher Eccleston, who gives his best performance as the Doctor in his swansong (and possibly the best farewell speech I have ever heard), and Billie Piper, who shows something of all of us in her performance. Unfortunately, Jack is fairly unceremoniously dumped out of the TARDIS, but we all know he’ll be back. In fact, he’ll be all over the place before we know it.

So the Doctor and Rose’s relationship has seen hardships, and the big questions have been asked, and in some ways been answered. One question remains, though. Has Rose asked for too much, though? For all his sacrifice, the Doctor has changed. And nothing will ever be the same again.

The TARDIS comes back to Earth, to refuel in the best city in the United Kingdom. Well, it does come to Cardiff, at least, nicely setting up a lot of later continuity for both Doctor Who and Torchwood. Except, of course, nothing is ever that easy, and when the TARDIS team (and Mickey) discover a member of the Slitheen family still alive and well, they know they must fix the problem.

Oddly enough, this is perhaps the most experimental story in the entire first series. Instead of aliens, explosions and mysteries of time and space as the focus (though they are still present, don’t get me wrong), Boom Town is an interesting meditation on the ethics and moralities of the Doctor’s lifestyle and actions. Because Davies is right – the Doctor does just pack up and leave as soon as he has sorted out the mess he sees, without any thought for the personal consequences for those involved.

Margaret Slitheen (played so excellently by Annette Badland) has a plan to leave Earth and catch up with her family. The only problem is that she has to blow up the planet to do so. And the Doctor stops her, but when she tells him that her family has been tried for a multitude of crimes (clearly the rest of Raxacoricofallapatorius is not as mafia-esque as the Slitheen family), there is some hesitation. It is interesting to see which characters are sure about her death sentence. Mickey is the most certain, and in many ways this makes sense. She tried to blow up his planet, and this is all he knows. Without the knowledge the other three have from travelling in the universe, he has a very black and white sense of what he thinks is right and wrong – and the alien that tried to blow his planet up is definitely in the wrong. Quite understandable, I think.

But what of the Doctor? That restaurant scene between him and Margaret is sublime, and perfectly pitched and acted. There is such chemistry between these two people, and they really feel like equals, which is the only way this episode could have worked. Finally, the Doctor has someone on his own level to talk shop. And as Margaret points out, they aren’t so different. Both of them are killers, and the fact that she let someone go is nothing new. How great is that, by the way? She thinks she has got her get out of gaol free card, and then he throws it back in her face. But he’s right, of course, and his message doesn’t just apply to killers. We all have bad habits – whether it be eating junk food, or drinking – but every now and then, we console ourselves with the fact that we stop ourselves from these little indulgences. And that is how we live with ourselves. We delude ourselves into thinking we can stop at any moment, and yet the Doctor shows that we cannot at all.

Also important is the question of the death penalty awaiting Margaret on her home world. Clearly, this woman deserves to be punished. Is the death penalty too harsh, though? The four good guys are happy to send her back to Raxacoricofallapatorius for punishment, but when they realise they are sending her to her death, none of them can look her in the eye. And I think that really says a lot. I’m against the death penalty, but I wonder about those people who are all for it, whether they could actually carry out the punishment. It’s an interesting conundrum. When push comes to shove, do our morals go out the window in order to protect ourselves?

Other than this heady talk of morality, Boom Town is the story where Mickey at last comes into his own. Up until now, he has been treated as comic relief, but here – oh, he’s so good. Finally, he confronts Rose and asks her what he means to her. Even though he has found someone else, it is clear that he still loves her, and cannot bear to think of her far away from him. Good on him for still loving her, then. Because it does make Rose look really selfish, a pronouncement I can totally agree with. She does seem to have little regard for Mickey’s feeling, and leads him on every time she comes home, only to dump him again and again when she leaves. This relationship, more than the Rose and Jackie dynamic, highlights how loved ones feel when their friends go travelling with the Doctor. What makes this situation worse is the fact that Rose keeps giving him hope, but pulls it away from him each and every time.

Right. The end. Davies receives a lot of criticism because of his apparent propensity toward deus ex machina endings, whatever they are. To be fair, I do know what they are, but that’s not the point. And in some ways, the ending of Boom Town is a bit of a cop-out. Instead of having to make the big decision, the TARDIS turns her into an egg and we don’t have to worry about it. To be fair, though, it does look like the Doctor had planned this all along, so perhaps this was his way of getting out of the death penalty thing. Because I don’t think even the Doctor, even the Ninth Doctor, could willingly or knowingly sentence someone to their death, no matter how ‘evil’ they were. So he gave her a second chance, a way for her to redeem herself and live a proper life.

Every time I watch this episode, I can’t help but feel a pang of regret that this TARDIS team (and I’m aware that phrase is very cheesy) did not continue for longer. In some ways, they are very self-absorbed (as evidenced from Mickey’s first meeting with Jack in the TARDIS), but they are clearly having so much fun together, it doesn’t matter at all. All three of them feel like they have a reason to be there (as opposed to many classic TARDIS teams of three or four people), and they are all unique enough to stand their ground in terms of characterisation and screen time – though, granted, Jack does spend most of his time in the TARDIS. At least he didn’t faint, or break his ankle. It makes for a fantastic dynamic that I really wish had been explored further. Alas, though, this was not meant to be.

I think Boom Town has a tendency to be forgotten by a lot of people – sandwiched between two highly regarded episodes. But that is a shame, because there’s quite a lot at work here. The core morality debate is something that has not often been explored in Doctor Who, and framing it with a lot of characterisation at the same time means it has a lot to offer.

And so we have well and truly entered the back half of the first series. The show seems to have found its feet, and everything is coming together nicely. So why not add a random new element to keep the show from getting stale? Welcome, Captain Jack Harkness.

It’s interesting that, while this is Jack’s first story, originally, he doesn’t seem to be the main focus of the story. It is not until much later on – in the second half of the second episode – that we fully realise his actions in these events. Despite this, it is clear that he is not supposed to be in this time line. Jack has been touted as the first non-straight companion, and while it is somewhat toned down here in comparison to what we might now expect, his flirting with everything he likes is clear. And yet, this does not define him as a character. This man is dashing, charming, and a criminal. Here, he is willing to blow up a small piece of history (granted, a piece doomed to explode anyway) to get some goods out of these other time travellers. In some ways, he breaks every rule in the companion book – he is hardly an identification figure for the audience – and yet, because he is so charming and so good looking, we don’t seem to care. And he is a genuinely nice guy. Despite his past mistakes (and present), he was only conning the Doctor and Rose with something he thought was completely safe. When he realises the mistake he has made, he is truly remorseful.

While Russell T Davies gets a lot of flack for making the rebooted Doctor Who a place of smut (read: gays and lesbians) from a lot of people, ‘true’ fans believe that Steven Moffat will fix all of this. If they watch this, they are in for a shock. Moffat uses this recurring metaphor of dancing to talk about the Doctor’s sexuality, in a beautiful way. The scene between Rose and the Doctor discussing whether or not he has danced before is almost note perfect – right down to the fact that the Doctor is eventually distracted by something else from Rose’s advances.It’s almost as though, deep inside this man, is the desire to dance and be normal, and yet again and again, he knows that he must save the world one more time. Because if he doesn’t, who will? Indeed, at the very end, there is this lovely scene with the three time travellers just dancing. And the metaphor is not really at work here – or maybe it is. Maybe dancing isn’t just sex (though it definitely is at least that) – maybe dancing is fun and happiness and togetherness and love and all those other mushy emotions that make us (even 900 year old Time Lords) tick. So the Doctor, Rose and Jack all indulge in a little dancing to relax and unwind.

It could be argued that it is in this story that the ‘Rose fancying the Doctor’ storyline really kicks off, as before this, I think she was still a little in awe of him. Here, though (and I think this is helped somewhat by the inclusion of Jack), she is beginning to see herself more as his equal, and so the subtle dynamic shifting begins. This set up works quite well – and to be fair, we have seen it earlier in The Long Game – with the Doctor and Rose teaching someone else. It’s just that Jack is a much better person than Adam Mitchell.

Outside all of this lovely character development, though, is a plot line that actually has some bearing on the story, too. I suppose. There is something truly terrifying about a young boy looking for his mother – it’s just like those lost children in Big W that have lost their parents, and are wandering around shouting ‘Mummy!’. The looks on their faces say it all – they haven’t started crying yet, but it’s clearly not far away, and once they do, you know it won’t be pretty. This boy is exactly the same – he hasn’t started crying yet, but once he does, we all know it won’t end well. On the reverse, though, it is almost more unnerving to have him calm throughout the entire episode. Why isn’t he crying? There is something clearly not human about him, and this is only accentuated by some excellent costume deign for the gasmask he wears, which hides any facial expressions he might have once had.

But what is behind all this terrifying nonsense? Technology! Of course! Moffat has tapped into what is probably humanity’s fear – the fear of technology taking us over, and changing us into something we don’t wish to become. And here, that technology, while alien, is at work on Earth, wreaking havoc, and possibly killing everything on the planet. Well, not killing – turning everyone into these gasmask creatures. Zombies! Again!

But here’s the kicker. The technology hasn’t gone wrong. Not really. It’s doing exactly what it was programmed to do – return everyone back to health. The only problem is that it has been given the wrong information, requiring some not very tricky reworking on the Doctor’s behalf. And that’s all this story is about – a simple machine malfunction that could be easily fixed. A machine that was so one minded about its goal, it didn’t stop to think about the fact that it might be doing something wrong.

I often have it in my mind that Steven Moffat’s plots are always better than his characters – for better or for worse. Certainly, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is very well plotted, and hits all the right spots at the right times. But if you look past the cheap thrills of knock-off horror concepts, there is a brief, but central, core to this story about the relationship between the Doctor, Rose and Jack. It’s not very long, or even signposted throughout the story, but it makes for a memorable moment in an already memorable tale.

Land Rover Series 1

What is your favourite Land Rover model?

Originally conceived as a multi-purpose workhorse for agricultural and light industrial use, the Land-Rover remained fundamentally unchanged between its introduction in 1948 and the demise of the leaf-sprung models in 1985. This guide details the models produced between 1948 and 1958.

Land Rover 80″

The first Land-Rovers had an 80inch wheelbase and were powered by a 1595cc IOE four-cylinder petrol engine. They were available as spartan soft-top or open models, although an optional hard-top with cab roof was introduced in 1950. The first 1500 vehicles were permanent four-wheel drive and used free-wheel in the drive train to counteract axle wind up. After October 1950, however, this system was discontinued in favour of selectable 2WD/4WD. A feature of early Land-Rovers built before May 1950 is their headlamps, which are concealed behind the wire mesh grille, after this date the headlamps were exposed.

Land-Rover 80″ Station Wagon

Introduced at the London Commercial Motor Show in 1948, it used the standard Land-Rover chassis and bonnet/front wing assembly, the rest of the body being constructed from alloy panels on a traditional coachbuilder’s ash frame. Seating was for seven, with three abreast in the front and two pairs of seats facing inward over the rear wheel arches. Only 641 examples of the 80 inch Station Wagon were produced between 1948 and 1951 before it was discontinued.

Land-Rover 86″

Customers were demanding more and more carrying capacity in their Land-Rovers and so in the Autumn of 1953, two new and larger models replaced the 80-inch original The direct replacement for the 80-inch had an 86-inch wheelbase and an increased rear overhang, which together gave nine more inches in the load bed. The new long-wheelbase model had 107 inches between the axle centres and a full six feet of load space in its load bed. From mid-1954, a seven-seater Station Wagon was offered on the 86-inch chassis and during 1956 a ten-seater model was made available on the 107-inch chassis.

Land-Rover 107″

In the Autumn of 1956 the wheelbases of both the existing models were increased by two inches. Thus, the 86 inch became the 88 inch and the 107 inch became the 109 inch model. This increase was not to make the load bed any larger but to allow extra room in the engine bay, even though the new engine around which the Land-Rovers had been redesigned did not actually become available until the June of 1957. It was a 2-litre OHV four-cylinder diesel and fulfilled a long-standing need for a diesel alternative to the petrol Land-Rover. Petrol and Diesel 88 inch and 107 inch continued side by side until April 1958 when a completely revised Land-Rover range was introduced.

Thank you for reading my guide and I hope you found it interesting!

Pilot

Elena Gilbert and her brother Jeremy come to terms with the deaths of their parents. Elena likes to visit the cemetery where her parents are buried to write in her journal. When she is there she runs into Stefan, the new guy at school. Jeremy treads on a dangerous path of using drugs to ease his pain. The school is having a back to school party that everyone is attending. While walking in the woods, Vicki is attacked by Damon and her body is found by Jeremy and Elena. Stefan soon realizes that this was done by his brother. When he returns to the boarding house, he and Damon see each other for the first time in over 10 years.
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]]> http://thegreatamericandesert.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/your-hand-in-mine-origins-part-i/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:18:18 +0000 freelancernicholas http://thegreatamericandesert.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/your-hand-in-mine-origins-part-i/

Okay, this is the start of a series of posts about how I came to be the person I am, and why I think the way that I do. The story I’m going to tell is one of the most identifiable things that makes me unique from most other people I know. The closest people in my life know this story, but probably not the whole thing. They might have been there in the beginning, they might still be around. Some friends don’t know and are ignorant all-together. I will address the reader as if he or she is meeting me for the first time. How would I tell a stranger this story? That kind of thing.
This is probably the most intensely personal thing people can know about me, so I’m still a little squeamish about it, but I don’t plan on glossing over anything. I’m going to be honest. You want to know who I am? I’m the little boy that started this story out bruised and injured to begin with, put myself through my own trial by fire, and now lives with the consequences; scathed or not, I’ll trust you to decide.

We’d just found the back of the bus. My friend Jesse and I stumbled into a seat, to be carted back to 7th grade after a fairly racy production of “South Pacific” at a nearby Catholic High School. The whole bus took on an atmosphere centered around who likes who, who’s kissed who, who’d gone a little further, and so forth. A skinny kid who hated sports and loved reading, my nose always buried in something way over my grade level, I’d already sullied any chance of impressing the 13 or 14 girls in my class long ago. But I’d always have that summer, and couple of the guys were begging me to go on and on about it. 12 and 13 year old boys are desperate voyeurs, so I caved…

I was stuck in the very, very back of my parents’ 4-cylinder 1988 Maroon Chevy Celebrity Wagon, facing backwards as my dad negotiated the interstates of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia in an 18 hour marathon from his sister’s house in St. Louis to his brother-in-law in Norfolk, VA.
My parent’s constantly pointing out things on the road, I could’ve given a shit. My head was buried in two books (Spoiler Alerts):

Stephen Coonts’ Final Flight: Jake Grafton, after bombing Hanoi on his own in Flight of the Intruder, switches from A-6’s to F-14’s, and in a high G turn at the end of the book, blows out blood vessels in his eyes, ejects and is rendered blind. (It’s okay though, he eventually gets his sight back and becomes President in a later book that I didn’t read.)

Orson Scott Card’s Novelization of James Cameron’s movie The Abyss :
This is actually a great book which added a lot of depth to an already cool story. Orson Scott Card was a great author, and later on in High School, gadesert re-introduced me to his better work.

We arrived in Norfolk at like 2 am on July 2nd, 1994. My aunt and uncle were in the Navy at the time and he taught electronics to enlisted men (I think), and she was an Air Traffic Controller at Oceana Naval Air Station, which was a mile from their house. When you are a 12 year old boy who isn’t into sports really, but grew up on movies like Top Gun, Iron Eagle (and Iron Eagle II), and The Final Countdown, you have found heaven if you’re a mile next to an airbase that has it’s own wing of F-14’s constantly running training sortie’s. They were loud, they were fast, and the next day, my aunt took us on base and gave us a tour of a lot of the pilots’ ready room, staging areas, stuff like that.
The next day was July 4th, we toured the naval yard, complete with the Aegis destroyer that another one of my uncles worked on as a sailor who kept its nuclear power plant going. The best part of that day was the USS Teddy Roosevelt.

That fucker is a beast, and you don’t realize what a marvel of engineering it is, until you’re standing on its empty flight deck and then take one of the two main elevators down into the hangar bay. Best part of the trip, hands down. 5,000 people live on it, and I got my picture taken in the captain’s chair. (Sorry, parents never scanned the photo album. Yes!)

That night we went to the beach. Virginia Beach was putting on their annual fireworks show, and somehow, my parents got it in their heads that we needed to show up super early because in their heads, there was probably less room on a miles long stretch of sand than on the 10th St bridge back in Omaha. I didn’t ask, but being a contrarian savant and generally a little shit from a young age, I yelled some excuse to leave and ran off towards the boardwalk before I could hear any objections. Not to the extent of “Watch out for sex predators!”, this is 1994, and we hadn’t lost our collective shit over statistically insignificant anecdotal tragedies as a nation just yet. I was sprinting to avoid hearing, “Take your brother with you!“

Running onto the boardwalk I just stepped off into the distance with my lanky 90lb, bean-pole gait. I stared at the ocean, leaning against a rail. A few minutes lost in thought, thinking about the fictional inhabitants of DeepCore drilling station, I stand up straight and turn around on the boardwalk. I’m immediately knocked over and I feel something wet and fizzing all over my shirt. I recover from cowering like Buster in the fetal position and stand up.

Before me is an equally lanky, but pubescent goddess with a slight gap in her teeth standing up on her own and holding a half-empty can of Coke.

Imagine a 14-year-old version of her honed in on you at your first 8th grade dance. Try to resist and the words out of your mouth sound like 'Yes, more please.'

She’s confused, slightly annoyed, but smirking at me. I’m just confused and already half-full.
“You owe me a Coke,” she says, peeved but not bitchy.
“Alright, alright, I owe you a coke. Where can I get one around here?” I say with unknowning Woody Allen-esqe embarrassment, and like those moments where you’re trying to catch up to the present, we are speaking out of rote, plugged into something massive, and in my head I’m dumbfounded, but still talking.
“Over here, let’s go,” she says.
“My name is Nick.”
“I’m Lauren, C’mon!”
and the scene is set.
We’re holding hands ten minutes later.

And to this day, the profundity of holding a woman’s hand in utter affection is still unshakable and for me, a feeling very difficult to top.

To be continued…

Some prefer this version, so here you go.

Continued in Part II here.

With the change in the way Doctor Who has been run in the twenty first century, there has been a definite shift towards a focus on characterisation of the companion. No longer must people who travel with the Doctor be vacuous, pretty young things that do nothing but go along with the Doctor, and scream at terrifying sights (though Rose is guilty of the latter in this story). Rose Tyler, as the model for the new companion, here has an entire episode dedicated to  her and her family history. The Doctor allows Rose to meet her father before he dies, but it all goes horribly wrong.

It’s interesting to think that the relationship that matters most coming into this episode is that of mother and daughter. The small flashback to a young Rose being told by her mother about her father – Pete Tyler – is short, but it’s all we need. From before the opening credits, we know that Rose loves her father – or rather, the memory of her father. And so her desire to finally meet him makes perfect sense – if you had a super-duper time machine, who wouldn’t go and try to meet their dead parent? So her wish is granted. But of course, Rose can’t help herself. On their first go, she can’t do anything, too overwhelmed by watching her dead father die again. Yet the second time, she does what she shouldn’t do – she saves Pete.

Rose here is nothing more than a selfish teenager. Despite warnings from the Doctor, she does what she wants. And when he has a go at her for being so stupid, she leaves him, even though, really, neither of them want this. Her desire to see her father alive and well is perfectly understandable, but she hasn’t thought of the wider implications. And why should she? It is the Doctor who carries the burden of responsibility, and he tells her as much.

I love the dynamic between Pete and Rose. She is clearly in awe of this man, and yet he has absolutely no idea why, or who she even is. Presented as an everyman, Pete Tyler is a bit of an idiot, but loveable, and a nice guy. The tension between Jackie and Pete, to begin with, doesn’t make sense – why would Jackie talk about this man she seems to only tolerate, in such a positive way to her daughter? And so Rose sides with her dad, the man she believes to be almost superhuman in his ways. And I think, to begin with, even though Pete is doing nothing to live up to these superhuman aspirations, Rose is blind to his faults.

And yet, this is all perfectly understandable – clearly, she has daddy issues. She has made Pete out to be something he never was, though this has a lot to do with Jackie. But one cannot blame Jackie – the idea of protecting your young daughter from the actual memory of her father (not that Pete Tyler is a bad man) makes perfect sense.

Is the Doctor really angry that he is no longer the only man in Rose’s life? Or is it because he thought she was better than the others? Not just another ’stupid ape’? I think there are definitely elements of both here, and they do tie into each other. For the first time, we understand just how much both of these characters need each other – for Rose, this is just a smudge on her record, and for the Doctor, this is perhaps the first time he realises just how much he cares for Rose. In some ways, having Rose correctly guess that he would come running back to her weakens him somewhat as a character, but once he realises she is in danger, it makes perfect sense that he would want to try and save her.

By saving her dead father, Rose has created a something of a time paradox – a man who should be dead is still alive, and terrible creatures are here to feed off the time paradox energy. Ahh, Doctor Who mumbo jumbo – how can you not love it? The paradox serves two – no wait, three – purposes here – the first is to ensure that the important characters all end up in the same place so they can sit down and have a good chat about what’s going on. Two, it allows some sense of danger and desperation to the tone of the episode – particularly when the Doctor’s magic plan to save everyone goes horribly wrong, and he’s eaten by an oversized bat. This is another important event.

But the most important part of these creatures – Reapers, in the credits – is to highlight what goes wrong when you try and change history. Because there are two stories at work here. The first is Rose’s realisation that her father is not what she thought he was. And that’s tragic enough in itself. But more important is the realisation that you can’t change history, no matter what. There are always terrible consequences, and unwanted side effects, if you try and mould time to what you want.

What drags these two themes together is Pete Tyler’s self-sacrifice. Even though he is an everyman, a man who, in some ways, knows he isn’t special, knows he isn’t going to do anything amazing with his life, he understands that he should be dead. It’s lovely to realise that this man is so self-aware, that Rose’s description of him as the perfect father is the thing that tips him off. All too often, people are unaware of their own faults, but Pete’s realisation makes him special. So even though he won’t change the world, he is important. Even though he’s in our view for less than 42 minutes, we don’t want him to die. And kudos to Cornell for making this work so well.

Questions of time paradox are important, but not as important as the emotional punch this episode packs. I often thought this episode was a bit overrated, but on this watching, I understand fully why it’s so brilliant. And it’s not just brilliant television, it does have something to say – Father’s Day talks to us of the love between friends, between aliens, and between fathers and daughters.

And so the Doctor has picked up a new companion. somewhat unusually, he’s a man! Argh! But what will happen with the new companion and Rose, who seems to be ogling him at all available chances?

The Doctor, Rose and Adam arrive at Satellite Five in the year 200,000. But something isn’t right, and the Doctor wants ot know why. Meanwhile, Adam has decided that travelling in time and space is more useful than he could possibly have imagined.

It’s interesting to see some of the themes Robert Shearman explored in Dalek coming back here in The Long Game. In Dalek, we had Henry Van Statten more worried about making a profit from the alien artifacts he found than actually finding out anything about them. And while we thought that Adam wanted to travel with the Doctor and see the world because of his natural curiosity. It turns out, however, that he, too, wants to exploit the universe for his own good. He is the negative example for what a companion for the Doctor should be. While Rose again and again is shown to be the ‘good’ one (because she is asking all the right questions), Adam is eventually discovered for what he is doing, and is harshly punished for what he has done. Though, the final scene is pretty funny. Clicking one’s fingers has never been so hilarious.

Adam’s failure to become a proper travelling companion with the Doctor is not the only story that Davies is telling us here, though. His failure is backgrounded with an interesting take on the modern journalistic ethic, and the questioning of curiosity from the human race as a whole. In fact, I would almost go so far to say as ‘curiosity’ is  the concept that Davies is exploring most here.

While Satellite Five is touted as the frontier of journalism for the whole Human Empire, the Doctor quickly realises there is something amiss. The subtle digs at contemporary immigration policies is a nice touch, and its interesting to see the satire of the state of the all-powerful media at work. Satellite Five is supposed to be a bastion of free and bipartisan journalism, and yet something is holding them back. And in some ways, this is perhaps the central message of the episode – that these humans are wrong because they are not curious. They have become stagnated and cemented into their ways, not wanting, or needing, to find out anything else. They just take the word from Floor 500 as the gospel, and hope for the best. Davies is telling that this is not how it should be – Cathica becomes our hero because she is able to finally realise that she has to do something drastic to stop the cycle.

The last scene between the Doctor and Cathica is also interesting – all too often, there are a lot of questions surrounding the actions of the Doctor, and what might happen after he swoops in to save the day. And this is brought to the fore here, with Cathica asking why he cannot stay. And the Doctor just believes that his way is best. Somewhat strangely for Doctor Who, this issue is explored further down the track – but I’ll leave that for now.

Having said all this, however, there is a downside to The Long Game. It has this sense of being something of a filler episode. I don’t know why – and it certainly plays a vital part in the whole fabric of Series 1 – but it’s just not that interesting. In part, I think this is because it feels a bit generic – the costuming particularly does not help to identify the society in which we find ourselves as particularly alien or interesting. Also annoying is the fact that we are confined to almost one set – I understand that this is probably, from a budgetary point of view, quite necessary (and to be fair to the set dressers, Floor 500 is quite nicely done), but it still irks me somewhat. Who knows – maybe I just like to complain. Also letting the team down somewhat is the villain. Simon Pegg plays the role of the Editor very, very well, but the big slug monster that is the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe is a bit meh. Of course, the monster is out to make a profit. Of course, the Editor is there on behalf of the evil banks. It all just seems a bit sci-fi cliche to me. The Jagrafess is also annoying because there doesn’t seem to be very much motive on its behalf – it’s just sitting there taking up all the air con. And before anyone tells me otherwise, I know that the reason for its being there is explained later, but unfortunately, this does nothing for the episode here.

As I said above, this really does feel like a bit of fluff to fill in time. Which is a shame, because there are some interesting concepts at work here – Adam’s role as a bad companion is something that hasn’t been done before, so it’s a nice change. The other stuff is also interesting, but a bit more normal for Doctor Who. All in all, a bit meh.

**CONTEST BEGINS Oct. 24th**

Hey everyone! It’s Nike here to announce a HUGE Halloween Igloo Contest. Why is it HUGE? It’s HUGE because I’m giving away these Coin Code prizes…

1st Place — GRAND PRIZE — will receive 2 Series 4 Coin Code(s)… worth 4 items in said Treasure Book.

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And at Random, 2 lucky penguins will be selected to receive 1 Series 3 Code Code (each)… worth 2 items in said Treasure Book.

Here is the way Nike (me) and Icy are judging the Igloos.

• Creativity
• Style
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TO ENTER, PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO nikeandicycpc@gmail.com CONTAINING A PICTURE OF YOUR IGLOO AND YOUR PENGUINS NAME/PICTURE.

Starting and Ending Dates

The contest will being on October 24th, 2009….. and end on October 30th, 2009 (the day before Halloween).

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!

~Nike~

P. S. – We are in no way associated with Club Penguin, this is our own contest.

Hi, all. My name is Nick, and I’ll be posting here under the name freelancer. I’m kind of rushed to post, but soon I plan on outlining why I’m here and what I’m doing.

I want to focus on a lack of critical thinking that seems to be plaguing the very roots and expressions of our culture, and how, I feel, that skepticism seems to be the most appropriate response to living in the reality we call this universe.

I’m going to chronicle my years long journey from credulous child, to fabulist adolescent, to delusional young adult, to finally where I am today: consistantly tearing down deliberate or unintentional fantasy in place of empirical fact.

Skepticism is not cynicism. It isn’t a narcissistic Woody Allen-esque self-doubt, it is not the seductive nihilism of Tyler Durden, but it is a way of confidantly looking at the world that constantly and (without regard to sacred things, traditional dogmas, or cultural taboos) asks the question: “How do I know what I know? What evidence is there for that?”

Before I begin the narrative of my journey to my worldview, I figure that it is only appropriate to give you a short, albeit entertaining and informative introduction into how someone with a skeptical bent actually functions. I’m sure I’ll be posting more on some of the great names in the current skeptical movement, as well as people that are considered to be heroes, but for now, sit back and enjoy:

The Doctor and his companions travel around time and space – why? For the most part, it is to revel in the wonders that the universe has to offer – whether this be Christmas in Victorian Naples, or the beauty of a planet being naturally destroyed. What of those people who don’t travel, though? Those people the Doctor meets who want to see the stars, but don’t really understand what this entails? Dalek presents us with such a character.

In 2012, Henry Van Statten is, arguably, the most powerful businessman of the time. Hell, he owns the internet. But his penchant for collecting all things alien is interrupted when the Doctor and Rose receive a distress call from his museum. This isn’t any ordinary call, though. It is coming from a Dalek.

Were I, personally, to collect things from outer space, it would be because I’d quite like to go there one day. To see what is out there, the beauty of the natural world – yet a natural world so unlike what we perceive to be natural. This is also why the Doctor acts as an ersatz tour guide for his companions – to show off the wonders of time and space.

But for Van Statten, it really isn’t about the wonders of space and time. His collection is just another status symbol for him – a way for him to exert his own power over things he doesn’t understand. Ironically enough, Van Statten does spend a lot of time in Dalek trying to understand the Dalek – he wants to know what it is, why it does what it does, and how. The Doctor cannot understand why Van Statten would even bother with this collection if he doesn’t care about the stuff – and this clash of paradigms is interesting to watch. Obviously we are encouraged to side with the Doctor, and this makes a lot of sense. Here, Shearman is telling us that collecting the outside world is not enough – we must be engaged with what happens around us, and be curious about new things.

Christopher Eccleston is on fire in this episode. Seriously, that first scene with him and the lone Dalek is genuinely terrifying. Even though he is shit scared of this one Dalek, once he realises that the Dalek cannot do anything, he turns instantly. The power is all his, and he revels in the ability to taunt a Dalek that can’t kill. Because really, what does a Dalek do when it cannot kill?

Indeed, the Doctor is so unlike himself here, that he will torture a Dalek. Is this something we as viewers are comfortable with? Oddly enough, it seems that yes, we are fine with it. For the most part, we want the Doctor to be our pacifist hero, willing to shun violence in favour of diplomacy, but here, the Ninth Doctor, so burnt up with guilt from the Time War, he is more than willing to torture the last remaining Dalek. And we don’t mind. Which is an interesting dichotomy. Of course, in the script, the Doctor is punished for his actions. Rose asks him whether he is really the Dalek, when he points a giant gun at her. We know that the Doctor cannot be the one with the gun – it just isn’t right. And when he tries to be the one with the gun, he is brought back down by his companion – the traveller he needs to ensure his morality remains true.

In stark contrast to the reaction of the Doctor, we have Rose Tyler reacting in a very different way. Partially because she has no history with the Daleks, and partially because she is so very, very human, she instantly pities the Dalek, once she realises it is being tortured. And I suppose, without prior knowledge of the atrocities of the Daleks, this is a perfectly natural reaction. She doesn’t, like Van Statten, assume that the alien is evil, or needs to be catalogued. Rose just wants to help it – a reaction that is so very Rose.

The other big question Shearman asks of us is this: what happens to a Dalek when they are no longer a Dalek? While this is somewhat of a metaphorical question (in relation to this Dalek’s inability to kill), he is also asking us this question from a purely genetic point of view. What happens to a creature, bred to hate literally every other kind of life form other than its own kind, when it physically becomes something else? Clearly, the xenophobic nature of the Dalek eventually wins out against the humanity with which it has been imbibed from Rose. It cannot stand the fact that the ‘purity’ of its genetics have been compromised, and so the only thing left for it to do is to commit suicide. Similarly, the inability of the Dalek to change and adapt to the situation in which it finds itself is too much for it. It is clear that the existential crisis the Dalek is facing is all too much for it, and can’t change who it is

Joe Ahearne should also receive some credit for some nice direction – particularly of the Dalek itself. The use of close-ups, particularly on somewhat abstract images, like the bumps of the body, and the gun, make for some excellent visuals. really bringing home the alien-ness of the Dalek.

Dalek is certainly the most intelligent and adult episode of the new run so far. Despite this, though, it is also an excellent (re-)introduction to the entire concept of the Daleks. And for a race of aliens that are synonymous with Doctor Who, this thoughtful, yet interesting, episode introduces the Nazi pepper pots to a whole new audience in a whole new century.

After a quick tour to the two ends of time, we’re back in modern day London. Oh no, wait a minute. It’s not 2005. It’s 2006. A year into the future. Well that’s unfortunate. Despite this, though, there are bigger problems to worry about. Aliens are on the loose, and they have plans that have to be stopped.

Strangely enough, this two parter (the first of the New Series) has attracted quite a lot of hate from quite a lot of people. There are several reasons for this, and I thought I’d address them in this review, because I feel a lot of these criticisms are unfounded.

To begin with, though – how excellent is the idea of returning a companion back to her home, just to drop in, only to get your destination just that little bit wrong. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem, but here, Davies uses the TARDIS’ propensity for wrong landings to create an excellent situation. Because, of course, the question of what happens to the people who know companions is something not very often explored in the original run. And I think it’s done pretty well here – the bond between Rose and Jackie is really stong in this story, and really sets up a lot of stuff that happens later on, including Rose’s eventual departure.

There’s actually quite a lot of stuff set up in Aliens of London/World War Three that becomes quite important later on in the new run. In particular, everyone’s favourite British MP, Harriet Jones. Penelope Wilton does an excellent job of imbuing Jones with a great deal of humanity, and is remarkably calm under pressure. She’s an excellent character. And despite not being front and centre in the script, this story also sees the first time UNIT has been used in the new run, and for now, they are nothing more than the military presence. Torchwood also gets a somewhat indirect reference, with Tosh making a subtle appearance as a doctor.

And so, the villains. The Slitheen are an excellent creation. Intergalactic black marketeers, always on the lookout for a cheap deal, or something they can sell off to the highest bidder. Their plan to destroy the world makes sense because they don’t just want to destroy the world. They have a reason for the nuclear war they are trying so desperately to start – sell off the radioactive slag that will be left over. Actually, this is quite ingenious. The Slitheen are also nicely recognised not as a race, but as a family from the hilariously named Raxacoricofallapatorius. I love the stupidity of this name – for a story that is somewhat of a satire, this seems somehow appropriate. It’s a nice change to see a planet that is not easy to pronounce, or stupidly faux-sci-fi named, like Alpha Prime or the such. Similarly, enough of a unique culture is painted here – their love of hunting, for example, as well as their keen sense of smell. Oh, and their living calcium, which makes for some funny explosion scenes.

The Slitheen do have a slight problem, though. Their realisation on screen leaves something to be desired. The effects of their zip heads are actually very well done – the simple blue light is all that is needed – and the lumbering forms of men in rubber suits is also fine. There is, however, a slight problem between the rubber suit Slitheen and the CG Slitheen that take to running down corridors. They don’t really match up, and while their love of the hunt would perhaps indicate some kind of ability to participate in such an event, I prefer the lumbering ones. They look better.

And now to the criticisms. The big thing that a lot of people seem to have a problem with in this episode is the presence of bodily functions. In particular, farting. Yes, the Slitheen have problems keeping their huge frames in our tiny body bags, creating something of a gas problem.

But, to be fair, these farts are hardly the cornerstone of the story, and are really just there to ramp up some of the comedy. Because, really, this story is somewhat of a satire, which is (often) supposed to be funny, poking fun at its intended targets. Here, the targets are politicians. The joke that all of our politicians are actually aliens in disguise, running the world for their own nefarious plans – is intrinsically funny. This is helped by some less than subtle phrases, like “mass weapons of destruction”. And while Davies touches on themes such as this in later works (see Children of Earth for more details), the reactions of governments in first contact is something that is ripe for exploring. And the use of nuclear weapons against hostile aliens makes sense. If these weapons were accidently fired at something else, this could be problematic. Then, the political instability of nations with nuclear weapons at their disposal creates a war in which no one wins. Aliens of London/World War Three plays on the public’s fear of incompetent governments, of nuclear war (something we still fear in the twenty-first century), and people not being who they seem.

Other than this, Aliens of London/World War Three manages to again ground this science fiction in reality, and the use of Jackie and Mickey in this episode begin to show their good sides. While Mickey is still being used as comic relief, the scene at the end with him and the Doctor talking about why Mickey can’t come along really helps to define Mickey, and he’s actually a nice guy. Similarly, while Jackie Tyler may possibly be the most overprotective mother in the world, she does get to slap the Doctor and, really, who can blame her?

I’m not going to pretend this is classic Doctor Who. It’s not. But, it is nowhere near as bad as many people make out to be. There are some interesting themes at work here, and unfortunately, some people can’t get over the fart jokes. If you, as a discerning viewer, can ignore these, though, this is a solid political satire – something science fiction in general is very good at.

I’m now selling the third batch of cards, and they are slightly cheaper. Updated pricing is as follows;

International: NZ$80 (~US$56) including postage paid by Paypal
More than one card is NZ$70 (~US$49) each + postage (please email for cost)

Discounted to NZ$69 (including postage) for New Zealand orders paid by direct credit. More than one card is NZ$65 each + postage (please email for cost)

Bulk orders are welcome, on which I’ll provide more of a discount.