Edmund Zebrowski LIVE!

TV...now, then and to come

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:52:00 GMT

TV...now, then and to come
Watching Pushing Daisies right now and am just in love with the series. You got to watch it. It has that whole "Tell me a story" thing about it that I love. Very Tim Burton in style and the fact that the guy that read the Harry Potter books does the narration is just the icing on the cake. Please watch this show

Been watching Rock Follies as of late. It's an off beat series that aired in the UK in 1976-1977. It's a kind of musical drama about three girls that form a rock band and the struggles that come with it. Got both seasons on DVD from Amazon UK and just finished the first season. It's kind of good in a culty kind of way. There is one song called On the Road that really makes me long for the days of road trips and rocky horror.

On the TV to come MTV is showing Legally Blond the musical complete direct from Broadway. I'm VERY excited about it. I haven't seen the show live, but I have seen the first number and it looks like it is going to be a real fun show.

I baked some cookies the other day that I swear must be filled with crack because they are so fucking good. Been watching the episodes of Good Eats on baking and been using the tips he uses. Good Eats is the THE BEST show ever to come out of the Food Network.

We turned the heat on for the first time tonight, and life had moved to fall mode. We have a big sugar maple tree behind the house and I can't wait to see what color it's going to change to. I also started to make my own shampoo with the soapwort that I got. It was real easy, just boiling the herb in water for 20 min and there ya go. It works well. Just one more thing to replant in the spring. 3-16 should really start to take off next year. I have a bunch of mint harvested for tea this winter, and I'm going to be cutting some comfry root and make some ointments next weekend, this weekend is already full booked

Lord..first of two

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:51:28 GMT

Lord..first of two
Been a while I know but here is the scoop on the last new weeks of life.

Life is good

that's about it

The house is fantastic. We had a great gathering here over Labor day and did our first cook out. Everyone that sees the place loves it ,and two or three have even threatened to move into the basement. I have to say I like the fact that people like our place, as not a week goes by without some gathering or another going on it's good to know that people are comfortable.

We started to chop out some of the front trees this weekend in order to open up the front lawn. They had planted about 5 evergreens in the front of the yard, and now they have gotten to big to be next to each other... well they were to big about ten years ago, but hey what can you do.

We saw The Producers at Lincolnshire about two weeks ago and laughed our asses off. Hands down the best show that they have done in about three years. The cast was fantastic, almost better then on Broadway, and they did an amazing job staging it.

In the world of theatre those that know my fetich for bad musicals will be happy to know that you too can see the strangest show you will ever see right here in Chicago. End of the month In My Life opens for just two weeks here. It is the show about the girl with OCD that falls in love with the guy that has teretts , but that's normal because, as the cross dressing angel will tell you, they are part of god's first reality opera complete with pirates, a number with tap dancing skeletons and a whole musical number about an exploding brain tumer......*joy*...I saw the broadway run of this show and am going to be there opening night to see the new production. When it was announced on the message boards the reaction was that pigs were flying. It lasted only 42 shows on the Great White Way.....*sigh

I'm looking into taking massage classes as maybe a side hobby. I'm taking a Reiki massage class this weekend to see if I like it.

We decorated the house for Halloween yesterday. Not over the top, just nice and tasteful. Our first real holiday here.

We have birds...lots and lots of birds. I put out a feeder when we first moved in and it was like throwing out one loaf of bread to a tribe of starving Eathopians. Now we have about half a dozen feeders and play host to a bunch of wildlife including a black squirrel.

The new Terry Pratchett book came out. it's called Making Money, it is a follow up to Going Postal a book I think everyone should read, because you'll laugh your ass off. To fill space before that came out I burned my way through a series called Tales of the Otori, that starts with the book Across The Nightingale Floor. Good, a bit on the light side, but entertaining.

After seeing the fantastic trailer for it we went to see Across The Universe a few weeks ago, and walked out two thirds of the way threw it. It was awful, but looking forward to seeing Sweeny Todd this christmas.

I'm going to eat some cookies more later...

Good Earth, HAIR and Stardust

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:49:47 GMT

Good Earth, HAIR and Stardust
Well my week has been quite a busy one. For work I had to head up to the Twin Cites for a sales show. I started out on Friday morning at about 9Am for the long 6-7 hour drive up there. Truth be told I do love the drive. For a nature guy like me it's a joy. I gathered up a few good CDs, packed a bag and the laptop into the car and headed up. The drive takes me through most of the upper regions of Wisconsin. Here is where you will find places like Black River Falls, Crystal Cave, and Black Bear Forest. It truly is breathtaking as you drive up steep hills that then lead you windingly down into valleys full of growing corn, and cows then though giant stone out croppings and into miles and miles of forests. I put on the Book of Secrets CD and Zened out for a good three hours of the drive, just gazing deep into the valise and forests. Once there the whole thing just kind of falls apart. We are in our showroom from 9-6 each day and then your on your own for the night. I took this time to get all my files of projects sorted out in the laptop so all the writing and creative bits are in order. Not wishing to spend too much money while I was there I had brought a bunch of books to read and DVDs to watch, but I did go out to eat one of the nights. This was to a restaurant called Good Earth. I guess it's been open there for almost thirty years and has always been an natural and organic place to eat. It is a wonderful place to go. If you are ever in the area they have amazing food and one of the few pie crusts I actually think is good. So for the last four days I've been sitting in a hotel reading, cleaning and working...wow life is grand.

HAIR

A CD I took with with was the OCR of HAIR, and as I was listening to it it struck me that this one album has had the greatest impact on how I live my life. I first heard HAIR back in 85 when a friend of mine ,Steve Mac. (Hi Steve) gave me a tape of it. First time I listened to it I had no idea what it was. It had a few good tunes like Aquarius, Air, and Let The Sun Shine In, but that was about it. It was one night when I put it on in our living room back at home that it truly became more then another cast recording. My mom was not crazy about it, but she let me play it and while we listened to it she told me stories of life in the 60s', of burning bras, protesting the war, and all the turmoil going on all hither unto unknown to my 10 year old mind. Those stories still stick with me to this day. It was a few years later in my teenage years when I fell into my Rocky Horror crowd that I found others that liked it and I began to seek out as much information as I could on it. I became a groupie of a tour that came into Chicago back in 98. I saw it, and pretty much was in it every night for over two weeks. My friend Kelly would come with me some times and we were decked out in colorful gear and I had my hair long back then and we became fast friends with the cast. Night after night I was lead onto the stage and was part of various scenes such as the Be-In where I got naked on stage, Let the Sun Shine in where some times it was so intense I was afraid of passing out while up there. I have met about a half dozen of the original broadway cast and even still email Michael Butler, the shows original producer, every now and then. Now I have close to a dozen books on it and over 40 recordings of the show, and it still has the power to take my breath away and wrench my being . But more then looking at what I have collected I look at my world on a whole, Zen meditation. earth awareness, sex and drugs...well a little past that......and other things that speak back to that piece of music. I never would have thought that my life would reflect art to any degree, but there it is. Anyone else have something like that in their world?

Stardust

One thing I did do while up in the Twin Cities was go and see Stardust. I read the book about five years ago and remember liking it, but am blurry on the fine points of the story. Neil Gamain is in the same pompous camp as George Lucas for me, but I respect Neil a little more because at least his ideas are original. Lucas on the other hand just knows how to take everyone elses ideas and package them better, once he gets a truly original thought then I'll give him a break, until then.... well. Neil is a good ideas man. He can come up with great visual ideas, which is great for his graphic novel medium, but for me he has never been able to really successfully sustain a novel. He tends to come up with a string of cool ideas and places but pretty much leaves us feeling kind of 'eh about his leading characters. Take his last film of Mirror Mask. Fantastic visual film, but the story was kind of dragged out and one never really cared about the lead character, you were just wondering what next weird thing was coming around the corner. Stardust is Neil's most polished story for me, maybe because he is drawing on familiar themes and one never really IS supposed to care about fairy-tale characters that much. That said I did think this was a fantastic movie. The first 20-30 min felt over rushed but after that it is one heck of a good romp on the screen. It benefits and suffers from the Peter Jackson syndrome that is happening to fantasy movies these days. I benefits do to the lush details in the sets and costumes, suffers from the camera shots that look copied almost movement for movement at some moments. Still I totally recommend that people see it on the big screen, trust me you will not get the same feeling at home with this one.

Going to be posting a few pics of the move later on tonight so you all can see what living in boxes is like. Only three days left till we become home owners. Some how I never thought that I would be doing this, but here I am about to put down roots.

Harry, Hairspray and I forget what else....

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:57:28 GMT

Been a while and I've gotten a bunch of people asking me all the same questions so I'm going to answer them in mass.

What did you think of the end of Harry Potter?
So many of you know that I've been reading Harry Potter since book one and have heard the stories of waiting outside Barns and Noble in the DAYTIME for books to come out before they did the whole midnight thing. Now we come to the end. Yes, I did go to the last midnight party. This was the first time for me going in costume. After Scott and I saw Hairspray (more on that below) I got dressed in my ren-fair best and got to the book store at about 8:30 to wait with the rest of the fans for the magic midnight hour. It was a great time, I saw people I knew and met new ones. I made sure to take a moment to just stand and observe as I knew this was going to be the last of it's kind. Then I got the book, went home and promptly went to bed. I had to work down in the city that weekend so I had to get SOME sleep. On the train to and from the show for the next two days I devoured the 764 pages. My verdict... I loved it. It was by far the most different of the series and it was what was needed. I felt that it was well paced and I really enjoyed all the little threads of plot getting tied up. It was the first book I felt was too short. I felt that it could have been about 50 pages longer and been better. All in all a good end to the series.

One thing I STILL don't get about the books is this: On the flap of the dust jacket it states that this is the last book in the epic story of Harry Potter. For some reason I never got the epic feeling from these books. Are they good books; hell yea, but are they 'epic'...naaa, not in my book. The books that make up His Dark Materials of Lord of the Rings are epic, Harry was just a great story that I almost felt was intimate. It almost all took place within the walls of Hogworts and most of the action took place in the past so good, yes..epic...no.

Have you seen Hairspray yet?
Ummmmmmmmmmmmm think about that. I've seen the show 4 times on broadway and am a John Waters nut..I don't feel the need to really answer that one. I thought it was fantastic. Bright, fun, tune filled and the best movie they could make of the show. I've seen it twice and might be seeing it again this week . GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

How goes the move?
We're living in boxes for the most part here right now. I walked into the downstairs bathroom a few minutes ago and forgot that we had put the new coat rack in there because we have no other place to put it. We have so much new stuff going into that house I've forgotten half of what we have gotten, it's not even going to seem like ours yet. Down to the bare things now, and waling around piles of boxes and new furniture. Very excited about getting out of here. Made our last rent payment to the complex and are getting butterflies as the big day draws near. We close next week Friday, the 17th, and as I head to a sales show out of town end of this week I have but 6 days left to spend here. It's going to be a week of hell moving, unpacking, building, painting and planting. I have so much that I want to get done right off the bat. I know I can wait, but while we have the time and money now to do it there is no reason not to get it done. I have a great deal of plants that have been growing here in little pots that I'll be needing to get into the ground I have most of the week off following the signing so I hope to get a bunch of it done before the official move on the 25th. We're looking at having our house warming BBQ over Labor Day weekend, so I have to get SOME stuff done.

How goes the 3-16 project?

Very good actually. This weekend we went to the WI state fair with my mom and grandmother. When we dropped grandma off she loaded us down with bags and bags of peaches from her trees in the back yard so Scott and I blanched, pealed, cut and vacuum sealed about 8 quart bags of peaches for pies this winter today. This on top of the 36 cups of red and black raspberries that we have picked from mom's yard. We have enough organically home grown fruit to last the winter. We have apples coming next month. I did my first batch of home made tomatoes for lunch this week with the first fruits of the season from mom so we will see how that al works out. The next big step for this is to get the almost 80 plants growing here into the ground for the fall so they can get roots for the winter months. Gotten Scott to take up all natural cleaning with a book called Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean. She has tones of natural cleaning tips in the book that work amazingly. Scott has taken to it like a fish to water and we're perfecting the techniques for when we move so that we don't have any chemical cleaners in the house.

Not all time is spent on work or the house we did go out to dinner with a bunch of friends on Friday night. About a dozen of us had dinner and drinks. We had to call it an early night as we were heading out bright and early for the WI state fair for cream puffs and sweet corn. It was a pain driving there this year with the road construction, but we had a good day and ate our fill of sweets and fair food for another year. So life here is going on. Hopefully I'll get to play Catan after we have moved as both Carmen and I are both having withdrawal from it. The group and I are also going to be watching all the Best Picture of the Year movies in order from All Quiet on the Western Front on once we're settled into the new place, and everyone is invited to watch with us.

Just finished the first season of the Third Doctor, and I'll have more thougts on that in a bit as Project Who still roles on....

House, Harispray and Harry

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:49:20 GMT

We locked our rate!!!! Now we are “clear to close” according to Glenn and all is good. So this means that in about 28 days Scott and I will be home owners. Gosh it’s kind of an exciting but scary feeling. We’re living in boxes right now, because we have so much energy to move that we feel the need to put into a box anything that isn’t nailed down. So here is our time line for the week that we close:

Aug 17: is THE day of signing and the day we get sign away our souls for 30 years. I’ve decided to take the day off since I KNOW that the minute we’re out of there I’m over at the new place painting.

Aug 18-19: The old carpet is taken out and the wood for the upstairs floor is delivered. As well as the day we should finish painting the basement and I start to move in the boxes and boxes of books records and shit. I predict that since I have the 20th off as well the place should be done in three days so that is one floor taken care of

Aug: 20-21: The new carpet and floors are put in as we are having the bathroom tiled, hardwood in the upstairs and carpet put in on the downstairs.

Aug 21-23: We are moving the boxes of kitchen stuff and cloths over and getting them all unpacked. This is the after work projects that will keep us busy till the weekend.

Aug 24: The day we get a U-haul and head up to my mom’s and get the antiques and tools she is bequeathing to us and get those into the house and into place

Aug 25: The movers come at 7AM to move the heavy pieces and we move the lighter stuff thus finishing the move.

So provided nothing goes a rye we should be good to go with everything. Housewarming sometime over the Labor Day weekend for anyone wanting to stop on by.

Hairspray opens in movie theatres around the US tomorrow and we are there at 6:00 tomorrow night to get an early show in before I make my final midnight pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble for the last of the Harry Potter books. It’s going to be about a week of media black out for me as I read it. I know there are those people that are saying “I’m going to have it read in three hours of getting it” and it’s kind of like a pissing contest about who can read it the fastest, but as I have to work at a show this weekend I’m not going to be able to just lock myself away. I’ll be I-poding it all week with no TV, Radio, Newspaper, Internet or anything that might have a reaction to the book. It’s been 10 years in the making and I really would hate to have it ruined by some dumb ass news reporter.

Scott and I have been addicted to My Life on the D list and watch it almost nonstop these days. We both have always loved Kathy Griffin, but something is just really clicking right now. Last episode next week. We are also finishing the last season of Flootballers Wives….sigh..the end of trash TV as we know it.

I repotted house plants last night…damn I hate doing that. I have a few plants that are about even years old now and they are getting pretty big so a repotting is a lot of work. Were looking at having the plants in the living room so I got some rather nice pots to put them in. I’m hoping that were going to start working on the herb bed the first weekend in September and get in what I have growing, if not I may lose most of what I have done this year. No matter I guess, I’ll just restart things up in the spring. I have to remember that the herbs and lawn need not be done all at once. I know this I just need to keep reminding myself every so often.

BIG news

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 04:26:39 GMT

Well it has been a long time since we have talked and ALOT has been going on first off the 3-16 initiative is coming along great. I have trays and trays of seedlings sprouted and growing. I have been collecting old canisters for storage of the clippings when the season comes. About 7 of the 12 herbs planted this year have been transplanted and the comfrey roots have just grown like mad. I can't wait to get them all into the ground...and that's the big news, and a major reason for the lack of updates. Scott and I have bought a house. Our new place is in Algonquin IL right along the Fox River. It's a house that was built in 1920, and sits on a two acer lot.

Scott and I were out driving last Sunday and while he was looking for another house to show me we stumbled onto an open house. The place is a little A frame house set far back on the double lot with fantastic old trees. We loved it for the get go. It has a three season porch, fire pit, two car garage, great landscaping and tons of charm. We thought that it was going to be out of our price range, but were floored to find out that it was right in the middle of it. The nice couple that lives there has owned the house for the last 17 years, and he used to work for Enesco..ho cool is that. We were VERY excited about it and started calling around to out realtor and loan advisor as to what we should do. So on Wednesday we went back to do another walk through and after that we went back to the realtor office and wrote out first offer. Less then an hour later we were standing in Kinko's getting my latest project printed out when we got the call that they accepted our bid. We were floored, and so happy/scared that neither of us got much sleep that night.

The next day Scott worked with a mortgage guy that he had worked with last winter when we were thinking of buying. I got on the phone with the guy that I had worked with back around that time as well. Well Glenn, my guy has come up with a great rate and all, and were now about 2/3 of the way through getting the house bought. We can't get out of our lease here till mid August, which is perfect, because they wanted to move out about mid-August. So yes folks I think we have a winner. I'll have pictures up of some of the yard and porch in my photos section so take a peek.

We also had time to see the new Pirates and Spider Man movies over the last week. Pirates just rocked. It was big, fast, and over the top just as it should have been. I can't wait for parts four and five to come out. Spider Man on the other hand was a miserable pice of wet toast. Just MST3K bad with some of the most embarrassing scripted lines we have ever heard. A bunch of us went and so it turned into one of those evenings that we won't forget soon.

We stopped up by my mom's for her birthday last weekend as well. This year we gave her somthing that she can really use...a 30GB Ipod and CD speaker dock. I don't think I have ever seen her mosr scared of a gift, but we showed her how to use it, and by the next day so was calling us up to tell us that she had used it on her morning walk, taken it out cutting the grass and just had it going all day. She has over 8000 showtunes in it so it should keep her going for some time

I promise I'll be more regular in my postings, as a bunch of you guys have written me wondering if I am still alive. Yes, but getting the mortgage is just a pain and a half and I can't wait till it's over. We're going to have a big house warming party so be ready for it.

The week away and an update on 3-16

Mon, 21 May 2007 01:08:39 GMT

Well we're back from vacation and what a week it has been. It started back last Thursday when I went over to my friend Di's place to help her plant her pots of herbs. She has never planted anything before and wanted my help. So we sat there replanting plants and starting seeds in trays. I got seven trays of seeds planted and got the Comfry root potted into big...big pots. There were just these little things. It was great fun as we talked about things. So home came the trays and into the fridge with some and onto the window sills with others. The pots of comfry are on the upstairs balcony. Then Friday night Scott and I packed for the week at Disney and The Island. Packed were all the pairs of shorts and short sleeve shirts, a few good books and my spirit flute. I was not able to sleep Friday night, which was a short night as it was because we were to be up at 4AM to get to the airport. Ya know 4AM is a crappy time to have to start a vacation, but hey it is sometimes the thing you have to do. We got to the airport and checked in and on our way with no problem. We left a 55 degree morning and landed in a 82 degree afternoon in Orlando FL.

Day 1: A glassy day, a new book and I get drunk
Our first day there was kind of a lazy day. We got there about 10AM and slowly wondered the area. Scott used to live there so he took me around to some of his old haunts. We then stopped at the Tiffany Glass Museum that is down there. That was VERY cool to see. It really reminded me how much I can't wait to get the house and pick up that hobby again. We saw the stained glass chapel that was made for the Chicago World's Fair that Devil in the White City was written about. We got to see how he did some of his techniques. We wiled away the afternoon there then headed over to our hotel. It was a beautiful room with Sleep Number beds and a view of the huge pool and saunas below. That night we met up with Scott's friend Judy for dinner at a local place to eat. While we were waiting for her I was able to stop in to the Border's across the street and there I found a herbal book I had been wanting to take a look at, so I plunked down some cash and walked out with a fantastic new book. Dinner went well. To the shock of many of readers I got waited at dinner. The bar had my alcoholic vice and it was yummy. We headed back to the hotel and passed out that night.

Day 2: Lions and tigers and ...well now bears but we got to see wort hogs
We started our trip at the Disney parks with the newest one; Animal Kingdom. It was fucking amazing. The park is like a huge jungle with this massive tree in the middle called The Tree of Life. It is a sculpted tree with huge animals and birds carved into it. The roots of the tree sprawl out over the whole middle of the park and the whole thing is just breathtaking. We took the safari ride and saw tigers, work hogs, elephants, gorillas, lions and many, many other animals in this wonderful savanna that they made. Truth be told I was not looking forward to going to the parks but that soon changed. The park was engrossing and fascinating. The weather was perfect and the day was awesome. The only bummer was the fact that we got into see Finding Nemo the musical and it got canceled do to technical issues. Judy met us at the park later in the day and hung with us till the park closed. That night we were very tired and just headed over to Chick-fil-A for dinner. That night we headed down to the hot tub and just soaked for a while before heading up to bed.

Day 3: Yea it really is that cool
We awoke early to make our way to The Magic Kingdom. Our plan was to do the Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon. We headed over to the park on the ferry and I actually got a little giddy seeing the peaks of the park come around the bend of the lake surrounding the park. It was made that way so that you could not see the park from outside. That way it was if you were entering a whole different world, and you truly do. Now I am not a massive Disney supporter, but this park was truly magical. The level of detail in the buildings and landscaping was so incredible that you really have to see it to believe it. We took our picture in front of the castle and went on all the rides that you are supposed to; Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World and all. It was wonderful. There is no way to explain it. Out of the four parks we went to Animal Kingdom was my favorite, but The Magic Kingdom was the most incredible.

After a short morning there took the monorail to Epcot. Yea... Well Epcot is the park that I remember hearing most about growing up because it was new, and that silver dome thing is just so cool looking. The front part of the park is Tomorrow Land and it was lame.....very lame. The dome...lame... The only saving grace there was the gardens that they had. Plants... good. The park looked pretty much like a bust to me, but we were waiting around for Judy to meet us there later that day so we had to stay. Then things turned around as we went through the back of the park. The part some people call Drinking Around The World. It's this massive semicircle that has sections from around the world such as Mexico, Norway, Germany, Italy, Japan, England, China, France and on and on. Each mini area is staffed by exchange workers from that country and had shops, restaurants, and bars featuring the native food, drink and items from that country. Here we saw a celtic rock group called Off Kilter that were fucking amazing. They had guitars and bagpipes...me happy. We sat down to watch them for a set and then walked our way around the world. That was fun. All the different people, items, food.. it was allot of fun. Once again we headed back to the hotel and unwound in the hot tub before heading off to bed.

Day 4: We FINALLY see Nemo and are board off our ass.
This was supposed to be the easy day. All we were going to do was go to the last park; Disney-MGM Studios. So we thought this would be a good chance to see if we could catch the Finding Nemo show back at Animal Kingdom. This was a big point for me as the guys that wrote Avenue Q also wrote the score to this show and I really wanted to see it. We got there at 10:30 for the 11:30 show and about thirty minutes into waiting we were told that it was canceled, but was assured that the 1:00 show would be going on. So I plunked my ass down...now at the beginning of the line...and waited till 1:00. Scott took off to go on some rides and joined me back in line in time to go into the theatre. The show went off, and was well worth the wait. It was a 45 min show and it was a joy from start to finish. The show is much like Lion King with people working with puppets, but so much better.

After that we headed to the MGM park. It was the lamest yet. Dull..boring and just no reason to see it again. We wondered around for a while waiting for the fireworks show at the end of the day... and it was a long day. By the time we got back to the hotel we both were well parked out and set to relax.

Days 5-7: We do nothing

We woke up and drove the two hours to the small island that would be home for the next three days. The beach house we were renting was massive. Three huge bedrooms each with it's own special bathroom featuring something different like a claw foot tub, whorl-pool tub or huge shower. The kitchen was fully loaded and the privet pool had a waterfall. in less the one minute you can be at the beach with ultra soft sugar sand and water so clear you can see to the bottom even 50 feet out. Here is where for three days we just laid out in the sun, ate at quaint little beach side restaurants, and just had a fantastic time. We got 90 minute deep tissue massages and just plunked our asses down and did jack shit. We loved it. The weather was perfect every day and we watched the sun set over the gulf every night we were there. We loved it so much we want to rent the house again next year and bring people with us. The dam place can sleep 8 and we can all spend a week at the beach, grilling, swimming and hanging out. Over the days there I did read a bit of my new book as well as translate the first chapter of The Tao Ti Ching and play my flute at sunrise at the ocean. Such a great way to unwind. Sadly the time there did have to end and we packed up and headed home.

Back at home many of the seeds have started to sprout, which is amazing given that it had only been a week. The Comfry plants are almost 8 inches tall and have leave all over them and I harvested my first herbs: dandelions. These are very good for cleaning out the digestive system. So I harvested about 10 plants and am making a ticture out of a few of them and the rest of them are hanging to dry. The rest of today as been spent playing with the kitties and doing more jack shit. Back to work tomorrow after a week off so we'll see how things went and then back to the grind of projects and plants.

The 3 16 initiative

Wed, 02 May 2007 14:11:10 GMT

For the last two weeks I've been busy researching and preparing for a very lofty goal. It's a plan I'm personally calling the 3-16 initiative. This began a year ago when I started to eat all natural. That kind of became eating all organic and now this. What is this? Later on this fall or early winter Scott and I will be getting a house and with that comes a yard. By planting sixteen different herb plants and three fruits and vegetables I hope in 18 months for that date to be able to derive almost all my daily personal care and a big chunk of my food intake from what I grow. Thus cutting down on the amount of garbage I generate.
By researching plants and their uses I will be planting herbs from which I will be able to make shampoo, face cleaners, skin moisturizers, simple cold care, headache medicine, and all that I need for my sacred quests. So far here is what I have going in:

Soapwort root (20 plants) - by boiling this whole pant in water and then reducing the mixture by half you get a nice, mild shampoo. You can add rosemary or chamomile to it for sent. It’s a great white flowering groundcover as well.

Comfrey (3 rootings)- One of the most useful herbs out there. The herb contains allantoin, a cell proliferant that speeds up the natural replacement of body cells. This means that it will promote the swift healing of damaged or injured tissues, as well as maintaining cell growth and preventing diseases. Comfrey has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments ranging from bronchial problems, broken bones, sprains, arthritis, gastric and varicose ulcers, severe burns, acne and other skin conditions. A salve of the roots of this plant is easy to make out of a decoction of the root and adding beeswax.

Mint (10 plants) - Ahh mint, one of my favorite plants. I’m a huge drinker of mint teas as well as using mint oils in cooling lotions. It’s great for burns and upset stomachs.

Lavender- (80 plants) - Yes that does seam like a quite a bit of lavender till you know Scott and his love for the sent. Now truth be told I’m much more of a sage person when it comes too sent, but lavender will do. This number of plants will allow the making of lavender oil for scenting laundry soaps, pillow sprays. I’m going to make the knot hedging of the garden out of this.

Rosemary- (10 plants) - One of the best cooking herbs out there when fresh it also, when combined with Skullcap makes for one great tea for getting rid of headaches.

Skullcap- (10 plants) - So named for its blue skull cap shaped flowers this is the second part of the tea for headaches.

Vervain- (10 plants) - A beautiful purple flowering herb that is a very good sleep inducer. Combined with chamomile it makes a wonderful bed time tea.

English Thyme (5 plants) - The first of the cold cut trio I’m planting it’s also a great cooking herb. The real reason for this plant is to make the cough syrup with it, Hyssop, and Elecampane.

Hyssop (5 plants) - Part two of that trio it works well on it’s own as a tea for getting rid of fevers. A plant that butterflies love, it has brilliant blue flowers.

Elecampane (10 plants) - The last of the boys of winter this plant has its roots used so that is why the double in plants. The roots can only be used after the second year of growth. It is a powerful cough suppressant.

Chamomile (20 plants) – this little bugger spreads like wildfire I know and makes a wonderful groundcover. Aside from that it’s well know to calm nerves and smells very good. It’s getting made into shampoos and teas.

Sweet Basil (20 plants) - cooking, cooking and more cooking. Being used in 52 quarts of cooking…need I say more.

Oregano (10 plants) –the other cooking, cooking, cooking plant

Sweet Grass (3 plugs) - a sacred grass to the Native Americans and a plant that grows and grows. I use it in incenses and after a year I’ll be making three harvests a year on it. This will allow for the starting of basket weaving.

White Sage (10 plants) - Great for cooking and awesome as an incense to get rid of unwanted energies. This also makes great cleaning soaps when combined with orange oil.

Mugwort (5 plants) - A good mind opening herb when drunk or burned. It’s really there just for that.

As for the food thing, many of you know that everyday for breakfast I have pasta and tomatoes. Del Monte makes an organic: tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano. I eat a can a day of this for breakfast/lunch. I've done so for years and I hope by planting the tomatoes and garlic and using the basil, oregano from the herbs I grow I hope to be able to can enough myself to not have to buy then again. By planting about 25 tomato plants and about 25 heads of garlic I should be able to produce way more then needed to can 52-60 quarts of the mixture. I’m trying out different recipes this year on mom’s tomato crop. It's not really the money that it will save, but I hope to not have the packaging waist. I eat one can a day 6 days a week. That is 312 cans a year. By canning things in quart or half gallon jars I can reuse them and therefore being better for the environment.
The third fruit in the 3 are two apple trees, do to my apple fetish, these too can be frozen or canned. This means that pretty much only one meal a day I will have to get from elsewhere. Were planting more in the way of veggies, so that we can freeze them things like beans, peppers, beets and carrots. This means that if we do things right we should only be buying minimal stuff from the store. Savings wise, I’ll be cutting out about $1000 a year off of the food budget. The seeds for all this run about $30 dollars. When we look at the houses I know that the yard is a big part of our decision. This weekend I'll be starting the almost 300 herb plants needed to start the herb garden next spring up at my mom’s place. I’ll be planting them out in an organic soil mixture in the long seed trays. Then in about a month I’ll head up there and transplant the little things into 4 inch plastic pots for the summer. This will give them a year to grow in their pots before getting planted our yard.
Scott has agreed to let me rip up most of the yard and turn it into a traditional English Herb Garden, complete with pebble paths. I'll be keeping a hell of allot of notes on this and how the things work out so forgive the occasional dull post about plant germination, syrup distilling and canning that may pop up from time to time.

Shade and Sweet water
Edmund

Catan, prophets and pizza

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:38:19 GMT

Well it’s been a long time since we have sat down for a little chat. The world of EdmundLand has been filled up with a bunch of interesting things going on.

Friday night Carmen dropped by for our first game of Settlers of Catan in well over six months. Its not that I have lost interest in the game, on the contrary I’m drooling over the new Rome set, but life just got way too full. So Friday night Carmen came over to spend the night and we broke out the game and played as people came in and out of the place. Sunny stopped by for a while as did Amy. It was a good night filled with wine, extra sharp white cheddar cheese and good times.

Saturday morning came a bit early, as we got to bed about 2am. We were up at about 8:00 to get over to Sunny’s for our field trip. Seven of us descended on Sunny’s place chattering with the caffeine of morning coffee. We loaded up into her SUV and headed off to our field trip to the Bahai Temple: http://www.bahai.us/bahai-temple It was fantastic. We had a good hour and a half each way in the car to get there so it was filled with good tunes and conversation. The sun was shining bright and we had the windows rolled down. Carmen and I sat in the cargo area in the back and we all got into the groove of the day. We got there about 12:15 as we wanted to make the 12:30 devotional to see what they did.

Once we were there everyone was amazed with the outside of the building, which you really need to see to believe. I had seen it many times as my friends Jenny and Ginger lived in that area in my Rocky Horror days, but I had never been inside of it. The building itself is make of quartz and cement and is just dazzlingly white in the morning sun. It sits right along side the lake and has trees and fountains around it. We walked up to the front door of the great dome and were just shocked by the complexity of the outer carvings that went all the way though to the inside. The building consisted of only one great chamber made up of nine sides. The windows faced all directions and the vast vault of the dome towered over us in a tapestry of stone and light. It was breathtaking. There was no alter, just a speaking podium to the front. The vistas of windows had sayings of their prophets above them.

We took seats off to the side and waited for the devotional to start. There were only about a dozen people in the temple including us went the devotional started. Seated at the front near the podium were a small group of people that were obviously there to hold the service. One by one they each went up to the podium and recited, what I imagined was part of their scriptures. Some was in English other parts were in Persian. It was a little odd, as there was no visible form of leadership to the gathering. Some hesitated a bit before going up checking to make sure that none of the others there were going to head up first. It was only about 15 min long and we all sat there when it was over wondering just what it was we had just seen.

Down below the dome on the outside is the entrance to the visitors center, and it was here that we decented after the service. We noticed a man talking to a small group of people I a lecture room off to the side so we quietly sat down and listened. For the better part of an hour we listened, asked questions and learned about this most interesting faith. That lecture was the most interesting part of the day. I asked for a recommendation on a book that would start one off learning more about the faith and he gave us a few titles to work with so we’re going to choose one of them to be our next reading for book club. About 2:00 we piled back into the car and headed back.

Now the last half of our day was to be played out at Phil’s place up in Island Lake. Once we were all back at Sunny’s we loaded up into our own cars and caravanned out there as none of us were sure as to where it was. Turns out that Phil is less then one block from T and P’s place, so of course Carmen and I had to bound over there to bang on the door…but no one was home. Back to Phil’s we went. Amy joined us at this point and we started doing Practical work.

Here we sat making Pagan projects, eating pizza and brownies and practicing our divination. It was hours of interesting chatter with all of us giving our interpretations of cards and opinions on decks. The place smelled wonderful as we had also played with essential oils. All this lead up to our doing our New Moon ritual starting about 10:30, which went very well. It was the first time the new writings I have been doing were used in a group setting and everyone gave it very high praise. The day wound up about 1am and so Carmen and I loaded stuff back up and headed back to my place to pick up her car and I went in and just about crashed on the rug I was so tied.

Yesterday was a very quiet day. Scott and I are headed to Florida next month on the same day that he, mom and I have show tickets so we went over to exchange them and winded our way back home by looking at houses and getting a better feel for where we want to move to in the fall/winter. Took a nap in the afternoon, read some of my book and basicly did nothing. Watched more of Planet Earth last night and crashed hard.

Life, Cancer and Anal Leakage

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:51:04 GMT

LIFE

The world of EdmundLand keeps turning these days. I have just finished up the mother-of-pearl inlay on the latest altar board. This one has really been an amazing piece to work on. It features inlay of both mother-of-pearl and abalony shell, overlay of sterling silver and 24k gold as well as many hours of burning and staining. The whole idea for making these came out of the need that my little coven group and I had. We were looking for an altar to use and were not really able to find one that we liked so I set out making one. This is now number 7 as people now contact me to make them for them, having seen the ones that I have made used in various rituals around the area. It's a real good feeling to know that things that I have made are being enjoyed by many others. I already have two more people waiting for me to start work on their altars. They do take quite a good deal of research and preparation as each is very different but that's part of the joy of it.

Up to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire now, and about half way threw it. It's much better then I remember, but still not my favorite. I just can't get into the Tri-Wizard Cup thing. Going to be reading a book called Religious Literacy next. It was a book I found it while wondering around the bookstore and it's very cool. More and more policies and laws both in the US and abroad are being made based on religions reasoning, yet the greater part of Americans have no knowledge of their own religion let alone others. In fact many people admit to never having read the bible but believe in what it says. Here is sample of questions from the quiz in the front of the book. These questions are very much relevant to policies and disagreements going on in the world right now, see how many you can answer.

1. Name the four Gospels. List as many as you can.

2. Name a sacred text of Hinduism.

3. What is the name of the holy book of Islam?

4. Where according to the Bible was Jesus born?

5. President George W. Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho road. What Bible story was he invoking?

6. What are the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament?

7. What is the Golden Rule?

8. "God helps those who help themselves": Is this in the Bible? If so, where?

9. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God": Does this appear in the Bible? If so, where?

10. Name the Ten Commandments. List as many as you can.

11. Name the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

12. What are the seven sacraments of Catholicism? List as many as you can.

13. The First Amendment says two things about religion, each in its own "clause." What are the two religious clauses of the First Amendment?

14. What is Ramadan? In what religion is it celebrated?

CANCER

In a lesser light part of life, Scott may have cancer. He went to the dentist last week and they discovered a large gray mass at the back of his mouth. That is about all that we know right now, but today I get to go with him so that they can determine just what it is. If it is cancer it's in one of the worst places you can get it, as from your mouth it can spread very easily to your lymph nodes. Keep sending good thoughts to him right now as he has just about scared himself sick with worry about this.

ANAL LEAKAGE

Now for my big question… Does anyone out there know a person that is really REALLY into fist fucking? Because I REALLY want to know if after a great deal of it if you end up not being able to control ones own bowel movements. I mean, I know that after one has been fucked by a big dick that you lay off sex for a few days and things are back to their nice tight self, but after having a guys fist up your ass do you have to wear depends? And after years of having a guy elbow deep up your pooper what happens?

one of two

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:48:33 GMT

Saw 300 today and it gets my vote as having the hottest cast of the year. Not an amazing movie, but wonderfully fillmed. For me it was lacking any kind of emotional connection to anyone. Quite frankly I didn't care who lived or died, but I don't think that was the point of it. I do think it was a brillant piece if not a bit cold.

Been re-reading the Harry Potter books to get set for the July 21 release of the last one. Been reading them ever since my friend Rich sent me one from over seas back in 97 before it's state side publication and always told myself that I'll re-read them all before the last one so that time has come.

Finally getting around to watching all the second season of Dr.Who. I've been putting it off and putting it off and now I've gotten about half way through. In many ways its better then the first season and just a fantastic show to watch. The only issue I had was with the episode School Reunion where they bring back Sarah Jane. I was a blubbering wreck at the end of it. I think only people that grew up with the Dr and Sarah really get what happened at the end of that story, any way I had to explain to Scott what the hell I was going on about.

Almost have done my first chapter in my translation of the Tao Te Ching and I think I'm going to post them here with some commentary about them. Oh speaking of comentary I just found out about a week ago that the DVD of Sleeping Beauty has commentary on it. Being my favorite of the old Disney films that make me amazingly happy.

Working with doing mother-of-pearl inlay on a new altar project and it's turning out briliantly.

Adventures in Mac Land

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:13:49 GMT

Well life has now completely switched over to my MacBook, and it’s …getting better. It really is like learning a computer all over again and at times it can be frustrating. Once I was able to get Parallels working and printing I was doing much better. While there are great advantages to my Mac right now the big thing that it’s missing for me is now real Publisher type program that I have been able to find. Once I find something like that, I’m good to go.

There were some “I hate this fucking thing” times when I didn’t know how to do something and I would just sit there frustrated wanting to cry. There are still a few things that I’m not sure how to really do, but I’m sure I’ll get there.

In blast from the past news my ex of 7 years stopped by my work the other day. It was rather humorous because I get a call from the receptionist saying that Matt was downstairs and I had to ask her to repeat it. Turns out that he had found a few posters that were mine and since he is leaving the state he wanted to give them back to me. Is lost weight and growing this beard thing, but other then that he’s still Matt. It was kind of cool hearing from him, as we do have a lot of history together. We’re going to do dinner sometime this week before he goes as kind of a last get together thing.

It’s funny because all things old are flashing back as some one made reference to someone pulling a K Belgrad at a pizza lunch we had last week. This person was one of the first ones in line and took an extra “take home” plate before everyone could get there lunch. I just found it funny that several people knew what the person meant, so I guess everything old is new again.

I guess the tryouts for Joseph went well and I wish the best of luck to the cast, you’re going to have a blast!

The Great I-pod crash of 07, people closer to death and I get a new book by someone called Mac.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:17:16 GMT

A very full weekend is now behind me and let me tell you it was…..long. Friday night kicked off the weekend with a slow but constant stream of projects. Scott was getting more frustrated with his laptop and asked my advice in helping him get a new one. This is because he got a new I-pod and it keeps crashing his system…not that it wasn’t crashing before, just more so now. So I told him that I would help when ever he needed, and went up stairs to play with my own I-pod. Now the computer that I have is about three years old and is a pretty nice one from Dell. I too had been becoming more disenchanted with my system as over the last year they have had to replace the motherboard as well as twice replacing the power box thing. That’s not the big part of my unhappiness, that stems from the fact that every time I walk away from the computer for more then five minutes with a program open such as Word or Publisher the damn thing starts it’s little blower fan going as if it were trying to get my attention. It’s REAL loud and only shutting down and reopening the program will stop it. This and the fact that I have been using my work laptop at home a lot have led me to the decision that my next system would not be a desk top. So I know that I have a few updates to put in to the I-Pod and do so and then IT happens…the system locks up my I-Pod all 22GB of it needs to be restarted from scratch and I spend the next hour setting up another user side on the computer so that I can use things like Audible and I-Tunes…not fun. So I take a break and tell Scott that if he wants to go to the Apple store I’ll go with. At the Apple store we notice an odd phoneme. There are a lot of kids there…all girls…all under the age of 15…all hanging out on the laptops on display….all hanging out on Myspace…..at the mall. What kind of twisted world have we come to where we go out in public to hang out with our friends online? This is the beginning of the end. Will someone tell me why?!?!

So we look at the Apple store and despite the fact that I’m drooling Scott is not too much into getting a Mac. Well it is logical in his case because he mainly will be using his system for things like Excel and the internet, me it’s all about audio and video editing as well as photo projects. So for me they look purdy.

Then for some odd ball reason I could not sleep Saturday night and I was up till about 3AM watching the random DVD and chatting online with some new people and old friends. Then was able to crash till about 8 when my brain woke me up.

Saturday was spent finishing up the book I’m reading for my book club and loading the music back into my I-Pod before hear Scott yell…”Hey want to go with me to get my new laptop?” With that it was off to Best Buy and about thirty minutes later he walks out with a new HP laptop complete with Vista….all together now oooooooooooooooooooo. Well since I went along…and I had nothing better to do…I walked out with a new MacBook.

With the MacBook I got a program called Parallel that is allowing me to run my old Windows programs on the Mac. It’s pretty cool, and it was really the only way that I could ever think about switching systems as my main tool on my PC was Publisher and I have over 800 pages of documents there that I have completed. Once we got the laptops home we had to rush out to a birthday dinner for our friend Carmen. She is real old this year 39. One year away from the big 40. We went to this Japanese stake house that just opened and had a very nice time. The food was good, but I’ve had better and we all agreed that it was to cramped to ever go back. There were five of us having drinks and a great time: me, Scott, Cindy, Amy and Carmen. Afterwards Carmen came back to my place and we ended up watching LOST, Neverwhere and The Wallace and Grommet Movie till about 2 in the morning. All the time while we were watching I was playing with the new brain in my world…the Mac.

I really like it, but it is VERY frustrating when you know what you are to do in windows, but it’s not like that in Mac Land. There is no such thing as a right click and a left click for start. I love the way things work once I figure them out, and I’m sure that if I read the guide I’ll get a better feel for the thing. I’m VERY happy with it.

Sunday came and it came very early. I was up at 6:30 and out the door by 7:00 to get the baked French Toast ingredients and be over at Sunny’s place to make it for our 11:00 book club meeting. It was our normal half dozen people there and we had some fantastic discussions. Working out things from the book and sifting though the ideas it puts out we actually came up with a few things that we all agree work. We broke up the meeting about 4 when I headed home, I thought to take a nap, but I knew better then that. I was finishing moving all the files over and tinkering with the Mac to figure out how in the hell this is going to work. I know it’s just growing and learning pains right now. Then last night…yea it was like 2AM before I was able to shut down the Mac and sleep…so today I am REAL tired.

Side note…you know all that I Love a Mystery work I’ve been doing, well it might pay off. It might lead to them actually hitting store shelves in nice published book forms, but more on that when it goes further.

Anna Nicole a freak….but the people’s freak

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:26:37 GMT

Maybe it was one collagen injection too many, or maybe that freaky chick O.D. but the end result is that Anna Nicole is dead….and for a few minutes yesterday our office stopped. Jimmy Carter croaks…nothing. Sidney Sheldon passes away…silence. Anna Nicole goes and offs herself and suddenly everyone is talking about it. True the discussion lead to the most revolting sex acts that one has ever heard of, but still we were talking. Yes she was freak, but we all saw in her our own inner freak that we all wished we could show. You see we all want to have a strange obsessive lessy woman on our own reality TV series, and have ET do exclusive coverage the ever changing line of man-whores that we spread for. I know that secretly every one of us wanted to dress in 80s’ hot pink and get our hair bleached and our skin burned so that we could look like her (What will TrimSpa do now?) We all want to be known as that fat ex-playmate who acts like a six year old and carried a dog the size of my balls all the time. We know that the world morned as her son died as her baby was born, because, you see, she truly was the Circle of Life, and little Danny Lynn Smith will now have to grow up with no mommy and two daddies…..sounds like a bad 90s’ sitcom. Ahhhh yes she truly was the People’s Freak

I’ll give her that she and Jenny McCarthy were the last of the big name Playmates, and I’m sure nasty old men are clutching their wet stained and dog eared copies of her photo spreads close to them today, and that her video sales will go a for a bit. But how morbid is that….. to jack off to a dead chick…….

LOST again and Brain wavings

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:26:01 GMT

Last night gave us the return of LOST and ya know it was a good episode. We learned about the back story of Juliet but as always more questions got asked like what the fuck was that machine that Carlos was hooked up too?!?! I think the next 15 weeks are going to be good ones.

Has anyone seen that Coke commercial that has the slightly British kid making the cell phone ring and handing the chick a Coke? That dumb thing makes me smile every time

Also Firefly’s Captain Mal is going to be in a new series coming out that looks REAL good called Drive. Don’t know if I’ll have time to watch it live but I’ll DVR it.

Brain wavings…….hello

Walkman
Typewriter correction tape
Floppy disk
Car phone
Long playing record
Cas-single
45s’

What do all these words have in common? Most likely if you are under a certain age you may never hear these words. Lost in the whorl wind of progress.

Kleenex
Jell-o
I-pod
Pam
Band-aid
Pop-tart

What do all of these words have in common? Here are examples of brands over shadowing the item. You never ask for cherry gelatin at a restaurant it’s always Jell-o, or “Pardon me do you have a plastic adhesive bandage.

The End...in a few ways

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:25:24 GMT

Allow me to digress in to a story from my past for a moment here… When I was about six years old WBBM radio here in Chicago used to broadcast old time radio shows from 8-10 every week night. I was always allowed to listen to them till 9:00 when it then became bed time as it was a school night. I got to have the radio on in my bedroom, and really did just stay away each night till 10:00 when the last show was over. Then one Wednesday night from 9:30-10:00 they started to broadcast the first part of a 10 part serial called The Land of the Living Dead from a series called Adventures by Morse. This was a seminal experience in my young life as the story was the first pulp story I ever really encountered. When we got to week four ( the chapter titled "The Tree that Eats Flesh") I got caught awake after bedtime and got the radio taken out of my room. Well I left off with the party of explorers lost in the jungles of South America about to be captured by the werewolf man and the green eyed killer as they were trying to prevent the world disaster that had been predicted by the shadow crossing over the sun…..this was no way to leave a story. So for the next six weeks I had to slide along the ledge of the staircase over to the hall stereo and turn it on very…very quietly and put my ear up to the speaker to hear the rest of the story. My parents bedroom was on the first floor just across from the ledge, so I had to make sure I was pressed up as close to the stereo as possible to avoid getting caught. Ever since that first broadcast I have been in love with pulp. Flash forward about 10 years and I have managed to obtain a tape copy of the show and my friend Gean and I are sitting doing sound restoration on some old Rocky Horror records and I ask for his help in cleaning up the sound of these shows. Well, we did as best as we could. For the next 12 years I would obtain no less then 10 more copies of this show to try and clean myself. The issue being that no original copies were circulating. Every copy out there had come from an old reel-to-reel copy of the transcription disk that was made back about 1968. Now just arriving in the mail this morning came a fully restored edition off of the authors own set of transcription masters…I just about cried. This is like finding your most favorite toy from childhood mint in the box. I popped in the first disk on the way into work and my heart skipped a beat as the crispness and clarity of the sound and story poured out of the speakers. Here is a list of the chapter titles of this story, how could one NOT want to hear something like this:

1)The Land of the Living Dead

2) Gorilla Man Onboard Ship

3) The Green Eyed Murderess Again

4) The Tree That Eats Flesh

5) The Stairway To The Sun

6) A Traitor in Their Midst

7) The Terror of the Sacred City

8) The Sacred Temples

9) The Boiling Lake of Lava

10) End of the Mountain

Now if you are thinking that that sounds a lot like and Indiana Jones adventure remember that this story was made in 1945 so just think about where Lucas got his idea.

Tonight ends the auditions for American Idol..*sniff*…I'll miss them till next year.

Has anyone out there seen that ads for the movie Bridge to Terabithia who read the book growing up? Do these ads look ANYTHING at all like the book? Where did all that shit come from? That was one book that traumatized me as a kid and I don't remember anything like what I see on TV in the book…well I guess we'll have to wait and see.

We watched the Wallace and Grommet movie last night and what a fucking good movie. It totally deserved the Best Animation Oscar. We sat in pure bliss watching it; ever Scott thought it was great. If ever you need to see just a charming piece of fluff that is funny as hell AND rated G rent this sucker.

I'm about a third of the way though Atlas Shrugged right now and I got to say, I'm actually really enjoying it. It is a bit wordy and the over abundance of her philosophy does get in the way of the plot a great deal of the time, but she does have some very interesting ideals. Atlas has been called one of the most influential books ever written and one can see. Back when it was published one just didn't fined text like this, that were this blatant in there messages and beliefs. I think I still like The Fountainhead more, but that's another post…..

A great weekend, a daunting task and the return of LOST

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:20:16 GMT

A Great Weekend

Well I think I've recovered from the weekend. This was another one of our big weekend sabbats. This time it's Imbolc, a celebration of the coming light. I ended up taking Friday off to start the preparations for Sunday. Traditionally at Imbolc you have blessed all of the candles that you are going to be using on your alter for the coming year so that is what I ended up doing Friday afternoon.

Long time readers might remember that last year, and for several years before that the candles were done by hand dipping them and that took many, many hours, this year I used a new tool…well and old tool that I just got. I was able to use a very old, old candle mold that my mother had used when we were kids that her mom gave her. Now you might say, well why didn't you just go buy one earlier…well because the molds are A) very hard to find as the new styles are very different and B) they are VERY expensive. A few months back Scott, Carmen and I were in an antique shop and saw one about half the size of mine and it was $60.

I dragged out the mold, cleaned it up, and got it working so that I could heat, pour and set half dozen candles in about forty minutes. That is fantastic compared to the rate we were going at last year. So Friday I worked on getting the dozens of candles made that I need for the seasons to come.

We had a full house Friday night with the Full Moon happening, and that went so well I can't even describe it. We just had a great energy and it completely reaffirmed just how much my faith and religion mean to me. Sometimes it can seem that that's all I do any more, and it is a big part of my daily life, more so then I ever write about here, but the complete feeling of harmony and peace that comes for it is intoxicating.

Saturday came with a nice lazy morning and a short stint at work. I normally don't come into work on the weekends, but I knew that I had quite a few orders on my desk that needed to be entered so I went ahead and got those in. After that Scott and I headed over to our favorite place, Sweet Tomatoes, for a nice lunch. Carmen dropped by Saturday night to stay over for Sunday. We had a great time with wine, Cosmic Cows, Lost Cites Family Guy and pizza. Scott and I love it when she comes over because it's just a lot of fun hanging out and talking about all manors of strange things. You see, Carmen has just as many strange interests as I do, and that makes her awesome in my book.

Sunday dawned and Sunny came over so that we could start our Imbolc celebrations. Things got a little bumpy in the morning but soon we got into the rhythm of pouring candles, braiding ribbons and cooking the feast. We had a great time. It was also Carmen's first time writing a sabbat and, aside from a few areas that need to be expanded, I think she did a bang up job at it. She wrote some really good passages, and even a few that were going to hold over for Ostara next month.

The long day and long weekend real took its toll on me by 6:00 when everyone went home, and I was out on the couch by 6:30 and didn't wake up till morning. Of course this meant that I missed the Super Bowl, but quite frankly I was glad of it. Here in Chicago the coverage has been suffocating. I assume that nothing of interest happened in Washington DC these past two weeks, and that we must have settled everything Iraq because there was no news to report other then the fact that Bears fans were renting a boat in Miami to watch the Super Bowl, Bears fans were playing football on the beach in Miami, Bears fans were eating at restaurants in Miami…etc….etc…etc… So a win would have meant at least two more grueling weeks of coverage like that.

A Daunting Task

Over the last year and a half or so I have become enamored with the Tao Te Ching and have gathered up about fifteen different translations of the text. The Tao is the second most translated text in the world behind the Bible. It's the corner stone of Chinese philosophy and in many respects it's culture. I have decided to work on my own translation of this text. I have copies of all the original text in Simplified Chinese characters, the Wade/Giles and Pinyin spellings all of which are slightly different in ways, as well as books on the translations of each symbol and study guides on ancient Chinese language. It's a project that is going to take many years but I think that it's going to be a very good challenge for me. There can never be a true translation of the Tao because of the way that ancient Chinese used their characters, but at least I can make my own decisions on what I think it says.

The Return of LOST

Yes it's time. Tomorrow night is the night of the return. I know that some people are kind of disillusioned with the show right now, but one has to remember that the show as a five year plan and that every story line that long has its slow points. (Anyone remember just how very long and slow The Two Towers was as a book?) I for one am still very excited about it. I can't wait to see how their going to end this season as we now move into the bulk of the story. One knows that it's going to lead to a good pay off and very soon we'll be back into the confusion of what the fuck is going on.

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:23:55 GMT

I admit it I am an American Idol junky. I would sit and watch the bad auditions ALL day if I could. I think it's the same fixation I have on bad musicals, that thought that someone thought that they were really that good and so many people along the way told them that they to make that moment so….sublime. Anyway off the bad people, there was a guy last night, kind of pudgy with mop top hair that I just loved. He had a very good voice and his reason for wanting to become the next American Idol was to make David Hasselhoff cry…now how can you not love a guy like that!!

So I discovered I have real good taste in used books this weekend. If you read back a post you will find that me and a few friends went to the used bookstore here in Dundee. Well one of the books I picked up was a like-new paperback called By Standing Stone and Elder Tree. It's just this little pagan paperback, and it looked sorta interesting and it was only five bucks so I thought what the hell. I thought nothing of it till later Sunday night when I decided to pick it up and start it. Before starting things like this I usually go online to Amazon to see if it's a creditable work. Usually the reviews will give me a good idea as to if the author got most of his shit right. Look this title up on Amazon and you find it's out of print with used copies starting at $67 and new copies at about $400!!!! This sucker I have doesn't even look like it's been read once, so now I'm holding it Very carefully as I read, and on top of all that…it's actually on interesting read. The book is a series of mental and physical preparations to get one ready for a great rite called the Rollright Ritual that was used in some of the smaller stone circles in the UK. It's kind of interesting stuff and a bunch of interesting info I have never heard of.

Scott right now is addicted to Ms Pac Man, and we both take turns playing this simplistic game from our youth for a little while each night. How dumb is that…we can play a 1982 arcade game in HI-DEF…. But what the hell we're having a good time before dinner.

I think I'm going to start doing a bit more recording with my singing bowls and flutes. The few tracks I have done for meditation purposes have been well received by the people that have gotten them and they were wondering if I would record a few more. So that's going to be on the docket coming up.

Carmen is coming over Saturday so that we can pour candles and play Catan while drinking a lot of wine and listening to strange music. Then we have our Imbolc on Sunday so that should lead to a few good lines in the next posts.

Firefly Part 1

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:35:04 GMT

Firefly Part 1

Just like Who, I'm writing down a few thoughts about each of the Firefly episodes as we go through the series again:

Firefly; Serenity parts 1 & 2

Here we have one of the best pilots ever shot. The two hour movie like opening episode is just spectacular to watch. We get a real sense of a universe completely formed here. Much like a good book writer gives us the sense that there world is real here we have a nice "lived in" world. It feels right. Right off the bat one has to notice the great chemistry between the cast members. Mal and Zoe play perfectly off of each other as if they really have been through hell and back. The one bit of criticism I would give would be to the slightly OTT and cheesy opening Battle of Serenity sequence. I understand that they have only a TV budget, but the rest of the show looks so great that the cheep opening is a bit of a let down.

The Train Job

I have to say that I for the most part hate this episode. Mostly because I do remember watching it when it was first aired, and after about 10 min into the episode I ended up shutting it off because shit was not making sense. That was my only exposure to Firefly till Roman let me borrow his copy through Tony about three years ago. Now watching it in context having seen Serenity I am much less critical about the episode. It's still not great, but it is a lot of fun, and the scene at the end where Mal kicks the guy into the engine is just so fucking classic it's unreal. I still find it a bit thin on plot, but understanding the reason behind it now it's not too bad.

Bushwhacked

I love this episode. Not so much for what happens in it, but for what doesn't. It's very tightly plotted and is deliberately slow and tense. There are no great battles or anything, just a tight story. Rewatching it again one really starts to notice the use of colors and deliberate lighting that really, rally works in this episode. River starts to come more center stage and we are settling down into the characters ourselves only to feel that they have been settled with each other for a long time.

Shindig

An episode useless other then for the fact that it shows us just how much we all love Kaylee. This is the episode where her lovely simplicity shines and she is never more cute and lovable then during her Scarlet O'Hara moment at the party when she is surrounded by men talking about ships. As useless as episodes like this are they are what is truly at the heart of the series. More and more one understands that this is one of the only sci-fi shows done where one wants nothing more then to watch these people just do their everyday lives.

The Firefly Weekend

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:32:33 GMT

For some reason or another Scott and I decided to make this our Firefly weekend and veg out starting to re-watch the series. Sitting there watching it again, it struck me that while we do a have new Firefly coming out this year the series plus movie make a very nice package of a story. I know that the new story is going to be set during the series years and not be placed after the film and I think that's good. The book ending of both Serenity the pilot and Serenity the movie nicely give us a great story with an over all arc. I'd not cry if we did get a series two, but I don't know if it would really add to the grand scheme of the series.

The other parts of the weekend have good slow and calm. We went out with a few friends for some morning bumming and lunch yesterday. We have this wonderful little used bookstore downtown here and so we stopped in there and we each got something new to read. Then we ate lunch at the downtown pub. Both Scott and I love to support the little local business around the area here. Shops like the book store and Golden Harvest, the all organic food store up the street, are just part of the charm of this little area. My book that I licked up was a book on the history of ritual chanting throughout the Eastern world.

I'm still out on how much time to give to the theatre group here. It's not that I'm getting tired of theater, as many of you here know I love theater. But I'm just not as much into needing to perform it as much. There was a time where I was doing three shows at a time while helping with sets and reading plays for the next season. Then I was doing Rocky Horror and, as Bev can attest to, we were just doing all sorts of shit for that. We were practicing, doing collage shows, conventions and the like. Then in the early days of helping HOTT I would be down at the storefront painting, and moving the sets as well as doing a lot of my own costume work. And as many of you here know rehearsing for a HOTT show is life in itself, with practice about three times a week plus Saturdays. I'm not sure I'm willing to give up the way life is now to get that started again.

Scott and I have a great thing going, we have our core group of about a dozen friends that we hang out with an we always have time to do what we want be it projects, a movie, or just fucking sitting on our ass doing nothing. Part of the great fun of theatre was getting out and meeting new people. The drawback is that unless everyone you knew was in the show, you rarely got time to spend with your old friends while you were doing a show. For some unknown reason I have no desire to meet new people right now. Call me a stick in the mud, but I have a fucking awesome group of friends and really have a great time hanging out with them. Some I wish I could see more often then I do, and I hope to have that time cleared soon…*cough* Catan *cough*, but I just have no desire to sit for endless hours studying lines when I could be reading the rest of Atlas Shrugged, or waiting while people learn their blocking when I could be sitting down at Emit's having a drink with a few friends….well not a DRINK, maybe some nice lemon water, or a shot of something….you know…. so it's going to take a few days more thinking on this issue to figure out if I want to get back into the theatre fray.

(Why does the guy in the KABOOM and Oxi-Clean commercials always sound like he's yelling?)

Speaking of theater HOTT, it looks like, is doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A great show, but it takes A LOT of mend to do that. I really hope they can pull that amount of guys out. IF I could correctly you need a MINIMUM of 15 men to do that show, unless you dress up girls to play the brothers. I really do hope that can pull it off, as having done the show a few times, it is one of the most fun shows to do, musically and all. The Go-Go-Go Joseph number and the Megamix are just a ton of fun to do. Jeff… I can see you cast as the part of Rubin so break out a cast recording and start to practice the Benjamin Calypso now man.

Ah well I've managed to scan in the next 5 episodes of my script to clean so I'm off. More later guys.

A day off

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:22:25 GMT

Scott is off to the Big Apple for a few days, so I decided to take some me time today. It was nice. I worked a bit more on the project, watched more who and then headed out for an evening with Carmen and Di. We had dinner an went to see Pan’s Labyrinth. All I have to say about it is if you have seen it…e-mail me and we’ll talk.

The Fountainhead is the next book I chose to read and I’m very much enjoying it. I never thought that I would get into it but I’m very much enjoying it, and in fact took time off from working on shit today to do nothing but sit in the Zen room and read. God…I just got the Rocky Horror reference to the fact that I have a Zen room. Fuck…it never even occurred to me…well Bev, I guess in some ways it does stick. Mine is NOWERE near the tacky mess that the one in the movie was. For those not familiar with what I’m talking about: In one part of the movie Dr. Scott is seen in a close up In a room that one never really sees, but in the foreground are bunch of burning incense and that was the Zen room. God that was an odd flashback. Well I can happily say that mine is NOTHING like that.

Off to bed now, oh yea and I got into a car accident. A deer just plowed into the driver’s side of my car like a priest on a twelve year old. So I think I’m going to take advantage of my insurance now…

A New Year

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 06:11:32 GMT

Well the fist post of the new year finds me sitting in the big chair here in the loving room watching more Doctor Who and continuing the I Love A Mystery project. You all know what the Who project is. It’s going quiet well. I know that Scott is probably going to be very happy once it’s all over. By that time he will have heard the theme song to the show more then 1,400 times. Now me I could put it on a loop tape and be stuck on a desert island with it, but hey that’s me. Here is a short update on where I stand in the series before other news:

Season 6

This season is the only one of the Second Doctor to remain pretty much intact in video from so it’s really a treat to get to actually SEE the Dr’s adventures.

The Dominators (208-212)
The TARDIS materialises on the planet Dulkis, currently under threat from two alien Dominators, Rago and his subordinate Toba, who have landed in a spaceship.
Aided by their robotic servants, the Quarks, and slave workers drawn from the native Dulcian population, the Dominators set about drilling bore holes, through which they plan to fire rockets into the planet's molten core. Their intention is then to drop an atomic seed capsule into the resulting eruption, turning Dulkis into a radioactive mass - fuel for the Dominators' space fleet.
The Dulcian Councillors, being pacifists, refuse to retaliate, although Cully, the rebellious son of their leader Senex, has already joined forces with the time travellers. The Doctor eventually defeats the Dominators by intercepting the seed capsule as it is dropped and placing it on board their ship, which is then destroyed shortly after take off.
Dulkis suffers only a minor volcanic eruption, as a result of the rockets fired into its magma.

The Mind Robber (213-17)
To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Doctor uses an emergency unit which moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void, where they are menaced by White Robots.
Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped - until the ship suddenly explodes apart. They then find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel and Swift's Lemuel Gulliver.
This domain is presided over by a man known only as the Master - a prolific English writer from 1926 - who in turn is controlled by a Master Brain computer. Now the Master is desperate to escape and wants the Doctor to take his place, while the Master Brain plans to take over the Earth.
The Doctor engages the Master in a battle of wills using a variety of fictional characters. Zoe and Jamie meanwhile succeed in overloading the Master Brain and, in the confusion, the White Robots destroy the computer, finally freeing the Master.

This one I really do like. The design and feel of the story just for some odd reason just click in my book.

The I Love A Mystery project:

Well as many long time readers know I have this absolute passion for the old ‘blood and thunder’ radio series call I Love A Mystery. Considered by many to be one of , if not thee best, action series ever produced. People that read back a little will find out just how fucking hard it is to get scripts for the 900 odd missing shows and just hoe excited I get when I do get them. Truth be told most of these scripts are in pretty poor shape despite their high price. So I have taken it upon myself to sort of ‘restore’ these scripts I have. Over the years in there respective libraries and universities they have gotten dirty, recopied for the files and therefore some pages are very much crooked and just generally fallen into disrepair. I am now cleaning them up page by page with correction paint, and by cutting and resetting the text on a great percentage of them. This is a BIG project. Right now I have about 12 stories comprising about 250 episodes. Each episode is about 15 pages long and many are in crappy condition. It can take upwards of 15 minutes to clean one page. Then I am re-copying them onto a heavy 24 pound acid-free 98 bright white archive paper and having them bound in five episode volumes. Once a story is cleaned and bound the 3-6 volumes that make up that story are then housed in a hand made birch wood slipcase that I have cut, constructed, stained and varnished. Each with a plaque in its spine to denote what story is houses. This truly is a labor of love and with another 17 stories arriving soon it will mean that I will also be one of the few people in the nation with a near complete set of the stories.

Other then working on that I’ve also decided to concentrate on classic literature this year. Already I have read the first two Sherlock Holmes novels with great enjoyment and am now onto The Fountainhead. I’ve plowed about 50 pages in and so far so good. I’ve just become disenchanted with modern fiction and wanted to go and read over some of the classic books one always hears of and shit so hell why not now. Feel free to make any suggestions as to what to add to the list. I should be finishing up The Fountainhead about end of the month, as the fucker is like almost a thousand pages thick.

We watched “You’re the One That I Want” tonight. You know, the search for the next Danny and Sandy that’s going to try and be the next American Idol type show. Well peeps…it sucked big time. All it made me do is want to watch American Idol even more. The judges were just…well. Nondescript, and I love the fact that they had to get a nasty British man on to be the Simon. Come on, it’s Broadway that even I don’t care about how shitty is that.

I've decided to take tomorrow off so anyone that wants to come help me correct pages is MORE then welcome to drop on by

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:06:59 GMT

Back from the trip to Miami, and what a trip it was. We landed to a 77 degree night and went out for ice cream in the middle of December. It was the beginning of a great, and relaxing trip. Over the next four days we went to South Beach… you know, like the diet, and walked up Lincoln Road. I got to swim in the ocean on Christmas day, and that was VERY cool. I also got to find out what a rip tide is and that was a little scary as I was really having trouble getting back to shore, but the ocean was beautiful. I loved sitting on the beach, just in grasp of the waves crashing in. Scott and I got quiet a bit of sun and we came home to open Christmas presents. I got the new Forbidden Planet DVD boxed set that includes the miniature Robbie the Robot toy in it as well as the new complete recording for The Two Towers to go with last years release for Fellowship of the Ring. I hope that next year that the complete the set and come out with Return of the King.
Driving through Miami I was reminded of the Wisconson Dells, everything was built back in the 50s’ and all people can do now is slap a new coat of paint on it and change out the neon. A pretty trashy city who’s architecture I was never quiet able to warm up too. I went out for morning walks as found all the little salamanders running around quiet entertaining. I got picked up in a mall by a gay guy that wanted to take me home to his boyfriend, that was quiet interesting. At one of the restaurants I had the worst apple cobbler I have ever had in my life, in fact aside from the Cuban sandwich most of the food there was pretty bland. I was also able to get quiet a bit of my script restoration project done in the long lazy days. I finished up quiet of bit of Dr Who… all of season five. That means that I got done:

The Enemy of The World (184-189)
The time travellers arrive in Australia in the near future and learn from a man named Giles Kent that the Doctor is the physical double of Salamander, a scientist and politician who has discovered a means of storing and distributing solar energy and thus ending starvation in a world ravaged by earthquakes, floods and the like.
Most people see Salamander as a hero, but Kent and others believe him to be establishing himself as a dictator. The Doctor uncovers the truth by impersonating Salamander and gaining access to his research station. Salamander and Kent were originally working together. Almost five years ago, they convinced a group of people undergoing an endurance test in a bunker beneath the station that a war had broken out on the surface.
It is these people, led by a man named Swann, who - deceived into thinking that they are striking back against an evil enemy - have been engineering the so-called natural disasters. Kent, now exposed as a traitor, blows up the station. Salamander meanwhile tries to escape in the TARDIS by impersonating the Doctor. He neglects to close the doors before dematerialisation, however, and is sucked out into the vortex.

The Web of Fear (190-195)
The TARDIS narrowly avoids becoming engulfed in a web-like substance in space. It then arrives in the London Underground railway system, the tunnels of which are being overrun by the web and by the Great Intelligence's robot Yeti.
The time travellers learn that this crisis was precipitated when Professor Travers, whom they first met in the Himalayas some forty years earlier, accidentally caused one of the Yeti to be reactivated, opening the way for the Intelligence to make another invasion attempt.
The travellers work alongside army forces - led initially by Captain Knight and then by Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart - as they battle against the alien menace, hampered by the fact that one of their number has fallen under the Intelligence's influence and is a traitor in their midst.
The Intelligence's ultimate aim is to drain the Doctor's mind. The Doctor manages to sabotage the device with which it intends to achieve this, so that he can drain the Intelligence's mind instead, but he is 'rescued' by his friends before he can bring his plan to fruition.
The Intelligence is repelled into space, and the Doctor and his friends leave the army to clear up the mess.

Fury From the Deep (196-201)
The TARDIS lands on the surface of the sea, just off the east coast of England. The time travellers use a rubber dinghy to get ashore, where they are shot with tranquiliser darts and taken prisoner by security guards as they have arrived in the restricted area of a gas refinery.
At the refinery base, run by a man named Robson, the Doctor learns that there have been a number of unexplained problems with the pressure in the feed pipes from the offshore drilling rigs. It is later revealed that one of the rigs has sucked up a parasitic form of seaweed, which is capable of releasing poisonous gas or a strange kind of foam that allows it to take control of the minds of those it touches.
The weed spreads rapidly and seems set on establishing a huge colony centred around the rigs. The Doctor makes the chance discovery that it is very susceptible to high pitched noise; consequently he is able to use the amplified sound of Victoria's screams to destroy it. Victoria elects to stay with the family of one of the refinery workers, Harris.
The Doctor, although sharing Jamie's sadness at her departure, understands her decision to settle down to a quieter life.

Wheel in Space (202-207)
The TARDIS materialises on board a spaceship, the Silver Carrier, where the Doctor and Jamie are attacked by a Servo Robot. Jamie manages to contact a nearby space station known as the Wheel and they are rescued. Meanwhile, the Silver Carrier discharges some Cybermats, which also travel to and enter the station. These pave the way for the penetration of the station by Cybermen, who intend to use its direct radio link with Earth as a beacon for their invasion fleet.
The Doctor sends Jamie and a young woman named Zoe Heriot over to the Silver Carrier to fetch the TARDIS's vector generator rod. Meanwhile he manages to free the Wheel's crew from the Cybermen's hypnotic control and to destroy all the Cybermen on the station.
When Jamie and Zoe return, he installs the rod in the station's X-ray laser, making it powerful enough to destroy the Cyber-fleet. An approaching force of space-walking Cybermen is also vanquished.

Now onto season 6, and the end of the Second Doctor, and the end of the shows black and white era.

The rest of the weekend has been relaxing with Scott and I going through our next batch of Netflix movies and getting the holiday decorations down and all. The twins were very happy to see us again and now I’m off to bed.

Light is returning .... 513 left

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:58:29 GMT

And so passes another Yule. This year we had a full day of stuff to do. I did have to work for a few hours just to get things cleaned up at the desk since we are closed till Jan 2. I gave Tony his and Phyllis’s gift. It’s a three month subscription to Netflix, and even thought that might not seem cool right away, once the movies start to come and come they will be as addicted as Scott and I are to it.
After that I headed over to Sunny’s place where we started the celebrations. We baked ginger cookies in the morning and started to pour candles. Amy was there with her two boys and despite them getting underfoot they were not too badly behaved. I made a great meatloaf and we had it with mashed potatoes for lunch as our friend Cindy showed up for a few minutes. We then started to open gifts and were soon surrounded by colored paper and bows. I got this wonderful hand painted wall scroll of the druidic Tree of Life, some speakers for my I-pod and Tibetan hand chimes. We then headed off to see if we could surprise Carmen with her gifts at work, but she was not in when we went over. When we got back we started to string the 27 feet of popcorn and cranberry garland that would outline our circle and be our gift to the animals. This is when everything just gelled. Sunny and I were cutting out cookies and Amy and the boys were stringing the garland all the while the tow dogs were under the table to catch any popcorn that would fall to the floor. It was truly what I wanted to happen.
Late that afternoon we went to Carmen’s work again and this time we were able to hang out and exchange gifts. She got me a funnel cake maker, because she is very much aware of my passion for fried food and sugar…yumm. Once we were back as Sunny’s we started the ritual. It was simple and effective, and we all had a great time.

The Tomb of the Cybermen ( 172-175)

This is one of stories I watch the most, and I ljust loved watching it again. The TARDIS arrives on the planet Telos where an Earth archaeological expedition, led by Professor Parry, is attempting to uncover the lost tombs of the Cybermen. With a lot of help from the Doctor the archaeologists enter the tombs. There, one of the party, Klieg, reveals himself and his business partner, Kaftan, to be planning to revive the Cybermen.
He wants to use their strength, allied with the intelligence of his own Brotherhood of Logicians, to create an invincible force for conquest. It transpires however that the tomb is actually a giant trap designed to lure humans suitable for conversion into further Cybermen - a fate that almost befalls Kaftan's assistant Toberman.
After fending off an attack by Cybermats - small but dangerous cybernetic creatures - the Doctor eventually defeats the revived Cybermen, led by their Controller, and reseals the tombs. The Controller is apparently destroyed in the process.
For over twenty years this story was thought to have been lost till one day it was returned after being found in a church basement in Hong Kong! What the fuck was it doing there? I’m really glad it was, because this is to me one of the high points of 60s’ Who. It has great effects, and chilling performances and a highly effective use claustrophobic sets. This is the best outing for the cybermen!

The Abominable Snowmen (172-177)
Missing all but the second episode this six parter is a jolly good romp. The TARDIS arrives in Tibet in 1935 and the Doctor visits the remote Detsen monastery in order to return a sacred bell, the ghanta, given to him for safe keeping on a previous visit. There he meets an Englishman, Travers, on an expedition to track down the legendary Abominable Snowmen or Yeti.
It transpires that the Yeti roaming the area are actually disguised robots, which scare away or kill anyone who approaches. The High Lama Padmasambhava, whom the Doctor met hundreds of years earlier on his previous visit, has been taken over by a nebulous alien being, the Great Intelligence, which has artificially prolonged his life and is now using him to control the Yeti by way of models on a chessboard-like map.
The Intelligence's aim is to create a material form for itself and take over the Earth. The Doctor banishes it back to the astral plane, allowing Padmasambhava finally to die in peace.

We do come across the Yeti again soon, as they proved to be very popular with this kids at the time. The lone surviving episode shows the massive Yeti monsters are very imposing and the dialog is very compelling.

The Ice Warriors (178-183)

Ahhh another partial classic. This time were only missing two of the six parts so this one is doing good in the surviving episodes department.
The TARDIS arrives on Earth at the time of a new ice age and the travellers make their way into a base where scientists commanded by Leader Clent are using an ioniser device to combat the advance of a glacier.
A giant humanoid creature, termed an Ice Warrior by one of the scientists, has been found buried in the glacier nearby. When thawed, it revives and is revealed to be Varga, captain of a Martian spacecraft that landed on Earth centuries ago and is still in the glacier. Varga sets about freeing his comrades and formulating a plan to conquer the Earth - Mars itself now being dead.
The scientists meanwhile realise that continued use of the ioniser could cause the alien ship's engines to explode. Their trusted computer is unable to advise them without further information, and it seems that disaster is imminent. The disaffected scientist Penley, supported by the Doctor, eventually decides to risk activating the ioniser. There is only a minor explosion, which destroys the Martians and, at the same time, checks the ice flow.
This is another great, great story with costume design and performances to match. The Ice Warriors with their raspy whispers of voices and reptilian bodies are one of the best examples of The Monster Era. Again we have a very large monsters in very tight quarters this time in the artic setting. I can’t wait for the special edition of this one to come out on DVD.

One day left.........

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 03:51:13 GMT

As I was busy touching up an I Love A Mystery script, getting it ready for binding, I was able to go through the 7 part, season 4 closer:

Evil of the Daleks (165-171)

The TARDIS has been stolen by antiques dealer Edward Waterfield, who lures the Doctor and Jamie into a trap. They are transported back to Waterfield's own time, 1867, where his daughter Victoria is being held hostage by the Daleks to ensure his cooperation.
The Daleks force the Doctor to monitor Jamie's performance of a test - the rescue of Victoria - with the supposed intention of identifying the human factor: the special quality possessed by humans that enables them always to defeat the Daleks. The Doctor, having succeeded in this task, implants the human factor into three test Daleks - with the result that they become friendly and playful!
Everyone is transported back to Skaro where the Doctor discovers that the Daleks' true aim has been to isolate the Dalek factor - the impulse to destroy - and implant it into humans. The Emperor Dalek informs him that his TARDIS will be used to spread the Dalek factor throughout all time.
By a ruse, however, the Doctor is able to infuse many more Daleks with the human factor. A civil war breaks out between the two Dalek factions and they are apparently all destroyed. As Waterfield has been killed during the course of the action, the Doctor offers Victoria a place aboard the TARDIS. And so starts the beginning of the second great Dr. Who team of Jamie and Vicky. They have a great chemistry that was so lacking in the last few pairs.

Season Four was not the best, we had a few too many weak scripts such as The Highlanders and The Smugglers. We saw the birth, and return of the Dr’s second greatest enemy in the Cybermen and the rebirth of the Doctor himself into the very capable Patrick Troughton, and the season was able to find it’s feet again in the final storyline. Onto season 5 also known as The Monster Era:
The Tomb of the Cybermen
The Abominable Snomen
The Ice Warriors
The Enemy of the Word
The Web of Fear
Fury from the Deep
The Wheel in Space

All set for Yule tomorrow!!