St. Patrick’s Day is near, when the world unites in all things Irish. Sure, the story of St. Patrick is littered with miraculous imagery to possibly cover over a gruesome part of old Ireland’s earthen history. BUT, the way people today share, cook, and toast to one another’s health, wealth, and happiness has added a new spirit to the day.
Here are some Geeky Irish Blessings created for you. Enjoy! Hopefully, there will be time to come up with some more.
I’ve never viewed Doctor Who as a science fiction story. A person can drive himself mad trying to see the science in the fiction and the connections in the timeline. Within the wibbley wobbley universe created, there is a tangible hope that each episodic glimpse breathes more life into the fairy tale character, and the desire to have it come closer into our individual lives.
We are on the edge of our seats, we hold our breath, we don’t blink…
How has the story of Doctor Who influenced your life?
There are a multitude of theories running around regarding who Clara Oswin Osward is. Everything from the “granddaughter” Susan to the Time Lord Romana, and Jenny as the Doctor’s test-tube daughter to an early regeneration of River Song. They are each plausible in the Doctor Who fairytale, and it’s amazing what that team of writers can do.
The River Song regeneration could be plausible as she mentioned being an “impressionable young girl” when she first meets the Doctor. Depending on a definition of “young”, that could have been Mel in Let’s Kill Hitler, but at that time, Mel was far from “impressionable” in the traditional sense. There’s also the issue that River’s regenerations bring around a new body, while Clara has been the same character twice. In a Steven Moffat-esque twist, this might still work. In the same episode, Amy mentions to River “Apparently you used all your remaining regenerations in one go. You shouldn’t have done that.” Perhaps as the normal regeneration process was interrupted, but she still retains some of the attributes. Maybe she’s now getting multiple 1UP’s. Same body, but having to continually take the slow route.
Amongst the guesswork, the hat should be thrown in that Clara Oswin Osward might be the legitimate daughter of the Doctor and River Song. To put it bluntly, they had to have had a few adventures together alone after they had been married. *nudge*nudge*wink*wink*
What’s the thrill and excitement in being predictable, anyways?
The TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he’s needed. Perhaps the TARDIS recognizes Clara, knows that the Doctor needs someone with him, and takes the initiative to bring the two of them together. With a mix of Time Lord DNA and human DNA with TARDIS blessings, the outcome could be a person that lives and dies, but retaining the same genetic codes. Almost like a reincarnation, complete with a simple mind wipe of the previous life (she obviously doesn’t recognize the Doctor in Asylum of the Daleks). Born on November 23, which is the date when the first Doctor Who episode was broadcast. A new life created on the birthday of the show?
Regarding the flirt and fascination with each other, it’s obvious that something’s pulling the Doctor and Clara together. It seems possible for an oddball twist reminiscent of the Star Wars Luke & Leia flirt-and-kiss before they knew that they were related.
Depending on how long Clara is planned to be a companion, the show could have lots of play time to build up the suspense of who Clara is. Sure, it would be a corny ending to the hype, but it also holds a much more emotional tie that could only be compared to the moment when we discovered that River Song was Amy and Rory’s daughter.
Besides, with Clara’s wit and feisty spirit, a “Hello Dad” could be delivered with the same enthusiasm as “Hello Sweetie”.
The name itself, Clara Oswin Oswald, seems like a brilliant search for anagrams. It’d be a shame if there wasn’t some kind of hint in there somewhere. Aside from some interesting words, “snow” does appear in it.
We inch closer day by day to the season premier of Doctor Who on March 30. I’m sure that the writers aren’t going to be letting us down. It’s going to be an intense roller coaster ride of adventure and emotion, and we can’t wait.
It’s that fabulous time of the year again!
Whether you slingshot around the sun, jump in your personal TARDIS, or procure the binary code for time travel, have fun!
Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day
December 8 at 12:00:00am until December 8 at 11:59:59pm
Everywhere
Description
Spend the entire day in costume and character. The only rule is that you cannot actually tell anyone that you are a time traveler. Other than that, anything’s game.
There are three possible options:
1) Utopian/cliché Future – “If the Future did a documentary of the last fifty years, this is how badly the reenactors would dress.” Think Star Trek: TNG or the Time Travelers from Hob. Ever see how the society in Futurama sees the 20th century? Run with it. Your job is to dress with moderately anachronistic clothing and speak in slang from varying decades.
Here are some good starters:
- Greet people by referring to things that don’t yet exist or haven’t existed for a long time. Example: “Have you penetrated the atmosphere lately?” “What spectrum will today’s broadcast be in?” and “Your king must be a kindly soul!”
- Show extreme ignorance in operating regular technology. Pay phones should be a complete mystery (try placing the receiver in odd places). Chuckle knowingly at cell phones.
2) Dystopian Future – This one offers a little more flexibility. It can be any kind of future from Terminator to Freejack. The important thing to remember is dress like a crazy person with armor. Black spray painted football pads, high tech visors, torn up trenchcoats and maybe even some dirt here or there. Remember, dystopian future travelers are very startled that they’ve gone back in time.
Some starters:
- If you go the “prisoner who’s escaped the future” try shaving your head and putting a barcode on the back of your neck. Then stagger around and stare at the sky, as if you’ve never seen it before.
- Walk up to random people and say “WHAT YEAR IS THIS?” and when they tell you, get quiet and then say “Then there’s still time!” and run off.
- Stand in front of a statue (any statue, really), fall to your knees, and yell “NOOOOOOOOO”
- Stare at newspaper headlines and look astonished.
- Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say “In thirty years dial this number. You’ll know what to do after that.” Then slip away.
3) The Past – This one is more for beginners. Basically dress in period clothing (preferably Victorian era) and stagger around amazed at everything. Since the culture’s set in place already, you have more of a template to work off of.
Some starters:
- Airplanes are terrifying. Also, carry on conversations with televisions for a while.
- Discover and become obsessed with one trivial aspect of technology, like automatic grocery doors. Stay there for hours playing with it.
- Be generally terrified of people who are dressed immodestly compared to your era. Tattoos and shorts on women are especially scary.
Remember, try to fit in. Never directly admit you’re a time traveler, and make really, really bad attempts at keeping a low profile.
It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye yellow bellied land-lubbers! Heave-to, cast the main sails, and set yer sights upon that blue horizon, when sky and sea meet. For all of you Pastafarians* out there, this day is even more for you! Celebrations carry on around the world now, thanks to John Baur and Mark Summers, and Brian. For some reason, I keep thinking that my high school History/Economics teacher is somehow tied into the holiday.
Fond memories can be recalled from the Studio City Tattoo party, to more intimate local pirate gatherings at mom-and-pop shops around the San Fernando Valley. Celebrate with your friends and educate the masses to this festive day!
For a classy pirate treat, try out the Rum Runner’s Trifle.
Here are a couple perfectly piratical videos posted for your eyes to visually plunder. Enjoy, and if you have any that you’d like to add to this list, please leave the YouTube link in the comments below!
*Click here for more information on Pastafarianism and the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In the words of the creators themselves, this is how International Talk Like a Pirate Day started, and the complete aftermath and more can be found at the Talk Like A Pirate Website:
Arrr! We be the pirate guys, matey.
Or, in another vernacular, we are guys, John Baur and Mark Summers. And that really should be all you need to know about the origins of Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’re guys. Not men, with responsibility and suits and power ties. We’re guys, with all that that implies. But here are the details.
Once upon a time — on June 6, 1995, to be precise — we were playing racquetball, not well but gamely. It wasn’t our intention to become “the pirate guys.” Truth to tell, it wasn’t really our intention to become anything, except perhaps a tad thinner and healthier, and if you could see our photos, you’d know how THAT turned out. As we flailed away, we called out friendly encouragement to each other -”Damn, you bastard!” and “Oh, jeez, my hamstring!” for instance – as shots caromed away, unimpeded by our wildly swung rackets.
On this day, for reasons we still don’t quite understand, we started giving our encouragement in pirate slang. Mark suspects one of us might have been reaching for a low shot that, by pure chance, might have come off the wall at an unusually high rate of speed, and strained something best left unstrained. “Arrr!,” he might have said.
Who knows? It might have happened exactly that way.
Anyway, whoever let out the first “Arrr!” started something. One thing led to another. “That be a fine cannonade,” one said, to be followed by “Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!” and other such helpful phrases.
By the time our hour on the court was over, we realized that lapsing into pirate lingo had made the game more fun and the time pass more quickly. We decided then and there that what the world really needed was a new national holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day.
First, we needed a date for the holiday. As any guy can tell you, June 6 is the anniversary of World War II’s D-Day. Guys hold dates like that in reverence and awe so there was no way we could use June 6.
Mark came up with September 19. That was and is his ex-wife’s birthday, and the only date he could readily recall that wasn’t taken up with something like Christmas or the Super Bowl or something. We also decided — right then and there on the court on June 6, 1995 — that the perfect spokesman for our new holiday was none other than Dave Barry himself, nationally syndicated humor columnist and winner of the Pulitzer by-God Prize. So, naturally, we forgot all about it.
For seven years we celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day pretty much on our own, with our friend Brian Rhodes actually reminding us that the event was coming up. Frankly, we usually forgot exactly when Talk Like a Pirate Day was supposed to be or even that there was such a thing. Brian is one of those guys who programs every important event into his computer so that a reminder pops up the day before. John and Mark may be the founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but Brian is certainly the midwife, or godfather or something. (Have a cigar, Brian!)
Things would probably have continued indefinitely on that low-key note until John, Mark and Brian were little old pirates in the Home for Retired Sea Dogs. We had a national holiday that almost nobody knew about, and we were content with that.
Except for one happy accident. One day in early 2002, John chanced upon Dave Barry’s e-mail address. As the entire universe knows, Dave Barry is a syndicated columnist and the author of somewhere between four and 6,000 books and the second funniest man in the universe. We were two guys (three if you count Brian, and that seems only fair,) but Dave (we call him Dave now, though he probably doesn’t know it. Mr. Barry would probably be more appropriate, but, well, you know.) anyway, Dave is like a whole parade with brass bands and elephants. We reasoned that Dave would be able to bring attention to Talk Like A Pirate Day in a way that Mark and John (and Brian) wouldn’t be able to if we lived to be 200. Ambition suddenly burned bright, and sending e-mails is a very easy thing to do. Which is why we finally got around to contacting him.
The first e-mail introduced us, and told him about our great idea — Talk Like a Pirate Day. We knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. Then we offered him the only thing we had, the chance to be official national spokesman for the event.
We clicked the send button, casting our bread upon the water, if we may wax Biblical.
Surprisingly, we had an answer in a matter of days. We had assumed a famous guy like Dave Barry would have more important things to do than read the e-mail of a couple of louts with a hare-brained idea. It turns out, louts like us are where he gets a lot of his column material.
It’s a great idea, he said, (actually “very excellent” were his exact words, in case you’re keeping score.) But then he asked the fatal question.
“Have you guys actually DONE anything about this? Or are you counting on me to carry the ball here?”
Very perceptive of him. The way we answered would be crucial in bringing Barry aboard. We decided on the truth, with a lot of ass kissing thrown in.
“Well, we’ve talked like pirates every Sept. 19, and we’ve encouraged our several friends to,” John wrote in reply. And Mark put it in perspective when he wrote, “We are dinghy-sized-talk-like-a-pirate kinda guys, but you, Dave … you are like a frigate-huge-sized-talk-like-a-pirate kinda guy.”
In early September, John got a phone call from the feature editor at the local paper, someone he had worked with for several years before leaving the newspaper business (But that’s a different story.) She sounded confused. “John, I was editing this week’s Dave Barry column and it’s about … Is this you?”
It was. The nationally syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning writer of “distinguished commentary” (the Pulitzer committee’s description, not his own) became convinced of the great potential of such a holiday. Or maybe he had run out of fresh column ideas and didn’t want to do another one on toilet training his infant daughter. Either way, he had written the column.
And hell broke loose.
Shenanigans: Silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief.
Geekery: The collective goings on of geeks/the qualities that make a geek
Together combined, their power is known as shenanigeekery! If you’re a geek, and you enjoy creating geekish mischief or being geekily silly, you get into the realm of shenanigeekery. Do not use the term lightly, for there are many forms of geek and different levels of shenanigans. Shenanigeekery is only to be used in the most utmost of high-spirited, good-mojo, and thrilling of instances. It is not a derogatory term, nor does it have any negative connotations. Treat it as such.
Pond Life is the new 5 part mini-adventure, with a new part every day, featuring the Doctor, Amy, Rory and some surprise familiar faces! En route to visit the Ponds the TARDIS’ Helmic Regulator malfunctions, leaving the Doctor popping up everywhere in time and space. Will he ever make it back to them?
Watch Asylum of the Daleks, the new Doctor Who adventure, on BBC One on Saturday 01 September at 7.20pm, and on:
BBC America on Saturday 01 September at 9pm ET
Space (Canada) on Saturday 01 September at 9pm ET
ABC1 (Australia) — Coming Soon
Prime (New Zealand) — Coming Soon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho
***Be sure to check back here for a list of all the adventures as they are released!***
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It’s hypnotic. 50 minutes of 56 episodes of Star Trek TOS played at the same time, tiled next to each other. If you get through the whole thing, it will make the 49:15 mark, and following, that much more enjoyable.
Good luck.
56 Episodes of Star Trek At The Same Time
A new themed restaurant has opened amongst the bustling hub surrounding the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles. It shows promise, as long as the general public gives it a chance, and the restaurant can hold up to the high standard that the décor, theme, and prices that it shows off.
It’s christened “Excalibur Medieval Restaurant”. Now, your mind might automatically jump to the kitschy feeling that the standard Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament can bring about, but this restaurant seems to have something different. It takes the heart of the medieval ideals, and combines them with food. It’s not your standard turkey leg, goblet of beer type of place.
This past evening, on April 12, they held their Grand Opening, complete with a King and Queen, Knights, a Jester, a world-traveled magician, musicians, and dancers galore.
Vaclav, the magician, displayed some serious skills with his card tricks, one of which involved a dagger pistol, as well as “tapping” into the energies and aura of an unsuspecting volunteer. Andrew, the Scottish piper, played his heart out while the dancers (almost all from the Celtic Arts Center in North Hollywood) entertained with some traditional Ceili group dances. As the night progressed, Peter McGowan and Suman enchanted guests with a tribal rhythm and sound which had hints of a Celtic line at times, along a belly-dance display by Suman. As the evening came to a close, and the music was still going, it was pleasant to see some of the wait staff getting involved with the music and dancing. It’s those spontaneous moments that every human spirit encounters that can bring magic to a time and space.
While the royal company and others would normally not be in attendance at the “castle” during the normal operating (I’m sure they’re off visiting the War Dukes, and bringing the entertainment with them), you can still enjoy what the restaurant has to offer.
The menu has an assortment of single person entrees, each generalized into an earth location: The Land – Meats and Fowl, The Pond – Fish, and The Garden – Veggies. If you are of a stronger will, and want to tempt your palette, they also offer duck, venison, boar, rabbit, antelope, or pheasant, but you may want to call ahead to ensure that it’s available that day. If you are in a group, you may want to opt for one of the Feasts, which covers meals for 2 or more people.
CHEF BENI VELAZQUEZ draws on worldwide influences to re-imagine dining in the Medieval age. His unique menu utilizes fresh organic produce and meats from local farmers, sustainable seafood and an eclectic blend of European-inspired spices and flavors to stimulate the most carnal senses. Excalibur guests are invited to eat with the bare hands as they savor dishes like.
Unfortunately, there was a down side to the evening. It seems that the kitchen may have run out of food, as quite a few guests at the front of the restaurant were not able to sample the delicacies, and left thus left early.
If you find yourself amidst the Downtown area, and are itching for a different style dining experience, or else are going into pre-, or post-, Rensaissance Faire withdrawals, this might be your place. Visit their website HERE for more information!
*I had been invited to attend the Grand Opening as a volunteer Ceili Dancer, but how could the nerd side of me resist taking in all of the other medieval aspects? It was an enjoyable time, and the staff was friendly and welcoming*
Back during the innocent days of High School (Catholic, mind you), there was a teacher that displayed a formula on how to determine the date that Easter would occur each year.
It’s brilliant, and one of the few actual life-applying lessons that I learned during that time, since even Algebra apparently changes over the years. The odd thing, however, is that it is seemingly Pagan based with the Spring Equinox, and a method that the Church adopted, making it into their own (gasp!). I have a strange suspicion that this was the beginning of my desire to look at the world outside of the Catholic, and organized religion in general, bubble.
It’s Easter time in the world, along with Passover, Theravadin New Year, and probably a handful of other holidays. These holidays encourage forgiveness, peace, hope, new life, and then it seems to go wrong.
In V for Vendetta, Stephen Fry’s character mentions the Qur’an: “I don’t have to be Muslim to find the images beautiful or its poetry moving”. The Torah and Christian Bible (and its many variances therein) possesses equally powerful passages, however, since a good chunk of the world is Jewish or Christian based, admitting that a completely different script was equally as beautiful makes for a more striking sentiment.
Each religion possesses its own beauty, and in it, core beliefs which are meant to make its followers into the best people that they can be. Each religion is tailored to a society’s specific needs, and a desire for fulfillment that the purpose of life transcends Earthly meaning.
Each religion is right. Each religion will defend its 
beliefs. Traditions are hard to sway unless forcibly made to. While many religions preach for a display of peace and a show of universal love to everyone, it appears to need only apply to those within the same umbrella of that religion. It’s a teensy bit hypocritical.
There are sparks of hope. While doctrinal religion, overall, holds tight, there are the individuals who accept humanity for what it is, rather than what they believe in.
If a person is a good human being, does religion matter? If a person speaks or looks different, does it mean that they are automatically inclined to hurt you? Alternately, are you automatically inclined to hurt them? What makes you more “right” than someone else? What makes it so difficult to be accepting?
Does another person’s life choice (religion, gender, sexual preference, etc) change yours in any way? You would still love the people you love and go about your daily business in the same way. Why are you allowed to pick and choose the “acceptable” qualities in people, while cutting down anything that doesn’t jive with yours?
If you haven’t noticed, we’re only in this life for a blink of an eye. Why would you want to spend it with hate or fear in you?
Your basis of religion stems from something that was taught to you. You were molded and formed to behave within the collectively agreed upon set of values. While you accept the certain method of thought, you were not born knowing your religion. You may have been born “knowing God” in whichever form you want to believe, sure, but you would have known him in a true essence. You had to grow into your religion. You can choose, at any point in your life, to change.
While the human race has an incredibly long way to go, change is happening. Change will come.
~~Wishing you all of the love and peace that the universe has to offer.~~
