Friends,
Went to dentist, not the one who died last week, another one,
and he immediately found three cavities but none that seem to
account for the headache in ear ,likely sinusitis then as I have
always tended to have. Good to have gone though in spite of
recent exam from Dr Ackerman since it seems, understandably
considering he was about to die, he missed some things...

Just a couple of photographs to share I guess ...
Here is one from yesterday, St Nicholas in Cohoes New York, in
which is blessing of icons painted by memers of a parish icon
painting class. ( Read more... )
and secondly a picture of a pond outside the library last
evening...and as always welcoming all your response
I am yours
+Seraphim
.

Teaser gift for leyenn

Title: The Bet
Author: Santa to be revealed
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Rating: Adult
Spoilers: Detour
Summary: Knowing she had hit the target dead center every time, Scully looked smugly over at him, and wished she hadn’t. He was still leaning against the partition, but his eyes were filled with an intensity she had never seen from him before.
Word Count: 4,716
Disclaimer: Not mine, sadly.
Author's Note: Thank you so much to my wonderful betas. This was supposed to be a drable that grew and grew and grew...

( The Bet )

A few days ago when Ginny was listening to some Star Wars music in the car, she realized it had been a long time since we had watched the movies. The last time I saw one from beginning to end was probably four years ago when Revenge of the Sith came out, and she last saw A New Hope in May of 2007 when she was wondering what she could do to pass the time one night and I pointed out that the movie was 30 years old that day.

So last night we watched The Phantom Menace after the kids went to bed. (We're waiting until we're sure they'll understand the movies before we reveal them to our little darlings, and we want Vader's little tidbit of information he gives to Luke to have the greatest effect possible.) A few observations came up, some in my mind, and some between us.

Jar Jar isn't quite as obnoxious or annoying as he used to be. Maybe we've become desensitized to him after ten years. As Ginny pointed out, he wasn't ever meant for adults, but for kids. And kids love him, even if some adults can't imagine that being possible.

The movie itself is kind of goofy as a whole, but it still offers a lot of fun, which is what it's supposed to do.

How did anyone ever fail to realize that Darth Sidious and Senator Palpatine were the same person? The movie gives plenty of hints about Palpatine's sinister side for anyone with eyes to see. Most obvious is the scene at the funeral pyre, where Yoda tells Mace Windu that there are always two Sith lords, a master and apprentice. Mace then says, "But which was destroyed, the master or the apprentice?" and the next shot pans past several characters before stopping at Palpatine, while the music fades away on a minor chord. (It's also interesting to see how well the series worked around Ian McDiarmid's age. In 1983 he was heavily done up with age makeup, in this movie he was the right age for the role he had and used no age makeup, and then in the later prequels he was aged again. If he had already been an older man in Return of the Jedi, he would have been way too old for Phantom Menace.)

Darth Maul might not have had many lines, but he was still an effective villain: scary and dangerous looking.

Early on, one of the Naboo describes the Trade Federation army as "battle-hardened," which seems like an odd thing to say about an army of robots. They're only as hardened as their programming makes them, which didn't appear to be very much.

Governor Bibble (the guy with the white beard) mentions massive starvation on Naboo, but by then the queen's ship had only been on Tattooine for two days. Perhaps the damage to the hyperdrive made their journey there last a bit longer (the movie doesn't say), but if not, how could starvation kill off massive numbers of people in only two days? My best suggestion was that the Naboo had no food stored up of any kind, and the robots weren't allowing them to go shopping. Now I'm thinking that maybe the blockade of unspecified length that preceded the planet's invasion might have already depleted their food supplies, but that would only be the case for off-world items. And Naboo certainly has enough arable land to feed its population without depending on foreign food imports, so that theory doesn't go very far either. The hyperdrive theory seems the best one.

People pick away at Jake Lloyd's performance, but how many people know how nine-year-olds really act, let alone remember how they were at that age?

Why do people have problems with midichlorians? I hear so many people gripe about them, but their gripes are vague and unfocused. Enlighten me, my seven readers, because I see no problem with them and will be happy to explain why.

On its face, it's odd that the queen's decoy would order Padme, the real queen, to perform the menial task of cleaning up R2-D2. I suggested that Artoo knew who the queen really was, and would thus consider it a compliment. Ginny questioned that idea, since he was just a ship-bound repair droid before that, but this is Artoo, the robot with the madd hacking skillz. And since he can't talk, no one seems to care how much he really knows of anything. Still, it seems unusual that someone impersonating her superior would order that person to perform such a task.

When I first saw the movie ten years ago, I marveled that a government could oust its leader by just one person suggesting a vote of no confidence. I now think it's more telling of a bad government that a commercial entity (the Trade Federation) gets to have its own representation in the Senate, alongside all the various planetary governments.

Jar Jar has got to be the luckiest person ever. Watch as he takes down several droids in rapid succession by means of a damaged droid whose wires got tangled on his feet. He drops each droid with a single clean shot, but how can you expect to hit anything by shooting at it with a gun loosely attached to your foot? It gets worse when he's blown into the air, lands directly on the cannon of a moving tank, then takes down the droid who tries to shoot him by accidentally tossing an energy ball at it that he had no control over. This is luckier than Indiana Jones, and that is some lucky.

Anakin's pretty lucky too, considering all that happens in the pod race, topped off with his accidental crash into the blockade ship's hangar and subsequent lucky choice of weapon to use against a main reactor he wasn't trying to destroy.

If they had just turned off the lights in the bongo, maybe all those sea monsters would have left it alone.

The villain no one recognizes as such in the Star Wars saga is Qui-Gon Jinn. He's a leading master in the Jedi order, an amoral organization distinguished by its corruption, complacency, and disregard of the traditional family. He's one of those people who believes that nothing happens without a reason, and so he thinks finding Anakin is what he was supposed to do instead of entertaining the possibility that it was a coincidence. Then he flaunts the rules of the Jedi order because he's so sure that Anakin has to become a Jedi and bring balance to the Force, without questioning what "balance to the Force" could mean. Without Qui-Gon, Anakin would have never become the Jedi who would wipe out the order, along with countless other victims of his brutish will. Good job following your hastily formed opinions there without considering the consequences, sir.

To all filmmakers out there: The final duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul is how you film fight scenes--long shots where you can see the actors from head to toe, interspersed with only a few extreme closeups of flashing blades and grimacing faces. This habit of filming fights with all closeups all the time results in bad fight sequences that frustrate the audience because they can't see what's really going on. Please review this fight until those bad filming techniques are purged from your minds. And then continue reviewing this fight because it's just that awesome.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1551

Jeez, so many (okay, just two) callbacks in this strip. As my archive grows ever larger and more intimidating I'm gonna have to watch out and make sure new strips don't devolve entirely into references to things that happened hundreds of strips ago.

Also you will be pleased to know that in a fit of holiday cheer I have ordered my legal team to allow David Willis' various websites to continue operating even as I pursue legal action against him for his heinous, impertinent theft of my characters. I expect to literally own him by the end of the year, but I figure I might as well allow him the small mercy of pretending he still controls his own fate.

(Before you email me THAT LAST PARAGRAPH WAS A JOKE. Some of you people have no grasp of the concept of sarcasm.)

One last thing: this coming weekend I will be in Austin, TX for WEBCOMICS RAMPAGE! I've never been to Austin before, I hope some of you will show up and say hi. That would be rad.

See you tomorrow!

Teaser Gift for memories_child!

A Mulder Fanmix!

Yes. I know, I am bypassing the queue again. I need humor, friends, and there is no humor to be found in the queue, just depressing and even more depressing story recs. It has been a long time since I've read this, but I remember it as being a very clever x-file, written by two premier writers from our fandom. And, if memory serves, it is quite funny, too.

Title: "Malus Genius, vel Hoc Lemma Nequiquam Latine Scribitur" (The Evil Spirit, or This Title Is Written In Latin for No Reason)
Category: X, R, A, H
Rating: mostly R (sexual situations, mature language, and implied violence), but there are a couple of NC-17 sections.
Spoilers: Brief episode references late in the story; no major spoilers. This is a stand-alone, with the typical stand-alone disregard for the mytharc.
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Summary: What's *your* evil spirit?

Malus Genius

As usual, give love to the writers, let us know what you think and leave suggestions for next time. I swear, I will get back to them, eventually.

Title: Attachment
Author: raeology101
Pairing: E/O
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine (only Bailey) and I cannot make a profit from them.
Summary: famfic

http://raeology101.livejournal.com/16242.html

[30] icons for The X Files
and [12] Gillian Anderson/David Duchovny (:

Previews:


find the rest here @ my journal !

Friends,
Back from weekend visit to St.Nicholas church in Cohoes
New York just north of Albany. It is a beautiful church
with a sort of jewel box quality which Orthodox churches
can have sometimes have. Here is a picture from the
choir loft which gets the general view.( Read more... )
And here is are a couple of others in which I appear...
In the first the icon of St Nicholas on a stand in front left.
( Read more... )
It is remarkable about St Nicholas how,although really all
we know certainly about his life is that he was a bishop in
Myra in present day Turkey in the 4th century, the stories
about him spread and grew, centering on his practical help
to people and standing with them in need, with sailors helping
them clear the rigging in a storm, with unjustly accused people
standing with them in court, appearing with money for a poor
man needing it for his daughter...to be there beside the other
is already a miracle perhaps,as Simone Weil says people wait
for the freeing question addressed to the Fisher King in the
old Grail stories ..."what ails you uncle?" for a question out
of real care as to what it means to be the person we are...a
rare question and a freeing one... well in any case perhaps
this standing with the other is at the center of the continuing
spread of the stories of St Nicholas.
And after liturgy today and a wonderful festive meal there was
a perforance by the children of song and instrumental play
ranging from "Jesus Loves me" to Beethoven...and then a great
surprise! St Nicholas himself appeared! I was in awe of a man
who has been a bishop 1600 years longer than I and looking so
well, and he brought gifts for all the performers. Picture
at end of post.
So today these and as always I am yours welcoming all response,
+Seraphim
.
I am to St Nicholas's right. to his left Fr Alvian Smirensky,
and the rector Fr.Terenti Wasielewski.then Victoria Serbalik
parish president. Some children who sang and played.

Why hello again, philes.

I am hosting a "Death Match" in my journal. 50 nominations were voted down to 30, and then 15 pairs were made at random.

What I'm trying to say is, MULDER IS INVOLVED IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH WITH BEN LINUS.

Please vote. It may be too late, the alien ship might be above us all in 2012, but a rally really isn't out of the question.

Otherwise, Mulder feels like this:


GO HERE TO VOTE: DEATH MATCH, GQMFS: BONUS ROUND

Hi hi!

Did anyone happen to snag Simon on Radio 6 this morning?

My recorder decided to be a beast and only recorded 4 minutes of the 2 hour show I didn't get to listen to!


Problem solved! The lovely Beebs decided to put it on iPlayer after all! I have it uploaded here.

At any rate, I have Pegg and Frost on Edith Bowman from November 1st, if anyone's interested. Just their hour, not the whole show.



(And sorry for the overlap--I'm cross-posting to all Peggy comms!)

I <3 Christmas Specials

Title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

One piece of wisdom that I have come to appreciate more and more through the years has been a point C.S. Lewis made toward the end of the first book of his Mere Christianity. In this passage, he was dealing with one of the major hurdles to Christian belief in the 20th century. This was the generally held idea by a number of people that Christianity had been "tried out" in history, and had been found wanting, or even had been disproved. The power of this idea was that it functioned as an assumption, rather than as an argument that required proof itself. In fact, its chief attraction is that it even excuses one from having to work through any history, data, argument or proofs.

The idea was then re-enforced through the power of being fashionable. For those embracing this increasingly-secular vision of reality, the rejection of "religion," in terms influenced by Marx or Freud, was seen as progress. For those who understood themselves as "Progressives," and want to understand themselves this way, to question anything that had been defined as progress is particularly difficult.

Realizing that the power of the intellectual cultural assumption against Christianity lay not in data and argument, but in the more psychological and sociological attraction of being "progressive" for people, Lewis centered this particular argument on that notion itself.

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

This insight is applicable far beyond the question Lewis was dealing with, regarding whether there is actually grounds to believe in the truth of Christianity. In my case, in the last week, it has been to come to the realization that the work I was doing in my current section of the dissertation has really taken me into a tangent, and a tangent ending in a quagmire, at that.

I was intending to use some of Sullivan's work on the controversial question of the meaning in Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church as an illustration for my chapter on the concept of corporate charisms. In the Dogmatic Constitution, there is a section where a new terminology is introduced, describing the Church of Christ as "subsisting in" the Roman Catholic Church. The import of these words has been debated and developed for over forty years now, with Sullivan being one of the key proponents of a particular take on the matter. It is simply just too much of a disputed question in current ecclesiology, and I cannot keep this material from growing to an unwieldy size for my chapter. It might be something I could revisit as a stand-alone article later, but I've just had to admit that it's too big and too much in a state of flux to use in the dissertation.

And so Lewis's point of wisdom on progress sometimes requiring one to turn back came to mind, and I finally summoned up the will or humility to simply flush the entire section. I hate to "lose" a month or six week's worth of work, but it had begun to grow into a tumor on the side of the chapter. Progress, I finally realized, meant turning back and taking another route.

It's Sinterklaas today, which means Saint Nick got to come by tonight to put candy in some of the shoes here.

And this morning the elders quorum went out and banged away at stuff with shotguns. I haven't used a shotgun since I was sixteen, and I'm pleased to report that I'm a better shot now than I was back then. I'm not a great shot, of course, but that doesn't mean any of you potential home invaders out there should feel any safer. It just means I won't guarantee killing you with one clean shot. I might need two or three to make sure you're properly taken down.

Then it snowed on the way back, and Ginny and her mom were late getting to the theater for the latest Twilight movie as a result. But when all was said and done they only missed the first two minutes, and they're not such rabid fans of the franchise to hold that against me and the weather. (The fact that they saw the movie for the first time now instead of on opening night also suggests how non-rabid they are about things Twilight. Me, I can wait for the DVD.)

Teaser gift for memories_child ( Drabble Under the Cut Tag )

For hummingfly67:
Do you have a favourite myth-arc? if not, what is your favourite season or some of your favourite episodes?


For memories_child:
What is your stance on William? How do you feel about character death?