Quiet Sunday

"Every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty." Mahatma Gandhi

"An inch of time is an inch of gold: treasure it. Appreciate its fleeting nature - misplaced gold is easily found, misspent time is lost forever." Loy Ching-Yuen

"When you are part of a group, living for others: you broaden yourself. This really is family life." Swami Prajnanpad

"I believe that no one is born free from the need for love." Dalai Lama

It has been a rough couple of weeks. My Aunt Bird was in the hospital with bi-lateral pneumonia and my Mom has been frantic. Of course in worrying about her sister she got down sick herself. And then my brother came down sick with an upper respiratory infection and his coughing is keeping me awake at night. I'm glad to have an extra day off this week due to Labor Day.

I went ahead and bought the First Season of Doctor Who and yes this ramble will be going into geek time. I have made no secret of the fact that I am a long time fan of the show and have seen every Doctor except Sylvester McCoy. I was tied up big time in real life when his episodes were shown although I may try and go back and watch some. I love the new series and the current Doctor, David Tennant has edged out my former favorite Tom Baker.

I've been watching the first series with Christopher Eccelstone and while the shows are really great I had put off buying them because I really didn't like that Doctor. I'm sure if I worked with the actor I would find him to be a lovely man however I was put off by the harshness of his Doctor. I didn't get a sense of "humanity" in him. It was the same reaction I had to Colin Baker's Doctor. I love the actor to pieces. I mean how can you not love someone who leads your staff in "meowing" happy birthday to your cat? I wasn't all that fond of Colin's Doctor however because I found him to be harsh and egotistical. It was hard going from the vulnerability of Peter Davison's Doctor to Colin's.

In watching the ten Doctor's I would put my top three as David Tennant, Tom Baker and Peter Davison. All of them had a vulnerability about them and you got a sense that they really loved these creatures that make up planet Earth and that they care about us. It is that sense that they care that make their versions of the Doctor so appealing.

One of the deciding factors in finally getting the Series One is that the character of Captain Jack Harkness is in five of the episodes. Other then the fact that John Barrowman is one of the biggest dolls in history I must say that his character is so appealing, even when he is being a con man, that you still like him. So why would you prefer the con man to the Doctor? Again it comes down to a feeling that Captain Jack has a vulnerability and soft spot where he does care for others.

In the best of science fiction and fantasy there is a humanity in the characters who stay with you. Aragon in The Lord of the Rings may be a non-human but he still has the doubts and fears that humans are prone to. He cares about others and he does in the end overcome his own doubts to become a noble and caring person.

The Doctors that I like the most are the ones who have doubts and fears and care for others. I don't like the Doctors who have the big egos. I can't relate to them. I liked Captain Jack from the start because you sense from the start that there is that "humanity" inside of him. There is certainly the love of life and enthusiasm in him that makes you want to chuck it all and joining him in spite of the rational being inside of you screaming "are you nuts!" ;-)

I like my heroes human even if they are Time Lords, Time agents from the 51st Century, or Rangers raised by Elves. That spark of humanity is what makes them special. Besides let me see you try to resist those dimples and that devilish glint in his eyes. Me I'm not even going to try.

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Once More Into the Breach

"Three things are essential: great doubt, great faith, and great perseverance." Zen saying

"The sun lights up a thousand courtyards. Take away the walls and you will see that it is all the same light." Djalal ad-Din Rumi

"He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good." Confucius

"It is easy to see the faults of others, hard to see one's own." Buddha

"The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis." Dalai Lama

"A clear distinction should be made between what is not found by science and what is found to be nonexistent by science. What science finds to be nonexistent, we must accept as nonexistent; but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter....It is quite clear that there are many, many mysterious things." Dalai Lama

"Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer." Dalai Lama

Well there should be enough quotes there to keep you thinking for quite a while. ;-) Obviously I have been away from this Journal for a time and they have built up. An injury to the left rotator cuff has kept me really under the weather and not feeling like doing much at all these last couple of weeks.

I managed to get my website caught up again and am happy about that. I was thinking about my art the other day and was considering which artists I consider as being an inspiration to me. I came up with three main ones. The first is the great French impressionist Claude Monet. The second is the great Spanish surrealist Salvatore Dali. The third would be the classic space artist Chelsey Bonestell.

From Monet comes my love of doing landscapes. I found it interesting to read that in later years one of the reasons that Monet did his colors and the paintings the way he did was because of cataracts and that was they way he saw things. It is a great lesson in not letting anything get in the way of doing what you love.

From Dali I learned the love of the unusual, the surreal, the bizarre. The above picture is called Surreal Dali in honor of one of my favorite artists. If I want to be amazed I will sit down and go through Dali's works and look and wonder.

My love of science fiction goes with my love of space art and Chelsey Bonestell was one of the very best. I have always love space art and their are many, many talented artists in the field. I find that I always go back to doing space art as that was what I started with when I first embarked on computer generated art 10 years ago.

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Empty Sounds

"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." Kahlil Gibran

 

"We should not be too concerned with our fame or what people say about us, either bad or good, because in reality fame could not make any serious difference in one's life. Therefore, we should have our priorities right, and seek what is truly of value, what is truly of meaning to our lives, not just mere fame, which is, after all, empty sounds."

 

It has been an interesting week. My mother finally turned in her intent to retire letter at work and she will be retiring come the first of September. Yeah!. We have been pushing her to retire for years now. I think having Pixie around helped her to make the decision as she loves being around the cat. I guess the spoiled rotten little cat does have some real good points.;-)

 

Friday was the season ending of Doctor Who. It was a beautifully done show and I was very impressed. We had all the companions back and that was great. It also showed more sides to the Doctor then we have seen in the past. You get the sense that here is a man who has enormous power and hasn’t always used it in a way that he has come to approve. He has more humanity now and seeing an incarnation of the Doctor as he was at the very beginning of the new series before he encountered Rose and the Doctor he has become was a lesson in the power of caring for others. He has learned more compassion as a result of being around his human companions and that is a good thing. His companions have also grown and they are now able to work independently of the Doctor and make the difficult decisions.

 

The show wasn't all grim however and watching John Barrowman's Captain Jack flirting with everybody was really fun. There is always a sense of humor in the show even when in the midst of its most intense and frightening battles. Davros is truly a demented and frightening opponent and I'm glad the show brought him back. Now if we can get the BBC and David Tennant talking to each other rather then to the press and get the man signed up to do more seasons of the Doctor everything would be great.

 

I saw X-Files: I Want to Believe yesterday and still haven't made up my mind about the movie. My brother was really impressed with the movie. I liked it but not as much as I thought I would. I really wanted a movie more like the last one where you had the conspiracy theories and the race against the forces of evil. This show was more about redemption I guess and in its way was well done. It gave the fans a lot of what they wanted but I really wanted it to go in a different direction then it did.

 

I finally splurged and got myself a new TV. The sound was really bad on the old one. I got a 19 inch HDTV flat screen and it is wonderful. I also replaced my DVD player which kept over heating and freezing in the middle of the discs. The one I got has VCR and DVD/DVR. I plan on copying some of my old tapes onto DVD since this system has a one step copy feature.

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