Light over Darkness

AGAIN we celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness, of the God of day over the hosts of night. Again Samson is victorious over Delilah, and Hercules triumphs once more over Omphale. In the embrace of Isis, Osiris rises from the dead, and the scowling Typhon is defeated once more. Again Apollo, with unerring aim, with his arrow from the quiver of light, destroys the serpent of shadow. This is the festival of Thor, of Baldur and of Prometheus. Again Buddha by a miracle escapes from the tyrant of Madura, Zoroaster foils the King, Bacchus laughs at the rage of Cadmus, and Chrishna eludes the tyrant.

This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.

This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions — the worship of the sun.

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.

The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.

This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.

All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.

Let us all hope for the triumph of Light — of Right and Reason — for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.

And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.

Robert Green Ingersoll – “The Agnostic Christmas” (1892)

Reminder from Cynical-C

3-2-1 Contact

The opening credits to 3-2-1 Contact are burned onto my retinas like a brand. I watched so much of this as kid! I really enjoyed the Lisa/Mark/Trini era, but stuck with it through the mid 80's. It's youth science programming like this that made me the man I am today. I guess I should donate to PBS at some point in the future.



I tweeted this a few days ago, but it bears repeating.

Community: I am Batman

It is setups like this that have made me a fan of the tv show Community. I want to watch the Community webisodes, but I have yet to find a way to do so from Canada. I get cable, and two different NBC affiliates, but I can't watch shows online from my geographic region. Does that sound right to you?

ETA: Thank you youtube for The Community College Chronicles

Community - I am Batman!!!
Uploaded by blacktuna4581. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

This is my 500th post. Please make a note in the records of the day.

Pho Porn

Anthony Bourdain loves a bowl of pho as much as I do, though wearing a white shirt is a rookie mistake. He needs one of my red pho gang shirts:

Video via Cynical-c

Moon conspiracy shirt

I think it's obvious that the Moon bombing was an inside job. Anyone with two eyes and a brain could tell you that, but THEY don't want you know. This shirt will let everyone know the TRUTH!

Or this is an ironic shirt, mocking conspiracy nuts. Or that's just what the Illuminati and the World Bank want you to think.

Wake up sheeple!

[Shirt available from Spreadshirt]

My Fandom History: Part 3

I have been slowly recounting my personal experiences in science fiction and fantasy fandom. When we left off I was attending a planning meeting for Conversion 22.

I can sum up the next couple of years thusly.

Enough people quit the convention planning committee that by the end my wife was the president, and I was head of programming. We came to "lend a hand" and we ended up running big parts of the show. We brought in Jeremy Bulloch who portrayed Boba Fett in Star Wars, which was great. Sure, a good portion of his speaking fee came out of my pocket, but it was totally worth it, spending time with him and his wife before the convention.

Overall, however, things did not go exactly as planned and we took a lot of flack. We also got a lot of complaints from certain quarters that we had too much Star Wars content at the event.

What was not made clear to me at the beginning, was that the local premiere Science fiction and Fantasy convention was supposed to be geared towards authors, aspiring authors, and (space permitting) artists who might be interested in doing the cover art for said authors. A fine event, but one that is clearly not Star Wars friendly. One author made it very clear that Star Wars was crap and fans who dress up are overweight, arrested adolescents. Clearly not my crowd.

So I decided to turn my energies back to the local Star Wars fanclub that my wife and I helped start. After a year or so, I noticed an unusual trend. Core members were meeting without me and people stopped coming to lightsaber class. I was eventually informed that my cracking wise about the prequels pissed people off, and my raving about DragonCon pissed people off. My wife and I (among others) were removed from the council and Dragoncon was declared to be NOT Star Wars, and its discussion, verboten.

So in short, I pissed off the SF&F fans for liking Star Wars too much, and I pissed of the Star Wars fans for not liking Star Wars enough.

What did I do then? Watch this space.

Previously on Slashboing:

• History Part 2
• History Part 1

The Lost Skeleton Returns Again!

I'm really looking forward to this film!



[Lost Skeleton Returns Again]