Year 3 of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 9

Week 9: Watercolour

"Hey diddle diddle, don't stop in the middle..." Freehand watercolour on white recycled paper. Masking fluid stars, with highlights and outlines added in black ballpoint and white Puffy paint. Mounted on black card.

Update:

Week 9: Watercolour II

"Goldfish". Freehand watercolours and finepoint Sharpie, over watercolour wash, on watercolour paper. Mounted on black card. Fish based on numerous photos found in a Google Image search.

Return of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 26

Week 26: Land

"Tetraptych of Uluru". Based on photographs found in a Google Image search. Watercolours on watercolour paper, with some detailing in white Signo opaque marker and black Sharpie.

Update:

Week 26: Land II

"The Eagle has landed." Collage of salted watercolours on watercolour paper and gold foil on black card, with highlights of white Signo opaque marker and black Sharpie.

Week 26: Land III

"When land runs out..." Cartoon in black Sharpie, painted in watercolours on watercolour paper, with highlights of white opaque Signo.

Crescent moon

DAY 27

I love how the tree seems to have made space for the crescent moon to snuggle in close.

Happy anniversary, Apollo 11!

Wow!

I've spent the last few weeks demonstrating some of the joys of my school's new interactive whiteboard (IWB), and browsing on Google Earth has been addictive for most of the school's population.

But, in similar vein, NASA has just released some very cool pictures from their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or LRO), which has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites, just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. "The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident."



The online comments added by moon hoax conspiracy theorists are hilarious.

I really liked the appended comment from a NASA Moderator: "This is just the first glimpse of many more images to come. When we're in the operational orbit of only 31 miles, resolution should be two to three times better, and we should be able to get the right lighting conditions to identify the rovers."

All images credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University.

Boy, sitting in the school hall watching a fuzzy black and white television in 1969 (Year 5) at Arncliffe Primary School seems sooooooo long ago, but it also seems like it was only yesterday. Happy Moon Day (on a Monday, even!).



Also worth checking out: The Moon in Google Earth

Full moon, "Full Circle"

Maybe it was the full moon, but the Internet BBSs went wacky this week, what with people avoiding spoilers for the new Star Trek movie, others devouring spoilers for the new Star Trek movie, many celebrating/commiserating about their quest for tickets to the Sydney gala world premiere, plus the surprise preview screening in Austin, TX.

As diehard fans continue to grapple with how the new movie might affect their personal view of Star Trek, others are continuing to demand predestined assurance of a happy ending (ie. a resurrection) for the recently-departed Admiral Kathyrn Janeway, formerly captain of "Voyager". Killed off in a "Next Generation" novel, Peter David's "Before Dishonor", and dying again this month - from another angle - in the just-released "Voyager: Full Circle", the passionate Janeway/Kate Mulgrew fans continue to express their online anguish.

Perhaps Pocket will bring Janeway back as a surprise, unexpected event? They might not want us to know when, or why, or how long we must wait. In real life we never know how long we will take to recover from an illness, a death of a loved one, or adapt to a career change, a divorce, or moving house, Perhaps the creative team at Pocket, too, don't know yet what is in store for Janeway.

When the Borg ship needed to be secured who went charging in? The best woman for the job. A popular main character. She gave her last breath to help save the Federation. In fact, she gave that support beyond the death of her physical body. How heroic!

(Less effective alternate version: When the Borg ship needed to be secured who went charging in? The best woman for the job. A popular main character. She once again kicked Borg ass, just like every other time. How... repetitive!)

Now Pocket Books has a highly popular character waiting in the wings. Just as Wesley Crusher returned (twice) in the "A Time..." mini-series of novels (set between "Insurrection" and "Nemesis") to help save the day with his Traveler powers, now Admiral Janeway may be off learning new abilities with the Q Continuum. Considering if she still has a future with mortals? Maybe. Who knows? We aren't supposed to know. Yet.

As I told a few distressed VOY fanfic writers, I would have thought they'd realise how to manipulate the emotions of their readers by now. A writer learns to use his or her words in clever ways, to cause readers to experience strong emotions towards a particular set of fictional characters. Sometimes negative emotions, and sometimes positive ones. Because we, as an audience, all bring to a work of fiction our own sets of values and experiences, each individual reader's reponses to a story will be unique.

Some fans might not like the twists this particular storyline ("Full Circle") took, but it's part of an ongoing saga, and it's a licensed tie-in. As history has shown, all successful licensed tie-ins usually end up reverting to the status quo. Eventually. Because to continue too far beyond the canonical work, the tie-in stops resembling the parent show. I have no doubt that Janeway will return. You can't keep a popular character down, and the Janeway fans keep telling us how popular she is.

Surely it's the right of an author to use everything in his or her power - even death - but also a host of other life-changing experiences, to bring us the best possible story they can tell? Many VOY and ST readers are loving Kirsten Beyer's "Full Circle", and are eagerly anticipating the sequel, and are willing to bide their time in case Janeway returns. Some fans need to be a little more patient. (I waited from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", in 1979, all the way until the "Enterprse" TV series to get what I had always hoped for: a continuing, feisty, wonderful, antagonistic, ongoing Andorian character: Shran. I even got an entire ST DS9 novel, "Paradigm" by Heather Jarman, set on Andor itself! And then ENT set an episode on Andor, "The Aenar"!)

But I don't want a return to the situation of 1987-1991, where every licensed ST novel was guaranteed to be self-contained, and guaranteed to preserve the status quo, and - in the licensed comics - every new character added to DC Comics' TOS movie era and TNG storylines was only permitted to stay for a short story arc and then had to be dismissed forever. It got very tedious knowing the authors were so hemmed in, and their creativity was constantly being challenged.

Smile, Sydney, smile!

Anyone else in Sydney get smiled upon last night?

No luck finding it at 9pm, which was supposedly the optimum time to witness the phenomenon. However, from a car approaching Penrith about half an hour later, and on a rather overcast and blustery Sydney night, we saw it very briefly when some clouds rolled back - but the face's right eye was winking!

Across Australia, the planets Venus and Jupiter were in formation with a three-day old crescent moon, appearing as a smiley face in the night sky. It will be another five years before the formation appears again. The phenomenon pictured here was taken by Yahoo! 7 user, Caroline, from Victoria.

Filking with Leslie Fish

Over breakfast this morning, an unexpected but very welcome email arrived from "first fandom" identity, fan artist and filk singer/composer extraordinaire, Leslie Fish.

Way back in the 70s, Leslie was the author of numerous Star Trek fanzine stories, often featuring the Andorian character Thelin, briefly seen as Spock's replacement in an alternate history in "Yesteryear", an episode of Filmation's animated Star Trek (TAS).

In 1997, I sought Leslie's permission to upload an online version of her fascinating speculative article "A Summary of the Physiological Roots of Andorian Culture" by F. Sigmund Mead, Journal of Xenoanthropology, June 2341 - originally published in Sehlat's Roar #2, a 1976 Star Trek zine published by Randy Ash. Leslie's extrapolation of Andorian culture was way ahead of the licensed tie-in fiction, which didn't succeed in describing Andorian genetics or social aspects until the post-Deep Space Nine TV series novels, which commenced in 2001.

Leslie recalls that she drew the original artwork that accompanies the article in simple pen-and-ink, and Randy traced over them onto mimeograph stencils! Leslie says she's amazed that they came out readable at all. Furthermore, the added texture you see in the illustrations I uploaded came from the original (amazingly grainy) recycled paper. For republishing them online, I simply cleaned up good photocopies with Liquid Paper and ran the pictures through the photocopier a second time, only on coloured paper, then scanned them. (The grain of that old textured paper played havoc with my first attempts at text scanning the article, too.)

I love the old cover art for Randy's issue #1, too: each cover was hand printed from a linoleum block master! Check out that cover art on Randy's blog.

Leslie's Andorian essay still gets plenty of comment from online readers, especially from people seeking a comparison with the four-partnered Andorian paradigm (suggested by Data in TNG - "Data's Day"), as extrapolated by the recent licensed tie-in novels, and what Leslie had proposed in 1976 with her three-sexed stages of Andorian development.

I was telling Leslie, who's been out of touch with Trek fandom for a while, about recent Thelin appearances in the licensed Pocket Books fiction: in the "Crucible" trilogy (extending the scenes from "Yesteryear") by David R George III; and in a "Myriad Universes" omnibus story, "The Chimes at Midnight" (an alternate history from "Yesteryear" thru to ST VI) by Geoff Trowbridge.

Thanks to her fellow folk singer, Joe Bethancourt, Leslie now has her own website, at www.lesliefish.com/. While investigating the site tonight, I noticed the Youtube song clip on the front page: Star Trek novelist, Julia Ecklar, singing a Leslie Fish song, "Hope Eyrie", about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Check it out! It's great!

Leslie Fish is probably best remembered for the Star Trek filk song lyrics she wrote in a desperate hurry to fill a hole on an album of songs. "Banned from Argo" is still sung at Star Trek conventions the world over (to the tune of the traditional song, "Boston Burglar"). The song isn't her favourite, but it's certainly gained her many fans over the decades.

Sing it with me:

"And we're banned from Argo, everyone.
Banned from Argo, just for having a little fun.
We spent a jolly shore leave there for just three days or four,
But Argo doesn't want us any more..."



By the way, for those of you wondering, "filk songs" are science fiction media folk songs - often, but not necessarily, parodies. The term "filk" came about as the result of an infamous typographical error. A fan named Lee Jacobs meant to type the word "folk" in a program schedule and typed in "filk" instead. It struck his colleagues as being hilarious at the time, so it stuck.

Full moon, dark knight

I just walked home under a glorious full moon, having just seen "The Dark Knight" at the local cinema complex.

Heath Ledger was... magnificent! (And so was the moon.)

I'm sure it's trendy to say that Heath did well in the part, but I reckon he was captivating. Understated, dangerous, chilling.

The movie itself was quite complex; the plot just keeps going and going. Some very strong performances all round, but how sad that Heath isn't around to collect his accolades.

Memories of the moon

Today, I had to run a video about the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969 to some six year olds. Talk about nostalgia! It really does seems like only a few years ago I was in Year 5, sitting towards the back of a school hall at Arncliffe Public School, straining to make out the moving monochrome blurs on a small television set positioned way up on the stage!

On the video today, the narrator suggested that - maybe - someone in the audience might know someone who once saw the moon landing as it happened. Yeah, like their grandparents!

By the light of the crimson moon

Sydney hosted a gorgeous crimson-coloured lunar eclipse tonight. As usual, the various television news programs delighted in demonstrating precisely how lunar eclipses work, and they did a great job of encouraging viewers to go outside and observe the "blood moon" for themselves, but it's hard to look up and not wonder what ancient peoples of the world must have thought - what omens were being summoned forth - by such spectacular natural phenomena.

And a big welcome to all my fellow lunatics.

Howling at the moon

Jack and I went for a walk around the block just before dark this evening, and I happened to notice that the moon was already up, and almost full. (According to my calendar, Monday is the day it counts as "full".) I had to smile when several dogs from a nearby yard started up the most wonderful howl-a-thon. It made me wonder if they were howling at the moon, or if their master was just late home to open a few cans of dog food.

We were almost home when we approached the house where Tyson the Rottweiler used to live (at least, up until a few months ago.) Jack still loves to anticipate that Big Bad Tyson might be there, inside his gate, waiting to bark savagely at us. Today the familiar wrought iron gates were gaping wide open, and Jack did the most hilarious cartoon-like head turns, trying to work out if Tyson was on the loose!

Doggone!

On the eleventh day of Christmas

There has been considerable discussion on "the boards" (TrekBBS) lately, to debate Vulcan's controversial twin/sister/planetoid. We first saw the orange Vulcan sky during "Amok Time" in the 60s, but it was in the first episode aired, "The Man Trap", that Mr Spock revealed that "Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura." Uhura is "not surprised".

However, the Filmation background artists on "Star Trek: The Animated Series" (TAS in the 70s) did not notice a handwritten comment, "Remove moon", by DC Fontana on her sign-off of preliminary artwork for "Yesteryear" (above left, image from the View-master reels packet of the episode). Thus, Vulcan did get an orbitting planetoid - or perhaps, a sister/twin planet. When "Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TMP, (above right) was hurried into release in 1979, with the film barely dry enough to show on premiere night, the planetoid survived. (Only to be removed for a different interpretation of Vulcan's sky for TMP's "Director's Edition" DVD.)

Filmation's TAS wasn't removed from the official "Star Trek canon" until 1989, when the tie-in licences were renewed under tighter restrictions, and the licensees of the "Star Trek" novels, comics and roleplaying games (RPGs) were asked to refrain from referencing TAS. (That memo, of course, has slowly ceased to have influence since Roddenberry's death in 1991. See the many TAS references in other "Star Trek" tie-ins my webpage Toon Trek.)

"Spock's World", a hardcover ST novel by Diane Duane, came out with much publicity and critical acclaim in 1988. The planetoid was spelt T'Khut in "Spock's World", and also in "Voyager: Pathways" by Jeri Taylor, "The Worlds of the Federation" by Shane Johnson and "New Worlds, New Civilizations" by Michael Jan Friedman. The planetoid's name was given as T'Rukh in the hardcover novel, "Sarek", with an explanation from the author, AC Crispin, that the name changes are seasonal. (Like the names for the phases of Earth's moon, I guess.)

But - before all that - the planetoid had already appeared in another Pocket novel set on Vulcan, entitled "The Vulcan Academy Murders" (1984). Here it was called T'Kuht, and the author Jean Lorrah acknowledges fanfic identity Gordon Carleton for coining the planetoid's name, and his effort to explain its appearance in "Yesteryear" and TMP, and thus reconciling the old (canonical) TOS quote from "The Man Trap". Because, according to that old memo, if it's live action and its onscreen then its canonical.

Hope that clears it all up. Yes, it's four days into the New Year and I'm still mooning you.

Today's Christmas ornaments are:



Above left: For 1986, the wooden Santa Claus is riding in a hot-air balloon. A cool way to deliver presents to hard-to-visit places? This ornament was a gift from my mother, who, over the years, has been determined to undermine my "only two items per year" policy, and often tucks crafty ornaments into my Christmas gifts. The carolling penguins caught my eye while wandering through the now-defunct Waltons department store adjacent to Bankstown Square.

Above right: For 1985, the three white ceramic geese were quite expensive and came from Grace Bros., Roselands. Obviously these geese are half of the famous "Six geese a-laying..." from the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas"? The wooden Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a gift from my friends Karen and Tim; a souvenir from their trip to Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, the week of the premiere of "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock". Karen and another friend, Eric, took Tim (a Star Trek club member visiting from Perth) to do some touristy things when I was stuck at work.

On the eighth day of Christmas

Happy New Year!

The midnight fireworks telecast has just finished on Network Ten, so I figured I should get this post up ASAP.

The organisers were hailing the display as the most amount of fireworks they've ever done, and that it is the best in the world - and of that I have no doubt. We are probably just spoiled and take the beautiful Sydney harbour, city skyline at night, the Sydney Harbour Bridge (celebrating its 75th year) and the fireworks (and musical accompaniment) for granted, but it did look and sound rather the same to me. Mind you, the television broadcast fails to capture the intensity of the colours of each explosion compared to when you see them for real, but my days of trudging into the city, battling for viewing space, waiting for hours as the youth of Sydney get wasted, and getting home again with crowds of (tired, grumpy, sunburnt, tipsy) people who forgot to wear appropriate clothing, are over.

Anyway, since we've entered a new month and a new year, I'll just fill you in on what I've been doing so the blog menu shows up properly. Very few visitors get to see my Christmas tree on display, it seems, so I'm doing a virtual presentation of all the ornaments. I like to hunt for unusual Christmas tree ornaments - only two per year, one expensive and one el-cheapo-but-cute. Then I scrawl dates upon them and try to imprint some favourite memories of people, places and things connected with those ornaments. It's not that hard because it's only two per year, and they usually reflect aspects of my life at the time.

Well, it seemed like a great idea on Christmas Eve. I'm a bit surprised none of the pics have garnered any comments, though.

No matter! I shall continue. I have meant to catalogue them formally for years, and have attempted to make handwritten lists several times, but I usually file them - somewhere. Today's Christmas tree ornaments:



Above left: For 1992, the Hallmark Galileo shuttlecraft from "Star Trek" can be added to a light string, and it also contains a computer chip with a voice message from Leonard Nimoy, especially recorded for this ornament: "Shuttlecraft to Enterprise, shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy holidays. Live long and prosper." Unlike Hallmark's figural character ornaments for "Star Trek", the ships were not sold in commercial quantities in Australia, due to the different wiring needs. I did a little tweaking to get my imported shuttlecraft, bought from The Phantom Zone in Parramatta, working - but, sadly, the voice chip stopped working in 2005. Although it still lights up, the whole light string gave up in 2006. Most new light strings have different sockets these days, so the shuttle shall remain dark. Santa Claus riding a dolphin to deliver his sack of gifts came from a specialist Christmas shop in Boston, USA, the same day I went to the famous real location of TV's "Cheers" bar, way back in the January.

Above right: For 1991, the wire-bespectacled crescent moon man was a boxed ornament from Grace Bros. in Roselands. The wooden gingerbread man is such a happy little ornament. He can swing his legs back and forth. He was probably also purchased from Grace Bros. in Roselands. Because I was in the USA for Christmas 1991, my tree didn't get put up that year.

Q: "How many 'Star Trek' fans does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

A: Five. One to screw in the bulb, and four to bitch about it.

Ah, I forgot the one who will pre-empt the screwing of the light bulb by posting a rumour to the Internet and forgetting the spoiler warning.

And the ones who then blame Brannon Braga for the burnt-out bulb, even though he'd played no part in its manufacture.