A Western writer once said in one of his books, "Godhood is more
than a name. It is a condition of being.... Being a god is the
quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your
passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that
those who look upon you know this without hearing your name
spoken.... One rules through one's ruling passion. Those who
look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is
Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction.'"

So it is with the Sailor Senshi; one cannot be in their presence
and ever hope to deny it. Sailor Mars is Fire, burning passion
and intensity. Sailor Venus is shining Light. Sailor Mercury is
Water in all its forms. Sailor Jupiter is the Storm and the
Lightning. Sailor Uranus is the power of Heaven brought to
Earth. Sailor Neptune is the inexorable force of the Sea.

And Sailor Moon -- Sailor Moon is Love.

-- excerpted from "I Spent A Week With The Sailor Senshi" by
Jitsuha Yoshi, Asahi Shimbun, 22 November 1992

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

There's a certain core element to Republicanism in this country that seems utterly incapable of accepting the fact that Ireland and England have entered into a friendly political relationship based upon mutual respect, clear communication and rememberance of shared histories.

And so they heckle the President at a joint memorial ceremony

They should've held the ceremony on a signing day.... it'd probably have kept the majority of hecklers away. They're the sort of people who bitch about the State somehow being the illegitimate authority of Ireland while they queue to accept their welfare cheques.... a peculiar Civil War holdover that never quite went away.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

And he's blonde and British, too, not Keanu Reeves!

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Is there room to cover them in the tech chapter? In particular, is there room to provide GURPS Spaceships information for the Ulysse Merou, the Wanderer, typical Confederation vessels, and/or the one-Meeran scoutship that brought Ambassador ss'Shemmrar to Earth?

The bass line thrummed out of darkness, built in volume ; was strengthened by martial keytar and then by drums. A spotlight stabbed the stage revealing the glittering chain mailed Asada Strangelove tearing off the opening line of Fugue State’s heavy metal transcription of Mars, Bringer of War on her skeletal Gittler guitar. A second guitar took up the slightly discordant wail.  Pinned by a second  spot,  the  greatcoated  Khimera Chang flayed her ’58 Stratocaster in a berserk performance twisting and twining manically about that of Strangelove’s. Then the pyrotechnics cut loose and the remaining band members, revealed in firelight, united the band and ignited the audience.

The guitarists strutted towards center down-stage to enact a sweatily suggestive close-in guitar duel as Suki2, garbed in retro-space-war polymers, enthusiastically pounded her Ludwig-Musser Oyster Black Pearl drum set and Dazzle Ardent, fantastically Teuton  furred,  fervently fingered a feverish fusillade of notes off of a labile pink  Roland AX-Synth Keytar. Six and a  half minutes later, the quartet climaxed in a sultry crescendo that spattered sweat into the front row of an animated audience. Seven and three quarter minutes later, Holst had resolved the members of Fugue State into post orgasmic lethargy. A glowing Strangelove took the Fifties mike, and purred :

 “Who wants Cold War when it can be so very hot!” She languidly pushed stray, damp copper locks out of her ice blue eyes before continuing.

“We’re not yet done with war, troops. Our next transcription, Metal Legion, is our variant of Ottorino Respighi’s slow dance Republican love letter,  Pines of the Appian Way.” She flourished a close fisted Imperial Star Trek salute.

“Praetor,  break camp : Rome awaits!”

Dazzle Ardent, wearing the requisite red crested helm, stepped to the fore, her fingers deftly working out the slow introductory martial cadence of a legion on the move. Next, Suki2, also like helmeted,   brought the extra dimensionality and percussive depth needed to image six thousand legionaries marching in lockstep. The red caped guitarists brandished the brassy notes of triumphant cohorts and the glory of the dawn as as the band took the music to the towards the slow burn retro crescendo of days of yore.  

A glowing Chang musically crowed,  “That’s my  Bolero, babe!” Her bandmates supported her statement enthusiastically with shout-outs of their own. 

****

After a quick shower, change ‘n charge--beer for everyone but Suki2 who was far happier with a Shirley Temple--the band was ready to absorb the main act, Ookla the Mok.  Khimera sang along lustily to Evil I : 

“I’m the man with the evil master evil master plan / Got it all laid out on a evil diagram / Gaze into my evil I....I’m the bad guy! I’m the Bad Guy!” She ended up back on the stage to the delight of the crowd, and the eventual epic, if slightly awkward encore of both bands attempting to meld their frankly dissimilar musical styles into an impromtu Geeky musical medley : fortunately, it was awful enough & energetic enough to successfully cross over the transcendent threshold from painfully unwatchable into magnetically campy. 

****

In the bar, Long Tom’s, after the show, Asada toasted her bandmates with a frosty, luminous blue stein of Witch Head Blue lambic. 

“To being fantastically good & fantastically bad!”

They all drank to that. 

Suki2 exclaimed,  “Jamming’s the bomb!” 

They all drank to that, too.

****

The next morning the worst hangover belonged to Su Su : the Shirley Temple is an evil brew. 

--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

www.tthfanfic.org/Story-30386-13/batzul ... egends.htm
Living Legends (Buffy/Avengers/other)
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

En route to the family lake cottage in the wilds of central Michigan, we stopped for one night in Cleveland, to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and three in Detroit, to attend this year's NASFiC. As mentioned in the South Africa post, I had IST-related insights in both places.

At the Hall, seeing the "Pink Floyd: The Wall" display, the mention of the 1990 Berlin performance reminded me of the super presence at the Krypton-1 version thereof, and at some point along the road, this percolated into wondering whether the Hall has a discrete exhibit on the rock-and-supers connection, or whether it's threaded through the whole thing, tracing the links in both directions (Elvis drawing his costume designs from the Marvel Family, and serving in turn as an inspiration to Charlie the Clone).

There was a separate NASFiC because this year's Worldcon is being held in London for the first time since 1965 and the third time overall. There have only been four UK Worldcons in the interim, and one of those was in 1987. I found myself wondering whether anybody sprang for a membership for Rheergar ss'Shemmrar. For that matter, I found myself wondering how many of the Worldcon sites on Krypton-1, post-WWII, have been the same as on OTL.

Discuss?

I've been meaning to write about a couple of the deathless insights I had over the past week or so of road trip, but first I have to share something I noticed last night:

I think Krypton-1's South Africa is on a fast track to becoming the Domination of the Draka. Anyone else see that?

...so let's have a trivia party.

Tell me something about L5 station http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... he_Rainbow]Over the Rainbow that isn't already known. Anything, no matter how small - pile up enough grains of sand and we'll get a mountain ... or, at least, a small hill.

This shouldn't be too hard: all we do know is "industrial platform partially abandoned mid-build, inhabited by squatters; suspected Boskonian waypoint" - unless there's something on the forum that didn't get ported over. We also have an image:



(Larger version http://www.fenspace.net/images/e/ec/Ove ... ainbow.png]here.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012