Wednesday's Child Is Full Of Grace
LENORE: Just sit still. I'd like to see what effect my tranquilizing emanations have on you.
JEFF: Ulp! D-d-do we have to?
(LENORE approaches JEFF, raises her veil and a white light shoots out covering JEFF's body. The previous vibrating JEFF is now completely still.)
JEFF: (feeling to see he actually is still) Dag! I - I - I stopped quivering! This is unbelievable!
LENORE: Anyone else is paralyzed. You, with your accelerated metabolism, are simply slowed down to normal human speed.
(from D. P. 7 issue 1, cover dated November 1986)
Marvel Comics. The New Universe, which ultimately turned out to be the House of Spider-Man's competing against itself in the late 1980s with more "real world" characters such as the two above, who were members of a therapy group organized to help people with newly acquired abilities from the cosmic "White Event" deal with them. Yes, suddenly getting super-powers is not easy -- but then, others titles in the series had as their main characters mercenaries (Merc), dream therapists (Nightmask), and football players (Kickers Inc.) who all eventually came together in a storyline dealing with World War III set off by what was thought at the time to be the nuclear destruction of Pittsburgh. It was actually the attempt of a man "gifted" with the power of a nigh-infinite object to transfer the power to something else (Star Brand).
I'm slowing down my recitation of the books I read, one of the only two things that will make us different five years from now from the people we are today! I can do that, starting with Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Maya by Leonard Fisher (ISBN 0823414272), and that designation "Ancient" is important. My understanding's there are about seven million modern Maya living through present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. They don't live in the pyramids and observatories the ancients are known for building, but if your knowledge of the Maya -- and not the Mayans, that term which I'd learned along with Aztecs, Incas, and Islam in sixth grade social studies with Mrs. Kent -- is that 2012 non-disaster, you may be missing out. I once read that understanding the ancient Maya are the closest we can come now to understanding an extraterrestrial civilization.
By whose calculation, but I digress. Besides all the practical things like creation, weather, food, death -- yes, you saw plural forms in the title so this is a pantheon -- there's also a god, specifically a goddess, of suicide. At first Ix Tab (that's the goddess of suicide's name) sounds like she represents a value so contrary to our own; that is, we don't honor people for killing themselves, but that wasn't always so. We still admire people who die to save family and country in the face of impossible odds, but we grieve when one person or many people choose to end their lives as a result of there being no perceived point to life going on or following a charismatic leader to (they believe) something higher. For every Ajax there is a Millard, for every Charge of the Light Brigade there is a Heaven's Gate. (And for further clarification on THAT, please see me after hours.)
Let's see, paragraph five (the typical length of an essay that hopefully ties all the loose ends together) ... today was Martha's second day in a row walking outside before everybody else was awake. It so helps that we still have the oval track in our backyard, technically across the alley from our backyard, from the original Ramstad Middle School which got washed out by the flood four summers ago. We used it this weekend as a walking and bike track and likely will continue to until winter sets in. It's really the start of Sarah and Jeffrey's second week of school at Longfellow? (Whoa.) Last night the kids and I ate what we found at home, tonight Martha will be home with them before I will -- and I heard she got Employee of the Month at Burger King for August! She told me, and that's fantastic! Really, my whole family's fantastic!
Which I guess makes me the stretching genius guy,
David
JEFF: Ulp! D-d-do we have to?
(LENORE approaches JEFF, raises her veil and a white light shoots out covering JEFF's body. The previous vibrating JEFF is now completely still.)
JEFF: (feeling to see he actually is still) Dag! I - I - I stopped quivering! This is unbelievable!
LENORE: Anyone else is paralyzed. You, with your accelerated metabolism, are simply slowed down to normal human speed.
(from D. P. 7 issue 1, cover dated November 1986)
Marvel Comics. The New Universe, which ultimately turned out to be the House of Spider-Man's competing against itself in the late 1980s with more "real world" characters such as the two above, who were members of a therapy group organized to help people with newly acquired abilities from the cosmic "White Event" deal with them. Yes, suddenly getting super-powers is not easy -- but then, others titles in the series had as their main characters mercenaries (Merc), dream therapists (Nightmask), and football players (Kickers Inc.) who all eventually came together in a storyline dealing with World War III set off by what was thought at the time to be the nuclear destruction of Pittsburgh. It was actually the attempt of a man "gifted" with the power of a nigh-infinite object to transfer the power to something else (Star Brand).
I'm slowing down my recitation of the books I read, one of the only two things that will make us different five years from now from the people we are today! I can do that, starting with Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Maya by Leonard Fisher (ISBN 0823414272), and that designation "Ancient" is important. My understanding's there are about seven million modern Maya living through present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. They don't live in the pyramids and observatories the ancients are known for building, but if your knowledge of the Maya -- and not the Mayans, that term which I'd learned along with Aztecs, Incas, and Islam in sixth grade social studies with Mrs. Kent -- is that 2012 non-disaster, you may be missing out. I once read that understanding the ancient Maya are the closest we can come now to understanding an extraterrestrial civilization.
By whose calculation, but I digress. Besides all the practical things like creation, weather, food, death -- yes, you saw plural forms in the title so this is a pantheon -- there's also a god, specifically a goddess, of suicide. At first Ix Tab (that's the goddess of suicide's name) sounds like she represents a value so contrary to our own; that is, we don't honor people for killing themselves, but that wasn't always so. We still admire people who die to save family and country in the face of impossible odds, but we grieve when one person or many people choose to end their lives as a result of there being no perceived point to life going on or following a charismatic leader to (they believe) something higher. For every Ajax there is a Millard, for every Charge of the Light Brigade there is a Heaven's Gate. (And for further clarification on THAT, please see me after hours.)
Let's see, paragraph five (the typical length of an essay that hopefully ties all the loose ends together) ... today was Martha's second day in a row walking outside before everybody else was awake. It so helps that we still have the oval track in our backyard, technically across the alley from our backyard, from the original Ramstad Middle School which got washed out by the flood four summers ago. We used it this weekend as a walking and bike track and likely will continue to until winter sets in. It's really the start of Sarah and Jeffrey's second week of school at Longfellow? (Whoa.) Last night the kids and I ate what we found at home, tonight Martha will be home with them before I will -- and I heard she got Employee of the Month at Burger King for August! She told me, and that's fantastic! Really, my whole family's fantastic!
Which I guess makes me the stretching genius guy,
David
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