The DC Comics “Captain Marvel” was always about pre-teen wish fulfilment.  As I understand it, 12ish Billy Batson, on uttering the magic word “Shazam”  would instantly transform into an adult superhero with all the attributes of Superman apart from a Kryptonite allergy.  Known either affectionately or disparagingly depending on your superhero allegiance as the “Big Red Cheese”, Cap was all mum and apple pie and goodness.  While in the 50’s and 60’s Supes and Bats attracted a cheesy co-pantheon of supporting acts (eg: Supergirl, Krypto the Superdog, Streaky the supercat and a caped horse I can’t for the life of me remember the name of and am not inclined to Google),  Cap had a whole Marvel family who transformed in a similar fashion along with some strange pets and hangers-on.  They were all squeaky clean, of course.

Mark Waid put a new spin on Cap in “Kingdom Come” by making him a pawn of the evil Luthor; a grown-up, naive Batson who has grown into the body of the Captain but has been brainwashed to be scared to utter his magic word, and who, when he does, is utterly conflicted.

But the best Captain Marvel Image, I think, is the most adult depiction by Frank Miller in “the Dark Knight Returns” when an ageing Marvel in his attempts to rescue threatened people from collapsing buildings finds himself mortally hurt.  He is urged by a wonderfully Hellenic Wonder Woman to speak his magic word  and become an unhurt Batson. He then reveals that he and Billy “switched places” when the word was spoken, and were not in fact the same person.   Batson, it seems, died long ago but presumably spoke his word as he died so Captain Marvel has continued on alone. “Where did you go?” (when Billy spoke his word),  she asks.

“where’s a wish go? Where’s a dream go when you wake up and can’t remember it?    ….  nowhere.”, he replies.

It’s a poignant scene as he says the word for the last time.

It’s the inspiration for a short story I want to write one day.  Not too many clues, but it has to do with the nature of consciousness.  Watch this space.

On one of the discussion groups I frequent, we’re occasionally visited by gentlemen with interesting agendas wanting us to invest time or money in interesting projects.

One such visitor insisted that he’d built a human powered vehicle out of old bike parts a couple of years ago that he’d got up to 127km/hr (conveniently there are no witnesses and the machine is not available for examination); subsequently he has a proposal for a commuter vehicle that would allow folks to pedal their vehicles for up to 20 minutes at 100km/hr.  He just needs our help and money.   And to seal our impression of his credibility, he talks blithely of the marvels of the over-unity motor.   No perpetual motion nut is getting any of my money or time.

In the same week, we were visited by a proponent of the perennial Flying Car.  He’s been pushing this agenda for a long time, mainly with complaints about the way that governments and the entrenched car industry have used legal impediments to halt or otherwise bury the concept to preserve the status quo.   According to this chap, if he could just get the concept accepted, (and get a bit of help and money) his flying cars could replace/destroy the current automobile industry.   For this guy, our discussion group is fresh meat – he’s bombarding us with flying car related information in the guise of some relationship to human powered vehicles.  (Sadly we’re too polite to tell him where to get off…)

This (the “flying car”) is one of those concepts, IMHO, where the question is not whether it can be done (though that’s debatable), but whether it should.

I suggested to the advocate that I’d be interested to read his prospectus; that I’d expect to see some discussion of how the concept would be ecologicallyand socially responsible; how it could be made safe, how much additional infrastructure would be required, whether there would be any saving of investment in existing land transport infrastructure, how it stack up against putting resources into better mass transit.. and lots more.  Interestingly he has not provided any such thing, though he seems convinced that if I came out to his workshop and listened to his sales pitch I’d be a convert.  Hmmm…. just like all the other folks (not) clamouring to invest in his technology?

I’d hazard a guess that if any one thing kills the concept of the flying car, it’s that no insurance company would touch one.  And much as I think the insurance industry has a lot to answer for, in this case I wouldn’t blame them.

A couple of days ago, my son told me that his car (mine actually, but he seems to be increasingly fond of  this particular possessive pronoun)  had overheated when he was driving through the city central business district.   He’d noticed the temperature guage climbing and stopped before it actually produced steam, then driven home with no overheating after it had cooled.

This was a worry.  I took the car for a spin that evening but it seemed to be performing OK.

The next morning before work, I decided to get down and dirty and crawled under the beast (not much crawl space under an Impreza!) for  a look-see. 

No plastic bag plastered onto the radiator or wasps nests in the grille, plenty of coolant,…. but aha! what’s this?  Two floating electrical connectors… that look like they fit into sockets on the radiator fans.

Yes indeed, at the last service a few months ago (100k) in which they replaced the timing belt, some clever mechanic forgot to reconnect the electric cooling fans.

It looks like the only reason the car hadn’t overheated before was that it’s been Winter (hence cold) and that my son normally drives the car to and from university along roads that allow 60-70km most of the time so there’s adequate airflow through the grille to keep things cool.   

When he ventured into the CBD, he was stuck in slow, crawling and stopping traffic for quite a while, so without airflow, the temperature soared.

I’m just glad the boy keeps an eye on the guages and that it wasn’t summer.  It could have been an expensive mistake.

OK, it’s a week later and the six stitches are out, and the horrendous bill is in.

My GP said he’d have cut the small (basal cell carcinoma – look it up!) skin cancer out if it were anywhere else, but he’d prefer I went to a plastic surgeon since it was on my face.  The plastic surgeon was keen to assure me that there wouldn’t be much scarring.  Well for what he charges, there better not be!

But hey, I’m a guy in his mid 50’s who was never Fabio to start with and the freckles hide a multitude of sins, so you, know, I think maybe for a budget price I could have put up with looking like I was the product of a good German University. (where dueling might still be fashionable…).

Anyhoo, I figured I’d get my money’s worth when I went back for the free follow up to get the stitches out, and had the poor (well, not really, see above) guy take a quick look at all my other minor blemishes – which he pronounced unproblematic at this stage…..

I haven’t actually seen the results since he covered it with yet another plaster after removing the stitches, so I may yet qualify as a possible Stuttgart graduate.  Another 3 days till the reveal.

Languished, this blog has.   Life gets in the way of idle keyboardmanship, and that’s as it should be. 

Over the last few months, thanks to a mysterious tummy complaint, your correspondent has been poked, prodded, had blood let, had his insides peered into by X-ray and ultrasound, then invaded by the upper gastic and the dreaded rear-end probe in a search for the elusive cause.    With every test coming up boringly normal, the diagnosis is “irritable bowel syndrome”, which in layman speak means “you have a mysterious tummy complaint”.  Some antispasmodic pills later, everything’s settled down, we hope.   In the process of this exercise, however, a small skin cancer was found and has to be excised next week.  It’s apparently not the life threatening type; but since it’s on my temple, the local GP would prefer to leave it to a plastic surgeon so that the scar doesn’t make it look like I attended one of the better German universities.

Being unwell is hard on the creative juices, I find.

Every year in October, thousands of “ute” (pickup) drivers and assorted hangers-on arrive in Deniliquin, New South Wales for the Deniliquin Ute Muster.

Ute on a pole in the town

It’s two days of “ute” events – from just showing off a decked-out (pimped) ute to “circle work” (burn-outs).

Mosaic-covered ute in town

The event is held on a purpose-built 138 acre property about 3km north of the town. The company I work for is peripherally associated with the organisation side of the Muster, so I had to go there a few weeks ago.

The Ute Muster is a big deal for Deniliquin, bringing a much needed injection of economic activity to a town suffering from the global recession.  Deniliquin is about 80km north of the VIC/NSW border in very, very flat country where sheep, beef cattle, wheat and rice are the major industries.  The town itself is very pretty (but flat) with wide avenues and plenty of on-road bike paths – and Autumn is a great time to visit.  I don’t recommend the height of Summer.

Here’s a pic of the front gate of the Muster site, a mighty rusty steel edifice….

My "ute" at the Muster gates

Thanks to a last minute cracked fork on my recumbent, I rode almost 100km on a mountain bike with knobby tyres this weekend while Ms Canada and I stayed at Meeniyan with friends.

As a result,  parts of my anatomy that are really only of fleeting interest to doctors making prostate examinations* are complaining even as I write.  Why people put up with normal bicycle saddles I do not know.  Most of the time I was able to find a position that resulted only in severe discomfort rather than actual pain – but only most. I ended up raiding a dumpster in Leongatha and swathing the seat in carpet underlay.

(* the alternate title for this post was to have been “cracked fork leads to forked crack”, but that is just smutty.)

A long time ago, when I worked for Big Blue, my regular commute down Brighton Rd through Elwood to the city was invariably the usual dull crawl with the only entertainment being the frenzied stylings of  ”breakfast show crews” on FM radio as they laughed ( in a mainly self convincing way) at their own witty repartee.

One day, all that changed.

On the window of the Cat and Dog Grooming shop at 71 Brighton road appeared – in giant letters – IT’S A GIRL!

The next day, we knew her name.  Again in big letters: NATASHA!

That day was just over 16 years ago, for recently, on the window, below the permanently badly-signwritten “NATASHA’S”  that appeared on the window top soon after the birth announcement came down, was “SWEET 16!”

Natasha became part of the regular commuters’ journey.  Her proud parents declared her talents to the world.

We watches  ”NATASHA’S SHE’S CRAWLING” ,  ”NATASHA’S HER FIRST STEP” then her first word (though we don’t know what it was), her first day at school and even saw her childish artwork posted in the window which was  sadly (or perhaps fortunately) too far away for us to see without stopping and getting out of our metal chariots.

More recently we learnt that Natasha has started work experience training, and now, of course, the girl is 16.

I wonder about Natasha.  How does she feel about thousands of strangers following her life story?  Without her consent, her whole life has been window-blogged in three to five word precis.  Does she have any siblings? Why have we never heard about them too?

If you ever read this, Natasha, let us know.

That’s what my son (18) said as we left after the Watchmen movie.

Does it to full justice to the comic/graphic novel story?  No, how could it? The movie was 160 minutes long and they had difficulty squeezing in just the main plot line.  Nevertheless, it all hangs together in the end.

Is it visually awesome? Yes!

Is it too violent?  Probably was.  Waaaay too much gore,  Rorschach’s gruesome epiphany was made more graphically violent – yet strangely less horrific – than the original’s and given that these are supposed to be real mortal people in tights, not actual invulnerable superheroes, they absorb far too much punishment before going down.

What about the visual style?  Great, loved the 40’s retro and wished there was more of it. And as everyone says, they absolutely nailed the duplication of many of the comic’s core visuals.  Rorschach was a characterisation triumph and the Comedian was better humanized in this version.  Nite Owl probably wasn’t podgy enough (probably just my own middle aged jealousy creeping in here).  As in the novel, Manhattan’s change of heart on Mars seems a little Deus ex Machina, but given that it really doesn’t matter because ultimately apart from Rorschach’s legacy almost everything except Manhattan’s decision take the fall for Viedt’s flawed vision is just back story, it’s a niggle.

The other niggle,  maybe I blinked, but how did the Comedian discover Adrian’s plot in this version?

I give it four and a half rubber chickens.

A quick Photo of team “Bent, Not Broken” after the completion of the Lake Wendouree 2.5 hour Challenge.

From left to right:
Steve N (homemade, “The bike from Oz”)
William & son (Barchetta)
me (homemade lowracer)
Freddy Flatfoot (Homemade SWB)
Ken H (homemade lowracer)
Adrienne (trike)
Greg (Challenge Fujin lowracer)

Stats: Number of riders: 7
52 rider-laps (each lap 6.2km)
Average overall speed for all riders: 32.24 km/hr
Total km ridden: 322

No, we didn’t win, but we did well – we were second in the “sporting groups” section, the winners being the Sebastopol cycling club with 12 young riders, meaning each of their riders only had to ride one lap in three with a 2 lap rest . We were riding 2-4 lap stints with mostly one lap rests.

Thanks to everyone who turned up and it was great to meet you all. A fantastic effort everyone!