Wasteland

Ashes, ashes,
Hope dared for collapsing in the hand
I sit this throne of wrenched heart
In my kingdom of the wasteland

A glimpse of joy, of Heavn'ly tempt
I beheld across the sand
Chasing, chasing, toward earthen-circled bliss
Nought but mirage, Siren song, to my place among the wasteland

Beloved, beloved,
Cross'd hell did I for thy hand
But a plight betrayed, by wretched mind
Made lock'd unto the wasteland

Rejoice! Rejoice!
My Quest'd prize was 'tlast at hand
The road assured, with gay apace
To long-wont sweet and restful land

My tryst was kept, my virtue true
Devout to God's command
Trusted I, brought through lonely toil
To my lady's side, be stand

With Providence prais'd, with thanking hymn
Knelt I, with heav'nward hand
A song of joy, of grateful heart
My psalm be surely grand!

Yet at the last, my prize beheld
And sweat'd brow be fanned
Ambush'd was I, by devil'd brain
Wrought long ago proband

My oldest foe, with ceaseless stalk
Upon my mind be bran'd
A blight, a demon, damn'd mania
Does becalm'd thought disband

Cry I have, to Heaven high
For an answer, would I demand
Can't thorn in flesh, not precious mind
Be I allow'd withstand?

No answer come, prayer be in vain
And nought be countermand
Is grace enough, to have the strength
That unquiet mind be strand?

Striv'n I, have I, sought my best
To serve the worthy Lamb
Are thoughts awry my cross to bear
For all my days be spann'd?

Is happy home upon this Earth
Denied my seeking hand?
No child of mine, no warm embrace
Would turbulent mind demand

And all my dreams, asunder torn
A mercy plea cannot summand
Driv'n I, I am, from friends and love
To ruin-strewn hinterland

And here I rule, a maddened place
Damn'd brain does dare demand
That I be lord and master bound
To reign this lonely land

Ashes, ashes,
Hope dared for collapsing in the hand
I sit this throne of wrenched heart
In my kingdom of the wasteland

-- Robert Christopher Knight
4:06 a.m.
November 17, 2013

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"Physician, heal thyself": Paul McGann returns as The Doctor!! "The Night of the Doctor" mini-episode is dropping jaws all over today!!

In May of 1996, Paul McGann portrayed the Eighth Doctor in the Doctor Who television movie that aired on Fox.  It was meant to be a pilot for a possible revival of the series.  Unfortunately it didn't pan out, which was almost tragic because in the brief time we saw him, McGann's Doctor really endeared himself to fans.  It was the first and last time we got to see him play the part.

Until this morning.

BBC just unloaded "The Night of the Doctor" upon us: a nearly seven minutes-long mini-episode of Doctor Who meant to be a lead-up to next week's fiftieth anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor".

Here.  Just watch.  Be sure to mop up the drool afterward...



To all involved: bravo!! Now, Steven Moffat, how about you give us some more episodes with Paul McGann as The Doctor! Please?!?!?

(Thanks to good friend of this blog Drew McOmber for the alert!)

UPDATE 10:27 a.m. EST: Look! The BBC has released an official image of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor from "The Night of the Doctor"!  Click on it to drastically embiggen it.

Some thoughts: it's a very solid transition look from the costume of the 1996 TV movie, to the feel and tone of the revived series.  The Eighth Doctor has been called one of the more "romantic" and "sympathetic" of The Doctor's incarnations and this outfit - accompanying McGann's presence - evokes that quite well.

C'mon BBC, that's way too much awesomeness than to limit it to just one seven-minute webisode: more Eighth Doctor, please!!  And give us officially licensed attire!  I'd pay several hundred bucks for that coat alone...

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BBC releases a SECOND trailer for "The Day of the Doctor"!

"Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame."
-- The Doctor ("the one who broke the promise")

I don't know what stokes me most about "The Day of the Doctor": seeing the Time War at last in all its horrific glory, the return of the Tenth Doctor and Rose, the interaction between Matt Smith and David Tennant's Doctors, Daleks attacking and getting 'sploded, the return of the Zygons...

Okay, no doubt about it: John Hurt as The Doctor that we didn't know about.  The one that whatever it is that he did, The Doctor was so ashamed that he has never acknowledged his existence... until now.  Because I really believe that this Doctor is the reason that The Doctor, in his ensuing generations, has been such a haunted and wounded man beneath the jovial, childlike surface.

(Thanks again to good friend of this blog Drew McOmber for the alert!)

EDIT 6:34 p.m. EST:   Awright, how did I miss this one?! It's only been up since about three weeks ago!

Here is the "50 Years" trailer that the BBC released for the fiftieth anniversary special. And it it is truly, in every possible way, epic...



The day The Doctor has been running from all his life comes November 23rd.

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December 18th, 2015

To quote Yogi Berra...

"I'll believe it when I believe it."

I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that Star Wars Episode VII gets delayed to around May 25th, 2016.  Ain't no proper Star Wars movie been released outside of late May, and I've confidence that larger forces at work will compel Disney to keep to the tradition... whether it wants to or not.

('Course, the very first Star Wars movie was originally slated for a Christmas 1976 release until it got pushed back, so Disney isn't completely without a leg to stand on here.) 

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At last, the trailer for "The Day of the Doctor"

Two weeks to go until "The Day of the Doctor"...


Now, something to go back into your Doctor Who archives and check out:

In the two-part "The End of Time" special that saw David Tennant's Tenth Doctor regenerate into the Eleventh (played by Matt Smith), we see Gallifrey on the last day of the Time War.  And in the council, one of the Time Lords tells Rassilon (played by Timothy Dalton) that The Doctor has "the Moment".

Watch that trailer again.  Listen to the words.  And look at what John Hurt's "missing Doctor" is poised to use.

Could it be that Steven Moffat was planting the seeds for the fiftieth anniversary special four years ago, right in front of our very eyes?  Could it be that John Hurt's Doctor is the one always intended to be the one that so terrified the Time Lords?

"The Day of the Doctor" broadcasts simultaneously beginning at 7:50 British time on November 23rd.  Thanks to Drew McOmber for the heads-up on the trailer!

UPDATE 3:54 p.m. EST 11/09/2013:  Bad news: the BBC yanked the above leaked video.

Good news: the BBC finally posted it officially!

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I did it. I really, really did it...

Dear Readers,

Last night, while at a restaurant with a friend, I did something that I have wanted to do for years but thought would never happen, particularly after I vowed not to do it.

But I figured, "what the heck?"

Yesterday evening, at long last, I ate Bhut jolokia: the notorious "ghost pepper" from India.  Until recently, certified as the hottest pepper on the face of the Earth.

(Yes, there are photographs of this happening.  My friend took them with his iPhone but I don't have them yet.  Suffice it to say they are rather... interesting.)

So, what did I think?  Bhut jolokia is extremely hot.  However it is not as hot as I had long anticipated.  All along I've had visions of my bare tongue pressed against the inner circles of Dante's Inferno.  What I experience instead was a fiery hot pepper that made my face burn crimson but otherwise was not at all unpleasant.  I may try it again sometime.

(For sake of disclosure, I must note that after eating Bhut jolokia, I chased it down with a rich chocolate milkshake.  So that might have had something to do with the Bhut jolokia not haunting my digestive tract as I slept last night and throughout today.)

Maybe I should try the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper next, since its heat is said to trounce that of Bhut jolokia.  What sayeth y'all?

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Review of ENDER'S GAME (the movie)

For reasons beyond my control I wound up going in to see Ender's Game more unaware and "in the dark" than any movie that readily comes to mind.  I've long known who the main actors were and who they were playing, but other than that, including who was scoring the thing?

Nope.  Nada.  And this, the film adaptation of  Orson Scott Card's novel that has been one of my very most favorite books since first reading it in 1990.  A novel that has become not only a bona-fide science-fiction classic but one of modern literature as a whole.  I should have been total fanboy for this thing from the beginning.

Instead, I went in as cold as one is apt to be in this day and age.  Hopefully, it is a trick that I could pull off again...

...because I was absolutely delighted and thrilled with how Ender's Game came through as a movie!

It's a hundred years or so from now, and Earth is still reeling from an attack decades earlier by an insectoid race called the Formics (sometimes "the Buggers").  Humanity barely won and swore that it would never happen again.  To that end, there has been an international effort to find the best and brightest children for grooming into the commanders needed for mankind's next encounter with the Formics.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is one of those children.  And after believing he has washed-out from the program, he discovers that he has passed with flying colors and offered admission to the Battle School by Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford).  Ender accepts, and leaves the only world he has ever known (including his loving sister Valentine, beautifully played by Abigail Breslin) so that he might one day be among those who will save it.

If you've read Ender's Game, you're aware of what is really going on with Ender.  If you haven't and are going in to see the movie unfamiliar with the story, you'll find out soon enough.  I thought it made an elegant and thoroughly compelling translation to the big screen: how Ender is being shaped and formed by forces beyond his control, whether he likes it or not.  And Asa Butterfield was absolutely the best actor for the role.  He brings to Ender all of the strengths, the vulnerabilities, the empathy and the guild that define this character.  It's positively amazing how much of that Butterfield conveys and projects just through his eyes.  Now, that is acting!

Harrison Ford is pretty much everything I imagined Colonel Hyrum Graff would and should be, and maybe even better realized than my original estimation of the character (courtesy of Ford's trademark delivery).  Hailee Steinfield is terrific as Petra: the Salamander Army member who takes Ender under her wing in defiance of Bonso (Moisés Arias, projecting a brutality that would have made his character an unstoppable juggernaut in the Hunger Games).  And despite how he only turns up in the latter half of the film, Ben Kingsley makes an indelible mark as Mazer Rackham: the legendary half-Maori pilot who almost single-handedly stopped the Formics in the last war.

Ender's Game takes a few major liberties with the original novel, but they are handled with such grace that one might forget they are even there.  To me, the most obvious departure is the complete absence of the subplot about Valentine and elder brother Peter (played in the movie by Jimmy Pinchak) using an Internet chatroom to wend their way toward becoming internationally-acclaimed commentators and ultimately world leaders.  Ender's fear and resentment of Peter is also, in some ways, downplayed significantly.  There seems to be no "unable to travel faster than light" which as those familiar with the novels, becomes a critical factor in the story (the movie implies that faster-than-light is now the norm, which could be a problem for any sequel films).  And I thought that Bean (Aramis Knight) was a character who demanded much more screen time and attention.  Bean was always my favorite of Ender's army, and he needed to be fleshed-out more in the film to convey the kind of spunky street urchin he's known to be.

On the other hand, Ender's Game the movie brings to life some concepts that I had honestly thought would have never made it past drafting the script.  The Giant's Game is in there, beautifully and violently brought to life (the Giant is voiced by director Gavin Hood, by the way).  We also get the confrontation between Ender and Bonso (which ends different from the book, but I can kinda understand why that is).

I found the special effects in Ender's Game to be, if not ground-breaking and remarkable, at least the component that the story needed it to be.  In fact, on that basis I would say that the effects surpassed what I was anticipating from this movie.  The Battle Room sequences are a thrill to behold, and will no doubt be what many kids (and not too few adults) will be dreaming of playing inside of.  And for all of their deadly intent, the Formics are an astounding... one dares even say beautiful... thing of pure alienness.  The Formics have long been one of the few elements of the Ender novel series that I couldn't quite focus my mind's eye on: they always seemed something that the "less you can conceive the better" approach works well with.  Even after watching the movie I still have that vibe: yeah, we can see them finally, but they are still something beyond human perception (which given what the themes of the overall story of Ender's life entail, is how it should be).

Ender's Game the movie is the adaptation that many of us hoped we would get and is even better than what we were expecting.  It absolutely gets my recommendation, and I'm already planning on catching it again while it's playing in the theaters.

Oh, and about the orchestral score for Ender's Game?  It was composed by none other than Steve Jablonsky.  It might be his best work to date by far, and I thought it was perfect for the tone and the themes of this story.  How much did I love Jablonsky's score?  I'm downloading it from iTunes even as I write this.

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To all the readers who are guys

This isn't the Halloween post I had wanted to make.  The original plan was to do something rather bold (read as: utterly insane) with twelve pumpkins. Maybe next year.

Instead...

There's something I need to say to my male friends, to the ones who are husbands and fathers:

Never stop thanking God for what He has given you.

You have no idea how truly blessed you are, to have someone to spend your life serving, cherishing, honoring, and treasuring. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank God for that. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank her for being in your life.

And if you are so blessed as to be a father, never EVER take that for granted! There are some guys out there who would do just about anything, to know what it's like to be the father to a child, if only for just one day. I have most wanted to be a husband and a father. I don't know if that will happen now. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life to have never held a child in my arms, to have loved and comforted it as a father. I will probably never know what it's like to do the "tea party" with a little girl or be there for a son's game. I won't know what it's like to guide and nurture my children and do my best to encourage them to love God and to love others. I dreamed for so long of a home built on love, not one ruled by fear. And now, I don't see that happening.

If you are a husband who has been blessed with a wife, if your are the father of sons or daughters, if you have a home devoted to serving God and each other... then never cease to be thankful for that. You have been given more than all the wealth of this world put together. You have a joy that some pray for but will never know. Don't ever forget that.

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A personal parameter

I have only always fought hardest for those things which I have held most precious and dear.

I do not know how to be otherwise.

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I don't know what to write

Isn't that something.  I have a blog getting close to five thousand posts and over a million and a half readers and I don't know what to write for it.  In the past month and a half I've suddenly wound up with a writing career that until now I could have only dreamed of.  I'm writing more than I ever have before.  I'm finding creativity and drive to write about anything and everything almost.  And I can't write a thing for my own blog.

I went from a nobody who had all that mattered in life, to a somebody in high demand and nothing to show for it.  Now what would the Preacher at Jerusalem have to say about that?

"Meaningless!  Meaningless!"

Yesterday I wrote from the heart and did it for nothing and was the happiest man on the face of the earth. 

Today I write professionally and I give it my heart and make good money, more than I am used to by far, and I'm asking God why He...

"No.  Don't go there Chris.  Don't be angry at Him.  Be frustrated.  You can be frustrated.  You can even have some doubts.  Everyone doubts.  Even Mother Teresa doubted.  But don't be angry at Him.  Job refused to curse God.  Job thanked God and praised Him.  Praise Him for what He has done in the light, remember that during the times in the dark..."

I want to write.  I want to write for me.  I want the Christopher Knight who wrote as deftly and with passion about everything from doggies to dancing to Star Wars to sundry silliness to be here writing and instead tonight at the keyboard, that's not him at all.

The Walking Dead?  Saw the season premiere last week and this week's is still sitting fresh on the DVR.  Don't ask me what I think about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: I haven't watched it at all, though they're also on the DVR just in case.  Gravity?  I want to see it soon.  Every day I tell myself "I'm going to see Gravity today" and it hasn't happened yet.  Because I've been busy with the full-time career God suddenly and without warning landed in my lap.  In part.  Mostly it's because I have seen success and found it wanting.  Boring.

People chase money, they chase celebrity, they chase after fifteen minutes of the spotlight.  If you want a vision of the modern world, witness Jesus turning down Satan's offer for all the kingdoms of this earth... and then a billion-fold hands rising up with screams of "PICK ME!  PICK ME!"

Tolkien was right: immortality within the circles of the world would be a wretched, damnable thing.  It would be the most damnable thing of all.  Fellow Inkling Lewis put it well: that once man had fallen, death was God's merciful way of allowing for an escape.  Took me a long time to realize that.  I was afraid of death for so long, after losing too many people.  Now I accept it.  Appreciate it.  Have found a serenity in it: that death is not a thing of dread but a gift to embrace in due time.

Why shouldn't I embrace that gift when it comes?  I have fought devils without and demons within.  I have seen things that can not be explained.  I have borne secrets that men have slain for.  I have carried responsibilities that none should have been given.  I have loved and lost and hoped and throughout it all I have given every possible iota of effort toward staying true to whatever it is that God has made me to be.

People think they know what it is that will make them happy.  They think it's fame or fortune or money or... something.  The things that more often than not contribute to the modern wretchedness.  And then they become desperate to bargain with God, to deal with Death, for just a few more years or months or even hours of that very wretched nature.

The Preacher was right.  "Meaningless, meaningless..."

I've been writing a poem for some years now.  Its title is "Cursed Recursive".  It is a stream of thoughts from the mind of one with bipolar.  Recursion is a bad thing, we were taught in that C programming class at Elon years ago.  A program can get caught in a recursive loop, if you aren't careful when you're writing it.  And then it just goes on and on and on and on, unable to break.  Unable to break free.  Unable to stop.  Funny.  I barely passed that class, now I understand it better than ever.

People have told me that they missed my writing.  Well, here's some writing.  I don't know what it's about.  Maybe it will make sense later.  Sometimes that happens.  But here it is, for what it's worth.

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Tom Clancy, father of the techno-thriller, has passed away

Tom Clancy was one of the first authors who I would eagerly await the next novel from.  I was a high school sophomore when the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October came out and I read the novel soon afterward.  I spent the next several months and into the summer devouring everything Clancy that I could find.  The night before Hurricane Katrina hit, I curled up with my newly-bought copy of Executive Orders and by the time the storm's outer bands were hitting I couldn't have cared less: Clancy had engrossed me again.

Tom Clancy was a pure American... I'm not going to just say "writer" but also, just leave it at "pure American".  What do I mean by that?  This is a guy who had dreamed as a kid of being a pilot in the United States Navy.  What kept him from having that dream was an eye condition that instantly disqualified him.  Clancy wound up going into the insurance business... but he never quite gave up on his dream.  What did he do?  He started reading and researching United States military aircraft and naval vessels.  He learned everything he could about the government and military of the Soviet Union.  And then he set out to write what President Reagan would later call "the perfect yarn".  Almost thirty years later and The Hunt for Red October is arguably the definitive novel of modern naval warfare.  As well as being one hell of a gripping story.

He couldn't be in the Navy, so he made a phenomenally successful career out of writing about the Navy.  And along the way became perhaps the most prominent icon of the modern Navy.  How many other places in the world could someone have an opportunity to do a thing like that?

Tom Clancy - who gave us Jack Ryan, Marko Ramius, John Clark, Ding Chavez and many other characters in a genre he made all his own if not created single-handed - passed away Tuesday.  He was 66.  At the time of his passing he had another novel due out later this year.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.  Think I'll watch The Hunt for Red October tonight in his memory.

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Reconsidered

Like Michael Corleone said: "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

Last week I posted that it might be goodbye for good for my blogging.  Lots of things went into that.  I have wound up extremely busy with work-related stuff lately (speaking of which, I'm soon going to be advertising freelance writing services on this blog, and if you want to go ahead and solicit my services e-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com and I'll be happy to discuss it with you!).

And then, from my perspective, some... very lousy things happened on this end.  My spirit wound up darn nearly broken.  Friends counseled me to not be discouraged, to keep going.  That this blog has given them hope when they needed it, even if at times I myself feel little or no hope at all.

Huh.  Imagine that.  Getting hope from the hopeless.  I suppose anything is possible...

Maybe just as writing about the bipolar disorder has been, I should keep writing to... stay grounded, stay focused, on things.  Keep grounded in reality.  Be able to see beyond my own problems.  Maybe even offer something worth visiting this blog for people who are needing something to smile or laugh at.  Who knows: maybe even provide something new to think about.

So for the time being, I'm going to stick with it.  I'm going to try even to have a new photo of Tammy up tomorrow.  The frequency of posting may not be very often, at least not for the time being.  But it will be something, anyway.

Just one thing that I'd like to ask: this is a very difficult time for me right now.  However it is that you can or are led to, some prayer for Yours Truly would be seriously, seriously appreciated.  I don't know how I've been brought through the past week, except for God bringing me to where I am now.  I have to thank Him and I have to thank those who have kept me in their prayers.

I suppose, if there is any hope at all in this world, that is where it is going to begin...

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Goodbye

Dear readers,

This is likely to be the last post made on The Knight Shift.

If it is, I would like to thank you all for joining me on this little adventure.  It lasted almost ten years, and was approaching its 5,000th post.  I like to think that it was time well spent and that you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

God bless,
Chris

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November 23rd is "The Day of the Doctor"

A short while ago the BBC finally revealed the title of the Doctor Who Fiftieth Anniversary Special.

November 23rd will be "The Day of the Doctor".

And here is the official poster for the episode...

Ho-leeee smokes, that is an insanely great piece of work!  I have literally watched the final moments of "The Name of the Doctor" at least once on my iPad ever since it aired in May, all because of John Hurt being an incarnation of The Doctor that we never knew even existed.  Seeing him strolling away so casually from those dead and burning Daleks - like a man walking straight out of Hell itself - just gives me the shivers.

And look!  There's a "Bad Wolf" sign!  What could it mean?!

The BBC also announced that "The Day of the Doctor" will have a running time of seventy-five glorious minutes.

Now, if only the BBC could release a trailer for this baby...

Edit 6:59 p.m. EST:  I can't resist doing it.  It's just too good.

Here again - or for the first time if you haven't seen it yet - is the mind-blowing shock ending from "The Name of the Doctor":

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My thoughts on Syria

This has been one of the busiest periods that I've been in for quite some time now, hence the lack of blogging as actively as I'd like.

That being said, I'm feeling more than a little led to get this off my chest...

For well over a decade I have believed and as of this writing I still believe that George W. Bush was the absolutely worst President in the entire history of the United States.

For the PATRIOT Act, for creating the Department of Homeland Security, for failure to strengthen our border with Mexico, for a war in Iraq with no definitive goal or even overall purpose, for all of the "bailouts" and "stimulus" that deepened the damage to our economy... for all of those reasons and more, George W. Bush will forever be one of the most destructive Presidents that America was ever cursed with.  And I have no doubt that a wiser citizenry in generations in the distant future will point to Bush the Lesser as a grim example of how broken our current system of politics is, and has been for a very long time.

I earnestly believed that Bush the Lesser's place of shame would be secure for a very long time to come.  But now...

If the United States military is directed to take action in Syria, as is looking more and more likely to happen, then Barack Obama will have become the absolutely worst President in American history.

And barring going full-tilt bonkers and launching ICBMs at Quebec, I don't see how anyone else ever would possibly topple Obama from that spot.

Syria is not something we want to get mired in.  Other countries' civil wars very rarely are.  But Syria is the meanest situation imaginable.  The ruling government are not the good guys.  The rebels are not the good guys either.  There are many good people who are caught in the middle of this: they aren't combatants at all.  Many of them are Christians who are being targeted by the rebels.  And speaking of those rebels: there is considerable evidence that they are aligned with Al-Quaeda.

Just as there is overwhelming evidence that the chemical attacks we have seen in the news were not launched by the Assad government at all.  That they might in fact have been perpetrated by the rebels.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are at best, horribly misinformed about Syria.  They are at worst, blatant liars.

And there is no reason whatsoever to involve any American money, any American equipment, or any American life with any aspect of the civil war in Syria.

There are some things in this broken world which all one can do is appeal to God in prayer about.  Things beyond the jurisdiction of any sane and rational government.  What is happening in Syria is one of those things.  There is nothing the United States as a sovereign nation can do to remedy that situation.  But there is plenty that it can do to make it worse, and nothing worse than launching a military strike in Syria.

If Obama does this, nothing good will come of it.  Nothing at all.

Nothing.

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Tammy Tuesday returns with an ear-full

After an absence of too many weeks, Tammy the Pup is back!  That was my fault though: just been way busy on this end of things.  And I've a few posts percolating in the ol' gray matter that I'm gonna try to channel into reality the next coupl'a days.

But anyway, here's Tammy, in a pose that is familiar to anybody who has ever owned a dachshund.  I don't think a day goes by that I don't have to "reset" Tammy's ears back to their factory default position.  Here she is with both of hers about to get fixed...

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