The War of the Wells (HG)

In my OAC (grade 13 for the unenlightened) English class, my teacher Mr. Bland, gave us assignment called a "Creative Product". The outline was minimal, but it had to somehow combine two books that we had read into one "creative" final product. Some kids made videos, some did collages or other artistic representations of the characters in their books. I read The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and decided to hand in the following writing. I thought it was "creative" and held the spirit of Mr. Bland's original intentions. I ended up with a 20/20 on the project as well as some brief, but deep praise from Bland himself. Here is what I wrote in March 1997: (forgive some of the formatting, not sure how to correct that yet)

My Creative Product involves a letter written by the Time Traveller to his friend, the nameless narrator of The Time Machine The letter will depict the Time Traveller moving into the future a few years and discovering England being invaded by the Martians as depicted in The War of The Worlds.

Dear -------, I have constructed and sent you another version of the device that brought me to the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand and Seven Hundred and One in order to send you a letter. I would like to enlighten you on whether or not I am alive or have met my own demise from some unimaginable catastrophe native to this future earth. The device has been modified to cease its descent through the eons at your house, at your time in the late nineteenth century, a mere week from when you last set eyes upon me. I have chosen to spend the rest of my days on this future earth because I have created something wonderful! The group of skeptics with whom I shared my tale --with the exception of you my friend-- were but the first of many who would have dismissed my tale of time travel as madness. The world of the late nineteenth century was not prepared to accept my device. I am able to accept this as I have seen the future and know man will eventually be willing to accept new ideas and live a life free from the ills of your time’s society. After my disappearance from your time, I chose to explore the nearer future in order to better understand the causes of the evolution of humanity into the Eloi and the Morlocks. My first jump took me just a few years hence, to the turn of the century. Upon my arrival, these people not more than five years more advanced than us, were in the middle of the battle for the earth itself! I had landed my Machine in what seemed to be my own backyard, yet the house was gone. Rubble lay scattered throughout the area and I quickly realized the sound of gunfire in the distance. Fear had taken control over my actions. I hurriedly hid the Time Machine with the foliage that lay abundant at my feet and rushed off to inquire about the situation at hand. As I ran through the streets of London I began to wonder about the absence of people in the usually busy city. Houses stood with their doors ajar and transients wondered through the abandoned buildings looking for money and goods to steal. As it seemed to me the city had been evacuated in a rush and panic. I then heard an explosion of great magnitude towards the west and, grabbing a discarded bicycle, I peddled towards the commotion. After what seemed to be a great distance, I had lost my bearings and wondered aimlessly through the streets of some London suburb. I cycled atop a nearby hill and looked over the horizon in search of the cause of the explosion I had heard hours before. Away from the city I saw sights that would instil horror upon all who witnessed them! Great walking machines, tripods of metal reeking havoc throughout the English countryside! The images I saw atop that hill I am unable to describe with any credit to the horror I felt as I watched them attack a village. They had incredible weapons mounted upon their bodies atop their three legs giving them incredible heights and allowing them to tower over the opposing forces which fired guns franticly and fruitlessly in their direction. All of Mother England’s inventions, all of her self-assuredness, her empire and her greatest creations, could not stop these mysterious invaders. I wondered who they could be! Which of God’s nation states, under whose authority, could wield such terrible power? Had German technology progressed to this devastating level? Had the tensions of the Boar War stretched this far? As soon as these scenarios, and countless others, had crossed my mind, they had been vanquished just as fast. I spotted a man in a bombed out townhouse nearby, digging through the rubble, I yelled to him; “Sir! Sir! Kind Sir, what has happened to London?!” His reply filled my empty mind with the appalling details; he told me tales of the metal tripods rising from the ground as though they has always been there. He told me of the pilots of the dreadful tripods, arriving from the sky! The sky?! How could this be? As my companion and I bunkered in to weather out the firestorm, he told me of the theories he had been hearing. No nation hostile to England or otherwise was capable of these terrors. He had surmised that it was a Martian invasion! Why the Red-weed that seemed to grow as the tripods walked was enough evidence to implicate Mars. The red planet, long a home to antagonists in works of fiction and mythology, now a live menace tearing apart our dearest Earth! What could mankind do? My host had resolved his answer to: ‘nothing’. Nothing could be done to stop tripods. Man’s only hope? To run, he said. He spoke of people fleeing; some ran for the hills, some for the valleys and some even to the sea! But not my new friend, no! He had chosen to run deeper into the Earth herself! “Dig!” he tells me. “Dig”! As I use a makeshift shovel, we dig long into the night. The sewer system, the underground sections of the Metropolitan Railway, he tells me. These are our goals. If we make it to the vast underground network of tunnels beneath London, then and only then, will we escape the Martian’s wrath! My new friend speaks with passion; I ask what he fights for. “My wife”, he replies. “I was supposed to meet her in Leatherhead, but fearing she did not make it there, I shall hope she makes it to London town.” As dawn breaks, others have joined our cause. Shovels and men aplenty, they are digging, digging for their freedom, for their futures, for the hope of all of England. Two shovels however, drop amongst the commotion. My companion gives up his efforts and I join him in contemplation. “How much longer”, he wonders, “till we reach London?” The despair, the longing for his wife is crystal clear in his voice. He declares his intention to walk to London above ground. I urge him to reconsider, to wait; he ignores me. Not wanting him to travel alone, I join his quest and leave a now bustling basement full of determined diggers. As we walk together, avoiding the tripods we see in the distance, we begin to discuss the possible outcomes of these horrific events. My journey mate professes his hope that technology will defeat these extraterrestrial creatures, I however, cannot help but wonder, wonder how the future I have seen, will develop. Then, it hits me. The diggers! Humans will take to the underground, and eight hundred thousand years of evolution later; Morlocks! By God! That must be it! And could the Eloi be a form of evolved Martians? I was sure then that I had found the answer to the future, the cause for the evolution of the human race! The path of humanity was clear to me now! Then, in the distance, shockingly, abruptly, a tripod fell into the Thames with a massive splash! Others soon took its place with determined animosity, but to my companion and I, this fallen tripod represented a new sense of hope to help us on our trek back into the city. Upon our arrival to London a strange noise was bellowing throughout the city. We stumbled upon a dying Martian!, the first of many we would come across. The bells began to ring in the church towers, the sound of victory, others had also realized the truth! My partner and I soon pieced together that the Martians had not been able to handle earth’s microscopic organisms. Bacteria and viruses had done what humanity could not! We were overjoyed with the result. What we had hitherto believed to be the end of mankind had become a new beginning! Food and other aid began flooding into England from all over the world! Man was beginning to work together for a better tomorrow. Humanity would make it after all, I thought. My theory of the evolution of the Morlocks, I therefore believed was wrong. Man had no need to hide in the sewers any longer. My new friend and I soon parted ways as he found his wife and wanted to rebuild, as did all of England, that which had been before the Martians. I went in search of my Time Machine and found it to be exactly where I had left it only a day ago. Much of England had been covered in the Red-weed that had accompanied our visitors from Mars, but the area around my Time Machine was clear. On a whim I picked up a piece of Red-weed which laid a ways from my Time Machine. I let out a deep breath towards the weed and watched it shrivel up and turn to dust. Was it a virus brought back from the future I had visited that was responsible for the death of the Martians? I picked up another piece of the weed, then I asked a passer-by, “Sir, I assure you I am not mad, but would you please breathe onto this weed!” As soon as the words exited my mouth I felt like a fool, but the young man, barley beyond adolescence obliged to my request. The weed did not move; it remained as Martian red as ever. I thanked the man and he walked off without notice of what his action had proved. My friend, I had changed the future! It was me who brought back a deadly virus to the unsuspecting Martians! I had prevented the downfall of mankind! My theory of the Morlocks’ evolution was right but it was no longer valid as there would be no Morlocks! The future was once again a blank slate to me, a feeling which I had missed since the invention of the Time Machine. The curiosity, however, got to me and I hopped onto my Machine and rushed forward to Eight Hundred and Two Thousand and Seven Hundred and One. I have only been here a short while, but it is obvious that the version of the future consisting of the Eloi and the Morlocks no longer exists. I have discovered a Utopia! The people here are intelligent and live in an advanced society which has no war as global peace has long since been established! Space travel and journeys to new worlds are commonplace. Apparently humans invaded Mars over eight hundred millennia ago! I’m telling you my friend, take advantage of this machine which I have sent back to you. Join me in the future. I know not of your fate during the Martian invasion. Take heed this foreknowledge of future events. However perfect the future is here, the sound of familiar voices is still missing I hope to see your face soon I ask again, will you join me, please?

Your Friend, The Time Traveller

Gun Control

Nobody should have guns. Why not just ban their manufacturing? Anybody who makes money from the sale of firearms should be arrested and thrown in jail with their customers.

The army and the police are the only people in the WORLD who should have guns. No other exceptions, EVER!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh.... you're a collector? OH! you target shoot? OH! you hunt? Too fucking bad assholes. Hang up the guns and play some Duck Hunt on Nintendo to get your jollies. Grow the fuck up!

Ban guns, ban gun manufacturers, ban gun collections. Just stop making them available to ANY members of the public.

You should all be shot.

Potter

I don't like adults who read Harry Potter.

IT'S A CHILDREN'S BOOK!

Stephen Harper is a moron.

Please don't vote for him.

My Last Meal

If I was ever sentenced to death in some backwards country, and they let me choose my last meal, I would pick the single most difficult and most expensive meal to create. This would give me some more time to plot my escape and maybe let them stay my execution.

What would that meal be? What is more difficult for a chef than a coelacanth fillet and condor eggs? The only problem is how to have the eggs done. Benedict maybe?

Either that or Swiss Chalet...

Climate Change

All these scientists are saying the climate is changing, and they are calling it Climate Change. I guess it's an appropriate name. So here we have the earth, CHANGING. The environment CHANGING. And every time a report comes out saying that ice is melting, ducks are dying and summmer now arrives in March, the powers that be release reports saying that the data is inconclusive and the science is "wacko", "more research needs to be done". Well that is just the perfect excuse for the blame to be passed around over and over again. "It's not our fault, it's their's." And even when people do take responsibility, they decline that they can change their ways; "Yeah our factories are polluting the air and our SUVs are killing ducks, but if we regulate our factories and tell people to buy sensible automobiles, millions will lose jobs! So therefore status must remain quo."

Well that sucks doesn't it? First of all I don't believe the econmony is that fragile that it cannot stand some regulatory restrictions on industrial pollutants and guidelines to more enviro-freindly automobiles. AND, AND even if there might be some job loss occured upon adopting, say Kyoto, these people would get jobs in other sectors. Someone is going to have to regulate these factories, someone will have to invent, build, maintain, sell, distribute, deliver and install new technologies related to the envitonment, and some poor bastard is going to have to pick up all those dead ducks.

And so in the final scenario, if there IS massive economic collapse and people do lose their jobs and do not get hired as government regulators, pollutant measurement device installers or duck carcas cleaner-uppers, then what will happen? Well yeah there MAY be a recession or even a depression in the economy. So this is the worst case, but let's look at the alternative. CLIMATE change.

Do you know what the CLIMATE is? It is the massive system of GLOBAL weather patterns. GLOBAL. So the SUV drivers in Jesusland watch the news and see the ice melting on Ellesmere Island and the ducks dying in Labrador and what do they do? "Oh well that doesn't affect me here in Jesusland, so fill 'er up y'all" Soon it starts snowing in Alabama and Miami becomes the new Venice. (Not that flooding Florida is all that bad an idea, it IS a red state.) So 50, 100 years pass and then one day we wake up to the news of the last polar bear dying in the Columbus Zoo, SCUBA diving trips to Disney World, and discount trips to tropical getaways like Winnipeg. Now where are you prescious jobs? The goverment officials of the year 2100 are wondering what the hell their grandparents were thinking. Our grandchildren have now lost the earth. We HAD the earth, took it for granted, squandered it, and sold it out to market SUVs and Ancient Incan Wal-Marts.

So governments of 2004, what to do about all this? Of course no matter how bad we make out the result of global warming, no politician (or political party) is going to risk the economy and their re-election by implementing a wide reaching all encompassing Kyoto-type legislation. That is a fact. Live with it. No matter how many scientific studies are released about our impending doom, noone is going to sacrifice the current stability of their house in the 'burbs, SUV in the drive way, drive-thru Burger King and all the other modern staples of a free society. So to all the Lefties out there, the enviro activists, the non-republican moral majority, what is to be done? To sell the idea of Kyoto-style reform to the mainstream (or the other 51% of the mainstream) a cohesive workable model must be designed to entice a greener way of life. Someone (or some groups) have to sit down and draw up an exhaustive plan that will outline a way to change the way we live, without actually changing the way we live.

Concessions need to be made on both sides; on the Left we have to realize that the implementation of any process is going to be slow. AND the process will not move forward if it heavily distrupts drive-thru Burger Kings. On the Right, they need to realize that change MUST happen. Get greener or die. It is that important. More important than terror, more important than "family values", more important than anything you have ever imagined before.

So Left-wing, you must come up with an reasonable plan that can work in the Right's world. And Right-wing, you must realize that the maintenance of the almighty dollar depends on the maintenance of the almighty earth.

My quick fix solution? Oil must go. I think everyone should take an hour out of TV each day and read up on hydrogen fuel cells. The more people we have studying the subject, the quicker our dependence on oil will be decreased.

Monday, Nov 8, 2004

Pops Freshenmeyer

first one

My first blog entry.

Hello people! I hope something I say has some value.

I am a scientist and lack the ability to write in a non-logical/scientific way, so bear with me.

enjoy....