What's in a Name Again

Funny thing, I finally post my examination the Origins of this Blog, A Recovering Ubergeek.  I realized I was not done.  I realized another meaning to this title.  I am recovering from an abusive situation and I am an Ubergeek.  This meaning was implied in the last article on the subject.  I felt though it needed to be obvious.  This post will be fairly short.  I am a survivor of abuse and this most recent period, a fourteen year relationship, was worst in my experience.  At the time I was unable to truly see it for what it was.  I was too close to the situation.  I allowed someone to make me responsible for everything in both our lives without any real decision making power.  I gave up too much of what made me who I was.  That has led to where I am I now; trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be.  The overwhelming problem is not what can’t I do but deciding from the infinite possibilities.  The funny thing is that this is in many ways a wonderful problem to have.

In the Future, I am going to be more about self interest.  That does not mean I am putting myself above others in a negative way.  It means I will not subsume my necessities to the point I have in the past.  I will not give up my necessities or parts of myself to please others.  I will surround myself with people who would never ask for that.  I will do better about boundaries my own and others.  I will let things happen in their own time not my own.  No rushing any relationship, be it a friendship or an intimate relationship.  People will need to accept the whole me, including that dorky nerdy Ubergeek part of myself; especially that part of me.  If people are not interested in getting to know me, I will let it go.  If it is meant to happen it will happen.  Forcing things never works.  What I left is proof of that.  I also need to remember sometimes the destination is not always the most important thing.  Sometimes the Journey itself is everything.  Well That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

Perception

Growing up I never saw people who looked like me.  Now I know you are saying, “Dude you are white.  There are lots of White folks in media.”  Well, that is true.  However as a kid, I had a physical attribute that in my mind was a huge red flag.  In retrospect, it was not huge.  To me it glared at me from the mirror.  It screamed you are different, you are a freak.  What was this attribute? It was my cleft lip scar.  It is a faint scar now, but with the constant surgeries I had to keep up with my growth it was swollen a lot for a quarter to a third of the year.  So to me it was loud and screaming.  When I was young my identity was tied to my disabilities.  By my Twenties, I did not do that as much.  After 14 years with someone whose whole life was about their disabilities, I found myself there again.  Now that part of my life is over, I am reassessing myself and my history.

I look back at my picture of myself as a little kid.  The only time the scar is obvious was either right after surgery or the one time I tried to shave at the age of 5 or 6.  I was trying to be just like my Uncle who was 13 or 14 at the time.  I think it did not help that my mother kept bringing up my being different.  She did not do it with any malice.  She just did not want me to be disappointed when I was unable to do things other kids could.  Were my challenges as harsh as my friends of color?  Socially, no they were not.  My physical challenges though at times were difficult.

I never had to deal with people putting me down for being a Harelip or freak.  In many ways I had myself for that.  As a kid I only heard one Harelip joke.  There was on incident where a kid finally went after me for being a Harelip.  Later, I discovered his baby brother was like me with a cleft lip and palate.  Somehow, since I was the only other person he knew that was like that he blamed me. We were little kids, these things happen.  Later as an adult, I have encountered more insensitivity about that subject.  Mostly the problem is about those God Awful Harelip jokes.  I grew up in a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood and that kind of stuff did not happen.  Here in rural Oregon, I encountered it a lot in my early twenties.  Funny thing very few of the idiots telling the jokes knew that I was a Harelip.  It is less obvious to people, because I wear a full beard and do not sound like the stereotypical Harelip.  Harelip is a common derogatory term for someone with a Cleft Lip and/or Palate.  Most people who have this condition find it highly offensive.  The jokes made present someone with limited intelligence.  The condition almost never affects cognitive abilities.  It also uses the stereotypical speech impediment, which most modern folks with either do not have.

This re-examining came after several articles about people dealing with being minorities in America and what it means.  With me, it has been about perception.  I saw myself as a minority.  I doubt however many around me saw the same thing.  They saw an educated, Blue Collar Caucasian guy.  Honestly, I did not have it that bad.  Due to my father being a career military man, all my surgeries, speech therapy and dental work were covered.  Financially, we had rough patches when dad was on deployment.  Overall, we were fortunate.  Now the only two celebrities I knew growing up who had clefts were Stacy Keach and Cheech Marin.  In high School I saw them as a coke fiend and a pot head.  Now that is not a nice thing to say, but that was my perception.  In the 1980’s Mr. Keach had legal troubles surrounding cocaine.  Mr. Marin’s most famous character is a pothead.  Since then I discovered that Tom Brokaw, Rev. Jessie Jackson, Jason Robards and Doc Holliday had a cleft of some kind.

What I am saying is that sometimes perception is everything.  What I saw as a major thing, was not so major in the big scheme of things.  Many folks overcame their challenges similar or worse than mine.  I did not deal with real discrimination based on my challenges.  I dealt with insensitive idiots.  Compared to what some people deal with it is an irritation.  I need to step out of my skin from time to time to gain perspective.  Lately I have been doing a lot of that.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

Zeitgeist

For Whatever reason, I seem to be hooked up with the Pop Culture Zeitgeist.  The reason I believe this is that I have had ideas that have turned up in Television and Comic books.  Since I am not paranoid, I do not believe I am being plagiarized or my mind is being data mined by aliens or what not.  I feel somehow I tapped the same part of the collective unconscious that other creative types have.  Also the bigger concepts are the same but the details are very different. 

In the early 1980’s I was a teenager with way too much imagination and time on my hands.  I created a lot of worlds and concepts.  I was a huge Doctor Who fan back then.  I came up with an idea of a Gallifreyan who had an affinity with American Culture.  He was a Military man.  Funny thing is twenty years later; we get Captain Jack Harkness an American Time Traveler in the Doctor Who Universe, who later finds himself immortal.  Now there are differences, my character was from Gallefrey and his rank was Major.  Am I claiming I came up with the idea first?  No there probably were many American Whovians who came up with a similar idea.  I am just pointing out the interesting thing there is that a similar idea ended up on the show.

In the mid 90’s I had this idea.  What if Superman’s rocket landed in the Soviet bread basket of the Ukraine?  A decade later Mark Millar put out his great series Red Son.  The Series was in development since the late 90’s.  It is considered one of the best Superman and alternate reality comics of all time.  My idea had the superheroes spread out in more countries.  Lex Luthor was Soviet as opposed to being American as he was in Red Son.  I was not surprised this happened.  There are a lot of cultural parallels between Kansas and the Ukraine in their importance to the two countries they were a part of.  Early Superman was very pro the common working man which some people translate as Communist.  So I was not surprised that more that one person came up with this idea.

Also in the mid- nineties, I had the idea that the members of the X-men aged in real time and were as old as the year they were introduced.  So the original five were teenagers in the sixties so today they would be in their sixties.  The original New Mutants would be in their Forties, and so on.  In 2006 Marvel announced GeNext.  It was supposed to be similar to my concept; however it ended up a sequel to X-men: The End Trilogy.  I think the original idea would have been fun and interesting. 

Another idea I had back in the Mid 90’s was a few other X-Men related ideas.  Most of it has come to pass.  The idea was to integrate the New Mutants into the X-Men.  This was a concept that Chris Claremont had implied as the natural progression of their story.  Thirty years later they are only a few years older.  Some have become full fledge X-Men.  With the recent integration of the Avengers and X-Men, Cannonball and Sunspot are Avengers.  I also thought with integrating the New Mutants/ X-Force members, that the idea of the X-Force should be a black ops team headed by Wolverine.  This team would utilize Mutants with Covert ops backgrounds and those with powers that lend themselves with those kinds of missions.  In 2008, Marvel did just that.

Now in all this I am not claiming responsibility for any of these ideas.  I just think it is interesting these ideas could not be contained to one person.  They came out regardless of my own situation.  It is weird how some ideas will do that.  These ideas came along with parallel inspiration.  Others came up with them independently of me.  It is like we were tapping into the same part of the creative ether.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

The Doctor & Me

With the Fiftieth Anniversary of Doctor Who occurring this year,  It makes me look back at my own personal history with the show.  So do I know the exact date I was introduced to Doctor who?  No, I do not.  Do I remember the exact episode?  I cannot help you there either.  It was on a UHF channel from Glendale.  It was a Tom Baker and Sarah Jane Smith Episode.  It was in a Frankenstein like castle on an Alien Planet.  It was some time between 1976 and 1977, maybe even 1975.  You know what?  It had me hooked.  One small problem, getting reception was trying.  This was the days of Antennas and rabbit ears.  Cable was still new.  I am not sure if our local PBS carried it either.  Our reception of that in Oxnard, California was not the best either.  It was not until I visited my extended family in Oregon and later moved there that I was able to truly catch up on Doctor Who.  OPB or Oregon Public Broadcasting has always had a good relationship with Doctor Who.  Even after it went into hibernation they still showed episodes.  They even found old shows and broadcast them. 

Of course there is a saying among Whovians, Doctor Who Fans, there is nothing like your first Doctor.  In my case that is true.  The Fourth Doctor Portrayed by Tom Baker has a special place in my heart as well as my first companion Sarah Jane Smith.  Tom Baker was the delightfully mad and playful Doctor.  He still holds the record for most seasons and episodes.  His Jelly Baby eating, Scarf wearing and Sonic Screwdriver wielding Doctor is one of the most iconic of the Doctors. I watched most of his adventures with Leela, K-9, Romana and Sarah Jane Smith.  Later through the mid to late Eighties I caught up with the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors.  As older shows became available I was able to catch the stories of the First, Second and Third Doctors; I also saw the Fourth Doctor’s adventures I had missed.  When The BBC made the Video tape about Shada, the Fourth Doctor’s Story that was never finished, I bought that too.

Doctor Who was always fascinating.  His different incarnations made him refreshing and unpredictable.  During the Seventies to the Nineties, American Whovians were still kinda fringe.  In the UK Doctor Who was like what Star Trek is here in the U.S.  It was also very popular in British Commonwealth countries like Canada, New Zealand and Australia.  In The U.S., it was not as widely known.  It took more to get into Doctor Who.  Not to mention, mainstream found the low budget costumes and special effects silly.  If you look closely, that can be said of many 20^th Century Science Fiction Movies and Television.  From 1989 to 2005, when the BBC put Doctor Who on its long Hiatus there was very little fueling Doctor Who Fans.  There were books, audio plays, comic books, and in 1995 the failed Fox/ BBC reboot Television Movie with Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.

I personally loved the show; the idea of a Protagonist who tried to avoid physical confrontation and in some incarnations did not what the adulation was amazing to me.  I still found the Fourth Doctor to be my favorite, although the Seventh Doctor was a Close second.  The other concept I loved was the Companion.  Anyone could become a companion.  A companion did not need to be the fastest or strongest.  They definitely did not need to be the smartest; all they needed was the spark of spirit that the Doctor could see clearly.  Many of the Doctor’s companions were outsiders to their respective cultures.  Those things did not just resonate with me, but many Geeks and Nerds who grew up with the earlier version of the show.

In the Eighties many BBC executives saw the show as this silly little children’s show.  Some felt it had not place in the BBC.  Funny thing happened during the long Hiatus.  The people, who became BBC heads, were now the generations who grew up the Doctor.  That led to another discussion to attempt to revive the show.  The attempt in 1995 had some serious issues.  By being a joint U.S. and UK Production, it lost many of the things that made it unique.  Many of the unique flavors of Doctor Who have to do with it being ensconced in British Culture.  The 1995 Movie tried to Americanize it too much.  So in 2005, Doctor Who re-premiered.   This time with the Ninth Doctor and a young London Shop Girl, named Rose Tyler.

Not only did it premiere in the UK, but within a year it showed up all over the world.  With the advent of the internet, fans worldwide were able to keep each other up and discuss their passion for the show.  The show seemed to be a cultural juggernaut.  Some old school Whovians get irritated that the newer fans do not know the pre-2005 cannon.  Is it Necessary to enjoy the show? Not really.  My ex was a fan of the old show like me.  We watched faithfully the Ninth and Tenth Doctor’s tenures.  We enjoyed the spin-off, Torchwood, up until the Last series.  When that relationship ended, Sixth season had just finished.  Honestly I am not a huge fan of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith.  He is better than some of his predecessors.  He just does not connect with me like previous Doctors.  I will continue to watch, because I enjoy the show.  I still plan on catching up with another spin-off, the Sarah Jane Adventures, mostly due to my fond memories of the character when I was a kid.  To this Day Sarah Jane Smith and the Fourth Doctor are my Doctor and companion.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.