dashwood_one

I think, in fact, I'm sure that it is Chinese - there are stylised dragons on it's circumference. I have no idea how old it is, and the patina on the inside is beautiful. There are cuneiform type markings on the base. If the rim is tapped with a fingernail, it emits a clear, beautiful bell-like tone (as the band Wire stated: 'A bell is a cup, until it is struck'). I wonder if this could be similar to a Tibetan Singing bowl. It always fascinated me as a child, and I begged my gran to let me have it. She always said no, until one day, she moved house, and I saw the bowl with a load of unwanted items due for the rubbish tip. I 'liberated' it, and have had it ever since.

Thank you, Horror Block™, for yet another cracking shirt. There were two shirts this month, and the bonus one was the grim reaper Darth Vader below. I was particularly pleased with that one, as it came in the Nerd Block™ released the month before I started subscribing. I saw it on the net, and wanted one, badly. Now I have one, and all is well with the world. Little things...

Damn cool, huh?

All together now: "Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!". Or Doctor Smith's: "Be quiet, you bubble-headed booby!". 

You can attach the straps on his sleeves to buckles on the back, pinioning his arms. I think that is just a bit too weird, and stops this being ostensibly a toy, into something quite other, quite sinister. It's a great likeness, but the straightjacket renders it oddly distasteful and not a little creepy.

Why do I say this? Well, they all (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert) all came home. I remember all the Apollo missions, and yes, I can remember my mum telling me that the spacemen (I was four at the time) had died in a fire in Apollo 1, and I remember being bothered, not by the catastrophe, but my mum crying. I stayed up to watch the reports on the TV about Apollo 8, and watching the grainy footage of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I don't remember much about Apollo 12, possibly because one of the astronauts accidentally turned the TV camera on to the sun, which burnt it out. But Apollo 13 - you couldn't make it up. Right from the understated: "Houston, we have a problem." to seeing the CM parachutes deploy fully after re-entry, and that ominously long radio blackout, it was a drama that everyone watched. It was a real triumph over adversity, with the rulebooks being re-written several times. That's why I have an Apollo 13 mission patch.

In fact, this is how I always saw 'him', in my mind's eye, when I read the books.