Oz-Squad.com

Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published February 23, 2009.

Most people don’t worry about this stuff. I do.

The continuity of a television show like Star Trek is, at first glance, a relatively simple affair. The show aired on the NBC television network starting on Thursday, September 8, 1966 and continued for three years. From a continuity standpoint then, we can simply state that everything happened in the order that we would have seen it had we been watching the show from the beginning.

Unfortunately, we run into problems almost right away. It turns out that the third episode aired was the first episode filmed. (And the first episode was actually the second pilot.) For the episode entitled “Where No Man Has Gone Before” the cast had yet to be solidified. From a viewer’s standpoint, there would odd discrepancies. Doctor McCoy is nowhere to be seen, instead we have Doctor Mark Piper as the ship’s chief medical officer. Uhura is gone. Sulu is an astrophysicist.

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If this is the first page you visit when you come to this site you may have missed the latest updates.

In the Galleries I’ve posted some unpublished pages I did for the Unfortunate Millenium Special.

In the Royal Library we’ve posted the first chapter of Lizzie the Girl Knight. We’ll be posting an exciting new chapter on the first of every month until the serial concludes.

Finally, and least importantly, I’ve closed oz-squad.blogspot.com and that address redirects to this page.

Things are really looking good for 2012. Stay tuned!

Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column you’re missing out. We’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published February 8, 2009.

It’s unknown when F. Scott Fitzgerald first came across the remarkable story of Benjamin Button, born an old man in 1860 in the city of Baltimore, dying in the same city as a baby in 1920. Fitzgerald reports that when news of this remarkable birth reached the public, “The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious.” It was only the advent of the American Civil War and its attendant chaos that drew the public’s attention away. Whether this event was important enough to be written up in papers or was merely passed as the gossip of the age is unknown.

Newspapers from that era are hard to access, and Fitzgerald is notably lax in providing hard dates; he seems more interested in using the Button story as a means of exploring what age means to us at various points in our lives. (You can read the story yourself here.)

Button is once again the topic of high society gossip and makes the society pages of the Baltimore press many times upon the announcement of his marriage to Miss Hildegarde Moncrief, daughter of the Civil War hero (at least to the south) General Moncrief, author of the largely discredited History of the Civil War in twenty volumes. Fitzgerald reports:

“…the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin’s birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise–and, finally, that he had two small conical horns sprouting from his head.

The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case with fascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He became known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case, had a very small circulation… In vain Mr. Roger Button published his son’s birth certificate in large type in the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it.”

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Steve Ahlquist has been writing his Mythographical Meanderings over at ForcesofGeek.com for two years now. If you haven’t been reading his column, you’re missing out. To catch you up we’ll be posting excerpts from his best essays with links back to FOB where you can read the rest. This essay was originally published January 18, 2009.

There’s not much I can add to all the hoopla and praise being poured onto Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a must-see film that delivers a story that literally left me breathless. It was a full on emotional workout. There’s so much to talk about in this film, but I’d like to concentrate on the less discussed.

I know that winter is coming in and all your thoughts are turning to scarves and sweaters but remember, winter passes. Summer will be back. When it arrives, you’ll need these t-shirts!

Little Oz Squad Scarecrow by Atomicsteve

Little Oz Squad Dot Gale by Atomicsteve

Little Oz Squad Nick Chopper by Atomicsteve

To anyone who has found this site out of interest in Oz Squad or Oz or just ended up accidentally – welcome! Feel free to poke around. The site is far from finished. It will be work in progress for some time to come but I try to add something new every week. This morning I just added text to Steve Ahlquist’s bio. You’ll find him under Royal Historians.

To anyone who is thinking of posting a comment in order to add to the link count of some commercial site and therefore pump up that site’s SEO – please read the post that you’re commenting on and say something that actually relates to that post and I’ll probably let your comment through moderation. I know it makes your job harder but if I were interested in whatever you were selling I’d link to it myself. If you can’t think of anything to say that relates to the post you’re commenting on then feel free to tell me how you ACTUALLY found this site. I know it wasn’t because you were looking in google or bing.

And to everyone –

Happy Halloween!

Howdy folks!

For now, let’s consider this post an introduction. I’m David Lee Ingersoll and I’ll be your moderator and main author here at Oz-Squad.com. Steve Ahlquist, the creator of Oz Squad, will be contributing as well, but, at the moment, you can expect most of the content to come from me.

As you can see, there’s not a lot of content yet. There are placeholder pages awaiting text and images. There are four banners that load randomly. They feature versions of the Squad in different incarnations. You can amuse yourself for a few seconds by reloading this page enough times until every banner has appeared.

I’ll be working on getting something more interesting up as soon as possible. In the meantime, feel free to say hi in the comments. If you have time, tell us how you found this page and share any thoughts you’ve got on the Squad.

Stay tuned!