Category Archives: 37 Minutes

Channel 37’s roundtable talk show. Commentary, discussion, interviews, in-depth features, and humor (of course) related to all things science fiction.

The Original “Cowboys and Aliens”

37 MinutesToday’s installment of 37 Minutes is a guest post (our first!) by aerospace historian, archivist, professor, and author Dr. Anne Millbrooke, our new historian-in-residence. Follow Anne on Facebook
and Twitter.

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Cowboys fight Martians in Cowboys & Aliens (DreamWorks & Universal, 2011). I responded to the media hype for that film by recalling one of my favorite bad movies, The Phantom Empire (Mascot, 1935). Cowboys fight aliens of a different sort in The Phantom Empire, produced as a 12-part serial starring Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, and set at Radio Ranch.

Producer Nat Levine of Mascot Pictures had entered sound film with King of the Kongo (1929). He produced the serial The Miracle Rider (Mascot, 1935), notable for Levine shooting all 15 episodes in only four weeks and for 55-year-old Tom Mix starring in his last film. Mix earned $10,000 a week in pay, $40,000 total, and Levine earned over a million dollars from The Miracle Rider.

With Mix retiring from films, Levine needed a new star. He found Gene Autry singing in Chicago, brought him to Hollywood, taught him to ride a horse, and The Phantom Empire became Autry’s first starring role. Whereas The Miracle Rider is a traditional western with Texas Rangers, Indians, and murderers, The Phantom Empire combines science fiction and western genres.

The “phantom empire” is the underground Scientific City of Murania. Muranians descended from the survivors of the lost continent of Mu, which like the lost island of Atlantis, sank into the sea. Mu was antediluvian, before the Flood, though it was glaciers that drove the Muranians underground. Abundant amounts of radium power Murania. Murarian science had produced ray guns, television, surface-to-air missiles, and wireless phones.

People living above ground have radio. In this movie Gene Autry has a contract to broadcast a regular radio show. Autry and his Radio Riders open the musical entertainment with “Uncle’s Noah Ark” (“. . . the duck went quack, the cow went moo . . .”). Despite that, Autry’s radio program attracts guests to Radio Ranch. Guests arrive by train, horse, and automobile, and now by airplane.

The evil Professor Beetson seeks to discover the underground survivors of Mu and get rich on the radium at Radio Ranch. But visitors, and even Autry and his partner, make secret exploration difficult, so the professor adopts murder as a method of exploration. Autry is a target.

Other threads wind through this story. Ruled by Queen Tika, Murania has rebels in its midst. The ranch children form a club called Junior Thunder Riders, who adopt the motto “To the Rescue!” etc.

This 6-hour, 12-part serial has adventure in each episode: 1. Singing Cowboy, 2. Thunder Riders, 3. Lightning Chamber (a death chamber), 4. Phantom Broadcast, 5. Beneath the Sky, 6. Disaster from the Sky, 7. From Death to Life, 8. Jaws of Jeopardy, 9. Prisoners of the Ray, 10. Rebellion, 11. Queen in Chains, and 12. End of Murania.

The Phantom Empire, all 12 episodes, is on YouTube, but I prefer Archive.org, where I routinely watch movies. By the way, Timeless Media released The Phantom Empire on DVD in June 2011.

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Steve Jobs – Rest In Peace

37 MinutesRIP, Steve Jobs.

The news that Steve Jobs passed away will reverberate for quite some time. Mr. Jobs was a true innovator who inspired a great wave of creativity.

As someone who owned an old Apple IIc and later an early Mac, I was inspired to reach into new levels of creativity. Most of the writers I know started on an Apple.

The Apple IIc was the first computer in many homes. Many games were designed on these systems (which I will argue are still some of the best games ever!)

Anyway, since we are a science fiction site, we have to admit a few things:

  1. Mr. Jobs made a lot of predictions come true. In many homes, the apple was the most affordable computer available. It took on Big Blue at a time when they ruled the world. Where is IBM now?
  2. The Macintosh was/is one of the most advance machines ever. They were the closest thing to the HAL 9000. My first and only Mac actually had HAL’s voice (geek that I aspire to be). The Mac was like those computers from the campy 50’s movies. I think some of the cases the computers were designed from these movies.
  3. An iPhone beats a Star Trek communicator every time!
  4. The iPad is truly an item from the future. No keyboard, hooked up to the world. The iPad 2 is as good a communication device as the main screen on the Enterprise. I even program my wife’s iPad and a remote (don’t tell her!) No matter how many copycat designs come out on the market, Apple was the first.

So, in conclusion, many things will be written about Steve Jobs the next few days. There are so many things and stories that can be told how this man touched EVERYONE. I will leave to you, dear reader, to go out and learn about this creative human being.

Here is a post from Channel 37’s Paul Lagasse that I think you all will appreciate: A Dream, Fulfilled.

Rest In Peace Mr. Steve Jobs!

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Breaking the Sound Barrier

37 MinutesOn this date 64 years ago, U.S. Air Force Captain Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager broke the sound barrier in the bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket-plane, a pivotal moment in aerospace history. Thanks to Capt. Yeager, on that day the gap between fact and science fiction became a lot smaller.

For those who only know about the flight through The Right Stuff, the event might not seem like such a big deal. But in many ways, the moment embodied the spirit of exploration and discovery that was at the heart of many golden-age science fiction stories. It represented the cutting edge of engineering and scientific knowledge. It required people to design a vehicle that would operate in an unknown — and perhaps unexplainable — environment. It required a courageous pilot who was willing to take a chance and rely on his skills and wits to see him through. Space heroes from Commander J.J. Adams to Captain James T. Kirk to Space Repairman Clarence “Chuck” Banner (who chose his nickname to honor Capt. Yeager) all pay homage to the original space hero.

And while we traditionally celebrate the event as a great American moment, we should remember it was also the direct result of the hard theoretical and practical work of many engineers and scientists from around the world. After all, Ernst Mach, the scientist whose pioneering research into fluid dynamics led to the airspeed numbering system that bears his name, was Austrian. Capt. Yeager and the Bell designers stood on the shoulders of giants — and they’d be the first ones to tell you so.

In addition to proving that brightly-colored teardrop-shaped rocketships could indeed fly, the X-1 also contributed to science fiction in a lesser-known and -appreciated way. The plane’s XLR-11 rocket engines were pressurized by steam-driven turbopumps, thereby establishing the importance of steam power in high technology — as anyone who’s ever watched Aliens or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica will appreciate.

As we celebrate this momentous anniversary, I leave you with this thought: is it a coincidence that a mere four months before Capt. Yeager made his historic flight, another pilot — one Kenneth Arnold, flying near Mount Rainier in Washington — ushered in the era of the flying saucers? Perhaps the X-1 was really a prototype flying saucer interceptor, and the real story is that Capt. Yeager secretly led a squadron of rocket aces to do battle with dastardly invaders from distant space over the high desert of California, thereby saving the Earth from invasion . . .

And speaking of anniversaries, this is post #100 on Channel 37! Onward and upward!

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Faster Than What?

37 MinutesFaster than what???

Last week we revisited the anniversary of the breaking of the speed of sound. It was a great accomplishment, which changed the way we thought about limits.

This week we have to look at the recent CERN experiment.

For those not familiar, it seemed that the speed of light is not an absolute limit. The scientists at CERN sent a neutrino across the continent. The neutrino arrived 60.7 nanoseconds before expected.

Does this mean the speed of light has been broken?

CERN itself is not speculating. In fact, they have asked the scientific community to repeat the experiment and see if the results hold up. So far, as far as I can tell, not one has agreed to do so.

There has been rampant speculation as to how the results have been skewed by one thing or another. There has been talk of how the scientific method has not been adhered to. But there has no one to accept the challenge that CERN has put forth.

I was first introduced to the neutrino by the writings of Isaac Asimov. In researching this article, I found that he published a book in 1975 titled Neutrino: Ghost Particle of the Atom. I am quite sure that this doesn’t read as well as his fiction works, so I never attempted it.

The neutrino was first thought of in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli. The neutrino is thought to be very low mass or even no mass, which would make it a particle of pure energy. Pure energy, according to Einstein is the only thing that can achieve the speed of light.

Some have suggested that the neutrino did not exceed the speed of light, but traveled through another dimension. This would be a stretch for most scientific thought, but kudos for those of us who understand the concept of alternate universes.
In short, this news from CERN may well be one of the first cracks in the absolute limit of the speed of light. Will it allow man to travel faster, or maybe just a way of communicating at higher speeds. Perhaps it will be a way of maintain instantaneous communication with outposts in the further reaches of our solar system, or even the galaxy.

Maybe Sprint, ATT or Verizon can use this technology to speed up phone service, and have fewer dropped calls. The travel of the neutrino is not affected by objects of mass. Cell phone towers could go the way of the dinosaur.

Neutrino technology could be the next greatest steps of mankind. The atomic age may pass and the dawn of the neutrino age could be upon us!

For more information you can visit these excellent sites:

wikipedia

Neutrino The Ghost Particle

Wired

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Teenagers and Other Scary Things from Outer Space

37 MinutesToday’s installment of 37 Minutes is a guest post by Channel 37’s historian-in-residence — aerospace historian, archivist, professor, and author, Dr. Anne Millbrooke. Follow Anne on Facebook
and Twitter.

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Scary things come from outer space, according to Earth-based movies of the 1950s. Fear of enemy invasion, nuclear war, and Nazis influenced storylines. Four examples will illustrate.

The Phantom from Space (1953) landed in Santa Monica. His spacesuit causes a stir, so he takes it off. That’s when viewers discover that the phantom is invisible! Silicon, rather than carbon base, might explain this X man. Directed and produced by W. Lee Wilder, the movie opens when radar “with eyes that never sleep” picks up an unidentified flying object. It ends . . . well, that would be telling.

Killers from Space (1954), also directed by W. Lee Wilder, begins with an atmospheric test of an atomic bomb in Nevada. Peter Graves as scientist Dr. Martin survives an unsurvivable crash of the support plane Tar Baby 2. With an unexplainable scar on his chest, Dr. Martin behaves strangely thereafter.

Big-eyed aliens from the planet Astron Delta left their planet became their sun was dying. They must move to survive, and earth can support their population of a billion aliens. As they prepare to invade Earth, they capture the radiation released from each atomic explosion in the nuclear test program. The aliens use the atomic radiation to control genetic mutations of insects and other Earth creatures that will become the aliens’ army for the forthcoming invasion. Oh, what can Dr. Martin do to stop them?

A low-budget film directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr., Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) brings alien grave robbers to Earth. According to the human-like aliens, Earth people who can think are frightened by those who cannot think. In the aliens’ ninth plan to conquer the earth, the aliens plan to create an army of those who cannot think, the dead. The aliens revive the dead at a California cemetery. Flying saucers and multiple murders tip people off. An airline pilot living nearby must rescue his wife. Best line is the nonsensical “Can you prove it didn’t happen?” In other words, this is a bad movie that really is bad. Zombies just don’t make good science fiction.

My favorite is Teenagers from Outer Space (1959). The theme is that some teenagers are aliens. In this case David Love plays an alien who falls in love with an Earth girl. Betty (Dawn Anderson) realizes that he is not from this world. As he explains to her, “We were made the same. The only difference is, we were put on places far, far apart.”

Directed by Tom Graeff, the movie uses an exploratory spacecraft to bring several teenagers to Earth. These space teens come from a Nazi-like, book-banning world ruled by the Leader. There a supreme race kills the old and the ill, and the young are raised by caregivers rather than in families.

This alien society seeks more living space, immediately for the carnivorous monsters they raise for food. The exploratory team determines that Earth is suitable for raising a herd of gargons, if you don’t mind the monsters eating every living thing on the planet. Young Derek has read a banned book, and he does mind if the gargons eat intelligent life forms. He escapes from his alien colleagues, but another teen alien with a focusing disintegrator (a ray gun) chases him.

The Leader is a hereditary position, only Derek does not know who his father is. He finds out. The Leader comes to retrieve his errant son. They meet, and . . .

Gee, the good old days were scary!

These movies are online at the Internet Archive:

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The Top Religions of Science Fiction and Fantasy

37 MinutesHow do SF&Fwriters build worlds? Often they use things that are common to us all, but with a little twist. How do some of the great SF&F writers fit in a religion in one of their worlds? Observe

10. The Catholic Church as a cult. Fritz Leiber describes this turn of events in his book, Gather, Darkness!

Gather Darkness

9. The world that Stephen Donaldson describes in his Thomas Covenant series. The beginning book Lord Foul’s Bane begins a long, harrowing quest that extends nine books. The religion is part of a rich history and excellent world-building.

The Thomas Covenant Series

8. The Church of Scientology as founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. The Mr. Hubbard’s ideas were supported and encouraged by John W. Campbell, Jr. of Astounding Stories, one of the great magazines in the Science Fiction genre.

Scientology

7. Nordic religion revisited and updated in Norse Code by Gregg Van Eehout.

Norse Code

6. One of the best all-time science fiction stories of all times “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke. It’s a meeting of an ancient religion with modern technology.

The Nine Billion Names of God

5. Is the “Seldom Plan” a religion? Is something that is followed a religion? Ask Isaac Asimov.

The Foundation Series

4. J. R. R. Tolkien’s world in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is not an in-your-face religious experience. Yet one can almost understand that goblins, trolls and wraiths called to serve Saur on as an anti-religion approach. The worship of the floating eye is quite prevalent throughout the books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauron

3. The plot of The Fifth Element is about the fruition of a coming “Perfect Being” as a one to save the world.

The Fifth Element

2. The weird “Weirding Way” religion found in Dune by Frank Herbert.

Dune

1. Star Wars, The “Force” is undoubtedly the most quoted SF&F religion ever.

Star Wars
The latest Force Expression

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Cabinet of Curiosities: FlagShip’s Steampunk Issue is a Blast

37 Minutes Stout hearts, wondrous inventions, mysterious travelers, exotic outposts, plenty of brass, and of course airships — like a Victorian cabinet of curiosities, the latest issue of FlagShip, the science fiction/fantasy arm of Flying Island Press, is full of secrets and surprises, mysteries and wonders. Kicking off the e-zine’s second year of publication in high style, this special Steampunk Issue demonstrates that not only is reader-oriented short fiction alive and well, but that it has the potential to make a thundering comeback — with FlagShip in the vanguard — into the mainstream.

As anyone who’s listened to the Galley Table podcast knows, FlagShip’s Editor Zach Ricks has pulled together a team of talented, knowledgeable, and wickedly sharp writers to select stories that are told well and — just as importantly — that have a note of optimism. The stories don’t have to have happy endings, and many of them don’t, but they all convey something positive about humankind and its striving efforts. It’s a spirit that (in this desk’s opinion) has been sorely lacking in fiction in general lately, but for science fiction it’s an essential ingredient. Science fiction traces its origins to multiple literary roots — the parlor adventures of Verne, the speculative novels of Wells, the backyard inventor stories of Gernsback — but one thing that drove them all was a determination to look forward and upwards, toward an unknown. And to do that takes not just courage but a sense of optimism — the desire to improve tomorrow, whether it’s one person’s tomorrow, or a society’s, or the world’s.

Cover of Flagship Special Steampunk IssueBy focusing on steampunk, this issue of FlagShip looks to the past rather than to the future, as much optimist-oriented science fiction tends to do. But in these stories there is still a sense that the characters are looking for something better. Whether it’s a pair of press-ganged airship crewmen seeking escape in Doug Souza’s taut “Firebrand” or an Indian servant whose dedication to duty helps others overcome their prejudices in Scott Roche’s atmospheric “Behemoth,” the characters are not just passively along for a ride, but are learning to take control — in big and small ways — of their personal destinies.

The issue contains seven stories of varying length:

  • “Firebrand,” by Doug Souza
  • “Rats to Ruins,” by Mike Plested
  • “Boys Will Be Boys,” by Philip Carroll
  • “Behemoth,” by Scott Roche
  • “Crossfire,” by Bill Blume
  • “A Walk in the Park,” by Doc Coleman
  • “Wondros, the Clockwork Man,” Ryan Underhill

A witty advertisement (emphasis on the second syllable, please) for tactical corsets by Laura Nicole comes as a nice break about halfway through the issue, and Zach Ricks introduces the issue with a thoughtful essay on the importance of perseverance.

If you enjoy reading science fiction short stories, there’s no good excuse for not subscribing to FlagShip. It’s available in multiple e-book formats, at least one of which will work in your e-reader of choice, and it’s also available as an audio podcast too. Zach and his merry band are helping reinvent a literary tradition for the digital age, and the results continue to be encouraging for readers and writers alike. It can’t be easy to challenge, issue after issue, the conventional wisdom that if it’s digital, it should be free. But that’s what optimism looks like in real life.

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The Art of the Bomb Shelter

37 MinutesRemember the Fabulous Fifties and Swinging Sixties. When all we had to worry about was instant destruction.

Typical for the “Builder” generation was fixing a way to prevent becoming a statistic of the effects of Mutual Assured Destruction. The solution: the good ‘ole backyard bomb shelter.

Channel 37 takes a look back at some of the design and ingenuity of these underground fortresses. Some are quite sensible; others are very artsy and design oriented.
Enjoy!

From Second Edition

From 50 States Classified

From eBaum’s World

From Popular Mechanics

From Trend Hunter

From Xaxor

For the kitty

From Design world

Personal Sized!

From Stelzriede

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Paul’s Favorite Turkeys of Science Fiction

37 MinutesThe first Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup I ever tasted was really good — so good, in fact, that it was years before another one tasted as good. Nostalgia? No — it turned out that the first one was just really stale. To this day, no matter how much I like the fresh ones too, that’s just the way a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup should taste for me.

And so it is with science fiction — many of the stories that I first encountered as an eager young reader and viewer still warm the cockles of my fannish heart, no matter how bad I know they really are.

So, in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, I thought I would take a moment to share some of my favorite science fiction turkeys — stories that may be overstuffed with corn and ham, but that I still find yummy nonetheless. In the interest of a balanced meal, I’ve picked one movie, one TV show, one book, and one short story.

Movie: The Alien Factor

A spaceship carrying an assortment of the galaxy’s most terrifying evil creatures crashes in a Maryland suburb, and the sheriff can’t stop them from terrorizing the town — until a mysterious man appears who seems to know more about the aliens than he lets on.

Produced, directed, and edited by, and co-starring Don Dohler — the Ed Wood of Baltimore — this amazingly MST3K-able movie has one of my all-time favorite turkey scenes: an alien resembling a rubber ape suit on stilts plodding unsteadily down a muddy road in pursuit of the sheriff’s Chevy Nova as the car attempts to escape at about 6 mph.

The Alien Factor also has my all-time favorite turkey line: “I’m going to tell you something that may seem incredible. Perhaps even unbelievable.” (Pause) “I come from Harford County.”

Noooo!

TV show: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

What’s not to love? It’s like Star Trek in a submarine. Well, OK, not really. It started out pretty serious, with the crew of the submarine Seaview fighting foreign governments and dealing with the perils of the sea against a backdrop of Cold War realities. Then gradually things went downhill, as they ended up doing lots of time traveling, battling an army of lobster men, defeating a werewolf, and matching wits with a disembodied brain. But it had that cool control room with that big control panel with all the lights, and a flying submarine too. Come on, people! A flying submarine!

Book: The World of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt

Philosophical tracts masquerading as fiction tend to make for pretty dismal reading (see under Rand, Ayn), and in The World of Null-A, we get a double dose — the book is not only a lengthy exposition on van Voght’s personal interpretation of Alfred Korzybski’s theory of General Semantics, but it’s also a case study in van Voght’s peculiar theories of plot structure, in which each scene must be around 800 words long and always followed by a plot twist or a resolution.

The resulting story — a man named Gilbert Gosseyn (“go sane” — get it? (Nudge) Get it??) seeks to prove his intellectual superiority only to discover that all his memories are false and that he is really some sort of superman — manages to be simultaneously monotonous and suspenseful, tedious and engrossing. It’s quite a combination for a young reader to encounter at an impressionable age. Is it a profound story, or just a story that pretends to be profound? To this day, I don’t know. I’ll keep re-reading it until I figure it out.

Short story: “The Eye of Argon” by Jim Theis

Could there really be any other choice? This epically bad heroic fantasy story has been a staple of con wrap parties for a generation, and has been brilliantly MST3k-ed — which is probably the only way you can make it through the whole story. “The Eye of Argon” follows the adventures of the barbarian warrior Grignr and his travels through the wastelands of the vowel-deprived Prince Agafnd (“by the surly Beard of Mrifk!”) until … stuff happens and then … umm, something about lecherous monks and buxomy wenches in taverns and, umm … stuff. The end.

Transcribed from a mimeographed fanzine and rich with typos, grammar mistakes, and bewildering exposition, “The Eye of Argon” is People’s Exhibit A in why writers need editors. Yet there is something deeply mesmerizing about dialogue such as this:

“Eminence, the punishment you have decreed will cause much misery to this scum, yet it will last only a short time, then release him to a land beyond the sufferings of the human body. Why not mellow him in one of the subterranean vaults for a few days, then send him to life labor in one of your buried mines. To one such as he, a life spent in the confinement of the stygian pits will be an infinitely more appropiate and lasting torture.”

An experience not unlike reading “The Eye of Argon,” actually.

From all of us at Channel 37, Happy Thanksgiving!

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SPECIAL REPORT: Glinda – International War Criminal

37 MinutesAs the holidays approach, we are bombarded with the “ole” favorite movies. One of my favorites has always been the Wizard of Oz. After watching this movie over twenty-five times, I have come up with several new insights. One of the strongest is that it is now apparent the Glinda, the “Good” Witch of the North, is an avowed War Criminal. Please understand that the evidence presented is based on the Movie as opposed to the book.

Let us examine the world of Oz before the appearance of Dorothy. The governments of Oz consisted of four major powers: The “Wicked” Witch of the East, her sister the “Wicked” Witch of the west, the Wizard of Oz and Glinda the “Good” Witch of the North. This status quo seemed to be in place for several years BD (Before Dorothy).

The arrival of Dorothy is, of course, quite dramatic. The house falls, killing the “Wicked” Witch of the East. First of all, the house falling on a highly mobile witch appears to be a hugely, unlikely “accident.” Whether or not Glinda had prior knowledge of the alleged “accident” is not readily apparent, but she did take advantage of the situation.

She stepped in and took control of the American intervention and the propaganda machine started. First and foremost, the Munchkins remained in hiding until she orders them out. She then explains to Dorothy how oppressed the poor Munchkins were under the thumb of the “Wicked” Witch of the East. Just an observation: Most of the oppressed populations I have seen, usually dress in gray or sad looking uniforms; most have civilians that are thin. There usually aren’t organizations with oppressed peoples such as the “Lullaby League” or the “Lollipop Guild.”

Of course the invading Americans (I’m including the dog) are taken in with these “facts.” Glinda then urges Dorothy to take the Ruby Slippers and never let the “Wicked” Witch of the West to have them.

Having been involved with several family court settlements, I can truly say that family heirlooms such as ruby slippers are not allowed to be handed out to any passers-by. Glinda, in doing so, sets up an adversarial arrangement with the true inheritors of the priceless accessories.

When the “Wicked” Witch of the West, (hereafter referred to as “W”WW), shows up, Glinda tells “W”WW that Dorothy will never give up the shoes. After expressing her obvious disappointment of having last remaining memory of her sister stolen from her, “W”WW leaves, presumably to seek legal counsel.

Dorothy in her confused and disoriented state is then sent to the last remaining world power, the Wizard of Oz (WoO). The trip in eventful and fraught with dangers, but Dorothy, the resourceful American that she is, builds a small army of dissatisfied local indigenous personnel. This army descends on the Emerald City and demands satisfaction. The city of course refuses to let them in.

Faced with no other course, the army stages an Occupy Emerald City event. It is at this time “W”WW asks Dorothy to surrender the shoes or face a protracted legal battle.

The WoO hears about the upcoming legal battle, perhaps from a clerk, and summons Dorothy to meet him. He agrees to meet the Occupy Emerald City Demands with certain conditions, namely the “W”WW’s broomstick.

Dorothy assembles her crack Special Forces team and covertly invades the domain of “W”WW. “W”WW invites Dorothy to wait, showing her a lovely hourglass and presumably waiting until her legal counsel arrives to work out an equitable settlement. Meanwhile, her team invades “W”WW’s mansion-destroying things in their wake. “W”WW assembles her security personnel and confronts Dorothy and her team.

The situation escalates and “W”WW is accidently slain. Dorothy returns the broomstick and demands WoO keep his end of the bargain. WoO complies and then abdicates and flees, leaving Dorothy in charge.

Glinda “miraculously” shows up. She then shows Dorothy how she can leave using the shoes (If the shoes worked, why not earlier). Dorothy leaves a puppet regime in place and returns home.

Oz is then left bereft of three world leaders. As nature abhors a vacuum, Glinda steps in and becomes the One World Leader.

So, in conclusion, let us list the Crimes Against Humanity that Glinda obviously committed:
1) Murder (“Wicked” Witch of the East)
2) Unlawful Takeover of a Sovereign Entity (Munchkinland)
3) Grand Theft (Ruby Slippers)
4) Inciting a Riot (with the Munchkins)
5) Aiding a Abetting a Felony (Aiding Dorothy absconding with the aforementioned Ruby Slippers)
6) Inciting an Invasion of a Sovereign Entity (Two Counts)
7) Accessory to Murder (“W”WW)
and Accessory to the Overthrow of a Sovereign Government (WoO).

Channel 37 is always vigilant in the ways of Truth, Justice and The American Way. If there are comments on this matter, or crimes we have neglected to list, please feel free to comment.

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