WTR Moment of the Day 10/31/06

The setup: A cutting-edge piece of technology known as the Thunderhawk has been stolen from government couriers. The Thunderhawk is a device that emits sonic lasers that are "like an ultrasound, but 1000 times stronger and 100 times more accurate". It has extensive utility in fields such as medicine and engineering, but can also be used destructively, as is shown when it's used to demolish a large factory. Walker and Trivette arrive at an airfield where the thieves are attempting to escape on a jet plane with the Thunderhawk.

The moment: Walker and Trivette, along with the help of Rangers Gage and Sydney, overpower all but one of the thieves, the ringleader known as the Shiek. The Shiek retreats onto his plane and orders the pilot to fly while Walker and friends are distracted.

Seeing their plan, Walker springs into action. As the jet plane starts to move towards them as it attempts to build the speed for takeoff, Walker removes the Thunderhawk from its case and confidently powers it up. He aims it at the oncoming jet plane, and fires.

We see the space around the jetplane warp and distort. The gauges in the cockpit go haywire and alarms go off, as the Shiek angrily asks the pilot what's wrong. Walker continues to fire the laser, and when Trivette suggests they get out of the way, Walker sternly replies that the jet plane will stop.

Walker doesn't move an inch, and the Thunderhawk finally stops the jet plane, inches from Walker's face.

"Walker, Texas Ranger" Moment of the Day 1: 10/25/06

The "Walker, Texas Ranger" Moment of the Day is a daily reminiscing of one of the myriad of great moments from the TV show Walker, Texas Ranger. For thorough information on the show, go to wikipedia.org and look up "Walker, Texas Ranger" to gain access to the highly informative Walker, Texas Ranger Wikipedia site, of which this writer is an editor.

Your "Walker, Texas Ranger Moment" of the Day:

The setup. A young man on an Indian reservation is framed for a murder. Meanwhile, Walker has been having hallucinations of an elderly Indian shaman.

The moment. Walker strides into an abandoned blacksmith in a ghost town where the young Indian is engaged in a standoff with police. As he tries to coax the youth to come out quietly, the Indian shaman once again reappears, and SHOOTS WALKER WITH LIGHTNING. The scene grows dark as CGI clouds appear, conducting the lightning from the shaman to Walker; we see a rift open in the clouds, and Walker is deposited upon the ground.

Groggy, Walker wakes up and looks around him. He is alright and, at first, it seems nothing has happened. But the abandoned blacksmithery is now, oddly, full of life; in the corner, a blacksmith is working at an anvil. Walker leaves the smith unnoticed. As he exits out onto the street, he sees a covered wagon roll by. Women in frocks and bonnets hustle by, and surly-looking men look at him from in front of a noisy saloon.

It is then that we realize that Walker has traveled back in time.

Child molestation! Alcoholism! The Blame Game! More!

At this point, everyone's heard of the Mark Foley scandal, wherein he got drunk, IM'ed sexually explicit messages to teenage Congressional pages, and then went and voted on a bill (not necessarily in that order. And come on Mark, cybersex is so 1997.) What's interesting to me is the wave of revelations on Foley's part that occurred after everything came out in the press; namely, that Foley was a) suddenly an alcoholic, and b) suddenly molested by his priest when he was a boy. I'm surprised he hasn't come out and revealed that he's addicted to crystal meth, or that he was forced to lose his virginity to a Cambodian prostitute.

Even more to the point, on a serious note, is the amount of people who allegedly knew about some sort of indiscretion on his part but didn't see fit to cause a fuss about it. It has come out that House Republicans knew in July about apparently inappropriate emails sent out to a Louisana teen in 2005, but kept it almost wholly silent. This is, of course, disgusting. And I'm always wary of hating on the GOP, lest I create a "TEH GOP AND BUSH ARE TEH EVIL OMG HE IS TEH ANTICHRIST!" type of impression, but God Damn, Can You Believe This Shit. The guy is most likely a pedophile (pederast?) To keep this quiet in the interest of preserving party unity and shielding themselves from public scorn around election time is repulsive and, you know, probably politics as usual. Hooray.