Only Humans Carry Their Past Around, Their Past Around
As a Time Lord (or Gallifreyan at the very least), there is no such thing as the past for me. From my privileged viewpoint, all of Time and Space exists coterminously – past, present and future – in one eternal instant. The past is the present of that moment and the future of a previous moment. The present is the past of the future and the future of the past. The future is the present of that moment and the past of a future moment. The past is also the past of a future moment, and the future is also the future of a past moment, and the present doesn’t actually exist as the present moment is always passing from the past into the future (or the future into the past, depending on your point of view). That isn’t even taking into account all 93 dimensions. Wibbly wobbly, bollocky wollocky and so on and so forth.

A further problem exists when one considers the phenomenon – or phenomenomenon – of nostalgia; as a being who experiences time coterminously, I cannot experience ‘nostalgia’ as the past does not subjectively exist for me. Everything is a good or as bad as it ever was, is, or is likely to be.

Therefore, this week’s question is meaningless to me.

That won’t stop me answering it, though, if I consider ‘the past’ to be a segment of my own personal timeline existing at a reverse tangent to my present temporal juncture as a hyperplexoid polychronic interface within the time vortex yielding a magnifactoid switchback hysteresis which subtends to a gravitic accelerator linked to my Artron energy signature.

I can thus examine my memories of any segment of this ‘personal past’ and ascertain my current feelings towards it, and, if they are positive, check the veracity of said feelings by examining the segment as it actually happened through my Time/Space Visualiser, and then identify any disconnect between my memories of the segment and its actuality, and conclude if the resulting dissonance constitutes a counterbalance to the positive feeling – or ‘nostalgia’, if you will – that I now experience. I can then also examine the segment against my current node-state and identify if there are any material differences between them to ascertain if I am actually better off ‘now’ than I was ‘then.’

Okay. Running examinations now… downloading results…

Interesting!

It seems that a period of my prior personal timeline – I’ll say ‘past’ to make it simpler for you apes - that best meets the definitions of this week’s question is the five years I spent on the colony planet of Arketoria. My current feelings towards this segment are – or were until I ran this experiment – positive, as I helped a lot of people, had some great sex and made many cakes.

But the reality, as examined through my Time-Space Visualiser, was somewhat different...

Arketoria was a tough planet, with an arctic climate like northern Alaska. High velocity winds, blizzards and earthquakes were common. Precipitation was low, the soil was arid, water scarce – it really was an inhospitable shithole. Yet the colonists were tough and set about establishing a settlement in the form of a town called Destiny, basically a cluster of steel huts surrounding an atmosphere converter (you know – like the one in Aliens, in fact very similar, James Cameron got that spot on).

I arrived there ten years after the establishment of Destiny. I was fleeing from the Oabex-Mengoxtra conflict where I was acting as personal military consultant to the Feag Mengoxtra itself. Things had got pretty hairy during an Oabex bombardment of the Mengoxtran Battle Moon Foowounga, and I had become separated from my TARDIS. I escaped from Foowounga in a lifepod together with a young Mengoxtran female called Oooalaquaia, who sadly did not survive long (naughty old me!). After I’d cleaned myself up, I managed to soup up this pod to warp me halfway across the galaxy. Thus I ended up on Arketoria.

I crash-landed a hundred miles from Destiny and somehow managed to walk the entire distance, honing in on the psychospoor of the 125 surviving colonists. By the time I arrived at the settlement I was close to death and on the point of regeneration – but those good people took me in, fed and watered me despite their lack of resources, and I was soon nursed back to full health. During this incarnation, my third, I was a strikingly handsome male of about fifty years of age in appearance with short jet black hair and piercing blue eyes. I must have looked like a god to that rag-tag bunch of terraformers. They’d suffered over the last decade – disease, famine, feuds and murders had all took their toll. They’d lost almost a third of their number. They were glad of another able body to help around the place, and, feeling nothing but gratitude towards my saviours, I made myself as useful as possible. Of course, during those first days I sent the usual tesseract to the High Council requesting they locate and return my TARDIS to me. The response was immediate but abrupt: ‘Pending.’ So there I was stuck there on Arketoria with all these colonists. To take my mind off the wait I truly threw myself into my work. Firstly I sorted out their irrigation system and then constructed a more sensitive earth tremor detector to give them all ample warming to get into the shelters before quakes struck.

Then I opened a cake shop. My Battenburgs, Black Forest Gateaux and cheesecakes – made from the mini food machine I carried – took the Arketorians’ minds off their sorry plight, however briefly.

I took a wife and several lovers, of all sexes, and they were glad to give themselves to me, however sadistic my tendencies. I did not indulge myself fully in my fantasies of torture (which would come to fruition in my next incarnation) but I did slap a few of them about a bit. They seemed to enjoy it though.

One day the food machine ran out of raw material and that was a dark day for Destiny. No more cakes! Luckily, I had a fine singing voice and put on shows for the colonists singing hits from Olde Earth like We Built This City On Rock And Roll, Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, Eat Y’Self Fitter and Atmosphere (the Russ Abbott one, not the other one).

An even darker day dawned when a brace of Sontaran battle cruisers landed on the planet. We had no way of standing up to their might, so we were fucked. Fortunately, the Sontaran Commander deemed Arketoria to be of no strategic military importance, so after stomping around in the dust and shouting a bit, the potato headed clone cunts fucked off.

Worse was to come – for the Arketorians, that is. Yes, you guessed it – Daleks! Those bastards aren’t fussed about military strategy, they just want to destroy anything and everything humanoid. I woke up one morning to the sound of shrieks, screams, sizzling energy bolts and metallic cries of ‘EXTERMINATE!’ and I knew instantly that Destiny was doomed – and so was I. I must admit I sobbed and whimpered and cowered on the floor of my shack, meekly waiting for the end. Then, to my intense amazement, a familiar wheezing, groaning sound reached my disbelieving ears and my TARDIS materialised before my eyes, in the form of a giant banana with a zip down the side, and the words ‘Here you are you Shobogan tosser’ emblazoned on the banana skin in glowing neon pink tubing.

Did I hesitate, did I pause, did I think, ‘hang on, better see if I can save any of my Arketorian friends’? Did I bollocks. I unzipped that giant banana and was inside in a flash. My hearts sang with joy to see my old familiar coral-blue console room and I dematerialised the fuck out of Arketoria and deleted the banana configuration from my Chameleon Circuit, restoring the outer plasmic shell of my TARDIS to its default setting (a small Napoleonic fort).

As for the Arketorians, well, I can only conclude that they were all exterminated, each and every one. Unless, of course, that other Doctor in his ridiculous outmoded Type 40 turned up and saved them. I never checked. I could now I suppose, using my Time-Space Visualiser...

...hang on...

...no, he didn’t. They all died.

Ah well.

And so, having examined this segment of my personal past, I can conclude the following:

1. My current feelings towards this segment of my personal past are (or were) positive, as I spent the time helping people, making cakes, singing songs, having great sex and fixing irrigation systems.

2. The actuality of the segment, as examined through my Time-Space Visualiser, is that it was a stressful, arduous period of my life where I was trapped in a cheerless shithole at the mercy of Sontarans, Daleks and the weather, just twiddling my thumbs waiting for my TARDIS to turn up. The cakes, songs and sex were brief distractions, and if I am honest the sex wasn’t that great with those poor stringy undernourished Arketorians.

3. There is therefore clear dissonance between my memories of the segment and the actuality; therefore, ‘nostalgia’ has distorted my memories of this segment of my personal past.

4. Examining the material difference between this segment of my personal past and my current node state, it is plainly obvious that I am miles better off ‘now’ than I was ‘then.’

Therefore, to sum up: yes, the past (or this particular segment of my own personal timeline existing at a reverse tangent to my present temporal juncture as a hyperplexoid polychronic interface within the time vortex yielding a magnifactoid switchback hysteresis which subtends to a gravitic accelerator linked to my Artron energy signature) was a bit shit.
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Mon 2 Sep 2013, 22:39, 19 replies)

Fuck's sake, are you not fed up of being this boring?

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Mon 2 Sep 2013, 22:43, closed)

Could you supply an abstract for this treatise?

( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Mon 2 Sep 2013, 23:22, closed)

Embarrassingly tl;dr means too long;did read.

After all, he made the effort to write it, so I made the effort to read it.
(Docofair, Mon 2 Sep 2013, 23:32, closed)

And that, right there, is how Baz Luhrman makes his money.

( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Mon 2 Sep 2013, 23:57, closed)

Fuck off, cunt.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 0:04, closed)

Wait.
Are you lot complaining because there's NOT a horribly laboured pun at the end?

"There's no pleasing some people." -Jesus
(MrTrick, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 1:27, closed)

I totes read this.

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 8:38, closed)

Does anyone ever read these?
Am I missing out on anything by never reading them?
( tangledupinblue hairy badge with moving eyes, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 8:49, closed)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no, and no.
Although I think that may be the point.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 10:22, closed)

I have. I find them dryly amusing.
(cs1ca, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 20:46, closed)

I saw this was a massive long post full of shit
and started scrolling through it to see who wrote it

"I bet it's Dr Skagra" I thought to myself
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 9:32, closed)

Exactly this.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 13:05, closed)

You fucking wanker.

( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 9:52, closed)

FUCK FUCKING WORDS

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 12:03, closed)

You could probably write a PERL script to churn these out.
If you haven't already, I mean.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 12:12, closed)

my word, is it 2009 again?

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 18:41, closed)

Imagine what you could have achieved if you had dedicated all this effort to something useful.
Well ... probably fuck all of any significance given that you're clearly as sharp as lard. But you could probably have dug a nice big hole.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 19:20, closed)