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Elysian Visions Blog Spot | LINKS: (More wisdom and / or madness in no particular order.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ranting and raving, wisdom and whimsy, from the mind of a madman,
...with links.
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About last night . . . I'm not sure what it was but I was in a foul mood. Maybe it was all the stupid things happening in the world today. Maybe it was the seemingly endless parade of teenagers coming and going through my house. (I don't know who all these people are anymore, I've given up asking.) Maybe it was work, or the weather, or maybe the stars weren't lined up quite right with Mars receding while Jupiter was in foul mood too. (Astrology is for numbskulls, sorry kids, but there it is.) Anyway, whatever the cause, the universe had become a dark, pointless place, and I was in no mood for any of it. When this happens the best thing for me is to be left alone to watch some science channel, or history channel, some Tech TV or the old stand by, Star Trek. Last night it was, in fact, the old stand by Star Trek: The Next Generation. There happened to be an episode coming on and two seconds into it I declared "Ah, Face of the Enemy, this is a good one." Needless to say the room cleared out in a hurry. Anything I really like to watch is like kryptonite to the teenagers and everyone else in my house. (Argh! This again, not the science channel, not the history channel, you are so boring, even I have seen this episode before, my synapses are firing, I'm like . . . learning stuff, it hurts, turn it off, turn it off, isn't cops on somewhere? Bah! Philistines! Their post puberty, chemically unbalanced, brains can't appreciate the glory that is Star Trek.) Where was I? Oh right "Face of the Enemy" good stuff! So I'm sitting there and right after the titles, which I don't mind very much, the commercials start. . . . Now I don't know why this is but the older I get, the more I hate goddamn commercials. Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age but they seem to be getting more banal as time goes by. It's not bad enough that they're insulting my intelligence, but now the dog is starting to complain that this noise is really beneath him. What's worse I agree with him, (That's ok boy, you can go outside and bark at the teenagers for me, good dog.) So by the end of the first commercial break I'm just about digging my fingers into the chair like I'm having a root canal with no anesthetic and . . . we're back. The episode, for those who don't know, is about Troi getting kidnapped by the Romulans, being surgically altered to look like a Romulan, and being forced against her will to pose as Major Rakal of the Tal Shiar. Like I said, good stuff. I'm just about to start feeling better when I find myself in another set of commercials and man let me tell you it's getting worse. I don't see why I have to listen to people talk about how to get their toilets minty fresh, or what fast food garbage the cool folks are currently throwing at each other, or any of that stuff. Then like the fire of the Gods on Mount Olympus through the haze, I see the answer. I've got most seasons of ST:TNG on DVD! I don't have to take this anymore! I look around cautiously, no one is around to stop me. Suddenly, right in the middle of some idiot woman talking about the perils of having the wrong pad for her period, I bolt out of my chair and race over to DVD's! Like Prometheus, I will steal the fire of the gods and deliver it to man. I will deliver my tired, abused psyche from the endless dark of commercial TV. I will dwell in the warmth of . . . well the analogy falls apart at this point, but you get the idea. I deftly juggle the three remotes it takes to make everything just the way I want it, load up a few of those precious, latinum looking disks, and I'm good to go. Now for anyone who hasn't tried this, let me just say this is the hot juice. Television, not only with no commercials, but with control over the very scenes you want to watch. For the next few hours I really go at it. I'm spinning DVD's on the tips of my fingers as I role through some of my favorite episodes. I reach a point towards the middle where I stop watching full episodes, I mean I've seen them all let's face it, cut the chase. I spent most of the night in season three, a few clips from "The Survivors" including the end, when Kevin Uxbridge confesses "You don't understand the scope of my crime, I didn't just kill one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all, all the Husnock, everywhere." Yeah, ummm hummm, good stuff! Then I jump over to "Who Watches the Watchers", another favorite. I finished up with one of the best episodes ever "Sarek". This one I watched every minute of. The entire scene where Picard and Sarek are locked in a mind meld, and Picard is sitting in his quarters ranting at himself and Beverly is cathartic for me. I watch it and I really begin to feel better. The most moving part for me however is the very end. When Sarek takes his leave and explains that he and Picard will always keep the best part of each other inside. Picard says that he thinks he has the better part of that bargain. Then, right before Sarek and his party beam down; Sarek reaches out and takes his wifes hand, much to her surprise and quite delight. Close on Picard, who is suddenly a lot less certain he got the better part of the bargain. Whew, that's good stuff let me tell you. After that, I went for a brisk walk in the cool night air (too much Sicilian pizza lately!) and I slept the sleep of the just. Anywho that's how I spent last night.
September 29, 2003 Have a seat, enjoy
the . . . view? You
see our society has become so litigious that shop owners and landlords have become
terrified of lawsuits. Around here, when some kid falls while riding his (or her)
bike or skateboard, it's not the kids fault, it's not the parents' fault, it's
not even gravity's fault, it the fault of the owner of the property where he happened
to fall.
September 26, 2003 ESA's SMART-1 heads
for the Moon! September
26, 2003 A
New Addition!
September
22, 2003
September 19, 2003 PIRATES!!!
September 17, 2003 Fun with
fusion: Hmmm . . . I
like the sound of that. September 16, 2003 MEANWHILE
. . . IN JAPAN! Okay,
for those who don't already know this, Gina and I just finished shooting an indy,
fan film, called Revelations.
Well, it seems that the people who are producing it are looking to also release
a Manga style comic book version of the movie, and (you'll-never-guess-what!)
they just sent us some samples of the artist's work. What can I say about this?
I mean I always expected to end up in comic books somewhere, sometime, somehow. September 12, 2003 About this RIAA thing. I
don't want to repeat what a lot of other people are saying. Sepember
2, 2003 September 2, 2003 Asteroid may strike Earth in 2014 with the force of 20 million Hiroshima Bombs!!!!! But "very probably not" say scientists. http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/6674108.htm What the hell kind of story
is this anyway? Is it any surprise no one takes the news seriously anymore? This
kind of sensationalistic nonsense really has gone too far in my opinion. To add
to this it seems that after more than thirty years of treating the general public
with nothing but contempt, media outlets now have the audacity to be surprised
when no one pays any attention to them. August
27, 2003
"The next Mars opposition will be in August
2003, (Quote from this
Nasa JPL news release) You want to know what we're doing about it? We're sending probes. Probes! Damn it! Sure, we should be gearing up to launch a fully manned round trip voyage from our complete international lunar base, but, of course, we don't have a lunar base, do we? No; we're too busy lying to, cheating, brutalizing and bombing the hell out of each other with depleted uranium shells down here on good old Earth. You may ask, "why?" Well, I'll tell you why: because we're a petty, short-sighted, warlike species that will exploit any minor difference of appearance, gender, behavior, belief or opinion to pick a fight. We love to fight; it's what we're best at. There's nothing we love so much as the glorious rush of battle while we're drunk on the sweet wine of righteous indignation over past offenses (real or imagined) inflicted on (insert your group, sect, race, gender, or whatever, here) by (insert your favorite faceless villain or evil group here). Never mind the underlying fact that we are all one species, one race, one common family of humanity. I've gone from wondering if our race is going to make it in the long term to questioning whether or not we deserve to make it at all. It's a complete disgrace, in my eyes, from our religious fundamentalism to our tribal race wars. It's not that we don't know better, because we do. We've been told many times, by many sources, what the right things are, what the good is, and what the world ought to be. We all, at some point or another, have seen it for ourselves, or felt it in our hearts and minds. Sadly, the other thing we love to do is ignore all that. We love to disregard great ideas, meaningful insights, or beautiful truths. After all, the integration of these ideas would take thought, effort, honest introspection, and maybe even... change, on our part. Who wants to be bothered with all that? All we need is an excuse, and when it comes to protecting our feeble, mostly-accepted-by-default view of reality, any excuse will do. We don't like the person who said it, or we don't agree with everything else they've ever said or done, or they were too much this, or too little that, or they didn't live up to the ideals that they themselves set forth - therefore nothing they said can ever be meaningful, insightful, beautiful or true. Besides; who has time for all of this? We're busy gassing up our sports utility vehicles, watching mindless sitcoms or provincial sporting events, and worrying about what the latest media-pumped villain-of-the-week is up to. The saddest part of all of this is the wasted potential; we could be so much better than this, we should be doing so much more. Meanwhile, the universe moves on, and opportunities which come around once every 100,000 years or so pass us right by. Frank Hernandez, 2002/11.With thanks to Mr.Peter Gilman for his editing services. |
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| Started: 08/27/2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
