The world in 1415

I was already up in the wee hours of the morning when the news came out of the Vatican that Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, announced that he will be resigning the papacy at the end of this month.

My first thought was "is this a joke?", but that notion lasted the better part of 8 seconds. When it finally sank in that His Holiness would, indeed, be exiting the post he has held since succeeding John Paul II in 2005, my mind went reeling. And it hasn't slowed any throughout this day.

I am not Catholic, but I did know that it had been a long... like, a waaaay long time, since a sitting pope had left the Holy See by choice. It turns out that the last time was Pope Gregory XII. That was in 1415.

Nearly six hundred years ago.

Ummmm... "wow"?

Consider the world that was in 1415...

There had actually been two popes: a result of the "Papal Schism". One pope held court in Rome and another in Avignon, France. Gregory XII's resignation as Bishop of Rome was meant to be a "healing gesture". It also signaled an end to much of the papacy's political power.

The Protestant Reformation was one hundred years in the future. It would have to await the birth of Martin Luther in 1483. However in that very year of 1415, Jan Hus had been burned at the stake for having "heretical" beliefs in defiance of papal supremacy. His teachings would soon give rise to the Moravian Church.

The Renaissance was beginning in the city of Florence.

Christopher Columbus was 36 years from being born.

The Hundred Years' War raged between England and France.

Joan of Arc was five years old.

The Roman Empire still existed, albeit a tiny fragment of its former glory.

The Ottoman Turks had begun to concern the powers of Europe. The Ottomans' conquest of Constantinople would come 38 years later. The Ottoman Empire would endure until 1922 following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I.

China, Siberia and eastern Europe were still fresh from the dominion of the Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan. It would be another sixty years before the Rus' of Muscovy would finally win their freedom from the Mongol and Tartar hordes.

The Moorish kingdoms controlled north Africa and much of Spain.

Much of Europe was still recovering from the Black Death.

The Aztecs were at the height of their power in what is today Mexico. The Mayan culture still flourished in the Yucatan Peninsula. The Inca civilization dominated South America.

The average life expectancy throughout the known world was 40 to 45.

Like I said: "wow".

And then when one ponders the world then, and all of the history which has transpired between then and now...

Pay close attention, dear readers. Today's announcement is in many ways the most historic event from the religious realm in half a millennium. A voluntary abdication/resignation from the papacy has happened before, but nowhere close to any time in the annals of the chronicled modern era.

I was blogging a lot about the passing of Pope John Paul II in 2005 and the election of his successor. I thought it would be a long time before I'd have to wait to see the white smoke again. But now, it might well happen before the arrival of spring.

Interesting times, folks :-)

Read More

Saw WARM BODIES yesterday...

I can't decide if Warm Bodies is a zombie movie with romance and comedy or if it's a romantic comedy with zombies. Either way, I enjoyed it.

(Yeah I'm making two posts in a row about zombies. I'll refrain from overkill by stating here that we also saw the trailer for World War Z and it looked much better than that ad that ran during the Super Bowl"big game".)

Warm Bodies is something I haven't been familiar with before: a zombie movie from the zombie's point of view. R (played by Nicholas Hoult) is a recently undead who wanders around the ruined shell of an airport. The shambling corpses are split into two varieties: the "regular" zombies who continue to shuffle along in mimicry of the patterns of their former lives. And then there are "bonies": those zombies whose decomposition has brought them too far gone to be helped. And all the while we're getting a running commentary of monologue from R courtesy of voice-over. Sorta like the flip-side of the Zombieland coin.

R's "life" is in the shadow of an armed enclave of normal humans (led and controlled with an iron hand by John Malkovich) which sends scouting parties out on a regular basis to find food, medicine and ammo. Unfortunately one one such mission a party is attacked and R encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), the bossman's daughter.

What ensues is like a classic age-old tale of star-crossed lovers. Except she's young and smart and beautiful and he's... dead.

I know. It sounds like twelve degrees of total hokey. And to be honest I wasn't too crazy about Warm Bodies when I heard about its premise. But having seen it, I cannot but confess that it was a cute little movie and quite worth spending an afternoon watching (especially with a girlfriend). In a genre that has become stretched thin and tired and oh so terribly anemic, Warm Bodies is a refreshing breeze that succeeds admirably.

And the zombie genre could learn something from it, too!

Read More

THE WALKING DEAD returns with "The Suicide King"

It's currently taking me about 20 hours to watch a new episode of AMC's The Walking Dead after it premieres on cable. That's out of voluntary choice however, because I'm a good boyfriend. See, m'lady Kristen is a huge fan of this show too... but since we're over an hour away from each other and she doesn't get regular cable (note to self: get Roku as soon as possible) we just wait 'til our schedules can jibe the next day, then we sync my DVR and her Internet streaming and voila: we get to see one of our favorite shows together after all!

But I gotta tell y'all: with it being more than two months since the crazy events of "Made to Suffer", those 20 hours between last night and early this evening were torture to wait through...

"The Suicide King" picked up right where "Made to Suffer" ended: with brothers Daryl and Merle together at last. Unfortunately they're in the middle of Thunderdome: Woodbury Edition (did anyone else feel like chanting "Two men enter, one man leaves!"?) and The Governor insists upon a show despite Andrea's protests. What followed was one of the best firefights we've seen yet as Rick and crew came to the rescue.

But action ain't the biggest reason why so many of us are hooked on The Walking Dead. This is a well-written, well-plotted drama about very human characters, their relationships and their conflicts with each other.

And right now the two biggest conflicts to watch are The Governor and Rick. As much in conflict within themselves as they are with the world around them. And since we just know that they and their respective factions are going to eventually meet face-to-face...

Two thoughts about this episode. First, David Morrissey has now firmly established his portrayal of The Governor as the most menacing, diabolical and certainly manipulative bad guy on television today. The "benign dictator" schtick is losing its benign and if anybody in Woodbury cares, they fast forgot about it. Especially after that little speech that Andrea gave. Who doesn't think that she was doing exactly what The Governor wanted her to do?

But that stuff was small potatoes compared to watching Rick Grimes' continuing descent into madness.

If Andrew Lincoln gets nominated for an Emmy, that scene at the end of "The Suicide King" is what will be aired at the ceremony: I'd wager money on it. Bless his heart, the man is trying hard to keep the group together, to maintain some hold on his purpose, on his mind, on his soul. We've seen lately how that's been tentative at best and then when hit with the matter of Tyrese and his group...

Good God. The man has gone cuckoo for Cuckoo Puffs full-tilt wacko. Remember that scene in John Carpenter's The Thing where Wilford Brimley went nuts and began shooting and chopping up the place with the fire axe? Well if Hershel, Glenn and Tyrese don't get Rick sedated and restrained Lord only knows what he'll do to himself.

(At least now it makes sense why a certain cast member's name is still in the opening credits...)

Chad Coleman's Tyrese is fast becoming one of my favorite characters on this show ever: there's a quiet and thoughtful determination behind that brute strength he carries, and that's something the group is gonna need. It was also fun to see his former football colleague Hines Ward as a walker (if you missed him, he gets a fairly good closeup before getting thrashed bad right after the group is through the fence fleeing Woodbury).

Not the best episode we've seen this season (it's gonna be really hard to top "Killer Within") but still an altogether solid episode to return from a mid-season hiatus from, while changing up the board for what will doubtless be harsher stuff to come.

Read More

"Winter is coming"... and this iOS app will help guide your way!

Last spring I added a new vice to my list of stuff worth spending valuable time on. I haven't spoken about it on this blog yet but those who know me best will tell you that I have become a huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire (AKA Game of Thrones), the fantasy novel series by George R.R. Martin. Kristen gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for my birthday last year and I used it to buy A Game of Thrones. When June rolled around I wound up taking A Feast for Crows along on our trip to Oregon. And just before Christmas I finished the most recent book, A Dance with Dragons.

I am digging the heck out of this series! My three absolutely favorite characters are Jon Snow, Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister. Especially Tyrion: it's impossible to get enough of that guy! Jon and his direwolf Ghost - with the Wall behind them - are the wallpaper on my desktop and iPad. And if I ever have a daughter someday I hope she's even half as spunky as Arya is.

And all of this was before I had even watched HBO's Game of Thrones, the acclaimed television series based on the books. I just finished the Blu-ray set of Season 1 and am looking forward to getting Season 2 when it comes out. Maybe there'll be a way I can sneak some premium cable by the time Season 3 begins late next month. I can see now why Peter Dinklage earned that Emmy: his portrayal of Tyrion is the most electrifying character on television lately.

"Stick them with the pointy end!"

While we're waiting for the next volume, The Winds of Winter, to get published one of these daysyears, if you're also a fanatic for all things Westeros and have an iPad or other Apple gadget then you should check out A World of Ice and Fire app for iOS devices. It's not as thorough as A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki and it isn't as definitive as it could (and let's hope eventually will) be, but as a basic guide for the Game of Thrones it comes pretty handy. The app is loaded with character biographies, genealogical info (so you can keep track of which is Robert Baratheon and Robert Arryn, who I'd love to see thrown through the Moon Door someday), maps of the various regions, some really nice artwork of many of the characters and locations... all things considered good enough to recommend for downloading from the App Store. It's not "perfect" but it still ample merit for some positive mentioning. There is even an option that will keep "spoilers" hidden until you've completed reading any book in the series. It's a free app but some features you'll have to pay for. Even so, it can be pretty useful while following the machinations, manipulations and myriads of characters fighting to control the Iron Throne!

Read More

Wars have consequences. Don't we know that?

My great-uncle Rob was a G.I. who served in the Pacific during World War II. But unless you were family you likely would have never known that. It was something that, like many others who served during that conflict, he never liked to talk about.

Mom told me when I was a child that Uncle Rob had to kill an enemy soldier. I didn't know until years later that it was during the American invasion of Okinawa. Uncle Rob dived into a foxhole for cover. At almost the same moment a Japanese soldier jumped inside the same foxhole.

The Japanese man said something that Uncle Rob could not understand. My great-uncle killed him without thinking. He beheaded the Japanese soldier with the bayonet of his rifle.

Uncle Rob was one of the kindest, gentlest men that you could ever meet in this world. But from a young age I sensed that he was a very haunted man. "Post-traumatic stress disorder" wasn't medical terminology until the tail end of the Vietnam War, but by then Uncle Rob had lived with it for thirty years. Until his passing in 1993 his experiences in the war would continue to linger on the edge of his memory. I once saw him go pale in the face as an Army helicopter out of Fort Bragg flew overhead.

Like I said, my great-uncle was a good man. So were the millions of other young men who went off to Europe and the Pacific islands to stand against their country's enemies in World War II. Another member of my family was already in the Army stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. He survived the war... barely. A friend of my family who died recently was one of General Patton's staff officers. I had no idea that in my friend's house, which I'd been inside a few times, there was some of Hermann Goering's finest dinnerware. Turns out that a lot of the Third Reich elites' personal items made their way into farmhouses across America, but I digress...

War is terrible. Perhaps the most terrible thing. It is an unfortunate result of this fallen, broken world that war happens. That war is, sometimes, necessary and unavoidable. But I've never understood why war could possibly be a thing to be glorified, or honored. To respect and honor the sacrifices made by those who served in war, absolutely. But war itself?

I posit that our perspective on war is a far different matter than how our grandfathers and their brothers saw it. None of them regarded themselves as "heroes" because they wore a uniform or went abroad or even because they fought in combat. They knew they had a job to do, they did it and they came back to be husbands and fathers and productive members of the community. That was enough for them. Today we have an inclination to deem anybody and everybody who wears a uniform as "heroic". World War II was a conflict where we knew who the bad guys were and we knew that we had to defeat them and we knew why they had to be defeated.

But I can't for the life of me understand how any war that America has engaged in during my lifetime has had either a definitive enemy or a definitive objective. Sometimes both.

For more than ten years we have had our forces fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. For almost two years Osama bin Laden has been sleeping with the fishes, and Al-Quaeda has been quashed more or less, yet we try to conquer a land that not Alexander or the Soviets could overcome. The Iraq War turned into a costly experiment in "nation-building" (as many of us knew it would).

America's running tab the past decade and more is now a few trillion dollars and thousands of American lives lost, when the matter of bin Laden could have been resolved easily within a matter of months after 9/11. As for Iraq well, I've written before how that country needs a "strongman" figure along the lines of Tito to hold it together and how the United States has become that strongman in the absence of Saddam, but again I digress...

I was led to write something after watching what has transpired in the past few days regarding what former Representative Ron Paul said via Twitter about the shooting death of Chris Kyle, the retired Navy SEAL considered to be the most lethal sniper in American military history...

As a longtime supporter of Ron Paul, I will admit that the former congressman exercised the wrong tact. Almost certainly an ill sense of timing. However, I do believe that I can understand what he is trying to state in 140 characters or less. Paul is - apparently - noting that war has consequences, that those who fight in war must live with those consequences... and there may even be a snide remark in there about how our system has failed many of those who come back from war.

Maybe it's just me, but war seems a horrific enough thing by nature that there should be no immediate desire to write bestselling books about fighting in one. An armed forces uniform does not a hero make. Neither should tactical operations readily produce celebrities (Alvin York being one of the few exceptions).

Anyway, Ron Paul released the following on his Facebook page later on Monday...

Paul acknowledged - and there is no reason why any person should not - that Kyle's death was sad, tragic and unnecessary. But Paul also stated that...

Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies.

Now, is there anything at all wrong with this, which Ron Paul has said? Because I've read it over dozens of times and I'm not seeing anything un-American, unpatriotic or insensitive toward the memory of Chris Kyle. What I am seeing however is an uncomfortable truth: that war comes at a cost. War without meaning, far more so.

I see no reason why the former congressman should be reviled for saying what he did. Instead I have read a lot of anger and even hatred vented toward the man because... well, he strongly suggested that wars involving America can be - gasp - wrong on moral and legal grounds.

But we aren't supposed to dwell upon those trivialities, according to some. Instead we are to cheer on the war, cheer on the "heroes", forgetting that too many are coming home with wounds whether visible or not.

When a young man or woman enlists in the United States armed forces, he or she is making a sacrifice of a few years of their lives. Years that could otherwise be spent in college, falling in love and starting families, buying houses, earning money. Some even choose to spend their entire lives in such sacrifice toward serving their country.

Again, perhaps it's just me, but it seems that if any person is going to lend his life and precious time to his country and its government, that that person more than deserves to trust that his time... and perhaps even his very life... will be used wisely, be given the utmost and sincerest respect, and expended only when all other options have failed.

Those who fought in World War II paid for that understanding in grief and blood and were humbled by it. As well we should.

Read More

Fred Astaire, dancing, in full makeup as Alfred E. Neuman...

The temptation yesterday was to post this then. But it's something so offbeat and unique that I felt the original article at Ain't It Cool News deserved 24 hours to stand on its own. But I really could not possibly be more giddy about sharing this...

In 1959, dancing legend Fred Astaire had a televised special called... well, Another Evening With Fred Astaire. And during it he did a routine with Barrie Chase.

And for whatever reason, Astaire chose to perform as Alfred E. Neuman. Yup, the gap-toothed ever-grinning mascot of MAD Magazine.

Astaire went all-out. The costume was spot-on Neuman. And for good measure he brought aboard makeup and prosthetics genius John Chambers (who went on to create the ape makeup and appliances for Planet of the Apes a few years later) to bring Neuman to life.

How did it turn out? Here's Fred Astaire as Alfred E. Neuman...

"What, me worry?"

This was 1959. MAD Magazine hadn't been in existence for very long (and even less in its modern satirical format). It's fascinating to me that in that brief a time, Alfred E. Neuman had become a classic enough character for Astaire to pay homage(?) to.

But wait, there's more! Here's the clip from Another Evening With Fred Astaire of "Alfred" dancing with Barrie Chase!

My girlfriend is into ballroom dancing bigtime and she thinks Astaire and Chase gave a great performance. I'm not as good a dancer as she is but I have to concur. If for no other reason than because MAD influenced me so much while growing up.

Tip o' the hat to Eric Vespe - AKA "Quint" - of Ain't It Cool News for this amazing find!

Read More

Restaurant gives parents $4 discount for "WELL BEHAVED KIDS"

You can't have any doubt: those three kids are going to turn out great! They're gonna be really thankful someday that they have two awesome parents like the Kings.

Laura King and her husband took their three children - ages two, three and eight - out for dinner at a swanky Italian restaurant in Poulsbo, Washington. And when they got the ticket at the end of the meal... it listed a four-dollar discount for "WELL BEHAVED KIDS"!

From the MailOnline story...

A Washington couple were left stunned after their server handed them the bill for their family's dinner - and they saw they had been given a $4 discount for their 'Well Behaved Kids'.

Laura King and her husband took their three children, aged two, three and eight, to an Italian restaurant in Poulsbo to enjoy an early-evening meal last Friday.

As they tucked into their feast of pizza, pasta and mushroom ragu, the family discussed planets, racecars, zebra jokes, and commented on the warm decor of the restaurant, Mrs King said.

'They were just being their normal selves,' she told Today.com of her children. 'Our server came to our table and just really thanked us for having exceptionally behaved children.'

After the server brought them a bowl of ice cream to share, they received the tab - and saw it had been discounted by $4 for 'Well Behaved Kids'.

There's plenty more at the link above, including photos of what can only be described as a beautiful little family. And Laura King has posted much more about her family's life when it comes to meals together on her personal blog. Well worth reading for anyone with children (or anyone considering having them :-)

Read More

Missing no more: King Richard III found at last!

They paved Plantagenet and put up a parking lot.

Richard III of England, in better days

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

-- Richard III
Act I, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare

The realms of history and archaeology are run amok with chatter this day with the news that the remains of King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet monarchs, have been positively identified. The bones were discovered last year beneath, of all places, a parking lot in Leicester.

(Does this renew hope that Jimmy Hoffa will yet be found, or what?)

Richard III ruled England from 1483 to 1485... and what wild years they were! It was the War of the Roses between the houses of York and Lancaster. And then that upstart Henry Tudor crashed the party. Richard III and his army fought the Tudor boys at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. It did not go well: Henry Tudor won the day (before going on to become King Henry VII) and Richard III was killed in manner most foul!

So history tells us that afterward some Franciscan monks took poor Richard's body to their church in Leicester and buried him there. And then decades later in 1538 that bastitch Henry VIII was hellbent on destroying many churches and monasteries throughout his lands. The site of the church - and Richard III's resting place - wound up neglected and ultimately forgotten. It might have remained so, were it not for a group of researchers from the University of Leicester who last year, working through "map regression" of recent geography back through to the Middle Ages, rediscovered the site. In the process they came across this skeleton...

Regardless of the nasty propaganda that the Tudors disseminated about him (and which Shakespeare unwittingly helped to perpetuate) it can't be denied: Richard III had a severe case of scoliosis.

Anyhoo, it's really him! The wounds found on the skull correspond with reports of those Richard received at Bosworth Field. And analysis of mitochondrial DNA from the bones and those of Michael Ibsen - a descendant of Richard's sister, Anne of York - have confirmed it.

And where has Richard III been for many of the past 528 years? Buried beneath a modern parking lot in Leicester.

It's been announced that Richard III will be re-buried - this time with a coffin and proper honors - at Leicester Cathedral. But I'm certainly not alone in the desire that some day Richard III will be given the resting place due him in Westminster Abbey.

Wheverever it is he winds up now, it's awesome news that Richard III has been found at last. The king is dead. Long live the king!

Read More

February 3rd, 1943: The Four Chaplains

It was cold as it gets, that early February morning on the North Atlantic. The USAT Dorchester was en route to Greenland, carrying nearly nine hundred U.S. soldiers on their way to the European theater. The Dorchester was part of a convoy of Navy and Coast Guard vessels: necessity for the grim threat of the German U-boats.

The Dorchester was struck by torpedo just before 1 in the morning. The ship began to take on water fast, and a frantic chaos ensued in the desperation to escape.

Among those aboard were four United States Army chaplains. George L. Fox was a Methodist minister. Alexander D. Goode was a Jewish rabbi. Carl V. Poling had served as a Baptist and Church of Christ minister before being ordained in the Reformed Church of America. John P. Washington was a Roman Catholic priest.

As the Dorchester descended into the frigid waters, the four chaplains - Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington - did what they could to evacuate the men in a calm and orderly fashion. Unfortunately there were not enough life jackets immediately available.

The four chaplains each gave up his own life jacket. The four continued to help soldiers and sailors into the lifeboats. Of the 903 personnel aboard the Dorchester, 230 were rescued.

Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington remained aboard the ship.

The last that anyone saw of the Four Chaplains, they had joined arms with each other. Those in the lifeboats heard the singing of hymns and joyous praise from the four men. In the final moments of the Dorchester those who made it off the doomed ship reported hearing prayers - in English and in Hebrew - from where the Four Chaplains stood.

Moments later, the Dorchester disappeared below the waves. The Four Chaplains went down with her.

The Four Chaplains, depicted in a stained-glass window of Memorial Chapel, United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

And that was seventy years ago today: February 3rd, 1943.

In 1988, this day was recognized by Congress as Four Chaplains Day. The bravery, honor, and filial love across the bounds of mere "religion" that Fox, Goode, Poling, and Washington demonstrated on the decks of the Dorchester would be remembered always. As well it should.

You can read more about the Four Chaplains, their lives and their story at The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation website.

Read More

Damnable 100th Anniversary to the federal income tax!

Today officially marks one century of extortion at the point of a gun by the Internal Revenue Service!

It was on this day, February 3rd 1913, that the 16th Amendment was allegedly ratified (there exists substantial evidence that the amendment was not passed per due process by enough states, that and then-Secretary of State Philander Knox's declaration that the amendment was "in effect").

The 16th reads...

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

We do not need the income tax and never have. This country did fine for more than a century with tariffs. And it would do just as fine now... or better.

It is far past time that the American citizens call the income tax for what it is: a shackle holding us down. Just think about the countless billions of man-hours of lost productivity during the past hundred years, wasted on simply adhering to the increasingly byzantine tax code. Think about how much better this country could have been had We The People had more of our own money to spend as we saw fit. Think about the outrageous gall that the government has, that it has believed (and had upheld within its own courts) for so long that it can take our hard-earned money from us at the point of a gun (figuratively and literally).

What has come to bother me most about the income tax? That it has created a mentality of class warfare in America, when there had been none before. Not really, at least not enough to significantly matter. But don't raise your hopes on politicians seeing that. If anything too many of them love the income tax for that very reason. It keeps the constituents divided, confused, angry at each other... and easier to play on emotion and exploit for votes.

The United States will not see true prosperity until the income tax is not just revoked, but thoroughly eradicated. Shredded. Burned. The ashes dumped in the desert and the ground sown with salt. And a pox upon the houses of those who have imposed it upon us!

Someday, in the not-too-distant future, mayhap my children will read the words I write this afternoon, and ask me "Daddy, what was an 'income tax'?" If that happens, I will be able to die a happier man.

An America where our children will not know an income tax.

If it's not for us to see better days in our time, then it's damned well worth it to fight now so that they can see them tomorrow.

Read More

Obama gets DOOMed

I couldn't help myself. You might say the "id" within me was irresistible.

You know that photo the White House released of President Obama "skeet-shooting" at Camp David? Yeah: the one the White House also warned us peons against "manipulating" a'la Photoshop.

It was begging to be done though. Here is Barack Obama fighting off the legions of Hell...

"Gun-free zones" are no deterrence to Imps, Cacodemons and Former Human Sergeants.

And in place of Doom-guy's face I put Dianne Feinstein. Hey, she has to have her gun too, right?

Read More

Very late-night ponderance about the Bible

The Word of God is perhaps a sword, but never should be a weapon.

Read More

In memory of the crew of STS-107

The crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia,

who perished in re-entry from Mission STS-107

ten years ago today

February 1, 2003

Read More

U.S. soldier gets double-arm transplant (WOW!)

Whatever faults there might be with American healthcare, you have to admit: it still kicks ass like nobody else!

Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Brendan Marrocco (right) lost all four limbs to a roadside bomb attack while serving in Iraq in 2009. It's nothing short of miraculous that Marrocco is the most severely-injured American service member to have survived such an ordeal.

It's also nothing short of amazing that nine weeks ago Marrocco received a double-arm transplant at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. It will take a few more years of his nervous system getting acclimated - to say nothing of the physical therapy that'll be involved - but in the end Brendan Marrocco will have two fully-functioning arms and hands again.

From The Guardian article...

Sergeant Brendan Marrocco, 26, of Staten Island, New York, said he was anxious to return to an active life after the successful bilateral arm transplant surgery six weeks ago at the renowned Baltimore hospital.

"I feel like I'm getting a second chance to start over," he said at a news conference. "I'm just looking forward to everything I would have wanted to do over the last four years." Driving, swimming and hand cycling top his list, he added.

He lost his arms and legs in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq in 2009. "I hated having no arms," Marrocco said. "I was all right with having no legs."

Something that also astounds me: both arms were transplanted onto Marrocco at the same time. The surgery only took 13 hours to accomplish. That sounds like a very long time until one considers the complexity of this procedure. When I first heard about it, I thought it would have taken at least a full day to pull off.

Just over half a day to give a wounded soldier two new arms. A new lease on life.

Like I said: does American healthcare kick ass, or what?

(Tip o' the hat to Kristen Bradford for a terrific find! :-)

Read More

Dung beetles use Milky Way to move poop

That's odd. I've eaten lots of Milky Way bars at my girlfriend's house...

...and I didn't know the stuff was a laxative.

*rimshot* "Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!!"

Actually I speak of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is most visible in the Southern Hemisphere and which the humble dung beetle of sub-Saharan Africa uses for stellar navigation, scientist have recently discovered.

It's like this: dung beetles roll around balls of... ummm, "Number Two". They need to do it fast and in a straight line away from the source so that other natural predators of poo won't swipe it first. During the nighttime hours the dung beetles use the Moon to guide them. But on nights when there is no lunar light, something else is required.

So these researchers conducted a series of experiments and found that in the absence of the Moon, the Milky Way (the most concentrated visible part of it anyway, the brightest part being the galactic center in the direction of Sagittarius) suffices for the dung beetle's navigational needs

Pretty cool. So not only is the dung beetle the strongest animal on the planet in terms of weight ratios, it's also the first insect found to use the stars to guide their way.

Sorta "stinks to high heaven" in a perverse sort of way, huh?

Read More

Homeland Security sez: Fight mass shooters with scissors!

Shear-ly they can't be serious.

Just when you'd think that the Department of Homeland Security could not possibly prove it's the most useless U.S. government agency in the history of anything... they release this:

So if a carbine-wielding madman bursts into your office or school and starts shooting up the place, fend him off with a pair of scissors! Unless he also has a rock because, you know, rock beats scissors.

Taking this video to its logical extreme, the safest elementary school in America is whichever one gets to have this guy as its School Resource Officer...

No mention in the video about protecting yourself against a gunman with, y'know, a gun.

The New York Post has a great write-up about this latest waste of taxpayer money.

Read More

Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, has passed away

The sad news broke this morning that Ed Koch, mayor of New York City for twelve years and certainly one of the most colorful characters in American political history, died earlier today. He was 88.

Disagree with him on some things though one might, it must be agreed by all that Koch gave his gal-darned best for his city. Koch managed his town instead of trying to manage his town's people (yeah I'm looking at you Michael Bloomberg).

Thoughts and prayers going out to Hizzoner's family.

Read More

Mellow Mushroom goes the extra mile for U.S. soldier's family

There is a Mellow Mushroom that opened up not long ago in nearby Burlington. I've yet to eat at that one but now I'm feeling led to. For one thing the pizza is insanely delicious. For another, after reading this next story y'all will agree: this company rocks!

The tale begins with Army National Guard Major Shawn Fulker, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. At the moment Fulker is deployed thousands of miles from home in Afghanistan. His wife's birthday was coming up and in spite of the distance he wanted to do something nice for her. Josephine Fulker really loves the pizza at Mellow Mushroom, so Shawn e-mailed the company's corporate office and asked if one of their Jacksonville restaurants could deliver a pizza and a $50 gift card to his wife. Shawn let them know that he would gladly call the store and pay for it by credit card.

Good story so far, aye? But wait: it gets better...

Mellow Mushroom's headquarters forwarded the e-mail to the company's Fleming Island location, which went above and beyond the call of duty. First they made a special heart-shaped crust for the pizza.

Then the store manager and another employee drove out with it, stopped at a supermarket to buy balloons and a vase of flowers, and proceeded on to the Fulker home.

They delivered it all - including the $50 gift card - to Josephine.

And the store didn't charge Shawn Fulker a thing! From the story at ABC News...

John Valentino, the Mellow Mushroom franchisee who owns that location and others in Jacksonville, said his store was happy to have made the day special for the couple.

"Of course we weren't going to charge him for anything," Valentino told ABC. "Him being a serviceman and his wife being home. … Hopefully in her husband's absence we were able to help her have a great birthday while he's over in Afghanistan serving our country."

Josephine Fulker had just finished Skyping with her husband when the doorbell rang and she saw the two Mellow Mushroom employees at her door on Thursday.

"I don't know their names exactly, but they had a pizza and a big butterfly balloon and a vase of flowers with a gift card for $50 and they told me that it was from my husband. I said 'Oh my goodness.' I was surprised and excited and overwhelmed and all of that. It was so nice," she said.

It was especially nice because Shawn Fulker had already sent his wife flowers and candy earlier that day. Since he hadn't been able to check his email for a while, he had no idea that Mellow Mushroom had been working on his initial request.

The Facebook page for Mellow Mushroom at Fleming Island has gone bonkers with gratitude about their efforts for the Fulkers. Which was a very, very cool thing to have done.

And hey, Fulker and his unit also showed their thanks, all the way from Afghanistan!

It's stuff like this that renews my faith in humanity. Way to go Mellow Mushroom :-)

Read More

70 degrees Fahrenheit at quarter 'til 5 p.m.

This is in north-central North Carolina, mind ya, and ordinarily at this time in the midst of winter the temperature should be about 40 degrees colder.

I went to Greensboro yesterday evening. It was much the same, with people wearing shorts, t-shirts etc. at 8 at night. I wore my "Weird Al" Yankovic Alpocalypse Tour shirt and if I didn't know any better could have sworn it was late spring.

But I've already seen snow four times this winter so far, most recently this past weekend (the girlfriend and I found ourselves looking at about 2 inches of the white stuff falling at her house in Roanoke). There's another cold front about to hit us in the worst way (read as: severe storms, high winds and possible tornadoes) this evening and given the way the trends work out we're apt to have snow later next week.

Expect a bunch more posts soon. In the meantime I gotta go unplug the 'spensive stuff. All of y'all getting hit by this storm system (which The Weather Channel has decided to dub "Magnus") and all of you folks in the path of it, batten down and good luck!

Read More

Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)

The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.

To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than 500,000 to the Mall to protest abortion -the premeditated murder of unborn children - on the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Now, applying some logic here, you would think that a story regarding half a million people would dwarf that of an event which drew, at most, several hundred.

But I suppose when it comes to stories and their coverage from big media, some of them just don't fit the expected narrative...

Read More

Winter Storm Khan is giving us snow today

Dear management and staff of The Weather Channel:

You probably thought this was something "cute", didn't you?

Next year, just drop the whole "names for winter storms" thing, okay? "Gandalf" was pushing it already. But not like this...

"Khaaaaaaan!!"

Read More

Gun control lunacy: Feinstein would take YOUR weapon but keep hers, and the modern cost of saving a life

Senator Dianne Feinstein - a person who exemplifies the absolute worst that an elected official could possibly be - is trying to ram through another gun control bill on Capitol Hill. It would take away dang nearly every firearm that We The People have as articulated in the Second Amendment... EXCEPT for her own and those of other government officials.

So lemme get this straight: Feinstein, who owns a pistol or two herself, wants legislation that will prohibit the "little people" from having guns but also wants to keep her own.

I am trying to be a man of polite society so I will refrain from using the word that many will be tempted to use in describing Feinstein. I can at least say with no small degree of accuracy "rank hypocrisy".

And then from the D.C. area there is the story of a man who several days ago came across a pack of pit bulls trying to maul a little boy to death.

The man fired his handgun at the dogs, saving his young neighbor's life.

And for his valiant act of courage the man is now facing an "illegal weapon" charge because of Washington D.C.'s insane gun control laws. He faces a year in prison and $1000 in fines.

Let's get this straight: the D.C. prosecutors would rather this guy not have a gun at the cost of a dead eleven-year old. Am I getting that right?

If a jury convicts this dude, I will have lost most of the hope that's still there for America.

But not all hope, if more local sheriffs vow to refuse to comply with federal gun laws that would deprive citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Read the new piece by Chuck Baldwin at the link for the encouraging words from people across the fruited plain to those inside the Beltway.

And the words are: "Hell no."

Read More

Crazy new data storage: DNA and quartz crystals (for 300 million years)

Because I don't want to go to bed with two consecutive posts pertaining to Star Wars staring me in the face (no matter how good, or how nutty)...

A strand of DNA containing the digital data of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, a half-minute sound clip of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, a photo and a science paper was announced a few days ago in an article from the journal Nature. So you could pretty much take everything information-wise accumulated during the course of your entire life - photos, videos, music, writings, financial information, medical files, an entire Blu-ray collection of movies and TV shows, computer games and porno - and put it inside a test tube. The DNA used in the research took two weeks to extract data from, but the read times are supposed to get shorter as the tech develops.

And earlier this month a group of researchers in Japan announced they've turned quartz crystal into a storage medium that will last 300 million years. Currently it has the capacity of a standard CD, but it's thought that it can be expanded with more layers of crystal. It probably won't have the size-to-data ration of the DNA gimmick but in time it'll still hold a lot of your videos, finances, movies, porno TV shows and other stuff.

If the technology ever produces practical quantum computing and nano-scale laser diodes, there could be some wildly cool applications with this. Never mind that iPhone silliness: gimme a real Mother Box!

(Can't recall if I've ever used a Fourth World/New Gods reference on this blog before, but I have now :-)

Read More

And STAR WARS EPISODE VII will be directed by... J.J. Abrams!

Get ready for it peeps...

My head hurts just thinking about what a lightsaber battle is going to look like after Abrams gets finished with all his lens flare plug-ins.

The biggest news of this hour is that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars Episode VII. This will be his next project after the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness.

Hmmmm... Star Wars and Star Trek together at last. Sorta like those old commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, when you think about it...

Seriously though, this is abundawonderfully great news!! Star Wars is in very, very good hands :-)

Read More

Turkish group claims LEGO Jabba's Palace is racist, offensive to religion

Let's compare some fiction and fact...

- Jabba's Palace was first built by the B'omarr Monks, who continued to live within it and practice their religion long after after Jabba the Hutt took over and made it his headquarters.

- The Hagia Sophia was a Christian basilica until 1453 when Ottoman Turks forced their way inside, slaughtering thousands of innocent people whose blood poured into the streets of Constantinople. From that time on Christians were forbidden from worshiping within their own building.

Got that? Good. Because it only makes the claim by a group of Turkish Austrians that LEGO's new Jabba's Palace set from its Star Wars line is "racist" and an affront to religion all the more ridiculous.

LEGO version of Jabba's Palace (left) and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (right)
One is a place that has known murder, slavery and intolerance toward others. The other is a children's toy.

From The Telegraph article...

Austria’s Turkish community said the model was based on Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul and that the accompanying figures depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.”

The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria released a statement calling for Lego to apologise for affronting religious and cultural feelings.

The anger was provoked by “Jabba’s Palace”, a model of the home of Jabba the Hutt from Lego’s Star Wars product range based on the blockbusting series of science fiction films.

Jabba is the large slug-like creature who holds Han Solo captive in the film Return of the Jedi, and his palace is the setting for several crucial scenes, including using Princess Leia as his slave.

Jabba’s domed home and accompanying watchtower bare, according to the statement, an unwanted resemblance to Istanbul’s great Hagia Sophia, and another mosque in Beirut

...

The Jabba case came to light after an Austrian Turk complained to the organisation after his sister had bought his son the box set.

Austria’s Turkish community also took issue with the figures that went with the palace, including Jabba.

“The terrorist Jabba the Hutt likes to smoke a hookah and have his victims killed,” said the statement posted on the organisation’s website.

“It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities.”

The crimes associated with the figures, the statements adds, include terrorism, slavery, murder and human sacrifice.

Taking into account that many of the Lego figures carry weapons, the Turkish organisation also urged parents “not to buy toys of war or toys of discrimination” as the model goes against the “peaceful coexistence of different cultures in Europe”.

As an indication of the anger felt over Jabba’s Palace, the organisation said it was considering taking legal action against Lego for inciting racial hatred and insulting human dignity.

Hit the link for plenty more of this ludicrous story, including a statement LEGO released in response to what the Turks are insisting.

How about some more comparison? Like, how the Turks in Austria are claiming that "The crimes associated with the figures... include terrorism, slavery, murder and human sacrifice."

There are numerous accounts written by those who survived the conquest of Constantinople about how Sultan Mehmet II allowed his soldiers to plunder the city for three days: butchering anyone who got in their way, stealing from homes and separating families. Mehmet II took the city's most beautiful young women - and men - to be in his private harem (those who resisted were beheaded). Many boys were pressed into the service of the Janissary corps. Not long after the conquest, the Ottoman Turkish sultan sent several thousands of children to each of the major potentates of the Muslim world to be slaves.

So far as we know, the only criminal activities that Jabba the Hutt and his gang engaged in were spice-smuggling and gun-running.

Nor do I ever recall Jabba employing suicide bombers, declaring jihad against anyone or even declaring that Luke's announcing himself as a Jedi as being "blasphemy". Come to think of it, Jabba tolerated a lot of "coexistence of different cultures" at his court.

Yup, Jabba the Hutt and his palace are insulting to certain cultures and religions, no doubt about it...

Read More

Yes, it can really be like this...

Bipolar Bear, whose entire appearance in the animated series The Tick was for a whopping 8 seconds (series premiere The Tick vs. The Idea Men, 1994):

Heh-heh, love it! I've thought since the beginning that The Tick was one of the most intelligent, cerebral and funny shows to ever come out of animation. Nothing of the past decade and a half comes even close. The Nineties seriously was the height of the animated series as an art form and The Tick embodies everything that was good and pure about that era.

Speaking of bipolar disorder, I currently have three new pieces for Being Bipolar on the burner... and I can't figure out which one to run with next. Recent events complicated matters in terms of issue appropriateness, if anyone's curious. I'm hoping to have a new one up real soon.

And no, I don't mind laughing about my own mental illness. Not at all. When you're in a spot like me, you have to. But even so, I'm thankful for The Tick to have made it funny as only it could :-)

Read More

Hu Songwen: Kept alive for 13 years by his self-made dialysis machine!

This man is hardcore. HARD-CORE, no two ways about it. MacGuyver ain't got nuthin' on this dude...

Hu Songwen was diagnosed with early kidney failure in 1993. A college student at the time, Hu went to a regular hospital for the next six years on a routine basis to have dialysis scrub his blood of the waste material that a healthy metabolism has no problem with passing out of the body.

But then the money ran out. And Hu could no longer afford those hospital visits.

So left with what he deemed no choice, Hu put together a homemade dialysis machine.

And his self-crafted dialysis has kept him alive for the past thirteen years!

Mail Online has plenty on the story of Hu Songwen, including a bunch more pictures and the technical details of how his machine works.

Gotta love ingenuity and initiative like that. Whenever I find a story like this, it renews my hope in humanity. Here's wishing Hu all the best in a long and prosperous life :-)

Read More

Forty years of silent screaming

The moment is still seared into my memory. Indeed, I can still feel the revulsion that was far too much for a little child to have to grasp.

It was this day in 1983. I had seen on the news about something called "abortion". Seems that it was the tenth anniversary of it being allowed. So I asked Mom what "abortion" means.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

A chunk of my childhood died that day. There are some who would think of it as "no big deal". But to me it was the beginning of a loss of innocence. The first bricks of the wall of naivety that had secured this small child away from the madness of man's own making, come crumbling down to Earth.

"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."

My God.

And then some years later as a foolish teenager who thought himself wise, I was stupidly defending abortion. It seemed the "enlightened" thing to do, I thought. Thankfully that phase didn't survive my high school years. I'm hoping that twenty years of writing in opposition of abortion has helped me atone for it.

I made an attempt to do it as a columnist on our student newspaper at Elon, the first spring that I was a student there. My first piece as a columnist was about abortion: how it was destroying our culture, our sense of morality.

One week later while walking around with the flu and a 104-degree temperature (what an idiot) a female student walked up to me and said into my ear "You stupid pro-life fucking piece of shit."

I received some death threats too. I took a pro-life position and people claimed to want me dead for it. I'll always take perverse pride in knowing that at least a few people read my premiere essay and took it seriously...

And now, here we are: the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision that established a "right" to terminate an unborn child.

Funny thing: we admit that human life ends when the heartbeat stops. Why then shouldn't human life begin when a heartbeat starts?

And there is a heartbeat there. In fact, there have been roughly fifty-five million hearts that have stopped beating since this day in 1973.

See those photos on the right? Ultrasound imaging has been refined to the point where high-definition 3D pictures can be made of the unborn child within the womb of his or her mother. We can now chronicle in stark detail the development of a baby for practically its entire nine months of gestation.

Look at those pictures.

Do any of those look like "unviable tissue mass" to you?

Does a mere clump of cells within the body possess a face? Fingers? Toes?

Can a benign tumor yawn? Can it smile?

Does an appendix scream in pain when it is ripped open during a "medical procedure"?

Yes, there are screams. The first of many. There have been abortionists who halted their "practice" at once when they heard the sound of an unborn baby's agony. Too often there are other screams too. The screams of those who realize sooner or later "Dear God, have mercy on me for what I have done..."

Fifty-five million hearts silenced. Fifty-five million people. Killed without being allowed to draw breath beyond the comforting warmth of their mothers' wombs.

Now think about what we have lost in those forty years...

We have lost great scientists.

We have lost great physicians.

We have lost great artists.

We have lost great athletes.

We have lost great leaders, great statesmen.

I've been dabbling in filmmaking for several years now. How many directors, writers, actors, cinematographers have we been robbed of? Their gifts never to see the light of day, the flicker of the big screen.

Fifty-five million people, dead before they were born. The Nazi regime murdered 12 million.

And yet some dare to wonder why there is such violent in our streets. In our homes. In our schools.

How the hell can we possibly claim to value the preciousness of human life we see every day, when we don't give a damn about the preciousness of human life when it is at its most vulnerable?

I... don't see how that is possible at all.

"But Chris, it's a woman's body."

Bullshit.

Yeah, I said "bullshit".

It's not a "woman's body". It's the body of a whole another person. A person with his or her own chromosomes and brain activity. If a woman doesn't want to be bound to one body, she shouldn't be reckless with her own. If she is, then there are alternatives. There are thousands of barren couples in this country who are desperate to have a child in their life. Let them have that opportunity.

Fifty-five million children dead. Across the span of forty years.

Forty is the biblical number of completion. God made the children of Israel wander in the wilderness for forty years. From that weak and timid band of refugees came a strong and hardened people who took back the land promised their fathers. Forty is the age of full maturity, in body and mind and spirit.

What have we come to, in the forty years that God has mercifully allowed us since this day in 1973?

Can we say honestly proclaim that four full decades of abortion have nurtured within us a better heart and soul?

Or maybe it is that we no longer have that soul. Perhaps, we don't deserve it. Forty years is an awful long time to look back upon an error and repent of it. For one individual or for a people entire.

More laws will not restore the soul of our culture. Taking guns away won't replenish it. Not all of the politicians and psychologists and pop culture icons put together will bring back a thing that God has given us but we have chosen to let fall away.

President Barack Obama surrounded himself with children last week when he signed his executive orders pertaining to gun laws. Imagine how many more could have been there if he and those like him and allowed those children to live.

Don't talk to me about the violence on the evening news when we let the greatest violence of all happen in the clinical sterility of a "clinic".

Forty years.

How far we have come.

I don't know of any better way to wrap this up than to defer to the wisdom of one of the most beloved people of the modern era...

"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion, because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between." -- Mother Teresa

Read More

LOST as a Nintendo-style role-playing game

It's been ages since anything Lost-related has appeared on this site. Someday I'll try to write up an essay that's been percolating for a year or two: how the answers to everything we'd been looking for really, honestly were revealed or explained by the time of "The End" in 2012. Including how the Island could move (there's a scientific theory for that!).

Until then, it's nice to see that Lost still resonates. Enough so that CollegeHumor.com explored the notion: "What if Lost was a computerized role-playing game?" Sorta in the style of Dragon Warrior running on a Super Nintendo...

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

There may be spoilers if you haven't watched Lost, so viewer beware. For those who held on to the very end, this is a pretty hilarious video.

Read More

Look: A real X-rated movie! (more about DJANGO UNCHAINED)

Yes, I realize that this post might bother some people. But I'm going to say it anyway...

A few minutes ago I published my review of Django Unchained. A movie that some have condemned as being "insensitive", "racist", "offensive", and too many other epithets that are wildly, wildly wrong.

I will not only stand by what I've written about Django Unchained - that it's not a film about slavery or even race at all but instead an epic quest to find one's lost love - but I dare say that those who want to be upset about this movie... well, they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I thought we as a people were beyond this already. Apparently not and Django Unchained is proving it. That there are some who apparently can't be happy unless they've something to unfairly harp-on about being "racist" or whatever. Spike Lee comes to mind (he said he'd never watch Django Unchained because of how he claims it portrays people of African descent).

These are the kind of people that Booker T. Washington, that venerable educator and orator, wrote about...

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."

I'll eagerly contend that Quentin Tarantino has produced the most poignant, the most endearing and the most accurate film portraying slavery in the South in an unwholesomely long time. Heck, I could even see this movie shown in high school history classes.

This is a movie that is NOT defined along racial lines. It is a film that defies those. And I absolutely believe that this is at the heart of why some people want to be offended by it.

You wanna know how a movie about slavery can truly be disturbing, even downright sickening to watch? Because what you're about to see (if you've the patience and the stomach for the next two hours) makes Django Unchained seem downright puny so far as human bondage goes. I've been thinking about Goodbye Uncle Tom since coming out of seeing Django Unchained and what have I realized from the juxtaposition?

Again: that those condemning Django Unchained don't know what the hell they're talking about.

So here it is, from 1971, a movie that I first saw at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 a little over five years ago. The movie that to date is still the only X-rated film that I've watched in my entire life: Goodbye Uncle Tom...

Read More

Review of DJANGO UNCHAINED

My biggest regret so far as movies go right now is that I've yet to see Les Misérables, because everyone I know who's watched it has been raving about how spectacular and downright beautiful it is. So that's currently on my short list, along with Hitchcock and Zero Dark Thirty.

Last weekend however, we made time to catch Django Unchained: the first Quentin Tarantino film that I've seen during its theatrical run. Not even Inglourious Basterds got that honor. I first saw that on premium cable and went numb with disbelief during the final scene. As the credits rolled my jaw was still drooping and my reaction went like "Uhhhh... that's not how I remember reading about it..."

So going in to Django Unchained, I couldn't imagine what to be braced for. I've known since the beginning that it's about a slave getting revenge while searching for his wife: all kinds of possible permutations could come from that setup. I mean, would Tarantino be above a Nat Turner-ish figure leading tens of thousand of freed slaves to the streets of Atlanta, slaughtering and burning every white person they come across in a red red orgy of blades, bullets and blood?

After Inglourious Basterds, I was afraid to speculate about his latest movie.

But that's not what we saw in Django Unchained. Instead we watched what in this writer's opinion ranks high among the most historically accurate and unapologetic films ever produced about slavery and the antebellum South.

It's 1858, somewhere in Texas. A convoy of slaves are being walked to market by two brothers. Among the "cargo" is Django (Jamie Foxx, in easily his best role since Ray). During one night of the trip a very odd dentist comes out of the darkness, looking for Django. Seems that he's the only one who can identify on sight the fugitives known as the Brittle Brothers... and there's a big fat reward on each of their heads. So it is that our hero falls in with bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who proceeds to teach Django the tricks of the trade.

But in exchange for helping Schultz find the Brittles, Django has terms of his own: to locate Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), the wife who he was separated from by their previous owners. It's a long and winding road of tracking down murders and miscreants that leads Django and Schultz to Candyland: the notoriously brutal plantation reigned over by the sadistic Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Now there were a few things that weren't right for the period in Django Unchained. The existence of dynamite for one thing (something that Alfred Nobel wouldn't invent until six years later). I also have to question the treatment of the slaves in the very first scene: contrary to widespread belief, harsh treatment of slaves in transport and on the plantations was not something that happened on a regular basis. The disfiguring and sometimes deadly abuse was also not as prevalent as many might think, if for no other reason than because slaves were deemed to be valuable property. If the Speck Brothers had made their slaves walk across Texas in real life, barefoot and barely clothed, some if not most of them would have died from exposure and malnutrition: hardly a thoughtful way to transport one's "products". There is no record of "mandingo fighting" and it would be after the Civil War before anything like the Klan came about.

But then there are the details - some insanely minute - that Tarantino poured into Django Unchained that I have to appreciate, even applaud as a historian. The "bell collars" worn by some slaves was accurate (they were usually placed on slaves with a history of trying to escape), as well as the practice of branding some slaves with an "R" on the cheek if they had run away and been returned. Tarantino often puts a scene of exposition in his films. This time it's Calvin Candie educating Schultz and Django about phrenology: a long-held eugenics theory pertaining to skull size and capacity (even at the time it was being called a pseudoscience... and yet many "civilized" people held it in serious regard as proof of racial superiority).

For all of that however, nothing in Django Unchained is perhaps as startling as Stephen: Candie's servant, played by Samuel L. Jackson. This seems to be the biggest item of controversy about the movie: that black slaves would be that unflinchingly faithful to their masters. To the very land they were property on, even.

Folks, that's not wild fiction at all. That kind of behavior was extremely common, especially among the more wealthy plantations. Slaves like Stephen had such a fierce and unflinching devotion to their masters that it was nigh-on inconceivable to them to be otherwise. Indeed, there are many records about how after the Civil War, many newly-emancipated slaves chose to remain on their former masters' lands as free men and tenant farmers. That wasn't a habit that disappeared overnight after the Confederacy surrendered, but to the best of my knowledge Django Unchained is the very first time that a movie has portrayed slavery's "Stockholm Syndrome" with such uncompromising accuracy.

But this isn't a movie about slavery. This isn't even really a movie about revenge, I thought. Instead, Django Unchained is a story of love and devotion between husband and wife. This is a quest movie: Django not giving up until he finds Broomhilda. Having to endure unspeakable hardship and pain and despair, not relenting until he can at long last be reunited with his wife. This is a love story decorated with guns and explosives... not to mention crime, cruelty and castration.

It's not Homer's The Odyssey. But I will say that with Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino has crafted a uniquely American epic. One that will certainly pass the test of time.

I'm gonna give Django Unchained my highest recommendation. Meaning that if I'm eager to have it on my Blu-ray shelf, it's worth people seeing at least once in the theaters.

Read More

"It's not a free-speech zone when we did it!"

I did not watch President Obama's inauguration today. There is nothing particularly interesting about a leader with no real vision. Sadly that's a trait that has been shared by every president since Reagan. But I digress...

It does interest me this afternoon however that President Obama continued the tradition established by former president George W. Bush of having a "free speech zone" marked off for the event...

Freedom Plaza is the site of one of the only authorized demonstration zones, where a strip of the plaza is designated a free speech zone.

The "free speech zones" were a routine and chronic practice of George W. Bush. Nobody who protested his policies was allowed anywhere close to him when he was president and out in public. There were many instances when protestors were limited to an area nearly a mile away from Bush.

The "free speech zones" were wrong then. They are just as wrong now on Obama's watch.

But that seems to be going clean over the heads of a lot of self-professed "conservatives" today, judging by how many at the above link on Politico.com are feigning outrage that Obama is keeping those who disagree with him out of sight and out of mind.

Here is what I wrote this past October about Obama continuing Bush's practice.

Now, I defy anyone to argue that it was any more right when Bush had the "free speech zones" than it is for Obama to do precisely the same.

This is but one reason why I have become so disgusted with politics. I like to think of myself as an honest person... and honest people have a problem with sullying their hands with such blatant hypocrisy.

That and as I said earlier: there is no leadership with clear and bold vision in America.

Sometimes I wonder if that might be on purpose. Or even if that's what we the people have come to embrace.

Read More

Back from the break

I needed to unplug from some things for the past couple of weeks. Including this blog.

Nothing traumatic or crazy happened. 'Cept I chose to focus on a few things and getting other things re-focused that had been lingering too much for too long.

This blog has been around for nine years now (wow!). In that time it has become quite a chronicle, a collection of documentation, about the evolution and development of that strange and bizarre creature that God created in Robert Christopher Knight. And that's what it will continue to be, until whatever point if and when I decide that it's time to retire from blogging.

But sometimes, that evolution and development appreciates the time to rest and reflect. And I'm still reflecting now. There might not be the frequency of posts that many readers (gauging from the amount of e-mails that came in) seem to enjoy, at least not off the bat.

In terms of Doctor Who, I'm regenerating. Becoming a different person.

But then, aren't we all? Isn't that what every one of us has been doing since the day each of us came into this world?

And besides, my girlfriend thinks it's time to write some more here. She has me well trained already. So I'd better get to work :-)

Read More

It had to happen: BACK TO THE FUTURE and DOCTOR WHO mash-up!

A friend in our community theater guild is fond of wearing a t-shirt with this graphic on it...

So what would happen if Doctor Emmet Brown's DeLorean crashed head-on with the Doctor's TARDIS in a game of chicken?

Probably something like this...

Props to Kristen for coming across this uberkewl video by James Farr!

Read More

Aaron Goins Jr.'s 2012 in Review

For me personally, the best part about this New Year's Day is that I made it through the rest of 2012 without getting any more speeding tickets! Having three in the past twelve months really was going too far even for me, but at least I'll have that "defensive drivers class" coming up to write about :-)

Which one is Honey and
which one is Boo Boo?

Anyhoo, there was plenty of good about 2012... and too many things that were quite a mess. If that Psy guy doesn't make good on his promise to put an end to "Gangnam Style", I swear that I'll be reaching for a glass of whiskey, a revolver and two bullets. The country remains without any real vision or leadership. And I could have lived the rest of my life and died happy without ever being told that such a thing as Honey Boo Boo (right) exists.

But on the plus side of the ledger: 2012 saw the announcement that we ARE getting Star Wars Episodes 7-9 at last, and many more Star Wars movies afterwards.  For that alone I will say that 2012 was a terrific year!

Reviewing the previous year's pop-culture, sports, entertainment and pro-wrestling scenes (especially the pro-wrestling) really isn't my forte however. But rest assured that in his own inimitable style, Aaron Goins Jr. is on the case! Over on his blog The Highlight Reel, Aaron has composed a monstrous (and hella fun) compilation of the year that was 2012. Even if you know more about Taylor Swift than you do about Vince McMahon, you won't be at a loss for something good here. Part 1 covers professional wrestling and sports, Part 2 goes over entertainment and music and Part 3 is about anything and everything in between including more pro wrestling (are we seeing a trend in our boy Aaron's blogging?).

But I think the best part is how Aaron chose to wrap up his look back...

There were so many good times that, even outnumbered by the bad, I cannot help but smile when I think back on 2012. I hope that 2013 will be a better year for me. I hope it is a better year for us all. I hope that we can find more time to smile, more time to think, and more time to cry tears of joy and not sorrow or pain. 2013 is a year full of hope. In conclusion, I hope 2012 was great for you and that 2013 will be even better.

God bless.

Hear hear! May we all have a better year in 2013 :-)

Read More