It was one year ago this past week...

...that Ronald Reagan passed away.

I know that there is - and probably will always be - some debate about his times as President of the United States. The man wasn't perfect by any stretch. Then again, who among us is anyway?

But I always admired Reagan. Part of his charm was that he wasn't afraid to admit having human foibles. He spoke with people, not at them or down to them. And they were people from all walks of life: foreign dignitaries, ecclesiastical authorities, or humble family farmers.

We were in Atlanta, me and Lisa and one of her friends from college, when the news broke that Reagan had died. We were on our way to the Lord of the Rings concert with Howard Shore conducting (I got the tickets about six months earlier, a Christmas present for Lisa). The concert was great, but all night it felt like... like the era of my childhood was finally, at last, finished. You didn't grow up in the Eighties without being in Reagan's shadow somehow: he was that kind of bigger than life. Nancy was bigger than life. Remember when we saw Reagan walking around the White House rose garden with Michael Jackson? Today Reagan is dead and Jacko is awaiting the verdict in his child molestation trial.

What the hell's happened to this country?

That was Saturday when he died. We were leaving back for home Tuesday morning and it was Monday night, while watching the mourners file past his casket at the Reagan Library in California, that I decided I had to go to D.C. and pay my respects to the man. We got back home about 10 that night and 12 hours later I hit the road again. Met up with some friends from the Internet along the procession route on Constitution Avenue and about 6 that evening the caisson bearing his casket filed past where we were standing...

I stayed in D.C. one more day, getting in line late Thursday night to try and get into the Capitol rotunda where his remains lay in state. It was like seven hours' wait from the far end of the Air and Space Museum, through five large "holding pens" on the Mall set up to accommodate the crowd, but just after the beautiful sunrise broke at dawn ("mourning in America", I couldn't help but think) our group got inside and were there for what turned out to be the next-to-last changing of the guard done in the Rotunda. Sure didn't seem like that long a wait though: all through the night I met with some really neat people from all over the place. Domino's and Papa John's were delivering pizzas to folks waiting in line (how they were told which holding pen to come to I've no idea). The Park Service had bottles of water for everyone. It was a little before 8 when we got through the buiding and I took the train back to my waiting car, drove to my hotel and packed up and went home.

I started writing about this a few days ago but got caught up in some things on this end. Wanted to come back and finish up this lil' tribute to the man. Wish this country could have other men of his kind of caliber in high office.

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The Nazis invented the sex doll (saywhuuuu...??)

Started randomly looking at other blogs this evening and found one called Suspect on film and since I'm a World War II freak his most recent post caught my eye. From Blogcritics.org...

The Nazis invented the sex doll

The Nazis invented the worst thing ever: the assembly-line death factory. But they also invented something else, perhaps the only legacy of theirs that endures to this very day. During World War II, Hitler's war machine created the world's first sex doll: Borghild.

The ”field-hygienic project” was an initiative of Himmler, who regarded the doll as a ”counterbalance” for the sexual drive of his stormtroopers. In one of his letters, he mentions the ”unnessessary losses” the Wehrmacht had suffered in France, inflicted by street prostitutes. ”The greatest danger in Paris are the wide-spread and uncontrolled whores, picking up clients in bars, dancehalls and other places. It is our duty to prevent soldiers from risking their health, just for the sake of a quick adventure.” One assumes Himmler also wanted to stop any racial dilution of the great German army.

The project was considered ”Geheime Reichssache”, which meant ”more secret than top secret.” Himmler put Dr. Joachim Mrurgowsky in charge, the highest ranking officer of Berlin's notorious SS Institute.

The world’s first sexdoll – or ”gynoid” – was built in 1941 by a team of craftsmen from Germany's Hygiene Museum in Dresden. The project was supervised by a famous technician, Franz Tschakert. He was the ”father of the woman of glass,” which happened to be the sensation in the 1930’s International Hygiene Exhibition...

Ohh-kaaaay that's enough for now, don't you think? This is probably the weirdest thing I've EVER heard about World War II. Weirder than the "British aircraft carrier made of ice cubes" or the "Nazis trying to contact the subterranean supermen" bits, even. Squeeze here if you want to read more about them kinky Nazis.

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Check out the new Forcery website!

Awright, our lil' film is starting to get some press coverage so in advance of the good word and for benefit of anyone who might find their way to it, Ed and I have worked on-and-off throughout today to beef-up the official Forcery website. You'll find production photos, cast and crew bios, download links and more! We'll be adding more stuff to it soon as it develops. In the meantime, head over to forcery.kwerkyproductions.com and enjoy!

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Man in suit! Man in suit!

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers was the first place (I think) that had the concept of strength-enhancing mechanized endoskeletons worn by humans. It's since been used in movies like Aliens and The Matrix Revolutions. Now it's become a reality...

From AFP via Yahoo! news:

Japan unveils "robot suit" that enhances human power

Tue Jun 7,10:14 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan has taken a step into the science-fiction world with the release of a "robot suit" that can help workers lift heavy loads or assist people with disabilities climb stairs.

"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University who led the project.

The 15-kilogram (33-pound) battery-powered suit, code-named HAL-5, detects muscle movements through electrical-signal flows on the skin surface and then amplifies them.

It can also move on its own accord, enabling it to help elderly or handicapped people walk, developers said.

The prototype suit will be displayed at the World Exposition that is currently taking place in Aichi prefecture, central Japan...

That's gonna be a pretty cool thing for pro wrestlers to wear.

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This blog's look will be changing soon

I redid its look back in January but the all-black "nighttime" style is really starting to bore me. And that picture of me at the top isn't the best: it looks like I'm smirking or something. The original is a photo taken of me for a newspape I worked at a few years ago and in larger size it looks great. Reduced size, it makes me look too much like a psycho. I'm going to find a better one. I'm going to monkey around with it some during the next few days and see what I can come up with...

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Bush wants to make destruction of Bill of Rights permanent (seeks PATRIOT Act renewal)

A lot of its provisions were intended to "sunset" when it was passed over three years ago. Except Bush wants to keep them around indefinitely. For the duration of the "emergency", you see.

This "emergency" will never end. The "war on terror" is not intended to have a substantive goal. This will never enter into endgame.

Might as well face up to it: Osama Bin Laden won when he sent the planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center going on four years ago. He made sure America would never be the sweet land of liberty ever again. The irony of it is, it wasn't Osama who did the really dirty deed against the American people. He merely instigated it. He hasn't even been adequately punished for it. Instead the President of the United States - who swore an oath to defend this country's Constitution - is too busy taking away basic rights like that of having an attorney and protection against unwarranted searches and seizures and letting our guard down along this country's borders, to do anything meaningful against whatever real terorrists are still out there.

The PATRIOT Act does not defend America. The PATRIOT Act defends politicians from the Americans they continue to steal from and rape of their freedoms. No wonder Bush wants to keep hiding behind it forever.

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The unfilmmable Watchmen claims another one

This time it's Paramount that threw its hands up in despair. Mash here for the full story. This is one story - graphic novel or not - that will never, ever, EVER be made into a movie and it still do justice to the original source material. The only way it could possibly be done is if someone like HBO turned it into a 12-part season-long series of one-hour episodes, one hour given to each chapter of the book. There's no way to cram something so dense like Watchmen into a three-hour long movie.

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