Two amazing fan films: sequel to STAR TREK's "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and ARKHAM RISING

An awful lot of the homegrown cinema lately seems to have more heart and soul than most of the big studio productions.  These two fan-created films are some of the best that I've seen lately.

First up, it's a sequel to the original Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?".  "Pilgrim of Eternity" has Michael Forest reprising his role as Apollo from the 1967 episode.  The script was written by Jack Treviño (who wrote the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes "Little Green Men" and "Indiscretion").  Christopher Doohan - son of James Doohan - plays Scotty and Marina Sirtis herself is the voice of the Enterprise computer.  And not being content with just one Apollo, "Pilgrim of Eternity" also has Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica's Lee Adama) as a redshirt security officer!


And then we have this: Arkham Rising.  Set during the events of The Dark Knight Rises, Arkham Rising takes us into Arkham Asylum just after Bane breaks open Blackgate Prison.  This very well could have been a deleted scene from The Dark Knight Rises.  In fact, I kinda wish it was.  Especially in how it attempts to answer the most tantalizing question left from that movie: "Where was the Joker?!"


The thing I like most about Arkham Rising is how it plausibly demonstrates that Batman really could have battled more of his rogues gallery than were depicted on-screen in the Nolan continuity.  If you ever wanted to see what a Nolan-esque take on the Riddler, the Mad Hatter and the Calendar Man could have been, Arkham Rising serves it up.  And if you go to the Arkham Files on the film's official website you can find stuff about the Penguin, Poison Ivy and Clayface.  I bet these guys could have even pulled off a Nolan-ish Mister Freeze, they did such a great job!

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The three kinds of people in the world

As I have grown older and wiser to the ways of this world, I have come to understand that there are three kinds of people:

Those who want to control.

Those who want to be controlled.

Those who want neither control or to be controlled.

The people in the third group are almost universally despised by those in the first and second.  So much so that their lives are made much less comfortable.  Because they have chosen to be in the power of no man.  From those who control there is crushing hatred.  From those controlled, there is boundless jealousy.

However, their lives are significantly more fulfilling.  To say nothing of being more interesting.

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This week's Tammy Tuesday is all wrapped up

Several months ago I came across a long piece of scrap fabric from my Children of Eden costume.  It seemed like something Tammy would enjoy playing with.  Ever since, there hasn't been a day that goes by when we haven't had a tug-of-war with it (and you would not believe how such a little dog can yank something soooo hard).

Here's Tammy in one of her quieter moments with it, as she chews happily on a piece of deer antler...

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"Honest as the day is long!"

It's Friday night and I'm feeling extra goofy.  Also feeling pretty good about some more personal concerns too, and praying they'll soon... well, I'm just praying.

Anyhoo, it seems that lately too many people are awful tense and bummed-out about stuff.  So here's something that will make anybody laugh: a collection of Junior Samples' famous "BR-549" sketches from the classic country-comedy variety show Hee Haw!


Yup, that's George Lindsey (aka Goober from The Andy Griffith Show) as the robber in the first skit. And longtime Hee Haw fans of the masculine persuasion will no doubt remember Barbi Benton with much fondness!

Junior Samples is perhaps the all-time king of country rube humor.  He got his showbiz start at age 40 with a comedy recording about catching a big bass (he also nearly got in trouble with the fish and wildlife agents).  From there he was invited to join the cast of Hee Haw and became as much-beloved for his stumbles and bloopers as he was for his down-home demeanor.  Sadly, he passed away in 1983 at the age of 57.

And the phone number is "BR-549" for a reason.  Samples was from Cumming, Georgia and loved to go fishing on Lake Lanier.  And when it wasn't in the water his boat was kept at "Boat Ramp 549".

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Danny de Gracia: more laws do not equal greater morality

Friend, fellow writer and fighter-in-the-good-fight Danny de Gracia has published some well-recommended thoughts this week about the correlation between the quantity of legislation and the resulting amount of public morality.  It has been the conventional wisdom throughout history that more laws equals a more perfect society.

But does it really?  De Gracia doesn't think so.  In fact, as he writes in separate pieces for The Washington Times as well as his own blog, the ever-growing volumes of law being produced have made things worse.  They are, in truth, a symptom of a far worse problem: the spiritual condition of the human heart, which no act of government can change.

From de Gracia's essay in The Washington Times:

When first-time candidates run for office, most pitch a platform promising “change” in the form of new laws. Incumbent legislators are often attacked by challengers not for the number of bad bills canned in committee, but for the number of introduced measures that actually made it into law.

At the Hawaii State Legislature, a newly-hired Senate analyst was once given the assignment of reading the 2011 Session Laws of Hawaii (SLH) and complained when her boss was away that she faced reading thousands of pages packed with dense legalese. A veteran House staffer simply smiled and replied, “The SLH covers a couple of months of lawmaking and is more than a foot thick. Yet the Bible contains thousands of years of God’s commands to man and is only three inches thick on average. What does that say about how many laws they’re making here?”

As that incident perfectly illustrates, legislators are lawmaking mass-producers. (Prior to going paperless, in years past whenever the Hawaii State Legislature was in session, the cost of printer paper in Honolulu would rise by a few cents.) It also underlines the more important fact that even God, who is infinitely powerful and wise, could not by the means of law alone make humans righteous or the Earth more verdant.

Laws do not make good citizens nor do they prosper the environment. As is evident by thousands of years of human civilization, the only thing laws really accomplish is condemnation for those who engage in banned behaviors.

 And from his blog piece:

Our 21st century America has become an extremely legalistic society. Chances are if you can think of something, there's a public law that taxes, regulates or bans it. Most legislators who introduce laws do so based on a belief that law somehow makes for a better society or more responsible citizenry. Yet as we have seen in recent years, the increase of laws has only meant more incarceration, more law enforcement (and tougher police tactics) and more surveillance. People need to consult a lawyer for almost everything these days because the slightest screw up could result in government fines, imprisonment or civil action.

In my article I discuss how law at its very core is flawed with respect to humanity because laws do not change the human heart, they only punish. A law can forbid perjury or fraud, but it can never make a liar honest. Another law can prohibit littering, but it cannot make a messy person neat. The human heart -whether it inclines towards evil or good - is the true driving force. A society without morals can have laws forbidding everything but without citizens who have the soul (and by this I mean heart, mind and spirit) to live right, will be marked by chaos, violence and mayhem.

(snip)

You cannot legislate righteousness. It didn't work for God (nor was it His intent to justify by the law) and it certainly won't work for humans either. This is where so-called "social conservatives" miss the mark: they think that by banning behaviors they will somehow "instruct" souls in the way of righteousness or "preserve" the character of the nation. Jesus - speaking of a man's internal heart condition - said that a good tree does not bear bad fruit, neither does a bad tree bear good fruit. Bad deeds do not spontaneously generate, they are the fruit of a bad heart. "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matthew 12:33).

It reminds me of something that Cicero observed: the more the laws there were, the more numerous the lawbreakers.

Metaphorically, it's the political equivalent of grasping at straws: our leaders, we ourselves even, have been convinced that if we pass just one, more, law, that somehow it will magically make everything better.  And that kind of thinking is in defiance of the reality that Man, on his own, is a fallen and corrupt creature.  Nothing he can do according to his own wisdom is going to succeed... or at least survive the test of time.

Why has our country become so corrupted politically and socially?  Because her people have placed their trust and confidence in government, in political parties, in cheapened religion which makes them "feel good" but does nothing to convict and bring personal accountability.  Unfortunately, I look around and see too many people, preachers and politicians who still insist that "things will be right", if only they were in power.

Anyway, de Gracia has some eloquent elucidation in these two essays and they're well worth passing along.

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How to fix bankrupt Detroit

History was made yesterday as Detroit became the largest American municipality ever to file for bankruptcy.

What was once the wealthiest city in the United States is now $18 billion dollars underwater.  It can't pay its bills.  It can't pay out pensions to employees.  And there is practically no income.

But hey!  All is not lost!  Detroit can simply have a "Save Detroit Telethon"!


How does a city as ruined as Detroit make a comeback? Getting rid of every vestige of its failed leadership would be a good start. But that alone isn't going to make up for all the damage that kowtowing to the unions (representing both government employees and private industry) has done.

Actually, to be honest: I don't know how a city like Detroit could recover.  I believe it's possible, but it would take a very long time.

Expect all kinds of hell if the United States federal government gives Detroit a bailout.  I have even heard some suggest that it was the bailout of GM which helped precipitate this bankruptcy.  Now imagine that on a larger scale.

Gotta wonder how many other cities across this country are poised to go broke.  Or even how many states...

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American Inquisition: Holder's Justice Department demanding "tips" on George Zimmerman

This has been news for a couple of days now, but the reason I held off posting about it is that I wanted to do some historical investigation first.  And you know what I found out?

To the very best of my understanding, there has not been a single instance before this week of the United States federal government setting up a hotline or e-mail address asking the public and organizations for information against an individual citizen.  Not one.  And if anybody reading this does know of one, feel free to write me at theknightshift@gmail.com and better my education on the matter.

George Zimmerman was acquitted this past

Eric Holder:
Roland Freisler would have been proud of him.

Saturday night of all charges against him in the death of Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman had been charged with second-degree murder.

And now, not being content with a jury of his peers finding the man not guilty, Attorney General Eric Holder has directed the United States Department of Justice to solicit "tips" about George Zimmerman from "civil rights groups" and the general public.  Holder's people are searching for "evidence" which would put Zimmerman up on federal "civil rights charges".

In other words: the Obama Administration has officially designated George Zimmerman to be an enemy of the state.

Holder's Justice Department is declaring war against a single American who was found not guilty and who the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that they had "no evidence" he was a racist.

The Obama White House is engaging in activity which makes those of Nixon's in the Watergate scandal positively pale in comparison.

Among everything else that is so wrong with this (including what could strongly be considered violation of ex post facto) I must wonder aloud: could this be a case of using the weight of the federal government to perpetrate an act of racial injustice?  All of this seems motivated primarily by the ethnicity of the respective parties in the case: Martin being black and Zimmerman, a Hispanic.

"Justice is blind", it has been said.  Yet Holder's Justice Department is behaving, to any rational observer, with racial prejudice against an American citizen and to an unprecedented degree of official action.

And if the government can do this to George Zimmerman, it can very well choose to do this to anyone else.  Including me.  Or you.

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