Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

The royal wedding is over and now we can get back to talking about other things, is one way I feel about it.  Didn’t watch it, but people have been talking about it on Facebook all  day, so  I’ve got a few opinions.

For as left wing as I am on  most issues, I don’t really hate the British Royal family.  Philip is a doddering old racist, which is not exactly atypical for a British family, Elizabeth may not have been mother of the year, but she’s always taken her job seriously.  Sure, they’ve got tons of money  which  is kind of obscene while some people are struggling, but so do Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, and the Sultan  of Dubai, and the head honcho of  the house of Saud and all his relatives, and the Waltons, and the Kochs, and the Trumps, to name a few.  And what about the Pope?  There’s probably a few billion dollars worth of stuff in the Vatican alone.  They all should be doing more to end the world’s problems.

I think the Windsors could do themselves,  and England, a big favor by putting some  of their money to  good use, and maybe turning a few of their castles over to the public, either as public parks or some charitable use.  Then, they should just relax a bit.  Be more like the Dutch and Swedish monarchs, who act more or less like ordinary people but are still excessively  rich.  But,  I’m not holding  my  breath.

I really don’t think  that Meghan Markle being half-black is going to do much to affect race relations in Britain, any more than Barack Obama’s two terms in  office ended racism in the U.S.  Also, and I hope it isn’t racist of me to say  this, she looks white.  The whole race thing is going to  fade into the background.

Unless, of course, they have children who  are noticeably black.  I’d love to see the look on old Philip’s face when that happens.

I went out for a little walk and I was just sitting there on a rock, with trees and bushes all around and stood up and walked over to check  the street and there was a policeman standing on  the corner.  No big deal, smoking is more or less legal and he was looking the other way and no big deal so I  retreated to  my  seat and finished off the joint and solved all the problems of the world in my head, they should put a plaque on that rock.

So, I started walking home and now there’s two cops on the corner.  I walked past them, crossed the street and was headed home.  Then I looked back down the street and suddenly realized why the police were there.
There was a huge crowd, like I couldn’t see  the back of  it, shouting something incoherent, so I started walking toward them, along the side of the park, where plenty of folk were just taking it all in  stride.  I thought maybe they were Nazis.  Anyway, there was a serious paucity of information in their signs and on their T-shirts, which all said ‘trouble gang’ if they said anything at all, and some of them were carrying flags, black and white stripes like in a parody of the American flag, and a black field in the corner, with some sort of  insignia in it.  It wasn’t a swastika, but it still looked intimidating.  The chant was “Trouble-Gang, Trouble-Gang.  The flag that was different was one big orange one saying ‘Radio Fajn,’ so I  thought maybe some kind of promotion, but there were no serious cameras around, just a few people  with cell phones.  Also, plenty of police at the back, all in ninja black with paddy wagons at the ready.

When I got home, a friend of  ours was here and I  recounted the tale.  He googled  it real  quick and trouble gang is apparently the posse of some Slovakian rapper.
Then, when Sam  got home from work, I  asked him how it went and he said “Terrible, there was a concert from some Slovakian  rapper…”  I said ‘trouble gang’ and he said yeah.
So, I guess it’s an interesting way for the fans to arrive at a concert, but if their schtick is to look like Nazis, well, that’s not a good look.

Sure, lots of you have already seen this film, like forever ago, so my review is not going to be timely or Earth shaking, because opinions have been long ago formed, battle lines drawn, but I just saw it now and so here are my observations.

1.  I enjoyed it.  That doesn’t mean I  was knocked out or amazed by  it, but it was entertaining and exciting all the way through, in an action adventure sort of way.
2. I didn’t care for what they did with the Scottie character, I mean his Burns-Smithers relationship with the twisty little blue man who looked a bit like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.  It would have been fine in an  original  movie, but it was so out of line with the character of Scottie we know that, even as comic relief it didn’t work well.  He did save the day, though.
3. And the Klingons, how many iterations of Klingons have we had?  It was a cool look, though.
4. The actor who played Spock did a fine job and it’s not his fault he reminded me a bit of  Dan Aykroyd and every time he opened his mouth I  heard a  Conehead joke.
5. The thing that really  struck me though is that I’ve always like the TV shows better than the movies, and I  think I’ve figured out why.  When they’ve got the big screen and the big budget, it’s all  action  adventure, one big battle scene after another.  The shows always seemed to be more focused on the ethical dilemma.

I was daydreaming and got the idea for a sci-fi novel in my head. Because all planets are separate, developing within their own atmosphere, each planet is going to evolve differently, and my idea was a planet which had  3 or  4 intelligent species which had all  evolved to the technological  level together, obvs there was just something in  the atmosphere that led intelligence to co-operation instead of intra-species warfare at a very early stage so  maybe they  developed technology quicker than humans, maybe slower, maybe in some ways quicker and in  some ways slower, but then they get out into space and start exploring the universe and are totally blindsided by the idea of other , warlike species.  I would make them the good guys, of course, and they eventually prevail, maybe by outwitting the others, or seeking alliances  with other star-faring, war-knowing creatures, but who weren’t actually trying to kill them, and then I  realized that parts of the idea were similar to a book I read, probably when I  was about 11 or 12.

I  think it might  have been  Heinlein, it was right up his  alley,  but if so it’s not one of his most famous.  Anyway, in it a bunch of kids were chosen by the aliens (who’d just made contact with Earth) to go to some camp on  another planet, kind of a scout outing/survival experiment/audition for the human race  to see if we could join the federation  of planets, and the main thing I remember is that there was more than  one intelligent  species on the planet.  Does anybody know what book I’m talking about?  I’d kind of like to find it and read it again.

At the moment I am reading a particularly boring book.  I borrowed it  and I am determined to finish it, because it is a good idea, although I think the author fails to get to the point in the title, which  is “Economics of Good and Evil.”
It’s good  that someone has raised the point, at least.  Since the economy  is an  arbitrary, man-made system it can be whatever we want, and the fact that it  is not being used for good, for the common betterment of humankind, is horrifying.
Anyway, another thing the author does that irritates me is he just fills in lots and lots of space with quotes, whole Bible passages and stuff.  On the other hand, a few years ago I went back  to re-read some books by Buckminster Fuller, trying to figure out why nobody reads  him any more, and he NEVER quotes anybody else, which is just as bad.  It’s great to have original ideas, it’s great to analyze other’s great ideas, but there’s an ideal range.
Anyway, it was one of the quotes that led my thoughts down a different  track.  In  a play by the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, which was apparently about women taking over the government and hijinx ensues, sort of an ancient version of Wild in the Streets.  The lines were:

There is a legend of ancient time

that all our foolish plans and vain conceits
are overlured to work the public good

and I’m not sure, maybe it was a typo and it’s supposed to be over-ruled, but either way, the  idea is ‘Gee, what if government actually was set up somehow that it would work for the public good, and not just for the benefit of the wealthy and their corrupt, lickspittle political toadies?  Imagine the paradise we could  have.’
It’s not such an original idea, but it’s impressive to me (and somehow reassuring) that this was written over 2,000 years ago.  People already had that concept.

We haven’t got that kind of  system,  in reality, but the idea has been around forever, and someday, someday, we will make it work.