Tag Archives: www.gurukalehuru.com

Star Trek

I’m just watching a rerun of Conan O’Brien, with William Shatner.  I don’t know what the feud was between him and the cast members, I’m not sure if I like his spoken word stuff or not and I definitely think that Patrick Stewart was the superior captain, but you can’t question Shatner’s achievement.

He was the star of America’s 1^st real science fiction hit.  (Well, the was Lost in Space, but that was a bit of a joke, now, wasn’t it?)  He was the commander of the Star Ship Enterprise, the hero to a generation of sci-fi fans and the role model for Picard, Cisco, Janeway and whoever else has done it since, I think I might be a Star Trek incarnation or two behind.

Anyway, much has already been written about Star Trek, and the reasons why I prefer “The Next Generation,” but also kind of liked Deep Space Nine and hated Voyager, although it got better after Janeway let her hair down and much better after Jeri Ryan joined the program, are not really relevant or compelling.

So, here are just some random notes on the Star Trek universe that I think have been underdiscussed.

The Ferengi were the Jews of Space.  Every big ear joke was a big nose joke.  Once you realized it, it was easy to confirm.  The laws of acquisition.  The way their interest perked whenever a financial opportunity arose.  So, what other racial stereotypes were there?  Well, I’m guessing that the Klingons are supposed to be black.  The Vulcans were inscrutable and highly intelligent, therefore Asian.

Anyway, in the Star Trek universe there were Klingon-Human hybrids, Vulcan-Human hybrids, etc…I don’t think anyone ever had sex with a Ferengi, because that would have been gross, but other than that, it was free love for everybody.  This was before inter-racial relationships were acceptable on TV.  So, that was how they said it.  It was a great and noble thing.

It’s amazing that for a show set 400 years in the future, technology overtook them very quickly in a couple of ways.  Their communicators just don’t seem that cool anymore.  And they had to totally update the holo-deck the 1^st season after they introduced it.

3^rd, the best single line on TV ever:  Get your Vulcan hands off me!

No Such Thing as “The Only Answer”

Normally, I am a compulsive reader.  If I start a book, I somehow feel morally obligated to finish it, even if it is a piece of crap.  If I am glancing through Huffpo and see a headline that intrigues me, I generally get sucked into reading the whole article.  But there was one headline I just saw that I want to respond to, but which was so glaringly stupid and wrong that there’s no way I’m going to bother reading the article.

“Only Spirituality Can Solve The World’s Problems.”

Now, I am not entirely against spirituality.  I am not a believer in any kind of a Supreme Being, or an afterlife for that matter even though I would like to be.  However, I believe that spirituality is generally a positive sort of emotion, and people who are honestly seeking spirituality are at least not out holding up liquor stores or kidnapping small children.

It’s the word “only” that I object to.  Very limiting and unimaginative.

There are many possible technological advances that could solve the world’s problems.  Cold fusion or some other breakthrough that provides us with unlimited safe, cheap energy would rejuvenate the world’s economy in a heartbeat, and with that unlimited power we would have the means to solve all our other problems as well.

Cheap desalinization, which is right around the corner, could make the deserts green and feed the world.

Advances in cybernetics could give us an army of slave robots capable of building the infrastructure of a civilization that would have us all living in luxury for the next 1000 years.

Medical advances in the very near future may lead to us living that long.

It’s not only technological advances that could solve the world’s problems.  A massive epidemic, WWIII, massive climate change or a meteor strike, while wreaking untold havoc and causing a relatively large amount of short term misery, would reduce the world’s population to a level where the survivor’s could live very comfortably.

There are other possibilities; a benevolent invasion by aliens with a superior intellect (hey, they’ve crossed light years.  If we ever meet any aliens at all, they will undoubtedly be superior to us in intellect), or a spontaneous realization (practical, not spiritual) on the part of the leadership of our species that solving the wold’s problems would actually be a good idea.

I’m not holding my breath on those last two, though.

Blue Texas

I was watching a documentary on the History Channel the other day, about November 22, 1963 (never forget).  The Kennedy assassination.  I will leave aside my resentment of the History channel for the fact that they just report “Lee Harvey Oswald, from the Book Depository Window, with a Mannlicher-Carcano” without any questioning of it at all, because there’s nothing I can do about it and because that wasn’t actually what the program was about.

They were talking about Kennedy’s presidency and the political implications of the trip, why Jackie decided to come along, the 1964 elections just one year away, etc…

Despite Texas then having pretty much the same reputation as Texas now, and hate for the dreaded socialist Kennedy pouring forth from every oil-financed orifice, the crowds who greeted Kennedy were friendly and enthusiastic.  That’s what struck me.

Even in the heart of “nut country” there was an incredible amount of support for the young, charismatic, liberal Democratic president.

A lot of things have not changed since 1963, but a lot of stuff is still the same.   Texas is still Texas,  a whole nuther country, as they like to say.  The governor threatens to secede from the union, school textbooks teach the children about Noah and the Dinosaurs and people post racist, hate-filled, threatening messages on their face-book pages.

And yet, those people who were in the crowd that day are still there.  Sure, some have died but some have had children.  Some have moved away and some have moved in.  If Barack Obama were to go to Dallas tomorrow, he would also be greeted by an enthusiastic, supportive crowd, of roughly the same mix of black and white, old and young, men and women.  The hairstyles and clothes would be a bit different, but that’s it.

Up until the shots rang out, the event had been a huge success.  Texas is a lot closer to turning blue than anyone thinks, and has been for a long time.

The image I get of Texas from reading the newspapers is totally at odds with the image I get of Texas when I talk to people from there.

By and large, they are pleasant, gregarious, decent people.  And there is a very good chance that Obama will carry the state in 2012.

Jaromir Graybeard

Last night (yes, the dates on the blog are a bit off – I know I promise a blog a day but sometimes I get a couple of days behind.  Today, for instance, is the 22^nd of February but I need to write 3 or 4 blogs today just to catch up.  Sooner or later I will get my act together) we watched the Czech Republic lose to Russia in Olympic hockey.

There is a long tradition of Czechs losing to the Russians in Hockey, and other things.  That is what, perhaps, made the Gold Medal in Nagano, in 1998, so sweet.  If you ask Czechs (who are old enough) where they were when the Russian tanks rolled in in ’68, you will get some vague answer which, in essence, means mind your own business, foreigner.  Even if you ask them where they were in 1989, when communism ended for good and all, which almost everybody counts as a win, you get a vague answer.  But ask them about Nagano, 1968, and it’s seared into their memory.

They are proud enough of Antonin Dvorak and Karel Capek, and teach their children about them in school, but they love Jaromir Jagr.

I’m not a huge fan of Jaromir Jagr.  I arrived in the Czech Republic about 2 weeks after the miracle at Nagano, so I wasn’t so caught up in all the hero worship.  I’m sure he’s a fantastic hockey player.  After all, the New York Rangers paid him many millions of dollars and I’m sure their managers know a lot more about hockey than me.  It just seems to me, in the years that I’ve been here, that he’s done a lot better in the NHL than he has when playing for the national team.  And he gives really dull and boring interviews, but that’s pretty much par for the course for athletes.  We don’t expect them to be geniuses or even scintillating personalities.  Terry Bradshaw is an exception.

Mostly I’m just sick of hearing about him.  Last night, after the game, he was being interviewed (Czech TV will occasionally interview other players – but they always interview Jagr) and I noticed something – white hair in his beard.  In his scruffy, little, too-cool- to- shave- but- not- going- to- grow- a- proper- Abe- Lincoln beard.

(That’s how old I am.  The Yasser Arafat unshaven look has gone from slovenliness to high fashion to eh, that’s the way everybody wears it now and I’ve never got over seeing it as slovenliness)

Anyway, my wife pointed out to me that at the time of Nagano they made a big deal about him being one of the youngest on the team and now they are talking about him being one of the oldest.

I try not to be sexist but I don’t like the idea of women as firefighters, boxers or combat soldiers.  And I try not to be age-ist but, really, athletes should be young.  Full of energy, ambition and hope for the future.  They should not have white beards.

My Way, My Ass

If there’s any song I hate, it’s Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

Not because it’s Sinatra.  Generally, I like Sinatra.  I know all the stories about him being connected with the mafia and also an arrogant asshole, but I’m not going to worry too much about that.  If I can enjoy the poetry of Ezra Pound, and films by Elia Kazan, I can excuse old Frank for being a bit of a dick and knowing some unsavory folks.  In fact I very often do Sinatra at Karaoke events.  I swear I’ve got Mack the Knife down pat.

No, it’s just My Way.  It goes back to my childhood.  It seemed that whenever there was an event where adults gathered, from weddings to my Dad’s union picnics, the band would play My Way and all the old men would sing along, like it was the national anthem or something like that.

As I looked around the room I could tell, although probably not until late in my teens, that they were all full of shit.  They didn’t do it their way.  Salaried workers, damned near every last one of them.  A few farmers here and there, who did it Monsanto’s way or not at all.  And that irritated me.  I don’t like self-congratulation.

I often wondered, then, what song would be the “My Way” of my generation.  It’s “Free Bird.”  The crowd calls for it, and reacts to it, in the same way.  And it’s just as full of shit.  “I’m as free as a bird now….like a bird, I can’t change.”  Free, but can’t change.  That sums it up.  A bird is only free to be a bird and we are only free to be what our natural born talents allow us to be within the context of our society.  Fair enough, but not much to sing about.

Anyway, the song My Way was in the news recently in a couple of ways.  First, it was the theme of Joe Lieberman’s birthday party.  He’s very old and hopefully will be dead soon, but he’s exactly the self-congratulatory sort of old prick I would have suspected of liking that song.  Sure, he did it his way.  His way was to do whatever the insurance companies, and Israel, and the military industrial complex wanted.  Nothing to be terribly proud of.

But while I was reading through the comments over at Wonkette, I was directed to a news article about karaoke murders in the Philippines.  By far the greatest number of victims had been singing My Way immediately before getting whacked.

The article introduced a couple of possible reasons for this.  One was that it was such a popular song that audience members were frequently outraged when it was sung badly.  Another theory was that, because it’s such a popular song, it’s statistically inevitable that it would be involved in the greatest number of murders.

They missed the most obvious explanation.  I’m not the only one who hates that song.