Star Wars Mythos

Growing up, seeing Star Wars and their sequels at the drive-in, I thought I was seeing the greatest science fiction movies of all time. This is the silly idea of what a child thinks SF is. Star Wars, at least the three 'real' films, are no more science fiction than The Matrix is. In fact, you'd have to tip the hat to The Matrix as far as science fiction goes, but not by much. The Matrix simply has more science fiction trappings to drape over its shoulders. They're both Fantasy, and they're both just simple retellings of the Monomyth, or the Hero's Journey.

Now, I love both trilogies, although the second Matrix movie isn't one I tend to watch when it's on cable. But there have always been things about Star Wars that have always bugged me, and that's what I'm going to write on today. What I hate about them is Droids have no rights.

This is where the Star Trek universe and Star Wars differ. How many episodes have there been where ST writers have tried to establish that technology-created personalities deserve to be recognized as citizens? At least two, one in Next Generation and one in Voyager. The poor Droids in Star Wars have no such recognition.

In fact, if you watch the movies, they're literally treated as little more than smart toasters that can walk/roll. When 3PO has all his fucking limbs shot off, as well as his head, the reaction isn't one of horror but of irritation. "Oh 3PO! You're a mess!" Like somebody just upended his crumb drawer and well fuck now we're gonna have to clean it up.

Or the multiple times R2 is shot up. While 3PO nells it up that his butch top just got a laser labotomy, everybody else is just kind of shrugging their shoulders and going "Oh, well we'll just get him some new circuits or something." I don't know about you, but if I considered somebody a sentient being whose life I valued, seeing their brains shot out would be a horror. Heck, if I came home and my HDTV had a pixel out, I'd probably find religion over it.

It makes me wonder why as a kid I identified with the Droids so much. Of course, I didn't notice how they were being treated at the time, but yeah, that's how people treated me as a kid. I wasn't a real person... oh just ignore him til he stops his crying. Kind of pissed me off, a lot.

I also had a sub-topic dealing with Dark City and how Roger Ebert, in BOTH his commentaries, never mentions the very important line that Mr. Hand (Richard O'Brien) utters on the rooftops: "We use your dead as vessels." Considering we know the true form of the aliens are inside these bodies, it makes the movie a little more horrifying; so they're experimenting on us AND when we die they scoop out our brains and crawl inside to animate us? GROSS. However, it's almost midnight and I need to get up early, so bed time for me.

Also I'm proud to say I've never seen any of the SAW movies.

Bendis

I'm taking the day off from work because I'm sick. I really shouldn't be sitting here typing this. I should be in bed. I should amend that, I really shouldn't be sitting here in bed typing this, I should be resting. Or, if I insist on sitting up, I should just be mindlessly watching TV and not getting out of bed for anything but peeing and juice refills.

But I have more than just that bug. I have a bug up my ass. That's why I'm sitting up typing this. And this bug's name is Brian Michael Bendis.

I remember when I was first introduced to Bendis; my friend gave me a birthday gift of, among other things, the first Powers trade collection. I'm always wary of this friend, because he tends to do that "well I like this so surely my friend will like it too" kind of gift giving that really is not the safest way to give gifts if you're wanting everybody to be happy in the end. In this particular case he hit a home run.

Bendis had a fresh new voice for comics, and was part of an emerging crew of writers that were really changing the face of modern funnybooks. Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar among others. Yes, yes, Alan Moore and what'shisBatmanface originally changed the landscape of comics back in the 80s, but come on... things just snapped back after that. Does nobody remember Maximum Clonage?

So Bendis comes along and damn, if he's not awesome. Powers? Awesome. Alias? Beyond awesome. Daredevil? The best it's been since Frank Miller (better, I think). Along with the others, it seemed like we'd entered a new golden era of comics.

And then. House of M. Avengers Disassembled. Civil War. One misstep after another, it seemed. It seems the top dogs at Marvel just gave Bendis and Millar keys to the kingdom and said, "Go play! There are no rules." It's like the kid in the sandbox who was the only one who brought toys, and he wants to play with all of them at once. Everybody thinks he's a dickhead.

So now Secret Invasion comes along, and damn if I don't love it. The first book was great. They were all great books. Up until the last one, when nothing happened. Seriously, it's like, did I just read a comic book or not? Because nothing happened. We're at the same place we were in the story before we began. That's the first sign of cracks in the armor.

The second one was it looks like we're going to have to go back and relive fucking House of M again. Yeah, the book is the New Avengers, they're in it about half the time, we have to see House of M through the eyes of the Skrull invaders. Why? Continuity, because some asshole fanboy might question when the Skrulls first invaded and if they'd been replacing our heroes then were they replaced and good God do I hate this.

Is continuity as important as a good story? I was enjoying Secret Invasion just fine. I didn't need to go back a couple of years in New Avengers and see that Luke Cage had figured it out all along! Well isn't he the smartest! He knew they were being manipulated! SEE IT ALL FITS.

I don't care if it all fits. Really, at all. Not anymore. Just tell the story and stop telling the main story in other books. And more than anything, please, please, stop telling the same story from somebody else's POV over and over. I don't care.

Anyway, back to being sick.

Dallas

When I lived in Dallas there came a time in my life when it seemed all the most important people to me were moving out of the city for one reason or another. Now, this included people I needed to stop associating with for health reasons, people who I know I would have a bond with no matter where either of us lived, and people I just wanted to fuck. Still, those are three very important qualifications, and it was distressing to see them all go. So when the time came, I took an offer and left.

Now it seems that I can't get away from people wanting to move to Dallas. No less than five people I've been associating with and/or talking to are moving to the city. This makes me feel weird, like I've got some Dallas germ that I've passed along to yankees.

What I'm surprised by is how it doesn't make me feel bad at all, or give me some desire to return to the place. No, don't get me wrong. I loved almost all of Dallas. The two things I didn't like were the High Five and the sun. Thunderstorms were rare, and they were nowhere near as fun as in Kentucky, but they were there, occasionally.

Up here, well, I have to say the weather is much more to my suiting. It's the first day of fall and the skies are horribly overcast. Not a drop of the sun is making it through. I quite like it. It's better of course when it's storming, but this year was a mild season for that, although last night we did have a surprise cloudburst which led to a harrowing drive home from my birthday supper with friends.

I just find it interesting that so many people I've been peripherally associating with are heading to my old stomping grounds. I wonder who they'll meet that I knew from back then, because they inevitably will meet some of them. I wonder if those people will talk about me at all.

I wouldn't say I miss Dallas. Nostalgia isn't the same thing.

Disney

Let me set the record straight: I don't hate Disney.

I visited my brother in California a long time ago and he took me to Disneyland. I was pretty excited about going. It's such an iconic destination, how could you not be? And everybody who I know who went to Disneyland all share some kind of special bond, it seems. This would be life-changing.

About an hour into the trip, I looked at my brother and his friend, and they were having a grand old time, and that's when it hit me: I didn't like anything about what we were doing. Literally, I didn't like it. I wasn't having a bad time, I just wasn't interested in any of it. I wasn't interested in getting a mouse ear hat, or some giant swirly lolly pop with Donald Duck on it, I didn't care for Cinderella's castle or the Pirates of the Carribean ride. None of it was interesting to me.

Then I realized I've never cared for Disney. Ever! It was quite a shock. I'd just assumed... well, actually, I hadn't assumed anything. Disney was just this thing. I never thought about it and wasn't interested in it at all.

Then Goofy came up to us and I wanted to punch him in his nuts.

I feel kind of bad about this. I have a friend who is a Disney nut who posts all the time now about his trips and obsession, and I feel kind of bad when I realize he's written another post I'm just going to skip over. I mean, you could be the best writer in the world and I don't think you'd be able to make me interested in anything about Disney, ever. But, I guess my friend understands this.

Still, I don't want anybody to think I'm just a miserly old geezer and not really a kid at heart, because I am. I just... Disney. It's not for me.

The First Post is Always the Hardest

So, here's my first post on this blog. It may become my main blog.

I work in the telecommunications biz and I am an amateur video editor. The first subject for this blog is the most popular online video I've done, which is this one:


Common / People - a Kirk-Spock slash mashup from kirk spock on Vimeo.

It's a 'slash-up' of William Shatner's cover of Pulp's Common People and video from the Star Trek animated series, done to a theme of Kirk/Spock stories. As of this writing, it's been on Youtube for three months and has generated 177,000+ views.

I did another mashup video, to the episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer called "The Body" and Sheryl Crow's song "On The Outside" from the original TV soundtrack to the X-Files. That can be found here:


On the Outside - The Body/Sheryl Crow mashup remix from kirk spock on Vimeo.

It was flagged by Youtube the day after I put it up, so it's only on Vimeo, and I worry that it'll get taken down from there, too. But as of now it's still there.

If I have other blogs registered, why this one? Well, because I'll feel more open in this one, thinking nobody is reading. I can't post openly in my other blog, as I have an online stalker who is obsessed with me. (p.s. Everybody you contacted knows it's you, you psycho.) Therefore, I likely won't post personal stuff here, just geek stuff.

There are many subjects I'd like to touch on. Marvel's Secret Invasion series is one, but that's a post for another time, when I've read a new issue. I guess I should just touch on wondering why UPS hates me.

When I lived in another city and state, a long, long time ago, my apartment number was "I." Now, that's not a one, it's the letter "i." So when I'd order something from UPS, they would label the package as "no such address" and not deliver it, despite the fact that all the other fucking apartments had letters for numbers as well.

I should probably have mentioned that there might be swearing in this blog.

So this is a pattern in my life, where UPS simply cannot figure out where I live and they give up on my package. It happens all the time. Currently I live in an apartment that has an actual street address (it's a duplex). That address, for some reason, was placed at the bottom of the door instead of the top. Because of this, UPS freaks their own shit when they look for my place, and they give up rather easily. For the past two days I've been trying to get my copy of WARHAMMER from UPS, and yet three days later I still don't have it. So, pissed off, I wrote Amazon and demanded a refund. Sure, it's not their fault it's not here yet, but UPS isn't going to do squat for me. I'm taking a bunch of X-Box and Wii games off to the GameStop tomorrow and purchasing it.

I plan on playing on a role playing server, because as annoying as role-players are, they're not as annoying as the general populace, and while you won't catch me doing OrcSpeak at any time, I will play "in character." I'm unsure if I'll still use my old handle in the new game, but I liked it so much I probably will.