For those of you following along with my email-listing updates regarding the Boeing 2707 eBay listing and how to get in on it… it has now closed. The package of proposal books, art & diagram showed up today, and now the process of scanning begins.
For those of y’all reading this going “WTF?” and wondering why you don’t know what I’m yapping about and why you’re not on the list to receive a gigabyte or so of SST stuff… probably has something to do with you not being on the emailing list.
As I pointed out a few posts back, I liked the recently unveiled trailer for the 2014 “Godzilla.” It just seems creepy and serious. But someone else posted a few comments HERE that got me thinking about it further, and *if* the film goes in the right direction, it could be *really* good:
I love how they’re evoking the feeling of overwhelming, primordial terror here. The music, the aura of storm and lightning that seems to follow Godzilla. It’s almost Lovecraftian, eldritch in tone. The monster is this titanic, inscrutable and inimical force of nature that’s absolutely terrifying to witness.
The whole subtext of Gojira at his Hadean Eon, Cosmic Horror best is: This Planet is Not Yours, Mankind.
Neat.
The previous American “Godzilla” was just a big dumb animal stomping around New York making a mess. It was not an existential threat; worst came to it, you knew that the USAF could have shoved an AGM-86 up it’s keister and vaporized it with a nuke. I know a lot of people like the Japanese Godzilla movies, but they never seemed to me to be much more than “a guy in a rubber suit stomping around Micro-Tokyo making a mess.” It all seemed terribly silly. But the possibility exists that something really remarkable could be made of it, if the movie makers follow the Lovecraftian “Cosmic Horror” model.
A monster in the Lovecraft mold is a bit different from most. In general, the better ones are more like a force of nature than a traditional monster. A Lovecraftian monster isn’t out to scare you, or hurt you, or kill you… you are beneath its notice. And that’s something that just bugs the hell out of people: when their enemy has so little regard for them that they simply ignore them, people go bonkers. And so a Lovecraftian monster would cause all manner of mayhem, and would threaten the extinction of Man or All Life On Earth… and not even really notice that they are doing it, or care if they did know. It would be simply a matter of clearing the surface off to Cthulhuform the planet to their liking with no more notice taken of us than we’d care about the bacteria wiped out when dusting a tabletop.
Lovecrafts futilitarian worldview, where all of Man’s great achievements are, at best, making a very slight delaying action against the inevitable victory of cosmic forces of chaos we couldn’t possible hope to understand (never mind defeat) would make a hell of a monster movie. Will “Godzilla” live up to that? Probably not. I had equally high hopes for “Cloverfield” back when nobody knew a thing about it and the possibility still existed that it just might be a Cthulhu Attacks New York movie. But a guy can dream.
Try this on for size:
A 165-year-old law that threatens anyone calling for the abolition of the monarchy with life imprisonment is technically still in force – after the Ministry of Justice admitted wrongly announcing that it had been repealed.
It’s not been used in more than a century, but it’s still on the books.
Those who have read this blog for a while, and perhaps in particular the recent “2001” posts, might be able to understand that Lewis Black’s rant last night on The Daily Show struck a chord.
The Daily Show
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Whenever I start getting worried about China maybe taking over the world, I see news stories like this:
China School Teaches Children Kung Fu – to Fight Against Air Pollution
If the article is accurate (who knows), the facts are *almost* as mind-snappingly stupid as the headline might lead you to believe. While they aren’t using Kung Fu moves to keep smog at bay, they are using Kung Fu moves to somehow – apparently magically – mitigate the effects of smog.
Two of them are particularly interesting:
1) Very deep breathing. Because if there’s something you want to do with airborne particulates, it’s force them as deep into your lungs as possible.
2) “Pressing the Hegu acupoint, located between the thumb and index finger at the back of the hand, helps promote lungs’ detoxification.”
Riiiiiiiiiight.
In a way, it’s comforting to see that the US isn’t alone in having anti-science idjits as typified by the anti-vaxxers, newage aficionados, creationists, “prayer instead of surgery & meds” types, and so on. Perhaps, if China really does start to become a force to be reckoned with, the CIA would do well to run a black propaganda campaign in China to convince the Chinese people and government to reject “western” science and medicine in favor of traditional Chinese folk remedies. As the man said, there’s a reason why “alternative medicine” isn’t just called “Medicine.”
Ah, nothing brightens ones day quite like reading a North Korean press release about someone that repressive socialist (but then, I repeat myself) regime has executed:
Some highlights:
The accused Jang brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state. …
Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.
The accused is a traitor to the nation for all ages who perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system. …
However, despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him. …
When his cunning move proved futile and the decision that Kim Jong Un was elected vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea at the Third Conference of the WPK in reflection of the unanimous will of all party members, service personnel and people was proclaimed, making all participants break into enthusiastic cheers that shook the conference hall, he behaved so arrogantly and insolently as unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people. …
He was so imprudent as to prevent the Taedonggang Tile Factory from erecting a mosaic depicting Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and a monument to field guidance given by them. Moreover, Jang turned down the unanimous request of the service personnel of a unit of the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces to have the autograph letter sent by Kim Jong Un to the unit carved on a natural granite and erected with good care in front of the building of its command. He was so reckless as to instruct the unit to erect it in a shaded corner.
Spectacular.
Note to Jay Carney: next time you need to spout an official line you know to be rubbish, use this style. People still won’t believe you, but at least it’ll be more entertaining.
Someone *please* buy this. I could use the percentage-pittance from the referral…
| List Price: | $44,999.99 |
| Price: | $39,997.99 & FREE Shipping. Details |
| You Save: | $5,002.00 (11%) |
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Huh. Color me stunned, but this actually looks pretty good. Not “wacky hijinks” like the one a decade ago, but more “oh crap we’re all gonna die.” And if you don’t recognize the “music” that the trailer starts off with… well, you fail Basic Science Fiction Appreciation 101.
[youtube 2nP5s2Y3yJE]
