Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Change Space Force Command to Starfleet Command


Have you seen the logo for the newly created Space Force?



Remind you of something? Look at the logo on Spock’s chest.



(I can’t use the actual Starfleet Command logo. But Star Trek did some black & white publicity photos that they never copyrighted.)

Here’s our chance to change things. At We the People, the site where the White House can be petitioned, I have created the page:


To sign the petition, you have to take a moment to create an account. When 150 signatures have been gathered, it will appear publicly on the We the People site. Then signatures could really start steamrolling.

Please let people know about this—Star Trek fans, people who want to throw a monkey wrench into government, friends with too much sitting-around time. Right now, we have to use the link above, but this could go viral. And who knows what will happen?  

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Movie Review: A Silent Voice

This is the first time I've reviewed a movie on Netflix. 

Shoko is a new girl in an elementary school. She is deaf. Instead of everyone being friendly to her, a number of students bully her, to the extent that they destroy her hearing aids. Shoya, a tough kid, is the meanest. But when Shoya is confronted by the school, he rats out his friends.

Ostracized in junior high, Shoya withdraws. He doesn’t try to make friends in high school. Seriously depressed, he seeks out Shoko in her school. She’s so scared of him, she runs off.

He wants to make amends, but doesn’t know how. What will happen with these two damaged people?



A Silent Voice is a beautiful movie. The way the characters move—whether children, teenagers, or adults—is completely realistic. And in typical Japanese style, there are some static scenes that show flowers or trees. It is up to you to figure out if there is anything symbolic about Shoya extending his arm for some yellow blooms that are beyond his reach.

Be warned, this movie is an emotional roller coaster. It would be nice to say that Shoya simply outgrows being a bully, but that wouldn’t be true. He had to go through his own torturous time. And it would be nice to say that Shoko stays a cheerful person, but she is just as emotionally damaged as he is. And the school doesn’t seem equipped to deal with bullying. There are no simple solutions here; just individuals not knowing how to put their lives back together from bullying and depression.

The movie does have some flaws. The names Shoya and Shoko sound too much alike. The early parts of the story are shown in a disjointed manner, which can be confusing. The use of a blue X on a person’s face to show that Shoya is not making eye contact gets tiresome. And the movie feels like it’s a little too long. However, it’s realistic in that getting over that much emotional damage would not happen instantly.

I’ve never been to Japan, but here are a few notes to explain some curiosities in the movie:

Q. What’s with all the hair colors?
A. Some anime show people all with dark hair. In this case, the animators chose very different hair colors so we can easily tell the characters apart.

Q. Why does Shoya’s mother always cook meals on what looks like a large hot plate in the middle of their equivalent of a dining table?
A. That’s normal in Japan.

Q. How much is a yen worth?
A. Less than a penny.

Q. What are the hand motions Shoya’s mother makes towards him while he is in their car?
A. In the West, we beckon with one finger up. In Japan, it’s four fingers down. So at first she beckons to him with four fingers down, then changes her mind and splays her hand at him, telling him to stay.

Q. Why do Shoko and her mother suddenly dress in kimonos?
A. For some festivals, women and teenage girls still dress in kimonos.

I know that some purists will wish to see the subtitled version, but with some characters speaking at the same time, the dubbed version will be easier to understand.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Movie Review: 1917


During World War I, Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) is told that his brother’s battalions is about to walk into a trap set by the Germans. They will be massacred. Because the phone lines are cut, he and his friend Lance Corporal Will Schofield (George MacKay) are ordered to cross no-man’s land to warn them.

The Germans have withdrawn as a way of setting the trap. The two friends set out, making their way through the gruesome and corpse-strewn no-man’s land, though other soldiers warn them they have no chance of surviving. Will it be safe to use the German trenches? How can two lone soldiers hope to make their way through enemy-occupied territory to warn the other battalion?


1917 is the most immersive war movie I have ever seen. We are right there with them with seemingly impossible close-ups as they make their way through mud, rats, water-filled craters, claustrophobic trenches, and mutilated corpses. At no point was I aware that anyone was acting. They simply were the soldiers going through hazard after hazard, thinking they will be shot at any moment. The film is done in a continuous style, so the movie gives the impression it was done in two or three shots—no shifting to other viewpoints or convenient scene cuts.

This goes right up there with Saving Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers as the most realistic war movies. Some of you have sat through the horrifying first twenty minutes or so of Saving Private Ryan, but I have to warn you, the state of the corpses shown makes Saving Private Ryan look like a coming-out party. Hours later, I still feel stunned.

As long as you know what you’re in for, I recommend 1917.

Monday, January 6, 2020

Mallrats


Did anyone else see the inexplicable teenage mob at Alderwood Mall this past Saturday? (It’s a large shopping mall in Lynnwood, a suburb of Seattle.) Here are excerpts from a journal entry I was doing that day, when I planned to sort out magazines and newsletters, some of them years old.

12:40 – 1:50 Drove to Alderwood Mall. I walked around the mall twice on the inside for exercise.

1:50 – 2:35 Sorted through old magazines and newsletters I had brought with me. I did this in the food court, near the windows. A massive amount of teenagers were in the entrance to the food court from the main part of the mall, and in the food court itself. This made it difficult to walk through, because they were standing around in clusters, the way teens usually do.

2:35 – 3:25 I decided to get some lunch. The teenagers in the food court had reached critical mass. The majority of them filled the center of the food court, which is quite large. They talked loudly to hear each other in their clusters, which caused the cascade effect of their talking even louder. I tried to walk through them, but they were so densely packed it became physically impossible without shoving them aside. I squeezed my way out and did a circuitous route to the Panda Express.
            I observed them while standing in line. They did not seem to be in the mall for any big event. They were all in their clusters, talking among themselves, but not to other teens in neighboring clusters. They were so densely packed, shoulder to shoulder and back to back, they formed one big mob. They were all talking excitedly, taking pictures of themselves, and doing normal teen things, but all in a mass. They didn’t seem self-conscious of this odd gathering.
            All I could figure is that one group of teens would observe others standing around, so they would go to the “happening” place. They ranged from middle school to high school, with mostly no sign of parents.
            So I got my bowl of noodles and one entrée from the Panda Express for $8.78. It cost $1.25 extra because I chose the honey walnut shrimp. (Historians get an idea of how much food cost because of journal entries like this.) It took a long time because they had to cook up a new batch of the shrimp entrée. In other words, the crowds of teenagers were there from at least 1:50, and they formed the big central mass sometime after that. They were still that way when I sat down to eat. I’ve never seen this many teenagers all together at a mall before.
            I sat down well away from them and continued to observe them as I ate. Occasionally, a girl in one of the clusters would give out a squeal of excitement, but the teens in the other clusters wouldn’t notice. So again, there was no one event going on that attracted them.
            A couple of teen girls walked towards the massive crowd so quickly, their breeze blew the napkin off my lap.
            Eventually, a couple of security people showed up and inched their way into the crowd. After a while, the crowd dispersed, as slow as molasses. That meant clusters of teens were now wandering around the food court. They were still loud.
            I went back to my car to get more magazines and newsletters.

2:35 – 4:10 I did more sorting. The teenagers were pretty much gone, so the food court was back to normal.

I was tempted to take pictures of what I hope was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But I don’t tend to publish pictures of minors without their parents’ approval. So here’s a generic picture of some teens.


photo by Alagich Katya

Just multiply in a dense space, and add those jeans with pre-torn rents in the front that some girls wear.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Book Review: Terminal Alliance

In a future where galactic civilization will be dominated by highly advanced aliens, humans are not advanced at all. In fact, Earth’s civilization has collapsed. So humans are only considered good enough to be two things: Infantry or janitors.


Lieutenant Mops Adamopoulos and her motley team are janitors on an alien ship. When the ship gets struck by a missile, they have to go clean up a cracked sewer line—because that’s what humans are good for. But they get attacked by their fellow humans who have gone feral—shambling dolts who want to eat other sentient beings. How did this happen? Will it spread to other humans? 


Click to enlarge
to see the spray bottles

Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines is a decent adventure story. Mops and her crew have individual personalities, and the odd way humans are viewed by the various alien species is amusing. A disadvantage in Hines’ writing style is too much detail at times: He will give a detailed description of a character who is never seen again in the story. Or he will give a detailed description of a distant scene, and the characters just walk past it.

Mops and her team go from one alien world to another, trying to solve the mystery of what is happening to the remnants of humanity. Their janitorial team boldly outsmarts aliens, shimmies though pipes, explores sewage lines for evidence, and gets in gun battles on a galactic scale, which seems kind of improbable, but that is in keeping with the comic undertone of the story. On my first pass through, I thought the story dragged after the first quarter of the book. However, something about it made me want to read it a second time. The book had just enough interactions among the characters, amusing incidents, and forward motion that made it worth a second look.

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