Thank You, Captain Obvious

This was on a table of snacks. One woman said if you can’t figure that out, you deserve what effects they have on you.

In other news, water is wet, and vacuums suck.

The following picture is kind of the opposite of obvious. Notice how the Revival Sermons of Jonathan Edwards is displayed between the females from the Batman series and Wonder Woman.

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Jonathan Edwards is famous for his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” 

They did this because . . . not sure.

Dawson’s Creek Dream

I think it’s important for writers to write down their dreams. I had this one Monday night.

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In my dream, I was in the TV series Dawson’s Creek. I and another guy saw Dawson standing on a short stool. A rope led from his mouth to a doorknob several feet in front of him.

He said he had a toothache, and this was how he was going to pull the tooth out. But he became hesitant about going through with it.

Joey was there. I said, “Joey, grab his feet. I and this other guy will tackle him at his shoulders.”

She bent down and moved forward to grab his feet. Dawson didn’t like the idea, so he waved us off.

Dawson jumped backwards off the stool. The rope pulled his tooth out.

He showed it to us. It was a large molar with faint black streaks on the back. He said that showed where the cavity was inside.

Later, Joey and I went to a dance we had organized. Couples were dancing in a large, dark room in formal styles, holding hands as they went through practiced moves.

Joey asked me to dance. She said it in a non-romantic way—just something to do instead of standing around.

We danced without holding hands. The room around us was black now. I think Cindy Lauper’s song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was playing. I tried to imitate Joey’s moves, saying I wasn’t familiar with this form of dance. She said I was doing it perfectly.

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Imagine her younger, with long hair

Sources of the dream:

I wasn’t a fan of Dawson’s Creek, but I watched part of the first season. I thought Katie Holmes was pretty, just like Shiri Appleby in Roswell.

My current workplace has Muzak from the 80s. That’s probably where the song came from.

I went to the dentist on Monday. A tooth might have a tiny crack in it too small for their X-rays to pick up. I may need to get a crown.

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:

Change the name of Space Force Command to Starfleet Command

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?  

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.

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.

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.

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? 

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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.

Movie Review: Richard Jewell

Richard Jewell is named after the security guard who spotted a backpack bomb in Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He saved an immense amount of lives by running around, warning the crowd to evacuate. The movie tells the true story of how he was falsely accused of being the bomber.

Jewell fit the profile of someone who would plant a bomb to then become a hero by finding it: He was white, male, and had a lifelong dream of becoming a police officer. The FBI distrusted such wannabe cops. The local paper managed to get a leak of the investigation, then ran with the story. Because of that, the FBI was under pressure to resolve things quickly, so they ramped up the pressure on him.

If my description of the movie seems simple, it’s because the movie tells his story in a plain, straight-forward manner. There are no plot gimmicks or forced melodrama. It simply shows what happened.

Paul Walter Hauser should get an Oscar nomination for his performance. Hauser completely becomes Richard Jewell, a working-class hero who has no idea how to grapple with the forces out to destroy him. And Kathy Bates as his longsuffering mother is amazing as she shows the anguish she went through.

Clint Eastwood produced and directed. He has complete credibility for this sort of movie. Those of you who are old enough will remember the saying, “It took Nixon to go to China.” That is, President Nixon was so thoroughly anti-Communist before and during his presidency, he could go and open relations with Communist China without the American people thinking he was betraying us. In the same way, Clint Eastwood as an actor is most famously known as his Dirty Harry character, who had to unflinchingly use lethal force to deal with the worst of street criminals. Obviously, Clint Eastwood is not anti-law enforcement. But he can show how horrible things can become when law enforcement goes out of control.

One of the FBI agents does say something interesting in the movie. A profile is just “a jumping-off point.” It’s just a start, but then they need evidence. Watch the movie and see if they ever have any.

Pearl Harbor Day—A day that will live in . . . ignorance?

These were real conversations that took place years ago in a previous workplace on a December 7th. After all, the people I work with can’t be this ... Well, we’ll see. The conversations were so remarkable, I jotted them down at the time.

photo by Stan Shebs 

Worker: Do you know what the significance of December 7^th is?

Co-Worker #1: No.

Worker: Think: What happened in December 7^th?

Co-Worker #1: The stock market crashed.

Worker: You are kidding me! This is the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Co-Worker #1: Well, that was before my era. That was your era.

Worker: Wait a minute! I wasn’t born in the 40’s.

Co-Worker #1: Well, we didn’t study about that in school. We studied things like World War II.

Worker: Pearl Harbor was a part of World War II!

Co-Worker #1: Well, we didn’t study that. We studied about the fighting and stuff.

Worker: That was part of the fighting! That was how we got into the war.

Co-Worker #1: Well, I know.

Then, maybe a minute later:

Worker: Can you tell me what day is today?

Co-Worker #2: Your birthday?

Worker: No, what happened today, December 7^th?

Co-Worker #2: I know what happened on December 8^th. John Lennon died.

Still later:

Worker: Can you tell me what happened today, December 7^th, in history?

Co-Worker #3: I don’t know.

Worker: Do you know?

Co-Worker #3: VJ Day?

Worker: Well, you’re the closest

What’s remarkable about these conversations is the co-workers show a level of intelligence, using words like “era,” remembering the date of John Lennon’s death, making a guess about VJ Day. But these people were stunningly ignorant about the obvious.

These conversations occurred before smartphones were around, so they can’t be blamed for lowering the IQs of these people. (This was from a very old piece of paper I unearthed while sorting through old things. It proved very timely for today.)

It reminds me of a girl in high school who was authentically dumb. (If this offends you, start your own blog and describe dumb guys.) In our junior or senior year, a huge map of Europe had been displayed on the chalkboard for the entire semester of our history class. It had the word “Europe” in large, black letters, curving across the entire continent.

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Something like this, but with the letters larger and

going in a graceful curve across the continent

For some reason, she was standing towards the front of the class and staring at the map. She stared, stared, stared, looking increasingly confused. Finally she asked the teacher, “Where’s America on this map?”

The teacher paused for a moment to collect herself, then said calmly, “That’s a map of Europe.”

Without any hint of embarrassment or self-reproach, she said, “Oh.” She continued to stare at the map.

To her credit, she seemed to be well-liked.