nature doesn’t love us

This morning contained a nice, quiet, blue-gray dawn sky as my dogs did their thing. I enjoyed it. But then on my journey to evil cubicle, I heard on the news we’ve got the birth of our first hurricane of the season. And so nature’s decided to remind everybody just exactly who’s running things.

These planetary death machines generate the energy equivalent of a hydrogen bomb about every six minutes. The planet laughs at our own feeble attempts to destroy ourselves. Wherever a hurricane wants to go, it’ll go, and if it so desires it’ll lay waste to everything in its path. All we can do is run and rebuild.

Nature doesn’t love us. It might be beautiful, give us joy, or show us our purpose in life. But try having a chat with a grizzly bear and you’ll get reminded that the love is not necessarily reciprocated. Or try running from an earthquake. The planet is amused by this as you stumble about, unable to find your footing, as if wasted on tequila.

Why do we put up with this? Maybe we should fight back? Go hit a tree with a bat? Or discharge a firearm in the direction of an oncoming hurricane? To quote everyday-working-man Charles Montgomery Burns:

 

master burns

“Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor. Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well, I say hard cheese.”

 

I once heard on a documentary that weather, as in hurricanes, is nothing more than the planet’s attempt to equalize conditions throughout the globe. When you stop and think about this, in a dark-cynical way common to my unhinged-freak mind, if nature was really interested in equalizing the planet’s conditions? If it could, it might equalize us out of existence.

But it can’t, so at least we’ve got that going for us. Hey speaking of erasing humans from existence, do any other childhood losers similar to me remember the genocide ending to Final Fantasy VII? Do you remember that? That after spending countless hours of your young life and all along you didn’t know that “victory” entailed liquidating the human race? It was like waking up and realizing you were wearing an SS Stormtrooper uniform.

It has come to my attention while reading of a possible remake of the game that there are actually people who claim the ending of said game did not involve mass extinction of the race. This is lunacy. The game’s message was quite clear. They meant exactly what they said. The Gaia concept is all over the game. It’s also explicitly referred to in the movie which Hironobu Sakaguchi wrote and directed himself.

 

genocide

attention haters; kindly point out to me, the location of the humans in this scene?

 

I’m no doctor or scientist, but when you really think about what the Gaia folks are saying, it essentially devalues the human race (you) to nothing more than an expendable biological organism that is part of the greater whole. So why shouldn’t the planet be able to kill you?

I guarantee you there’s at least one doctor or scientist on this planet who so believes in this concept that they’re, right this very second, trying to find a way to kill us all, 12 Monkeys style. It is for this reason I don’t post my Guests’ contact info anywhere.

This stuff is all rather creepy. The idea that our greatest threat might not be hydrogen bombs, or hurricanes, or climate change, or nature in general; but rather, criminally insane but smart people who subscribe to the concept that the greatest threat to us, to the planet, is us.

Sooner or later they’re going to (hopefully) arrest a person who’s trying to do this before he/she succeeds. And we’ll all be shocked at how close they came. When they catch this dude, we need to be sure to reinstitute medieval style public executions.

Because, seriously, whatever. This is our home. God / Nature / Ham Sandwich put us on this planet to live long and prosper. And so we need to do exactly that.

And when the hurricanes or earthquakes come we have to endure them like we always have. But rather than firing a handgun at a tornado, perhaps we should also try and give some love back to nature. Even though nature doesn’t love us. Call it tough love, I guess? After all, I still got to see that beautiful dawn this morning. So thanks Nature.

 

danny

BRING IT ON!!!

I’m glad science is finally paying us back what we’re owed

Let’s humbly acknowledge our role in paying for all of this. Our carefully appropriated research and development funds took 38 years to yield a functioning speeder bike. And 26 years for a hoverboard. So we should all expect a check in the mail in the next week or so.

 

Hoverbike

Coming soon to a wooded National Park near you; a 700% increase in death by tree strikes

 

Coming soon from Lexus (ignore unrelated smoke-like appearance)

hoverboardlexus

[lunatic wide eyes] Baaatttterrr Up!

 

But I want to know where the hell is the rest of our damn money. Our funds have led to a whole bunch of projects and I’m just sitting here, waiting, drinking beer, and tapping my finger on the table. I paid $4 a seat many years back, and I still don’t have:

 

– Skyways & Hover Conversion; 26 year delay

docbrown

“I’m on it, I’m on it, [shifty eyed] I know I promised these by 2015, but I’ve been, a little backed up lately. I saw Breaking Bad, and decided to get into the meth business, so I’m running behind on the car.” [panting] [panting] [panting]

“Doc are you getting into your own stash? Doc? Doc?!”

 

– Upgraded Dialing Machine; 33 year delay

et phone home

If this piece of shit could communicate between freaking stars, and all they did is upgrade it, I could harness the technology to solve minor problems like cold fusion. Also, does anybody remember TI Speak & Spell!?!?

 

– Self Driving SUV; 22 year delay

Google’s self-driving clown car is a joke. Where’s my autonomous SUV that’s so durable it can mostly survive a vicious assault from a deranged creature seven-hundred times it’s size?

jurassicpark-trex-footmud-full

Uh, he can probably see you even if you don’t move. You should run. Like, honest. “Go. Go now!” It worked out well for the other guy.

 

– Buildings on Sky Stilts; 52 year delay

It worked for Cloud City, it’ll work just fine in Frisco.  What could go wrong?  It must be done.

JETSONS

 

– Man Portable Death Ray; 29 year delay

death ray

If the machines took over tomorrow, what are we supposed to defend ourselves with? America’s existing 300 million carbon based firearms? Ordinary journeyman and teenaged-girl-stalker Kyle Reese made himself pretty clear that all those ordinary guns are ineffective against the machines. And so, …

bale

Oh.

“…well, then that would be even better.”

Life is not a dream. It’s really not. I know this because right now I’m drinking an awesome beer surrounded by my dogs. This is real. So are we. And so are the ideas that keep us going.

Leonard Nimoy knew this. Better than most I suspect. It bled through his art. And if Nimoy was anything, an artist in the old sense he was. He wrote books and poetry, he took photographs, he mastered the craft of the motion picture.

It is this reason, not just because people love Spock, that made him a household name. He had the power to tell us who we are. He made it seem like he wasn’t one of us, when he was actually among the best of us.

More than anybody else, Nimoy made Star Trek. Everybody thinks it was Priceline Senόr Bancό de Rόbber Bill Shatner. It wasn’t. In the beginning, nobody working on the show really liked Shatner or Gene Roddenberry. Although folks don’t talk about it openly, except perhaps George Takei, you get the idea that things tended to almost fall apart because Shatner and Roddenberry were arrogant jerks.

Later, Nimoy and Shatner would actually build respect and ultimately a deep friendship. When you read about how Nimoy tried to help Shatner with the troubles and ultimate tragic death of his wife, it brings tears to your eyes. It’s rather strange but poetic, that two men who were friends only on screen for so many decades would actually find friendship later in life when they needed each other the most.

Don’t get me wrong, Bill cleaned up his act and I really like the guy. A lot of people still call him a bad actor. Mostly those who have never watched all of Star Trek or one episode of The Practice. But it’s clear to me, that without Nimoy, Star Trek would have been an unknown bad hack science fiction nothing.

I have the idea that Nimoy kept everybody together. Everybody else on set showed up because Nimoy was there. And the idea that was Star Trek, it was his as much as Roddenberry’s. Nimoy’s view of what Star Trek was is best exemplified by his goal with The Voyage Home where he said:

“…no dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy. I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film and if somewhere in the mix we lobbed a couple of big ideas at them, well, then that would be even better.”

This was Star Trek. A fun show the whole family could watch, but also riddled with big ideas that could melt the brain of any serious adult. When I was a young idiot, I couldn’t stand The Voyage Home. I’d be like, “what’s with these stupid whales, man, when is somebody going to get cut in half.” But when I rewatched it last year, I couldn’t believe what a joy it was. It’s a masterpiece. I breathed in the happiness.

In a modern storytelling age where the fog of doom is pervasive, it’s comforting to go back and watch a view of the future not owned by failure and bleached skeletons. Nimoy’s future of a still flawed but noble humanity with a bright existence remains inspiring, and a future worth fighting for.

So here’s to Nimoy and the hopes that he’s embarked aloft alongside DeForest Kelley and James Doohan and they’re off to Valhalla at whatever warp factor they prefer. Kelley’s chuckling, Doohan’s got a glass of scotch, and Nimoy comments offhand as they blast into the stars, “Life is but a dream.”

leonard_nimoy

farewell shipmate, fair winds

Orion – erasing a 40 year gap

We’re picking up where we left off.  Back in 1972.  That’s the last time we flew a crew-capable spacecraft this high in orbit.  Will it work?  We’ll know in about five hours or so after/if splashdown occurs as scheduled.

What have we been doing the last forty years?  Determining if ants can be taught to sort tiny screws in space.

I’m sure there are a lot of smart people doing cool things aboard the ISS, but it bores me.  It also bores all of humanity.

It’s also apparently been a waste of time.  Because after 40 years Orion looks exactly like a large Apollo.  So what’s NASA learned in the last 40 years?  Apparently very little, because we’re just using the same improved design.  But whatever, better to pick up after a 40 year gap then never again.

So fly Orion.  Do your part.  You’re exciting and are going boldly.  Our degenerate race needs such things now more than ever.

orion 1 launch

We can put this one in humanity’s win column

Some actual good news for once! We aren’t just a bunch of degenerate losers today! We did something cool. Something hard. Something worth doing.

We managed to put metal on a freaking comet. It’s pretty awesome. And the complexity of this mission is mind boggling, which makes it even more awesome.

Mankind has looked up at the stars and held comets in very special esteem since our beginning. They’re unique, bright, and a hell of a neat thing to look at. Particularly back during the times where folks didn’t have the internets and car chases to entertain them.

Folks throughout history have called comets “good omens”, “purveyors of doom”, “gods”, or “that weird fucking thing in the south sky”. Their sightings have influenced wars, changed our view of science, and helped shape our understanding of our floating rock’s place in this twisted universe.

Now we’ve been there too.

For those interested in the technical brilliance, we’ll turn it over to Professor Rollmops at Tragicocomedia who does an outstanding job of explaining this masterpiece:

http://tragicocomedia.com/2014/11/10/six-impossible-things-before-breakfast-rosetta/

And then we’ll turn it over to our little robot to show us what’s quite the photo, hopefully the first of many:

ROLIS_descent_image_node_full_image_2

Anybody want to bet money, that later on, the robot takes a picture of this too:

Hothslug