"...see because cloaking was a Romulan technology..."

Telling Joe about the online discussion I'm in, started by a dude who finds parallel between Star Trek TNG and Harry Potter. Mostly based on the Starfleet uniform colors and Hogwarts houses, the fun ideas being raised are, for example, that the Hogwarts green (Slytherin) aligns with the Romulans. I explained, "By that logic, a Slytherin must have originally charmed the Invisibility cloak---" That's as far as I got before Joe's eyebrows did the thing. 🚀

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to America: 2016 Edition

I am not suggesting that Douglas Adams was like some kind of prophet or anything like that. 'Cuz I, um, totally don't think that. That would be insane. *cough* Here's what I will say: If you already know where your towel is, then you're a cool frood and we can totally sass a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster sometime, dude, hey, let me know when you wanna hitch a ride with some Dentrassi, those guys don't give a wet slap about anything but food and drinks and having a good time.If you do not know where your towel is, well...

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THE PICKLE: Volume 1, Issue 2

In his wildly popular sci fi account chronicling the end of the world, Douglas Adams imagines a guidebook to the universe that is so massive it only exists in electronic form, you swipe a screen to access anything you want to know about the entire galaxy. This was 1978, you guys. We had vinyl and 8-track tapes, and the OS of my favorite toy was a light bulb. No, not the EasyBake Oven. Lite Bright — you can paint with light, motherf***er.

Lesser men than Adams have been called "Prophet." Respect.

You Can Panic Now

On the cover, in "large friendly letters," the guide said, "DON'T PANIC." In literary circles, it is understood that expression along these lines has the opposite effect. Essentially, Douglas Adams was saying, "Panic." It's like when you tell someone hysterical to "calm down."

In the guide, along with proving that God does not exist, are other helpful tips for navigating the galaxy, such as how to hitch a ride on a passing star ship and where to get laid while planet hopping on a budget. Also, Douglas Adams has something to say on the topic of dolphins.

Artwork by acidebetta

“Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing to punch footballs or whistle for titbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So Long, and thanks for all the fish.”
 ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams was writing about the Rapture. Consider "dolphin" as symbolic of intelligent, clever and generally well-liked creatures. Almost magical. Like David Bowie, for example. This isn't something you'll find in Cliffs Notes, but you can trust the stalwart Interpreters of Literature on this one — while you were outside sportsing, we were reading everything and talking about it over our inhalers and various collections of comic books, cards and action figures.

If Douglas Adams was a modern day prophet, it follows, then, that Donald Trump is the symptom of a growing sickness that's been festering since the 1980s. Fareed Zakaria delivered the message that, without an emergency Trumpectomy, the cancer would ultimately destroy democracy. Is it a coincidence that David Bowie died from cancer after an eighteen-month battle? 

Eighteen months from Trump announcing his toxic candidacy, the dolphins began to depart the planet. 

💥

Starman Hitches a Ride

ZIGGY GOES HOME! 

Soooo, mankind might have to come to terms with something right about now: The Rapture happened and we didn't make the cut. 2016 was the end of days. As existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sarte famously opined, hell is other people. We are the "other people." 

Welcome to Hell

Sorry, dude. We tried. Wanna hang? Netflix 'n chill until the apocalypse? There's nothing you can do. I might as well try those hot Cheetos now. 

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

NBS News, Dec 28 2016

Related: The Hitchhiker's Guide to America (2016 Edition)

Related: Santa is a Klingon

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The Star Wars Holiday Special : Merry Gen X'mas

Long ago in a galaxy we 40-somethings refer to as "childhood," we built a cherry Kool-Aid world with rad high tech toys like Lite Brite, Etch-a-Sketch, and Slinky...a popular (*cheap*) birthday present. Imagine every one of us rug rats fighting over a toy you play with on the stairs. We made our own fun, too. Get a pair of tube socks and you could slide across the linoleum, or shuffle out some sweet static on the shag carpet. I'm sayin', a kid in 1970s America could make a pretty good time out of not-much, because we had a ton of not-much.

There wasn't much on TV either, so you watched your favorite shows, which aired weekly on specific nights. There was one TV and four channels, so there were fights over who got to pick until bedtime, then the adults watched boring shows (Dynasty, Flamingo Road) followed by the news, until the TV went off overnight. I don't mean the TV got turned off...I'm saying the broadcast transmitter shut down its signal and went to static until morning.

In our house we loved Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Dukes of Hazzard, Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk. Up until they started to air commercials for the Star Wars Holiday Special, we thought Battle of the Network Stars was the absolute peak awesome sauce of "special" programming. I mean I assume we went apeshit over the idea of a Star Wars special, but I can't verify, because personally, somehow I have no memory of seeing The Star Wars Holiday Special. I might have blocked it out. We'll come back to that later.

Life Day

The Star Wars Holiday Special takes place in a vague point along the Star Wars timeline, opening with the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon—Han Solo and Chewbacca are attempting to evade a garbage scow in a tense scene. Evasive maneuvers! It's a promising start, but the excitement is woefully betrayed by the next million minutes. There's musical numbers, comedy skits, and at one point there is an un-related cartoon for no reason.

The whole thing hinges on Chewbacca's plight of making it back home for the Wookie holiday. Back on the Wookie home planet his family waits for his return. There's his son Lumpy, and his grizzled father whose name, cringeworthily, is Itchy. His wife Malla is anxiously awaiting Chewbacca and the family bickers because of the tense situation. There are long...surprisingly long...spans of angst-ridden Wookie howling, which is the loudest kind of Wookie howling. It just keeps going on, while Malla urgently seeks news of the Millennium Falcon's whereabouts.

The Guest Stars

Art Carney, Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman and Diahann Carroll. Put another way: who? Even my cool teenage cousins weren't old enough to know any of those people, which begs the question, "Who dafuq was this special for?" Kids, in theory, but in that case, they couldn't have gotten Wonder Woman or the Fonz at least so we'd have some joy of recognition? Performances include Bea Arthur (pre-Golden Girls!) as a bar owner who intones a ponderous ballad that lasts about a week. Harvey Korman does a few different skits, like one where Lumpy reads a technical manual and Korman appears to be acting out the instructions. What fun‒a dramatic reading...of instructions? Was this some sort of zany wacky fun for Grandpa? Although it could be suggested, with that skit, that Harvey Korman may have invented Max Headroom.

The Tech

Our shit was still analog in those days. Lest we forget. A Slinky is a coiled spring. Etch-a-Sketch let us scrape right-angles with magnets. And Lite Brite's entire operating system was a light bulb. In the Star Wars Holiday Special, there was great promise in the cool factor, like when Malla places video calls to Luke, Leia and Art Carney (okay?) to see if any of them had heard from Chewie or Han Solo, because they're still not home and it's almost Life Day. Kudos for the sci-fi, because video calls weren't a common thing  yet. But those scenes, as it turned out, were the only appearances of our beloved Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and R2D2. I am sure my cool teenage cousins said "Aw maaaan! Rip off!" There's promise when we notice that Chewbacca's son Lumpy owns that cool hologram game table from Star Wars. You know, when they're heading to Alderaan and Chewie plays a game against R2D2, when C3P0 says  "Let the Wookie win, R2!" But Lumpy uses the game table to call up a hologram dance troupe, and they jump around for about a month. Bor. Ing. There's even a Virtual Reality visor.

〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷 

As kids we saw more cool tech in sci-fi and fantasy and the world has a lot of people to thank for today's devices. Most of which are used for porn. And I don't even mean guys like Steve Jobs. I mean the nerd herd who popularized this stuff, artists and writers like Bruce Vilanche. The Star Wars special showed us VR on November 17, 1978, with a Wookiee head-mounted display. And yes, of course it was used for a wack segment of Wookie space porn. The company that would later become Sun Microsystems would put out the first virtual reality(VR) products almost a decade later, in 1987, including head-mounted displays (HMDs)and data gloves.

〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷＿ ＿〷

The Space Porn

The award for Most Awkward guest performance goes to Diahann Carroll. Again, I looked it up to see where we kids might have known her from when the Star Wars special aired. According to my research, she was on Milton Berle. Again: WHO WAS THIS SPECIAL FOR? In her scene, Miz Carroll emerges from a kaleidoscopic field of light as a mermaid sex vixen, and all of this action appears inside the Virtual Reality visor worn by Chewbacca's dad while everyone waits for the Millennium Falcon to arrive for Life Day. What to say about this scene? It's pretty much soft space porn. Working a lotta bare shoulder action, mermaid sex vixen sighs and undulates and croons. She porn-whispers "I am your fantasy." The old ass Wookie grunts and moans in his special chair. She says, "I am your experience. So experience me." He seems to be doing just that. She says, "I am your pleasure. Enjoy me. This is our moment together in time that we might turn this moment into an eternity." She sings a song for about a million hours. And let me hit you with that again:

"This is our moment together in time that we might turn this moment into an eternity."

Dude, what.


The Mental Block

We would have given up our Reggie Bars for anything Star Wars-related, so I should remember the special. But I don't. Does anyone remember it? Maybe we were so sugar-torqued that we couldn't sit through all those loooong, boring guests. I know we definitely for suresville would not have sat through that softcore cyber booty scene with a mermaid lady and a old-ass Wookie. Our brains would have sent alarms and we'd be a streak of flammable pajamas racing away in a flurry of Hawaiian Punch and Cookie Crisp crumbs.

But now that we're older and we have more viewing options (and weed) the Star Wars Holiday Special is available on YouTube, and we'll probably stream it several times each and every holiday season. Have a Life Day party. Smoke it if it's legal, and have a happy Life Day! ⭐

Watch it on YouTube:

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Santa Is A Klingon (Smile When You Bless The Gagh!)

Some are born dorks. Some achieve dorkness. Some have dorkness thrust upon them.

Today on Deep Space Nine (Netflix), Worf told everyone that the legendary Klingon warrior Kahless had said "Great men do not seek power, they have power thrust upon them." I yelled, "That was Shakespeare, mofo!" Then I messaged Joe this outrage. He was at work. So he said, "I'm gonna go find some lunch." What he meant by that is, "You're a huge dork." Later when I explained in greater detail, knowing that he wanted to hear the whole thing, with pictures and footnotes, he said "You're a huge dork," and then added "...but you're MY huge dork" and made me a cup of green tea. You guys. I should not be finger-wagging about a Klingon on this, the feast day of Saint Nicholas. That's like watching Rudolph and telling everyone that Santa is a tool. Okay, bad example. Rudolph. Santa is a tool in that.

Painting of St. Nicolas, our only Klingon Saint.
 

The figure of Saint Nick is said to have inspired the legend of Santa Claus and the legend of Krampus. 

A blend of Santa & Krampus is as Klingon as you can get.

 

Painting of Kahless the Unforgettable,
from the Memory Alpha Wiki.

Imagine a mythical race, fiercely honorable, loyal and ruthless. This is a people proud and strong, rigid about the line between right and wrong, a beastly nature quick to punish those who have acted badly, respectful and rewarding towards those who act with honor?

Yeah, that's a Klingon. Fa la la la la la, la la, la laaaggghhh! Today is a good day to diiiiie...!🎅


Related: Happy Saint Nick's Feast Day!

As an aside: I find lots of threads connecting the plays of William Shakespeare and the Star Trek universe. The Klingons aren't the only ones who pull from the bard, but they're certainly super duper good at it. Here's a little piece of fun for you...

Who Said It? The Klingon or the Bard?

1. "Great men do not seek power; they have power thrust upon them."

2. "If we are mark'd to die, we are enow to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor."

3. "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

4. "Today is a good day to die."

5. "Go honor the valiant who die 'neath your sword, but pity the warrior who slays all his foes."

6. "By the doom of death end woes and all."

7. "You cannot loosen a man's tongue with root beer."

8.  "A man cannot make him laugh, but that’s no marvel -- he drinks no wine."

9. "Life every man holds dear, but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life."

10. "Honor is more important than life."

(Click here for Answers. How did you do?)

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