WOO-HOO!!! NASA's monopoly broken! Private spaceflight begins TODAY!

368,000 feet straight to the bank. To the tune of $10 million.

A little while ago SpaceShipOne landed in Mojave, California. Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites has now won the Ansari X Prize, barely two months before the deadline. After more than forty years, manned spaceflight is no longer the sole province of major governments: anyone with a lil' creativity and the backing of a few investors can now soar past the atmosphere.

Congrats to Rutan and his entire team! They not only achieved all the goals of the Ansari X Prize, they also shattered the high-altitude record for an airplane. Now to break the next flight barrier: when individuals can hack out their own spaceships in their garages. Maybe this guy'll be the next pioneer.

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It's not called the ASS-imilator for nothing

Spent the past few days since Saturday morning out of town, which included spending part of the day yesterday at Paramount Carowinds on the NC/SC border near Charlotte. We rode just about all the big rides 'cept the Vortex (the very first looping coaster that I ever rode) because it started raining. There's one I WON'T be riding again anytime soon: the new Borg Assimilator. Sorta like the Superman coaster at Six Flags in Atlanta, but you tilt backward instead of forward. This thing is scary as hell. I think it almost gave Lisa's Dad a cardiac infarction. Probably the first time in over ten years that something of Star Trek seriously frightened me.

And at the encouraging good word of a friend that I highly trust, I have started reading a new book: Black by Ted Dekker. I started reading the first 2 chapters Saturday night and had to give up 'cuz of drowsiness... which didn't help that in those first two chapters I wound up with no idea what this is supposed to be about. Still, it's part 1 of a trilogy that someone said was much like The Matrix saga, so my curiosity is piqued. I'll post a review later.

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So how come Charles Manson doesn't get to be a Supreme Court Justice?

Antonin Scalia. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Probably THE most powerful conservative-leaning jurist (along with Clarence Thomas) on the bench anywhere in America.

He said the following earlier this week while speaking at a forum at his alma mater, Harvard University:

"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged," Scalia said.

As noted by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Helter Skelter, encouraging orgies was one of the primary methods that Charles Manson used to re-program his disciples, even to the point that some of them would kill at his command. If I recall correctly, witness (and former Family member) Paul Watkins testified that Manson would get an orgy going and pass out LSD for everyone to use... except for Manson. He used a far less amount of acid so that he could maintain his faculties while controlling the orgy.

But I wouldn't really worry about Scalia's comments. At least, not until he starts playing the White Album over and over while claiming that the Beatles are sending him "vibes".

Mash here for more about Scalia at Harvard.

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"It's made out of PEOPLE!!"

So, earlier tonight AMC was showing Escape from New York.

Then the tube was dominated by the Presidential Debate.

And now, right this moment, Turner South is running something I never thought that network would even know existed: Soylent Green.

There's a pattern at work here, I'm sure of it...

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Kyle 'n Chris weigh in on the Presidential Deba... thing.

Oh geez... where to begin?

I logged into AOL Instant Messenger just before 9 p.m. EST and hooked up with my main man Kyle Williams, America's youngest political pundit and columnist with World Net Daily. He's also a really good friend and someone I can trust to lay out the truth, no matter how much I may not want to hear the truth sometimes. The kid's got wisdom beyond his ears. He's the coolest cat you can have in a virtual living room while playing armchair political analyst. We spent the better part of two hours doing a lot of play-by-play commentary on this thing.

Bottom line: Bush bombed. Bigtime.

There's no way this can be spun into anything good: a pile of doggy-doo is STILL going to be a pile of doggy-doo regardless of how many times someone claims that it's a gold nugget. Tonight's debacle makes Michael Dukakis look positively Churchillian. No one can ever again say that the '88 debates were the worst for any candidate ever. I mean... sheesh, if I didn't know any better I would have sworn that Jimmy Carter had all the eloquence of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Whenever a politician is talking on television, like giving a speech or doing a debate like tonight, I don't watch it. For the last hour and a half my back has been turned to the screen, so that I could only hear it. That's a conscientious choice that I make, because I want to hear the person out without the visual distractions. Try it sometime: whenever a political ad starts on the t.v., close your eyes or turn your back or whatever and don't look but only LISTEN to what's being said. When you do that, you realize that 99.99% of these guys... aren't saying a bloody substantive thing at all!! They have NO ideas, no grasp of reality, only soundbites and cheap shots.

So it was with tonight's debate: I wanted to listen to the arguments, and not be wooed by Bush's necktie or Kerry's hand gestures. Kyle watched it on his end, he told me some things about what was happening on-screen (like when Kerry laughed at Bush's joke, I couldn't see that). He also sent me some choice comments that the folks at Free Republic had to say: they ain't happy campers tonight, to put it mildly.

I thought that Bush sounded absolutely apoplectic. He was EXTREMELY flustered, even sounded perilously close to losing his temper a few times. I can't really remember anything that he said that weren't a variation of his usual soundbites and mottos.

Kerry was wildly different. Kerry SOUNDED presidential. He definitely came across as the more confident and assured of the two, despite Bush stating more than once that he was sure he would win re-election. Kerry seemed more of a gentleman in his countering Bush's policies. Bush was too defensive when he shouldn't have been, and too aggressive when a calmer tone was called for.

Truth be known... Bush sounded like a kid throwing a temper tantrum to an adult.

After it ended I asked Kyle what he thought about it. His reaction:

"Kerry won.

"Let me elaborate. Bush regularly talks about vision with optimism in his eye. This is how has captured the hopes of Americans. But tonight, he tried to force it. He talked about vision, but fumbled about. He didn't come across as confident and he didn't come across as peaceful. Kerry on the other hand, did better than usual. He had specifics and facts on his side, talking about vision, but more about reality."

Kyle's spot-on in his thinking, and at the risk of seeming biased I can't help but agree with him. I have never seen anything so lopsided in an election year in all my life. Somewhere in America tonight, Karl Rove is sweating bullets over this thing. There was nothing salvagable in this evening at all for the Bush camp, and they know it.

Bush has a little over one week to get his act together. He'd better hit the books and lay off the caffeine in the meantime.

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Pre-Presidential Debate Predictions

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

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One more sign that the end of the world is upon us...

Hurricanes raging.

Volcanoes erupting.

Earthquakes trembling.

Tornadoes blowing.

Conflicts escalating.

Resources depleting.

Cultures stagnating.

And now... this. What may be the surest indication yet that the Four Horsemen are mounting their saddles:

Kevin Smith may be running Star Wars after George Lucas.

I'm gonna go get good and liquored up now.

(Actually, Smith would probably do a pretty good job at it... but don't tell THAT to a lot of fans groaning at the prospect right now :-)

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Sound and Fury

Volcanologists (scientists who study volcanos including taking samples from their craters and there'd better be some danger pay involved) are casting all eyes on Mount St. Helens this week. Seven days ago strong tremors started coming from the mountain: as of this writing there are now about three a minute. There's also been a buildup of the lava dome, meaning that fresh magma is coming in from deep underground.

It now looks like there's a 70% chance - up from 30% a few days ago - that Mount St. Helens is going to have an eruption in the next few days. Scientists are saying that it will be "a small one" but what that means exactly, I'm not sure. You can bet the good people of Washington State are praying (and we along with them) that whatever happens won't be a repeat or worse of the May 18th, 1980 eruption (pictured above). That one blanketed hundreds of square miles of surrounding landscape with ash and debris, obliterated the nearby wildlife, and took the lives of 57 people with it. One of them was Harry Truman, the cantakerous octogenerian who lived with his 16 cats in a cabin on Spirit Lake, at the base of Mount St. Helens (and was NOT related to President Truman). Despite weeks of warnings, Truman refused to leave. He was quoted as saying...

"No one knows this mountain better than me. This god-damned mountain doesn't dare do anything to Harry."

A few days later Mount St. Helens erupted. Harry Truman and his 16 cats are now buried somewhere beneath thousands of tons of and ash - averaging 40 to 60 feet deep - at the base of the mountain.

Anyways, keep an eye on St. Helens the next few days: along with everything else happening up and down the West Coast, we may see some neat geological forces at work... provided we stay back a safe ways.

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From the people who brought you fugu, Godzilla and Pokemon...

Years ago for Christmas my sister gave me a cardboard stand-up of Princess Leia from Return Of The Jedi, wearing the infamous "metal bikini". It soon found a place of honor in my bedroom at our apartment. The "slave metal bikini" seems to be most fanboys' dream: I've a friend whose first glimpse of his future wife was when she was wearing one of these things (though he was in Stormtrooper armor at the time. And I heard this getup even made for an episode of Friends) but I never found it all that appealing or even attractive. The "simple, modest look" is what I've always gone for... though that didn't stop my college buddies from coming over to oggle at the carboard idol of their dreams standing next to my closet. Some even tried to buy it. I wouldn't sell because I love my sister and this thing represented her twisted sense of humor: "Now you get to wake up to a beautiful woman in the mornings!" she told me after I got it out of the box she'd wrapped it in.

Funny.

But NOT as funny as THIS thing. Leave it to the Japanese - those wonderful people who take EVERYTHING to the extreme - to come up with something like this. Now a single person doesn't just have to pretend waking up to someone... but can pretend SLEEPING with them too!




The Boyfriend's Arm Pillow! From Kameo Corporation, nestled away somewhere in Fukuoka Prefecture in the southern stretch of the Land of the Rising Sun. For $106 American a girl can have a contoured pillow with artificial man's arm (complete with pajama sleeve) to wrap around her as she sleeps. The Courier-Mail has an article about this lil' gimmick and the people that have come to appreciate it...

For Ms Suzuki, who is estranged from her husband, the pillow has definite advantages: It doesn't squirm or thrash in the night, and you know it'll be there in the morning.

"It keeps holding me all the way through," she said in her home outside of Tokyo. "I think this is great because this does not betray me."

Slam here for the rest of the story. A hundred-plus bucks for a pillow with an arm.. unbelievable. Then again, what else could we expect from a people who regularly spend two hundred bucks to devour narrow slices of a deadly neurotoxic pufferfish? Crazy I tells ya... which may explain why I want to visit there someday :-)

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Ready to wage war for a tank of juice?

An upstanding citizen "sticks it to the man" and gets some gas the old-fashioned way
The price of crude oil hit the $50 mark for the very first time yesterday, no doubt adding to the already outrageously incremental increase in the price of gasoline we've seen during the past few weeks. Average price in this neck of the woods is $1.80 but I guess we should be thankful: in some places around the country the average is already at $2.00 a gallon. Some speculate it could go as high as $3 or $4 if not worse.

As a result, I'm no longer driving as much: if I don't absolutely need to go out for it, I just don't go period. That's not a conservative or liberal choice: it simply makes good sense. It might be something to get used to if, as some legitimate sources are now saying, the point of "Peak Oil" (the midpoint between petroleum demand and supply, where supplies are calculated to diminish greatly per year as population and industries increase) has now been reached. If so, the ramifications are almost too scary to comprehend: the price of EVERYTHING - not just gasoline but raw materials like plastics, and substances like fertilizer and pharmeceuticals - is going to skyrocket. We might do well to all tighten our belts.

And yet, I don't want to incline my ear so much to the "doom and gloom" soothsayers just yet. There's a growing - albeit controversial - body of knowledge indicating that petroleum may not be the "non-renewable resource" that we've been told for so long that it is. That instead of being the product of organic decomposition over the course of millions of years, it might be the waste product of bacteria many miles below the surface of the Earth. If so, petroleum and its byproducts may be a replenishable resource. And in the past few years experiments with domestic waste products have proven that crude oil can be made from already available materials and technologies. All that's really needed to make it a viable alternative to traditional petroleum sources is an investment of time and money to further research, to bring it to the next level.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the big oil companies (and their friends in the government) are going to be so keen on making the jump to synthetic (and more cheaply available) alternatives. For the time being we are almost at their mercy, and I'm almost tempted to say that it's going to take some outright nasty things happening across the board to bring them to their senses and let people have a real choice as to their energy sources. Barring THAT happening... well, might be a good idea to start watching those "Mad Max" movies for the valuable information they carry on surviving in a post-oil apocalyptic wasteland...

You have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.

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Jump to Lightspeed... Again! (but who'll be flying the ship?!)

Well, this is turning out to be an interesting morning. Right after posting that Mel Brooks is making "Spaceballs 2", this comes along...

My old stomping grounds at TheForce.net is today reporting that there will be a live-action Star Wars TV series beginning in the fall of 2006. You can bet the farm that this is gonna happen. For one thing, that had to be Josh Griffin posting the story (no one else can type "Awesome!" quite like he ;-) and being his colleague for two and a half years and friend for even longer, I can vouch that he's way more thorough on his sources than a CBS editor. Also, this has been coming out piecemeal for the past several months anyway: the "Clone Wars" microseries on Cartoon Network was a smash hit and George Lucas has been pretty adamant lately about not only not making any more Star Wars movies, but letting the story continue "in other ways" and with other people taking a shot at the saga.

Exactly who those people would be might be quite an item of discussion coming up. No doubt Lucas is going to be executive producer, if at least to make sure "his baby" doesn't stray too far off the path... but someone else is needed to nurture and guide the show's development so that Lucas can have a free hand to do his other film projects.

Someone is going to have to be trusted by Lucas himself to be only the second person ever to have complete control of Star Wars, answerable only to Lucas himself.

That someone had darn well better know the television industry.

That someone should also know how to manage a vast, multi-generational epic spanning thousands of years.

That someone should be able to relay that epic across a wide variety of mediums: not just television, but the ensuing books and videogames, etc.

That someone shouldn't be afraid to take risks, or "play it safe" to appease a demographic: good storytelling comes from conflict, and this person just might have a good track record on that.

That someone had better be a heckuva good writer.

For all of these reasons and more, finding the right person to take over Star Wars is going to be like finding a needle in a field of hay. But is there such a person?

Yes, there is, I find myself believing, especially in light of some interesting conjecture courtesy of CloneCleaner02 on TheForce.net's forums...

There is one... and only one... person who really comes to mind. One person who has worked most of the past 30 years in television and wound up creating one of the most original series ever put to that medium. One person whose writing is as prolific as Isaac Asimov's... coupled with an understanding of human nature on par with Orson Scott Card. One person who has spun a tale that began millions of years ago and ended one million in our future... but mostly concentrated on a mere five somewhere in between. And, it happens to be the person who has been dropping hints like mad that he's been tapped for an executive producer of a new network series "and while I don't usually do that on shows I don't create or develop, when I heard what this project was, I had to get on board." He later added that this new show had "nothing to do with any current series." Not long thereafter he wrote to his fans on Usenet that "Pending contractual negotiations and formal pickup by the networks involved, I've been offered two different series, so we'll see which goes first. They could both be very cool to work on, but one of them could be insanely successful. I should know more about this situation in late October." In his initial post he said that part of the contract was "work out how that will interface with the stuff that'll be going on later in the year, but fortunately the start date for the series should work out, at least at this point."

The "other stuff" could very well be a few novels, a play, and some television work. Not to mention writing "The Amazing Spider-Man" every month. Everything on the timing works out perfectly for a 2006 launch.

Could it be that Star Wars is about to be placed into the capable hands of J. Michael Straczynski? The same "JMS" who brought us "Babylon 5"?

The mind boggles at such a thing...

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Jump to Ludicrous Speed... Again!

Oh Lord please no...

Ain't It Cool News is reporting this morning that Mel Brooks is currently writing "Spaceballs 2"!

The original "Spaceballs" was already as perfect a sci-fi spoof as a comic genius of Brooks' stature could make. It's BRILLIANT and it's FUNNY! It riffed on just about every major sci-fi classic up to its time. HOW da heck is a sequel going to not only live up to all that but raise the bar?

I love Mel Brooks' movies - heck, "Blazing Saddles" was the very first DVD I ever bought - but he should reconsider making this. Although, since his last movie was the largely forgotten "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" and that was almost ten years ago, he really should try something to show that he still possesses the edge he had when he did "Young Frankenstein" and "Silent Movie" back in the day.

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They don't cast 'em in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt anymore...

My wife and I talked a bit about the elections on our way back from working-out this afternoon, and I shared with her a story about Teddy Roosevelt: how one night when he was President he was giving a bill the "hairy eyeball" before signing it. Roosevelt found an item in the bill that he couldn't understand the rationale for... and he wasn't about to sign it until he did. So Roosevelt put on his coat and hat, stomped out of the White House and took a carriage to the house of the congressman who wrote the bill, and at about 1 in the morning started banging on the door. The bleary-eyed, disheaveled representative found the President of the United States on his front doorstep demanding to know what was constitutional about that part of the bill. The congressman couldn't give Ol' Teddy an adequate answer, which led to an angry scolding from Roosevelt, who then told him that he would not, could not sign the bill. Roosevelt then hopped back into the carriage and left.

Don't even think that there's this kind of accountability or stalwartness today. Lisa put it best when she told me "this country needs another Teddy Roosevelt." She's right... but I can't see one riding into town anytime soon.

Teddy Roosevelt figures well in today's article by Charley Reese: "First Lady Just a Wife". In it Reese speaks softly and carries a big stick against the notion that the President is like unto Caesar...

I have never bought into this imperial presidency. The office of president, under the Constitution, was made a deliberately weak office. If the politicians in Washington obeyed the Constitution, which is to say if frogs sang arias, the president would not be allowed to start wars without a formal declaration, nor would he be allowed to legislate with executive orders.

As for the president himself, whoever he is, he is nothing more than an ordinary American citizen with a temporary job. As a man, he is entitled to common courtesy; the office itself is entitled to respect, but not worship or awe. As Truman had the integrity to realize, the presidency does not belong to the man holding the office, but to the American people. The White House is the people's house. Some presidents have respected that; others have not. Ronald Reagan always wore a jacket and tie in the Oval Office. Richard Nixon was careful never to put his feet on the furniture. That's in stark contrast to Bill Clinton's behavior, which was personally disgraceful and showed contempt for the White House, especially the carpet.

Punch here for the rest.

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George Lucas returns to Mel's as filming winds down on "Forcery"

No blogging since Friday 'cuz the bulk of this past weekend (maybe 5 hours sleep total since waking up Friday morning) was spent wrapping up principle photography on "Forcery". Once our cast assembled here at the apartment we arrived at the set about 10 PM Friday night to film a scene that demanded a strong moonlight shining down through the window. We set up one of the incandescent lamps with a blue gel outside the window and angled it to cast its light down on the bed, then moved the lamp so that we could get another angle.

After picking up another cast member we had everyone at Short Sugar's Barbecue in Reidsville NC at 8 AM the following morning to film the final scene of the movie: George Lucas and Rick McCallum in a red convertible at Mel's Drive-In from "American Graffiti". After getting that done we had to... we just had to... take this photo of Chad in his George Lucas costume, in the same pose that Lucas is in while directing Ron Howard in a famous photo from "American Graffiti"...


We returned to our main set and filmed from 10:30 that morning until 6 that evening, then did one final take (it's taken us two months to figure out what this one character should be saying during a certain event). With that, the bulk of our filming is done: apart from a number of minor scenes that won't require much preparation for, "Forcery" is in the can. And I haven't slept this good in a looooong time :-)

I'll be doing some updates here as "Forcery" enters post-productions but in the meantime, enjoy some production stills that we took during Saturday's filming.

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Faux posts the next few days

I'm going to be "tweaking" the look of this blog this week and at times some posts that will be nothing but pictures will be getting posted, then promptly yanked. That'll just be me getting some things uploaded for The Knight Shift's new appearance (it's too dark and I'm not into the whole "Goth" thing).

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Latest poll says that Chris is posting too much about politics ZZZZzzzz...

...although in my own defense I'd like to suggest that I'm not a political junky! REAL political junkies spend their waking hours playing imaginary games of Risk between the Democrats and Republicans in their heads. They also usually have two television sets to watch Fox News and CNN at the same time. Some of them would betray the family's priest to the Cossacks if dinner with Ann Coulter or Susan Estrich was part of the deal. The worst of the lot get an erotic turn-on by covering the bed with printouts of Zogby projections. I spent four years with some of the most psychotic political science majors in the cosmos: I know political junkies, man.

Consider me a mere historian who is watching events unfold, shaking his head in disbelief as this country becomes divided along a false dichotomy, and unable to believe that anything short of extreme circumstances will shake America from those who have enslaved her. That may not be for much longer, as many are now waking up to the stark reality that neither major party has anything of substance to offer: I wouldn't mind if they stagnated, but the damnable thing of it is that they're dragging this country into stagnation with them.

So with that in mind I had to post this story about MSNBC's poll showing that 88% of Americans do not believe the polls are accurate! How about that: a poll of Americans showing that Americans don't trust polls. Sorta like Michael Jackson asking a pack of Cub Scouts if they think he'll just let them ride the merry-go-round at Neverland, when you think about it.

Regarding my initial post from about two weeks ago about having something to say about an experience I had with the George W. Bush campaign four years ago (I posted some other thoughts and even confessions about my motivations a few days ago)... I'm still weighing it in my mind. Ya see, some of what I'd share with everyone... okay, some people know some of what happened, the account that got published then. But some stuff I didn't report on then for no other reason than because at the time, I was more than a little shocked at a few things that took place. It seemed so unbecoming of what I'd expected from these guys that I wondered if I even heard it right. Then some evidence turned up that proved it DID happen. And there's one other thing that only a few other people know about so far... and I'm wondering what might happen if that came out. It's not something provable mind you, but the circumstances by which it came to me does raise some curiosities in my mind.

Bottom line is this, I guess: I don't hate George W. Bush, but he's not someone who can be trusted either. He's a hypocrite and I loathe hypocrisy. I can't vote for John Kerry because of a few things like his pro-abortion stance, but in my mind he's at least the more honest of the two. But I can't find any reason to not come forward with my story either, and let people take from it what they will, to trust Kerry more or not because of it.

May or may not post from here on out until Monday, as we are wrapping up principle photography on Forcery. It's gonna be fun Saturday morning when we replicate Mel's Drive-In from American Graffiti. I might have a photo to post from that sometime this weekend that oughtta make everyone laugh, if we can pull it off :-)

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Update on 2004 hurricanes following the 2000 election results

"He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." -- Matthew 5:45, NIV

Ya gotta admit though: it WAS pretty eerie. Still is if you're only counting the mainland.

In my last entry I posted a map showing the route of this season's hurricanes through Florida, which one guy noted have only gone through counties that voted for Bush in the 2000 election. Counties that voted for Gore weren't hit. Almost as if the Almighty was sending Florida a message about something...

...'cept it turns out that the map isn't quite entirely accurate.

Charley's path took it through the Florida keys, which are part of Monroe County. And Monroe did vote for Gore in 2000! Also, as someone noted in the last post's comments, Ivan's eye actually made landfall in Alabama, not the Florida panhandle itself... although it was that part of the state - particularly the Pensacola area - that bore the brunt of Ivan's slam on Florida and did vote for Bush.

So it's not a perfect correlation after all. And although I do believe that God would "send a message" via nature even today, and despite knowing that everything IS under His control, I'm gonna chalk this one up as just a bizarre coincidence of politics and geography.

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