Hat tip to Chad Austin for the great find!
Monday, August 09, 2010
Movie posters rendered in LEGO
BLACKSTAR WARRIOR: A Star Wars blaxploitation trailer. 'Nuff said.
"Get between this brotha and his woman, and space ain't black enough to hide from him!"
About time somebody made a fan film about Lando Calrissian going up against the man!
Saturday, August 07, 2010
In memory of Mike Ashley
"The good die young."
Those were the words of my grandmother, twenty-five years ago this evening. And when those words were the most semblance of comfort that an eleven-year old kid had to grasp - even if he didn't really understand what it meant at the time - on what was at the time the absolute worst day of his life...
...well, they kinda stick with ya, even a quarter century later.
Heck, I can even still remember what I was wearing that day, what Granny was wearing, the most miserable dinner of pizza that I would ever have, all of the vehicles like neighbors' cars and the ambulance and the deputy sheriff cruisers that descended on our farm that afternoon. I can even tell you what show that I watched on television that night, trying and failing to lose myself, to stop thinking about it all...
...but most of all, I remember crying. Being inside the house with my sister and our two dachshund puppies, watching from the windows. I still remember calling my life-long best friend Chad, telling him about what happened: now I realize that I was desperate for a voice to talk to. And I couldn't stop crying. Harder than I ever had before until that day.
It was the ambulance arriving that first made me panic. The lady who took care of my other grandmother in the house across the road, she came to our front door. The first words that came out of me were "Did something happen to Dad?!"
No, Dad was okay.
But Mike had been killed.
Mike Ashley: 19 years old. Brown haired, a little bit of a mustache. As upstanding and Christian of a young man as you were ever likely to meet. He knew Dad because Dad had been friends with his father. And early in the summer of 1985, Mike started working on our dairy farm as a hired hand.
Being able to say that I grew up and worked on a dairy farm: that is something that I am very proud of. And with each passing year I realize how much happiness there could be found in that. I couldn't do too much, being about ten when I started. But on occasion Dad did let me help a calve to be born. And I can honestly say that I have milked cows by hand (go watch that scene in Witness where Harrison Ford's character is up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows on that Amish farm... and then imagine your friend and humble blogger doing that :-).
It was the people that Dad hired to work on our farm that I remember most vividly. Maybe that had something to do with my outlook on human nature, 'cuz at a very early age I had come to know so many kinds of people. They were white. They were black. They were migrant laborers from Mexico (some of whom spoke not a word of English, but we all seemed to understand each other somehow). They were my cousin Craig and my Uncle John. Some of them were characters in their own right. Others were - in their own way - downright silly. All of them worked hard, sometimes for a season and then going back to whatever or wherever, sometimes coming back to work again.
Mike Ashley though...
He worked as hard as anyone. Always cheerful, always smiling and with a twinkle in his eye. He was looking to go into farming as well, so this was kinda like college for him.
He was with us on the farm for two months. And in that time, well...
...he became the closest thing to an older brother that I would ever have.
I fast came to look up to Mike. Maybe it was the noble qualities that he had: qualities that in retrospect, I decided that I wanted to have in my own life. He became a role model to me.
And the thing is, I was admittedly pretty offbeat even as a kid. Mike was the first "grownup" who I had any extended time with who was sincerely interested in the things that I was interested in. And that had a lot of appeal to me.
So a lot of times in the afternoon, after Dad and Mike and whoever else had lunch and Dad took his usual nap before the afternoon milking, Mike would want to see the books that I was into. He enjoyed reading my comic books. He really loved going through my stash of MAD Magazines. And he even thought that my Transformers toys were very cool.
That is the last, best memory that I have of Mike. He was in my room on the afternoon of August 6th, and I was showing him how to convert my army of Autobots and Decepticons into their respective cars, trucks, guns, cassette tapes, what have you. Mike was instantly hooked on them! Pretty soon he was transformin' 'em just as well as me or anybody.
That was the afternoon of August 6th, 1985. And that night I found myself thanking God for the friendship that I had with Mike.
It was the very next day that Mike died on our farm.
He had been on a tractor, scraping cow manure into a manure spreader. And if you don't know already cow manure is some of the best fertilizer imaginable. On a small farm it is a very valued and precious resource. And it was something that had been done like a zillion times.
It worked like this: the manure spreader was parked below the high end of a ramp. Whoever was on the tractor would tow a bladed attachment and scrape manure that had come out of the barn and cattle stalls, off the ramp and into the spreader.
That is what Mike was doing.
To this day we don't know what caused it to happen. Maybe he saw a deer off in the field and was momentarily distracted.
The tractor drove over the top of the ramp and flipped over. Mike was killed instantly.
It was Dad who found him a short while later. He saw smoke coming from behind the barn. And then he saw the overturned tractor with Mike pinned beneath it.
A short while later the emergency vehicles and lots of cars and trucks started arriving. Mom got the call at work and rushed home immediately. She dropped my sister and me off at her mother's that night.
That's when Granny remarked that "The good die young."
Twenty-five years later and I'm still trying to suss it all out. I'd still like to know why God took Mike away from us: so young. So upstanding. So good...
He would have been 44 now. He should have known what it was like to be a husband and a father, 'cuz there's no doubt in my mind that he would have been the best. He should have had all the opportunities that a person as sweet and virtuous as he was... well, I think good people deserve more, anyway!
It's enough to make me question my own life. I'm now 36. Still young (and like to think that I'll always have that childlike quality no matter how many years go by), but I've had many more years than Mike ever got. Almost by twice as much. I look at myself and I don't see a necessarily "good" person. I see a flawed, messed-up guy who... doesn't deserve anything at all.
So help me, I have told God more times than I can count how unfair it is. That He would take someone like Mike Ashley from us and leave me - a complete screw-up who fails too many times more than I've ever succeeded - still here.
(Yeah I'll go ahead and admit it, for the first time: I am now divorced. And there is more that I am feeling led to write about that and have been feeling it for some time, but for now God is making me wait on that. It's not something to be proud of but at the same time, I cannot but feel that God has used this period to grow and mature me and make me appreciate His grace more than I ever have before... but that's an essay for another time.)
My life has been one cluster-#&@% after another. Why couldn't God have taken me? Why, why did He take Mike instead? Why does He seem to always take the people who deserve to have long, full lives on this earth?
"The good die young."
That is the closest thing to an answer that I have ever had. Maybe more so now than I ever did then, I have to draw some comfort from them.
Because God's ways... really aren't our ways at all. We expect Him to hand out goodies to us, rarely stopping to understand that this world is still a fallen place and tragedy does come from it.
I might still question Him at times. But, I am no longer angry with Him. About anything that has happened in my life. At long last I can see, and be thankful, that in spite of ourselves God doesn't mess up. That from each thing, for those who do love Him and seek after Him, He will never cease to eternally labor for our benefit.
A quarter century later, and I am thankful to God more than ever before: that He put Mike Ashley into our lives, for however brief a span.
And now you know, dear reader, that once there was a man and his name was Mike Ashley. And that he was a good man. He was someone that I have long strived to honor (and often missing the mark) with my own life and my own actions. And if others had the honor of knowing Mike, he would have left them with just as wonderful an impression from his strength of character, his humbleness, and his enthusiasm.
He was taken from this earthly realm twenty-five years ago today. I still miss him. And I still love him as the older brother that I never had.
And I do rejoice that he was here... and that he will be waiting for us all someday.
Friday, August 06, 2010
ABC's V next season featuring the return of Jane Badler!
Yeah you read it right. And not only that but Badler will again be playing evil Visitor baddie Diana: the role that she is still notorious for nearly thirty years later. In the relaunched series however Diana will be the mother of Anna (Morena Baccarin's character), the Visitor who's been leading the invasion of Earth. So it's two different characters, but each named Diana and each played by Jane Badler. Got it?
Ain't It Cool News has more info, including the official press release heralding Badler's return to the V saga.
I'll admit that I've only seen a bit of ABC's V. It's shown some great potential, but thus far hasn't quite lived up to it. Here's hoping that the second season will have this series finally coming into its own. That Jane Badler is being brought back makes me cautiously optimistic.
But that's gonna be dashed to piece if the second season premiere (the first episode that Badler will appear in) doesn't have a scene like this one, from Part 1 of the original NBC miniseries V in 1983...
I was ten years old when I first saw that. And I still get wigged out just thinking about it.
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH: Epic television we haven't seen in DECADES
The best thing on the tube this summer in this blogger's opinion is without a doubt The Pillars of the Earth, currently running on the Starz channels. Based on Ken Follett's bestselling 1989 novel and with production from Ridley Scott's company, The Pillars of the Earth is an eight-hour historical epic set during the Anarchy: the period between the sinking of the White Ship and the assassination of Thomas Becket in the England of the twelfth century. Amid the political and religious intrigues of the fight between Stephen and Matilda for the throne of England, the virtuous Prior Philip dreams of helping the people of his parish improve their lot. When Kingsbridge's original church burns to the ground, master mason Tom Builder presents Philip with plans for a majestic new cathedral. Set against their plot are Sir Percy Hamleigh and his wife Lady Regan (who is as cunning as she is hideous), their sadistic son William (who fears Hell above all else) and the wicked Bishop Waleran Bigod. These allies of King Stephen also must contend with Aliena and Richard: children of the Earl Bartholomew who seek to avenge the honor of their father and regain their title. And then there is Jack: the step-son of Tom Builder, who hides a secret history that is set to clash the secular and the spiritual against each other in an already tumultuous era.
Starring Ian McShane as Waleran, Donald Sutherland as Bartholomew, Rufus Sewell as Tom Builder, Matthew Macfadyen as Prior Philip, and with Eddie Redmayne in what should be a breakout role and contender for Emmy with his portrayal of Jack, The Pillars of the Earth is sumptuous in its acting, its production values and its attempt at storytelling in the television medium. The result is a work of art more of the caliber of Oscar-nominated film. It also single-handedly resurrects the miniseries - narcoleptic for far too long - as a potent narrative tool.
The first two hours aired two weeks ago and the second part was broadcast last week. Part 3 airs tonight on Starz, and throughout the next week. I've already got The Pillars of the Earth Blu-ray set pre-ordered. But don't wait for that: check it out now if you've got Starz, and prepare for a treat. Highly, highly recommended.
The 367 miles per hour school bus
The downside is that top speed is sustainable only for a half-mile. And it takes 150 gallons of fuel to reach it. But that's gotta be a hella scary ride for any kiddies that might be aboard this beast. Stender and his crew used an actual school bus to build their creation but admit having to reinforce it quite a bit because "There's no way the original bus could have withstood the speeds that I take it to." Still, he estimates that about 5 percent, including the door, are original parts.
Why a 367-MPH school bus? The self-taught Stender quipped that "I grew up on a farm and to tell you the truth I always wanted to learn things myself and didn't like school much... I guess this is my revenge for all those days riding on the slow journey to school, now it goes at my kind of pace."
But there are other reasons as well. From the story at the Telegraph...
Mr Stender's creation, which he has dubbed 'The School Time Jet-Powered School Bus', also fires out 80 foot flames from the back creating massive clouds of smoke.Click on the above link for more, including video of the School Time Jet-Powered School Bus in seriously hot action!Mr Stender, 43, said: "I built the bus for two reasons. The first is to entertain people because, come on, it's a jet bus.
"The second, is to keep kids off drugs. Jets are hot, drugs are not...
"We do a lot of displays at schools and we are trying to show them there's more to life than sitting in front of computers.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Happy 80th Birthday to Neil Armstrong
The Knight Shift and its eclectic proprietor would like to join the very many other admirers of Dr. Neil Armstrong in wishing him all the best on his 80th birthday today!
Proposition 8, states rights, and the end of jury nullification
Two things that trouble me about California's Proposition 8 - the "gay marriage" ban - being struck down yesterday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker...
The first is that a single member of the federal judiciary is empowered to render null and void the vote of more than 7 million voters in a matter pertaining to their own state of residence.
The other thing is that even as this is being cheered in some quarters as a "victory" for certain individuals, in truth it is a dire setback for all individuals. I speak of the now decades-long erosion of jury nullification: the tradition that common people empaneled on a jury can acquit defendants and even overturn legislation in spite of legal and prosecutorial weight, if sincere conscience should so dictate. And even though jury nullification is generally a matter strictly relegated to affairs at trial, its principle extends throughout the whole of the law of our democratically-elected republic.
Jury nullification is something that I have long appreciated. It is - and should always be - the citizenry's last, best bulwark for peaceable resistance against any and all agents of government overstepping the rightful bounds. The moment that government refuses to honor this, then it begins to be questioned whether government is obligated to acknowledge and respect the rights of the people... or whether the people are obligated to acknowledge the government in kind.
The people of California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 8, and whether the rest of us agree with it or not we should respect the people of California to manage their own affairs as a state.
And one judge, sitting on the federal bench and regardless of agenda, should never be enabled with the power to negate the legislative will of citizens in good conscience. For that way, lies tyranny.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Huh?!? So the plot for INCEPTION was already done in a Scrooge McDuck comic book?!?
Yesterday the Internets were lit up about how Christopher Nolan's new film Inception shared some common elements with one of Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.
If you thought that was a honkin' big coincidence, wait'll you get a load of this 'un...
Those same sharp lads at GeekTyrant have scored another find. The whole plot of Inception is eerily similar to Dream of a Lifetime: a 2004 Disney-published comic book about... Scrooge McDuck!
Here's a page from the comic. Click on it to drastically embiggenize...
According to the guys at GeekTyrant, Dream of a Lifetime "... tells the story of how the Beagle Boys used a device to enter Scrooge McDuck's dreams to extract the secret combination to Scrooge McDuck's vault! I dead freakin' serious! Did Nolan get his idea from a Uncle Scrooge comic book!?"
Mash down here for the link to GeekTyrant's page, which has a link to where you can read the comic in full.
Yah, that's a great find. However the more I think about it, the more examples of this same "invading a person's dreams" thing I'm able to think back upon. There was an episode of Batman: The Animated Series involving Mad Hatter that was kinda like this. And I even remember one of the episodes of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero years ago that had Cobra's Dr. Mindbender messin' with the Joes' dreams (one of the Joes, I think it was Low-Light, turned the tables on Cobra 'cuz he didn't sleep normally, or something...). However nothing that comes to mind bears anything as close a resemblance to how dream-stealing worked in Inception than does this Scrooge McDuck comic.
Now all we need for the world to be perfect is to wait for Muppet Inception.
Darth Plagueis novel WILL be published after all!
James Luceno is a happy man: word came out a few days ago that his long-simmering Star Wars novel about Darth Plagueis is going to be published at last! Release date at the moment: February 28th, 2012.
That's a year and a half from now, but given what we've gone through already to see this book happen, it ain't so bad. Around the same time that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was premiering in theaters five years ago, Luceno was talking in interviews about how he wanted to write a novel about Darth Plagueis: the Sith Master of Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious. Specifically, Luceno said at the time that he wanted to explore at length Plagueis' search for the means to immortality (and how what Plagueis wanted differed from the immortality that Qui-Gon Jinn discovered). A year later it was announced that Luceno was writing his Darth Plagueis book with a publishing date in 2008.
Less than a year after that however, the Darth Plagueis book was cancelled by Lucasfilm! The official reason given was that it was "decided that this was not the right time to delve into Palpatine's back story and Plagueis's beginnings..."
Four years later and the time is apparently ripe to at last reveal the history of this enigmatic Sith Lord. I shall certainly be looking forward to it :-)
Man robs restaurant, calls back to complain about small haul
Crime does not pay. At least it not pay enough for one Atlanta-area robber, who held up a Wendy's and then phoned the restaurant to gripe about how little money he got away with.
From the story at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution...
A man who robbed a Wendy's at gunpoint Saturday night apparently was so upset with his haul that he twice called the restaurant to complain, Atlanta police said.I've worked in fast food before, and nearly six hundred bucks is quite a lot for one register drawer. How much more was this guy expecting?"Next time there better be more than $586," he said during one call. He made "a similar threat" in the second call, police said.
About 11:15 p.m., a man wearing a ski mask and holding a gun walked up to the drive-through window at the Wendy's at 1940 Piedmont Road, police said. He told an employee to put the cash drawer on the counter.
After grabbing the drawer and running away, the robber discarded the drawer in the bushes at the nearby InTown Suites. Police dusted the drawer for fingerprints. However, the robber was seen wearing yellow gloves at Wendy's.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
CALVIN AND HOBBES did INCEPTION first!
Props to GeekTyrant for noting that years before Christopher Nolan's cinematic foray into dream country with Inception, that Bill Waterson was already "kick"-ing around the idea in Calvin and Hobbes :-)
Y'know, this would explain some things about Calvin, when you think about it...
Fred Reed's take on WikiLeaks
The inimitable Fred Reed - who I consider to be the Internet's greatest curmudgeon - has weighed in on the WikiLeaks issue. And as is the case more often than not, he's saying the harsh truth that too many reporters, pundits and professional policy makers would rather the rest of us not think too much about (for our "own good", 'course).
Here's some of Fred's musings on the matter...
Two ways exist of looking at Wikileaks, the site that publicizes secret military documents and videos. The first is held self-interestedly by the Pentagon and by Fox News, the voice of an angry lower-middle class without too much education. These believe that Wikileakers are traitors, haters of America, who give aid and comfort to the enemy and endanger the lives of Our Boys.Plenty more at the above link. If you've never had the pleasure of reading a Fred Reed essay, I've been told that it's quite like the literary equivalent to drinking several shots of Jack Daniels. Not that I personally know what that is like, mind ya...Implicit in the Foxian view is a vague idea that the leaks give away important—well, stuff. You know, maybe frequencies of something or other, or locations of ambushes or, well, things. Important things. The Taliban will use this information to kill American soldiers. The notion is vague, as are those who hold it, but emotionally potent.
The other view, held usually by people who have some experience of Washington, is that the Pentagon is worried not about the divulging of tactical secrets, but about public relations. Wikileaks doesn’t endanger soldiers, insists this way of looking at things, but the war itself, and all the juiceful contracts and promotions and so on entailed by wars.
Which is obvious if you look at what the military (the president, remember, is commander-in-chief) actually does. Remember the military’s frantic efforts to suppress the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, photos of prisoners lying in pools of blood while grinning girl soldiers play with them? These had zero tactical importance. They did however threaten to arouse the Pentagon’s worst enemy.
The American public.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Severe geological activity about to happen?
I may get called a "kook" from some quarters for writing about this. All I can really say in my own defense is that it's something I'm sincerely curious about and I was told a long time ago that the only wrong question to ask is one that isn't asked at all...
Slashdot is spreading the news this afternoon about a massive ejection of high-energy particles from the the sun. It's headed toward Earth and should reach us sometime tomorrow. Among other things it means that we should be enjoying some lovely aurora, if you're fortunate to live at a high-enough latitude.
Awright well, here's the thing: I've noticed in the past several years that most every time we get hit by a solar flare, that there's usually a massive earthquake that happens not very long afterward.
Considering that the inside of the Earth is a molten piezoelectric dynamo that generates this planet's magnetic field and that the plates of the planet's crust are floating on top of it, it doesn't seem that coincidental a correlation. I mean, if every now and then the sun ejects some highly electromagnetic particles toward us, seems only fitting that there'd be some agitation of the works beneath us.
So... will an earthquake be occurring in the near future? More than one, perhaps?
I decided awhile back that the next time there was a report of this kind of solar weather that I'd make a note of it on this blog, just to see if anything happens. And whether or not it does well, guess this'll be my own lil' contribution to the body of observable data on geological activity :-)
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Greetings to all of y'all at the 2010 National Boy Scout Jamboree!
Tonight I'm sitting in Reidsville... but my heart is at Fort A.P. Hill.
Here's bidding a hearty "hello" to all 45,000 or so of my friends who are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts in style this week :-)
Question for anyone who's playing STARCRAFT II
Is this game really that good? I'm thinking of getting it.
And should I play the original StarCraft first? Believe it or not, for all of the original's legendary renown, I've yet to play it.
(I'm way behind on my video games. I still need to finish Batman: Arkham Asylum sometime. Not to mention Halo 3: ODST.)
Anyway, StarCraft II looks incredibly promising. Just wondering if it's worth dropping sixty bucks for it, or if I should wait :-)
