Category Archives: General

General, Uncategorized

Not to brag…

For the past few years and if you know me personally, the subject of electric vehicles has come up.

Around these parts I’ve made my feeling known about the so-called “ICE” vehicles -those which have “internal combustion engines”- and my feelings they are a technology society should have done away with many years ago.

ICE vehicles pollute the air and are incredibly inefficient. There are those that argue electric vehicles and the batteries they use are also “dirty”, but few argue they are dirtier than the use of gasoline. Regardless, to my mind still using ICE vehicles is akin to buying a computer and settling for some 1980’s/90’s tech instead of the latest tech.

Over the past few years I’ve been reading up with great curiosity about the rise of Elon Musk’s Tesla. The reviews of their vehicles, in general, have been incredibly positive and, its fair to say, this has gotten the attention of the big car companies. Today and as I write this, almost all of major car manufacturers are now working on or have released their versions of an electric vehicle.

As fascinated as I was about electric vehicles, as much as I salivated for the opportunity to drive one, it wasn’t until just shy of two weeks ago I finally did.

That’s when things really changed.

Intrigued as I was about EV vehicles and Tesla in particular, I was unsure when/if I’d get it. That test drive, along with the fact that Tesla was having a sorta/kinda end of the quarter sale, sealed the proverbial deal.

Now I know there are those who are suspicious/weary of Tesla and, especially, CEO Elon Musk. He’s gone off the wall at times with some oddball tweets. And yeah it is scary to spend a bunch of money on a car that uses a whole new technology versus the tried and true gasoline.

But I’ll tell you this: If the driving population of not only the United States but the world itself goes to a Tesla dealership and asks to test drive the car, I suspect a good 80+ percent of them that give it a fair shot will come away sold on the idea that the Tesla vehicles are very much worthy of all the attention they’ve gotten.

So impressed was I with the test drive -along with the previous research I did on the vehicle- that I took the plunge. I paid the $2500 deposit and ordered my Tesla 3. Yesterday, I got her…


Driving home was my first extended trip in the Model 3 and it was as delightful as the test drive. When we got there, my wife had her first drive and she was every bit as impressed with it as I was.

Again, I do not intend to brag. I am extremely fortunate to have the means to pick up this vehicle, though in all fairness the version I bought was hardly the most expensive model I could have gotten (I wouldn’t have been able to afford the very top end options, anyway!). Having said that, I strongly urge everyone out there to give the Tesla a try.

Perhaps you won’t come away from the experience as impressed as I. Perhaps you won’t feel it is truly the next generation vehicle I believe it is.

But if you do give it a shot, it might clear much of the haze surrounding Musk and Tesla and the fanboy mentality of many out there while allowing you to focus on the vehicle itself.

A vehicle which deserves, IMHO, many of its kudos.

General

More shocking news…

A while back, lawyer Michael Avenatti made something of a splash as one of President Donald Trump’s most visible antagonists.

Image result for michael avenatti

The above photograph shows Mr. Avenatti with his most famous client, porn star Stormy Daniels. For a while last year he worked very hard to get Trump to admit having made payments to keep her quiet about an affair and the non-disclosure agreement made by her at the behest of her previous lawyer, who may well have colluded with Mr. Trump’s team to get her out of the way while the election was going on.

Even now I find it difficult to believe all those shenanigans happened and this man is President!

Yeesh.

Anyway, the situation was sordid to say the least yet I had to give Mr. Avenatti credit: During his TV appearances he looked sharp and was a witty talker who seemed at times to strike blood.

Welp, things started to go bad for Mr. Avenatti. A while back Stormy Daniels let him go and he no longer is her lawyer, though to be fair it seems he helped the case along and got her freed up to say everything about the affair (I think!). Further, there were odd rumblings of things amiss with his career and personal life.

Then the following incredible news broke. Written by Hayley Miller and presented on Huffingtonpost.com, it appears Mr. Avenatti’s world is coming crashing down:

Michael Avenatti charged with with embezzlement, trying to extort $20 million from Nike

The details can be found in the link provided above and they present a very sordid story. It would appear Mr. Avenatti is facing considerable serious legal jeopardy .

Ah well. So much for the figure that created, for a little while anyway, this image of the striving lawyer representing a David and going after the corrupt Goliath/President.

Is there no one involved in politics, directly or indirectly, who is clean?!

General

Don’t look a gift horse…

The full saying is: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”. What it means, according to phrases.org is:

Don’t be ungrateful when you receive a gift.

Why do I mention this?

POLITICS! Beware!!!

Because of the release of the Muller report and the subsequent “exoneration” claimed by those in the Trump White House of his very questionable actions leading up to the election and beyond.

Yeah, Muller found he couldn’t quite pin “collaboration” between Russia and the Trump team during the election, though I suspect this was a very near call in the end. Yet he didn’t exactly clear Mr. Trump of obstruction, even if he ultimately didn’t charge Trump or more of his bizarro friends/family in the process.

So in that respect, things look like they’re done on this front and, you know what?

I’m fine with that.

I think Trump has been sufficiently burned that he’ll probably try not to fuck up any more than he has to date. Whatever he did or didn’t do up to the election, I strongly suspect there will be a lot more eyes very wide open for any signs of any suspicious activities.

Further, I’m kinda glad we don’t have, at least for the rest of this year (perhaps) the prospect of an impeachment.

Why?

Because I’m old enough to remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the end it was a stupid, pointless exercise and all it did was turn people off of Republicans and their excesses. I feel Nancy Pelosi is operating very cleverly here and remembers what happened then like I do. So she’s playing it cool. She doesn’t accept the findings until she sees the full report but neither does she jump up and down pronouncing crimes under every rock while making herself -and the party- look silly.

Leave that to the experts as Trump does that well enough on his own.

With impeachment off the table, if indeed it remains that way until the next election, Trump will have to run on his record and I suspect there won’t be all that much to be proud off, despite all his grand pronouncements.

Yeah, it sucks that a stronger case wasn’t made against him. I still suspect he’s guilty of collusion and obstruction, at the very least and that’s without mentioning all the questionable financial issues dogging him.

So take this down this very hard pill to swallow (another nice little cliche!) and when election time rolls around, there is no excuse for those who share my opinion to do what they should: Vote the man out and rid ourselves once and for all of him and his clown show.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, General, Movies

Too big…?

Over at Hollywoodreporter.com, Georg Szalai and Paul Bond have an article which notes:

Disney Closes Fox Deal, Creating Global Content Powerhouse

I’m not surprised by these developments. Disney has been on a roll of late, making buckets of money on their parks, their movies, and their TV shows. When Disney bought up Marvel Comics, they went on a further roll with the various Marvel Universe films featuring Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.

Though Disney owned the characters published through Marvel Comics, it was Fox which had the rights to making movies featuring what were arguably the most prominent Marvel Comics characters: Spider-Man, X-Men, and The Fantastic Four.

Now, I’m not suggesting the only reason Disney targeted buying up Fox was to get all the Marvel characters’ movie rights under one umbrella, but given some of the loads o’ cash these films make, it had to be a consideration.

So, for those who long to see an Avengers vs. X-Men film, it looks like it could well be on the horizon.

On various boards, people who are fans of Disney’s Marvel films are happy for this possibility, but I’m rather disturbed by the whole thing.

Why?

Because we seem to be reaching a point these days where there exist one or two or three companies that control virtually all the entertainment being fed to us.

AT&T recently purchased Warner Brothers. Now Disney owns Fox.

I worry when we reach a point where there are so few companies responsible for so much. Will our entertainment get more and more bland?

I suppose.

I suppose its also possible that new, independent artists can catch fire, but given the size of the giants out there, how long before their concepts/ideas are bought out as well?

There is also this, found in the Disney/Fox article:

Disney has promised $2 billion in cost savings from the Fox takeover, with some in the industry expecting between 4,000-10,000 layoffs.

Ouch.

General

Egg Boy…

Heard of him? His name is William Connolly and he achieved a level of internet/cultural super-stardom because he cracked an egg on the back of Australian Senator Fraser Anning’s head.

Why did he do this to this to Mr. Anning? Because Mr. Anning, a self-avowed White Supremacist, stated the horrific massacre of 50 Muslim worshipers in New Zealand a couple of days ago was somehow their own fault.

Don’t believe me? Check out this article by Andy Campbell and found on Huffingtonpost.com:

Australian Senator Blames Muslims for New Zealand Massacre

So, Mr. Connolly, a 16 year old boy, cracked an egg on the back of Mr. Anning’s head and the resulting reaction by Mr. Anning and his people, as detailed in this article by Briana Ellison and found on Washingtonpost.com:

Punching a teenager over an egg really isn’t a good look for a politician

Here is a video of the entire encounter:

I thinks its fair to say no one likes the idea of assaulting people. I certainly don’t like the idea of someone hitting another person with a fist, an egg, a tomato, or whatever.

But you know what I hate even more?

Fifty people killed by a maniac with a semi-automatic weapon -and some 50 more in critical condition- and then hearing some loudmouth ignorant politician justify the actions of this homicidal maniac as the victims getting what they deserved.

An egging seems pretty tame in comparison.

But to some, the egging was a deadly sin. James Woods, no stranger to right wing frothing, denounced egg boy’s actions. So too did actor Dean Cain, who stated on twitter: I would have knocked that kid cold.

This led to plenty of criticism, much of which you can find in this article by Ed Mazza and found on (again) Huffingtonpost.com:

Ex-Superman actor Dean Cain’s Hot Take on Egg-Boy

The pile on against Mr. Cain was swift and at times brutal.

I want to move away from Mr. Cain, Woods, and Anning and state: What the hell is going on with the world these days?

I worry the influence on current political figures and their at times subtle and at times in your face statements are having a negative effect on people. It seems like we’re unleashing people’s collective ids and, yes, it seems to coincide with the election of one Donald J. Trump.

I’m not saying he’s to blame for all this. The hatreds were clearly there, mostly under the surface, perhaps held back. But nowadays hearing people excuse the actions of terrible people, as Anning did, then somehow fault a relatively harmless action by a teenager as deserving a whipping, seems odd at best and scary at worst.

Mr. Cain, Mr. Woods, Mr. Anning: How in the world can you on the one hand seem relatively un-bothered by the cold-blooded murder of fifty innocent people in a house of worship (I don’t recall seeing any mention of them tweeting about that to any degree… if they did, my apologies) and then they get riled up with the mischievous and certainly non-lethal actions of a teenager?

The world has truly turned upside down.

General

Sorry for the dearth of posts…

…but it’s Spring Break and that means I get to work even harder than usual while simultaneously dealing with more family members (the later being not an unpleasant task at all!).

Still, it does rob me of time I might otherwise use to fill up this page.

A couple of random thoughts:

In light of the news from New Zealand, I wonder how much more evidence is needed to show that White Nationalism is a plague which very much needs to be addressed. I don’t hold Donald Trump to blame for feelings many of these people have, he sure does bear responsibility for being so damn passive to the point of giving them a *wink* *wink* attitude.

Captain Marvel is flying high (pun intended) at the box office though its second week box office falloff was quite steep. It wasn’t catastrophically steep, far from it, and it will most certainly prove to be another big hit for Marvel, yet I still get the impression -and I may be super-wrong here- that this is a “lesser” Marvel feature, one that’s perhaps on the level of a Dr. Strange or Thor 2. Currently over at Rottentomatoes.com, the critical reaction stands at an OK 79% positive while the audience reaction is a slightly cooler 62% positive. Good, certainly, but not too terribly higher than average.

James Gunn was re-hired by Disney to direct/write Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I’ve noted before I really, really hated the original Guardians of the Galaxy and realize I’m in a small minority as it seems almost everyone went head over heels for that film. While the reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 wasn’t quite as positive, I absolutely want people who liked the two films -and there are many of you!- to see a third film delivered by Mr. Gunn and felt it was a shame when Disney -too hurriedly IMHO- fired him.

You see, while I may not like the first GOTG film and skipped the second (and doubt I’ll see it), I absolutely felt Mr. Gunn was screwed by the alt-right (them again) people who dug up his admittedly stupid old twitter posts and weaponized them to get him fired.

Some on the right have noted that Mr. Gunn is getting better treatment than, say, Roseanne Barr, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Gunn wrote those stupid tweets a while back -quite a while before he directed the first GOTG- and has bent over backwards to apologize for them and acknowledge they were attempts at humor that now look like nothing more than the poorest of poor taste. Roseanne Barr, on the other hand, has been writing questionable tweets, including tweets that are borderline -or right across the line- into racism and she hasn’t, to my knowledge, offered a sincere acknowledgement of sorrow.

I suppose if you feel the two situations are comparable I’d be the last person to convince you otherwise.

Finally, I have to once again thank everyone out there reading my books. The pace of reading them hasn’t slowed and I’m delighted to see there is an interest in those books.

I’m writing the next novel and of late I’ve been delighted with the direction the book is going in.

I’ll offer some information on that soon enough!

General

The type of thing that can give you nightmares…

Found this article on CNN.com and written by Jack Guy:

Woman dies as food poisoning in Michelin-starred restaurant hits 29 diners

The restaurant in question, Riff located in Valencia, Spain, has one Michelin star and, obviously, is considered a prestigious restaurant.

And yet, as the article notes, between February 13 and 16 something was served to patrons which caused them to get very sick. One of the patrons, a woman who leaves behind a husband and 12 year old son who also experienced illness from their meal at the restaurant, passed away early Sunday morning.

Incredible.

This is obviously a very sad and tragic situation, especially for the woman and her family. It also provides a sober reality check. Even if you go to a restaurant with a very high/prestigious reputation, bad things can -and in this case did- happen.

But it goes even beyond that. We buy food at our local grocery and expect the food we pick up is “safe” just as we do whenever we get food at a restaurant, be it prestigious or a “fast food”-type joint.

But as this article shows, things can go wrong. I have absolutely no doubt the staff of Riff had no idea they were serving bad food, just as I’m certain whoever sold them the food didn’t think it was bad, either.

There is no moral here, no point other than bad things can happen. It’s a scary thing to realize.

General

Sailor in iconic picture passes away…

Yesterday news came that George Mendonsa, the sailor pictured in this iconic World War II (or, more specifically, end of World War II) picture and presented on Life magazine, had passed away at the age of 95…

Image result for life magazine wwii kiss photo

The woman in the picture, Greta Zimmer Friedman, had passed away at 92 in 2016. The two did not know each other and Mr. Mendonsa grabbed and kissed the woman, a dental technician, without her consent.

That’s right, he grabbed a random woman, pulled her up to him, and planted a kiss on her.

I know the image is iconic, I know it has been used to show, in visual form, the ecstasy of the moment in Times Square when WWII was officially over and celebrations over that fact ran throughout the nation.

However, what we have here is a woman, against her will, being grabbed and kissed. Later on and when interviewed, Ms. Friedman stated: “It wasn’t my choice to be kissed”. Just like that, this iconic image feels… I dunno… wrong.

For years and before the story behind this picture was reported, I figured the two knew each other and they both shared in this celebratory kiss. When I discovered otherwise…

Look, I understand Mr. Mendonsa, as most military personnel and civilians, was thrilled war was over and they would not experience battle.

Yet what he did here… it simply wasn’t right. I wouldn’t want to be out on the streets, minding my own business, when someone (male, female… its irrelevant) grabs me and forcibly plants a kiss on my face… or worse.

I suspect not many people would.

It certainly mars what was, at one point, a seemingly delightful picture that came to signify the elation of a nation at the end of a brutal war.

General, TV

History Repeats Itself…

…again.

Read about actor Jussie Smollett? He’s an openly gay actor known for being in the TV show Empire. Here he is:

On January 29th of this year, he reported to the police that two people attacked him while in Chicago. He alleged they hurled homophobic and racial slurs at him, put a rope around his neck, and poured a chemical substance on him.

(For more details and a timeline of events regarding this case, check out this article by Sopan Deb and presented on The New York Times).

Needless to say, the assault and details Mr. Smollett provided were harrowing. Only thing is… it now appears that Mr. Smollett may not have been telling the truth. It appears he may have staged the event himself, something I can’t even begin to understand why.

Ah, but you ask: What’s this whole “history repeats itself” thing you mention at the header?

See, when you get older and if you pay attention to the news and have a pesky habit of remembering things from years to years, you begin to realize that, indeed, history does have a weird habit of repeating itself.

Way back in the 1980’s and before the rise of the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, and other right wing fanatics, there was this TV personality, now deceased, named Morton Downey Jr. who had a very wild right wing TV show. Here’s Mr. Morton Downey Jr as he appeared on his show:

Image result for morton downey jr

And here’s the very same Morton Downey Jr. photographed in 1989 after he was allegedly attacked -as he claimed- in a public bathroom by youthful hoods that, among other things, drew a swastika on his face:

Image result for morton downey jr

You can read a little more about this alleged attack on this site:

Bogushatecrimes.com

As you can tell by the website’s name, this attack on Mr. Downey Jr. wound up being… well… bogus. There proved to be too many discrepancies in his story and, amusingly, the Swastika was drawn on his face backwards. You know, as if he was looking in the mirror and drew it that way.

As it turned out, Mr. Downey Jr.’s TV show was suffering and was looking like it might be cancelled. It was theorized he set up this bogus attack as a way of getting attention on himself in the hopes of bringing the ratings of his show up and, thus, save it.

Alas, the show was cancelled anyway and Mr. Downey Jr. declared bankruptcy and appeared in other markets before his eventual death in 2001. I distinctly recall watching one of his shows way back when, where he puffed maniacally on his cigarette and blew smoke right at the camera, his provocative way of telling those who would dare try to stop him from smoking to go fuck themselves.

The big irony is that in 1996 Mr. Downey Jr. developed lung cancer and had to have one of his lungs removed. He went from being that very pro-smoker to a staunch anti-smoker but, clearly, by that point the damage was done.

I know there are rumors Mr. Smollett’s actions, if indeed the attack on him does turn out to be bogus, were motivated by perhaps being in danger of being dropped from Empire, just as Mr. Downey Jr. allegedly did what he did for fear his show was on the rocks.

Either way, if indeed Mr. Smollett did stage this attack, it looks like its in the process of being found out.

General

Not what you want to hear…

…if you’ve invested in cryptocurrency. Found on gizmodo.com and written by Tom McKay:

Crypto exchange says it can’t repay $190 million to clients after founder dies with only password

At the risk of giving away everything in the article, let me quote the first paragraph in it:

Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX says it cannot repay most of $190 million in client holdings after its 30-year-old founder Gerald Cotten, the only person who knew the passwords to its “cold storage,” unexpectedly died in India in December 2018.

While I suppose one shouldn’t generalize, reading this sure makes it sound like investing in crypto currency is at the very, very least… risky? And that maybe, just maybe, there should be more guardrails/regulations involved in crypto currency exchanges to avoid something so seemingly …stupid… from happening to one’s investments, no? Especially when they come to $190 million!

Here’s the thing, and I really do hate sounding like some kind of conspiracy theorist… but isn’t this rather convenient?

Also from the article (the bolding is by me):

Some other reporting has suggested it is possible some of the funds in question moved after the case was publicized, and though the evidence was not definitive, it and the strange circumstances of Cotten’s death spurred accusations that his demise was either faked or the pretext for an exit scam by other parties with access to the holdings, according to CCN. However, Robertson included a death certificate in the filings, CoinDesk wrote.

According to CBC, the government confirmed a Canadian had died in India, but could not offer more details due to privacy laws.

Okay then.

Granted, evidence of funds being moved after the date Mr. Cotten supposedly died was “not definitive” and therefore we cannot say for sure some funny business happened, it is weird that beyond a death certificate we can’t get more evidence to prove he did indeed pass away.

But, even if he did pass away in India and hasn’t “faked” his death to cover some financial crime, who’s to say Mr. Cotten was the only person to have that password? Is it possible someone else within his company or family had that password and maybe used it after the fact?

Pure speculation, mind you, and based on the article alone there’s absolutely no reason to believe anything beyond what’s presented.

Still, the whole situation is beyond weird.