It’s been incredibly busy for me around these parts, both with work and with (quick) travel.
Things should be settling down really soon and I’ll be getting back to normal postings.
Til then, Happy New Years, everyone!
Category Archives: General
The one good thing about reaching December 26th…
…is that the madness is done with and you can finally take a breath and relax.
Of course, this qualifies for first world problems yet there is stress involved in getting through these days. I get tired of running from one family home to another to deliver and receive gifts. Inevitably, I get fed -and eat!- way more than I should and today, as I’m sitting here typing, my stomach feels bloated.
First world problems indeed.
I suppose I should shut up and be appreciative about what I have, a family, gifts for all, a roof over our heads, and a meal on the table.
Certainly better to have than to have not.
Jingle Bells…
…Batman smells…
…Robin laid an egg…
…Batmobile lost its wheel…
…and the Joker got away!
Remember that old childhood variation on the song? I certainly do, and at least to my memory, that was pretty much it for the parody of Jingle Bells.
Except that time being what it is, it appears a whole second verse was added to the song since my childhood back in the stone age and, much to my surprise, Tom Scocca over at theconcourse.com writes about it here:
Do you know the second verse to “Jingle Bells, Batman smells?”
For those like me who never even knew about this mysterious second verse (something which clearly came to be sometime after my own childhood in the 1970’s), I’m sooooo tempted to not reveal it here and help out Mr. Scocca to get whatever pitiful clicks he can get via my site…
…but I just have to put it here, so Mr. Scocca, my deepest apologies.
And now, SPOILERS!, the second verse of Jingle Bells, Batman Smells…
SPOILERS!!!!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!
Batman’s in the kitchen
Robin’s in the hall
Joker’s in the bathroom
Peeing on the wall, hey!
Never heard those lines before. Ever.
Interestingly, there are variations to even those lines. If you do go to the website and check out the article (its not terribly long and, yes, I gave pretty much everything away here), scroll down to some of the comments.
Indeed, it appears this second verse found its way into the song sometime in the later 1980’s or perhaps into the 1990’s (which would make sense as my childhood was reeeeeallly far in my rear-view mirror by that time), and that even the first and this new second verse has its own variations…
For example, some people note that the line “Blew his nose in Cheerios and ate ‘em anyway” also appeared in the song at some point.
Then there’s “and joker took ballet, hey!”, which another one notes was a thing.
I vaguely recall another person who noted that at one point the line “Commissioner broke his leg” was a alternate variation of the “Batmobile lost its wheel” line.
Anyway, interesting stuff from childhood…
…oh, and to everyone out there:
Have a very Happy Holiday!
(And to those impatient for news about my latest/concluding chapter of the Corrosive Knights series… I’m working hard on it. It will come out sometime in 2018)
Times change…
In this era where sexual harassment has become something everyone is far more sensitive to -thankfully!- there are things from the past that are being looked at with fresh eyes.
One of them is this song, Baby It’s Cold Outside…
This is the first appearance of the song in the 1949 film Neptune’s Daughter and, yes, that’s Ricardo (KHAN!) Montalban singing!
The song is one of those very big Christmas songs that has been covered by many, many singers over the years since its release. Here’s another version, by Dean Martin, which I’m embedding below only because it offers the lyrics to the song…
What’s the song about? Easy: Sex. Here we have a guy and a gal together in the guy’s apartment/home and the gal wants to head out but the guy wants her to stay over, and its not so they can finish off the latest New York Times crossword puzzle.
Yes, Baby It’s Cold Outside is a Christmas sex song!
Here’s the thing though: Is the song really an innocent ode to having good ol’ fashioned sex or is this song about… sexual coercion? Date rape?
Kim LaCapria at snopes.com offers an examination of this song and the opinions about it, especially in these times:
Is Baby It’s Cold Outside about date rape?
As per usual, I don’t want to spoil everything in the linked article, but I will offer some analysis/notes of my own, some of which can be found in the article above.
First, the song clearly presents a woman who is, at least as the song starts, not interested/wanting to stay with the man. The man, on the other hand, is clearly horny and wants the woman and the line “Baby, it’s cold outside” is his attempt to convince her to stay, among other things.
As the song progresses, the woman notes her mother and father will worry and, if she were to stay, she worries what the neighbors will think. She’s offering multiple reasons for leaving while the man comes closer, offers her drinks, tells her there are no cabs to be found, etc. etc., all in the attempt to get her to stay the night with him.
Is it indeed sexual coercion? Or is the song meant to be playful, with the protagonists of this song -both the woman and man- really wanting to get it on and we’re given a “wink wink” view of sexual politics, the woman playing hard to get -but not too hard to get- while the guy has to smooth talk his way to get to where they both want to go…
Here’s the thing, and I posted it clearly in this particular blog’s title: Times Change.
A short while back, and in another blog entry entitled Time Passes and Things Change (gee, how about that?!) I wrote about seeing the opening minutes of the western comedy Waterhole #3. That film, which featured James Coburn as the protagonist, involves a search for missing money.
I like James Coburn. I think he was a great actor and he appeared in many fine films, as well as the occasional dog. Waterhole #3 isn’t one of his better known films, but it is an example of how sexual mores were different in the past versus what we have in the present.
While one could make a case that Baby It’s Cold Outside isn’t quite as dark a song as some view it now, there is no doubt, viewed from today, that the sexual “seduction” scene in the early parts of Waterhole #3 is rape.
Here’s what I wrote about the movie and the “seduction” scene between James Coburn and Margarete Blye’s characters in the film:
Billee (Margarete Blye) finds Cole (James Coburn) in her barn, with his pants down (I’m not entirely sure why he isn’t wearing his pants…I suppose that was meant to be part of the “fun”), and he corners her (“humorously”), she tries to fight him (“humorously”), he pulls her down to the ground (“humorously”), he starts kissing her (“humorously”), and then, but of course, she’s somehow charmed by his actions and succumbs to the passion.
I then added this: Holy shit.
Mind you, this happens within the first approximately fifteen or so minutes of the film and, no, the Billee and Cole characters do not know each other before their encounter and, yes, the scene was so off putting to me that I had to shut the film down right then and there.
But my point is this: Until recently (and by that I mean the last ten or so years and, particularly, within the past year) there was a far looser sense of sexual politics and in a movie like Waterhole #3, released in 1967, the idea that women would naturally fall for a “scoundrel”, especially one played by James Coburn, trumped the ugly implications of what was clearly, clearly, a forcible rape, which disgustingly was played for laughs!
Still, it doesn’t shock me that a forgotten film like Waterhole #3 doesn’t engender the same scrutiny as a famous song like Baby It’s Cold Outside.
Yet its a good thing, in my opinion, that people’s eyes are opening a little more to the world around us.
And if you think this is much ado about nothing, please take a moment to see this video. If this doesn’t open your eyes about what its like to be the victim of sexual harassment, nothing will.
The truth is out there…
No, this isn’t about The X-Files (though I’m eager to see the new episodes, now that you mention it!), but rather the recent reveal that the U.S. Government spent some $22 Million (let’s face it, chump change) to investigate UFOs and other unexplained phenomena.
Which led me to this intriguing article by Jacob Brogan and found on Slate.com…
We Shouldn’t Be Looking For Aliens. We Should Be Hiding From Them
To be clear, the article does not address anything new and startling regarding arguments among scientists and others about whether we should be trying to find other alien life or not.
Indeed, while one could adopt an optimistic Star Trek-like philosophy regarding alien cultures and the need to find and interact with them, there is a certain dark reality concerning what has happened in Earth’s past when cultures have found themselves.
Within the above linked article is this quote by Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin:
No civilization should ever announce its presence to the cosmos, [Liu] says. Any other civilization that learns of its existence will perceive it as a threat to expand—as all civilizations do, eliminating their competitors until they encounter one with superior technology and are themselves eliminated. This grim cosmic outlook is called “dark-forest theory,” because it conceives of every civilization in the universe as a hunter hiding in a moonless woodland, listening for the first rustlings of a rival.
I must admit, while I’d like to think that finding and interacting with other alien cultures sounds incredibly intriguing, there is a part of me -a sizable part, truth be told- that worries about exactly what Liu Cixin states.
As I noted before, when the European explorers met the native Americans in both North and South America, the results were not good, to say the least, for the Native Americans, be they Aztec or American Indians.
What’s to say that meeting up with an alien race capable of bridging the enormous gap between the stars (something we obviously haven’t come close to be able to do), won’t arrive to our planet and look at us much like those European explorers did to the natives way back when?
In which case, we could rapidly be toast.
Oh… my…
Reading this story should make everyone think twice about sending something valuable through one of the several parcel services.
The article, written by Maria Perez and presented on Newsweek.com, is about how…
UPS Loses Family’s $846K Inheritance, Offers to Refund $32 Shipping Fee
As with so many of the stories I present links to here, you should read ’em if they intrigue you, but as always, I’ll spoil things a little bit here by going into the article.
So here’s the thing: A Canadian man has a nearly $1 million inheritance. He agrees to have the money delivered in a bank draft and sent to him via UPS and, well, the bank draft is lost in the proverbial mail… and, hilariously, UPS offers to refund the shipping fee for the loss.
Here’s the thing: A bank draft can be turned in by anyone. It is not like a check where you can cancel it and issue another. Someone, somewhere, might get their hands on that check and, viola, get their hands on the money on it.
So far, no one has done this and, it strikes me, the Bank could figure out a way to flag someone illegally trying to cash in that bank draft and issue a new one for the gentleman whose money they’re withholding because of that.
I suspect the gentleman in this article will eventually get his money, but of course he’s gotta go through those idiotic hoops before the bank finally figures out the proper way to do this.
At least I hope he does!
Disney buying up most of Fox Entertainment…
Woke up today to the news that Disney is, as the headline right above states, buying up most of Fox Entertainment’s assets. The link below is to a CNN article written by Hadas Gold and Charles Riley concerning that big bit of news…
Disney is buying most of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 Billion
To comic book/movie geeks like me, this means that Disney, who owns Marvel Comics and the characters, nonetheless did not have the right to make movies using the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and only until recently, Spider-Man, even though those characters and the ancillary characters around them were part of the Marvel Comics stable.
Why?
Because there was a time, believe it or not, when Marvel Comics wasn’t doing all that well financially and the rights to the movie versions of these properties were sold to what eventually became 21st Century Fox. These properties, ironically enough, were THE most popular properties in the Marvel stable, so when the Marvel films first started coming out, they were forced to use “lesser” characters at first.
Sure, people knew the Hulk and Captain America, but Iron Man wasn’t a big character. Thor, also quite well known in comic book circles, was hardly a Marvel “A” lister. So too the Guardians of the Galaxy.
But the movies were successful beyond anyone’s dreams and, voila, the Marvel films were hot hot hot and when Disney purchased them, lock, stock, and barrel, they continued the success… and even managed to procure the use of Spider-Man.
I suspect that small opening allowed Disney to continue their negotiations with Fox and, today, it looks like we’ve come to the logical conclusion.
So, now what?
Will we see the Fantastic Four and X-Men finally come into the Marvel Universe?
I strongly suspect we will.
And… it kinda depresses me.
Look, its nice that the Marvel properties, both in print and in theaters, are now going to be under one umbrella. The properties should be together as they always were in print.
However…
Is it me or are we rapidly coming to the point where our entire lives are going to be influenced by only a handful of companies?
Think about it: In entertainment Disney, Warner Brothers, and Sony are a trio of incredibly big and influential companies. Fox was, too, but now Fox is part of Disney.
I could go on with other companies, such as Amazon and Apple and Samsung and Microsoft and… the list sure seems to get smaller and smaller, no?
One other thing: Fox owns the rights to the original cut of Star Wars (1977). Now, supposedly George Lucas, when he sold his Star Wars properties, put a clause in there nixing any release of the original cut of the film.
But now Disney actually owns that cut (again, this was like the Marvel deal, while Disney owns the Star Wars properties, Fox had the rights to the original theatrical version of the original film).
The big question: Will they finally release it?
Huh…?!
Over on HuffingtonPost.com, Ed Mazza writes about that weird, almost tube shaped interstellar object named Oumuamua…
…which is coming into our solar system from somewhere (gulp) outside and that…
Scientists To Study Mysterious Interstellar Asteroid For Signs Of Alien Technology
Ok, before you fly off the handle (and at the risk of spoiling things in the fascinating article I just linked to above), this from Avi Loeb, professor of astronomy at Harvard University:
Most likely it is of natural origin, but because it is so peculiar, we would like to check if it has any sign of artificial origin, such as radio emissions. If we do detect a signal that appears artificial in origin, we’ll know immediately.
Then there’s this quote, also found in the article, by Yuri Milner, the Silicon Valley billionaire behind the initiative looking into checking the object out:
We don’t want to be sensational in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial. But because this is a unique situation, we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis.
Again, from the article:
Oumuamua’s unusual cigar shape ― 10 times longer than it is wide ― was also “the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust,” the organization said. However, “a natural origin is more likely.”
So there you go. While the odds greatly indicate Oumuamua is a “natural” object, because of its weird shape and that its come from outside our solar system, why not check it out and see if any signals come from it?
Have to tell you, I get chills thinking about it. Kinda/sorta reminds me of some of the stuff I’ve written…!
Oh Al…
Politics be here… beware!
There’s so much going on in the world -the Bizarro Trumpworld we’re currently in- that its hard to focus on one thing but I’ll try.
Time magazine offered a brilliant, IMHO, “Person of the Year”: The Silence Breakers. It was about the women -and men!- who spoke out about sexual harassment and blazed a trail which has led us to a point where we, as a society, are finally confronting something which should have been confronted a very long time ago.
There are many people, some shocking to find, who have engaged in these types of sleazy activities. Many of them have lost their jobs, rightfully, while at least a couple of prominent ones -talking about you Trump and Roy Moore- who are determined to swim against the tide and continue the “they are lying” defense, which rings hallow, to say the least.
Another who has been exposed is Al Franken.
I like Mr. Franken, senator. I feel many of his philosophies are in line with my own and I think it was incredible the way he cornered Jeff Sessions in a lie. I wish there were more senators out there who vote the way he does.
And having said all that… he needs to resign.
While the allegations regarding Franken’s alleged harassment isn’t anywhere near being in the neighborhood of what Roy Moore is accused of (let’s face it, that man is in a perverse, disgusting world of his own), there comes a point when one either is against harassment or isn’t.
If we are to believe the allegations about what he did, which included forcibly kissing unwilling women, that’s quite enough, thank you.
As a politician, I really like you, Al.
Now do the right thing and resign.
If you’re sincere about being ashamed of what you did, provide restitution. Volunteer your time to shelters that provide aid and comfort to victims of sexual harassment. Show penance. One day very soon, you could step back into the political limelight, a renewed, hopefully forgiven man.
Who knows, you may even be elected again to office.
Oh, and Mr. Moore? Mr. Trump? I’d ask you two to drop out and do the same but it seems you’ve lost your shame a very long time ago.
If you ever had any to begin with.
Puerto Rico and Tesla…
If there’s anything good to come from an incredible tragedy, it may be Tesla’s involvement in powering up the island of Puerto Rico with their battery projects, as presented in this article by Fred Lambert and presented on electrek.com…
Tesla deploys 6 battery projects in order to power two islands in Puerto Rico, more to come
When I first heard of Tesla’s battery pack idea, I was intrigued with the concept. Essentially, the goal is to provide electricity to people via battery packs of various sizes.
In theory, one might in the future have solar panels (or some version of solar panels) on one’s house which feeds directly to a battery pack within your house which will then provide electricity to your home.
Granted, this is something that will work far better in areas like where I live in, which has plenty of sunshine. However, even if one doesn’t live in an area like that, the battery packs could be charged on your local electrical grid and then used in peak hours of energy usage.
Its intriguing stuff and I’m most curious to see where this all leads… and, of course, whether it works!