2025-02-01    23:56:17 PM

Book Tell-Vision Report: Star Trek The Next Generation: Cause and Effect

Although I was aware that my main high school girlfriend was a huge fan of this series when it first came on tell=vision, I didn't start watching it until 2015.

I've watched the whole series several times now, and this is one of two episodes (both in Season 5) that I keep coming back to. They are in the ship and are caught in a, what do they call it? A temporal loop? It starts with them hitting another ship and getting destroyed (that one does have Kelsey Grammer as the captain). Then it goes immediately to 4 of the main cast playing a game of cards. Or is it 5 of them? This reminds me of how my girlfriend and I used to play double deck pinnocle with my folks. I don't want to ruin this episode for you, but I can't really write a review and not talk about the thing about it. Essentially, the number 3 keeps coming up and the ending is a real cliff hanger!

Kinda like how the number 4 keeps on coming up in my life. Sure, there are only 10 base, base 10 numbers. And only 26 letters. 36 combined. The whole thing with "number one" playing trombone and Picard playing the pennywhistle. Waking up at 4am for 40 years. Winding up on the streets on 7-4-2003 and getting off the streets on 7-4-2004 (hey, I was working on making a video pinball machine, I mean, slinky!). You know "we couldn't have planned this better."

This last year though, it seems like when I say some absolute like "I've been getting up at 4am for 40 years", it's like people are out to prove me incorrect and grab some videos of me to prove it! I guess people are getting tired of playing Space Invaders! Like it negates 40 years of routine/history.

2025-02-01    07:37:36 AM

Book Movie Report: OH God! Book II

This movie, from the 1980's again, has been the main movie on my mind lately. The main character is Tracie, a 10 year old girl. She is an only child and goes out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her parents. At dinner, her parents are arguing. I think they are even divorced, which was a typical theme in the movies back then. So Tracie escuses herself and goes to the lobby by the restrooms, it's actually a bedroom sized coat room. She has a conversation with God there while she was alone, but she could not see him (seeing is believing, not hearing!). It's the same deal as in the previous movie. In this one, she and her friend, is his name Kato? I remember him playing basketball in his driveway with Tracie talking with him. They end up doing advertising all over town with the main slogan being "Think God". Her dad is in the advertising business I believe.

It gets all crazy of course. More and more stressful and having run for federal political office for a decade, I can relate to all of this, on all angles. At the end of the movie, her parents are "concerned" about her mental health as are her teachers who are even more concerned and getting the authorities involved. It winds up in a trial in a kind of large board room that could have her locked away for good. God makes an in person (seeing is believing) appearance, or was he invisible the whole time this time?

The actress who plays Tracie did an excellent job. I mean really, WOW! I'm very moved by the whole thing more than 40 years later. I wonder what kind of effect doing that movie had on her life? I looked her up for the first time the other day and it looks like we are almost exactly the same age.

[ I swear that I heard just now, or was it just imagination, "you lose". It's been common lately. With my religion/spirituality, losing and winning is simply a trajectory. ]

2025-01-29    10:29:37 AM

Book Movie Report: Pulp Fiction

Well, what can I say? There is this moment in this movie Where Bruce Butch was talking with his lady and she mentions that she would "like a little pot". Then she goes on to describe perfect/normal legs, arms but with a little pot "belly". That is essentially where my perfectly crafted pot belly came from. And of course there is Christopher Walken from Flatliners.

2025-01-29    09:40:29 AM

Book Tell vision Report: The Enemy Within

Listening to the Rush song The Enemy Within this morning and this brings up the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within.

This one starts on the surface of a cold planet where they encounter a yellow powder and get it all over their lovely blue uniforms (that actor reminds me of Kevin from Degenerate Art Ensemble). When beaming up, there is some transporter malfunction. Scotty does some tests and then beams up Kirk. All goes well, but Kirk is a little stunned and mentions the transporter malfunction. The leave the room and then "evil" kirk beams aboard.

So then all the action drama starts. The big point of this lovely story is about the unicorn dog. The evil one is just so cute with its yapping. Mellow one is kind of a fluffy blob. Of course they keep the "evil" one in a cage and "evil" Kirk winds up in cell too. What can you do? Some beings are just beasts!

The duplicating coffee on the surface is worth a mention too. Is it just green "extra virgin" rice/wheat grains now? I keep a bottle of the stuff on the top shelf and will put in on pasta once a year. It had been about a decade, so it was a good treat, but this whole bottle just sits in the back while I put the oil on thick wiht the Spectrum stuff.

2025-01-07    13:01:18 PM

Book Movie Report: Mr. Mom

This film from the 1980's staring Michael Keaton, Teri Garr and Richard Mull (I think I'm getting his name correct), and others who I have yet to research but likely will, is about a traditional family of 4 (two boys) who's father, who worked as an auto design engineer in Detroit or somewhere near there, got laid off along with others in his department. Soon, after unemployment sets in and the family is concerned about money and next steps, Teri (the female/wife/mother) "puts out the word too", to utilize her degree in advertising to become the family's only/main source of income. This puts Michael (the male/husband/father) in the position of running the household.

Perhaps I'm shallow, or whatever people want to say about me, but I like movies for the objects/situations more than the social dynamics/commentary. I pick up on the absurdness of grocery shopping. The whole thing with a long list of deli cheese to choose from a lady behind the counter who is getting a little frustrated. I'm sure it is frustrating on both ends! How did we get born into this insane alien world?

The school drop off point, in a car of course ( car, I assume, is short for carriage ). The somewhat dated rolling up of a car window (My first car didn't have a power window. I was gifted a car in 2002 with my first power window. I haven't had a roll up window car since.), fits well with the story of the laid-off auto engineer.

The middle of the movie (act 2) has the father experiencing a heavy conflict with his new way of life resulting in a depression. There is the scene with the "wobby" which was the youngest child's blanket which was getting a little ragged and the getting-more-depressed engineer's solution was to staple it quickly while trying to get back to watching the "soap opera" (does this have anything to do with Asyncronous Javascript and Extendable Mark-up Language?) on TV. Following closely is the ironing of a cold grilled cheese sandwich on white bread and the expression on the child's face!

Of course there are classic scenes that people of the 1800's may not have even considered with the vacuum cleaner known as "JAWS". And the washing machine inproper use.

The wifee was living it up in smokey board room meetings discussing tuna marketing strategy where her ideas were acted upon and escalated into corporate mayhem and business hotel trips concluding with the "big boss" considering the absurdity of it all and then breaking down in laughter accepting the only reasonable choice, SOMETHING ABSURD!

I had spent most of 2020 and 2021 spending time on the internet researching and thinking about "absurdism" and other related philosophies because my work situation had become completely absurd. It had gotten to the point in 2021 (at 50 years old), that I could no longer ignore how absurd it all is and apparently I am not the only one in the world, this mechnized post Charlie Chaplin society, who feels this way. Similar to the final scenes in this movie with the escalating energy of absurdness coming to a conclusion, or at least the ending so people can deposit their remaining popcorn and large soda-pop with tight fitting lid that helps to contain the remaining beverage on its way from the theater trash receptical in the heft "black" trash bag on it's way to the dumpster and other destinations, I had found joy in persisting through the madness to a new, and higher paying job, with more satisfaction. What I found though is that the feeling is fleeting the older you get (most likely an age thing) because there is a level of absurdity to everything in this society. Or perhaps I was just studying to be a comic like the professionals that spent time composing and recording this work of art?

2025-01-07    12:04:23 PM

One more thing to add is that I did not see any of the actions I have taken with transgenderism or my website over the decades to be an advertising mechanism of sensationalism. It's simply a natural expression of myself, however that came about. I like the dot trombone because of the math in it. It's part of my style and content. Perhaps people could say I didn't invlove someone to do my COVER ART for me and was ego-centric doing it myself. I think things evolve through time and people make artistic choices. And business choices.

2025-01-07    12:00:41 PM

The ongoing, mostly internal, professional battle with social politics has me thinking of my intense, decade long reponses to reading Sting's website writing. How he would say his passport says "Musician" and how he apparently talked negatively of people wanting fame intead of being a Musician. I would stick up, fight, for the idea that fame means having fans and as a musician, to be viable, you need fans. And he would also say there was some drive in him when he was young and I felt the same way and that is certainly where, or part of, where this fame idea in me comes from. I certainly WAS NOT implying that I wanted to be famous for something trival. I work hard at what I do and don't define myself as a Musician because I cross so many other boundaries. Not that Sting doesn't cross lines like that as well, but I have worked as a scientist at least as much as I did as a musician/artist. I earned the majority of my money in a science, even if the application of my computer science was for artistic means. I call myself an Internet Musician because my website is the vehicle for my music, or at least is the main vehicle for my music. This writing is important to me and the creativity of it is vital to my soul.

So, here I am starting the Book Report page! I'm excited about this....