Wednesday, October 31, 2012

For Halloween, A Poem: Fear


In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd share an old poem I wrote.  This is my darkest poem, and has a lot of references to horror films, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II, Poltergeist, The Fly, Stephen King's It, and Rosemary's Baby.  I analyze the meaning of it afterwards, but suffice to say that, at the time I wrote it, I was hurting, and not only did people seem oblivious to my pain, but were still sometimes even vindictive, and, as is sometimes the case, some people seemed to live on fear, not only causing fear, but getting some sort of satisfaction from it, and actually deriving some kind of weird pleasure from causing it.  Some people are just like that.

Fear

by Gary Van Buren



They live on fear!
They live on fear!
They live on fear!
They live on fear!


Be afraid
Theeeey're Heeeeere!
Be very afraid
They live on fear!






They smell your fear
And They feed it
They smell your fear
And They feed ON it




Our compassion
That we crave
Is in our past
An unmarked grave




Understanding
Lies beside
In our dirt
Is where they hide





The eternal They
Are drawing near
I must not feel
They live on fear!





Analysis:
The first stanza is a paranoid chant, not only calling to mind a Stephen King poem called "Paranoid: A Chant," but is taken directly from a scene from the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II.  In this scene, the disgusting cannibal killers are trying to break through a door, and the main character repeats this line in a petrified stupor.  My point is that her paranoid chant doesn't just apply to cinematic cannibals and monsters, but real people.  That may just be the point of all horror movies and novels.

I had a little bit of fun with the second stanza, interweaving and rhyming the taglines for the movies The Fly and Poltergeist with the refrain from that paranoid chant.

The third stanza is the same line written twice, with just one word being different, and that is the operative word:  "ON".  My point here was that some people, just like the clown from It, don't merely seem to get a kick out of causing fear, but they seem to derive a bit of joy or satisfaction from it, not only feeding fear, but feeding ON it as well.

For the next two stanzas, the key words here are "Compassion" and "Understanding".  I know these two qualities still exist in this culture, in quite large quantities.  But when a person is hurting, like I was at the time I wrote these poems, and surrounded by a bunch of indifferent or even malicious strangers, those two qualities can seem quite absent from life.  It makes it seem like compassion, something we as human beings all crave, doesn't exist anymore.  It's a thing of the past.  It's dead, and in it's grave, an image straight out of the darkest horror movies.  It makes it seem as though understanding is lying right beside it in that grave, in the dirt, and hidden from view.  

For the last stanza, "All of them witches" was a refrain from the movie Rosemary's Baby, when the main character discovered that all the residents of her apartment complex, including her husband, were a coven of Satan worshiping witches, all conspiring against her.  I had read an analysis of that movie that had referred to them as "the eternal they," and I thought it fit nicely with the theme of this poem, as those who "live on fear" seem to fit this description.  They are eternal, and they will always be here with us.  The last few lines show the result of all this.  They are drawing near, and because of this "I must not feel" because "they live on fear!" This means that the way I must deal with them is to shut off my emotions, build a brick wall, don't feel the fear they want you to feel.

I don't often write some of my darker emotions on paper because once they're out there, they seem a bit too intense.  But we all have to deal with them at some time or another.  I actually have very few poems with a dark tone such as this, which was written shortly after my Dad died and the world outside friends and family didn't seem to care.  Even worse, the mean people (and we all know they're out there) seemed meaner.  I think that is what I captured in this poem.

Well, and a bit of a love of horror films.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Lost in a Fog of Political Hate


There are times I feel like Johnse Hatfield; maybe not the real Johnse Hatfield, but at least the one played by Matt Barr in the History Channel’s miniseries Hatfields & McCoys.  There was a scene in that movie where Johnse is talking with his Dad as they sit by the river, Johnse with a line in the water, and his Pa sitting behind him, ready to blow his brains out for leaking information to one of the McCoy girls that got yet another Hatfield killed, and Johnse’s words, as they were scripted, resonated with me:

     Ya know I hate all this.  I always have.  I think all I ever wanted to do was play; just laugh and play.  It seems like nobody 'round here ever laughs anymore, ‘cept maybe when a McCoy gets maimed er killed.  It must be a trial for ya, Daddy; me not bein' like you… What I mean is, everybody looks up to you.  I mean, even your older brothers.  You know, there ain’t… there ain’t nobody look up to me.  I mean, hell, there are those that say Cottontop’s more use.  I don’t know how to be in this family.  I mean I got, I got all the memories, you know, I know all this happened.  I jus', I don’t have all the hate that comes with bein’ a Hatfield.
           
His words reach his Pa, who decides not to kill him, and I feel like Johnse sometimes.  I hate all the hate.  I hate all the division. 

     “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
                 – Abraham Lincoln, which is derived from Matthew 12:25 and Mark 3:25

     And yet I seem to be mired in the middle of it all.  Can I see it all clearly?
    I see these videos on the internet in which right-leaning reporters interview people on the left, and these people don’t seem to have a clue.  When they are asked what fair and balanced, objective reporters they go to so they can make informed decisions, many of them made it a point to scream out “Not Fox News!”  Several others immediately shouted out the name “Rachel Maddow” and “MSNBC”, and still others like getting their “news” from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Bill Maher!  When the reporter asked them if they thought Rachel Maddow would be a fair and balanced moderator during a presidential debate, they actually said “Yes.”  Check out this link:  http://www.mrctv.org/videos/where-do-liberals-get-their-news
     You know what though?  Our side is probably the same, or would probably be similar.  I can imagine that if these right wing reporters managed to speak with someone with an actual brain in their head, they wouldn’t have shown it, because the report was geared towards portraying these people as morons.  Ann Coulter will brazenly just come right out and say it.  And in a thousand different ways, there are little jabs happening back and forth, between the incumbents, in the political attack ads on TV, in all the political bickering on line and among even friends and colleagues, and calling to mind the fighting and the hate that visited such pain upon the Hatfields and McCoys.  Since I’m on the right, I’m almost automatically going to see all of it from that perspective.  It’s almost impossible for me to see it any other way.  But I realize that perhaps my perspective is not the best view to see the whole thing clearly.  Maybe it is, but who's to say?
     Yet even if I were to remove myself from this viewpoint, and attempted to get a clearer depiction of things from a non-partisan level, it still wouldn’t really answer all the questions that need to be answered, or provide a clearer picture.  That’s because everybody – and I do mean everybody – sees it all from a particular point of view.  Nobody is outside of it all, and even those who think they are can still only see it all from their limited position.  I don’t care if you happen to be a devout, gun-toting, righteous republican, a freedom-loving, all-inclusive liberal, or a peace-loving libertarian or independent who sees truthful shades of a Machiavellian nature in all government and big business!  Everybody is caught up in it, and there are no easy answers once you attempt to dive right into the middle of it all, and I’m not even sure I want to dive into the middle of it all!   I’m actually left in a bit of a quandary.  I don’t know whether I should stay my course, dig deeper, or step back.  My sister, and a lot of other people, would say "Dig Deeper", but sometimes it's akin to traversing a minefield!  
     Conservative republican columnist Ann Coulter has made disparaging remarks about those who are not either on the right or the left, but are “undecided”, saying that if you are not either conservative or liberal, then you are an idiot.  She goes on to describe liberals as horrendously evil people worthy of whatever hate and disdain she sees fit to throw at them, and in so doing, doesn’t do any real favors for the right by spewing such hatred and animosity.  In fact, one can see why some people might want to disdain from all of it.  In Ann’s black and white world, it seems you are either one of the good guys – conservative republican Christians – the bad guys – baby killing, homo-loving liberal democrats – or an idiot – everyone else!  The problem with someone like Ann is that this isn’t quite the truth of it.  Many – though not all – liberals are actually good people who stand for up for a belief in freedom and peace and love, and those aren’t bad things to stand for!  Many – though not all – republicans are good people concerned about where this nation is headed monetarily, militarily, and morally.  And many – though not all – of the others are people who don’t like what they see from either of the other two camps, and above all else, do not like seeing all this political fighting that masks what is really going on!  By the same token, there really are ill-informed or delusional people on all sides, and even those who aren’t with either the conservatives or the liberals and attempt to rise above the fray of politics can wind up just as “played” as everyone else.  Any of them can wind up believing wild, fantastical conspiracy theories, and it is difficult for anyone to be able to separate fact from fiction in this kind of atmosphere, especially with easy information at your fingertips, just a simple click away!  But just how much of it is real?
     For instance, those on the left have accused those on the right, particularly President George W. Bush and his administration, of actually planning the attacks on 9/11 so they could use it as an excuse to get backing for the military and to get their foot in the Middle East for oil money and possibly other reasons.
The right has accused the left, and particularly President Obama, of having secret agendas and ties to the Muslims.  Questions about his ring, and if there is a Muslim inscription, are all the rage these days!  (See the links here, here, and here!)  What's real here?  Who knows?  Those “above the fray” of politics have accused big business and banks of conspiracies involving the assassinations and attempted assassinations of Presidents who don’t tow their big business party line.  Apparently, Social Security was started when a group of big business fat cats were planning FDR's assassination; he got wind of it and worked out a deal!  Along with all of this, there are conspiracies surrounding everything from the space program (the 1969 moon landing was staged and aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947) to international politics, and though some of it would invariably have to be true, just by the law of averages, just how do you separate fact from fiction?  This is a road we should tread very carefully, and not just jump on any information we happen to come across, or we’ll wind up like the reporters on MSNBC and the misinformed viewers who like being deceived.  And I must then ask myself the tough question:  Are my news sources the same, just from the other angle?
     It makes one ask another tough question:  Just what is real?  What can I put my faith in?  And in the face of not knowing anything for certain, not even empirical science, especially in today’s political atmosphere, and if you take into account the philosophies of people like Descartes and Kant, then that means the best you can do is to make as educated a guess as possible in what you choose to believe and follow that, because NOTHING is certain!  The scientists will tell you that science is certain, but it’s not, and the Christians will tell you that God and the Christian doctrine is certain, but it’s not either.  There’s a certain amount of belief in both.  God cannot be proven, but He can’t be disproven either, and if you put all your faith in science, ask yourself how different the scientific world of today is from the scientific world of 100 years ago.  They were saying the same thing about the certainty of empirical science then too, before Einstein and Hawkings came along with something completely different! 
            I hate to sound like an Eastern mystic, but everyone must make their choice to follow their own path.  Others will invariably see problems with it, in the same way I see problems with those on the left who are so easily deluded.  Everybody with half a brain will search for certainties in this world, and for a while, I did my searching in the dark, thinking that there would come a time when I could be certain about what I might find and could then, and only then, make informed decisions about what to believe.  But life isn’t certain, and I quickly discovered that I would never find all the answers that would remove all doubt.  I found out I would have to make a choice, even without being certain, and I realized that everybody has to make this same choice at some point in their lives, or continue in the dark.   
            No, my religion is not certain.  It is a belief.  But so is science, and so is political theory, and any philosophies or theologies you may choose to follow or believe.  And the one thing I chose to believe in – quite some time ago – was in the Christian God, and His perfect Son Jesus Christ, who is somehow separate and yet the same as part of a nearly incomprehensible Godhead.  I put my stock in that, and if it does not dictate the way I think and live my life, then I at least want it to.  When all is confusion, and I don’t know what to do, I step, once again, into what I’ve chosen to believe more than anything else.  I step back into Jesus.

Hail Jesus, You’re my King (Hail Jesus, You’re my King)
Your life frees me to sing (Your life frees me to sing)
I will praise You all my days (I will praise You all my days)
You’re perfect in all Your ways (You’re perfect in all Your ways)

Hail Jesus, You’re my Lord (Hail Jesus, You’re my Lord)
I will obey Your word (I will obey Your word)
I want to see Your Kingdom come (I want to see Your Kingdom come)
Not my will but Yours be done (Not my will but Yours be done)

Glory, glory to the Lamb (Glory, glory to the Lamb)
You take me into the land (You take me into the land)
We will conquer in Your name (We will conquer in Your name)
Oh, and proclaim that Jesus reigns (And proclaim that Jesus reigns)

Hail, hail Lion of Judah (Hail, hail Lion of Judah)
How powerful You are (How powerful You are)
Hail, hail Lion of Judah (Hail, hail Lion of Judah)
How wonderful You are (How wonderful You are)…

            - “Victory Chant”
               Bob Fitts, Wow Worship Orange

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Star Trek: The Motion Pictures Featuring the Original Series Cast: Guide and Ratings

Now that I've covered the entire original series, linked here for Season One, Season Two, Season Three, and even the Animated Series, I will now turn to the first six Star Trek movies, a.k.a. the ones featuring the original series cast of William Shatner as Admiral James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Captain Spock, DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, James Doohan as Scotty, Nichelle Nichols as Commander Uhura, George Takei as Commander Sulu, and Walter Koenig as Commander Pavol Chekov.  It was with these first six movies where the idea that the best Star Trek movies were the even numbered ones took root, and they are right, though with one obvious exception, they were all pretty good, even the first one (but only the Director's Cut).


Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Grade: B
The Director’s Cut fixes many of the problems that previously plagued this film, but even the original version boasts the first adventure for the Enterprise and its crew on the big screen.  They were dealing with some serious, heady themes, and the special effects had never looked better!  Perhaps that’s why they spent so much screen time languishing over long shots of the ship or the really gigantic, menacing, machine cloud called V’Ger.  Thankfully, the new cut manages to take care of most of the pacing problems without losing the grandeur! 
     The plot has Admiral Kirk taking command of the Enterprise to stop V’Ger from destroying earth, and the way he finagles command away from Captain Matt Decker, drafts a reluctant (and bearded) McCoy back into service and creates an unstable wormhole effect before they even get out of the solar system makes it seem like he should be wearing his “Kirk is a Jerk” shirt.  Spock has been on Vulcan trying to purge his emotions, but telepathic contact with V’Ger has made this impossible for him.
His stoic reunion with an excited crew shows he almost achieved his goal, but he, and Kirk, lighten up a bit before the end, and Spock’s conversion back to normalcy actually holds the key to how they are going to deal with V’Ger.  
     A bald Persis Khambata as navigator Lt. Ilia of the extremely sexual Deltan species, and who shares a past with Decker, joins the other familiar faces:  Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Chapel, now the ship’s doctor, and even Rand, though two people die while she mans the transporter controls.  The ship flies through V’Ger and the crew marvels at the special effects.  V’Ger eventually sends a light probe that kills Lt. Ilia and creates a robotic version of her so it can communicate with the crew.  Spock attempts to mind meld with V’Ger and nearly dies, but comes to understand what V’Ger is:  An old Earth Voyager probe found by a planet of living machines.  They perfected it and sent it back to Earth to join with its creator so that it may know all that is unknown.  With nothing else to do now, Decker decides to join with V’Ger in a final effects light show, and a new being is born…
     With some new effects shots, this slow and very long film is tightened and pretty much corrected with the much needed Director’s Cut.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Grade: A+
In a word, Brilliant!  This is just about as perfect a Star Trek movie as they can make!  Not only is there a lot of action and great character moments, but the writing shines with a myriad of themes dealing with the old and the young, how we face death, the human condition and the ego, and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one.
     Not only does intergalactic villain Khan return, in a great performance by Ricardo Montalban reprising his role from the original series episode “Space Seed”, but they introduced Kirstie Alley as a sexy Vulcan trainee Saavik, Kirk’s old girlfriend and his grown son are revealed, Carol and David Marcus, and their fantastic, extremely powerful device called Genesis that can make a living, thriving planet from lifeless rock, Chekov gets a beefed-up role, and it ends on a very emotional note when the crew loses one of its own!
     While working for the Marcus’, Chekov and Captain Terrell happen across the madman Khan, who uses parasites in their ears to control them and gets the upper hand against Kirk in a big space battle that ends in the Mutara Nebula. Finally defeated, Khan starts the Genesis devise, which will kill everything.  To get away, Spock suffers fatal radiation poisoning to get the engines back on line.  The new planet is born, and Spock’s body is laid to rest there.
     From the nasty bug Khan puts in Chekov’s ear, to the heart-to-hearts between Kirk and McCoy about growing old, Scotty’s nephew being killed, Kirk cheating death time and time again, his standoff with the scenery chewing Khan and his difficult relationship with Carol and David, to the almost magical Genesis device and its implications, the cat and mouse game in the Nebula, Spock’s touching death and funeral, and the hope that still exists for the characters as Kirk, who told McCoy and Carol he felt so old, saying that he felt young again in the denouement, almost every aspect of this adventure is perfect. 

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Grade: B+
A little bit of cheese only slightly mars this very enjoyable, plot-driven outing with a lot of action!  The Enterprise limps home the worse for wear without Spock and with McCoy suffering from Spock’s final Vulcan Mind Meld (“That green blooded son of a bitch; it’s his revenge for all those arguments he lost.”).  After a visit from Spock’s father Sarek, where they determine that he left his Katra, or living soul, inside McCoy, Kirk tries to wrangle use of the Enterprise to return to the Genesis planet and retrieve Spock’s body, but Starfleet won’t budge; the Enterprise is to be decommissioned, and Genesis is a quarantined planet and a forbidden subject.  McCoy tries to charter his own illegal space flight and is arrested, so Kirk accepts help from the rest of his team, including Chekov, Sulu (“Don’t call me tiny”), Uhura (“You want adventure, how’s this?”), and Scotty (“The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain”).  Together, they all break McCoy out of the Federation funny farm and steal the Enterprise. 
     Meanwhile, David and Saavik are part of a scientific expedition exploring the new Genesis planet and happen across Spock, who has been made young again due to the Genesis effect, and Saavik even helps him through the Vulcan mating drive Pon Farr!  Along the way, she learns that David cut corners when developing Genesis, as he used outlawed and very unstable proto-matter to make it work, and now the planet is on the verge of ripping itself apart.  As if all this weren’t enough, a rogue band of Klingons, led by Commander Kruge, want the secret of the Genesis device, destroy the science vessel, and take Saavik, David, and Spock as prisoners.  When the Enterprise arrives, the Klingons kill David as a negotiating ploy, forcing Kirk’s hand, which includes the destruction of the Enterprise!  A final showdown with the Klingon commander is just a bit underwhelming, but leaves Kirk and his crew in possession of the Klingon Bird of Prey, which they use to take back to Vulcan in an effort to reunite Spock’s body and mind.  The ending brings Spock back into the fray, and it is quite a satisfying and emotional ending at that!

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Grade: A+
“There be whales here!”
Another stellar winner, only this time, the crew embark on a fun, adventurous, and comedic time travel romp!  It starts on Vulcan.  Spock is still not quite himself, and while being reeducated in a Vulcan fashion, his mother reminds him he’s half human.  Lt. Saavik is around long enough to tie up a loose end from the last film.
     Back on Earth, the Klingons want revenge, Starfleet wants to file charges, and Spock’s father Sarek offers his advice as the Vulcan Ambassador.  All of this is interrupted, however, when a very large alien probe cuts off all power to space stations and ships as it transmits a message to Earth’s oceans, causing a planetary disaster!  On their way back home in their commandeered Klingon vessel, Kirk and crew deduce the message is meant for humpback whales, now extinct, so, as Dr. McCoy expounds, “You’re proposing we go backwards in time, find humpback whales, then bring them forward in time, drop ‘em off, and hope the hell they tell this probe what to go do with itself!”
     The rest of the movie has the seven person crew engage in all manner of fun and funny adventures trying to do just that!  They “park” their cloaked vessel in the park, and Kirk and Spock locate two whales named George and Gracie at an Oceanic museum, with Kirk really hitting it off with whale expert Gillian Taylor.  Scotty and McCoy find material to build a whale tank (possibly altering the future in the process!), Sulu flies the tank walls in on a “borrowed” helicopter, and Uhura and Chekov collect nuclear energy from a “naval wessel” called “Enterprise”, but Chekov is caught and questioned by the military.  He is severely wounded in an escape attempt, forcing Kirk, McCoy, and Gillian to rescue him before saving the whales, now on the open sea, from a whaling vessel.  Once collected, it’s back to the future, with one more adventure for Kirk to free the trapped whales from the tank when the ship loses power and crashes into San Francisco bay!  The plan works, the probe leaves, the crew receives commendations instead of a court martial, Spock reconnects with his father, and Kirk and crew are given a brand new Enterprise-A!
     This is just about as perfect as Star Trek II, but with a very different tone, and proving that Star Trek can work as light comedic adventure as much as heavy Shakespearian tragedy.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Grade: C-
Alas, poor Star Trek V
It seems like the actors were just starting to get comfortable again, and to seem like a favorite, worn-out, old recliner!  The adventure starts with a camping trip, with Kirk climbing El Capitan in Yosemite and making the usually cantankerous McCoy completely livid!  After Spock, wearing jet boots, saves the captain from a fall, Kirk and McCoy try to teach Spock to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” around a campfire!  Meanwhile, Sulu and Chekov are lost, but they don’t want Uhura to know.  They all get their big moments here:  Scotty manages a jailbreak and then knocks himself out, Uhura performs a naked moondance, Sulu executes a difficult manual maneuver in a shuttlecraft, and Chekov carries out a deception, pretending to be the captain during a covert mission.  And if you ever wanted to see Spock fly around in jet boots and give a Vulcan neck pinch to a horse, this is your movie!
     The story concerns Spock’s half-brother Sybok, a galactic Dr. Phil of sorts, who has embraced emotions instead of logic.  He causes people to follow him by revealing and then helping them release their pain.  He takes “hostages,” forcing the Enterprise to investigate, and with Kirk, McCoy and Spock the only hold-outs in his quest to cross an inter-galactic barrier to find God.  One of the better parts of the movie is when he eventually tries to enlist them as well, revealing the death of McCoy’s father and Spock’s birth.  Along the way, some young Klingons, pinning for the glory of action in combat, use this incident as an excuse to battle the famous Starship.  The ending, as they find a creature claiming to be God, was a complete disappointment!  The effects looked quite shoddy, and after it’s all over, the crew has a cocktail party with the Klingons!  Oh, my!
     It’s all just a bit ridiculous, and perhaps too comfortable.  This is the first of the Star Trek movies that could be considered a failure, and wouldn’t have done the business it did if it didn’t already have the name Star Trek stamped upon it.  Shatner in the director’s seat does not impress like Nicolas Meyer or Leonard Nimoy did, or even Robert Wise!  The resulting movie is rather silly, with only brief moments of what fans have come to love about the series.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Grade: A-
Now that’s more like it!  This final, fast-moving adventure with a lot of interesting twists and turns at least allowed the original series cast to go out with a bang instead of a whimper!
     Politics is the name of this game, when the Klingon moon Praxis explodes, throwing the Klingons into turmoil.  Some see this as an opportunity to finally get the upper hand against them, while others, particularly Spock, see this as an occasion for friendship and peace, and Kirk himself is offered up as the host to the peace conference.  Trouble ensues when, after a rather amusing yet disastrous dinner party, it appears that the Enterprise fires on the Klingon ship, disabling gravity control, and then two human assassins beam aboard the Klingon ship wearing magnetic boots and murder Chancellor Gorkon.  Trying to unravel what happened, Kirk and McCoy beam aboard and try to save the Chancellor, but they can’t, and are placed under arrest by the villainous General Chang.  They are quickly run through the Klingon justice system and sentenced to Rura Penthe, a foreboding Klingon gulag on a frozen ice planet.
     While Gorkon’s daughter Azetbur plans to go ahead with the peace conference at a neutral site, Kirk and McCoy plan their escape, with the help of a shape shifter named Martia, played by famed model Iman, and the remaining Enterprise crew tries to uncover the conspiracy behind the assassination.  Spock soon learns that his protégé, Lt. Valeris, is a traitor.  Betrayed, he performs a mind meld on her akin to mental rape in order to extract the names of her co-conspirators.  Sulu, now the Captain of the Excelsior, lends Kirk a hand in the end, as they battle General Chang above Khitomer, the site of the peace conference, and they are able to stop a second assassination attempt and unravel the conspirators’ plan.
     The addition of Christopher Plummer as General Chang, David Warner as Gorkon, and even Kim Cattrall as Spock’s sexy Vulcan protégé Valeris all add much to the proceedings, and the special effects and writing are back on track as well, for the most part.  As with some of their best adventures, the seven main characters are each given lots of great character moments throughout, and there are some great cameos as well, including Star Trek’s own Mark Lenard, Grace Lee Whitney, Brock Peters, Kurtwood Smith, John Schuck, Michael Dorn and Rene Auberjonois, and even Christian Slater!  I found it an exciting and enjoyable way to end the movies featuring the original series cast.  The final shot even shows the Starship Enterprise riding into the sunset!  
    




Sunday, October 21, 2012

Cakes, Conscience, & Christ: Choosing Jesus


     I love chocolate!  If you were to look at my Facebook page right now, it has a picture of creamy milk chocolate in the shape of a heart as a background for my main page: 
Mom has this recipe for something called a "mayonnaise cake" that, in fact, doesn't taste like mayonnaise, but instead is one of the creamiest, chocolaty cakes ever made!  I saw a Garfield cartoon once where Garfield expresses his love of coffee, and by the last panel, he's actually in the cup bathing in it!  Please don't think I'm being literal when I say that this is how I feel about that cake!  I love chocolate in just about any form though:  Candy bars & M&M's, Lindt & Godiva truffles, chocolate chip cookies & dark fudge brownies, to name just a few!  
     And then there's chocolate cake, and the reason for this little commentary:  I've always seen a clear parallel between the recipe of a cake and, amazingly, the development of the human mind!  Have I gone off the deep end?  Just what do I mean by this?
     When a person bakes a cake, he or she usually follows a recipe, and takes all the ingredients, mixes them together, bakes it in an oven, and frosts it.  Humans are like that as well.  They start out a certain way – we’ll call it "Nature" – but it’s like a bunch of ingredients that don’t match everyone else’s.  These are the kinds of things determined by their genes and their DNA, and it’s why some babies are sleepy, rather quiet, and accepting, like I was, and some babies start out alert, vocal, and curious about the world, like my twin brother Terry tended towards.  They start out as a different set of “ingredients,” but that isn’t the only determining factor that will reveal the adults they will eventually become.  Experience changes them.  We’ll call this experience "Nurture", and it is akin to mixing the ingredients together, adding even more, baking it in an oven, and then applying the finishing touches.  
     Of course, I realize this analogy is fairly simplistic.  There are many more elements and variables that determine how a human being will turn out, and the end result actually doesn’t come close to being as easy to determine or see as a cake.  Humans are much more complex than a simple cake.  I mean, a cake is a cake is a cake, even if it didn’t turn out the way you might have liked, or the middle fell, or you forgot the eggs.  You can have a pineapple upside down cake, or a German chocolate cake, or even one of those monstrous, huge, gorgeous, and expensive cakes that the boisterous Buddy Valasco makes with his family and team of bakers on TLC’s Cake Boss, but in the end, it’s still just a cake.  People, on the other hand, are infinitely more complex!  Even Buddy!
     People usually aren’t just good or bad, but in a thousand different ways, they are both.  And I’ve realized over the years that some of the elements that have shaped me, and made me the man I am today, both Nature and Nurture – who I was when I was born and the experiences that have changed me – haven’t always changed me for the good.  I might wish that they have, but they haven't.  This is because we were all born into sin, and we all have a little bit of that inside of us, whether we choose to admit it or not.  I have come to understand that this world God made and put us in is a world of choices, and like all men and women, I have been given the free will to choose good or evil, righteousness or sin.  I’d be lying if I said all the choices I’ve ever made have been good ones – and so would any man or woman who has ever walked this earth.  Except for one, and His name is Jesus!  
     We are creatures of choice, and we can choose good, or we can choose evil.  It is our choice to wallow in sin or to rise above those baser things that change us for the worse.  I haven’t always chosen what is right and good, but it is my desire that I should, and it is what I continually strive for.
      And so my prayer to God is that He will always be there to help me make the right choice.  I pray that He will gently guide me during the times in my life when I seem to forget Him and forget myself, and become momentarily caught up in the devil’s snare.  It happens to us all.  Even the best of us can make blunders!
     God, don’t forget me as I have, at times, forgotten You.  Please don’t forsake me the way that I have, at times, forsaken You.  I’m only human, and like all of us, I was born in sin, and it is always there, and it is even a part of us.  But we can strive to choose something better.  I pray that, more and more, day after day, week after week, and year after year, that I will grow and become the man that You always wanted me to be. 
     I am a miserable sinner.  I realize this.  It seems I'm not the patient man I once was, and I am, at times, prone to anger or annoyance over things I shouldn't be angry or annoyed over.  I don’t deserve anything from You.  I ask for Your forgiveness.  I ask for Your help.  I ask for Your guidance.  I ask for Your wisdom.  I ask for Your grace.  I ask for Your love.  I ask these things with a heavy heart.  I’m sorry I am what I am.  I fall at the foot of Your cross.  I want Your help to be a better man.  Isn’t that how the healing begins, or begins again for those who need You yet again?  We all do.  We all sin and fall short of Your glory.  And yet there is Your saving grace, revealed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Your Blessed Son.  I call out to You God.  Heal my wounded, sinning heart.  You have given us the gift of choice.  Help me to always choose You in all things!
Take me, make me all You want me to be / That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking

Welcome to this heart of mine I've buried under prideful vines
Grown to hide the mess I've made inside of me / Come decorate, Lord
Open up the creaking door and walk upon the dusty floor
Scrape away the guilty stains until no sin or shame remain
Spread Your love upon the walls and occupy the empty halls
Until the man I am has faded / No more doors are barricaded

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home

Take a seat, pull up a chair / Forgive me for the disrepair
And the souvenirs from floor to ceiling gathered on my search for meaning
And every closet's filled with clutter / Messes yet to be discovered
I'm overwhelmed, I understand / I can't make this place all that You can

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home

I took this space that You placed in me, and redecorated in shades of greed
And I made sure every door stayed locked, every window blocked, and still You knocked

Come inside this heart of mine / It's not my own / Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it all Your own / Welcome home...

Take me, make me all You want me to be / That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking

            - “Welcome Home”
               Shaun Groves

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Revisiting Obamacare, Massively Unpopular Yet Still Shoved Down Our Throats: We Get the "Big Brother" We Vote For

With the election right around the corner, I thought now would be a good time to take a look back on Obamacare, when it was first being introduced, and revisit my thoughts about it from the pages of my journal.  This is from over two years ago, in July of 2010:

I tell you Winston, that reality is not external.  Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.  Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal.  Whatever the party holds to be truth, is truth.  It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
                                - From 1984 by George Orwell

     The more I keep hearing about or reading up on the Obama administration – the way they operate and their agendas and the massive and massively deceptive bills they try to pass quickly so nobody will have a chance to question them, and the far left values they stand for, and how they react to any dissent or opposition – it makes me stop and ask the question:  Has anyone else seen the glaring similarities to futuristic, dystopian novels like 1984 by George Orwell or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury?  I see the Obama administration’s actions, and reactions, and then I can’t get the plots and characters and eye-opening quotes from these novels out of my head!  …Orwell and Bradbury were quite the visionaries, and I can’t let go of their nightmarish visions, because the words and actions of the Obama administration keep calling them to mind!

All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers. 
                                - from 1984

      First off, there’s the health care bill itself.  Anyone who does any research on it at all will find that, as with the stimulus package, there are all kinds of hidden agendas in there among the hundreds and hundreds of wordy pages designed to exhaust the mind.  Fred Thompson recently interviewed Dr. Betsy McCaughey, the Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Death.  She has been nice enough to read the entire document for us, since most of us don’t have the time to read the entire monstrosity.  There are some shocking things in there!  On page 425, Dr. McCaughey tells us that elderly patients would have to endure a mandatory counseling session every four or five years with government healthcare workers.  It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that these government workers, trying to save a buck or two of medical insurance, will tell the elderly how they can end their life sooner to save themselves and their loved ones the trouble of keeping them alive.  Have you ever seen the movie Soylent Green?  After all, everybody knows that it’s the elderly that are creating such a drain on our healthcare resources; the liberal democrats can eliminate the problem by eliminating the elderly!  … Obama will finally be able to save us all some money, and the only cost will be our aging parents’ lives.  Cal Thomas’ recent article “What Lies Beneath” (cool title) states, “Our decisions regarding who will get help and who won’t are about more than bean-counting bureaucrats deciding if your drugs or operation will cost more than you are contributing to the U.S. Treasury.”  I'm thinking of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager called “Critical Care” in which that ship’s doctor found himself in a hospital where only patients who were deemed the worthiest in society got treatment.  These patients were given medication for unneeded, frivolous cosmetic purposes, while that same rare medicine was denied to people deemed of less worth, and who were allowed to die.  And it’s about to happen for real!  This is socialized healthcare, like what we are seeing right now in England and Canada and the Michael Moore “documentary” Sicko, and this Obamacare bill will only bring about more of the same.  Mike Huckabee and all the other conservative radio and TV voices have covered this on their shows.  It’s not us going to England and Canada for care.  Instead, they come here, and even with all its problems and faults, it’s still the best healthcare system in the world.  That’s why people from other countries come here rather than the other way around!  Do you think they’ll be coming here if this bill gets passed, and our country starts to look like theirs?
     Chuck Norris’ article “Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare”, which, like all the articles I mention here, can be found on Townhall.com, explains how they have also included within the bill, somewhere after page 800, government programs that would allow them to enter your house and tell you how to raise your children - in conjunction with their ideals and agendas, no doubt.
            But even scarier than the bill itself is their reaction to the people who question it. 

We must all be alike.  Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.  Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.
                - From Fahrenheit 451

     Wouldn’t Obama and the Democrats in charge love to be able to make that happen!   And now Washington, coming scarily close to Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984, wants you to rat on your neighbors!  From Lorie Byrd’s article “The Democrat’s Credibility Gap on Free Speech” she writes, “The White House is concerned that their health care plan is not being accurately characterized.  They have even encouraged Americans who read or hear their friends and neighbors saying anything ‘fishy’ to report them to flag@whitehouse.gov.”  Doesn’t that just send a chill down your spine?

     In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a fireman whose job it is to burn books.  In this future setting, firemen don’t put out fires anymore – they start them!  Their job is to burn books.  Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns.  When they go out on a call, they are following up on a tip by some random citizen; they raid houses, find the illegal books…and burn them… Becoming curious, Montag starts to collect and read some of the books he was supposed to burn, and then makes the mistake of reading the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold to his wife and her frivolous friends as they try to watch television.  His wife Mildred is embarrassed, and tells them this is the firemen’s way of showing others how useless books really are, but the other women are so appalled (and programmed) that they leave immediately to report him.  Likewise, a little later in the story, Mildred also turns in her husband for concealing the wretched literature, and Montag becomes a fugitive.  On the run, Montag happens to see a television report about him:

“Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows.  The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house.  Ready!”    
Of course!  Why hadn’t they done it before!  Why, in all the years, hadn’t this game been tried!  Everyone up, everyone out!  He couldn’t be missed!  The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs!

     And just like the society in that novel, we, too, are being called upon by those in charge, the very kinds of people who thought the McCarthy hearings were such an unspeakable tragedy, to report on the “wrong,” independent thinking of our neighbors!  This whole issue has turned from a concern about health care and what deceptive agendas are actually in the colossal bill to a debate on free speech and freedom!  Byrd continues:  “It is equally ridiculous to hear those on the angry left discredit and ridicule those American citizens – Republicans, Libertarians, and independent-minded Democrats – who have legitimate concerns over the inaccurately named stimulus plan, bailouts and the attempt to put the American health care system under government control.  Many in the media have joined in, labeling these concerned citizens as “angry mobs,” or, if reporting from MSNBC, as ‘tea baggers.’”  Leave it to the liberal media to refer to an alarmed populace attending nationwide “tea parties” as “tea baggers”, a reference to a gay sex act!  Does no one else see the obvious allusions to Fahrenheit 451?  In the novel, a large, futuristic mechanical “Hound” is dispatched to catch him, and Montag envisions his capture:

Would he have time for a speech?  As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty million people, mightn’t he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in the darkness… What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear their faces and wake them up?
                - From Fahrenheit 451

     Aren’t we just trying to do the same thing with our “tea parties” and questions?  WAKE UP PEOPLE!  THINK!  Don’t you realize they have an agenda, and that they won’t stop until they’re Government hands are as far into everything as they can possibly make them go?  They’re dream is to make you as brainwashed and as moldable as the characters in these futuristic novels!  That would solve all their problems!
     In the novel, Montag does manage to get away, yet the authorities and media completely forged his capture to make their indoctrinated populous believe whatever they want them to believe, as another character explains to Montag:  “They're faking. You threw them off at the river. They can't admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show's got to have a snap ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So they're sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They'll catch Montag in the next five minutes!”  Likewise, the liberal media is trying to discredit and downplay any dissenters to Obama’s great Healthcare Package, as Lorie Byrd explains later in the same article:  “When hundreds of thousands of average Americans showed up at over 800 ‘tea parties’ held in over 800 cities, and in every state in the country, on April 15, 2009, those in the media yawned.  Compared to the media attention Cindy Sheehan…garnered when opposing the war in Iraq, those hundreds of thousands of Americans were ignored.  Worse yet, some in the media even ridiculed them.”  In fact, this is just the tip of the iceberg in what is, in reality, a downright hatefest going on over on the liberal left, and one that the predominately liberal media wants to spread like wildfire…

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.  Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary.  A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s own will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.  And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
                - From 1984  

     How long before the liberal left becomes unhinged and starts treating ordinary, concerned citizens the same way Jessica Lange treated George W. Bush?  “The hubris, arrogance, and deceit of President Barak Obama and the Democratic leadership are breathtaking,” states David Limbaugh in his article “Conservatives, Shut Up and Step Aside”.  Shades of Big Brother abound!  “As increasing public awareness has translated into increasing grass-roots opposition to the bill, Democrats have ratcheted up their bullying tactics and deceit.  Our self-styled bipartisan president is telling his critics to shut up, while his partners in crime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues are calling them un-American and Nazis.”  Are these legitimate protests from government watchdogs as envisioned by the founding fathers, and conducted by, as Limbaugh describes them, an “increasingly informed, vigilant, politically engaged and liberty-loving citizenry”, or is it instead a hateful campaign waged by backwoods “un-American Nazis” as envisioned by Nancy Pelosi?  You be the judge (while you still can). 

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling.  Everything will be dead inside you.  Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity.  You will be hollow.  We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.
                - From 1984

     This would be Nancy Pelosi’s dream come true!  She and her friends on the far left have already proven that they have no love for unborn infants, and this Obamacare package shows how they are just itching to wage war on the elderly to boot!  And their reaction to the grass-roots “tea parties” of some of their own citizens shows quite clearly they would much rather have empty human minds to fill rather than the unwanted opposition they are rightfully encountering. 
     In an op-ed piece in USA Today, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Pelosi called this opposition “an ugly campaign… not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting civil dialogue.”  Well, don’t her words sound so very carefully chosen, and all so that she can be painted by the liberal media who loves her as the sane one?  …The more I get a glimpse of her true agendas, the more she gives me the willies!  Why are they so against opposition and genuine decent?  Could it be they have something to hide?  Could it be that this thing is just a nightmare waiting to happen, and most free-thinking people in society can smell the stink a mile away?  Trust me, this predominately democratic government would rather have an indoctrinated public, a citizenry that will take what they give it and love it, or learn to love it.

Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.  Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.  Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.  And they’ll be happy because facts of that sort don’t change.  Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.  That way lies melancholy.
                - From Fahrenheit 451

Like true politicians, their language is, first and foremost, deceptive and misleading.  So are their ideas, twisted so far out of proportion it’s hard to see what they really look like sometimes.  Is it healthcare reform, or a complete overhaul and socialization of the entire system?  And as with the stimulus package, they are making it massive and trying to rush it through Congress ASAP so no one will have pause to consider what this thing really is.  This lends the administration a tone of deceptiveness and, a concept straight out of 1984:  “Doublespeak”.
     Limbaugh continues:  “The bill would not allow Americans to keep their plans.  It would crowd out and eventually eliminate private care; enormously reduce choice, as well as the quantity and quality of care; and be a fiscal nightmare, as verified by Congressional Budget Office projections.  Worst of all, it would further destroy our liberties… Pelosi and Hoyer’s most laughable claim is that their plan ‘will stand up to any and all critics.’”  If that’s true, why are they trying to silence their critics by calling them “un-American Nazis”?  That’s some rather brutal name-calling, without really taking into account or answering any of our real concerns!
     I get the feeling Nancy Pelosi would like nothing more than to come down hard on and silence people for “thought crime” against her ideas.  Out of one side of her mouth, she and this administration welcome questions and criticism, but their actions and words betray them.  In truth, they want no such thing. 

Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference.  The Thought Police would get him just the same.  He had committed – would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself.  Thoughtcrime, they call it.  Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever.
                - From 1984

     They are taking a page from the radical homosexuals’ and the Global Warming alarmists’ playbooks:  In the USA Today article, they state, “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid [italics are mine] not of just differing views – but of the facts themselves.  Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”  Is it un-American to question the ideas and actions of our government?  I thought that kind of questioning was actually un-Russian, not un-American.  It’s the very same thing the militant gays and the extreme environmentalists have resorted to in the past:  Calling any who oppose them and their ideals “afraid” and “intolerant” (and “un-American…Nazis”).
     Perhaps we ARE afraid, but not of differing views.  We’re afraid of what this country is going to be like once Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama, and the far left liberals get done with it.  But the scariest thing is that they would like nothing more than for the nation to put down their loudspeakers and magnifying glasses and accept them and their agenda unquestioningly.  It would actually bring tears of joy to Nancy Pelosi’s eyes.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.  He had won the victory over himself.  He loved Big Brother.
                - From 1984