Dreams

Dreams are really very puzzling things. Sometimes they seem to make all the sense in the world, and sometimes there is nothing about Great Aunt Marge chassing you on rollerskates that suggests intelligent design. Of course, there are people like Sigmund Froyd who believe that dreams spring from the unconscious. In allot of ways, that seems fairly reasonable. If Great Aunt Marge secretly terrified you as a child, a nightmare with her at your heels might spring from some reality. You might not even reaslize she ever scared you - and think it hillarious when you wake up - but lurking in your unconscious the image of her never quite rests in peace. I think we've all experienced that. But there's another kind of dream that can be quite fascinating; the kind of dream that just cannot have sprung from any experience conscious or unconscious. You wake and feel like you've walked in another world, spoken another language, or been part of something that seemed almost more real that reality. Tolkien apparently experienced a particularly vivid form of this, as did his son, Christopher. In the Notion Club Papers (a fascinating read if you ever get the chance) Tolkien dwells upon this in depth. Ransom, a philologist and proffessor at Oxford, experiments with his dreams, attempting to access a different timeperiod through them. The story was unfortunately never finished, and it almost seems like Tolkien could never make up his mind about the outcome of such an attempt. Practically, dreams definately cannot be used as a timemachine, transporting us physically back or forward, but the idea that we can access a different time or place in our dreams I find very interesting. Who knows? That faerie land may still be open to those who dream.

Merry Christmas gentle readers

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Make the Yule-tide gay,

From now on, our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,

Happy golden days of yore.

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us once more.

Through the years We all will be together,

If the Fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

And have yourself

A merry little Christmas now.

The Good Neighbors

Anyone feel like traveling back into the 60's? Definitely not me...but it can have it's charms, if you're just watching it. I ran across an old tv show originally entitled "The Good Life", but rechristened "The Good Neighbors" when the Americans made off with it. Yes...the cloathing his tasteless, the hair frankly terrifying, but the humor is good. If you're looking for a lowkey show that will make you laugh 'til you cry... try the Good Neighbors. Man - that sounds like an advertisement. whoops.

Arriba, arriba...

It is hard to believe that the Spanish Civil War was a mere seventy years ago. That kind of passion, courage, and faith don't seem like virtues you could find much of anywhere in Europe; and to think that there are still people alive who remember a much different time--a time where these virtues were very much in evidence--is quite frankly remarkable. Spain today is a sorry mess of dying culture and futureless appeasement. It birth rate is a heartbreaking 1.1 (no country has ever pulled out of a death spiral like that) and the churches are nearly as empty as the cradles. The country that in former times spent an agonizing 770 years driving out Islamic invaders now kowtows to Islamic terrorists and meekly does their bidding. You would think that a bomb going off in your capital, killing innocent hundreds would provoke some kind of ire. But no...the reaction is instead to frantically try to smooth the ruffled feathers of killers who get upset when you curtail their activity. And this from the grandchildren of men and women who shed so much blood, sweat, and tears in what now seems a futile attempt to secure the future of their beloved country. But then when there are fewer and fewer children to think of, I guess it's not so surprising that they have ceased to think of the future and are trying desperately to just survive the present.

jelly beans

Apparently, people amount to just that, jelly beans. Check out this doozy of an article that appeared in USA Today on the 7th: “LATEST SHUTTLE CREW IS ONE OF DIVERSITY- NASA Corps still has ‘a ways to go’ The seven astronauts on space shuttle Discovery will be undistinguishable today as they wait for liftoff clad in bubble helmets and orange launch suits, but their gear will mask a milestone: For the first time, two African-Americans will rocket into space together. They’ll be joined on their 12-day flight by a half-Indian astronaut, making this the most diverse shuttle crew in recent years. The six crewmembers on September’s flight were white. The composition of Discovery’s crew illustrates how far NASA has come in building an astronaut corps that reflects America…. ‘We’ve made some great strides, and this mission is an example of that,’ says former astronaut Winston Scott, an African-American who is vice president of the Engineering Sciences Contract Group in Houston. ‘But clearly there is a ways to go.’” Hm. Is it just me, or should we be worrying more about people's qualifications rather than their skin color? I was raised to think that skin color was just as important as eye or hair color. (Unless you were really white to begin with...in which case you want to make sure your skin never turns red) Seriously; if we wanted a really diverse crew, we would send a contingent of righties as well as lefties, democrats and republicans, artists and engineers...and the mission quite possibly would end in a disaster. Who cares whether the astronauts are black or white or latino? Let's just make sure they know what they're doing, please. It would seem America does have a ways to go if we're still tolerating this kind of stupidity.

Lock your doors

Uh-oh. that just isn't a good idea...funny that he wants better treatment for his illness. What's wrong, Jack? Don't you want to die? Yeah. he makes me blood boil, creepy, evil old man. but anyway i have to go...watch a movie with my brother. I'll be back after the season. Merry Christmas.

Stardust Movie

More info on Neil Gaiman's first big-budget movie. Stardust has gone into preview screenings for test audiences and has been getting sweet reviews. Comparisons to Princess Bride abound, but it looks like it's kept that Jonathan Strangesque darkness that made the book so cool. Its about time we got to see a straight up, non-cheesy fairy story, set in Faery, and with some acting muscle behind it (Clarie Danes, Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Peter O'Toole, etc) Read the Aint it Cool News Review here.