one more goddamn milestone for genetic engineering

We are truly truly truly truly a dispicable species.

Pet Peeve of ALL TIMES

No, my greatest pet peeve of all times is not the redesign of Art In America, which seems to have been done by people who never held a printed page in their lives, and which ranks high on my list of pet peeves.  My greatest pet peeve of all times is the invention of the bloody seedless watermelon!!!!!  

As can be seen in the above photograph, seedless watermelons aren’t really seedless. Instead of having big juicy seeds that you can actually spit out, they have immature seeds that you have to ingest and that get stuck in between your teeth.  

Genetic engineers with nothing better to do (like maybe genetically engineer themselves off of this planet) have succeeded in manipulating one of my favorite fruits into remaining immature even though it looks ripe.  Hell, visual artist or not, I don’t eat with my eyes only!  With the, perhaps well-founded, assumption that Americans have become too lazy to spit out fruit seeds, they have given us a fruit that is always green even though it looks red; a fruit that goes from being immature to being rotten without ever being ripe.  Gee, thanks.

 

What's in a name?

What’s up with the name Dick?  Is the arrogance exhibited by those politicians who go by that name due to the fact that it can refer to the male organ?  

The puppet master Dick Cheney is finally out of hiding arrogantly defending his policies and, again, fear mongering.  Granted, his warnings about the closing down of Gitmo are not unwarranted; but the dilemma of whether to close or not the facility is entirely of his making.  Had the Bush administration made any effort to establish Guantanamo’s legitimacy in an orderly and legal manner, we would not be in this mess.  Fuck you Dick.

tats

Tattoos... I’d like to study their history.  Knowing nothing at all about them, but having seen them marking peoples from all kinds of cultures and times, and having one myself, I would venture to say that they are used, in all kinds of tribes, even these days when they are ubiquitous and seem to be aquired on a whim, as part of a ritual to mark some kind of passage, to mark an occasion, and to solidify a bond with another or others.

In these times of economic uncertainty, my friend Carlyn has been photographing images which she has classified as “economic indicators”.  NPR, in its mission to paint a picture of the national landscape, has also been putting out small stories, or if you will, giving us snippets of news that, because of Carly, I have come to think of as “narrative economic indicators”.   One such story today was not about the demise of one business or another, but about a business that is flourishing in these times of economic hardship, and that’s the tattoo removal business: the business that removes the markings of a passage, an occasion and/or the solidification of a bond with another.  And the most often removed tattoo category is the name of a loved one. 

Now for the rant: given the time and space we live in, and given the rate of divorce in this here time and space, what kind of IQ does it take to inject the name of another person into several layers of one’s skin! 

Now for a corollary rant: Having gone and done that, people, you should own up to your tattoos and leave the damn things intact; just start a damn list of names.  It will be a reminder that life can’t be so easily erased!

Latest Star Trek: Why I Don’t Hate It Even Though I Should

As if the whole frightful thing were my fault just because it brought me hope, the Ranting Economist woke me up twice during the night to groan about how dreadful the new Star Trek movie was.  In fact he is currently ranting about it on the phone.

Yes, the new Star Trek is dreadful; and no, there is no way to save a planet from a supernova by transforming its exploding sun into a singularity[1], the premise upon which the plot of the movie lays.  A premise, I might add, that was not worked into the plot as it would have been were this actually a good movie; but one that was spelled out to a young Captain Kirk by an old Mr. Spock, played by the one, the only, the true, the Leonard Nimoy.  Yes, yes, yes, the plot is brought to you by the cliché of time travel; here without any of the usual plot restrictions of the collapse of “All-Time” should a character encounter his future/past self in the present (huh?).   Moreover, the whole time travel premise of the plot, such as it is, is never explained, not even through the lazy device of narration.

Suffice it to say that the whole movie is a series of clichés loosely strung together into an incoherent and pedantic plot.  Given this, an interesting question remains as it pertains to me and the Ranting Economist: How come neither of us got up to walk out of the movie theater as we’ve done countless times in the past when confronted with this level of doo-doo?  And moreover, why was I buoyed by the whole thing even though I should have left the movie retching in tandem with the groans emanating from the Ranting Economist?

Weeelll, I can’t speak for Curtis, but for me, at least, it’s because of the hope “theng”[2].  The entire raison d’être of the movie was to set back the clock in order to resurrect the old crew, albeit with new actors, and start a new franchise with the ones, the only(s), the old, the tried, the true, and the much beloved characters of the one, the only, the first Star Trek.  And although this is a transparent ploy to make more oodles of money for the ST franchise precisely by tapping into the kind of nostalgia I have for the old show, it, pathetically, does bring me hope.

Curtis left the movie cursing and spitting hellfire; while I left filled with joy because now Hollywood could actually go back to the “past” and make more movies featuring the crew of the original, who, to those of us who grew up watching them, are like family, the kind you want to spend time with.  The fact that neither Curtis nor I left the theater before the end of this shuddersome movie is a testament to the character development in the first series.  It was that alone that kept us seated; and knowing my husband the way I do, that truly is an amazing feat.  Now, if the next movie is this bad, I too will be spitting hellfire.  But here’s to hoping....

---

[1] or a black hole, as Mr. Spock had to explain to the viewing audience who might not have come into contact with the word “singularity”; even though chances are that if you’ve never come upon the word “singularity”, your grasp of the concept of a “black hole” might be somewhat limited as well, even more limited than that of those lay people who actually have come upon it.

 [2]  No not the Obama Hope thing; but my hope that Hollywood might again put out a good coherent sci-fi movie.

Rhythm

"We shouldn't be going to see the Star Trek movie."

"Ahhh Let's just take a walk on the wild side."

"That's not it, Star Trek is so anti-thetical to Anderson, S.C."

"We should stop analyzing shit you and I."

"That's not it, this place shouldn't have talking movies."

master/master

Buckmaster asks McMaster to apologize (-; 

legalize it