The State of USS Discovery after the 2nd Episode of Season 3

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To be honest, USS Discovery has always been one of those shows that I have a love and hate relationship with, mostly because the writing has often been really bad. The acting is stellar, and the casting is great, but sometimes the writing takes the inevitable “we don’t really have a solution for this, so we’re going to just fill it with psychobabble so we can get to the whiz bang stuff”. Or, “we’ll try to pull on heart strings by showcasing the one character who has nothing else to do but pull on our heart strings.”

Season Two kind of went a different direction because of the stellar casting of Anson Mount as Christopher Pike. And strangely enough, the writing wasn’t that bad either. Sure, there were moments of the same problems as before (“we don’t really have anywhere to go with this so we’re going to just avoid sharing actual information that normal people would ask so we can keep the audience in a state of confusion going forward” but aside from those moments, like the whole “strange stars in space” phenomenon, which was basically the premise of the whole second season, it was still pretty good.

To be honest, after the mid-point of Season One, the show became watchable again, regardless of its avoidable moments.

(spoilers ahead)

And then Season 3 came along. Season 2 left us with Discovery being thrown 1000 years into the future (a future that has only really been touched on narratively once through a Star Trek short called “Calypso” and a bit through some of the temporal war background of Star Trek: Enterprise when “Crewman” Daniels brought Archer to the 30th or so century.

Now, we were in completely uncharted territory. The closest to this we really got, aside from a few one-off moments throughout the rest of the franchise, like Star Trek: Picard or some of the “it could have happened” episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’ve not seen much of the future of Star Trek’s future. Now, we were finally here (or there).

The first episode focused specifically on Commander Michael Burnham arriving in the 30th or so century and completely lost, spending the majority of her time teetering on whether or not she was gong to survive and whether or not she was going to figure out exactly when she arrived. We meet Book, a new recurring character and Sahid (I think was his name), an ambassador for a Federation that appears to have been more memory than prominent. Both of these new characters really do a great job of setting a scene for a dystopian future of the the far-off future, but still gives us a sense that there’s something still happening.

My only complaint on the first episode was more a feeling than an actual criticism, and that was that the premise for this future felt a lot like Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda where Dylan Hunt (the name that Roddenberry was originally planning for Captain Kirk’s character) wakes up from a wormhole accident and the Commonwealth (i.e., the Federation) has been wiped out, leaving him to have to rebuild it from scratch with the last starship (Andromeda). We kind of have the same scenario happening with Discovery, even though in the first episode, the Discovery has not made it to the 30th century yet, but because it’s the name of the show, we know it’s going to regardless. Even Book felt like Tier (not sure I have the spelling of his name correctly, but he was the Nietzschean outsider of that time who hooks up with Dylan Hunt, much like Book is now doing with Michael. And of course, Sahid represents the Federation, which is obviously what the cast is going to go about rebuilding to its former greatness.

Now, that criticism aside, the first episode was actually pretty good and strangely enough it had no members of the USS Discovery other than the commander herself, so it ended up being a fish out of water episode that tested how well the actress is able to show her acting chops. Further spoiler alert: She has them when the script doesn’t call for her to overact the scene.

But the one thing missing from the episode of Star Trek Discovery was, well, the USS Discovery.

The second episode is basically the response to that. And one of the more refreshing things they did with this episode was not focus 100 percent on Commander Burnham (Michael). And it made me realize how much of this series is based around this one woman saving the day, each and every episode so that every other character is basically Abbott to her Costello.

In Episode 2, the USS Discovery comes crashing out of the wormhole and literally crash lands in an ice landing that would make Deanna Troi seriously proud. And rather than, okay, we crash landed, so let’s all move on with the episode, they actually focused on the ramification of how impactful such a crash landing just might be.

This episode gave the secondary cast a chance to finally shine, so they weren’t just shadows of the main character’s actions. Saru, the former first officer made captain, BECOMES a captain here, showing that he’s not just a character filling a spot, but a person who has spent his career learning the things an officer learns that eventually leads him to have to lead when the time finally comes. There’s a brilliant moment where he and Ensign Tilly (a character that sometimes grates on my nerves as a sort of Wesley Crusher kid genius response to every dilemma) are on an away mission together. Saru chooses Tilly for numerous reasons, all of which make completely sense and really show actual thought behind the writers of this episode.

She’s scared, and he knows that, but in his strange paranoid all the time way, he shows how her fear actually comforts his own fear so that both of them benefit from being together. It’s a really touching scene.

The scene then moves to a futuristic western bar that we’ve seen hundreds of times in so many other stories, and of course, the martial arts fight whatever comes before her Georgiou shows up, meaning we’re going to have a “beat up bad guys” scene, so that happens as expected, but it leads to a brilliant display of Saru showing that they’re Starfleet, not a bunch of wandering thugs, and it becomes one of those few missing moments that Discovery is sometimes lacking at times.

Meanwhile, the crew is still on the USS Discovery trying to at least get the ship back up and running, and this is where we see some of the character development that the first two seasons was seriously lacking. And that was such a refreshing segment to experience.

And then there’s a huge attempt to get USS Discovery back up into the air again, and that’s when they are picked up by a tractor beam out of nowhere, and it’s one of those moments of “should be shoot while we have the drop on them, or should we answer their hail?” And Saru chooses the Starfleet way, leading them to finally come back into contact with Commander Burnham again.

It’s an episode well worth watching. So far, the third season is firing on all cylinders, and I hope it can continue doing so.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 732

Second episode in my book writing series on Youtube

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So, the second video is completed and uploaded to Youtube. One of the strangest things of having a somewhat defunct Youtube account is that getting traction is almost impossible. Even getting people to watch a video these days is difficult, even though the content is designed to help people who can definitely use the information.

Basically, had I been starting out in writing and found this information available, I would have been quite overjoyed.

It’s hard to understand people sometimes. Some of the stuff that’s popular on Youtube blows my mind at how simplistic and uninspiring it is, yet lots of people watch it. Oh well. Now I’m just griping for no reason. Here’s the video.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 709

My new Youtube Project

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Well, I finally got around to doing it. My Youtube channel isn’t new, but for the longest time, I’ve wanted to use my Youtube channel to actually start illustrating just how to write a novel.

Up until this time, my Youtube channel has been used for a number of purposes, including talking about politics, uploading videos of my video lectures for the college courses I teach, and for videos of content that usually involves me vlogging about something or other. But I decided I wanted to do something a little more substantive with the Youtube channel, and now I’ve started this new project.

What this project will be is an attempt to walk you through the process of writing a novel, not by doing what I’ve historically done (and every other Youtube person has done) and that’s talk about writing a novel. But instead, while I write my current novel, 1991, I’m going to show exactly how the process of writing it takes place.

So, we’re talking stuff like how to design characters, how to build your setting, how to do research, outlining, building dialogue, handling the day to day stress of having to write a novel (which can really wear you down, if you’ve never prepared for this process before), how to change the story midstream, how to settle on a main character and little nuances that most people tend to just take for granted, but you end up having to pick-up as you go along.

My main reason for doing this project (the Youtube project) is because I realized that had something like this been around when I first started writing, it might have made the process of writing a novel so much easier. I’ve written 16 novels since that first one, so I’ve picked up a few techniques along the way, but it wasn’t always a walk in the park. Sometimes, it was a brutal slug match with overwhelming odds.

This is an attempt to help anyone else deciding to do this himself or herself just how this process can be stream-lined, or at least made easier and better.

The first of these videos has been uploaded here:

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 610

About to Launch My New Streaming Service

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It’ll look a lot like this except make more sense

The other day, I was watching television and realized I had nothing to watch. There was nothing new on Hulu, Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple Itunes (or whatever it’s called), Amazon Prime, HBO Go (or is it Now?), CBS All Access and Telemundo. Okay, I don’t even know if I have Telemundo, but I bet if I did, there would be nothing new on it.

I’ve reached that era of humanity in which I’ve watched everything I can possibly imagine, leaving me staring at my television screen with nothing to do. Yes, a real first-world problem, eh?

So, rather than try to find another source of television, I’ve decided it’s time for me to just launch my own streaming service, something that caters specifically to Duane. I know the whole world has been waiting for this, as I’ve queried my various stuffed animals, and they nodded emphatically (or they just stared back at me with blank faces, but I’m pretty sure they were enthusiastic).

So, I’ve decided that in order to launch my new service, I need to feature premiere Duane-programming, which means 24/7 Star Trek (but only the shows I haven’t seen yet, which limits it to, um, none of them cause I’ve seen them all, twice, plus that one where Kirk fights the lizard guy probably at least five times; I mean, quality is quality, right?).

But the shows are going to have to be really cool, so as I’m a huge fan of twists and mysteries, we’ll have to focus on a lot of those, except every now and then they’ll have to not have a twist or mystery (being the twist and mystery itself). There should also be absolutely no sports whatsoever, because I don’t like watching shows where people can do all sorts of athletic things I can’t do, like breathe normally, or anything more strenuous than that.

I also don’t want romances because they’re not believable. Never once in my life has a woman knocked on my door and then wanted to make mad passionate love to me. Nor go on a second date. Perhaps there’s more than just a coincidence there.

I don’t like reality programming because I refuse to believe that 37 teenagers can live in the same house without an adult and somehow still manage to end up with beer in the refrigerator. And people laugh at me for liking science fiction?

So, the kinds of shows we’ll have to have will be the very high-tech science fiction shows with laser battles and really cool cars that talk to the actors, saying really funny things that people don’t actually say in real life, because that would be too scripted. But they still have to sound all natural, like it’s the right thing to happen at the most inopportune times.

And ninjas. You kind of need ninjas in most shows. Which now that I think about it, perhaps romances would be okay, as long as it was a romance between two ninjas (who throw laser ninja stars at teenagers who live in apartments with no beer). I’m not really sure where I’m going with this one, but something tells me I’m on a roll.

Of course, there’s no way to really talk about this without mentioning price. I figure $3.00 a month is appropriate as long as the entire world seems interested in subscribing. Considering there’s about 340 million people in the US alone (on any Tuesday, although Wednesdays and Fridays our numbers dwindle horribly), that would be (gets out calculator…at least three dollars times 340 million, which my two years of second grade math instruction comes out to about at least a million dollars). So, yeah, this would be really profitable.

I was going to say that my streaming service should have hot cheerleaders and Scarlet Johanssen but that was much more relevant when I was a teenager, so let’s just say that as long as we’re meeting the ninja demographic, we’re probably okay.

I haven’t figured out exactly when I’m going to be launching this new streaming service, but it may have to wait until after I’m finished watching the latest season of The Expanse, on Amazon Prime. Or was it on Starz? One of these days I’m going to have to figure out where my stuffed animals have hidden the remote.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 619

The Never-Ending Dilemma of Trying to Be Well-Read

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(Licensed by the author, 2020)

First off, this isn’t a post that’s designed to glorify how much I’ve read. Posts like that have a habit of being a bit condescending, boring and painful to get through. Yes, I’ve read a lot of stuff. But so have so many other people. This post really isn’t about that.

What this post is about is one of the consequences of reading a lot of stuff. As a social creature, I really love to share great literature and nonfiction with other people. The problem is: Most people don’t care.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I love to read. When I was a kid, just learning to read, I remember having finished all of the stuff other kids were supposed to read and then asking for more. The teacher had nothing else to share in the classroom at that time, but she had been reading “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky, which was on her desk. I asked about that, and she told me it was too difficult for someone of my young age. So, the next day, I got my mom to check out the book for me from the public library. And I struggled through it, and finished it. Years later, I’ve probably read that book at least five times. I get something new from it each time I read it.

A more recent example: I just finished reading Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant writer and thinker who also wrote A Paradise Built in Hell, which I love for its alternative approach of explaining history and the ramifications that occur during history. Both books are chalked full of history, so because I work with a couple of history people, I thought about recommending those books to them. The response I generally received was a blank stare, almost an admission of “your review to me didn’t convince me that I should waste my time reading what you were talking about.”

And that’s the problem right there. Over the years, as I’ve read more and more brilliant stuff, I’ve often recommended it to other people. What I’ve discovered is that so few people take up the gauntlet and decide to read those books. Instead, they listen to your explanation of that book and then because you’ve explained everything about it to them, they decide not to read it, possibly thinking that they’ve already absorbed the knowledge of that book by the mere moment you spent explaining it to them. And then they go on with their lives, only reading the things they find significant.

This reminded me of two things. First, Rebecca Solnit’s book Men Explain Things to Me, in which she details an encounter she had with a boorish man who found out she was a writer and had written on a particular obscure topic so spent the next hour or so telling her she had to read this book about her subject if she was ever going to understand it like he did. Turns out, she wrote that book he was talking about, and as men behave like men, he took forever to acknowledge that once finding out, and then still managed to talk down to her regardless of realizing that fact.

Second, the concept of knowledge and literature requires a modern scholar to actually read the texts himself or herself and not just the cliff notes version (and especially not just the conversation about it from someone who read it instead). Imagine discussing Plato with someone who has never read it but watched a lecture on Plato once. That works great if neither of you have read it (you can be clueless together) but when you’re the one who has read him, discussing it with someone who has no intention of reading it is a complete waste of time.

That’s how I feel when I talk about literature with people and discover that they’re not going to read it, condemning it because they didn’t read it first. I talked about Solnit with one person and actually saw his face turn negative, like he was disgusted by the fact that he’d never heard of her before, and thus, she was unimportant in his mind. That’s the kind of emotional response I receive a lot when I talk about literature that is important yet obscure.

What probably bothers me the most is that people often do not even realize that the books we read are snapshots of the best works of lives that we may never experience again. Other times, they’re snapshots of careers in progress, such as when I recall having read the early works of Ken Follett (who wrote a brilliant spy thriller in Eye of the Needle and then turned around and wrote one of the worst mysteries with ever bad writing technique available soon after that; and then he followed that up with one of the greatest historical narratives I have yet to read in my lifetime). It’s like having great conversations with people who have so much to tell us, and we’re limiting ourselves to only what’s popular, and quite often, on some television or movie screen.

It’s almost gotten to the point where I may not discuss literature with people any more. I remember bringing up Haruki Murakami to one colleague recently and received that “I haven’t read him, so obviously he’s not significant” response. Keep in mind, Murakami is probably among the most respected authors living in the world today. But because he’s not “known” to some individual, I end up having to explain his significance, which finally ends with a sense of “well, if I should find myself on a deserted island, am already bored and his book is all that’s there, I might read it.” Again, I find myself thinking, screw you and I hope you remain uneducated for life. But fortunately, I’m not that elitist. Well, not after I’ve had my first morning diet Dr Pepper.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 683

Dating Someone Who Is Bat S**t Crazy

Relationships, Social Networking, , ,
It always starts off great!

Years back, I had been between relationships and just decided that perhaps I needed time to myself, basically dating no one. I was in the middle of undergraduate work for genetics at the time, planning to eventually move onto medical school when a long-term relationship just fell apart on me. Realizing I had a number of years of tough education ahead of me, I realized this was probably not the time to get involved in any kind of future relationship.

Life doesn’t really work that way, unfortunately.

During that summer, I took a part time temp job to just pass the time (and keep up my finances before school work made that impossible), so I got this really mundane job working for a subsidiary of Pacific Bell. They were moving one section of the business to another location, so the job consisted of a bunch of temp workers literally transferring physical files from one place to another. Very boring work.

But kind of exactly what I needed after a break-up.

There were a few dozen other workers there with me, and there were a couple of supervisors. I kept being offered one of the mid-level supervisory positions, due to education, but as I wasn’t really there for longevity or intentions of rising up, I chose to remain at the bottom and just do the grunt work. Again, it was exactly what I needed.

The job was supposed to last about three months, and about a few weeks into it, the cliques already started to form, and as you would suspect, it’s very easy to get cast into certain corners, even without doing anything to make it happen.

One of the first things I noticed was that because of the horrible management of this project, we had lots and lots of time of sitting around in conference rooms just talking. I quickly started bringing books to read to pass the time, but all around me, people did the sort of things you might expect happen when people have lots of time and nothing to do. Add in those cliques I talked about, and you might get the impression that things might turn sour really quick-like.

The place had a real feral activity to it that resonated with herd mentality. The group would often find a weaker member of the room and then pounce on him or her, pretty much turning that person’s life into a nightmare until the person finally decided to never return again. We lost a number of people that way.

In the early days of this group activity, I found myself targeted early but that ended quickly as I was also a debater (and had been doing it in college to begin with); they discovered it was no fun engaging someone who could rapidly respond to anything they wanted to bring my way. So, I was mainly left to my own devices, which, as I said, usually consisted of me and my book.

For the most part, I really didn’t pay much attention to what happened around me, until I noticed the attention turn to a young woman named Sally. Now, Sally was originally from Hong Kong, on a path towards citizenship in the US, but she spoke horrible English. This made her an easy target of a group of workers who just loved the idea that it took her time to respond to everything they said, so it was easy to twist her words around and add to her frustration. Plus, she was the kind of young woman who got really upset, really fast and when edged on by people who are just trying to cause trouble, it does not bode well.

Due to a few assignments that were doled out by coincidence, Sally and I spent a few hours alone in the room when others were doing other things, so I actually had a chance to talk to her. Unlike the rest of them, I’m a really good listener, so when she was struggling to say what she wanted to say, due to broken English, I spent more time just listening and letting her find the words that she wanted to say instead. I learned quite a bit about her and found some of her background to be quite fascinating. Example: She was very well educated; just not in English.

As you might suspect, the others treated her like she was stupid, as people tend to do when someone around them is not fluent in the mainstream language. And as they continued on their warpath each time they tried to spook her, I started interjecting in those conversations so that not only did they have to attack her, but now they had to go after me as well. And as I said before, I’m not the sort of person you want to engage in argumentation.

Quickly, she realized it was a lot safer to hang out wherever I was and was pretty much always sitting next to me. The others just quickly realized that she wasn’t worth the effort, as they weren’t getting the results they wanted, so they went after someone else and continued their usual bantering. To be honest, I don’t remember much more about them after that.

So, needless to say, it was very difficult for me to separate myself from Sally during this work assignment. At the same time, I didn’t want to lead her on or get involved with any relationships at this time, so even though she was always around me, I tried to avoid thinking much about it. However, as it was getting close for me to finish my time there (school was going to be starting back up soon), I was going to take the coward way out and just disappear once my assignment was complete.

Unfortunately, Sally was a lot smarter than I realized. The day before I was supposed to be done (I had told no one but my immediate supervisor I was leaving), she appeared where I was sorting files and held out her hand: “Phone number!” she said.

I guess I should have realized there was a problem when we first started dating because it started with me getting home that night, receiving a message on my answering machine stating when and where we were meeting for coffee at a time she designated.

So, a couple of little things that help explain her a little further: First, she was a dead ringer for the actress Michelle Yeoh, something I made the mistake of saying one early date. She got extremely angry and said “She’s ugly!” Which, of course, she she’s not.

She also hated every one of my friends. Every one. The men were all abusers. Her words. The women? I suspect a bit of jealousy, even though they were never a threat to her in any way.

On a whim, she would just get really angry over anything. When we disagreed on something, she would pinch, really hard. And she would rarely stop. I know it sounds kind of funny because pinches don’t sound really painful, but oh wow, they were. I’ve been shot before, and I’m really not sure which one I’d consider worse.

One of my favorite, yet weird, experiences involves when we went to see a movie. The usher was taking our tickets and he looked up and her and nearly dropped his jaw, stating: “Oh, my god, you look just like the woman in the James Bond film.”

He was referring to, of course, Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies. The second he said it, I saw her face turn seriously angry, and I said: “I’ll go grab us some seats.” The last look I saw on his face was what appeared to be mortal fear as Sally was closing in on her next victim. About five minutes later, she sat down next to me, and I said, “He’s still alive, right?” She just nodded and then started in on some popcorn.

I’ll be honest, but I just wasn’t really ready for a relationship at the time. I kind of fell into it, and I really wasn’t over the previous one. And she kept getting more and more angry and violent as time moved on. I brought her to a school function once as my plus one, and my thesis advisor pulled me aside before asking me if she needed to plan an intervention to get me out of this relationship.

So, at some point I realized it was probably safer to end this relationship, so I tried to sit down with her and talk about it, but every time I did, she suddenly forgot how to speak any English, said she had to leave, and then came back a few days later as if nothing had happened. This stretched on for some time.

Finally, I set up a time where we could talk, and I said, without doubt, that this is something that needs to happen. Instead of pulling the same tactic, she nodded and left.

A few days later, she wrote me an email, and started with an abusive flurry of messages about how I was the worst person who ever walked the planet. I, at first, tried to respond in as friendly a manner as possible, but then those messages kept getting worse and worse. So, I stopped responding.

And then she started sending me bills. For her time. She had literally gone through and calculated everything she might have ever spent during our six months together and wanted compensation. So, clothes she bought, transportation she had taken, air she breathed, etc., was fair game. And when I didn’t respond, those amounts kept going up, like the worst loan shark in history.

Finally, I moved away and entered grad school. I stopped hearing from her.

Years later, a friend of mine from where I had been living sent me a link to a Craigslist ad. It was a series of pictures of Sally, with three kids (too young to have any connection to me), trying to find a new boyfriend because the last guy left her with three kids.

I don’t really have much to say. Maybe it’s just better that way.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 680

Democracy is finally experiencing Marx’s warning about capitalism

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Democracy just experienced its first serious blow, and it happened in a way that no one even noticed it. It didn’t happen because of some overwhelming force of a dictator forcing the masses to his will (although one sure seems to be trying any way). It didn’t happen because of some oppressive enemy that invaded and destroyed us like Spartans on the fields of Macedonia. And it didn’t involve the proletariat throwing off their chains and destroying the machinery keeping them in slavery (no thanks to businesses like Amazon that pretend to be enlightened as they benefit one man to become the richest man on the planet).

No, the problem started where people tend not to see these sorts of things. And one of its symptoms was seen in all of its glory just yesterday. And it came from as innocuous a place as a computer gaming company, Activision Blizzard.

Now, for most of its history, Activision, specifically the Blizzard portion of it, has been known for such computer gaming delights as World of Warcraft, Warcrart, Starcraft and Hearthstone. There are a few other gaming franchises under their umbrella, but for the most part, they have been known for creating enjoyable games that have produced a really strong reputation in the gaming community.

Well, over the weekend, they ran an international tournament for one of their franchises, Hearthstone. During this tournament, a champion of the game, Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai, used his successful platform to declare support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Blizzard immediately declared his victory forfeited and distanced themselves from him.

While it can be argued that Blizzard just doesn’t want any politics melting into its gaming forum, something a bit more sinister is definitely at play here. It is no secret that Activision Blizzard has been trying to break into the China market (and has been for a very long time now). It also wouldn’t be a stretch to understand why Blizzard would disavow any ties to someone who has acted against the very oppressive Chinese regime that is in the process of trying to be quite oppressive to Hong Kong.

This is basically what Karl Marx was talking about in his very long and detailed explanation of how democracy was eventually going to be overshadowed and destroyed by capitalism. Right now, we’re seeing capitalism being made more important because of profit than the ideas of democracy, which was originally thought of something that went hand in hand with capitalism.

But that was always a facade. In reality, capitalism works well with democracy up to a point, and the way it works up to that point is because capitalism needs a way of being untouched by government long enough to grow until it cannot be contained any further. Once it has reached a certain apex, it doesn’t matter how much democracy exists; it’s never going to be able to contain it.

Think of it this way: Democracy means that the people make the rules and control the government. But as capitalism creates entities of fake people (the corporation as a personal interest), what happens is that people are now competing with corporations for identity. Everyone has a voice, but a corporation has both a voice and an economic means to deliver that voice to more and more people. A person can’t do the same. Unless that person is a Kardashian or Taylor Swift. But Taylor Swifts are rare, and Kardashians incorporate themselves to create that corporate entity again. The average person, like you or me, has absolutely no voice whatsoever. And never will.

So, as more and more corporations begin to respond to a slowly disappearing market that is being swallowed up by more and more corporate interests, the desire is to find more overseas markets. Places like China, with its economic power base, are literally gold mines for corporations trying to sell their goods and services. But to do that, they often have to cut back on democratic ideals because countries like China aren’t interested in free speech and individual justice. It’s all about the state.

So, democracy dies a little bit at a time. You know, the whole death by paper cuts.

The problem is that we’re so wrapped up in our media-generated controversies that we don’t even see it happening around us. As our voices get fainter and fainter, we’re slowly heading towards a point of no return. And we don’t even know we’re on the road.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 786

That tendency to return to a beloved game

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So, up until recently, I was heavily involved in playing Shroud of the Avatar. It’s an okay rpg-like game, but there was a substantial learning curve involved and a heavy financial burden that was necessary in order to even become a somewhat productive member of its society. Sure, you could play for cheap, but like most things, cheap meant living cheap, and it was never really that much fun. But right before it was released, I invested heavily in the game, paying an absurd amount of money for a house and stuff (mainly a tiered system for joining), and even after that, I never really felt like I was going to become one of the better classed citizens around town.

You see, a lot of that was because in order to be one of those better-off citizens, you pretty much had to invest in the game back when it was in its kickstarter faze of existence. But I didn’t know about it until much later, so my chances of ever investing heavily in the game (and getting something out of it) never could happen. It’s like investing in Facebook AFTER its IPO. Sure, you might make a few dollars, but you were never going to make the CEO-like profits that you would have gotten by investing before the IPO. You were always going to be a second-class citizen.

So, while I haven’t completely left that game, I realize there’s not a lot for me there, so I’ve invested in going back to a previous game, one that I invested in since the beginning: Star Trek Online.

Now, Star Trek Online is one of those weird entities out in the MMO world, mainly because it probably should have gone out of business a long time ago, but lived long enough to be able to sustain itself and then reinvent itself as new Star Trek entities came on the scene to make it viable again.

And eight or so years ago, I paid about $300 for a lifetime membership, which means that I’m still racking up free money and benefits from the game that have made that initial investment completely worth it. But that’s not to say that I haven’t made it worth STO’s time either. I’ve put a lot of money back into that game, buying ships, in game zen currency (to buy other stuff) and even entire expansion sets when they were appropriate. It’s one of those games I’ve always felt was worth the price, even though I might have kicked myself almost every time I shelled out another hundred or so dollars.

But if you love Star Trek, and oh yes I do, then it’s really the perfect game for you. A lot of the game is grind, where you’re doing things that are just completely time consuming, like training skills so that you might one day actually use them, or fighting bad guys on some washed out planet so that you can build up enough of that faction’s marks so that you might one day be able to buy some ship engine you’ve always wanted that can only be bought by that faction’s store. Stuff like that.

But it’s got all of the pew pew you could ever ask for. And I figure that for the next three or four months (or until the next WOW comes along), I’ll be playing it on an almost daily basis.

And shelling out stupid money from time to time.

Cause that’s what they do best. Take your money.

And that’s what I do best. Give away my money. Not sure I’m all that satisfied with that realization. But I’ll be fighting some Romulans, so I’ll have to think about that later.

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Website is undergoing some changes

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As you can probably see, my website is undergoing some serious changes. I was having trouble updating my WordPress files when I pulled the files over to a new server, so I ended up trying to salvage what I could. I’ve managed to get most of it over, but there’s been a lot of damage in the process.

Right now, I am currently rebuilding my site from scratch, so I am not even sure I’ll have a blog at the end of this process. I probably will, but it may not be in the same style as the one being used now.

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As much as they would like, California hasn’t really developed a trump card on Trump…and neither have the Democrats

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Today, California announced that in order for Trump to appear on the California ballot, he’ll have to reveal his tax returns. Gotcha! There’s no getting out of that one, Orange Menace!

Except, there is. First, Trump’s people will sue California and most likely lose, especially if the judge is housed in California (although federal). And there’s always the chance that the judge might be a strict interpretationist who will argue that any stipulations a state puts on a candidate adds restrictions the Constitution didn’t put forth.

But even if that’s not the case, this is a battle being engaged in which the end of the war isn’t as clear. If you think about it, Trump has very little chance of winning California, so I don’t see a single reason why he should even care, unless it’s yet another one of those cases where he’s convinced everyone must love him, so he doesn’t want to lose his chance of winning California too in his expected massive landslide.

I guess the reason I mention this is that it’s getting really frustrating living through the continuous failures of the Democrats against this administration. And it goes back to 2016 as well. There was zero reason for the Democrats to lose that election, yet they proved how well they could completely screw up that whole process. As a matter of fact, when Bernie Sanders was seriously screwed over by both delegates and what I still consider the most dishonest tactic ever played by a party leader, I knew that Trump was going to end up winning the election. I actually had his numbers a little higher than they were, but that was only because I didn’t expect him to turn into a turd that early in the election. When I counted the states, I saw an easy victory for Trump, and even though a few of the states I suspected to go for him managed to be won by the Democrats, the numbers still held their own, even though in the end it came down to a stone’s throw of victory.

We’re heading that direction again. Yeah, I’m serious. And this isn’t because I like Trump because I seriously deplore the guy for the racist garbage that comes out of his mouth. It’s because the Democrats are capable of being their own worst enemies yet again.

If you listen to the rhetoric, we’re hearing nonstop about how the Democrats have an easy victory to the finish line this time around. The people saying this point out Trump’s racism, his womanizing (and hating), his lack of service and derision towards the military, his cronyism, his nepotism, his narcissism, his inability to care about anyone that doesn’t further his own means, and so many other little reasons, but the one thing they haven’t done is convince the people who love him that he’s not the person they think he is. Oh, sure, they have a lot of commentators revealing his evil ways and all that, but for the most part, they’re talking to themselves, and not the people who need to hear this.

And even if they did address these people, it probably doesn’t matter because they’ve been saying this stuff so long that any criticism is probably going to be interpreted as “liberal hogwash”. Hell, this article alone probably fits that as well.

They just don’t care.

So, Democrats need to do two things. First, they need to get every Democrat alive out to vote and those Dems needs to vote in states where Republicans tend to win regardless of who runs. And second, and even more important, they need to make sure they make the presidential candidate the most Democratic one they’ve run to date.

You see, last time, they let delegates choose their leader because they didn’t want their party represented by someone who wasn’t a “true” Democrat. And that hurt big time.

Even today, people complain that Bernie Sanders wanted to run. They blame him for Hillary’s loss. What they should have blamed was a system that demanded the votes from every Democrat regardless of who was chosen.

That would have been fine if they didn’t give the finger to every Bernie voter and then demand they support the party after. Well, hopefully, the party has learned from its mistakes.

Except it hasn’t. Instead, what has already started happening is that people are canvasing the Bernie and Warren voters and trying to make weird deals with them that go something like: “If your candidate loses, you need to support whoever wins, okay?” So, instead of waiting until they’ve suppressed any socialist movement, they’re trying to get buy-in for the eventual occurrence of that anyway.

Hopefully, that works for them because I’ve already seen that they’re no going the democracy route. Which seems strange for a party that has a very similar name.

Which should make 2020 a very interesting election. I’ll leave you with a small aside: During 2016, I kept telling people that in order to avoid a crappy result, they needed to do certain things. The response from a lot of my friends was that I was some kind of Sanders lover, and that I needed to toe the line. So, I started telling people that Trump had a really good chance of winning, and they laughed at me. After Trump won, they all acted like no one ever suspected such a thing and ignored bringing it up with me like the plague.

This election, I’m saying a little of the same things, based off of numbers I’m already seeing. People are pretty sure about the results that will be coming, and they’re starting to laugh at me for this election as well.

Like last time, I really hope I’m wrong.

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