Here’s a warning: Don't see this movie if you can’t stand violence or want clarity about who the good and bad guys would be in a potential civil war. Do see the movie if you can stand the disturbing violence and if you care not to let our country descend into civil war. In an appropriately disturbing way, the new movie is a wonderful warning - for two reasons. First, it is masterfully constructed and shot. All the actors are effective. The soundtrack is clear…
Progress for me recently was buying a used 2012 Mitsubishi MiEV. Regress is the miserable direction our world is headed politically. I'll address both here. Regular readers here know I am a proponent of appropriate technologies such as electric vehicles. They are unquestionably better for our environment - simpler, peppier, and less expensive to operate. They are environmentally, economically, and ethically better for us. That's why I used my electric bike for three years around town instead of my big Taurus V-6. I like my…
While highly distracted with love and hope (I fell for someone – on my face!), I managed to read three good but very different books this month: "Atheist Manifesto," "Proof of Heaven," and "This is Your Brain on Music." Because I owe all six of my regular readers something by the first of the month (when an automatic reminder goes out to this site’s subscribers) and because the events of my love life and non-love life roused up similar concerns, I’ll review them here. After…
Trump tweeted that "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just indicated" him. I believe he wanted the word "indicted," because he just was for trying to hide the hush money he paid a porn star after having an "affair" with her. It's the least of his four legal challenges. He'll play the victim, projecting that others are the very Thugs and Monsters he's actively trying to inflict on our government and society. He'll use it and the images of the violent insurrection of January…
Remember the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause”? James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo played three distraught teens, alienated from their families, caught up in teenage toughness, resulting in a tragic accident. Those were the days when a switchblade knife at school was considered dangerously wrong. “Blackboard Jungle” that year also showed the disturbing trend, amplified much later in 1972 by “Clockwork Orange,” which portended purposeless violence. The Rebel Without a Cause movie was titled after the psychiatrist Robert Lindner’s 1944 book of the…
It was a totally nice day as I walked by a guy in a car with the engine running. After I shopped and came out of the store, it was still running. I wanted to grab him, take him to the tailpipe, and put his mouth on it. “Breathe that, you irresponsible dope!” Instant car karma, he gets first what he otherwise sends to everybody else! Unless his starter was broken, he was either misinformed and ignorant of our shared responsibility to not wreck our…
That's me, jumping off the rope into Squaw Lake, similarly risky as posting online. The following is a log of what I put online in various forums during June. Because so few people read these, I'm not taking the time to arrange and edit them for our purpose here. If you have responses or additions, you can add them at the bottom. . . . . . . For those looking for my previous posting, Ira Flies, I've removed it and placed it in my…
The huge full moon, the amazingly colorful solstice morning, and Christmas all came together in a beautiful way that seemed to portend a beautiful upcoming year. I hope so. 2021 was a bit of a dreary, frustrating challenge. We're all worn by social, political, and medical worries. I hope and pray we regain a healthy community. Here's the sky on solstice: Solstice Sky Same solstice sky, another view I appreciate those few of you who came here to read what I post. However, it was…
I don’t want it to. Nor do I believe in some hell in an alleged afterlife. The hell America could go to is an actual one, fires and torment galore! I use this provocative title deliberately in a prophetic way. Prophesies are if/then warnings. If we keep fostering hateful division at home and new enemies to war against abroad, then we could create hell here worse than the Civil War, worse than WWII, worse than we want to think. Besides all the anger and domestic…
"... to our democracy," goes the extremely ironic script mouthed by scores of hometown reporters on TV stations managed by Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is now owner-manager of both our local Rogue Valley newspapers, our only major news sources. Sinclair manages all sorts of tv stations and newspapers. It both manages some Fox News and competes against them. Fox, while claiming to be "fair and balanced," has been anything but that. But they aren't extreme enough for Trump and those who support him. Having used…