Star Trek Meant I Had A Future

People have argued for decades about the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek, and which is best. 

I have the answer. Star Trek. Case closed.

For me, at least.

Star Wars staked its second-place territory in the first few seconds of its birth.

Star Wars was the past. It was a history lesson. Might as well have been a documentary. Did I love it? Absolutely! A proper telling of the Hero’s Journey can shed illumination on many levels. Plus, it was just plain fun. However, it was left to me to apply those lessons, and there was not much of a point of trying since I would be dead soon. You see, it was the 1970's,

Star Wars debuted at toy stores everywhere on May 25, 1977. I was seven. Star Trek, however, debuted on September 8^th, 1966. My parents hadn’t even remotely had THE SEX event that caused my existence. Star Trek, opposed to Star Wars, took place in the year 2265. It was a HUMAN future grown from my own Earth. Star Wars took place somewhere else and was long gone. Star Trek was a future where we FIXED things. Yes, it took hitting rock bottom in another cycle of war, but we stood back up swinging. We were alive and thriving by our works, our efforts, and our embracing of what it meant to be human. We were explorers. Innovators. Enablers of advancement and the exchange of ideas. We finally decided to not kill ourselves. That’s important. Paramount, in fact. I watched Star Trek when it was in syndication in the mid and late 70’s. The Cold War was a laugh a minute party even us kids knew about thanks to the atomic bomb drills. We got to kneel under our little desks and pretend they would save us from what happened to the Japanese children living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yeah. Don’t teach kids about World War II and not expect at least some of them to connect data points. Especially when you tell them the bomb (Hiroshima) dropped at a little after eight in the morning on a Monday. A few of us looked at the clock and did the math. We also knew the joyous wonder of waiting in long lines at gas stations while our mothers and fathers swore and muttered under their breaths about a Misery Index and the fuel shortage. The President had to wear sweaters in the White House to keep warm. We were taught a new, unstoppable Ice Age was coming to swallow the world, if mass starvation and a Population Bomb didn’t do it first. The Club of Rome sold millions of its report on why the planet would soon be a husk. (Does any of this sound familiar in current year? Just curious.) Penny on Good Times wasn’t safe. You had a Death Wish if you walked in Central Park any time of day. Even Saturday morning children television programs weren’t immune. The live-action Ark II took place hundreds of years in the future on our (wait for it) devastated planet, foreshadowing the post-apocalyptic movies of the 80’s we consumed as teens. At least it had a jet pack. That was pretty sweet. Killer bees were coming from the south to sting all my friends to death. Disaster films competed with Nature Turned Killer films at the box office. Logan ran and ran until he bumped into a bunch of damn, dirty apes. And don’t get me started on 70’s music. I lost count of all the clowns sent into cat’s cradles aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald after the new kid in town showed up. Do you see the landscape I’m raking? Some of us early Gen X’ers didn’t have much to grasp in the hopes of a future. Except, perhaps, that one weirdly appealing sci-fi program with that guy from In Search Of. That one example of a future, not perfect, but there and striving. That five-year mission with a crew from my future. 

Image from Alpha Memory, (c) Paramount

Star Trek was an optimistic vision in the midst of times filled largely with the opposite. This is not an Earth-shaking new statement. Many have made this observation before, and its been the subject of many interviews and documentaries. Search “star trek documentary” in IMDB and you’ll find twelve different titles alone. Beyond The Final Frontier (2007), Trekkies (1997), The Captains (2011), and For The Love of Spock (2016) are a good start. So is How William Shatner Changed The World (2005). It’s well-known, for example, that Star Trek inspired Martin Cooper to create the first cell phone. Remember that the next time you're watching a cat video on Facebook or Twitter while sitting in your car, or while watching Netflix at work. You can thank Star Trek for that.  
 

Time to wrap this up. Like I said, there’s tons of material about the impact of Star Trek on society at large, right down to individuals all over the world. Like me. I simply want to say I am grateful for all the actors, writers, production staff and everyone past and present involved in crafting Roddenberry’s little space western. I am grateful for all the fans who have stayed passionate despite the ups and downs. I am grateful for people like James Cawley who turned a labor of love into a Trek shrine in Ticonderoga, NY you can visit and stroll through.

Check it out here:  https://strongarmlabs.blogspot.com/2018/09/star-trek-tos-set-tour-set-phasers-to.html .

From the efforts of all these individuals, from all YOU wonderful people, I learned the future is not lost. Thank you.

Be well, gentle reader. Live long and prosper.

A Rocket, A Tesla, and Some Horse Poop Walk into a Bar

Stop me if you've heard this one. No, really. STOP ME if you've heard this one before because we just had a unique moment in human history and I didn't know if I should applaud, lament, drink, or do all three. Spoilers: I did all three.


Super Bowl LII closed on February 4th with the Philadelphia Eagles winning over the favored New England Patriots. It was a exciting game to watch and the halftime show's tribute to Prince nestled in Justin Timberlake's performance was great. It was the Eagles' first Bowl win so many fans went nuts. Literally. Just lost their minds.

My team won! Let's break shit! (1)

My team won! Let's eat shit! (2)

The overwhelming majority of fans did not break shit or eat shit, to be clear. So THANK YOU to all who partied hard without burning, breaking, or brawling. I love you all because your actions didn't require me to type "fan who ate horse poop in Philadelphia" in an internet image search for this piece. No one should have to type those words. Now, to be fair I don't think our Fecal Food Critic woke up that morning deciding today is the today I make my dream happen! I do hope he is okay, but I am still going to poke fun at him. Let this be a lesson, kids. Drunken decisions leave a bad taste in your mouth. The outcomes can really stink. You can make an ass out of yourself. You'll be the butt of many jokes. Too many? Sorry. I should have stopped at number two.

That was the 4th.

February 6th arrived to sees the launch of a new rocket designed by a private citizen's space company. Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy tore from the ground on its maiden flight at 3:45 in the afternoon. It was a test flight for a rocket powerful enough to potentially carry humans to the moon and Mars. And it carried a car. And cameras. And a prototype data storage disc made of quartz that can store information that of, "...will be readable 14 billion years and can hold 360 terabytes of data, or around 7,000 Blu-Ray discs." (3) Read the referenced article on the Arch Foundation which helped make this possible. Interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the math was a little off and Mars it will not go, but I think we can throw Spacex a mulligan on this one.

Image from Indian Express.com (4)

The car as seen from an on board webcam. I hope they gave Starman a towel. (5)

Looks fake, doesn't it? You're not alone if you thought so. Let me point you to the Hoax Trail. Lots of vids for you to digest while you question your life decisions and read the flame wars in the comment sections. Love you internet!

In this scant forty-eight-hour window we had: small riots over a large sporting event during which a single person became (albeit briefly) the unwashed face of an entire city followed by a day of rest and headaches and mouthwash before a privately held space exploration/delivery service company launched a quarter million dollar car into space as part of a test in the hopes of sending it into a Martian orbit. 

That's one of the best-ish example of humanity's range I've seen lately. It encapsulates so much about us because both the rocket and the riot are so human. That's our species in current year riding the bell curve roller coaster of human behavior. We're all a mix of awesome and asshole, daydreamer and delinquent because you can't have one without the other. That's us. 

And God help me I love it.

Be seeing you,

Sam




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1. https://www.thescore.com/nfl/news/1480419-watch-eagles-fans-storm-streets-wreck-philadelphia-after-super-bowl-win

2. http://www.thedailybuzzmag.com/eagles-fan-think-eating-horse-poop-is-cool/94589/

3. http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/02/a-car-wasnt-the-only-weird-thing-elon-musk-shot-into-space/

4. http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/elon-musk-plans-to-launch-a-car-tesla-roaster-to-mars-and-tweeple-lost-their-mind-4965098/

5.https://www.inverse.com/article/41015-spacex-starman-traveling-through-space-live-feed
 

DNA testing and a lesson in sex.

Spit they want. Spit they shall have!

With the looming shadow of 2018 upon the Gregorian Calendar's doorstep I decided to take a break from throwing bones, reading tea leaves, and lithomacy to take a quick look back upon my sexual history.

Okay, not mine exactly but the long history of those known and unknown couplings my ancestors made time for between finding food, not getting killed/eaten, and not dying of disease. Kind of takes the sin out of it, doesn't it? No fun looking at sex as something that might happen IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH. But, that's life for you. Real Life. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that things like, oh I don't know, the H1N1 flu virus killed between 3%-5% of the entire human race in roughly two years. Perhaps you've heard of the misnamed "Spanish Flu" of 1918 to 1920(ish)? We have it very easy today, my friends. Don't think we don't.

Anyway. Back to sex. There's a "special hug" between a Mommy and a Daddy, who historically speaking, are fortunate enough to have disease resilient/well-functioning genes and a safe food/water supply to even allow attempting the "special hug". (Don't even get me going on female selection strategies and competition dynamics.) This "special hug" usually produces offspring who hopefully also have the same or better resulting genes and who hopefully are taught to create or recognize the safe food/water sources. And thus, Life Makes Life. That, gentle reader, is the story of you and I and most other lifeforms back through the Corridors of Time. You, in fact, are highly unlikely to even exist given all the variables and means of Death in the world. Let me put it this way...

Shall I put it another way? Break it down to brass tacks? Fine. The ponderous and I dare say miraculous molecular machine comprising the self you identify as "you" thanks to an odd tension somewhere behind or between your eyes, the undefinable "you" as the Zen masters would try to say, is a unique creation never before attempted by Universe (in the Buckminster Fuller's appellation sense) and to our knowledge never to be tried again on this planet. Lots and Lots went into making you, gentle reader. Generations and generations of struggle. 

Settle down, Patsy. That's not what I'm doing.

 

Back to all the sex in my family tree. I want to know where my ancestors roamed, lived, found mates, and where the children lived to repeat the cycle. In all likelihood I will repeat this DNA test with other companies for comparison sake. Scientifically speaking, that's the best plan. Look, Life is the only true minority in the Universe as far as I as can tell. So why not study my small part in this great play, right? I hope to find surprises. I hope my understanding of my family is vastly incomplete. I hope to look at a map of the Earth and ponder the vast multitude I might call kin. 

What a great way to start a New Year.

Be seeing you,
Sam

Star Trek Ruined Me

Damn you, Gene Roddenberry. Damn you.

I’ve grown up with your techno-near-Utopian visions of the future and I’m miserable. They’ve caused me nothing but conflict. I hear people say our problems are too large. I say our thinking is too small. I hear poverty, war, and hunger will always be with us. I say we’ve never really tried to end them. I hear the Earth is running out of resources. I say let’s tap into the rest of the Universe. I hear people use artificial, divisive words like ‘race’. I say we share the same title: human. I hear people say the future is bleak. I say the future is what we make it.

Most people walk around thinking there is nothing they can do about the state of their existence, and therefore do nothing about it. Or, they actively resist all change, regardless of its merits, and therefore drag those around them backward in time. So here I stand in the midst of our wild, often tragic, world carrying an idealistic engine behind my eyes generating pictures of how much better people could live, how much untapped potential humans have, and what a brilliant adventure life can be.

So, to Gene Roddenberry and all the writers and creators and actors who made your vision possible, and in some cases, improved it: Thank You.