Blackmoor Vituperative

Watching a documentary about sugar, called “Sugar Coated” (2015). Briefly, obesity has doubled in the past 30 years, and diabetes has tripled, and it’s because sugar is in literally everything and we eat way too much of it. We eat twice as much processed food, and at least twice as much sugar, as we did 30 years ago. And make no mistake: our sugar consumption 30 years ago was enormous, compared to 30 years before that. It was already far too much sugar.

The people who made the video keep saying that this is a controversial issue.

How is this controversial? It’s obvious. Look at the ingredients in spaghetti sauce, hot dogs, barbecue sauce, ketchup, cereal, pizza sauce, even bread. Bread! Have you seen the cereal aisle at the grocery store? It’s literally boxes of candy. Grocery stores have become candy stores — and that’s not even touching on actual candy and cakes, of which we consume vast quantities.

We are a stupid, stupid species.

This is worth watching, too.

“Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” (2001) is a strange movie. Like all of the Godzilla reboots up to that point, it’s a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, ignoring everything in between. However, it goes in some new directions for a Godzilla movie.

First of all, Godzilla’s look is different, in one small but very visible way: he has solid white zombie eyes. In previous Godzilla movies, Godzilla’s eyes always looked like, well, eyes. Giving Godzilla solid white eyes makes it clear that this is a monster, not a defender of the Earth.

Godzilla has gone back and forth from being a villain or a hero, and in this one he’s the villain. That by itself is not strange. What is strange is that King Ghidorah is the hero of this movie (with some help from a sacrifice play by Mothra). Making Ghidorah (formerly “the space monster”) into a defender of the Earth is a 180 degree about-face.

Thirdly, prior to the power-up of Ghidorah into King Ghidorah, none of the three monsters facing up against Godzilla are as large or as powerful as Godzilla. They are at best about three-quarters of Godzilla’s size. That’s different. In the only previous movie where Godzilla fought smaller monsters, it was a swarm of them, and they eventually merged into a giant monster as big or bigger than Godzilla.

And the ending is the most bizarre of any Godzilla movie ever made, in my opinion.

It’s a good movie, though. I enjoyed it, anyway.

I have always been interested in criminology and criminal justice. I actually minored in Criminology when I got my degree (I’ve considered going back to get a B.S. in Criminology, but I’ll never work in that field, so it would just be an expensive piece of paper).

For many years, it has been a source of great distress to me that our criminal “justice” system is staffed by prosecutors who care only about convictions (guilt or innocence is irrelevant), police who are unabashedly and overtly corrupt, and politicians whose only concerns are being “tough on crime” and friendly to private-prison lobbyists. Our society is paying the price for this systemic corruption of what ought to be a bulwark to protect us.

I’d never heard of Larry Krasner before today, but the facts that he exists, and that the people of Philadelphia elected him, gives me some hope that our future may not be as dark as it currently seems.

Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Promised a Criminal Justice Revolution. He’s Exceeding Expectations.

At the risk of pouring gasoline on a bonfire, I think we have erred by making the Constitution part of our national religion. People shout out the numbers of Amendments like they are magic spells to ward off evil.

The Constitution is not holy text carved into tablets by a god. The rules our government operates under were written by people who thought they were a good idea at the time, just like all of our other laws. And just like all of our other laws, what people actually intended is subject to debate, how they will be implemented is subject to the discretion of later generations, and they can and should be changed when later generations decide that’s a good idea at the time.

It wasn’t that long ago that oral sex was illegal in Virginia. Just because someone wrote it down and people voted on it, doesn’t necessarily make it wise or right or even reasonable.

They’re just rules. Rules can be changed.

On this day in 2007, I signed up for World Of Warcraft. I met some amazing people… Artisania, Slade, Liore, Shivae, Kolja, Teledriath, Iloam, Heulwen, Kharris…

Those days are gone, but I’ll always remember them, and the people that made them great.

I ran across this quote today (not for the first time). It occurs to me that our fairy tales might have changed, but the lesson is still the same.

“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”
— G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909), XVII: “The Red Angel”

P.S. This is often mis-quoted as something like, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.” It’s succinct, and it’s true, but that’s not the quotation. I care about things like that. You might not.

This has been bouncing around in my head for days, and I wanted to get it out. So here you go.

The Republican death cult doesn’t actually believe anything they say. They say whatever will hurt the most innocent people. If it’s saying the free market is most important, they will say that. If it’s saying the free market needs to be constrained by government oversight, they will say that. If it’s saying the government should have more power and spend more money, they will say that. If it’s saying the government should be smaller and spend less money, they will say that. If it’s saying that the law should be based on Bronze Age myths, they will say that. If it’s saying the opposite of what their Bronze Age mythology instructs, they will say that.

Calling a Republican a hypocrite is like saying an earthworm is an adherent of the Ptolemaic model of the solar system: the term is based on concepts that aren’t even a part of their worldview.

This is a better analogy: Calling a Republican a hypocrite is like laughing at an alligator for not wearing pants. They don’t even know what pants are; also, they want to kill and eat you.

That’s why trying to have a rational discussion with them is so frustrating, and so pointless. They literally do not care if what they say is true, or even consistent.

I have tried to avoid dumping on things other people are looking forward to… but yeah, I am tired of the Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, [that’s not] Superman, Guardians Of The Galaxy…. The only superhero movie I am interested in at all is Black Panther (I am looking forward to that).

I am interested in Star Trek and Star Wars even less. Trek has become just … eh. And the last two Star Wars movies were so bad… just… SO bad… ecch. Barring something coming along as unexpectedly entertaining as Force Awakens, I think I’m done with that franchise (I never thought I’d say that).

I guess this is what getting old feels like.

I’ve been watching all of the Godzilla movies in order. I’m up to “Godzilla vs. Destoroyah” (1995). One of the wacky things about Godzilla movies is their … I guess I’d call it “alternative science”. Most Godzilla movies have at least one scene with people in a lab or around a table, explaining to each other the most nonsensical “science” behind whatever might be happening.