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Saturday, October 16, 2010

RANDOM THOUGHTS #15

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself.

1. I was watching SWAMP PEOPLE the other night, and noticed someone firing a rifle with an unusual left-side bolt. I thought that this must have been a custom-made weapon for a left-handed shooter. Then I saw the same guy firing a seemingly identical weapon with a right-side bolt and realized that some idiot had, for some reason, flipped the image over. Of course, on all of these reality shows, they cut pieces of other events to use as stock footage and while you may see one gator caught, shot, and pulled into the boat, you may actually be seeing bits of video from three or four different gator catchings. It's kind of like DEADLIEST CATCH and SWORDS where you see the fishermen pull something into the boat from a position way outside of the boat (a helicopter or another boat). The producers only have maybe one day of that kind of footage and splice it in to show the general idea.

2. Again and again, watching crime shows, cop shows, lawyer shows, I find myself saying not "What would the criminal do here?" but "What is the television writer going to have the criminal do here?" I also find myself saying not "Ok, who did the murder?" but "Ok, who did the writer decide to set up for the murder?"

3. Hawaii Five-O. Best. Theme. Music. Ever. But why, when the original tune is three verses, and the first (Jack Lord) show only gave us the first and third verses, does the new show only gives us the first verse? Does anybody know that there are words for this music? (One of the versions starts out: "In the early morning, at the break of day...")

4. I really hate the stupid TV writers who show you some scene at the first of the show, then say "Three days earlier" and start the real story. I don't like that. I hate that. Once I am king, it will be the death penalty for a writer to do that. For that matter, the stupid idea of NCIS showing the last frame of film from each segment before the segment begins is dumb.

5. I mentioned to my wife that the gym shorts I sleep in were totally worn out and that she needed to take me to the store to buy another pair. She went without me, and bought what was on sale, which is why my pajamas are now printed all over with Superman comic strips. (Didn't they have Batman?) Seriously, I didn't know they made comic strip pajama shorts in my size. I could have gone a long long time without knowing that.

6. The Russian Army is reinstating chaplains. We live in very interesting times. This will take several years, because the Communists had severely restricted the number of new priests and there is a continuing shortage of them, even two decades after the fall of communism. The other problem is that the Russian Orthodox church wants to control the new Chaplain Corps, and keep other religions and denominations out. About a third of Russians are not religious, and twenty percent are not Russian Orthodox, but are other kinds of Christians (including Mormons and Pentecostals, who have been heavily recruiting in Russia since the fall of communism), Jews, and there are even a few Moslems. (The US military has Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Jewish, Moslem, and Buddhist chaplains.)

7. Why is there any real urgency to build a working time machine? Once you have it, you can go to any time you want, right? So if you finish it this year or last year, you still can go back to 1863 and watch the Battle of Gettysburg when you get it finished, right?

8. I ask again, if China can keep its citizens from receiving anti-government email, why cannot the US keep its citizens from receiving spam?

9. I don't think anyone can understand Dune without reading the Harvard Lampoon edition of Doon. On Doon, the planet is entirely covered with sugar and is the only source in the galaxy for beer. Giant pretzels swim through the sugar, and the local inhabitants are desperate to import entrees.

10. I would love to attend Dave Ramsay's Entrée Leadership program, but he only holds these things in expensive foreign resorts. What's up with that? If I pay to go to a resort, I don't want to waste most of the day in a class. If I want to attend a class, why do I have to pay a fortune to stay at a resort that I have no time to enjoy?