America, what have you done? You chose fascism over democracy. You chose hate over hope, oligarchs over experts, patriarchy over equality. You chose repression, theocracy, violence. You chose anger, lies, insults, threats. You chose a felon over a prosecutor. You chose a dictator over the rule of law. You chose Putin and his puppet. Why?
We are, today, watching the most momentous decision that Americans have had to make in the entirety of their — and my own — lifetimes. Compared to the choice between Harris and felon Trump, all other elections seem almost inconsequential. That’s because never before was the whole fabric of democracy at risk. Never before has an openly racist, misogynist, totalitarian, cognitively-addled felon come so close to winning the presidency. Never before has the entire American experiment been on the scales. The choices are stark: between hope and despair; between optimism and negativity; between unity and division; between inclusion and exclusion; ……… click below for more ↓
My wife and I are members of the Boomer generation. That means our parents, their families, and their friends, their neighbours and their communities were impacted by World War II. In our family, our parents — British and Canadian — fought against the Nazis, fought against fascism, fought to keep the world safe for democracy. They endured six years of hell and deprivation so Susan and I could live a normal life. Many millions who fought for our freedoms died, often in horrible, lonely, and painful situations. In my family alone, I lost an uncle and stepbrother; victims of the ……… click below for more ↓
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/ Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. That’s how Edward Fitzgerald translated the 51st quatrain of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in his first edition of his book (1859). Fitzgerald might have done that translation differently had he known of our modern social media. Social media firms can “wash out” not just words, but posts, threads, and even entire accounts, turning account holders into an “unperson” in seconds.* This is, of course, supposed ……… click below for more ↓
Charles Darwin knew the score. In Chapter 11 of his famous and brilliant book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, he wrote, “We can clearly understand why a species once lost should never reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and inorganic, should recur.” But despite Darwin’s warning, the evil, greedy corporations of the Jurassic Park films kept bringing species of dinosaurs and other extinct lizards back to life. In many of the films, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) plays the role of those ancient oracles who warned of impending catastrophe, only to be ignored. With, ……… click below for more ↓
There’s one particular scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, about twenty minutes in, when Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler see the dinosaurs walking wild in the open for the first time on Isla Nublar; that still chokes me up, every time almost bringing me to tears. Even on my fourth or fifth viewing of the film last week, that scene still moves me. The kid in me is still agog with wonder when I see that brachiosaurus… even though my knees tell me I’m long past that childhood. As a lifelong dinosaur aficionado (who wanted to become ……… click below for more ↓
Be honest with me: how serious are you about the serial comma? Do you wade into discussions on language forums and social media brandishing citations from your favourite authorities? Do you dismiss dissenting authorities as heretics? Are there style and usage guides on your bookshelf with sticky notes and bookmarks in them so you can immediately find your references should anyone post a contrary opinion? Do you haughtily refer to it as the Oxford comma instead of the serial — or, the gods of language forbid, the Harvard — comma?* Do you rail and wail over comma splices? Does a ……… click below for more ↓
I‘ve hesitated to write this review because, of all the films in the Godzilla franchise, I dislike the campy-cute, family-friendly Minilla, the so-called “son” of Godzilla. Minilla appears in three films: Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, and Godzilla: Finals Wars, but the most saccharine of them is this one: Son of Godzilla. And it is, by my standards anyway, one of the worst of the franchise in many ways, not least of all in the remade Godzilla suit, but also in the cheapness of the sets, and the increasingly anthropomorphic kaiju. Unlike earlier films, Godzilla appears right at the ……… click below for more ↓
Can a movie featuring aliens, dinosaurs, spaceships, one of the main actors from Star Wars, and a giant asteroid about to crash into the planet be bad? Sadly, yes. The movie 65 manages to take what could a been another Godzilla or Kong: Skull Island. instead, it’s a watered-down Jurassic Park. Severely diluted. I love scifi and fantasy. I’ve been reading it since the mid-1950s when I got my first Tom Swift jr book. I read Jules Verne at age 10, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series by age 12. I read Dune when it was first released in ’65. ……… click below for more ↓
For many, many years, I owned and maintained my own, private zoo.* I fed and watered the creatures in it, occasionally neglected them, moved them from place to place, and when their population threatened to explode, I took out a large quantity and killed them. That’s what, in a nutshell, every baker does with their sourdough starter. A sourdough starter is a SCOBY: a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast; a complex colony of living creatures. It’s also what bakers call a preferment, like (but not entirely the same as) a barm, levain, biga, poolish, sponge, and desem. And if ……… click below for more ↓
I am going to assume that you, dear reader, already know who Marcus Aurelius Antonius was. I have respect for both the intelligence and education of my readers, enough to feel I can avoid making pedantic explanations and reiterating his biography that is more fluently available on dozens or hundreds of better, more encyclopedic websites. No, this is not a treatise on him, or even on his Stoic philosophy. It’s a look at how six different translators rendered some parts of his book, Meditations. But please humour me in allowing a little pedantry. Something must first be said about the ……… click below for more ↓
Toho didn’t waste any time cashing in on the popularity of the latest Godzilla movie, and released two G films in quick succession that same year (the only year to ever see two Godzilla films released). But this time, they went all-out in a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink manner because they were rushed to get the second film out. By this time, they must have realized Godzilla wasn’t just a character, but was the keystone of a growing franchise and one that could link Toho’s other monster films in a way no other films had ever done. I imagine a scene where all ……… click below for more ↓
Toho was not about to let another seven years slip by without a sequel to a successful Godzilla film, but what to do now? The last two films had all featured Godzilla battling another monster (kaiju), and since that worked for audience approval, why not do it again? But this time there would be several differences. And those differences not only resulted in another popular film, but one that is considered by aficionados as perhaps the best in the Showa series productions: Mothra vs. Godzilla. Not to be confused with 1992’s Godzilla vs. Mothra. Yes, it is a bit confusing. ……… click below for more ↓
What was to prove the most successful of Toho’s Godzilla films is, to me, at times one of the hardest to watch in the edited, Americanized edition, even though it included two of my favourite movie monsters. But even in the Toho version, King Kong is not the Kong of the beloved 1933 film. That Kong had majesty and flair. This one, well… read on. The film was released for Toho’s 30th anniversary, in 1962. Toho paid a huge royalty to RKO to use the King Kong name in a kaiju film, and then made it grow bigger in order ……… click below for more ↓
I admit to a nostalgic affection for the American (dubbed) edit of the original Gojira — renamed Godzilla, King of the Monsters — because it was the first film in the franchise I ever saw. It helped give me a love of monster movies I still have, more than 60 years later. At that time, I also saw a lot of other scifi and monster B-films in the ’50s and ’60s on TV, in theatres, and at the drive-in, but Godzilla holds a special place in my heart. As, of course, my readers here know. Although it came out after ……… click below for more ↓