The Boys are Back

We have fond memories of plastic bags filled with armies of little green soldiers posed in the glorious postures of war.  Campaigns fought on Mount Sofa and across the Plains of Shag got us through more than one rainy Saturday morning.

Years later, those soldiers are back home and living with the scars of war.  The Dorothy Collective has recast these familiar figures with a dismal dose of the real, making us wish we could go back to the breakfast table and work harder for peace.

(Thanks, Lisa and Gwen)

PS: Ron English also abuses little green men to illustrate the bleak reality of warfare.

RIP: Spirit (2004-2010)

It was the little engine that could, except this one could do it from Mars for nearly five and a half years; far longer than its originally anticipated mission of ninety days.

Yesterday, NASA pronounced the Spirit Mars rover dead and ended attempts to contact it after the robot stopped phoning home on March 22, 2010.

A quietly heroic voice in the night sky has fallen silent and a world away, things are a little bleaker.

Here is a gallery of this craft's finer moments.

Looting the Future: Update - Everybody Flunked, Nobody Chosen

The shelf life of this post may be shorter than usual.  Righteous types might want to read it before Saturday to keep  their appointment at the pearly gates of Heaven.  Others will have more time, but will likely be busy adjusting to the new world order and fighting over all of the boats,  BMWs, and McMansions which the recently ascended won't be needing anymore.  Yes, the end of the world is, once again, nigh.  

Harold Camping is at it again.  His 1994 prediction for Judgement Day turned out to be a little premature, but this time he is sure he has it right.  His mathematical calculations (Harold's mom always said he was a math whiz) prove beyond reason that the Apocalypse will begin this Saturday,  May 21, 2011.  

In Loving Memory...

What do President Obama, al Qaeda, the Taliban, Mrs. bin Laden(s), and Fox News agree on?  Osama bin Laden was killed shortly after midnight on May 1, 2011.  What else do they agree about?  Not much.

Before we dip our thirsty quill into the unctuous inkwell of irony that is bleakday's guilty pleasure, let us say simply, Good. (Irony after the break)

The world is better today than it was a week ago when Osama bin Laden was free to inspire thousands with his message of hate.  His backwards philosophy was dangerous to western civilization, but perhaps more importantly, it was deadly to middle-eastern civilization's ability to secure safety and prosperity in an increasingly connected global village.  His death is good news for us and gives hope to those who struggle directly under the oppression of feudalistic, pseudo-theocracies clinging to power through isolationism, censorship, and the invention of foreign devils to unite the gullible and silence the dissenters.

Good, we say.  Not Yippee, or USA! USA!, or even Hallelujah.  We will save that for the World Cup.  Those he hurt and those he threatened are breathing a little easier now and we are gladdened if their burden is lightened, if only a little.  The killing of OBL was a victory, not in the competitive sense, but in the survival sense.  Nobody scored a touchdown, and nobody deserves to take a victory lap in celebration.  Such comparisons cheapen the real suffering of his victims and the commitment of those who put their own lives in peril on May 1st.  Instead, we gratefully acknowledge those who found and killed him for the service they provided to those he threatened, which was all of us.  Good.

Repo Games: The Descent Continues

When future historians chronicle the downfall of western civilization, they will likely note the rise of popular entertainment genres which cynically exploited the least fortunate among us and appealed to our basest natures.  They will no doubt chronicle our descent into a culture that burned its food in its cars as it created an intellectually malnourished population of thrill seekers, whose sadly anemic idea of a thrill was watching someone squirm through life's embarrassing moments on shows like Repo Games.

Brought to us on Spike TV by the producers of Jersey Shore, Repo Games is just what you are afraid it is.  Real repo men jack up the car of someone who has gotten behind on their payments.  Then, with lights blaring and cameras rolling, they pound on the door of the unsuspecting contestant  victim and announce that their vehicle is being repossessed for non-payment.  But... and here is the real genius of the show... if the repossessee can answer three out of five trivia questions correctly, they can keep the car, and have it paid off in full.

Decent Christians imprison neighbors if they are scary

Consider us ardent fan-boys of Sociological Images, a blog that almost always makes us think, and when it doesn't, it makes us wish we had.  This time, the SI ladies pointed out a WWII-era U.S. War Department propaganda video that bleakly outs a government trying its darnedest to portray the imprisonment of 100,000+ Japanese American men, women, and children as the beneficent, caring, actions of a government protecting its citizens from the menace of Japanese provocateurs living among us.

Six thoughts came to our mind as we watched the film.  That sort of thing doesn't happen often, so we decided to write them down: