The Day Of The End Of The World

My entire life I have been haunted by this theme to the depths of my soul. Here is one fictional visual account of such a day. It shows this event from the perspective of the Battlestar Galactica television series from the 2000's. We see this calamitous coda to civilization known in the series as "the Destruction of the Twelve Colonies" from three perspectives: the planet Caprica, Colonial Fleet Headquarters at Pycon, and the Battlestar Galactica itself, the last remaining survivor of about 120 capital ships of the Colonial Fleet the rest of which are destroyed in this Pearl Harbor-esque assault. Below is a musical tribute ("Journey to the Line" by Hans Zimmer) to this fictional calamity derived from both the television series' movie pilot and and its two spin-off movies "Razor" and "The Plan".
Check out the follow up posting to this which shows the series conclusion: "It's All Happened Before But Will It Again?" 

There They Go Again

For as long as there has been Star Trek there has been ceaseless speculation even to the point of dogmatic assertion by a believing minority that the main characters of James Tiberius Kirk and Spock are more than mere fellow Starfleet officers, friends, and brothers-in-arms but rather much more to the tune of being brothers in each other's arms. Of course, this mostly comes from the gay community, but no matter, it is their reality if only in their own collective minds. In any case, as such topics often are to heterosexual males, this very idea is prone to be viewed in a most humorous light. This video below (which has been around a few years) is my favorite of all such fan-based innuendos having the best song ("Here We Go Again" by Neon Trees) and the best editing of all such. Enjoy!

Two Fireballs

Tonight on the way home to Paso Robles from spending Thanksgiving Day with my grandmother and mother in Fremont as I drove south on Highway 101 in southern Monterey County I witnessed two fireballs ahead of me to the south.

The first one I saw from somewhere in the King City area and of the two got the clearest view of as I watched it translate from left to right across my entire field of view arcing downwards, ever-slower and fainter and visibly tumbling. It appeared to have landed in the Santa Lucia Mountains or the ocean off the coast. It was clearing slowing down meaning it did not bounce back out of the atmosphere. It was not getting smaller or breaking up and it was getting fainter in glow meaning it was not burning up or breaking up but rather it was cooling down as attained mere terminal velocity and the atmosphere stopped burning it but rather began to cool it near the end of its descent. It was so close I could see it was somewhat elongated and tumbling. This object most assuredly plummeted to the ground as a significantly-sized object. The only question is if it made it westward into the ocean just off the coast or if it is sitting in the ground under some chaparral somewhere in the coast range.

The second one I saw only the end of as it exploded in a brilliant white flash of energy to my south as I drove a section of the highway within Camp Roberts placing this explosion to my south. I never saw tail or the heading of the object although my mother who was with me did. I missed it because I was momentarily glancing in a different direction.

Mas o Menos

Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine who this morning purchased a Dell laptop computer on pre-Black Friday special for under $400 at Wal-Mart. Her sister who rides a broom loaded up on her when this purchase came up in conversation later in the morning. Mean sister said all sorts of crazy-assed foolishness. This included the comment that my friend got was she paid for suggesting that since she did not pay much she did not get much.

I thought about this beyond just the bitch cattiness. It is illogical irrationality to make the blanket statement about things that are being sold less expensively even on special at Wally World somehow automatically are of inherently inferior quality. This is often true in the world, especially at Wally World, but not all the time for all items, especially when one takes into account specials which can feature quality items at less-than-typical price points as a means of garnering traffic into a particular store or chain. Retailers can afford to do this because they already dictate to the suppliers what Wal-Mart's costs will be. Also, Wal-Mart purchases in such huge quantities that they can still make a large profit on a small mark-up as a result of selling at scale.

It is also true that just because one is paying more for something that one is automatically getting more value for their buck simply by virtue of their paying more for the good or service. Experientially, anecdotally, and intuitively we know this to be as inaccurate an assessment as the opposite assertion. Something can be priced well-beyond its inherent value due to its value being unwittingly overestimated as a result of misjudging the marketplace or simply the seller intentionally overpricing said good or service in a disingenuous attempt to extract more  than he or she knows it is worth.

In summary, we all ought to recognize that while some patterns usually hold true and are useful to recognize such as "you get what you pay for" that it is not always an accurate saying.

Moonstone Sunset

Earlier this evening I experienced the high honor of being at Moonstone Beach in Cambria to witness gorgeous sunset. It was one of the prettier ones that I have seen this year. There were a couple of other even more breathtakingly beautiful sunsets recently which I missed but fortunately not tonight's event.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

My Top 10 Racist White Mascots

Lately there is a resurgence in the periodic political-correctness regarding school and/or team mascots due to some special interest group somewhere trying to make a self-righteous issue of a total non-issue in order to vainly validate themselves in their own imaginations. This has inspired me to honor the spirit of the Fighting Whities of the University of Northern Colorado and do another Top Ten List. This one is of (imaginary) team mascot names derived from non-white slurs and stereotypes of whites. For additional fun I added some regional chauvinism to my list by using mostly Southern or Southern-sounding location names. 

1. The Georgia Crackers
2.  The Pensacola Peckerwoods
3. The Winston-Salem White Devils
4. The Midland Mulletheads 
5. The Birmingham Blue-eyed Devils
6. The Huntsville Honkies
7. The California Bleachboys
8. The Oildale Okies
9. The Gainesville Goobers
10. The Wisconsin Cheeseheads

All-Time Greatest Rock Performance

To me this performance "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin at the 1979 Knebworth Concert in London is the greatest rock performance of all time by anybody anytime, PERIOD! It combines the quality of the song itself with quality of the performance of the song and the charisma of the band individually and collectively driven by the late John Bonham's drums. The song itself is rather weighty and deep and gets into existentialist metaphors derived from a journey down a desolate road that never seems to end. Interestingly, I hold this opinion of this song despite not being a big Led Zeppelin fan. However, this entire performance blows me away. Go full-screen on this and crank up your speakers and enjoy!
*Updated 6/23/16.