several blurs later

Check out this coolness.

Barry sent official letters, pretty awesome!

I need to look for frames. 😁

click for space humor on pinterest

So I'm looking at this movie reviewer's all-time stats since 2014 after reviewing 1,078 films (no one any of you guys know, but I found his Lexx review), and the only stats he has is about actual content, like 35 countries the movies he's seen were made in. As far as I can tell, the goal is to tic off as many movies as he can from several different lists, like IMDb top 250 and Oscar Best Picture Winners kind of thing, and in 3 years he has spent 1,847 hours watching these films so he can write little paragraphs and tic lists. That's his stats.

I, on the other hand, have no idea how many movies I've seen, how many directors I've gotten to know through their work, how many hours I've spent watching any particular thing or even all the things, but I can see that the thread with yesterday's review commentary that I put on SyfyDesigns.com has over 4300 views on it, that my Walking Dead think piece has over 13K now, and that my James T. Kirk homage now has over 17K. I can't really see where they're coming from, like I sometimes can on a couple of my own blogs. Today I got a street view of someone's house from stats on one of my other blogs, but that's really rare, and don't worry, I still don't have a clue who it really is.

We all do what we love, play the games that keep us going on this little blue planet. Whatever keeps turning this earth for us, right?

Every year I assess where I'm at, check it against how far I've come, and make a plan about how to continue. "The way forward is sometimes the way back."


From a year ago, give or take a few days.

I dreamed the other night that someone gently kissed me and told me to keep going. I won't say who, but it was extremely significant because it's not someone I'd ever have thought of on purpose, but definitely someone significant. I think I was being told to turn back to my original direction, the one direction that has always held true for me.

I have wanted to quit so. many. times.

I'm still not going to say who it was, but I will say that direction did hold true when all else was failing me this year. It's been a very hard year to stay focused and keep any kind of direction. Despite my facepalm super fail feels most of the year, reader spikes doubled and I pretty much just fell to my knees and onto my face wondering how stuff like that even happens.

I didn't know what to do with it, so I came this close to abandoning Pinky blog till the numbers dropped back to some semblance of normal, which took about 4 months. I thought about going after bigger tracking systems and roundly vetoed that with a few metaphorical slaps to my own face, and jumped clear into a tuck and roll while the stats thundered by, then peeked out of the bushes a bit after it kinda died back down. It's bad enough that I obsess over maps, and worse (or a blessing???) that my life has been upside down for the last 8 months. Time to walk away and not look at the numbers.

Best move I ever made. Got my breath, felt my brain start to purr again, tossed a little catnip out for it, and watched it start pouncing again. That felt really good.

So here we are, a 4 year old zooming around me

several blurs later, I finally got her to be still...

and @bonenado's show on the TV and the phone ringing and mama coming home any minute now and the next 2 hours of wonderful chaos reigning with a Christmas tree in the background behind my messy floors and dishes piling up on the counter.

I consider myself very lucky. I also think about my mom a lot. I wasn't shiftless or anything, because I worked hard, but I was selfish and spent many a night running with a rough crowd while she put my kiddo to bed after my own divorce, and I truly appreciate Bunny's mama not falling into that crazy life crash trap. I'm happy being part of this chaos because I see us being a team getting through a challenge together. I didn't know how to do that when I was younger.

I take full blame otherwise for my entire year diverting onto the slow track. I started off not feeling well and ignoring the real problem, thankfully that is solved now. I slugged my way against my own current and then lost myself in white waters, but along the way I found my joy, and that was exactly what I needed, so I don't count this year a waste at all. With that in mind, now I can properly assess.

Pinky blog clearly outstrips my spoonie blog, my fansite blog, my aspienado blog, my minecraft blog, I could go on, but it has never pulled in the specific high traffic like I get at SyfyDesigns. I should be over there more, and I do have good intentions. Currently in my background is a very noisy kid game going on, some kind of wack a mole music thing, and there is no place to hide in this house, which I call my spaceship. This is where I could argue with filmmakers showing personnel walking endless hallways in spaceships while they talk- my house doesn't have a single hallway in 3 floors of it, not even a very short one. It's the most efficient house you've ever seen. There is no escape. I can close a door, but anyone with a 4 year old in the house knows that's an invitation to be swooped on and winds up with all kinds of bouncing on beds and bringing #allthetoys and stuff like that. So when I think about needing to do stuff over at SyfyDesigns, I almost immediately collapse into exhaustion mode and crawl back to real life. But it's definitely priority. I've already lost a couple of lists about directions and goals over there, and I want to jump back over in 2018 with a vengeance. We'll come back this time next year and see if I laugh sarcastically or triumphantly.

I've never compared all my blogs in one place before, mostly because I barely work on most of them, but I'm curious what the all-time top post is on each one.

WordPress blogs

Arch Heretic- top post Stalking Mike Bilinski 101

Aspienado- top post Me and Willy Wonka, or, How I Learned I’m Aspie

DuckLordsOfTheSith- top post when the pecking order gets a little ugly

JanikaBanks- top post Help me choose an author pic

ExistentialAspie- About is the only thing available to read

Blogger blogs

Surveypalooza- top post Future Survey

spaz- top post things that have dramatically impacted my depression and anxiety levels

YabloVH on Minecraft- top post slain by brian

Lexxperience- top post Zev vs Xev

Pinky's Sox- top post The Sox of Truth

Staircase of Satan, Pond of Death- top post my Dear Jeff letter

That wasn't an exhaustive blog list because some of them have no tracking whatsoever any more (Xanga), a few more remain private, and one is unlisted and I'm not going to link it.

The point to assessing is to gather info and learn. On the blogs with very few posts, I was surprised at the incoming to the home pages (like people checking on the dotcoms themselves) were in the hundreds every year since I made them, especially on my two 'official' placeholders. One of those has been checked nearly every single day for 3 solid years. Had to put my eyeballs back in after they fell out. On the blogs with more goal-oriented directions, it was very surprising to find posts I didn't expect hitting the top all-time.

And then out of 1,111 published posts here on Pinky blog (this post is 1,112), my all-time top post now is summer syllabus. Most of my posts here average between 50-100, some hit around 300 once in awhile, but this was one of two that went over 2000. I'm sure it got caught up in the weird surgey spike last summer, whatever that was, but even then it was nearly double the other stuff also caught up in the surgey spike.

I'm not blogging to win points or make money. I blab away whether anyone reads this or not, because I do it for me. I am learning, though. I'm going deeper into me dredging out my closets, I'm getting a feel for what readers prefer in content, I'm finding out this whole #transparency thing isn't the big, bad monster it used to feel like not so long ago.

2017 was my sabbatical year, perhaps. I'm getting anxious to FOCUS! GET BACK TO WORK!

big worms

click for a tweet thread with pix

I couldn't take Disney Jr anymore and veered Bunny into Syfy last week. I had all the Tremors movies saved on DVR, and I was desperate to get my brain back. If you've ever woke up fresh out of bed with the Doc McStuffins theme or the hotdog song from Mickey Mouse stuck in your head, you know what I mean. I needed hardcore Syfy sustenance, stat! And bam, there was Tremors.

@TremorsGuide liked one of my tweets, so I found out there is an Unofficial Guide to Tremors, and that goes to a cool website with links to the book (and kindle) about behind the scenes. "A throwback to the kind of sci-fi B movies that had long gone out of fashion, Tremors was a box office flop that became a home video phenomenon, spawning multiple sequels and a short-lived TV series." Tremors is actually one of Syfy's best franchise hits. I've been public about being a Burt Gummer fan since 2008.

Tremors 6 comes out in 2018!!!! Tremors 6 Gets A Release Date- The original date got pushed back, so summer 2018. You can find announcements like this one on facebook (click the next pic) (remember that the date has changed since he posted this)

and follow Michael Gross on facebook and twitter for real time updates as he finds out himself.

And if you want more on the TV pilot... lol. Yes, another series, yay!!!

We love the 'big worm movies' in our house. People keep asking me what the big worm movies are that Bunny has been talking about this last week.

click pic for tweet
the tweet clicks to this article

I. Can't. Wait.


This is a fan post, with no compensation. I am a ~fan~. This is also posted at SyfyDesigns.com

Mystery Men review

I'm putting a back up copy here for SyfyDesigns.com. Originally written August 2013 for Nerd Movie.

Mystery Men (1999)

In a world of poorly timed spoofs and parodies, Mystery Men earns the hit and miss brilliance award from yours truly. The reviews on this 'other guys' movie- "We're not your classic heroes, we're the other guys"- are so spread out over the love/hate spectrum that a person could almost set up a viewer psyche analysis chart based on this movie alone.

Mystery Men, chock full of stars and cameos, flopped at the box office during a brief industry spasm when superhero movies suddenly careened into high dollar cheese, case in point Batman & Robin (1997) - IMDB starring George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think to remain true in reviewing Mystery Men in proper context, we must remember this vital part of its placement in movie history. Mystery Men was not only a spoof, but a spoof within a spoof, a layered mockery of not just superhero movies but of the industry itself.

Champion City is a spotter's dream, fun to frame advance and study. Of course it's a spoof on Gotham City, which gets even more fun when you watch the Shoveler drive up to his pink house after a late night saving spree with the boys.

Captain Amazing really does look amazing, but things take a turn for the oh so delightful when the underdogs try to save him later in the movie. This is where you can imagine Batman outgrowing his angst and getting a little fussy with the help.

And who hasn't dreamed of being chosen at a superhero tryout?

Mystery Men is a brilliant tongue in cheek story about the average person's struggle against public expectations in our daily aspirations to rise above the mundane meaningless grind, even if only by a little, while highlighting the industry flaws that veered superhero movies a little off track for awhile. Reviewers who missed the continual fun winks and nods and demanded to know when this movie was supposed to get funny probably weren't cognizant of anything deeper. If anything, that subtlety was probably Mystery Men's undoing for the masses, but for the rest of us it remains a rare gem of sparkling effervescence in an industry that sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. Special wink here to movie reviewers.

Mystery Men - Rotten Tomatoes -The Tomatometer gave Mystery Men a 60% while they reported audience rating at only 51%.

Bad Superhero Parody Movies - Blankman, Mystery Men, John Hancock, My Super Ex -You really can't please some people.

FILM REVIEW: Mystery Men -- Blade Runner meets Naked Gun - The Tech -Lectury. Let's see the reviewer make a better movie.

F This Movie!: Unsung!: Mystery Men -Appreciative, you can tell this guy doesn't hate his job.

Amazon.com: Mystery Men: Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria, Greg Kinne -John Q Public seems to like this movie just fine.

Seeing Past Crazy: Why Mystery Men is the Greatest Superhero Movie Ever -Wow, someone went deep.

But what about my own review? In the words of 'Baby Bowler', "Let's do some carnage!" Movie quoting as a sport escalates off the roof with this movie, setting it at a solid second to Spaceballs for me. I've watched Mystery Men more times than I've watched Galaxy Quest, which is my fave ever scifi spoof. This movie is my favorite comfort movie when I'm too sick to get out of bed and my favorite movie when I'm tired of everything else. As fallback movies go, I have gotten more value out of this dime than any other movie. Why is that? What is wrong with me?!

That is exactly what Mystery Men is all about, all us other guys. We're not the CEOs drawing up viewer schedules, or producers tossing cash around. We're the Roys and Jeffs and Eddies, just trying to make the world a little better place. We're not rich like Lance Hunt (the Mystery Men version of Clark Kent), or set up with corporate sponsors like Captain Amazing, but we do have standards and dreams and clear boundaries of where evil should be stopped. We all know people like the characters in this movie, we can all identify somewhere on the Champion City spectrum. If we aren't the wannabes ourselves, then we are the wives and mothers and girlfriends and children of the wannabes. Or maybe we even identify with the bad guys in the gangs recruited by Casanova Frankenstein. If there is a movie reviewer out there who can't identify with a character somewhere in this movie, I want to know what in the world makes them think they are qualified to judge superhero movies in the first place. The whole point to comic books and superhero movies is the wannabes who buy the merchandise. The industry wouldn't exist without wannabes.

If you've not yet seen Mystery Men, don't let bad reviews color your decision and skip this one. Of all the superhero movies ever made, this one is my favorite. Batman wishes he had friends like these.

Mystery Men trailer

by Janika Banks

grandfortuna.xanga.com

@PinkyGuerrero on twitter

the paranoid android

In the PJ Masks narrator voice saying "Night, in the city!": Dawn, in the kitchen!

Everything is quiet. Everyone else is still in bed. Meemaw is tippy toeing and gently opening and closing doors and cupboards, making coffee, getting the stove ready to make breakfast. She thinks tater tots would make a nice side to scrambled eggs mixed with crumbled bacon and topped with cheese, opens the freezer door, leans in to reach to the back for the tater tots, and suddenly the soft quiet is sharply broken with an abrupt D SAYS DUH. D SAYS DUH. EVERY LETTER MAKES A SOUND. D SAYS DUH.

That was almost to the tune of Farmer in the Dell, if you need audio context.

People who invent loud fridge magnet toys for kids- STOP THAT.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A friend of mine let me know some weeks ago that HHGTTG had only been seen in cinema form, not read in novel form. I mentioned that I hated the Marvin incarnations in cinema, which was difficult to explain to someone who missed the books, so here we go, this is why.

If you read this wikipedia entry you will see in the novelization that "Suddenly, he is kidnapped by a squad of Krikkit war robots, who are after his leg, a fragment of the key that will reopen their imprisoned world and restart the genocidal Krikkit War. Thinking that Marvin's intelligence will be an asset, they wire his brain into the interfaces of their intelligent war computer. This is a mistake. The once formidable Krikkit robots find themselves overcome with crippling sorrow and depression, and rather than focusing on their mission of extermination, instead sulk in corners doing quadratic equations. It is also due to Marvin's influence that Zaphod and the others' lives are spared by the Krikkit robots. Marvin is (presumably) rescued by his friends, who bring him back to the Heart of Gold." In fact, Marvin's LEG is a part of the intergalactic Krikkit Wars, and on our earth the game of Cricket is a long forgotten tribute to that war.

The way Marvin shows up in cinema form totally screws this humongously important bit of TRIVIA. So, I loathe watching Marvin in movies. Any true fan creating and recreating that story for film would have gotten that bit right.

Also, from here, "Krikkit also managed to leave other marks besides the destruction of numerous worlds: due to racial memories, the Earth sport of cricket and the pan-dimensional sport of Brockian Ultra-Cricket were based on the Krikkit Wars. Slartibartfast enjoys the game of cricket, but he notes that most sensible citizens of the galaxy find the sport to be in rather bad taste."

My Janika Banks tagline is from this HHGTTG series. I'm a devout Douglas Adams fan, and so much of his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series involves intricately woven historical details around robots that if you really and truly want to understand the foundation of the Pinky Robot concept, you need to go read that series. There are 6 books. Not being paid to link these.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy(1979) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe(1980) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle
Life, the Universe and Everything(1982) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish(1984) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle
Mostly Harmless(1992) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle
And Another Thing...(2009) Hardcover  Paperback  Kindle

Anyway, Marvin is a major player throughout the entire series and drastically undercut in film, which sends me into a seething corner in my mind. Don't get me wrong, I love the 2005 movie and all the actors in it, especially the whole Magrathea scene. Just... big fail on Marvin. He's supposed to be more than cute and funny.

You can read up on Krikkit and other planets of interest in HHGTTG here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are all wildly brain scattered this weekend, so I can't keep my focus on anything else in particular. I think this is about as close as it gets to our heads right now. 'Scuze me while we run into town to look for a new tie.

Atlantis

This think review is the original, which I'll be copying to SyfyDesigns here.

Pix click back to sources. Ancient Aliens screenshots from my TV will click back to their History Channel episodes that were broadcast.

Very early on coming back out public, I was picked up by a little gang who did Stargate Atlantis (SGA) watches in a chatroom at SyfyDesigns. Stargate Atlantis is the second series in the Stargate franchise, a natural continuation of Stargate SG-1, and a precursor to understanding Stargate Universe. The franchise was based on an original movie that came out on 1994, which itself appeared after a long dry spell in scifi in the movie industry. Despite initial boos from critics, the Stargate movie, a French-American film originally released through MGM, won a number of awards and is considered a break-through film.

Of course, Stargate Atlantis is based on the legends and myths of Atlantis that we have around the globe, and just as SG-1 reimagined and explained the reality and science behind our myths of all the gods throughout human history, SGA reimagined and explained the reality and science behind the legend of Atlantis, which turns out to be a very real city that once existed on earth, but actually built like a spaceship that could pick up and leave, and wound up deep beneath an ocean on a planet in another galaxy. An SG team is sent to investigate after discovering clues on Earth, and the series rolls out from there.

The entire Stargate premise starts out with and heavily relies on pyramids, circular stargates, and loads of symbols. While the show looks to be about the gods that star in our myths, the undercurrent is always about the gates themselves, the advanced technology, translating the symbolism from other languages, and how our world militaries learn to cooperate while building trust and relationships with other races of beings in our universe. There are good guys and bad guys, ultimately explorations in points of view since good and bad become smeared, and also the gods themselves, but this kind of stuff happens in scifi shows across the board, so I'm ignoring it here. I'm not going to discuss characters and plots and the entertainment industry. Rather, I'm going to discuss reality and how fiction fits into it, particularly the Stargate franchise and our Atlantis myths.

Our Earth has real pyramids. Lots of pyramids. Lots and lots of pyramids. Just about anywhere you go on our planet, we have pyramids. Sometimes they're called mounds or temples, but oftentimes we find that they are really pyramids. The funny thing about these pyramids is that they seem to line up with constellations, they seem to lay along ley lines, and they have been permeating cultures time out of mind. They are utterly mysterious, making no sense, relics seemingly without purpose, and if you're keeping up with the archaeological sciences at all, they are turning out to be very, very cool.

The creepy thing about the Stargate franchise is that they were using pyramids complete with accoutrements for entertainment before some of these things showed up in very real science. While Star Trek gets a lot of credit for pre-inventing our modern tech, pyramid discoveries are flying under the public radar, and they're way bigger than automatic sliding doors and cell phones. If you were to check on all the latest pyramid science buzz going on around the globe and then go back and watch the entire Stargate franchise, the hairs would go up on your arms and neck. Real life is getting spookier and way more entertaining than all the scifi out there. Guys, we are living it.

Right off the bat, I want to bring up the SG-1 episode where a scifi show called Wormhole X-treme is based on the Stargate program using leaked info, and "The Air Force had decided that while being a breach of secrecy, the show could prevent any future leaks of information about the Stargate program from being taken seriously." This is not a new idea. I grew up alongside the entire Star Trek franchise, and I'm not the only person in the world who feels like it was a great way to not only get ideas out across all borders and boundaries, but lead the way into a new kind of world cohesion in the form of fandoms. I don't know whether that was intentional, but I believe it certainly is now as I watch world sync happening over the Doctor Who and Marvel franchises. Entertainment is leading the way in a new kind of world citizenship like human history has never before seen, and at its roots it started with television shows about star travel.

I'll interject that some of you know I also grew up in a household heavily steeped in end-time prophecy, UFOs, conspiracy theories, numerology, and Atlantis was among that. Because I'm trained from childhood, it's probably natural that I come to the conclusions I do, but I want to make sure we don't beg the question. Which comes first, conspiracy theories or mysteries? Because the conundrums are out there. Blowing off the conspiracy theories doesn't make the very real conundrums in human developmental history go away, and it's very interesting that the conspiracy theories are turning into very lucrative entertainment nowadays, which manages to both plant more seeds in all our brains and callouses us to taking the questions seriously. All we have to say is You watch too much TV.

On SGA, the SGC put together an international team of scientists and a special ops U.S. military team to travel to the lost city of Atlantis in the Andromeda galaxy. The CGI is fantastic and well worth the watch. The wraith were an unexpected twist and I'm still not keen on them, but the idea blossomed into adaptive DNA and from there I was fully on board. It's really too bad the wraith and goa'uld never meet, that could have gotten brutal. At any rate, humans survive all the obstacles and bring Atlantis back to Earth in the end.

So let's talk about Atlantis. The myth is still very real, kept alive through sometimes bizarre enculturations, but some historians do not discount it. Myths have a way of coming alive through archaeology, and we are living in a stellar century for discovery. Our modern tech and equipment are getting better, our dating techniques are getting better, our historical analysis is finally getting better as different science fields collide and integrate, and most of all, our world sharing in real time is phenomenal. We've never been able to put so many minds to so much work on the same things all at the same time like this before. All these things are very real and ongoing, so to say entertainment is creating a bunch of dismissible hooey is very misleading and exactly what it's there for. One of the big concerns with discovery is how disruptive the truth would be to society, right? We hear it all the time in fiction shows- hide the truth so we don't freak people out. But still they keep freaking us out with some really wild and crazy entertainment, and we're taking that just fine, so I feel like entertainment is either being used to callous us, or it's being used to slide truth under our radars. That's right, a conspiracy theory about entertainment itself. It's not new, guys. I heard conspiracy around entertainment as far back as The Electric Company being used to brainwash the next generation (now your grandparents), starting from childhood, so this is really old stuff. Personally, I'm not against using entertainment to brain train, although it's simultaneously breaking down barriers and building up other barriers, so it's a bit confusing, and part of the growing pains I talk about in other places.

One of the biggies lately is The Curse of Oak Island on the History Channel. That is one of the top ten conspiracy theories worldwide, ranking just under Atlantis and the pyramids. The myth behind Oak Island is that the Templar Knights hid something down a shaft that is so difficult to get to that it's taking years, millions of dollars, and industrial equipment trying to get down there. I'd say this borders on Atlantis frenzy. Growing up, I can't tell you how many times conspiracy theorists erupted with We found Atlantis! and it always fizzled out. Well, Oak Island is still going. It's not fizzling out.

Along the way to archaeological findings are weird conundrums, like some kind of tech in seriously wrong layers of time, which creates all new time travel conspiracy theories, or threatens to shred the human development timeline that anthropologists have already set up. This is nicely explained away in TV shows like Stargate Atlantis, of course, but the fact is that these conundrums still exist whether a TV show makes them up or not. What's creepy, honestly, is when fictionalized TV shows predict real life before real life happens, like an entire franchise spending years brain prepping us for the latest revolution in archaeological thinking, and here is where I intro Ancient Aliens.

Before I go any further, I can't help interjecting that so much of our own space program shares the same project names with entertainment companies, and all these names are from gods that come from the stars. Something to think about. I can't help thinking that documentary style archaeology is supplemental to fiction in a way that continues toward specific concepts being seeded into our minds, since one show is produced by a company that has the same name as a spaceship in another show, and I could really go to town with this if I dragged pop music into it seeming to use prompted buzz words across a number of artists and song titles, like 'satellite'. One could argue that these are all common anyway and therefore not coincidental. I say fine, let's move on.

Ancient Aliens is a documentary series consisting of a team of scientists and historians from all over the world coming together to work on the conundrum that may be behind all other conundrums and may be finding answers by putting pieces of the entire jigsaw puzzle together in a way never before possible. Now that we have satellite views of earth, space telescopes, world class computing, and millions of brains trained to problem solve, we are going back through all the old conundrums scientifically and remapping our thinking. It's no longer acceptable to brush inexplicable conundrums off with the idea that primitive peoples were actually capable of things our modern technology is not. Embracing that as ludicrous is key to moving forward. I can't help thinking what great timing this is with not only the Stargate franchise, but with.... Minecraft.

I'm about to show you something really funky. If you are a minecraft gamer, all of this already looks very familiar. Our world hosts real archaeological sites filled with giant building blocks. Have we come full circle? What do these sites have in common, and how did they spring up all over the world without technology sync? The repeating patterns are undeniable. I think both Stargate fans and Minecraft gamers can appreciate this kind of significance.

But what really tied it to Minecraft for me was this bit.

Much of Minecraft is about block hardness and grief damage, and one of the three specific common blocks aside from cobble is andesite, which can be polished and used in construction.

Minecraft creator Markus Persson is one of those virtuoso kids, a genius already programming at the age of seven. How in the world did a game even come into being that looks like a mimicry of real life Ancient Aliens sites? I myself live in rugged country near state forests, and I can't get over how realistic this very simple concept is. If one really wants to get into conspiracy, one could also drag modern magic and alchemy into the discussion, which is exactly where Ancient Alien technology sent humans reeling for generations, it would seem. I'm sure this is a very odd coincidence, but it happened, and here we all are noticing it.

Back to Atlantis. These are symbols found on a very real crashed craft that was hushed up for years. No one has ever identified the origin of this craft. What is the point? This meant something to whoever put it there.

One of the mantras of ancient archaeological sites is "as above, so below". Ancient builds across entire continents lay out like constellations. Among the questions that instantly invites are why, how, and who in the world even thought of doing this?

Needless to say, I'm very much enjoying the 12th season of Ancient Aliens, click that to see full episodes yourself. Not paid to link that.

So the obvious question I'm leading up to is- Are the Ancients getting us ready for what's really behind Atlantis through entertainment and gaming? Are we being prepared to become world citizens with plug in jobs that include terraforming, big building, and coding? Will our militaries become work units in much larger collections of travelers, and will our ability to problem solve be the standard by which we level up in a new lifestyle?

Maybe our grandkids will have the answers to all this. By then we could all be plugged into the Matrix and never know the difference. For all we know, Atlantis could simply be Earth, lost to the heavens beyond, which cryptically brings up even more scifi shows about hunting for the planet of human origin. Why else would we be fought over and protected from catastrophic events in ancient history? And better yet, why are we so obsessed with it for so many generations if none of this holds an inkling of truth? It's almost like we keep being prompted to remember...

1000th post

I searched 'pinky turbo 1000'. The internet did not disappoint.

I had a visit earlier today from enjoyingthejourney, much appreciated even though I don't know if that was the blog owner or someone just coming from there. I check out referrals, and some of them have good stuff. This one has a recent post called An Open Secret: Documentary on Hollywood Pedophelia featuring this vid (clicks to IMDB), about an hour and a half long. I generally don't sit through long vids, but I did that one because Corey Feldman cameo'd in it. (Took a few breaks, though.) I mention The Two Coreys in older blog posts at Spaz and Surveypalooza, so this is something I've been aware of for awhile.

Anyway, the last 10 minutes are so powerful, I'm going to quote some of the things people said in it.

"The dream is so important. You know why? Because if you live in this earth, you have to feel something, and the dream makes you feel things. And that's what the power of a dream is, you know? A dream is life."

Evan Henzi: "It's a hard process to go through, the whole court thing, the whole police stuff, but in the long run it's so worth it, because in the long run it really isn't about how long this person will serve time in prison, or getting justice, revenge, and all that. It's more a kind of being able to express yourself and say Look, this happened to me, and I'm going to move on from it, and I'm not going to hide this in my head the rest of my life. And I'm going to maybe possibly learn to make a difference to somebody else by speaking out about it."

Corey Feldman on The View: "I'm saying there are people that were the people that did this to both me and Corey (Haim) that are still working, they're still out there, and they're some of the richest most powerful people in this business. And they do not want me saying what I'm saying right now."
Response from Barbara Walters: "You're damaging an entire industry." wtf, Barbara... 😡😢 (Corey Haim Died Broke & Alone, Says Corey Feldman)

Caroline Heldman: "Ultimately I think that viewers are the only group of power in this situation, because I think that there will always be a steady stream of kids who wanna be famous, of parents who push their children. And this industry, it's interesting how we will go and pay money and support a system which sexualizes children or puts them in situations in films where they're around adults who are engaging in inappropriate things. We would never do that for our own children."

Here is the original song at the end of that documentary.



Ok, some of you guys know how I feel about all this junk, and that even a very well done documentary about the Hollywood child actor sex ring doesn't make me blink. In the documentary they say this is the tip of a very big iceberg. Well, how about that is actually the tiny tip of a very local iceberg that has worldwide connections and commerce. If you've been paying attention to entertainment at all going back to our parents and grandparents, this has always existed. (And seriously, this goes back through human history, this is nothing new at all.) There are people and even families in our first world country who actually have kids to sell them, and this covers every religion, every political camp, every background and point of view. Children are commodities. I'll go so far as to say that hand picked/placed police, judicial, and medical personnel all help keep this network running very smoothly, case in point, how many people in Hollywood have access to so many prescriptions to use on other people. And no, I don't say this because I watch too much conspiracy drama on TV.

Until humans decide that it sucks for everyone to keep paying for commodities made out of other humans who are stripped of all their rights, threatened regularly with punishment or death if they don't cooperate or keep secrets, and drugged to be controlled, then none of this will change. And anti-sex people aren't off the hook. As long as militant religions can burn their wives and daughters for kindnesses to strangers, this world will never know peace. As long as people can mutilate their children and force them through rituals that break them down into obedient robots in the names of belief systems, there will be no 'faith in humanity restored'.

Before I forget, I'd like to challenge older adults in entertainment who made such a big deal stepping up for religion and politics to actually start helping these younger actors with the finger pointing. Pretty sure some of you have been groomed yourselves, even the super straight ones who are so careful not to rock more of the boat than you absolutely have to while you're rocking it on politics and religion.

I've had a long, crabby week, so it's fitting that my thousandth post be especially crabby. I'm really ticked at Barbara for responding like that.

I need distraction.

cool kids

clicks to article source

Totes rockin a bad hair day like Leo, knowing I'm a super cool badass under it all. I have looked like this ever since physical therapy this morning. That one really white straight hair in his beard is making me crazy.

Bunny is just like her mama, super hyper insomniac. My edge in my older age is I don't have enough energy to care and even think it's kinda funny. The 'wait till you have a kid' curse is spot on. Getting to see it live cracks me up.

Against all conscious bracing against caving to this level of shallow thinking, I'm mentally developing lists of awesome and stupid kids' shows, complete with their own pros and cons. PJ Masks is pure brainwash. One show and you're actually repeating lines around the house and thinking about cool new pajamas, and basically it's just a really simple psychology establishing bad guys (other kids) and all the ways we have to fix the problems those kids create. I give it 2 thumbs down, an obvious first step into linear thinking that progresses throughout life into party affiliations and blame games. The problem solving isn't much different from black and white thinking camouflaged into colorful adrenaline filled action scenes. Contrast that to Little Einsteins, the absolutely most annoying cartoon on the planet, and it's actually growing on me. Bunny is only 3 and already hums and sings along to classical snippets, totally gets the music instructions, and easily follows a real story. The bad guy is usually a jet instead of another human, and while I don't really understand why, it's a relief to get away from the whole bad guy motif because some human is being a monster that we must fix. The creepiest show is The Hive (uber 'normal' twisted into adorable bugs is creepy, guys), and I love it, to my surprise. I'm not a bug fan, every character in that show is some kind of bug. My fave is the wasp kid. Charlie Brown needed a wasp kid in his life. The Hive is like a British sounding Peanuts kind of soap style series (but also with adult bugs) on the opposite of steroids. That is the calmest children's show I've ever seen, and my brain thanks all the creators and voice actors and Netflix and everyone else involved in that show.

I know, right, I'm missing all the CW shows. I've been digging up rants and raves on youtube and web reviews, and pretty much Felicity floating to the top is irking me like crazy. Of course I've missed the entire last couple of weeks of #allthethings, although I'm somewhat staying caught up with The Flash. Barry can screw the timeline all he wants (you gotta admit Iris did a really nice future death scene and that it really coming to pass would crank the live tweet ranting up into outer space), but I can't wrap my head around Felicity masked and then killed off so fast. I'm just

click for more gifs

Also, something is going on with our electric, several times this week we've abruptly lost power, couple nights ago was 3 times in a row after we went to bed, which rather sucked for getting a child to sleep (you know how those backup batteries have to announce in really loud voices that the power is out and you're now on backup supply? yeah, that, and it does NOT help that suddenly there is a strange voice in the inky darkness), and today, especially all afternoon and evening long, the brownouts have been so bad every other minute or so that I can barely use internet at all because the router keeps getting interrupted, even if the other appliances are able to continue. Big storms the other night musta done something, and I finally just abandoned myself on a sheer mountainside on a multiplayer server, and I'll just hafta hope I don't get killed immediately tomorrow and lose all my cool gear that I worked so hard to get leveled up with enchantments when I finally log back on.

First world problems, huh?

I can't decide what vid to go out on. Hang on, we'll change it up tonight. Readers who don't follow on twitter really don't have a clue about a my girl crushes, and Felicity is right at the top.

living in the Dark Zone

clicks to an uber cool pinterest collection
also see Scifi-Meshes.com

I really loathe how creepers jump on Lexx hoping it'll be a great way to spam. Today I declined a child sex slave account from joining my group. I think most of my disgust lies in they didn't even try to pretend to be fans. Stick that little girl in a Lexx tee and maybe I'll reconsider. Sorry, that sounds terrible. Lexx in no way EVER brought child sex connotations to screen, and I still spit a bit on any reviewer who reduces it down to a 'sex in space' show.

I've seen people walk around with these kids in real life. They are young and fixed up to look normal, but more like dolls than people. They are experts with makeup and clothes, and they don't just walk around like we do with all the busy or emo stuff in our heads, but like self aware dolls always 'on' to how they come across to the public. One guy I watched take his 'daughter' shopping (in a very nice big retailer) had to stop her from fawning in public and got a bit agitated when she didn't (a little over programmed?), and when he caught my eye, even though he was next in line, he dropped his merch immediately and hustled right out of the mall. You wanna buy a living doll and parade around in public as part of your parent fetish, screw you. Poor kid probably got a bit more mistreated to ease his agitation.

And it's not just young people. When I was growing up, it was fairly common for army vets to bring Asian women home. They made perfect wives because they shut up when they were told, so you could treat them any way you wanted at home. What a horrible stereotype, and I hope that isn't true any more, but I still run into an aging veteran-Asian couple once in awhile, and I have yet to see the vet (bless him for saving our country) exhibit kindness to his wife in public. It got so bad in a Walmart check out line the last time I saw them that she nearly started crying because he was such a jerk.

Lotta streams cross my eyes when I work on my medias, and I generally don't share the junky part that drags me down, mostly because I don't shine a light at dark places I'd rather other people not innocently go. Those of us who've been touched by the dark recognize the intent behind what others gloss over for 'cute' or fail to notice is a stumbling block into a deeply entrenched black market or, at best, society fail.

I am 'pre-screening' (lol, that's fun to say) a playlist for a write-up later, and it's setting the perfect mood for this kind of work. It's a tad explicit, sounds of a woman possibly being choked to death, hints of underlying secrets and possibly crime, a slight dash of nudity, so NSFW, ok? But it's cool music in my opinion, and I really hope it gets picked up for a movie or TV show soundtrack.



Disclaimer- this is a personal blog where I frequently ramble. No connection is being intended between Lexx and Pagan. I happen to be fans of both. For those who aren't Lexx fans, the premise is that we live in a universe of depravity and evil, called the Dark Zone. It seemed apt for a lead-in, but again, my content in this post has absolutely nothing to do with the Lexx TV series.

My #TeamNegan Thoughts

This is an intense write-up, and you are responsible for closing this page if you trigger easily. I'll give you a chance to close this real quick without glancing by sharing my hottest tweet last night, over 4000 impressions in 30 seconds flat, far outstripping my other tweets, which really surprised me since I was low-level tweeting.

My second hottest, so you can't just glance down and peek at your triggers before closing this page, was this one, ripping a fast 1300 impressions in about 30 seconds flat.

Most of the rest of my tweet impressions ranged from 80-300.

SHUT THIS PAGE NOW IF YOU TRIGGER EASILY.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to remind the queasier Walking Dead fans that there are Negans all over the world right now actually doing that, and this has been going on for thousands of years. Your job in this human race is to SURVIVE. Slavers and purveyors of every atrocity have beset our history right and left, and we are not only still here, but so prolifically overrunning the planet that those of us at the top have to stay inebriated trying to forget we have it so good while we wallow around thinking life sucks and is unfair.

I'm #TeamNegan because that is reality. Hard, cold, cruel, and not fair. I'm not saying he's good, but he's a challenge, and if you ever find yourself up against someone that cold and brutal (and many do all over the world DAILY), you are still in control of how you respond, what you believe, how you play it, who you protect, how you prioritize your actions, and most of all, how you forgive yourself for not being strong enough to stop the cruelty.

We like to blame victims in mainstream America. Take a good long look at these victims.

This is why I am pro offing the cruelty without negotiation, without talking, without considerations. I have seen cruelty. That kind of cruelty is broken and there's no fixing it, no bargaining with it, no winning over it any other way.

Define what cruelty is. Study cruelty. Recognize that cruelty destroys ALL of us, even at a distance, from the lowest crime lord to the highest dictator.

You guys really do need to know that being hit that hard even just once on the head is so stunning to the brain that the rest from there on out is a blur and conscious attempts at anything is nearly impossible. Lesser impacts knock people out, less damage screws people up for life, so for anyone to remain defiant after that first blow is all fiction. The shock to the brain is so immediate that the rest is practically not even suffering.

Also, I've seen brains stomped out. Doesn't take that much to make a mess.

One thing they got right was the twitching, but there would've been a lot more of it, plus some contorting.

I know this isn't comforting after what we saw last night. What you got was like a roller coaster ride through a spook house, shocking images pulsing into your brains inducing emotional reactions. I'm dead inside. Not a single bit of that bothered me. I've seen the real thing and that wasn't real.

If I were a dictator, I wouldn't be a shock jock. I'd club the base of the skull at the top of the spine at a hard fast angle and simply just stop a person. A body will go completely limp that way, no weird twitching and contorting. People would think I was real nice compared to Negan. I also wouldn't preface it with long drawn out word games. Using terror to break people is inefficient. You wind up with wild cards. I'm really hoping the writers plug into that.

Anyone wanting revenge on Negan- he's already been broken. Something is really wrong with a person who can do that and enjoy it so much, and relish other people being psychologically damaged by it. There is no revenge you could ever do that would make a person like that repentant or beg for mercy. There's no getting even with someone who's already so broken that they can turn all that off. If I had a go at Negan I'd simply make a solid cut and just watch it all drain out. No words. No smiles or gloating, no winning. Just simply make him stop with a minute or two of consciousness before brain death started setting in, so he could feel himself dying. He probably wouldn't even fight it, assuming he's tied down. He'd think he's winning for not going through equal recompense, but does that even matter? Just make him be gone.

Getting worked up about scary stuff will be your downfall if you are ever caught in a bad situation. Becoming so afraid that you can't move or think is bad. Survival is priority over everything else, by any means. If that group had blankly stared back at Negan without reacting he'd have gotten pissed off because they'd be ruining his game. Rick going into shock like that is a real thing, that is happening to people all over the world right now in very dark places. You need to see it so you can start thinking NOW how you will survive if you're ever up against that kind of cruelty.

Personally, being ordered to cut off my kid's arm (which I'd actually be able to do, hate me all you want) I'd have whirled around with that hatchet on Negan's throat so fast and then claimed lordship, to hell with the bloody battle, just let people start scattering. Kill the head vampire, right? Who knows what could have happened. Negan actually kept positioning himself for Rick to make an easy kill, did you notice that? And Rick could not kill him. That is my biggest complaint with so much of this show, that victims are too timid to kill their abusers, but I have to remember I grew up really differently than a lot of people. When we go into reflections on how people could ever support Hitler, you guys just watch this show and see how easy it is to intimidate people into allowing abuse to continue, and even stepping up to assist with and enforce the abuse. These were probably all decent people before the apocalypse. Think NOW about what you already close your eyes to going on all around you, because believe me, we are all surrounded by a culture of abuse that is perpetuated by drugs, sex, and entertainment. Slick a palm, you can't trust anyone. Use this show to really start looking around you, ok? Open your eyes.

I could go on, but I see no point in it. I saw a lot of shock on the twitters last night, people swearing off the show- what did you expect? This stuff isn't cute. Just because there are toys promoting the show doesn't make it a fun little cartoon.

As you walk away from this post or the show itself, keep one thing in mind- there are people in real life going through real stuff like this every day somewhere in this world, and yes, even here in the U.S.A. There are people disappearing, being taken hostage, being forced into a variety of slaveries, and some of them are doing everything in their power to survive.

If you are not aware that human trafficking is one of the biggest international commerce trades in the world, you live in a pretty nice bubble. Never relax your vigilance. Keep eyes and ears on your loved ones at all times. Never take safety for granted.

The real life Negans out there watching that show last night probably laughed their heads off. Yeah, didn't even think of that, did you?

Johnlocked and loaded

This post is about the TV show Sherlock. If you've not seen this show and don't want spoilers, shut this page right now!!!! I'll also put a bunch of memes in the way so it's harder for you to glance down and accidentally see something just before the page closes. No cheating and scrolling first.

All pix click back to where I found them.

This has been in my head a long time about the whole Johnlock thing. It's very distracting that we're always seeing John's POV about he's not gay, they're not in a relationship, etc. Let's look at Sherlock for a sec.

Sherlock is the Emperor of factual information, and often leaves out details that others don't catch. He doesn't stop and explain. I love this kind of writing. I couldn't help noticing that Sherlock never corrected Angelo bringing the candle for his date. Angelo knows Sherlock. He assumes Sherlock is on a date. This alone implies mountains of stuff about Sherlock, both in his mind and in other people's minds.

When Sherlock introduced John as 'my friend' to Sebastian at the bank, it's quickly revealed that Sebastian knows Sherlock from their college days. It is significant that Sherlock would introduce a 'friend' (as opposed to colleague, like John insisted) to someone who probably made remarks about Sherlock being too weird to ever have a significant relationship (point blank, boyfriend). Sherlock knew this.

Sherlock never questioned John and Irene meeting up. He heard the entire conversation. "You jealous?" "I don't know, probably." He didn't question two people 'fighting' over  him. It felt very much like a current bumping into an ex. Even though we see John feeling rather left in the dark, even he can feel this is a triangle.

Because I'm asexual pangender and talk about being sapiosexual in brain sex, robot style (although I didn't know there was a term for it when I wrote that), I know that people don't have to have orientations or even be sexually active to be in love with other people and it still feel very sexual. They don't have to consummate relationships to feel deeply bonded with them, to feel ownership, to say 'mine'. "My friend." Sherlock is very careful with his words, and he always means them. He took possession of John immediately, perhaps like someone does a pet at first, but nonetheless, the world around him knew he owned John, and that John accepted and liked being owned as this "my friend".

In fact, this turned into John saying "My friend" over and over when he thought he'd lost Sherlock. Not just any friend, not just a friend- "My. Friend." And as I've pointed out (links below), if you really look at John, Sherlock is his only real friend up to this point, because in this context, acquaintances don't count as friends. He loves Sherlock.

Sherlock was so sure of this relationship that when he showed back up, he didn't take into account that John would be so upset. Sherlock erroneously assumed John would fall right back into step with him, because they were each others', and time passing would never change how they felt for each other. And it didn't, but there was definitely a readjustment period.

Mary replacing Irene in the triangle is a neat way to show Sherlock growing emotionally, in several scenes him identifying with Mary as one of John's emotional consorts. Mary and Sherlock easily share John, something Irene hadn't done.

Some of us are wondering if Irene will come back and upset the balance. Season 4 is rumored to get ugly and much more upsetting than previous, and we all know the previous seasons were upsetting enough. I would be in heaven if Irene and Moriarty both came back and had a bunch of kids and started a gangster baseball team, but we know that can't happen. I'm terrified something will happen to Molly, because she stepped into the 'sister' role so well, working alongside Sherlock at the morgue. I can't help wondering if Sherlock will finally be forced into that last 'I love you' scene with a dying brother or something, and I don't even want to think about what's going to tear John up if/when something happens to Mary and/or the baby. As much as a large part of the fandom wants a good scene about how close they really are, I really don't want to be destroyed seeing John having a meltdown in Sherlock's arms after something happens to Mary.

Keep in mind this entire show is about Sherlock and John. I questioned what started this story in my post John Carl Powers Watson and discussed what's in Sherlock's mind regarding John in the post f(x) where x = "reflection John". I like thinking about John, as we've seen in blogger on blogger on blogger. John is kind of slow to pick up on a few things, but the only one who can keep up with Sherlock, and I find myself identifying with him as much as I do Sherlock, between PTSD and autism spectrum.

I'm sorry this is difficult to read

I'm not very good at interpretation, and I love reading what other fans get from scenes that I completely miss (although I do think a few go a little overboard, but who knows how far Moffat will go with pink lighting, right?), plus I was very resistant to everything else Sherlock Holmes for years (I live with a super fan who watches ALL of it), so I feel my thoughts are mediocre, at best. However, this is the first fandom I've ever gotten emotionally involved in enough to write about character subtext, even though I started out being a Spirk fan many years ago and came up through the Xena and Merlin ranks.

I personally don't have a preference for whether Sherlock and John ever go the next step on TV and what is or isn't canon, but shows like this do have a big impact on both straight and LGBT communities. I don't think we need to demand a pro or con statement either way to have a great story, and the story is about Sherlock and John getting through all this stuff together, ups and downs and still there for each other. I think the writers would be crazy to pick one community to represent since that would create havoc, and I think they're geniuses keeping the question up in the air because it helps sales. Having said that, I personally feel like some of the LGBT community being so demanding is just as insensitive and bigoted as the straight community not recognizing it, and I'm standing up for some of us on the side applauding that it's just very well done all the way around anyway, and we'll take it because we are sapiosexual.

"Brainy is the new sexy."