Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, Fridays at 9 p.m. ET), now entering its third season, is not science fiction — or “speculative fiction” or “SF,” or whatever you’re supposed to call it these days. Ignore the fact that the series is a remake of a late-’70s Star Wars knockoff. Forget that its action variously unfolds on starships and on a colonized planet called New Caprica. And never mind its stunning special effects, which outclass the endearingly schlocky stuff found elsewhere on its network. Sullen, complex, and eager to obsess over grand conspiracies and intimate betrayals alike, it is TV noir.
–Slate Magazine, Troy Patterson, 13 October

Stick with me, we’re going to wander a bit here.
Read More »

Warning, Will Robinson–Political Post.

One in eight of Iraqis have now left their homes, with up to 50,000 people leaving each month, the UNHCR said.

It said the exodus was the largest long-term movement since the displacement of the Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon are hosting most of the country’s refugees.

–BBC News

Okay, here’s what’s really chapping my ass.
Read More »

Looking back on this post after writing it, I think I should warn you that I kinda sorta free-associated my way through it. I had a plan, but it didn’t survive contact with the enemy keyboard. I blame the tobacco withdrawal symptoms.

It wasn’t unusual for me, a hippie-freak, child of the Sixties to get deeply into music during my youth. But I don’t seem to be able to outgrow the obsession, despite receiving quite a bit of feedback from the real world that I could likely find a more productive way to spend my time.

I’ve banged on guitars since I was fourteen years old, have been in a half a dozen bands, starting with one that played only one gig, in a roadhouse on the Old Beaumont Highway when I was seventeen. The drummer was my best friend from high school, Mark Magaziner. His dad was a big band drummer, and Mark was damn good.

(He was the only person I’ve ever known to cook down marijuana and inject it. Mark turned me on to both acid and weed. He charged me twice the going rate until I got hip to what he was doing. He got so heavily into drugs, both dealing and using, when I was living with him, that he once grabbed the kitchen salt-shaker out of my hand in a panic as I was about to sprinkle something on my french fries. I still don’t know what was in the shaker. But that’s another story.)

Read More »