The red lion of Spring

Some thoughts that are running through my head as March roars in like a giant robotic lion that combines with four other giant robotic lions to create a human / lion robot hybrid that has a sword for no apparent reason.

Random Thought # 1: Where in hell is my Voltron movie? Every other crappy show has had a movie made about it. Hell, if I remember correctly the game of Monopoly had the movie rights sold, which will be awesome as it will mark the first time in cinematic history that a thimble will have the lead role, so why not Voltron? Giant robot lions fighting giant robot monsters along with Princess Allura. The script basically writes itself.

Random Thought # 2: You know what you never see anymore? Magic Eye posters. Those things were everywhere in the mid 90’s and now no one has them. Not a bad thing given that I was one of those people who could never figure out how to look at them to see the image (that whole look through the image was a bunch of crap.) What is really interesting is that people hung these posters up in their home as if they were fine art or at least art. In reality they were just a bunch of squiggly lines. As is a Jackson Pollack painting I suppose.

Random Thought # 3: Another facet of mid 90’s culture that has not survived is the baseball card / sports memorabilia shop. For a while every other strip mall had one of these inside where a guy who was always slightly overweight and rocking a goatee would sit behind a Plexiglas case and hope that someone would buy from his card collection. Basically the entire card industry was a ponzi scheme at that point where you always hoped that you could find someone dumber than you to pay more for your piece of cardboard than you did. Sadly, I was one of those people who ended up with lots of pieces of cardboard when the market crashed. Oh well, at least I’ll always have my Cherokee Parks rookie cards for inspiration and a reminder of market bubbles.

Random Thought # 4: I was watching Book TV on CSPAN 2 over the weekend because, well, I apparently have no life when I am not with Kim. That is probably a good thing when you think about it. Anyway, I was watching a discussion about George Orwell moderated by Christopher Hitchens, who is one of those guys I could listen to all day due to his intelligence and high end British accent. As a fan and admirer of Orwell I was really interested in the talk, which is about a new collection of Orwell essays that was released. One of the things that was discussed made me rethink something that I had been pretty set in my ways on for years.

The question was what would Orwell think about the Iraq war? The conclusion that they came to was fascinating. The first point is that Orwell would have supported the invasion as Iraq was easily one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes in the world and there is nothing that Orwell rallied against more than totalitarianism. As someone who has really bought into Orwell’s view of the world that made me rethink my position against the war as my main question has always been the necessity of it.

But they also made one big counter point. Orwell would have raged against the doublespeak and political spin that the Bush administration placed on the conflict. He would have called out all of the half truths and talking points that had no bearing on reality. Orwell could not stand governments that did not speak the truth and he held it as his duty to face unpleasant facts. In the end they almost said that Orwell would have felt that the war was justified but the way that it was justified wasn’t justified.

All this does is make me want to pick up my copy of Animal Farm again. Because all animals are equal; just some animals are more equal than others.