Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Ace just noticed that handrails don’t exist in the Star Wars universe.
I thought he might’ve stolen the idea from me, but when I explored my archives I found this bitch-pitch of mine somehow hadn’t made it into The Blog That Nobody Reads. I’ve been saying for years this has been a staple of the sci-fi genre — the absence of certain things. From anywhere.
1. Birthdays
2. Old women
3. Young men (at least, not too many young men)
4. Handrails
5. Dissenting viewpoints
Every single planet is populated by some wizened old geezer who’s going to be among the very first talking moving things you meet when you land on it, and happens to run the entire planet. His motives are somewhere between suspect and nefarious. And his lovely buxom daughter, who appears to have been conceived without the benefit of any mother living or dead worth mentioning. She’s never seen a young virile man ever before. She needs someone to teach her how to kiss.
And maybe pick out a wardrobe that would cover everything up. But first she needs to be taught how to kiss.
Everyone speaks absolutely flawless English.
Characters tend to be defined at the group level. Someone approaches a group with an offering of peace, or commerce, or to join forces — there is a spokesman for the group. What happens next just bugs the piss out of me: The spokesman thinks awhile, and then says “We agree.” Very rarely does anyone say something like “that’s quite an interesting proposal, give us an hour or two while we go off and think it over.” Nothing interesting happens there. Nothing like: Fredo wants to do right by the family but he’s humiliated and smarting from being passed over…or…Sonny has a famous Sicilian temper and doesn’t trust Tom like he should even though they were best friends in childhood…nothing complicated like that. Nope. Groups are atomic. There are no sub-factions developing within them, that would take time to explore, and in sci-fi every minute is prohibitively expensive. So — the group agrees. Event defined. Get to the next event in the story. Quick. And when the end product turns out to be boring, don’t blame the writers, you obviously didn’t have enough cute CGI creatures or blow up enough stuff.
The birthday thing: How in the world did Luke and Leia go four years not realizing they had the same damn birthday? The only possible answer is that in the Star Wars universe they don’t have ’em. All those stars in the galaxy with different planet revolution intervals, it’s just too much of a hassle to keep track. In all my years of watching and reading science fiction, as the writers flail around desperately trying to find ways to build the characters, failing at it more often than not, I’m reasonably sure the only birthday celebration I’ve ever seen was on Buck Rogers.
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I’m going with the “they’re adopted” answer.
As part of the plan to ensure the children were never recognized both of them had their birthday’s altered by the adopted parents. Ok, maybe not part of the plan, but maybe Luke’s birthday fell on a Tatooine holiday so they moved it. It’s not like he’s going to notice when the original was, it took him 20+ years to find out who his parents were.
- darury | 08/24/2009 @ 12:28