Dion Fortune's Guild

I started reading The Magical Battle of Britain: The War Letters of Dion Fortune tonight and came across something interesting.  Basically, during World War II, Dion Fortune started a sort of occult/mystical interest group to do group meditations on various topics.  Interestingly, the topics had very little to do with the war itself.  They weren't trying to hex German pilots or psychically attack Hitler or anything.  In today's language, they were trying to put a sort of "good vibes" out into the atmosphere to help their fellow Britons.

Anyway, I was reading how she got this group together and they started progressing along.  And then Gareth Knight, who edited the book (as it is a series of letters from Dion Fortune to her group), talked about how, as the work went on, they found they couldn't take newcomers in as well as they did at the start (when they took in anyone).  Dion Fortune herself wrote:

Outsiders who came in at the beginning grew with the work, but once the work had developed in the way it did, it was no longer possible to take in outsiders.

When I read this, the image that popped into my mind was nothing less than a World of Warcraft guild!  It sounds like how so many guilds in WoW start.  They take anyone and everyone at first, but, if the guild is successful and stays together for long, the people who joined at the beginning have leveled up to 80 (or more now) and have awesome legendary equipment.  After a while, joining such successful guilds is by invitation only.  Seriously though, as Ms. Fortune says here, its the only way they can really do it.  Taking on a newbie would take too long getting them up to speed to be of much use (and seriously, not be much fun for the guildies or the noobie).  

Anyway, that's just the thought I had.  I wish I could have joined Dion Fortune's magical guild to defend Britain.  :-)

Fictional Books: Where can I get them?

I am an incredible bookworm.  No, I'm a book-Sandworm.  No! I'm a book-Alaskan BULL WORM! (Spongebob Squarepants reference, and a bit of bragging about size, heh heh).

I love to read and read for pleasure.  I do tend to fixate on certain things to read.  I mainly read non-fiction these days, mainly British History, World War II, Espionage, the paranormal and occult.  For fiction, I mainly read sci-fi and fantasy.  Frank Herbert is one of my favorite authors.  I've also read authors like CS Lewis, Tolkien (of course!), T.H. White and other various dudes.

Anyway, that's just some useless background for my discussion today. 

Have you (fellow bookworms mainly) ever read a book or read about your favorite book series and had it mention an "in universe" book that you wish you could read for real?  That happens to me all the time.  I often save the titles and make my Sim write them in The Sims.  A couple that come to the top of my brain:

Ballads from the Border Stars - from the Dune (extended) universe, a book that contains the story of the Ampoloris (the Dune Universe equivalent of the Flying Dutchman).  I want this book!  I am planning to carry out a strange occult ceremony to try and shift into the Dune universe to get a copy. :-)

A Time for Pompous Titles - from a Dune parody but that title has stuck in my head for years and I want to at least look at it.

Is Man A Myth? - A must read for any bookworm who gets to Narnia.

Of course, Lovecraftians want to get a hold of the Necronomicon but I think I'll give that one a pass.

Some computer games like the Bethesda Elder Scrolls games actually have in game books which are quite interesting.  They're only a few paragraphs long but I can imagine versions that are the size of an actual book.  There's one in Morrowind, appearing in Skyrim as well, called The Doors of Oblivion that I would love to sit down an read in its entirety.

And there's the matter of that Giant Rat of Sumatra that Sherlock Holmes wouldn't let Watson talk about...

"He who would keep a secret..." A rambling codger story just for you!

Back again today with another old codger story that keeps wanting to jump out of my head!  It comes from the same period as that other guy I told you about who was an aging player and dry humped the poor cleaning girl.

This guy was another supervisor type, a big boo-yah ex-military guy (who should have known better, but we'll get to that).  Anyway, this guy was apparently trying to get a cushy job with a local senator.  He was going to be an intelligence analyst for this senator.  On and on he went, bragging around the office to everyone and anyone who couldn't escape in time about all the things he was going to do.  He was going to get raw intelligence from various intelligence agencies, collate it, put it together, give briefings to this senator.  

He apparently got pretty far in the selection process because he finally was going around telling his friendliest co-workers (I wasn't one of them, too new and low ranking) that the state department, or whoever, might be coming around to question them as part of a background check on him.  

Now, I don't know a lot about espionage and intelligence outside of my reading of WWII era espionage and James Bond films (I need to read John Le Carre one of these days!).  But I did once hear a line in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister that came to mind hearing this guy bloviate.

"He who would keep a secret must keep it a secret that he has a secret to keep!"

You'll notice most intelligence operatives and leaders tend to be what is often called 'dismal enigmas.'  They are quiet, secretive, keep to themselves, never let anyone know what they are thinking.  Admiral Doenitz, most leaders of MI5, and even Ex-President Bush when he was in charge of the CIA were excellent examples of this.  They did not go around bragging and boasting about their intelligence work.  They did not say what they were doing and how they were going to do it.  Never did they give away sources or talk about where they got their information.

Of course, this guy never did get this cushy job and after awhile there was nothing but silence from him.  I don't even know if they came around for a background check.  I was hoping they interviewed me because I wanted to give the line I just gave above and my little spiel to the interviewing state department officers.  Then again, I'm sure they know it well!

So that's today's story.  And remember, loose lips sink ships!  Not a word.... shhhhhhhhh!

Diagnosis over Skype

I just saw an article on the news about a new service being investigated on diagnosing illnesses over Skype or other video services; just decided to add my worthless two cent opinion on it.

This service would be good in situations where its clear what the person has.  The flu, a sinus infection, a cold, or something simple.  You see, the main problem is that people often have illnesses that any well trained Allied Health Professional can identify, but no one (underline that a billion times) nobody at all is allowed to diagnose but a licensed medical doctor (well some nurse practitioners but see below).

And I have no problem with that.  A nurse practitioner misdiagnosed gall bladder disease and pancreitis as GERD (bad heartburn) with my girlfriend.  She ended up in the emergency ward and was rushed into emergency surgery soon after.  So, really, we all have gripes with doctors sometimes but you really really want to see a doctor for a diagnosis.  That MD (or equivalent medical degree) does mean that they know a thing or two!

So, back to this diagnosis by video.  If a medical doctor can diagnose an illness from a remote location (to her/his satisfaction), then the nurses/medical professionals on site can begin instant treatment and the pharmacy can dispense medication.   It would be a good idea except in situations where diagnosis would involve more than observation or basic medical health signs (pulse, blood pressure, etc).  

Insensitive or just stupid?

I've been reading of the tragic deaths of Robin Williams and a local woman named Jennifer Hudson who also ended her own life seemingly when she had so much to live for.

So many of the comments to the stories express disbelief, but there are so many that say things like "we don't know all the details, so how can they say suicide..." or "asphyxiation does not mean suicide, we need to know more!" Comments along those lines.

People, when the reports mention "asphyxiation", "ligature," and law enforcement saying, after one or the other (or both) of those words, that they're pretty sure its suicide, it means they found them hanging by their neck from a line!  Its just indelicate to say that!

Of course, it usually comes out in the end exactly what they found, like David Carridine, who was found hanging from his neck in a closet. 

It just makes me wonder about people sometimes.  Are they really just daft?  Are they like the people that Wierd Al Yankovich makes fun of in one of his parodies that just have to know everything? 

And no, YOU don't need to know how they died in gory detail.  Family members, yes, but not YOU. 

It'll all come out for Robin Williams anyway since we seem to have this obsession with celebrity deaths.  Personally, I think its a form of vicarious enjoyment because people are secretly jealous of their success and now get to read of their final horrifying moments and what state they were left in.

For the ghouls out there that need their death porn, just go read an account on the effects of strangulation and hanging.  There's lots of those stories out there and you can read all about it.  

Book Review: The Occult Reich by J.H. Brennan

The Charles Berlitz of World War II

To preface this review, I have read Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's books on the Nazis and the Occult as well as Dusty Skylar's "The Nazis and the Occult." Goodrick-Clarke comes from the point of view that, of course, the occult is just a bunch of hokum but certain Nazis believed it and acted on some of the weird and twisted beliefs they found there. Goodrick-Clarke is very skeptical, as other Historians are, that Hitler took the occult truly seriously other than the effect it had to bolster his own claims to power.

Skylar takes a middle road and writes that the Nazis exploited the occult and maybe there is something in it. However, Skylar is quite clear that if there is "something in it", it is psychological magic instead of paranormal magick. Indeed, Skylar compares Hitler's movement and persona to recent evil cult leaders and the mesmeric effect they had on their followers.

Brennen, a prolific writer on occult matters, is far to the other side. For Brennen, Hitler was an experienced Satanist who focused his magical energies for his own evil ends. Himmler was not the master occultist of the Third Reich, it was Hitler. And to Brennen, this occult stuff is very, very real. His book, small and short and looking like one of the Charles Berlitz books about the Bermuda Triangle is written in a fantastical tabloid style with long digressions to show where Hitler may have got his evil satanic teachings. Crowley and Gurdjieff are mentioned although not directly linked to Hitler. As, in Brennen's world view, Crowley and Gurdjieff were mages with genuine powers, they are just compared to how Hitler himself had powers of precognition and reality bending with his will.

While this book expects the reader to approach from the point of view that all occult and paranormal phenomena are real, it is very well written. It is actually quite an enjoyable read. Written in 1974, it is quite dated but is often still quoted to this day by other authors. I even saw Brennen himself interviewed in a documentary on Hitler and the Occult (alongside Skylar and Goodrick-Clarke).

I recommend this book (if you can get a copy) more for the entertainment value. Its written well and is a fascinating read. Making Hitler into a Voldemort superman is, in my opinion, much more credit than the little twerp deserves, but who knows? (insert twilight zone musical cue here :-)

What is left behind...

I mentioned previously, regarding antediluvian/ice-age/post-ice-age civilizations that if they did exist, they most probably did not get as technically advanced as many seem to believe.  That is, they probably didn't have electric lights, plastic, stainless steel, and snacks like the ice-cream sandwiches from Wal-Mart.

I say this mainly because those things do not decay, ever.  Styrofoam will break up, but never deteriorate.  At least not in the time frame (10-15 thousand years) we're talking about.  I saw one of those "After Man" shows recently that said that while iron would rust and deteriorate, stainless steel would not (they showed a kitchen sink in a stream bed).  The Eiffel Tower, if not kept up, would be gone in a few hundred years as its mostly iron.  However, stainless steel would still be around.

An argument that the prior civilization(s) had to be industrial or even post-industrial (using our terminology) is that there seem to have been world wide trading networks.  Goods have seemed to get shunted around all over the place in the ancient world.

However, as a show about the Anglo-Saxons that I watched recently revealed, such trading networks can occur with non-literate agricultural groups.  The Anglo-Saxons had ivory and amber in some of their ornamentation.  But this does not mean that ships were going direct from Africa to Britain in 400AD (at least not Roman ones).  The trading networks were point to point.  The ivory found in pre-literate Anglo-Saxon digs would have been passed merchant to merchant, hand to hand, until finally getting to Britain. 

On the other hand, this shows that pretty complex and centralized civilizations can exist without being literate, an argument against such antediluvian civilizations as people assume they would have to have writing to be complex.

I'm bringing this all up because there's an argument that industrial or even post-industrial evidence could have been lost by a world-wide flood or catastrophe.  Of course, anything is possible, something like this could have happened.  We have to remember that at the end of the last ice age, the sea levels rose something like 300 feet.  If that happened today, most of the world's largest cities would be gone and under hundreds of feet of water.   If the waters rose higher, and then receded, perhaps this past culture's plastic and steel got covered under hundreds of feet of mud and rock.

I know of an instance where this happened in living memory.  The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1981 buried Spirit Lake under hundreds of feet of ash and mud, along with a recluse named Harry Truman, his cats, vehicles, and modern equipment.  A huge world wide disaster could have done this to a technological civilization.  Some finds have claimed to find metal screws and nails embedded in ancient lava and rock formations, anomalous finds in ancient mines. 

But I'm still not totally convinced.  I just think that if they were industrial or more advanced, we'd find more anomalous remains than we have so far.

However, I do think that something was going on before us.  For decades, mainstream archaeology and anthropology have told us, as a matter of rock-hard fact, that the Sumerians were the first culture and that nothing and nobody was around before them.   Earlier sites in Jordan and Turkey kept cropping up irritatingly but then Gobeckli Tepe happened.   This site is 12,000 years old!  That's like 10,000 years before Sumer, 7,000 years before the pyramids.   And no, it wasn't a one-off isolated site which is how the mainstream scientists are trying to fob it off as. 

Oh sure, those carvings at Gobeckli Tepe look crude but you go out right now and try to chisel a bas-relief alligator out of a big block of stone.  The stonemasons that did that had experience and teaching, and that came from somewhere.  They just didn't haul off one day and make that site then bury it.

I just wish that this prior civilization had buried a library of theirs like they did to Gobeckli Tepe to show more of what they were up to.  Of course, maybe they did.  One day some shepherd might fall through a hole and find himself in a vault of stone tablets from 12,000 years ago.  That will be enough of a find!  No need for pictures of aliens or electric light bulbs handing from the ceiling to spice it up... although I must admit that would be a cool touch!

The Lathe of Harry Potter

I saw an article lately about Ursula Le Guin called "Ursula K. Le Guin pressured to make books 'more like Harry Potter' "

I really can't think of a good analogy to this.  Its like asking Michelangelo to paint pictures of McDonald's characters for advertisements.  I have to admit that I haven't read as much Le Guin as most science fiction readers but I know enough that she is one of the giants of real science fiction, up there with Heinlein and Frank Herbert in my book.  Her book, The Lathe of Heaven, has haunted my mind for forty years since I first read it.  The 70s movie was okay, although it changed stuff a lot.

In fact, I wonder if Ms. Le Guin thought of her 1971 book when her publishers made this ludicrous suggestion, demand even.  The Lathe of Heaven is about all sorts of things; power corrupting absolutely, the abuse of power, the possibility that our problems will get solved in ways that we didn't intend and that are very bad.   Like the characters in the book, magic users in Harry Potter are able to remake their world, delete and edit memories, call things into existence that weren't there before.  But in Harry's world, this is all cool (and having almost no negative long range consequences).  

I just find this whole idea amusing.  I enjoyed the first couple of Potter books until author-bloat set in and JK Rowling showed her true stripes and lack of talent by doing the opposite of what usually happens with new successful writers: Her books became more bloated, less focused, less carefully plotted as she threw in more and more stuff, more and more wizbang and less thoughtfulness.  The final books, in which she portrays magical battles as mere gun battles with wands instead of attack rifles, was just disappointing.  These people are supposed to have strange magical powers but there was none of the idea of high magic and warfare in a whole different plane.

In the end, wanting a great science fiction writer to write JK Rowling stories is just silly anyway, its a whole other genre.  I suppose its understandable, the desire to admixture something you love with something else you love is a common theme I see in everyday life.  Gamers who want a computer game which combines two other games they love, but would suck if it was actually done.  You can't mix Harry Potter and the Earthsea Chronicles.  No matter how much you might love both of them, if you mixed them, you can almost be guaranteed a bad result. 

Raiders of the Lost Nazis

Giorgio Tsoukalos' second venture "In Search of Aliens" takes an unfortunate turn into Nazi-UFO mythology in his second episode "Nazi Time Travelers."  The stories and theories presented are old hat and regurgitated old stories which interested parties such as myself have heard before.   Presented as truth now is Jan Van Helsing's story of the Bavaria UFO crash in the mid 1930s, a Nazi Roswell.  Van Helsing, either a neo-nazi anti-Semite, or just a crazy but harmless conspiracy theorist, depending on who you listen to, is hardly a trusted granite source of information.

I say again that this venture into Nazism is unfortunate.  Now, I seriously doubt Tsoukalos is a crypto-nazi or that the people he interviews are neo-nazis of some stripe.  I very much doubt that the History Channel would broadcast neo-nazi revisionism.  And I do not want to believe Giorgio has any sympathy with them.

It has now been many decades since the Nazi era.  Over seventy years!  Most of the people alive to witness the events are dead now.  So it is only understandable, I guess, to begin to drift into story, fable, and the recreation of history, mythologizing many of the events.  This is a standard historical effect.  For many people, including some very deluded people, the Nazi era is a time of cool uniforms, awesome panzers, big armies conquering certain hated enemies, awesome technological wizz-bangs, and a time when one man 'stood up bravely' against the people he hated and despised (Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill depending on your side).   World War II was as historically complex as any other time but for many, pro-Nazi and pro-Allies, it was seemingly a very cut and dried, black and white time.  A time when it was easy to take sides, a battle of good versus evil (and that is relative to which side you were on of course).

As Jacques Peretti said in Hitler: The Comedy Years, all the movies about world war II in the post-war period wanted to record all the nostalgia that people had about the war sans the "horrible bit we found out about at the end" (the death camps and the holocaust). 

However, I have read widely on Nazism and their connection to the occult, and on the current Neo-Nazi movements.  One particular author that directly addresses the problems arising from something like this show's enshrining of Nazi science is the late Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.  Other authors I have read on Nazi fringe matters include Dusty Skylar and Peter Levenda, among others.

The danger of shows like this, is that it mystifies and romanticizes the Nazis.  These tales of vimanas and Die Glockes and secret Nazi achievements.  Talking so much about Nazis like this, divorced of the fact of their terror and oppression, their genocide, dehistoricizes them.  It makes them into a caricature that, while scary or even desired, is not really all that bad.  Just some tough guys in cool black uniforms that tried to invent anti-gravity drive, after all.   The effect of a show like this is to attempt to erase the evil legacy and bad memory of the Third Reich and all they stood for.

For instance, during Giorgio's interviews, even he mentions that prisoners of war would have been used to create "The Henge" and the supposed secret bases, but no mention of how many thousands died doing projects like this around Germany.  He mentions that hundreds of tons of coal had been brought into a certain area of Poland without mentioning who would have been doing the transporting and at what horrible human cost. 


Another danger of making shows mystifying the Nazis is that it does indeed recreate Nazism for a new generation of Neo-Nazis.  Neo-Nazi intellectual sources such as Savatri Devi and Julis Evola did quite a bit of work in this area after the war, rewriting the Nazi 'narrative' to try and make them more heroic, more honorable, and more of what all white people should have joined with.   Such people do not need the help of UFO mythology to further remake Nazism into something that it was not, and make it into a springboard for further murder, destruction, and terror. 

I would heartily recommend that UFO researchers read Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as a beginning point to learn how dangerous it is to make heroes of the Nazis based on mythology and false history.  Unless of course, that's the effect the creators of this program were looking for, then I have a quite different suggestion for them...

Believing the stories we tell...

I wonder and cogitate on some weird things sometimes.  Like, how come I can never remember how to spell the word "weird?"  I before E except after C... NOT!  Good thing we have spell check.  All hail spell check!

Okay, another thing I wonder about is when people lie, and its obvious that they are lying, do they really believe it?  I'm really not talking about common lies here, like, you were sick from work and then seen on the golf course or have a mysterious receipt for a huge bunch of flowers for a woman named Sylvia found by your wife...

Maybe I should go to my examples, that will make it clearer what I'm talking about.

There's this guy I'm acquainted with.  Not really a friend, in fact, I hardly know him at all, I just hear him talk a lot.  He likes to tell stories about his life and one of his favorites is how he got thrown out of his house by his father when he was 17 and had no choice but to go into the army.  However, his brothers say that his father offered to send him to college and that he had the possibility to share in a huge inheritance.  however, this first man refused this.  To be frank, he was a white nationalist and wanted to go off with George Rockwell or whoever was leading the Nazis of the day and join in their crusade.  The father wasn't going to fund that at all.  He also would have taken the money to go to school but wanted to go to a school in South Africa.  So, there's more to this story, but everyone this main guy tells it, his father just simply up and kicked his hairy butt out the door one day, with no money, no schooling, nothing. 

Now, I wonder, when this guy tells this story over and over (it was a long time ago, over fourty years now), does he really believe it?  Is there a bit in his mind where he goes "yeah, well, father and I just didn't get along and I wanted to make a whiter brighter world and so I had to get the hell away from him..." or does he really believe his lies now?  Really, as in the fantasy history in his mind now genuine memory.

Another example was a friend of mine, an older guy, from a long time ago.  He wasn't a well man and had suffered from societal exclusion and ostracization much as I did when I was young and sick.  He was also very intelligent.  Anyway, we both liked the author CS Lewis and he would go on and on about how he had not only seen but read a first edition of "Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" which did not involve Christianity.  It was written, he said, before CS Lewis returned to the church and held neo-pagan beliefs.  Then, according to this guy, it was rewritten by CS Lewis when he turned back to Christiantiy.   But this magical first edition still records CS Lewis' first neo-pagan and intellectually freer views.  Oh yeah, and you can't find this first edition anymore because they were all destroyed after CS Lewis reconverted.

An interesting story, but, unfortunately easily debunked by even a cursory reading of CS Lewis' life.  Yes, he did "fall out" with Christianity in his 20s and early 30s, a period in which he did dabble in alternative beliefs.  But he had reconverted long before he began serious writing.  In fact, the reason he began seriously writing again was to share his experiences in returning to Christian beliefs ("Basic Christianity" being an early work in this vein).

So, where did this old friend of mine get this bizarre story.  A story of previous editions and neo-pagan views?  Well, I can never be sure, but I think he may have heard of the "Le Fay Fragment", an early start to the Chronicles of Narnia that CS Lewis began but never finished; although the background of the fragment became the basis of his novel "The Magician's Nephew."  But even then, the LeFay Fragment dates from a period after CS Lewis returned to the church.  

My friend was no fan of Christianity for many reasons, echoing my own with bad experiences with people accentuated by medical problems which he couldn't help.  He was also a big fan of CS Lewis.  I think that he may have heard of CS Lewis' adolescent flirtations with non-christian beliefs and, wanting his hero to be non-Christian, came up with the vision of a non-Christian first edition.  Did he really truly believe this?  I really wonder, if the memories in his brain really had this as the scenario or did he know deep down inside that his stories were just so much wish-fulfillment?  

In an aside, many non-Christian people (or at least non-Anglican) love CS Lewis and have to deal with that part of him.  A Mormon gentleman I knew once would say loudly during our discussions "Too bad CS Lewis wasn't a Mormon!" with his hands thrown up. 

Lies, strange beliefs, falsehoods and distortions, I often wonder if, in trying to get others to accept them as truth, if the people spreading the stories themselves get to a point where they can't tell the difference between real and fantasy anymore either.

No Peaking!

Remember Peak Oil? How people kept saying that by 1990 we'd run out of oil. Then it was 2000. Then it was 2010. Then... well, UC Davis scientists are now saying 2040. People used to really go around screaming like Chicken Little over this one. Everyone was screaming doom and gloom over this one, and the doom and gloom was supposed to be immediate. We were supposed to be out of oil by now in the earliest versions of the theory.

I decided to troll around the 'net and see what's the latest buzz on this old topic. Interestingly, Peak Oil is kind of on the way out as a theory. I came across many interesting headlines:

‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy' - New York Times

The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That’s Bad News for Climate Policy - Time Magazine

Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong - Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine

There Will Be Oil:For decades, advocates of 'peak oil' have been predicting a crisis in energy supplies. They've been wrong at every turn - Wall Street Journal


Sure, you can find stories saying that Peak Oil is still coming and there are studies like the aforementioned one at UC Davis. But look at who's saying these headlines! These aren't weird survivalists in the woods. New York Times, Time, Wall Street Journal. I guess as a "theory", Peak Oil just isn't scaring people like it used to.

Now, I'm well aware that any oil supply that we have must be logically finite. We will run out of oil someday. Its just interesting that the scare theory of Peak Oil is being seriously discounted by seriously powerful people.

I wonder if in a couple of decades, we'll be reading the same thing about Global Warming.  The latest scare theory which has the status of religious truth right now; to question it, is to bring horrible retribution as an evil infidel against wisdom!  And there were those British scientists caught fudging data to make it fit the theory... Oh wait, did I say that? Oh no! It wasn't me who questioned Holy Global Warming Writ, the devil was at my elbow!

Radio Beaverton #1

Lots of people make podcasts and "radio" shows these days, so I thought I'd try my hand at it.  I made some "Radio Beaverton" videos for YouTube a while back, mainly book reviews.  This program is a more a wide ranging rant and rave on three topics.

Part 1:  Authors and the words they like to repeat and repeat and repeat.

Part 2:  An old journal entry and discussion of mine discussing the idea that science could defeat religion.

Part 3:  Computer game reviews!  Banished, Goat Simulator, and Crusader Kings II.

Thanks for listening to this show! I'll probably make more because I like the sound of my own voice (someone has to!)  so if you like it, look forward to more!

(PS: Thanks to Bryan Boyko and Public Domain Music for the little tune I use in the transitions!)

KAHHHHHN!!! Or, To Boldly Be Damned If You Do....

 The latest installment of the 'reimaged' Star Trek is quite good, IMHO.  The last movie "Into Darkness" brought back an old villain from the past.  Somehow, Kahn Noonien Singh got promoted into Kirk's nemesis, probably because the first Kahn was played by Ricardo Montalban, someone who is often equally OTT as the great William Shatner himself.

Kahn, preparing for his scenery eating contest with Captain Kirk.

In the movie, however, the very good yet very white actor Bennedict Cumberbach was cast in the role.  Ostensibly because the producers did not want to cast a non-white as the villain and possibly be seen as racist.  They were trying to avoid any accusation that, by casting an Indian or Middle Eastern actor, or at least a non-white actor, that they were saying that all non-whites are crooks.  Its understandable and somewhat justifiable concern.

Silently thanking all the fanboys that turned his role into Kirk's nemesis after only one appearance!

On the whole, fans and audiences didn't seem to have much problem with it.  However, there was some backlash, the website racebending.com being one example.  

The article you can read at that link sums up, much better than I, the problems with the casting. 

Basically, there's a long an complex story, full of theory and observation behind this casting choice.  But this is not the reason I am writing this entry today.  

Obviously this was a bad choice.  I love Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock.  He's a funny and wonderful actor.  But he should never have been cast as Kahn, period.  

Kahn Noonien Singh.  Funny, he doesn't look Khanish!

You see, the bottom line is that I think the flak JJ Abrams would have got had he cast a non-white as Kahn is, in the end, less damaging to all involved than casting who he did.  Had a non-white played Kahn, the non-whites may have been upset, the Sikhs and Indians may have raised eyebrows and voiced concerns that they just get to be the villain (but a cool one at that!)  However, you know, I don't think they really would have minded as much as this face-egg white-out that they got.  One of the biggest roles for a non-white of India to come along in years, albeit a villain, and the part goes to a guy who's skin is whiter than chalk.    

That's where it really hurts.  That's a blow below the belt.  Racebending.com put it much better than I can, how this act whitewashed out the fact that Kahn is meant to be from the Indian subcontinent.  

They should have just bit the bullet and cast a nonwhite for Kahn.  Even one of us Latinos like ole Rrrrrricardo MontalBAN! (I loved that guy!).  I love Star Trek and Sherlock, but this casting, it was really a slap in the face.  I don't blame central Asians being upset about it at all.