Rumination on Meditation

When I think of comfort, warmth, I sometimes flash back to images from childhood. Images of reading comic books under the yellow blanket up top my captain’s bed in the summer. The late evening sun shining through the curtains giving the room a warm look of permanent twilight.

Images of mornings before school, sitting on the clothes hamper in the closet, the louvered metal doors shut, shards of dawn light creeping between the slats and the sound of the shower running like a gentle rainstorm through the wall.

Then even farther back than that, sitting and playing inside a “Jolly Green Giant” plastic playhouse which was nothing more than a plastic sheet screened with “green leaves” and an image of the Green Giant’s sidekick, The Sprout. The plastic sheet fit perfectly over the old, square card table, you know the one! It had the folding legs, and had been around as far back as you can remember, which wasn’t very long, because you were only six.

I would lay inside, imagining it to be a space ship, or a submarine, or a castle, or moon base, or sometimes just colouring, or playing with my Hot Wheels®, and Matchbox, and Corgi vehicles. Sometimes even just shoving it against the wall under the open window when a rainstorm came and listening, eyes closed.

Being surrounded with semi darkness, and filtered light, and occasionally the sound of water, these are the things that make me glow inside, that create in me a special warmth which to this day I’ve not felt since.

The only time I’ve ever come close to this in my adult life has been by shutting myself in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and turning off the lights. This can sometimes afford me two or three minutes before noise from the outside world intrudes on my meditation in the form of a phone call (I really should just get rid of that fucking thing), the sound of the TV or a buzz at the door.

All this brings me to the conclusion that the kind of peace and quiet I seek can only be found in one place, and at one time: In Utero.

Nobody asks to be born into this world, but at the end, nobody wants to die either. Why do you think babies are born angry and screaming? (Like big, wrinkly raisins with a voice box.) Because to be torn from that place, that perfect place of comfort, warmth, and joy is a traumatic thing indeed. I’m sure most of us, had we the muscle strength, would crawl back in and stay there forever.

The moment we are born we begin dying. The clock starts counting down inexorably, perhaps another reason why newborns scream so much. This atavistic knowledge that time is a predator that now has them in its dark sights.

Lond Ho Adventures

Lond Ho Adventures Part Nine

May 1993

I hate the day shift, and the midnight shift working for the Cosmodemonic Security Company for different reasons. The day shift sucks because you always have to be “on,” always “alert.” Constantly answering niggling, dumbass calls to unlock doors, walk someone through the parking lot, or other such nonsense.

“Could you check the roof door on Tower Three?”

“Yo Kai!” I grumble into the Motorola.

“Say again?”

“Roger, ten-four, or whatever. . .”

“Yeah, just check it okay?”

Then (of course) half way up the lift, the so-called problem, which is invariably a maintenance guy not pulling on the door knob hard enough, fixes itself. The call comes over the radio that all is clear, but I check out the roof anyway to kill some of the excruciatingly long morning.

The worst thing about the day shift wasn’t the work of course, the work was really nothing, the worst thing was the supervisor. The corpulent, egomaniacal, and thoroughly insane, thieving Dutchman Thor “The Hutt” Jugg.

The midnight shift is quiet, dark, and lonely. In fact I find I’m talking to myself out loud more often than not. That’s kinda scary. And its not just random thoughts racing through my head, but full conversations spewing from my pie hole as I stroll through the dark, silent, stuffy towers. Last week I freaked out some suit that was working late while I was wandering through some random office having a pleasant conversation with myself about the different kind of cheeses I enjoyed. Just for the record, the five winners were: old cheddar, stilton, French brie, whiskey cheddar, and havarti. Actually, the graveyard isn’t really all that bad, the worst by far is the dreaded “split” shift. Just when you thought the powers that be couldn’t saddle the little man with another random shift, the twisted minds come up with this crap-assed time-slot. The idea is to have a supervisor, and a grunt on afternoon shift to be joined at by a choad at 18:00h and goes until 02:00h. It make no sense to anybody, especially the choad that has to work it. It’s the one shift that effectively wipes out any semblence of a normal social life that he of she may have, whereas the afternoon or even the midnight shifts one can still live a very healthy life outside of work. The split destroys all of that. Lets do the maths, on afternoons, the grunts are off by 23:00h which still leaves him time to go out, meet with friends etc. The midnight gives the opportunity to have dinner with family, hang out with buds, etc. before work, but the evil, stupid split disrupts life in the worst way. It destroys sleeping patterns, as well as disrupting family time. And because it finishes so late, there is nothing to do but go to sleep, then get up part way through the day with just enough time to get one’s shit together and go to work again. So horrid is this shift, I believe it only could have come from the twisted mind of The Hutt himself. Only Thor could have come up with this method of further degrading, and humiliating the underlings of the Cosmodemonic Cocksucking Security Company.

DVD Review

Star Wars Trilogy DVDs

A New Hope Directed by George Lucas
The Empire Strikes Back Directed By Irvin Kershner
Return of the Jedi Directed by Richard Marquand

Well, he made us wait long enough, and I’m sure all two of my loyal readers are at least a little curious as to my opinion of the Holy Trilogy on DVD so here it goes.

The Positives.
Absolutely flawless 16x9 enhanced, crystal clear picture quality that beats the VHS versions and my Hong Kong pirate DVDs to death, but of course I knew it would. Otherwise what would be the point? The films look better than they did when first released in the theatre firchissakes. The sound is a sharp Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that while a little front speaker heavy at times, still sounds terrific. What did you expect anyway, considering the source was originally recorded in good old fashioned two channel stereo, and I suppose there is only so much you can do with it. Like for instance the mixing in of new elements that were never there in the first place.

The Negatives.
Of which there are many. First, I don’t know why they didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to make every flick a two disc set with GL’s Original Releases on one disc, and the Extra-Special Editions on the other, and maybe a documentary about the changes GL felt he needed to make, and maybe one about the restoration process.
The commentary tracks are half decent for the most part, Carrie Fisher stands out to me as the funniest of the lot, but they are completely devoid of any explanation by GL as to WHY he felt he had to make the extra changes to the films. Like for instance, Why The Fuck he replaces Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as the Ghost of Anakin at the end of Jedi. Oh, well I guess we’ll never know. There are some decent things on the extra disc, but where are the old TV documentaries from the seventies and eighties? For that matter, where are the deleted scenes that EVERYBODY has been waiting to see for years? Why aren’t they restored, with commentaries like all the deleted scenes on the Episode I and II DVDs? What about a special documentary on the marketing? Toys? Etc? A video gallery with all the old action figure TV ads from the seventies and eighties? If you ask me, (which nobody is, or ever will I know) Lucas really dropped the ball in the extras department.

This leads my paranoid side to believe that George plans to screw us yet again by releasing a HUGE 12 disc “Ultimate Edition” about six months after Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD which will include all those things left out, and more.

Oh well, I suppose they are entitled to recoup the losses they are currently suffering from the tens of thousands of CRAPPY PAN AND SCAN versions of the films that currently sit unsold on store shelves.

In Closing, for those of you who don’t care about extras, it’s worth it to get the set for the quality of the film’s picture and sound presentation.

Oh yeah, I know all the fanboys ands choads who spend their pathetic lives bitching about films on various LOSERnets and chatrooms have been jerking themselves off about the Empire of Dreams Documentary, so here’s my take: Apart from a couple of segments, it was really nothing more than a two and a half hour commercial for Lucasfilm and ILM.