Tag: Star Wars

Twice the romance

For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable).

Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm

Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance.

As evolving species, we will adapt, both to adversity and austerity. Just eating in.

You might resent the new acronym (PIIGs), but wait until you have to go without pork (like in China in the time of inflation).

The Chinese are stepping up to the plate by offering to stabilize the Euro zone currency. with condition.

They failed to mention the arm shipments to Libya during Gaddafi‘s time (perhaps, already a market-economy exchange on that deal).

With every earth-altering discovery like that planet with two suns, we need to re-examine our assumptions.

What if we can also discover alternate energy out there? What if we can alter our attitude toward consumption and community?

Why would the damn vehicle always have to seat 4 people in “bowling alone” era (how about sidecar motorcycles; after all, Henry Ford was just tying two motorbikes together to make his first 4-wheeler, all in black, of course). As of this edit, Toyota concept EV is doing just that: three-seater enclosed vehicle.

What defines “hip” and romance (Gaga , the mermaid on wheels, w/ a “bad romance”).

What if we were given another shot at life, with our current macro-economic vantage point? (the rogue trader is doing it again, this time in the tune of 2 Billion).

Planet Bollywood.

Las Vegas in Macau.

Ford auto assembly plants mushrooming along China’s Eastern coasts.

We only transplant and replicate what works.

A tweaking here, a tweaking there. Not an overhaul. Not a paradigm shift.

Until, it’s in our face, at planetary level.

Two suns.

A discovery that should silence both Galileo and Copernicus .

Before we know it, we will adapt and take the two sunsets for granted. We will long for thrice the romance, two off-line, and one line.

Enlightenment turns entitlement again.

Turn off the telescope and turn on the microscope to look inside. We will find the thing called desire. And it’s unquenchable, and our last frontier to be conquered.

The happiest moment might not be a  Hollywood sunset. The happiest moment lies in our selective memory, wired in our deepest part of the brain. There, you will find twice the romance. More than provided by the two-sun planet’s. It’s a remarkable discovery nevertheless. Go NASA!

Certain summer

For young people, it’s a time for recreation, renewal and reviewing school materials.

For politicians, it’s time to pay the bills from Cold Wars, Star Wars, and Gulf Wars ….

For us, consumers, it’s a time to conserve fuel and energy, or just to stay cool.

One quote sticks, uttered by a friend of those who were killed in Oslo “Think of so much hate in one man, and how much more love in all of us together”.

Darkness and light. In each of us. Grant us the serenity.

There is fortunately a certain summer in all the seasons.

I like mature voices (like Terry Jacks or Gordon Lightfoot) who sang about lost innocence.

They lamented about a time that had slipped away undetected. Call it romanticism. Call it naivete. But we need leaders who can rouse the dreams.

We know what reality is like. And since we don’t like it, we invent an alternate one (..like an old-time movie)  with the help of our “high priests”: singers, entertainers, preachers and politicians, all masters and  manipulators of symbols.

Stephen King made this point clear: to write is to create another world. Once he took us inside a vacated hotel in the thick of winter (the Shinning) and moved us through the degenerative process of a defunct writer.

With Earth 7 billion, we’ve got sustainability issues.

Living in an age of de-leveraging.

Summer time in Greece and not in Grease.

“Skinned our heads and skinned our knees”.

I am finishing up “How the West was Lost” which depicts current reality in hard numbers. (as of this edit, Stockman releases his the Great Deformation volume).

Who is ultimately responsible? Fannie Mae? Greenspan? Clinton?

The rich-poor gap is so widened that the only people who feel stinky rich are the nouveau  rich in China mainland,

(rich people in the US dress down quite deliberately to blend in as “the millionaire next door”) with their Bentley’s and Gucci’s.

Summer traveling, with French waiters and Chinese tourists.

New world order.

Modern historians will be chronicling about Chinese in Paris.

(BTW, they are the ones who can afford “classical” music and high arts).

Meanwhile, the latest Economist issue features Westerners as the new Japanese (lost decades).

This summer in Oslo is also a turning point for the once Nordic Paradise.

To find Seasons in the Sun, one has to go further than Somalia, Sarasota or Singapore.

Maybe it’s a Lonely Planet after all. It’s the summer in our selective memory while reality is that of a declining  West. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun… Mature voices, innocent times. If you can read my mind…, it’s like an old-time movie.

Disco distraction

That’s what we need. Late 70’s, we also got gas price hike.

We got “a crisis of confidence”. And we got Middle East hostage situation that drove Nightline ratings over the top.  But we also got disco. It helped.

Distraction did not solve any problem. It just got our minds off the situation at hand. For however long the studio, most famous of all, 54, still opened.

Shiny shirts, bell-bottom pants, and yes, the disco ball.

Travolta, the Soul Train and the Bee Gees.

Everybody boogied.

Everybody heard of or listened to “Le Freak“.

Actually, it’s not the kind of music to be listened to, like “Air on the G-string“.

It’s dance music.

And for 15 minutes (Andy Warhol was there at studio 54) of fame, the disco era was gone.

For good.

Dancing Queen (no longer seventeen) and the Abba, all gone.

The hostage rescue effort failed. The Star Wars shield was dreamed up then took the Wall down along with it.

The Challenger went up in flame while the Concord got canned.

Now, NASA has to hitch a ride, and the Chinese bullet train hit its target (another train going on the opposite track). Everybody outspent their allotted 15 minutes of fame. Middle Eastern and Western terrorists also got their air time and equal time (Fort Hood in uniform vs Oslo, also in uniform).

I know now why we need a disco distraction: it arrived at the time when race, gender and class were all blended on the dance floor, under the ball. As long as you can afford some tight clothes, hitch a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, then you are in.

Take your turn in the middle of the circle, and take some steam off (Saturday Night Fever).

Everybody got his/her turn in that tribal circle and the DJ was our Priest.

We melted from one disco song to another and the beat carried us through the night. Distraction? yes. Destruction? no.

Fast forward to 2011, everybody forms into “circles” (we used to call it cliques).

And with google’s SEO, google’s Plus etc…we only hear and see what we most want to “search” ( selective revelation and association). To stand out, we must pay attention to personal branding and (first) page-ranking.

No wonder the Oslo’s terrorist planned ahead not only his exit, but also his defense, his manifesto, and his image (preppy crusader and defender of an imperial past), all well crafted to maximize his allotted 15 minutes of fame. And we (and the cable news media) ate it up.

Without disco distraction, we have to face gas price, debt talk, and death toll with nowhere to turn to, except online, his planned pulpit for hate and intolerance. Disco, a distraction? Yes. The Oslo terrorist, a destruction? Yes. Now we know who is “Le Freak”.

On Seeing

With YouTube, Skype Video and 4-G network, we will be watching a lot of video.

Some content was finally “remastered” to be added on to the collective archive in the cloud.

Yet, we neglect to clean our lenses and learn to see as if for the first time.

The sense of wonder, curiosity, marvel, or just discover what’s been there all along.

(The National Archivist picked Star Wars among others for future

generations).

I had my glass redone last week. After trying the new lenses on, it got worse. Turned out that the store had the wrong measurement for the order.

What you see depends on where you stand.

A or B? Is this better or worse?

Yesterday, on Bloomberg, Pimm Fox had a great interview with Howard Davidowitz, who pointed out that with more online shopping, we are stuck with so much excess in commercial retail space.

I live close to the near-abandoned Palm Beach Mall. All stores had moved out, except for JC Penney. Even when it’s not “last chance bargain” store, it feels like it.

We view others and being viewed within a context. I have my daughter’s high school graduation picture on my desk. I might be looking at her picture, but actually, she has looked at me, watching Dad struggle, put on his best face, war face if need be.

We also see differently when we are intoxicated, or with a pocket full of money.

It’s sad to hear that attempts at micro lending in India have failed due to loan sharks.

Noble idea but not without some hiccups.

With a new decade comes new configuration, if only we can “see” (IaaS for instance).

See what’s left standing. See what’s coming up from behind.

See who are still with us when the dust is settled.

And most importantly, seeing our real selves: that which has actually emerged due to so much contextual stimuli (that draw out our characters, and sharpen them in the process.)

The old Western movies extolled the Alpha Male (Last Man Standing).

Somehow, our Capitalist society got a page from that same script. The result is, Chase  branch at every corner, and JC Penney the only left in the block.

I know now what’s tomorrow’s blog should be about: on becoming.

New terms such as “coffice” (in Korea, you pay for the coffee like at Starbucks and sit down to commandeer a table from 9-5), TARP, CDO etc…New Year Celebration, on ABC, I heard Ke$ha (We are who we are) say “let’s make twenty eleven a bitch”.

Underneath it all, we should be glad that next-gen are holding it quite well.

If twenty eleven turns out as expected, then we are going to be OK.

That’s how I “see” it. So much wasted retail space, so much wasted US talent.