Nessie, Will You Please Show Yourself?

Based on my thoughts on other paranormal- phenomenon-blogs, my opinions on cryptids may shock you: I am on the fence as to whether I believe they exist or not. In other words, I’m not so sure I believe in the existence of them, mainly the two most infamous, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. The argument has always been, the only way to confirm the existence of such creatures is if one is captured alive or is hunted and killed. The need for proof is of course part of human nature. Neither of these options sound appealing because it doesn’t seem right to sacrifice a thriving single living creature put in captivity for a specimen to satisfy a scientific curiosity nor should anyone be actively hunting either of these creatures for the same reasons. That is why I ask that Nessie finally show herself (or himself?) to the world, to end a debate.

https://m.outdoorrevival.com/travel/loch-ness-monster-real.html

Legends of both have been circulating throughout history in North America and Scotland respectively (“Champ” or “Champie” in New York State’s Lake Champlain for example is “our” Nessie) and “man-like apes” from all over the world, specifically the American Pacific Northwest and the Himalayan mountains. The truth is, Bigfoot is quite a sales boon in the Pacific Northwest as a tourist draw. The same for Nessie in Scotland.

Legends of course are based on truth and I have no doubts that creatures of these descriptions have been seen throughout history by many straight thinking people. I also do not dismiss Nessie or Bigfoot as tall tales, steeped in recycled cultural folklore. The legend of the Loch Ness Monster goes back much further than the famous 1934 photograph:

This photo has been authenticated and disproven so many times over the decades, the latest determination being that it is a hoax. My opinion is it probably IS a hoaxed photograph, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the legend isn’t true.

We’re so ignorant of what is in our oceans and lakes because they are environments to which human beings are not suited or designed for. Even in our curiosity with current technology, we still have no clue what really exists in the bottoms of these bodies of water. Loch Ness is kind of an anomaly, a glacial lake formed by trapped ice between mountains. It is not as need or wide as, say, Lake Superior in the Upper Midwest. But how do we really know what is in these mysterious bodies of water? The reality is, we don’t know.

A while back, I did a post on the strange mystery of people that disappear in our National Parks. One of the actual mainstream theories is that these people have been attacked and killed by either wild animals or by Bigfoot. This Bigfoot theory is just as plausible as the next, frankly, and I never dismiss it because the unknown factor, the fact that like our oceans, we just do not know what is in our forests.

Of course with most phenomena, skeptics always hit you with what you didn’t see: i.e “you didn’t see a prehistoric aquatic dinosaur” or “you didn’t see an previously thought to be extinct hominid”. This talking down to of our own senses is both annoying and insulting, vaguely similar to “explanations” for unidentified flying objects. The historical accounts of these two particular cryptids being seen over the centuries automatically disqualifies the skeptics. Certainly somebody saw something otherwise there would be no legend. And if the legend dies, a great story will die and I say we shouldn’t let that happen.

Memento Mori

Is a family portrait not complete without everyone in the photograph, even if one of the family is, well, deceased? Ask this Victorian family as well as many others of the era on both sides of “the pond” and they would argue yes.

https://theconversation.com/memento-mori-remember-that-you-have-to-die-42823

The practice of photographing dead loved ones is almost synonymous with the early beginning of photography itself in the mid to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Photo portraits were an expensive luxury at first, but as the technology developed further (glass negatives instead of the Daguerreotype metal plates first used), many families began to use this seemingly morbid practice to remember those who have passed. But is it as morbid as we in the twenty-first century may believe? The Egyptians mummified their great leaders for, at a basic level, to be remembered for all eternity. So far so good.

We’re living in a time where digital photography reigns and will continue to do so thanks to smart phones and tablets with high-resolution and high-quality miniature camera lenses. Also we’re a society as a whole that takes an endless series of selfies wherever we go in life. And while it’s fun to take self portraits of ourselves and loved ones at beautiful sites and places, there are those who will take self-portraits in the most mundane of places, say Taco Bell for instance, and sadly, in the bathroom mirror. The purpose of selfies naturally leans towards selfishness, but it is also to be remembered. People as a whole never forget stupidity.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-selfies-dumb

I’d wager most of the amateur shutterbugs today probably don’t know of the practice of memorializing dead loved ones through photography as much as they should because they proably don’t know the circumstances behind the reasoning: high death rates. It wasn’t until the polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s that American death rates were able to plummet as they have. In the Victorian era before antibiotics and vaccines, any number of common and uncommon diseases could take away a loved one. When death struck and took someone, many families wanted to memorialize that person after death other than a simple headstone in a graveyard and photos were the means to accomplish this.

Keep in mind though, the shutter speeds of early cameras were not fast at all and sometimes required sitting still for a longer period of times than a mere few seconds. Can you imagine the family pictured above sitting in these positions with their dead daughter for a minute or more to get the exposure on film? The many generations before us were certainly a lot less squeamish than we are today. Again, that also has to do with the modern mortality rates. In other words, people were more accustomed to death.

We as a modern society do not handle death as those, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. We’re a little past the sesquicentennial of the end of the War of Northern Aggression (that’s the Civil War for all you Yankees) which was America’s first real visage of death, a war that also popularized photography in America. Some of the best and most grisly images in American history come from pictures taken after some of our most heated and bloody battles, Antietam, Shiloh and Gettysburg for example. The public couldn’t get enough. And perhaps it is a good thing that this conflict was documented in this manner for teaching future generations about the horrors of conflict and war, sometimes a sadly necessary function of humanity.

But what can and do death portraits teach the selfie generation? I see daily posts on Facebook of friends of mine opine through status or meme how much they miss a parent or other meaningful loved ones and I understand fully. It is hard to let go. And I see posts of people who are screaming for attention, often in various and dangerous ways in a public forum like Facebook.

The literal translation of memento mori from Latin is “remember that you have to die”. It is the “medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits”. The “live for today” generation doesn’t truly appreciate the time we have now and the looming end each of us have. Perhaps the Victorian era had a leg up on us with this realization.

Success Always Brings Haters

My wife wanted to know why I have been researching the life of Walt Disney over the last few months, absorbing tons of videos on YouTube and soon to be purchasing many books. Perhaps it’s the great American story behind him that I respect and have been yearning to learn more of. True men of genius fascinate me and there are many other unappreciated geniuses I would eventually love to talk about. Walt is not like the others I have posted about such as Jim Henson and Mozart, two men in totally different eras in different places and working in different arts. Those two geniuses I described as being “tortured”, constantly wrestling with their own minds to create new art and never quite satisfied, whether it be music or with storytelling and film. Walt’s mind was not tortured to create, but driven to innovate not for his sake but for everyone’s benefit and enjoyment. And the biggest difference between them all was he was allowed to stoke the fires of his genius by being successful. He also was what Ray Bradbury called an “optimal behaviorist”, going out and trying new things, experimenting without thought to success, failure or even profitability. If the idea works, great. If it doesn’t, oh well. Let’s move on to the next idea.

People of the present, learned or not, can either defend or lambaste the reputations of people from history. My choice is to defend the defendable and chaste the inexcusable. It is difficult to defend the dead however without knowing the ins and outs of that person’s lifetime and that is why I have been studying Walt.

At the 90th birthday of a certain celebrity mouse, there’s a new book coming out, stating in so many words, that Walt Disney deliberately and with malice stole the character of Mickey Mouse from his creative partner and co-creator Ubbe Iwerks for his own use and purposes. We know that Mickey Mouse is the intellectual property that began an entire entertainment empire. Scandalous as that sounds, as I believe the intent is, it is completely preposterous according to Disney historians, family friends and those that knew and worked with the man.

https://nypost.com/2018/06/30/walt-disney-stole-the-idea-for-mickey-mouse-off-his-friend/amp/

For decades after his death, Leftist haters have spread so much rumor and innuendo about Walt, from slave driving his employees to rampant racism, sexism and anti-Semitism from himself and in the entire Disney organization. Walt didn’t make many friends testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 following the unionization of his cartoonist staff and the strike against Disney Studios in 1942 and the personal attacks by union agitators. That may have a lot to do with the hate, jealousy and conjured derogatory myths towards him that continues today and seeing that future president Ronald Regan also testified in front of that same 1947 committee provides insight into why he was despised as well.

Jealousy is, in my view, simply fear of others successes. Walt’s entire life was dedicated to proving naysayers wrong, either producing high-quality art and story through his cartoons or his ventures into technology and innovation, including theme parks and urban planning. And in most cases he both proved them all wrong and made tremendous profit on it. Even when he lost money on projects, his optimal behaviorism looked forward to the next project. And there was always another project.

His commitment to American free-enterprise and cooperation with American industry and belief of working closely wrankled anti-corporate rewriters of history. Walt’s affection for other large corporations and his love of innovation goes hand in hand–working together to promote new ideas and technology for everyone’s benefit. He saw corporate America as something not to be feared but a relationship to use to reap those benefits. It is true there would not have been a successful American space program if Walt hadn’t shown the interest and passion to go into space and his efforts to educate the public on the need to invest time and money. His promotion of space exploration on his television show in the 1950s garnered the public’s understanding.

Walt’s belief in and promotion of sacred traditional American values is what I believe is the most important aspect of the man. To always work hard, dream and achieve is a hallmark of the American story. As the following article written in 1968 by critic Richard Schickel for American Heritage puts it, Walt was “a man whose taste and morality comfortably reflected those of the middle-class American majority“:

http://www.americanheritage.com/content/walt-disney-myth-and-reality

For the last fifty years, intellectuals have pooh-poohed middle-class values. If you look at Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, the Main Street that typifies middle America is celebrated and appreciated out of a partially nostalgic yet practical view that those Main Street values do matter. I don’t know what is to hate about that.

Schickel also in this same article points out that Walt was an ‘inarticulate, withdrawn man. Intellectually and emotionally he remained a child, but he was anything but childlike when it came to managing and directing the only thing he greatly cared about—his business or, to use the phrase favored by his publicity department, his ‘magic kingdom’.” Shame on Mr. Schickel for calling Walt, one of the best storytellers of this century inarticulate. I think that many of learned academia lookdown on and condedsend those with little education pedegree–Walt never completed a high school education–that are more successfulthan those who ridicule. Again, jealousy.

Sadly, Disney has become more of a brand name than a legacy, only superimposed (rightly so) on a corporate logo. Walt was a lion of business and creative ingineuity yet very few understand what a difference in the world he made as an individual. I tend to believe the people who ran the empire after his passing slowly lost the passion and energy he had for making the world a better place. Yes, that sounds totally banal, but can you imagine a world without Walt’s influence? How sad it would probably be. What is sadder that people who had a strong positive influence on our lives as Americans are being torn apart after the fact.

Which Alien is More Frightening?

There was a recent Facebook clickbait list of the scariest Sci-Fi aliens in films and I of course couldn’t resist. Among the ones chosen, the most interesting was the alien virus from the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain. This begs the question: as scary as the monster-like outer space aliens are, are the aliens we can’t see more frightening? Naturally, the enemy you can’t see coming is the one to fear the most.

If you are an afficianado of The X-Files, you already know the mythology of the grey aliens as we know them, that they are the original inhabitants of Earth and has origins as a virus suspended in crude oil, natural to the planet, with the intention to reconstitute themselves physically through mass infection at a later date. Even though this is science fiction, it has the most plausibility of actually happening. And who is to say it hasn’t?

The Spanish Flu epidemic of the early 1900s devastated the population of the Earth. In fact, as the First World War was ravaging in Europe, the flu was killing off many throughout the world including U.S. servicemen. There were more U.S. military personnel killed by the flu at home than we lost by combat in France in 1917 and 1918. The origins of this particular strain are still not completely understood by medical science, nor the origins and complexities of many viruses that are known and catalogued. Could it be that the Spanish Flu was a space-bourne virus, thus technically making it extraterrestrial? Possibly. There are theories that HIV/AIDS could be something extraterrestrial in origin, born and cradled from some asteroid meteor or comet hurtling endlessly through space before somehow crashing to the surface of the Earth. But as we all know, space itself is dangerous and has its own health effects on humans:

Diseases themselves are a mystery to science. As much study has been done, there is not truly an understanding of them as much as could be known. There are cures and sometimes only stopgaps to protect us but bacteria and viruses are some of the most adaptable organisms on the planet. Even the historical/scientific origins of these origins are in question. If the theory of evolution is to be believed, do bacteria and viruses also have a supposed common ancestor? Could that common ancestor be extraterrestrial?

This discussion of alien viruses and bacteria dovetails into panspermia, the theory that life was begun on Earth via this similar method of bacteria and viruses carried by natural space objects like meteors and comets or by the more wild theory of ancient aliens purposefully spreading their DNA across the cosmos in an attempt to save or create life. While I don’t personally subscribe to the theory as a whole it is interesting to ponder on.

As much as we collectively are afraid of Xenomorphs “Martians” or little grey (not green) men, we also tend to forget about the obvious, that it doesn’t necessarily take War of the Worlds or Invasion of the Body Snatchers to conquer humanity. There is so much in this vast universe that has the potential to harm us but the unknown is so much more scary. We’ll never be able to understand everything that the universe contains considering that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and we have no idea the actual age of the rest of the universe, only scientific guesses. And the natural and biological mysteries of our own planet are just as difficult.

We’ve been asking the questions “Are we alone in the universe?” and “Have we been visited byan alien species?” Perhaps the second question can asnwer the first if we consider the realm of the microscopic and realize “they” may have been here a while and we haven’t noticed yet.

Our Gasoline Safe Space

The electric car is being forced on consumers by a leftist multi-billionare. That’s the only way I can describe Tesla and Elon Musk and not be too political about it. A recent article I recently read about the company and its process of manufacturing their new Tesla 3 model is quite concerning and defies the “laws” of manufacturing common sense. To attempt to learn as you go when manufacturing cars before you are truly ready to put it in production is dangerous at best. In other words, Tesla is putting together its line of cars when it hasn’t perfected the means of doing so in mass production and assembly line terms. It’s almost like putting together a LEGO set with no instructions and only a picture.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-still-figuring-out-the-model-3-as-it-builds-th-1827268649?utm_campaign=socialflow_jalopnik_facebook&utm_source=jalopnik_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

I cannot say it enough: the completely electric vehicle is still not practical for everday Americans. Until certain technical and engineering challenges have been solved Tesla and others like it will not bring the innovation of fully electric vehicles to the market successfully. And people like me are perfectly satisfied living in our gasoline-powered safe spaces, willing to keep our trust in oil.

The folly of Tesla’s methods for manufacturing its cars is similar to a writer publishing a novel without any edits. Cars and books are both products and if they are not ready for consumers to buy, they just aren’t ready. Editing and research and development have to be part of the processes. You can’t be a Walt Disney and just invent a theme park and vacation industry on the fly. It is perfectly acceptable to try and innovate, but sometimes the old ways work best.

Elon Musk may shun the old ways of the Detroit automakers assembly line but there was a reason that system has worked for almost a hundred years nearly consistently. Of course over the years, robotics has come in to play to make these assembly lines more efficient in tandem with human counterparts, but the basics of assembly lines are as American as apple pie and baseball. They are tried and true. But there is a caveat.

Tesla wants to be a Ford Motor Company, despite their recent tiffs and insult trading with this competitor automaker. The problem is Tesla is too big for its britches and should stop trying to be a mass production company. The reason, Mr. Musk? Your company and your product is still a novelty, available to a select few able and willing to pay out the nose for an impractical vehicle for their own sense of self worth (that includes other rich leftists and the Hollywood types). Plus, the demand for your cars is, pardon the pun, manufactured by elites. As much as everyday people would like to have a clean electric car that looks cool (and they really do look cool), paying $2.65 a gallon at the gas pump is more affordable than the $35,000 starting price (the Model 3) despite other assertions.

https://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-3-just-got-cheaper-1827171048

The electric car is a lot like the Laserdisc of the 1980s, a technology designed to fill the need of a problem no one was aware that truly needed fixing. Laserdisc was a luxury that wasn’t practical for entertainment consumers of that era. VHS tapes could fill the need mostly cheaper and with equal or better quality. Again, gasoline cars are still the best mode of transportation as far as long-term cost and efficiency and if there is any alternative energy sources for cars that should get more research and more time it is both natural gas and hydrogen.

Don’t come at the American consumer and make promises you can’t keep. If your product is not great, keep working at it until it is ready. If your manufacturing process is still flawed, stop building until you have worked out all the kinks. Tesla, I believe, has forgotten a major factor in capitalism, that failure is perfectly acceptable as long as you learn from the mistakes and readjust to start anew. Do I think Tesla is a failure? No, I consider Tesla a good product idea way ahead of its time with ambitious plans and partial delusions of grandeur.

Don’t Decieve the Audience

Ultimate fans of the Star Wars saga were shocked, just shocked that Rian Johnson, writer and director of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi won the Saturn Award for best writing recently. Their disdain for the film is nothing less than hate, depression and disappointment and the internet trolls have called for nothing less than the entire film to be remade, including a fundraising campaign to do just that. The recent news of Johnson winning an award for a work they consider substandard is just another justification for the fans to go bananas.

https://movieweb.com/amp/last-jedi-saturn-award-win-rian-johnson-internet-reacts/

In a previous post, The Last Jedi As a Plot Exercise, I affirmed that I liked the movie, despite its glaring plot holes and questionable story points. I attempted to explain my views on where the plot of the saga should go at this point in the overall storyline and not whether the quality of the story writing was deserving of any praise. Because of the serious issues of the story which either don’t make sense or drags the plot along, in my opinion Last Jedi does not deserve the praise the director probably wants.

But the sad part is, both sides are right on this issue as crazy as that sounds. Johnson and the Disney Corporation are right because the film does fit into the “canon”, the overall epic derived from the George Lucas era. The fans are right too. Some of the characters are disjointed with the context of the previous films and the surprise leading of fans down one path from the previous script and going completely off on another tangent in the next confused people. My issues are less technical than they are with the story, although fans are not that stupid to not notice these flaws. As writers, we cannot decieve the audience and tell them they aren’t perceiving any flaws. If there are obvious problems, say nothing, but don’t tell fans they are wrong. I think that is what wrankled people.

Johnson clearly short-changed the general audience, the bulk of film goers who aren’t rabid as the fanboys with plot cheats, even though it is science fiction and it is allowed up to a point. But the unnecessary characters (Rose, the other Admiral What’s Her Name) and secondary plots (the whole excursion with Rose and Finn) do not help bolster Johnson’s or Disney’s argument that there is nothing wrong with the film and fans should shut up about it. But they might as well shut up about it and wait for Episode IX because the final episode of a trilogy can and must sum up the story in the final part. Explain things. Tie up any loose ends. If Disney and writer/director J.J. Abrams cannot do that then the new Star Wars films of this generation was a complete failure in terms that they didn’t entertain or inspire as well as the original films did thirty-five years ago.

However….

I don’t believe that Disney is intentionally decieving the audience, nor are they making a non-quality product. Eighty percent of Last Jedi is indeed brilliant. Johnson did do a good job of carrying the saga forward into the new generation and preparing for the next film. Questions remain whether or not the trilogy will be concluded satisfactorily. In my mind, those rabid fans will probably never be satisfied and their whining about it will solve nothing.

Curiouser and Curiouser….

The odd way that the Disney Corporation deals with itself is, well, odd. The amount of actual physical property and intellectual property the company owns is staggering, yet given its history of mismanagement of that property (i.e The Muppets, Star Wars, the upcoming potential deal with 20th Century Fox, the physical layout of Disneyland post-Walt and WDW and the incarnation of EPCOT we got in 1982) we’re left to wonder if the old-timer “Imagineers” have been replaced by corporate robots and moronic yes men. Correct on both counts I’m sure, but I’m also sure that wasn’t ways the case even in the leaner years of the history of the company in the immediate death of Walt in 1966.

To replace a man of genius like Walt Disney has proven to be difficult, and like all companies that try to find their way post-living-legend, bonehead moves get made. Bad deals get approved. Questionable movie projects are done (hello The Cat From Outer Space and The Black Hole). But the parks have remained the staple of the Disney revenue, evidenced by the steady increase in ticket prices adjusted for inflation.

Recently, Disney has announced it finally has plans for the abandoned section of Walt Disney World formerly known as River Country, the first water park that Disney World opened in 1976 and closed and left abandoned since 2001.

https://www.abandonedspaces.com

The circumstances are not perplexing on why the park was closed: two new on property water parks that were built in the 1990s could meet the high demand of visitors while not filling to capacity too quickly; and of course, location location location. River Country, although extremely popular in its heyday, was essentially out of the way of guests, near the Fort Wilderness campground which geographically diagonal from the Magic Kingdom. River Country was one of the first water parks in the nation and because of its newness, there was a learning curve.

But don’t get me started on the brain-eating amoebas supposedly in Bay Lake.

Still, why let prime, prime theme park (lakefront no less) real estate in Florida sit dormant for nearly twenty years and rot? Literally rot. Well, historically the Disney Corporation has not utilized optimum success in planning out its long-term future in regards to their theme parks. Yes, Disney himself invented the theme park industry with the creation of Disneyland and after the building of Walt Disney World in 1971, the company has developed the “vacation industry”. Or a better phrase, the “resort industry” with individual themed resorts and parks as part of a larger entertainment and fun experience for the whole family.

Disney World fans and afficianados tend to be traditionalists and nostalgiats, wanting to recreate moments of their childhood for their own children to experience. While WDW does that successfully for the most part, an organization who thrived in change, now has a history of questionable redos and updates and “forcing” them on vacationers without thinking. It is good to experiment and tinker, but what doesn’t work, doesn’t work. And as magically nostalgic as WDW is to people who have experienced the parks, change is often the last thing wanted.

Urban explorers have questioned the abandonment of the River Country property since the closure and for good reason: Disney does a terrible job of trying to hide it. It is the same reasons that others wonder, the fact that lakefront property has not been used for something new. And as previously inferenced there have been no end of ideas, some good, some bad.

http://www.wdwinfo.com/news-stories/disney-sets-up-plans-and-contractors-for-former-river-country-area-hotel/

Plans are now being made with a contractor (one worked with on previous projects) for a new moderate resort on the space where the old water park still stands. While this is a good thing for vacationers and Disney afficianados, we’re still left to question why it took so long for the company to do it. Revenue has always been steady. Property values in Florida has always been steady. The sheet number of acres purchased for the Disney World project in the 1960s (nearly 28,000!) has not run out. Plus there are a dozen–yes a dozen–of already existing resorts. And WDW has had plenty of abandoned ideas for concept resorts in its history (See previous blog post called The Strange Appeal of the Mouse).

So why now build a new WDW resort on the abandoned River Country property? Well, capitalism is still the best form of economics and the best way to generate more money in this industry is to add value by renovation, (dreaded) change and expansion, this time expansion being the way of adding such value. And in the minds of the current generation of Imagineers and corporate types, it was simply time to make that land valuable again as a potential resort experience. Never mind that it took eighteen years to come to an obvious conclusion.

No One Gets Out of Here Alive

Conspiracy theories know no limits. They reach everywhere apparently, even in the worlds of art literature and music. There are two pop musicians that have conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths, Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison. Both of the conspiracy theories suggest that one or both of these singers could still alive and faked their deaths to escape the pressures of fame, stardom and the industry as whole.

Whether or not Elvis is managing a gas station in Wisconsin or up in a cabin in Alaska is not up for debate, considering there is strong evidence that Elvis indeed died from a drug overdose and has been buried in his grave in his Graceland mansion in Memphis, TN for the last 41 years. For some, it is less believable that for former front man of The Doors has been buried in Paris for 47 years after a similarly questionable drug- related death.

http://allthatsinteresting.com/jim-morrison-death

Jim Morrison was an enigma in his own era and even today is misunderstood by critics and fans. I’ve once heard him described once as a “slightly androgynous rock-and-roll-god”. While that is an interesting, yet clearly generalized take on the man, the real Jim Morrison was a lot more complicated. In the 1991 Oliver Stone film The Doors, the depiction of Morrison can hardly be called a biopic because of its loose amalgamation of what Morrison and the band were really like and the history of their rise to fame in the late 1960s. Even the surviving band mates say this film was not true to life, but what biopic really is. Yet people still base an opinion on the man based on the portrayal concocted by director Oliver Stone and actor Val Kilmer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors_(film)

Obviously growing tired of concerts, promotion and touring after the Miami incident where he supposedly exposed his genetalia to a concert crowd, Morrison took an escape to France with his girlfriend at the time to regroup and rejuvenate. There’s no need to go into detail about how Morrison died, but the “official” cause of death was heroin overdose. Thus begins the conspiracy theory.

Suspicious minds note that Morrison was afraid of needles (the standard way heroin users take the narcotic internally) and that he was not fond of the drug in general. In fact, Morrison’s preferred choice of getting high was alcohol with occasional trips on the standard recreational drugs of the 1960s a la marijuana, LSD and barbiturates of all kinds. They say any heroin he took was snorted and not injected.

All of this makes the 1960s seem even less appealing.

Whether or not any of what the “experts” say is true or not, it is a historical fact that any famous musical person of this era was seen as subversive and evidence has been leaking for decades that police departments and the FBI were trumping up and kinds of charges against stars like Morrison, Elvis, John Lennon or any number of rock musicians to decrease popularity and render neutral in public perception. It is highly possible that the FBI had files on Morrison considering they had files on Elvis and Lennon (all the Beatles actually) too. Could it be that this constant pressure of the trumped up indecent exposure charges in Miami drove Morrison to an early grave?

While evidence has been bubbling up over the years that the exposure incident that started Morrison’s downfall may have never actually happened, pulling out your junk at a concert doesn’t seem to be in line with Morrison’s reserved nature. True, drugs do make you do stupid things outside of your nature, as does alcohol. Although exhibitionism is inherit to lead singers of rock bands, the surviving members of The Doors would tell you that the late lead singer of their band was a lot shyer than you would imagine.

Now the meat of it: the odds of anyone publicly recognizable being able to fake their own death and live out the remainder of their lives successfully in anonymity is extremely low. In search for simple truths, it is best to say other rock musicians of this time who died young (i.e. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) got lost in stardom and got over their heads. Of course, recreational drug use and burgeoning alcoholism cannot be factored out. Combined with a seeming depression from being that “androgynous rock-and-roll-god”, it makes complete sense that Morrison would try to cram down the demons of the fame he probably didn’t like with heroin. To say either that he was murdered with a heroin overdose or secretly walked away from stardom never to be seen again is denigrating an already short life of an iconic individual.

Do Not Forget the Important Days

Imagery of the pivotal battle of the Second World War pales in comparison to the real life struggle the Allied invasion armies had on that day in June of 1944.

These are American men in their Higgins Boats on their way to assured death and destruction. And as we go further and further linearly away from that date, the survivors of the event number less and less each year that goes by. We as modern Americans try to remember those who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of France and of Europe itself only to realize that the memory of American lives has faded in the current generations. Those conspiracy theorists who believe that the United States was tricked into the war or those libertarian minded who insist that millions of Americans were needlessly lost in a war that President Franklin Roosevelt should have never let happen only deepen the hole that the memory of this important world event has been crammed down into, unceremoniously mentioned breifly on social media and possibly the news media if we’re lucky. Whatever your opinion is it was still a war America had to fight. For the sake of the world this was a battle we had to win

History is a great teacher if you look at it objectively. What the D-Day invasion teaches us is that as difficult as something may seem to be, if it has to be done, it must be done. General Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, agonized for days on the cost of this battle in terms of life and materiel. The outcome of the invasion was never assured. Many packs of cigarettes were smoked before and during the battle by the great general.

https://www.stripes.com/servicemembers-mark-74th-anniversary-of-d-day-landings-in-lead-up-to-next-year-s-big-event-1.531122

All that we ask as people who study and revere history is for everyone to not forget the important days. On this day, do not forget the cost to secure the future we have now.

Memorial Day 2018 Editon

A little late, but better late than never:

As Americans know, or at least partially realize, the last Monday in the month of May is designated as Memorial Day. I imagine most people understand the significance of the holiday by taking the family on a semi-long trip or by firing up the grill and cooking copious amounts of meat. While both of those options are satisfactory (I certainly enjoyed the three-day weekend away from work and time with friends and family), let’s be totally honest about what you are grilling steaks and chicken for: a day created after the War Between the States and officially set aside in 1971 to honor American military war dead. Do those burgers and ribs cooking over flames justly grieve and honor those sacrifices?

The tradition of honoring the deaths of soldiers is not a new concept of course but we Americans have taken it to a more solemn and revered state. We’re not a nation of war, yet we fought one to gain our existence and independence, with a “rematch” in 1812. And it is very true that the United States has sent soldiers sailors and Marines to die in seemingly unnecessary and for sketchy reasons (see a previous post about the beginning of the Vietnam War) yet the respect that a good majority of our populace has for the fighting man or woman has never waivered.

On the other hand, having discussions with men and women that I associate with both at work and friends who have served, many of them are reticent about their feelings of Memorial Day. To quote an anonymous friend “I’ve experienced too many guys that I served with commit suicide to get into the so-called spirit of the holiday”.

Understandable.

Memory is a strange thing, tied to all emotions. Memory of death specifically resulting from war and the grisly nature of it is extremely powerful. Remembrances, mainly unwanted, of those events are what causes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, originally called “war nerves” and “shell shock”. Perhaps those who took their own lives to keep from remembering should be included in the annual memorial.

The original question posed still remains unanswered: Do we do a service to those servicemen who died in war with the way that we celebrate it? Are we doing it appropriately? Well, we Americans are continuing to live our lives, raising our families and enjoying the fruits of our own toils in freedom and liberty.

I’d say the dead probably do approve.