George Carlin

I've been seeing a lot of talk on the Internet lately about George Carlin. He is far and away my favorite comedian, a troubled, brilliant, and insightful man. People are quoting him on politics, religion, seven words you can never say, humanity, and the meaning of life. But they are all missing the point. The most profound thing George Carlin ever said was:

"You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

Case closed.

Beam Me Up Scotty, There IS Intelligent Life Down There

So this just happened in Netflix Customer Service...

Christopher Colombo! Ze Great Christopher Colombo!

The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation--full of impatience. He said:

"Come wis me, genteelmen!--come! I show you ze letter writing by Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!--write it wis his own hand!-- come!"

He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his finger:

"What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! handwriting Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!"

We looked indifferent--unconcerned. The doctor examined the document very deliberately, during a painful pause. --Then he said, without any show of interest:

"Ah--what--what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?"

"Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!"

Another deliberate examination.

"Ah--did he write it himself; or--or how?"

"He write it himself!--Christopher Colombo! He's own hand-writing, write by himself!"

Then the doctor laid the document down and said:

"Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that."

"But zis is ze great Christo--"

"I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out!--and if you haven't, drive on!"

We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said:

"Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent bust Christopher Colombo!--splendid, grand, magnificent!"

He brought us before the beautiful bust--for it was beautiful--and sprang back and struck an attitude:

"Ah, look, genteelmen!--beautiful, grand,--bust Christopher Colombo!-- beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!"

The doctor put up his eye-glass--procured for such occasions:

"Ah--what did you say this gentleman's name was?"

"Christopher Colombo!--ze great Christopher Colombo!"

"Christopher Colombo--the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he do?"

"Discover America!--discover America, Oh, ze devil!"

"Discover America. No--that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo --pleasant name--is--is he dead?"

"Oh, corpo di Baccho!--three hundred year!"

"What did he die of?"

"I do not know!--I can not tell."

"Small-pox, think?"

"I do not know, genteelmen!--I do not know what he die of!"

"Measles, likely?"

"May be--may be--I do not know--I think he die of somethings."

"Parents living?"

"Im-poseeeble!"

"Ah--which is the bust and which is the pedestal?"

"Santa Maria!--zis ze bust!--zis ze pedestal!"

"Ah, I see, I see--happy combination--very happy combination, indeed. Is--is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?"

Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad

The Truth Is (Still) Out There

It was my 35th birthday - Friday, September 10th, 1993. There was a new show premiering that evening that looked kind of interesting. At 8:00 we tuned in to our local Fox affiliate, and one hour later, I turned to look at my wife, both of us knowing that I had just been given the best present I would ever receive.

And for the next nine years, this was exactly the case. The reward for a long week of work was getting to ride the paranormal rollercoaster along with Special Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder, Special Agent Dana Scully MD, AD Skinner, the Smoking Man, and the most eclectic assortment of characters ever casted. The onion conspiracies created by Chris Carter, affirmed my wildest, lunatic-fringe, tinfoil-hat theories.

Last Christmas, my son and daughter-in-law gave me a gift subscription to Netflix. I enjoyed the service so much that when the gift subscription expired, I renewed the service. One of the first things we did, was to put The X-Files on our queue, starting from the beginning of the series. We are now in the middle of season 2, and continue to be amazed all over again as we relive the cutting edge horror and humor of each succeeding episode. We share Mulder's frustration as the truth slips through his fingers, and fear for Scully's safety as dangerous forces beyond our comprehension manipulate reality.

We saw the movies. We displayed the calendars. We bought the cassettes and soundtracks. And we continue to hope for a new theatrical release.

Carter cites many influences for the creation of The X-Files, but perhaps none more so than another of my personal favorites, the 70's TV series The Night Stalker starring Darren McGavin as the hapless investigative reporter Carl Kolchak. In fact, Darren McGavin guest starred on several episodes as Mulder's hero X-Files founder, retired FBI Special Agent Arthur Dales.

Side note: The X-Files introduced the world to the Lone Gunmen (a reference to the JFK assassination), a trio of cyber activists who appeared in various episodes in all nine seasons, and assisted Mulder and Scully by providing research and background information on government cover-ups. Long before there was an info-war, the Lone Gunmen were the original alternative news journalists.

The eerie and iconic X-Files theme song, titled "Materia Primoris," was written by Mark Snow, who went on to compose the background music for the run of the show. Outside sources for the show's soundtrack range from Bach and Beethoven to Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper, with a little Bobby Darin, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Partridge Family thrown in for good measure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKO-aBQ6DPs
The X Files Theme (P.M. Dawn Remix)

Unfortunately, in my opinion, as the series progressed, it became ever more reliant on the mythic story arc that involved not one but THREE different  interwarring, extraterrestrial species, alternately trying to enslave, colonize and save mankind, each to varying degrees in collusion with separate factions of our government, foreign governments and shadow governments. As the show wound ever more deeply into these confusing and unfathomable plotlines, I started to lose interest, and in fact, by season 7, the show had moved from a guilty Friday night pleasure to a ho hum Sunday evening obligation, and Fox Mulder had left the lead role and appeared only intermittently for the final two seasons.

Interestingly enough, at this same time, the show introduced Scully's new partner, FBI Special Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick), of T2 fame. In a 180 degree role reversal, Scully was now the firm believer in the unbelievable and Doggett the wide-eyed skeptic. A fan of the actor, I reluctantly tuned back in and was surprised to find that these were some of the best shows of the series.

By the time The X-Files ended, the show had become the longest-running science fiction series in U.S. television history. The series won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Awards, and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson received multiple award nominations with several wins.

The show also holds the distinction of being both a cult classic and a mainstream hit, that spawned several catch phrases including: "I want to believe," "The Truth Is Out There," and "Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen."

Side note: In all nine seasons of The X-Files, there was never a "Halloween" episode. But if I was going to nominate one, it would be, "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas." Yes, yes, I know. There are dozens of creepier, more disturbing, more gruesome, more intense, and more twisted stories to choose from. And yes, this was written and produced for a completely different holiday. But hear me out. This episode, originally conceived as a haunted house tale, stars Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as an elderly pair of happily married ghosts. The thought of being separated from each other was so unthinkable that in 1917 they entered a consensual murder/suicide pact, and since that time have tried to lure unsuspecting couples into the same fate.

Scully comments, "The dark Gothic manor, the omnipresent low fog hugging the thicket of overgrowth... Wait. Is that a hound I hear baying out on the moors?" Mulder, alarmed at a noise, says, "Shhh! What was that?" to which Scully replies, "These are tricks that the mind plays. They are ingrained clichés from a thousand different horror films. When we hear a sound, we get a chill, we, we - we see a shadow and we allow ourselves to imagine something that an otherwise rational person would discount out of hand."

The episode has Mulder and Scully shooting each other and crawling towards the front door drenched in blood before the story resolves itself.

From the pilot episode, simply (or satirically) titled "Pilot" where Fox Mulder welcomes Dana Scully to his dark, cluttered, claustrophobic, basement office (thereby setting the tone for all that is to come) with the words, "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted," to the series two-part ending, "The Truth," when Mulder is secretly subjected to a military tribunal, but escapes punishment with the help of the other agents, and he and Scully become fugitives, few other shows before or since have had the cultural impact of The X-Files.

Infernal

"The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."

Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy

Chrysalis

For the first time in human history the future of our entire species rests upon the choices of a single generation — us — and the choices are being made within a small window of time — now.

The way we solve the simultaneous crises — such as our response to climate change, the unsustainable and growing levels of extreme poverty, the emergence of new diseases, the growing shortages of food and fresh drinking water, the growing chasm between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, and the unsustainable demand for energy — will chart the destiny, or seal the fate of our global family.

The emerging bridge between the sciences that tell us how the universe works, and the spiritual traditions that give such knowledge meaning in our lives, plays a vital role in the new thinking that heads off the darkest possibilities of our future.

The new shift in thinking is the gateway to human transformation. And because of the sheer number of people involved in the shift, and the growing magnitude of the crises that are driving us to change the way we think, we are standing on the threshold of human transformation at a level unlike anything ever before known on Earth.

Gregg Braden

Idle Hands Are the Devil's Workshop

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