Assault on batteries.

I have to say, I have been very let down by batteries. The limits of battery capacity have completely upended any hopes of getting away from fossil fuels. No one seems to want to talk about this in the press, but it's true. 

After 9/11, many people (including me) wondered if we could get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels quickly. Nothing to do with the climate -- this was about starving the petrogarchs who sponsor terrorism. Ruining the garbage nations that only had oil to sell and only hatred to manufacture. It has not worked out. 

Even if we lived in a fantasy world where windmills and solar panels were not a useless boondoggle of limited and ecology-flattening waste, and where environmentalists would let us dam rivers and burn garbage and split atoms for electricity instead of suing and sabotaging to demand the end of these facilities, and where all minerals needed for batteries were plentiful and cheap, batteries would still suck compared to gasoline. 

In 2009, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted that "The maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven’t yet been demonstrated to work is still only about 6 percent of crude oil." Which sucks, because "Renewable energy–unlike fossil carbon–is harnessed dynamically from the environment. Therefore, it won’t be as useful as fossil carbon until it can be stored and transported with similar ease." To carry the magically-generated electricity I mentioned above, cars and other vehicles would have to have a far, far better ability to hold power, resist power loss, and not explode into flames than anything we have currently. So far, no battery like this that I've heard of has even been proposed as plausible. 

We figure that at some point, maybe not for five hundred years but at some point, we're going to run out of petroleum. Assuming Mr. Fusion is not available, what then? All the optimistic science fiction stories tended to have things run on batteries, but it may be as likely as having things run on unicorn farts after all. It may be physically impossible to make the kind of batteries we need for the modern world to rely on them. 

I don't have any answers. I'm just disappointed. You're never going to get a podracer to fly on methane, let alone an Odyssey-class Federation starship. I just don't think the future is working out. Thanks a lot, you dumb ol' batteries.  

The disco menace.

It's hard for kids today to appreciate the disco menace. It came on suddenly, and when it had done its damage, it went away. But even though I was a kid, I can never forget.

The word disco was alien when I first heard it, and it seemed like a nonsense word. But it came from the French discotheque, which itself came from "disque disk, record + -o- + -thèque (as in bibliothèque library)" according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, disco is short for record library. A discotheque was a place where people would dance to music played on vinyl records rather than music played by a live band. Any little town could have a dance club even if they had no musicians. The word disco dates to 1957, but disco didn't conquer the world for a while after that.

Disco music was defined by a particular beat, as classic rock is, and as the waltz is. Whereas rock used the backbeat (the emphasis on every even beat -- one TWO three FOUR etc.) and the waltz's emphasis is on the second and third beats (one TWO THREE one TWO THREE), the disco bass drum is hit on all four beats of the measure. Thus the four-on-the-floor, thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa. It's harder to play than you'd think, but it had the advantage of letting songs run one after another with the exact same rhythm and speed, so dancers never had to stop unless it was time to re-up the cocaine. 

The thing is, during the height of the vogue, any music could be put through the discoizing machine and come out disco. Any. Music. 

They dusted off a 1926 hit ("Baby Face"), put it through the discoizer, and it got to number two on the disco charts. They took the theme from the TV show I Love Lucy and discoized that, and "Disco Lucy" got to number 9 on the Easy Listening chart. The music from  May 1977's unexpected smash film Star Wars managed to get a whole disco album out of it before the end of the year (Meco's Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk), which is not to be confused with the mashed-up film music set to a disco beat by a studio band called the Force, released as a single before the end of the year. (The B side was the timeless classic "Funky Hat.") Even Ludwig van Beethoven became discofied in 1975, his breathtaking Fifth Symphony shrunken and beat to "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. Disney discofied itself, doing a takeoff of the Village People's "Macho Man" ("Macho Duck"), certainly the most famous track on the immortal 1979 album Micky Mouse Disco. If you stood still long enough, you might get discoized, too -- finding yourself with a whitefro and a leisure suit, gold Italian horn chain, shirt open to the waist. 

It seems to have seized the nation and the world like a kind of mania, but ebbed within a short period. "The Hustle" was a disco landmark, released in 1975, but by 1980, when Studio 54 closed, the whole thing seemed to be old (if still funky) hat. The Who had declared disco dead in 1978. The infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago took place the next year. But it took a while for the rest of the culture to catch up. 

Say what you will about disco, at least it finally got out of the center ring. If only all our manias would have the good sense to ebb as quickly. I can name quite a few that I wish would go away already, or at least go on vacation.

Hard times in a far-off galaxy.

For pool construction ... You Seek Yoda! 

Just call 888-555-YODA! Service fast, rates competitive, hmmm? In all galaxy, best there is!

2020 armam -- er, ornaments.

Well, 2020 is creeping to a close, and as I noted in August, a lot of us seem to be wanting to push the holidays along and get to January 2021. So I have held off on my usual complaints about the Christmas season muscling its way in too early and stomping on Halloween and Thanksgiving and all that. No, bring it on! Then shove it off, and pray for a good new year.

Meanwhile, I notice that Hallmark advertises no less than 1,111 ornaments on its Web site. To be fair, a couple of these are accessories for other ornaments -- hooks, wires, etc. --  and two or three are Halloween ornaments, which is odd. I have seen other companies doing 2020-themed ornaments that involved face masks, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and the like, and I wondered if Hallmark was too. Sad to say, no. 

But that doesn't mean there are not Hallmark ornaments that can mark the year in a special way, representing the many reprehensive things that have come to pass. I've pasted a few below. Find them at your local Hallmark store or of course at Hallmark.com. 

Around this time of year you see a lot of penguins, because of the obsession with snow at Christmas, and Hallmark has one for you! 

The Batman enemy known as the Penguin, a criminal mastermind and ruthless killer -- also a social climber. He's a featured villain in next year's reboot of the film franchise. But the Burgess Meredith version is dapper and not so scary. If you'd like something more disturbing, how about... 

The flying monkeys! The part of The Wizard of Oz that probably freaks out kids the most, unless it's the Wicked Witch of the East's feet curling up under the house. Maybe they'll have that next year -- a plug-in version where the feet roll in and out. 

Speaking of disturbing:

This is one of 29 different Star Wars themed ornaments! They only have three patriotic ornaments. Even the Disney Princesses only have 17. And among the Star Wars ornaments we get this one, literally titled "A Lack of Faith." Which in a way is nice. Christmas is about faith, after all, and come to think of it, so is Santa. Maybe when you play the sound effect (this one talks!) you could think of it as Vader's reaction to Admiral Motti saying he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. "I find your lack of faith distURBing." Then again, you have an ornament of a guy literally torturing another guy on your Christmas tree. I've been down on Darth Vader ornaments before, but even those didn't depict him in the act of crushing a man's windpipe with Jedi magic. But is it perfect for a year best characterized by a killer Chinese respiratory illness? Hmm.

Here's another movie themed disaster: Flick getting his tongue stuck on the frozen flagpole in A Christmas Story. It's not the only scene in the movie where someone gets hurt, but it's the only one we see that requires bandages. Ha ha! Pain! Yes, that does seem to suit this year. But even more than that is:

Anger! From Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. He lights up! His job is to be furious! I think he spends a lot of time on social media! He has been setting fire to Kenosha with his head! He's a mindless missile of fury! Right on the money there, Disney/Pixar! It's the closest thing Hallmark has a to dumpster fire ornament.

Now, a couple of 2020 ornaments that look friendly but are not. 

You may think: A golf bag with Christmas-themed club head covers! Perfect for Uncle Dave, about whom the only thing anyone can remember is that he loves golf! But I look at it and see that Uncle Dave has killed and beheaded Santa, Donder, and Frosty and stuck the heads on poles. North poles, in fact. Maybe I'm just in a mood.

What about this one? "Mischievous Kittens" it's called, but I call it "Hamster in Solitary Gets Terrified to Death." Seriously, this hamster lives a miserable existence. He can't even lie down in that box. He can't fit on the wheel. And now he gets to pee himself with fear as the kitten threatens to disembowel him? This is another scene of horrifying torture, worse because it looks cute.  

All very 2020 in their way -- but surely there must be at least one 2020 ornament that's just cute and harmless! 

Of course! Courtesy of Star Trek: 

The Star Trek Tribble Fabric Ornament with Sound and Motion. It vibrates and coos like the real thing, unless you encounter a Klingon, when I guess it would make that terrible fear noise. So fuzzy and cute! So born pregnant and eager to eat all the food supplies and starve everybody! Don't be taken in by Cyrano Jones in the guise of Hallmark; this cute bubble of fuzz is as big a harbinger of doomsday as the actual Doomsday Machine from another episode.

In fact, if 2021 is as bad as 2020, maybe Hallmark will use the Doomsday Machine for next year's Star Trek themed ornaments. Just spitballing here. 

Hospital TV.

During my medical sojourn last week, I found that you can learn things from the TV the hospital provides to help pass the time. Mainly, you can learn that daytime TV is an irritating way to pass the time. Still, I had nothing to read and no juice on the cell phone until my wife brought me books and a charger, so it was more engaging than looking out the window.

I can't say I wasn't warned. A friend of mine was undergoing cancer treatments last year, and while he was able to stay at home through most of it, he was unable to do anything beyond watch the tube. I believe he said he had memorized episodes of Bonanza and The Twilight Zone and that Wilma Flintstone was starting to look good to him.

Thankfully, I only had a couple of days to deal with it, from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening. I can see how it would make you crazy. Even the all-news channels, or maybe especially those; the constant chewing of the same Bone Du Jour is insane. Apparently there was nothing much in the world of note last Monday except for the Roger Stone sentencing, because all the news channels were on it constantly.

Ah, but the cable TV provided by the hospital had soothing channels, with calming music and video clips from nature. Well, the most educational thing about that was that I couldn't stick with them very long. You'd think a guy in pain, who'd just been through a major pain crisis, would want nothing else on but that channel and the back of his eyelids, but no. No wonder I suck at meditation.

So what did I like?

Well, as I alluded to yesterday, I watched America's Funniest Home Videos on Sunday night. What made that educational was how my attitudes had changed toward people falling during the previous 24 hours. You just fell down the stairs! Go get an X-ray! You have no idea how this can come back to haunt you, you fool! My previous reaction to people falling on AFV was the more lizard-brained Ha ha him fall funny.

On Monday there was a Catholic priest in the little chapel downstairs, and I was able to watch Mass on CCTV. I liked that, although the sound quality was pretty bad.

I picked up a tidbit on the History channel, one that had nothing to do with Ancient Aliens. It was a neat little documentary on Air Force One that the channel ran on Presidents Day. I knew some of the history of the planes assigned that name, but amid the data was this: the name of the country painted on the plane's exterior is meant to simulate the typeface used for the name of the country as it was seen -- for the first time -- on the Declaration of Independence.

Cool.

Other things I leaned came from watching most of Return of the Jedi, which I have not seen in a very long time. And those things were numerous. They include:

1. The movie begins with the worst rescue plan I have ever seen in the movies. I can't even tell what they were trying to accomplish, sending people into Hutt's Hut in dribs. To infiltrate and then take over at a signal? Obviously not, since everything went to hell immediately. It made no sense at all. If R2 didn't have enough space to hide a lightsaber in his chassis, the galaxy would have been screwed. Even then a lot of dumb luck was required. Almost any other plan would have been better. 
2. Mark Hamill was a pretty bad actor. I don't know if he got any better. I haven't the new trilogy and I don't care. But Harrison Ford was pretty bad, too. He looks stoned through the scene where we learn the plan to attack the new Death Star and he is revealed to now be General Solo. If 1970s Steve Martin had been cast as Comic Relief Solo, and played the part the exact same way, people would have thought it was a hilarious spoof. 
3. Retroactively speaking, I hear that Leia was supposed to do all kinds of Force stuff late in the third trilogy. This makes perfect sense, as she's revealed to be a Skywalker. And yet, although Darth and Luke can sense each other's Forceishness in real time across space, neither of them had any idea that the Force would be strong with that princess, too. Was this addressed?

Anyway, by the time we got to the Ewoks, I was about to be whisked out of the room for injections. Some people loathe the little Space Teddy Bears, but at least for those pre-CGI days, they were pretty convincing.

I also saw enough (ten minutes) of Matt Damon's The Great Wall to realize that, whatever faults the Star Wars series might have, if you put them all together in a bag they might still weigh less than the faults in The Great Wall. What a waste of Willem DaFoe.

All of this hard-won knowledge would have been avoided if i'd had more than an 8% charge on my phone.

Maybe I should have spent more time staring out the window. Sure, it's a modern, dull building, and it looks drab and tired although it opened in 2011, and February is not much to look at -- but at least the skies were blue.

Question: Did someone determine that tan and brown are great healing colors? Because that's the sum of the whole color palette in this place. Does it help keep people relaxed and compliant?

Jedi Boot Camp: Day One.

It was you all the time!

There may be spoilers here, so tread with care....

I was thinking the other morning that I hate the "this time, it's personal" school of thriller writing. It's lost its sting, but it was always so phony anyway. It takes the great, vast world and makes it small and circular as an episode of Seinfeld.

In the sixth season of 24, for example, our hero, Jack Bauer, winds up dealing with his own evil and incredibly wealthy father, ultimately leaving the old man to a righteous death on a bombed oil platform. Who thought that Jack came from money before this? And from evil money, no less? He never seemed like any rich kid I ever knew. I think we all would have guessed he was from a military family. But for the sake of the "It was you all along!" moment, we had to make his dad rich and evil. How did superpatriot Jack come from this guy's loins?

Worse was the ridiculous mechanism in Spectre, the 2015 James Bond movie that went through Gordian-knot-like-loops to make iconic villain Blofeld into Bond's own adoptive brother. Billions and billions of people in this world and the most important players in it are brothers? 

"I must find out where this enemy of all that is civilized comes from."
"It's me! You coming over for the hols, Jimmy?"

Nope, too stupid. Too small. Can you imagine how much trouble the world would have been saved if the Bond house had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning one night?

I could almost forgive in 1989's Batman, where villain Jack Napier (pre-Jokerized) turns out to be the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents many years before. Of course, in the comic books, Joe Chill was the young punk who kills the Waynes, which is the kind of street-level thuggery that doesn't require a future supervillain.

Not this guy.

Joe Chill (right).

But in Batman it's Napier who thus creates Batman, who later accidentally drops Napier into a vat of chemicals and makes him the Joker. Holy incestuous relationship! At least they weren't blood relatives. I could almost forgive this if it weren't for Napier's stupid, stupid knack of saying "You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?" before he shoots someone, or at least before he shoots someone named Wayne. The only reason for this is so that the World's Greatest Detective can discover by chance that the Joker killed his parents. I have been sore about that lazy writing for decades now.

Star Wars probably started the whole thing, or rather the second film, when we find out that Vader is Luke's old man. Again, the whole galaxy would have been better off if the Skywalkers had run into a bridge abutment on Naboo. (Also, we find out that Obi is a great big huge liar, but no one tumbled to that until VHS was invented.)

I want to point out again that this is not just the "It's Personal" trope as defined by the invaluable TVTropes site. They include things that become personal, like a cop character's spouse getting killed and him or her going after the bad guy in a rage, because the best police work is done by insane revenge cops. I'm talking about things that are personal at the beginning and stay personal, especially the ones that cause any amount of damage to innocent people dragged into the conflict. All the primary movers in these plots could fit in a Volkswagen Beetle.

I get that they want to bring the added motivation to the character, give the audience a shock at the reveal (which now is about as shocking as the scene where the rebel cop has to turn in his badge), but it was for things like this that the phrase "done to death" was invented. I expect that the Red Baron will turn out to be Snoopy's litter mate in Peanuts 2. "Olaf! It was you all the time!"

The next trope I may have to address is the origin convenience issue, wherein a character we meet as an adventurer of long, rich experience (do the names Solo or Sparrow ring a bell?) turns out to have gotten everything associated with him over a two-week trip to Vegas or the like, from nicknames to sidekicks to personality quirks. Suddenly it becomes Joe from Accounting: The Origin. How he got his position! How he got that expensive chair! How he got to be pals with Wendy from HR! How he got that weird cut shaving! How he got that cool Coach briefcase! All in his first month on the job.

Blarg Wars.

You probably wouldn't guess that I bought this at Walmart because of my interest in the overreach of the regulatory state, child safety, and international commerce, but I did.

Indeed, a chocolate egg with a toy inside was precisely the issue addressed on several occasions by Mark Steyn, who was unable to bring Kinder Surprise eggs to America over the Canadian border because of the menace posed by having the toy inside the egg. The United States government, or rather the agency to which they have ceded sovereignty (as in so many things), was afraid that a child would bite into the Kinder egg and choke on the toy. This puzzled me, as the package already explains what the Kinder Surprise is, and that the toy is not appropriate for children young enough to do such a thing, but that's the way it goes.

I don't think this Star Wars Milk Chocolate & Surprise had any connection to the Kinder people, but I gathered it would be subject to the same rules. So, I wondered, since it obviously had a toy and a chocolate egg, would the toy be inside the egg, signally a reversal of policy and freedom for the Kinder Surprise? Let's find out!

Nope.

The toy comes next to the egg, which I guess is okay, but there seems to be some disconnect in the whole purpose of even having a hollow chocolate egg with a toy. But all right, it's clear that U.S. policy toward choking hazards in chocolate is unchanged. Let those kids in Canada choke all they want; we defend our own!

So let's have a look at this thing.

Okay! We've got... I don't actually know who that legless chap is. Someone with a bendy stick. I thought it was supposed to be Kylo Ren; is it? Scrawny fellow with compensation issues? Maybe.

All right, let's just eat the chocolate and call it a day.

You will not believe this. I could not believe it myself. The chocolate that came with this egg was the most vile, inedible excuse for chocolate I have ever tasted. I've had lousy holiday-themed chocolate, crummy third-world Santas, cheap hollow bunnies, crappy gelt coins, all of it, and of even the worst of it I could say, well, you put a little PB on it and you have a passable Reese's. Not this. This was horrible. For the first time in my life life I threw away chocolate, people. I am 100% serious about this. First time ever. It was ghastly.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. Reviewers on Amazon hated this chocolate. "After one small bite I had to throw the rest away." "Imagine soaking your chocolate egg in gasoline."

It seems to have come from a galaxy far, far away where they comply with U.S. rules but have never tasted chocolate. It could not have come from Kinder or Kinder's parent company Ferrero SpA, which makes some excellent chocolate candy.

Well, the box did promise a surprise, and I guess I have to concede they were right. First chocolate in my life I could not eat. Wow.

Enough with the drumming.

We made it! It's the twelfth day of Christmas!

Pace Bob and Doug, the song traditionally mentions twelve drummers drumming as the gift for this day. We know there was the Little Drummer Boy on Christmas Eve, and now we're up another eleven drummers. How do they keep getting in?

Tomorrow is Epiphany, after which even we die-hards will be taking down the lights (although the actual day of Epiphany is celebrated in the American Catholic church on the following Sunday). I have time to squeeze in one more bit on decorations.

Star Wars stuff was very popular this year. I didn't get a picture of the ones I saw with R2D2, C3PO, and Chewie, or the inflatable BB-8, but here are their sales photos:

I did get shots of these:

Now, first off, we know from important sources that the Star Wars worlds, existing a long time ago in a distant galaxy, do not appear to have Christmas. Merely a Wookie holiday called Life Day. So the connection to out holiday is strange and tenuous.

What else do we see here? Yoda is at least trying to show the proper spirit, putting on the Santa outfit, as are the others. Darth Vader shows contempt for Christmas, as he does for all that is right and good. "I shall not celebrate this Christmas. And I shall not wear any stocking caps on my helmet!" So... how is Darth a Christmas decoration, exactly?

One thing it does remind me of, though, as do all the other Star Wars-themed objects -- that movie was absolutely brilliant in having so many nonhuman and masked stars. Lucas, and now Disney, has now made approximately half the money on Earth selling stuff made in the likeness of something other than the humans who actually appear in the movies. Actors own their own faces and can expect royalties.

Enough of that; it's been a great Christmas season, and I hate the way it peters out. But it kind of peters in, too. We didn't all slap up our decorations on the day after Thanksgiving; we're not taking them all down on the same day either.

The cheerful lights are a little sad, now, with the kids back at school and the adults back at work and two months of solid winter still grinning at us. But the days are getting longer already. The Light that doesn't fade will still be with us, too.

Geek mall.

I get e-mails and occasional catalogs from ThinkGeek.com, an excellent site to buy things for people who are geeks and refuse to grow up.

If they'd had this when I was a kid, I'd have never had any money ever. Come to think of it, I never did have any money ever, but I would have been saving any money I did get to blow it on Think Geek. 

For example, you never knew that you needed silver Batman cuff links, but you will now:

So do I, although dapper as I am, I do not even own a shirt that can take cuff links. However, were I to be a member of a geek wedding party -- a generous one, as these are $50 -- and received these as a groomsman's gift, I would buy such a shirt for just that purpose. 

Most of their products are appropriate for family use, but I did find some things, like the Harry Potter Corset, to be in questionable taste. 

I suppose that might be more appealing to young folks who grew up with the Potter franchise, but I was an adult when the first book came out, so it's hard for me to see a kids' series turned toward naughtiness. It would be like the darker, grittier Hundred Acre Wood.

I also think the design is kind of lousy, with the stupid little tie. 

If your dad is a geek or a dork or a nerd, you must browse their panoply of dad gifts before Father's Day creeps up on us. Where else can you find a Tie Fighter Tie? 

Nowhere, that's where; it's an exclusive to Think Geek. So it's either that for Dad or a new pocket protector, I guess; your choice! (Oddly enough, Think Geek has no pocket protectors for sale at this time. They do have a Sonic Screwdriver, so there's that.) 

This holiday season, give yourself to the Dark Side!

What says "Happy Christmas" more than an stuffed-toy ornament featuring a guy who'd destroy a planet full of innocent people just to prove a point? 

I'm not going into my song and dance about the flaws of the Star Wars universe and the foolishness of lovin' baby Darth all over again. You can read all about that here, if you like. 

I know Hallmark has been making Star Wars ornaments as part of its Christmas ornaments for a long time, at least since 1997. But those have been normal-looking Vaders, as far as I've seen, not the cute 'n cuddly Disney-fied Vader. I noted in that earlier commentary that Disney had not yet made a Darth Vader Tsum Tsum but that I expected it to happen, and this ornament is pretty close. 

Why do people want to put a mass-murdering stooge on the tree, anyway? To scare the kids? "If you keep being naughty, instead of Santa paying you a call you'll get THIS GUY... And he finds your lack faith disTURBING...."

Maybe next year we could have an ornament of Hannibal Lecter chomping some dude.

Geez, I shouldn't give anyone any ideas. 

I guess it could be worse. People might actually want to put THIS GUY on the tree:

Noooo! Not OLAF! The HORROR!!!!!

You find my lack of enthusiasm disturbing.

I was as big a dork as anyone growing up, but I can't get myself psyched about Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, opening on December 14. I almost certainly will not fight the crowds to go see it in theaters, and probably won't ever see it.

I'm not just a contrarian by nature---well, maybe a little, but if I am excited by something I will want to experience it, even if it is popular. In the case of Star Wars, I have good reasons for my poor attitude:

1) Ewoks: The third movie should not have had little bears in a pitched, lethal battle with the Empire. Hey, I liked the little guys, but if you're going to have space teddies you have to play them for laughs, like Poul Anderson did with the Hokas. This is first on my list because it was clear evidence that the whole thing was going to crap right in the original trilogy.

2) Vader love: Everyone loves Darth Vader until he destroys your planet, even after you give up the location of the rebels. Sure, he mind-strangles people in business meetings, which we'd all like to do sometimes, but look at the big picture. You know what we can the annihilation of millions? Genocide. You know what Vader calls it? Tuesday. And yet people love the bastard and find it perfectly okay that he gets to go to Jedi heaven because he bailed out his kid. Come on. 

3) Bad biology: The original picture was mystical. The prequels were biological. In trying to make the Force (and those in whom it is strong) more scientific, the screenwriters made it more insane. I'm sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the midichlorians, which were microscopic power critters, could give magic Jedi powers to people even after they died, but you know what I was by then? Past caring. 

4) Misplaced trust in Disney: In recent years the studio has given us great pictures like Tangled, but on the live-action front they've given us Tomorrowland, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, John Carter, The Prince of Persia, The Lone Ranger, and in SF animation, Mars Needs Moms... You trust them? Granted, they have yet to come out with Star Wars Tsum Tsums, but it's probably just a matter of time. Cute li'l Vader can play with cute li'l Stitch (who was created as a weapon of mass destruction---just saying). Meanwhile, you can get these at the Disney store:

If there were real Wookies, they would kill us all for that. 

5) Unreasonableness: Almost forty years later, people still want to know why the planet-size Death Star could have a preposterous flaw that enabled its destruction with a single blast. That's like building an aircraft carrier that could be sunk by a revolver and a lucky shot. The movies are full of stuff like that, but it may be the most famous example. Another is the way the Jedi started to look pretty evil in the prequels---not Empire evil, but evil, the freelance jerks of the galaxy. Others have written loads about that, so I'll leave the explanation to them. Any if Darth Vader built C-3PO, why doesn't he recognize the bot years later? Don't get me started.

6) Humor: Virtually nothing funny in Star Wars is funny---Jar Jar Binks being People's Exhibit A. (Watch the pod racing contest in the first prequel again and tell me how funny the two-headed race announcers are if you doubt me.) On the other hand, moments of high drama have been absolutely hilarious ("Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo...."). Which leads us to:

7) Emotional immaturity: Contrary to popular belief, mass murders like Anakin Skywalker don't become monsters because they caught a few bad breaks. If the little creep had been psychotic from childhood, or brought up in a nihilistic culture and religion of death, he might be understandable. But trying to use the building blocks of the Star Wars universe to explain how he became a towering force for evil would be like building Leonardo's Last Supper out of Lego blocks---and expecting it to be mistaken for the original. They tried... and that is why they failed. There is no try.

8) Timeline: The mighty empire lasted what, twenty years? Thirty? I forget. I don't care. That's not  an empire, that's an aberration. No one refers to the Nazi Empire because it was battled constantly and it lost, thank God. In the first movie you got the idea that the Empire had been around for some time, but it turns out that Obi-Wan had socks older than the Empire. 

So that's why I've lost interest in the whole franchise. Even if the movie gets raging rave reviews from the saner, non-fanboy critics, I doubt I'll get fired up. I can never forgive them for the lake of Naboo.

Movie cereals.

I know, I know; I had a coupon, all right? And it was doubled by the supermarket. Do I make fun of what you eat?

Okay, let's see what it looks like out of the box...

Fairly typical General Mills cereal, I'd say. Crispy things with marshmallowy things.

Let's see what GM has to say about this:

"'The ideas stemmed from our team’s desire to bring even more fun to the cereal aisle,' says Alan Cunningham, innovation marketing manager. 'Star Wars is as big as it gets and continues to thrive in appeal to fans young and old.'”

Fun! The boxes are out in Darth Vader and Yoda versions now, R2D2 and Storm Troopers next year. No actual actors' faces, which would require money changing hands.

General Mills has been touting its sugar reduction program, but this stuff still kind of tastes like Froot Loops. I don't know if that's a win for the flavor scientists or a reflection of how little they've really accomplished.

Let's have a look at those shapes:

Okay... This is all I could find, but there were more on the box. Looks like we have a TIE fighter and maybe an X-Wing in the top row... A couple of ice cream cones fighting as if they were light sabres, and an AT-AT Walker in the second... a Storm Trooper, a... Yoda head? And obviously that last shape is a combination of Pinky and Inky from Pac-Man.

Well, it was all right, but I know I'm not the target demo. Still, cereals like this never really were super awesome. If you didn't know what these shapes were supposed to be, you'd be nearly indifferent. Especially with less sugar.

And no secret toy surprise. Really, might as well just eat Grape Nuts.