Nubbins explained to me the basic plot of the Arthur C. Clarke inspired movies 2001, 2010, and 2061, and they were fascinating, so I read up on them on Wikipedia. Wow, lesson learned. If you don't want to ruin the experience of watching a movie, don't go reading the synopsis on Wikipedia. The plot synopsis was less of a synopsis then a dry recounting of each scene, shot by shot. (As an aside, I just checked a few other movies to see if they plot summaries are as detailed, and the certainly are. Don't read about a movie on Wikipedia before you see it.) Still, when Cougar got "2001: A Space Odyssey" on Netflix, I watched it and tried to pretend I didn't know what was going to happen. It's a beautiful movie, if overly long, but what I found most compelling about the entire movie was the part right at the beginning where early hominids learn from an alien object how to use weapons. What a fascinating idea: that mankind only was able to set itself apart from other animals with the help of an alien intelligence. Too bad it's been shown that many other animals use tools, and Chimps even use weapons.
Speaking of Cougar, and to follow up on my previous post about going to Acapulco, I brought a few gifts back for everyone, and one of the things I shared with Cougar is a mild case of Montezuma's Revenge. Some quick history: Cortes and his Spaniards made incredible demands of the Aztecs, all of which were met, and they still took the Aztec emperor Montezuma captive. Montezuma was later killed, although whether it was the Spanish or unhappy Aztecs who did it is a question lost to history. My money says it was the Spanish; their track record with captive native emperors isn't so good. So in essence the Spanish obtained enormous wealth, power, and global prestige, while I got a case of traveler's diarrhea. Which I then dutifully passed, along with a really nice pitcher for margaritas and a pair of maracas, to Cougar.
Apparently it's given her quite the case of flatulence at work. Maybe I should have also brought her a pair of panties that will capture the release. Or maybe she should just become a Fartist! No really! Apparently in ancient times, before the invention of television, you could actually make a living with fart jokes! I guess I was born a little too late.
My favorite story of a fartist from wikipedia is of the Japanese "fart dancer" Oribe, who tricked his rival into trying to mimic him, which led to his rival "soiling and thus disgracing himself". No really. It was like the Zoolander and Hansel walkoff on steroids.
Now, just to bring it full circle, remember that part in Zoolander when Derek and Hansel are trying to use the computer, and banging and hooting like apes? It's a parody of 2001, when the apes learn to use weapons. And I'm going to fart.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
The high price of middling fame
My friend Ibis is turning what she terms "Dirty Thirty" in a few days, and decided to have her birthday party in Acapulco, Mexico. I really don't know too much about what there is to do in Acapulco, so where did I look? You guessed it.
Acapulco has been a travel hub for more than a millennium. Somehow it managed to avoid being gobbled up by the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Aztec Empires, and was an independent city state until the Spanish conquered it, forever enriching the lives of the natives with smallpox and enforced catholicism, while simultaneously freeing them of their culture, language, and pesky left feet. There's a ton of stuff to do there, apparently, as long as what you like to do involves water sports or lying in the sun. I'm really hoping to do some snorkeling, and maybe find a gold peso or two from a Manila Galleon. Briefly, the Manila Galleon was the Spanish money ship that would sail from the Phillipines to Acapulco every year, laden down with gold. The Manila Galleon carried so much gold, that when Thomas Cavendish finally succeeded in capturing it for the English, it severely depressed the London gold market.
What I thought was most interesting, however, was the story of the man who actually discovered the Trade Winds that made the Manila Galleon possible, Andres de Urdaneta. The guy was an Augustinian priest, but was also somehow a captain in the Spanish army and became a famous explorer. All part and parcel, I guess, for a country and time where the preferred method of conversion was deception and torture. He was apparently the first one to consider that if the tradewinds in the Atlantic went clockwise, they might do so in the Pacific, as well. Despite have the perspicacity to come to this realization, he didn't think to provision properly, and most of his crew died en route back to California. Only Andres and Felipe de Salcedo, nephew of Andres' patron Legazpi, had enough strength to cast the anchors on reaching California. I'm sure this is because Andres and Felipe had amazingly robust aristocratic constitutions, and not because they ate and drank well while the crew starved to death. In any case, the lives of a few peasant bred sailors is a reasonable price for the immortality of being a footnote to history.
Seriously, though, can you imagine what the outcry would be if that many people died on a regular basis while exploring space? Because your chances of dying a horrible death of scurvy or beri-beri or gangrene were pretty high back then on transoceanic voyages.
As a side note, perhaps what Ibis really calls the celebration is "DiRRty Thirty". For those of you who might not be into pop music, "Dirrty" is a Christina Aguleira song, and apparently the video includes scenes of mud wrestling and stethnolagnia, which is defined as "sexual arousal from a display of muscles". If that's the case, I'm awfully excited about the mud wrestling, but am going to give the stethnolagnia a miss.
Acapulco has been a travel hub for more than a millennium. Somehow it managed to avoid being gobbled up by the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Aztec Empires, and was an independent city state until the Spanish conquered it, forever enriching the lives of the natives with smallpox and enforced catholicism, while simultaneously freeing them of their culture, language, and pesky left feet. There's a ton of stuff to do there, apparently, as long as what you like to do involves water sports or lying in the sun. I'm really hoping to do some snorkeling, and maybe find a gold peso or two from a Manila Galleon. Briefly, the Manila Galleon was the Spanish money ship that would sail from the Phillipines to Acapulco every year, laden down with gold. The Manila Galleon carried so much gold, that when Thomas Cavendish finally succeeded in capturing it for the English, it severely depressed the London gold market.
What I thought was most interesting, however, was the story of the man who actually discovered the Trade Winds that made the Manila Galleon possible, Andres de Urdaneta. The guy was an Augustinian priest, but was also somehow a captain in the Spanish army and became a famous explorer. All part and parcel, I guess, for a country and time where the preferred method of conversion was deception and torture. He was apparently the first one to consider that if the tradewinds in the Atlantic went clockwise, they might do so in the Pacific, as well. Despite have the perspicacity to come to this realization, he didn't think to provision properly, and most of his crew died en route back to California. Only Andres and Felipe de Salcedo, nephew of Andres' patron Legazpi, had enough strength to cast the anchors on reaching California. I'm sure this is because Andres and Felipe had amazingly robust aristocratic constitutions, and not because they ate and drank well while the crew starved to death. In any case, the lives of a few peasant bred sailors is a reasonable price for the immortality of being a footnote to history.
Seriously, though, can you imagine what the outcry would be if that many people died on a regular basis while exploring space? Because your chances of dying a horrible death of scurvy or beri-beri or gangrene were pretty high back then on transoceanic voyages.
As a side note, perhaps what Ibis really calls the celebration is "DiRRty Thirty". For those of you who might not be into pop music, "Dirrty" is a Christina Aguleira song, and apparently the video includes scenes of mud wrestling and stethnolagnia, which is defined as "sexual arousal from a display of muscles". If that's the case, I'm awfully excited about the mud wrestling, but am going to give the stethnolagnia a miss.
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