The hyperspace is an enduring concept in science fiction, as it provides a kind of panacea for all conflict. The slip into hyperspace/warp speed as a plot device is ordinarily used either as a) An accidental tunnel to the unknown, or B) An escape from danger via total oblivion.
Also pretty cool, though not as cool as Topher Chris, is this video I found on youtube featuring a colossal zoom out from the Earth and our solar system into the larger universe around us and eventually into hyperspace and multiversal fractals of all existence and beyond:
All things should have a “and beyond” tacked onto them, don’t you think? That’s fast tracking your shit to next level epicness. Anyway, tomorrow (or relatively soon) there’s something I want to do here, something semi special, and something that I’ve been thinking about for a little while now. That’s what’s next, whenever “next time” is. See you then, space cowboys and cowgirls.
That is so wild, right? The end of the science fiction year that wasn’t too science fiction-y, sadly. Or maybe it was and I just wasn’t paying nearly enough attention. Or maybe I’ve just gotten so accustomed to the very pedestrian and incredibly mundane and boringly sexy science fiction-y aspects of my normal life?
In this year, in this world of internetting and bloggery and social media, I had five very simple goals that I laid out at the start of 2010 and wanted to complete by year’s end. In order of my own personal interest and their importance, they were:
1. Not going to tell you (you’re not ready for this one yet, folks)(and neither am I).
2. Not going to tell you (forthcoming).
3. Not going to tell you (total abysmal failure).
4. Not going to tell you (worked, but was embarrassing and not worth mentioning again).
5. Getting 2,010 tweets in 2010!
The fifth one is the one that I’m going to definitely accomplish. Unless I lose both hands sometime in the next three days. Or lose my phone or computer or both. Or unless an EMP just wipes out all technology in the country/world.
But, well, I just don’t twitter much. And getting 2,010 tweets in 2010 was a silly, frivolous goal that I jokingly threw out on my twitter sometime back in… I don’t know what month, but sometimes those things you only jokingly declare are the ones that stick with you. It was somewhere around the start of the year, I believe, and I think I had less than a thousand tweets then and was probably tweeting an average of four to five tweets a month, roughly.
And eventually I just thought, yeah, I can do this shit, why not? Because it’s stupid? Stupidity has not stopped me from doing anything ever in my life.
Also, this is the 825th post on your friend neighborhood Counterforce. That’s wild. We didn’t make it to 1000 posts this year, but that’s perhaps for the best. Personally, I’m just shocked that I managed to ramble on for nearly 2,010 tweets. I mean, what a silly declaration. Thinking back upon it, at first I was like this:
And then I was like this:
You understand.
Oh man, how creepy is this photo below?
Right?
Also, New Year’s Eve is almost upon us. Time to celebrate!
Speaking of “science fiction,” the recent Doctor Who Christmas special was fucking wonderful.
So fun and smart and a nice little twist on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol cause, hey, why can’t the ghosts of Christmas’ past, present, and future be time travelers and holograms?
Michael Gambon was brilliant, but ruthlessly mean and joyously funny in places. And while the show did play around with some of it’s own rules towards time travel (and that’s why we have rules about time travel, folks: so they can be broken!), I found the idea of one watching their own past and memories change before their very eyes to be fascinating. Plus, the interesting but slight references to “the silence.” And I had to love the nice little nods to the recent JJ Abrams Star Trek movie with the copious lens flares on display of the crashing starship’s bridge.
…which I hear was pretty terrible, but that Olivia Wilde was the best part of. Is it me, or is Olivia Wilde totally the new Angelina Jolie?
I mean that based on a lot of things, like her acting ability, her potential, the type of roles she’s taken in the past, but also based on her seemingly having that same ability that Angelina Jolie has to turn straight girls a little curious.
And this is some old school adorable chillaxing right here:
The last six months or so on this blog and in my life have been… weird, to say the least. I’d go into more details here, but quite frankly, I don’t want to. I’ll just say that due to illness in my family, my life got a bit… derailed and I’m astonished that I’m seeing the end of this year without having gone totally insane. Or maybe I have already gone totally, stupendously insane and it’s just helping me see the end of this year more clearly? Like 3D glasses? That’s a comforting thought, right?
Anyway, at some point this will all be over and I’ll get back to some kind of semblance of “normal,” whatever that is. Are we still doing that? “Normal?”
Hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll be right back to asking “Who’s your daddy?” in no time flat.
This is an example of the happy medium between sanity and fear:
This is an example of how Batman is both a master of surprise and also quite probably a huge pervert:
And sadly, no matter what we say or do, Lost is still over and done with:
Oh well. Three days to go. And then…
Fingers crossed about something exciting happening in those next three days (after all, a good deal of people on this planet thought that their magic wizard man came back from the dead in that same amount of time) but not holding my breath. Exciting, but not too exciting. Wow me, thrill me, blow my mind, fuck me over and fuck me up (but in a good way, please), but remember that when the sun comes up, I’ve still got bills to pay and TV shows to catch up with. Three days to go, promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep, and a long journey sprawling ahead of us through mountains upon mountains. This is both the place we made together and the journey we started together and I’m gonna be there with you. And wherever we end up, whatever new definition of home or normal we excavate, when we do we’ll turn to each other and say, “This must be the place!”
But here is a pretty neat time lapse video of last night’s eclipse on a solstice:
I tried to experience the journey of the moon across the night sky myself (I’m glad I was there and not, say, trying to catch a showing of that Spider-Man musical) early this morning but poor visibility became an issue. That and the general weirdness of the other moon worshipers. I guess my kind of people only come out at night.
Ah, the big beautiful, glorious moon. From a February 1936 issue of Science And Mechanics, here’s a lovely depiction of what would happen should the moon ever crash into the Earth:
I’ve mentioned both Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker and my admiration for the work of both filmmakers before, so I have to say, it was pretty exciting for me to find some clips online from Marker’s documentary about Tarkovsky, One Day In The Life Of Andrei Arsenevich. Here’s one:
Tarkovsky was a director who let the moving images of his stories dictate his filmmaking, and whose plots tended to drift into poetry and the hidden ghosts dancing through the fire and water motifs (which is more natural and not as annoying as, say, John Woo and the fucking doves) of his subconscious tended to wander about the landscapes he so expertly conveyed. I can see a lot of similarities, not just with Bergman, who Tarkovsky greatly admired, but also with filmmakers still operating today, like Béla Tarr. Of Tarkovsky, Bergman said, “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”
And Tarkovsky’s films have always looked to me as if they were filmed on location inside of dreams. They’re not always pretty, but they’re not exactly ugly either. They don’t conform. Time doesn’t always flow as you think it should. Things happen, whether you understand the reasons or not, and sometimes events can get away from you.
Meanwhile, I’m going to go put his book, Sculpting In Time, on my Christmas list.
…from our perspective down here on Earth, is just fucking amazing.
The people watching the eclipse in Varanasi from the banks of the Ganges is fascinating to me. Bathing yourself there, by the way, is supposed to burn away your soul so that when you die, you’re free from the loop of karma and reincarnation. That’s just a little life after death pro tip for you kids there.
All of these awesome pictures come from here and here and here and here and here.
A brief aside: Yesterday also saw another post at This Recording from me, this time a pretty basic primer on shows like Doctor Who and Torchwood. Painfully basic, actually. Thanks again to Alex & co. for putting up with me.
It’s “Swim” by Danish band Oh No Ono, directed by Adam Hashemi, and it’s perfect, musical and visually. I’d give this best foreign picture Oscar right now if I wasn’t too lazy to get out of this chair.
“Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.”
For your viewing pleasure, a collection of “hyperspace” scenes from various movies:
Also pretty cool, though not as cool as Topher Chris, is this video I found on youtube featuring a colossal zoom out from the Earth and our solar system into the larger universe around us and eventually into hyperspace and multiversal fractals of all existence and beyond:
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