Electron Blue 17: How to resist the Turnip
He’s here to stay, I’m sorry to say, our world and its media currently seem to orbit the misshapen roundish vegetable and all its satellites and its every perturbation. He and his antics get ratings, and ratings get money and clicks, so it will keep happening with nothing to stop it - except two things: Boredom and cuteness. Have you ever gotten bored with a “reality” TV show? Have you ever turned off a show because its storyline got dumber and dumber? Have you hoped in vain that something interesting would happen so that it would be worth watching again? I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but the media universe is full of irresistible things which lost their inspiration, or their capacity to generate outrage, and ran aground on the stolid rocks of boredom and the channel switcher. I’d rather watch a pitcher rub a baseball against his butt than listen to political speeches telling me how great it is going to be. OK, it was great for the Cubs. Not so great for the rest of us, maybe.
If you’re bored with baseball, try this strategy to resist the Turnip. This is something which happens constantly even if people don’t consciously promote it. You can trivialize the monster. I’ll give you some examples. When the first “Star Wars” film came out, the one now known as number 4, Darth Vader was a genuine villain. He was terrifying! Not only that, he committed genocide on a planetary level, when his “Death Star” reduced the entire planet of Alderaan, along with everyone on it, to space rubble. This was one evil character. He stayed evil until the very end of film number 3, when the film makers started giving him more sympathy, as long as he was dead.
During the decade following the Star Wars films, people started to see Darth Vader in a comic way, including parodies, comedy skits, costumes, games, collectibles, and a world wide wash of Darth Vaderiana. Even more, there were Darth Vader kiddie toys, lunch boxes, Halloween costumes, plushies, you name it. Here was the killer of millions, destroyer of planets, asking for candy at someone’s door.
And nobody blinked.
The same thing has happened with the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft, where the dread Cthulhu has been turned into a toy for babies and their parents. Cthulhu is soft and green, with tentacles and big eyes! And what of the toys made in the image of plague germs? Do you really want to take Ebola Virus to bed with you? I guess that some of this must be considered “avertence” behavior, trivializing and making it cute so that it will not kill you. But can you see the terror through the plushie?
Then why not try it with the Turnip? I saw toys made from Hillary, with hideous “Hello Kitty” style oversize heads that looked like embryos. Did they do it with Turnip? Comedians are working overtime so let’s see the Donald Toys. They will be drooled on by babies, chewed by dogs, and kicked around the house by rambunctious kids. Can we make him funny so he will not hurt us?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Sunday, December 4, 2016
The Return of Electron Blue
Electron Blue 16: Changing color and returning
So it happened. The thing that none of us impotent rational pallid intellectuals dreamed of in their nightmares happened. The overweight orange Rutabaga has been selected as the leader of the free world, more or less. The vegetable has won. And in the word sphere, he is associated with the color Orange. How dare that Turnip take my brand away from me? He’s been called “His Orangeness,” “Orange Face,” “Big Pumpkin,” and other names of that sort and I won’t stand for it. I didn’t stand for Turnip then and won’t now. This means, among other things, that at least for a while, I am “divesting” (a word currently on the Buzzword List) from Orange. I pulled all the orange garments out of my closet and will fold and hide them. I can’t stop driving my Orange Honda Element, I do need the transportation. But I wish I had some sort of high-tech liquid crystal car paint job that could transform from Orange to another color with the press of a switch.
Then what will I use for my theme color instead? I already switch twice a year, in Advent (the four weeks up until Christmas) and during Lent (the six weeks before Easter). Priests in the Catholic and Anglican churches wear purple during these seasons, as well as blue sometimes. I have been purpling myself for years so why not now? I have plenty of purple stuff.
And as for this Blog which was named “Orangeness” when I started it as a humorous screed, well, things haven’t been so humorous since I started it. But I still want to write. So how do I change colors here? By going back to the past. I had a blog called “Electron Blue” from 2004 to 2008. It was named after the brilliant blue color of my car at that time, a Honda CRV. I wrote “Electron Blue” to chronicle my self-driven project to learn mathematics and physics, so the original Electron Blue was science and math-oriented. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to study these things, due to pressure from the day job. A few years later I revived it as “Electron Blue 2” and that ran for a year or two. Now that I no longer have the day job, I have more time to write so why not just switch back to the bloggy colors of blue and violet, (with a little orange accent here and there) but without the exclusive emphasis on science. I fished the header art out of digital oblivion, changed the wording and a bit of design, and now I am ready to once again throw my little koosh balls of verbiage into the endless chaotic flux of the infosphere. If you are interested, the URL for this remains the same: http://elementorange.blogspot.com. I will be writing about a wider range of things than in the previous two iterations, as well as continuing my humor and rants when I feel like it. I’ll help you forget Turnip and his gang of vegetables, at least for a moment or two. Welcome to Electron Blue 3.
So it happened. The thing that none of us impotent rational pallid intellectuals dreamed of in their nightmares happened. The overweight orange Rutabaga has been selected as the leader of the free world, more or less. The vegetable has won. And in the word sphere, he is associated with the color Orange. How dare that Turnip take my brand away from me? He’s been called “His Orangeness,” “Orange Face,” “Big Pumpkin,” and other names of that sort and I won’t stand for it. I didn’t stand for Turnip then and won’t now. This means, among other things, that at least for a while, I am “divesting” (a word currently on the Buzzword List) from Orange. I pulled all the orange garments out of my closet and will fold and hide them. I can’t stop driving my Orange Honda Element, I do need the transportation. But I wish I had some sort of high-tech liquid crystal car paint job that could transform from Orange to another color with the press of a switch.
Then what will I use for my theme color instead? I already switch twice a year, in Advent (the four weeks up until Christmas) and during Lent (the six weeks before Easter). Priests in the Catholic and Anglican churches wear purple during these seasons, as well as blue sometimes. I have been purpling myself for years so why not now? I have plenty of purple stuff.
And as for this Blog which was named “Orangeness” when I started it as a humorous screed, well, things haven’t been so humorous since I started it. But I still want to write. So how do I change colors here? By going back to the past. I had a blog called “Electron Blue” from 2004 to 2008. It was named after the brilliant blue color of my car at that time, a Honda CRV. I wrote “Electron Blue” to chronicle my self-driven project to learn mathematics and physics, so the original Electron Blue was science and math-oriented. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to study these things, due to pressure from the day job. A few years later I revived it as “Electron Blue 2” and that ran for a year or two. Now that I no longer have the day job, I have more time to write so why not just switch back to the bloggy colors of blue and violet, (with a little orange accent here and there) but without the exclusive emphasis on science. I fished the header art out of digital oblivion, changed the wording and a bit of design, and now I am ready to once again throw my little koosh balls of verbiage into the endless chaotic flux of the infosphere. If you are interested, the URL for this remains the same: http://elementorange.blogspot.com. I will be writing about a wider range of things than in the previous two iterations, as well as continuing my humor and rants when I feel like it. I’ll help you forget Turnip and his gang of vegetables, at least for a moment or two. Welcome to Electron Blue 3.
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