Royce's Random Thoughts

"Does the Groupmind believe in God, Sparky?" Lin asked, laying back on the hood of her reproduction Ford Fury and staring up at the stars through the Roof.

Sparky scratched his long rabbit ears, then glanced up at the Roof himself. "If there's an omniscient creator, they haven't chosen to speak to Us."

Lin smiled. "The Groupmind doesn't count?"

"As the saying goes: We aren't omniscient, just very powerful. And for obvious reasons We don't enjoy engaging in religious arguments. But given the current evidence We highly doubt the universe had a single great designer."

"What makes you say that?"

Sparky shrugged and pointed to the sun, which was just starting to peek around the Earth's terminator. "Well for one thing, we wouldn't have made it necessary for life to evolve in orbit around a gigantic unshielded fusion reactor."

For lilfluff: “The polite and extremely apologetic alien invasion.”

* * *
Bob looked at the man, appeared to be a man anyway, except for the blue skin and the Star Trek forehead bumps, who had stepped out of the spaceship. “Um, can I help you?”

“Yes, greetings from the stars. I’m Brother Neuvo of the Church of Higher Conciousness,” the alien said, bowing. He adjusted the lapels of his conservative suit. “A great pleasure to meet you.” He held up his palm in what looked like a gesture of greeting, the other handing over a sheet of blue paper printed in alien script. “May I have your name and offer you an explanatory pamphlet, sir?

“Sure. It’s Bob, er, Robert Thomspon.”

“A great pleasure to meet you, Bob.”

“Same. Um, shouldn’t you be talking to the President or something?”

“We prefer to start from the ground up when we take over a world,” Neuvo said.

“Sorry, you’re what?”

“Taking over your world. Basically we’re going to overwhelm you with superior technology, destroy your culture and make you adapt to our needs.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’s what we do I’m afraid.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“God told us to. Sorry.”

Bob sighed. “That’s okay. We do a lot of that here too.”

For avanti_90: "The weirdest thing to celebrate"

* * *

"'The Day of Black Death?' You're seriously celebrating a plague?" Salli asked as they watched the parade. Her much delayed Grand Tour had begun again. Which is why she and Alinadar found themselves on the Wazagan homeworld, gaping as wazagans dragged themselves down the street wearing painted on boils and seeping sores, moaning dramatically.

"Oh, yes!" their guide said. "Over ten thousand people died in it."

"And that's celebrated because...?"

"We realized our old gods had abandoned us, and the human missionaries' teachings of the One True God were correct." The guide paused, then added. "The antibiotics didn't hurt either."

Still holding up as a nice satire of city politics, but I can see why modern kids might avoid it. Definitely a bit dry in the prose department for the Short Attention Span set.

One thing that caught my attention was the character of Mr. Jerusalem, one of the pushcart vendors. He's described as "...already an old man. No one knew how old." He also doesn't have a home technically, choosing to camp out wherever he parks his cart, sleeping under a tarp and cooking his meals on a portable stove.

Am I reading too much into this to think Judith Jean Merrill snuck The Wandering Jew into a YA novel?

Once again the moronic ahem patriotic Right in my country is up in arms about Muslims being treated as, y'know, individual human beings instead of a faceless horde.

Short Version: The latest Detective Comics annual has Batman running into a Parkour inspired superhero calling himself Nightrunner. Who just happens to be a Frenchman of Algerian descent and a Muslim. This is apparently a problem for some people because of course French citizens who immigrated from former French colonies and who have lived in France their entire lives can't be, y'know, French.

Bear in mind this is coming from the same political spectrum decrying France as being full of "Cheeze Eating Surrender Monkeys" back when they declined to participate in Bush Jr. trying to work out his Daddy issues by invading Iraq. Headdesk

Frankly, my beef with this comic has less to do with using real world politics in a comic than the idea of Bruce franchising his Dark Avenger of the Night schtick. I'm definitely buying this one when it comes out on the stands though. And the "99" cartoon is utterly extraordinary. Hopefully Netflix will carry it after the first season comes out on DVD.

It only goes to really show that racism is being increasingly marginalized, the louder the Right screams about it. Try to imagine a show like 99 coming out twenty years ago, when the most positive non-white, non-Christian character in an adventure cartoon would have been Hadji in Jonny Quest reruns.

zoethe is disgusted by the idea of 9/11 commemerative coins. I've been seeing commercials for these for a few years so they don't bother me that much.

The one that got me recently was an ad in the Washington Post for "seed" coins, based on a story about Jesus in one of the Gospels. Basically low demonination Roman coins that aren't exactly uncommon, but given a jumped up back story to attract religious minded idiots willing to pay more than their worth for a pair of coins that were "Minted during the life of Jesus and showing the religious symbols of the time!"

Y'know, symbols of Zeus, Mithras, the Emperor... headdesk