OBLIVION (HOW LONG?)

Last summer in a cinema, and since then on DVD, our family has enjoyed watching the movie “Oblivion.”

The film is based on an unpublished graphic novel of the same name written by Joseph Kosinski, the picture’s director, and tells the story of Earth following a catastrophic event.  

Without wishing to disclose too much because the film surprises as it unspools, its protagonist, played by Tom Cruise, is a paramilitary technician-cum- repairman stationed aloft among gorgeous clouds, who is responsible for maintaining drone weapons that protect and defend oceanic power stations utilizing sea water to generate fusion energy.  

Like the “dystopic” RoboCop before it, “Oblivion” affectingly, and on a fundamental level, examines what it means to be human and definitively affirms human dignity in the face of exploitative, immoral fascistic forces.  

The acting performances by Cruise, Olga Kurylenko (pictured above), Morgan Freeman (who, thank heaven, goes beyond his usual “phoning it in” posture), Melissa Leo, and particularly Andrea Riseborough as Cruise’s work partner Vika, are all outstanding.

My daughter Jane, who is going to be an engineer (the Gulf Spill oil collector in last position HERE is an example of her previous inventing and design work), set her mind to determining exactly how long it would take for the rapacious dynamo machines in "Oblivion" actually to complete draining all of the waters from Earth’s oceans.   

Her calculations are presented herewith for your perusal.  You are kindly invited to check her work.

Pretty Things: Judgement Day (Link)

JUDGEMENT DAY

What You Gonna Do On Judgement Day?

Time runs out, baby, and you can't stay.

Screamin' and cryin', you got to go;

Hey, St.Peter, Won't you open the door?

Yes, I'm coming, Yes, I'm coming,

Yes, I'm coming – 

And it's like my time ain't long. 

Note:  I heard this song on the scary, icy drive back from New Hope yesterday, just before my unstable car was about to face our challenging, steep driveway.  I've always loved it and I think it's wonderful that Sirius XM plays The Pretty Things' music so often.  I prayed that I would make it up the driveway and I did. Now, about that other matter . . .



The Pretty Things -- Judgement Day (Link)

The New Bronze Age

"I sometimes think that gastronomes are returning to bronze age practices.  The Apollonians had no gastronomic pretensions; nevertheless, after work in the summer, they repaired with a loaf of bread and a flask of wine to a little promontory of rock frequented by sea urchins (Paracentrotus livdus).  Picking them off the rocks underwater, they bashed in their prickle-covered shells with knife or stone, emptied them, then dipped some bread into the shell to extract their succulent orange ovaries to the accompaniment of jokes and laughter."

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Note:  Pretty brutal, I think, but honest and original, like everything in Honey From A Weed.  I came to love eating sea urchin a long time ago as part of a sushi menu, and at one point even tried (pretty fecklessly) to deal with them at home using the French device called a coupe-oursins, which purports to sheer off the shell-top, but doesn’t work perfectly, at least in my hands.  

I was surprised several years ago to read that the Japanese now purchase most of their uni from Maine fishermen because Americans haven’t discovered or don’t greatly care for the taste and texture of sea urchin.  Anyway, although sea urchin isn’t a caviar-league expense, I haven’t indulged in quite some time because it is certainly a luxury that seems out of place at the moment.  

As with most non-vegetable foods (and especially ones like oysters, which are consumed alive), I feel guilty for ever having eaten sea urchin, although I hope the uni world population will forgive me on Judgement Day and consider that they’ve gotten theirs back based on two painful episodes where I had to dig their poisonous spines out of my heel.  Even on a beautiful Sint Maarten beach, that was no picnic.