Spoilers!

Another post from my old blog, from November 28, 2013. I’m very curious if anyone else feels similarly… note that there’s some major editing (consisting of a section being moved up) to make this flow a bit better, as well as an addition.

I remember back when Batfans were getting amped up for The Dark Knight Rises. It was an exciting time. So many rumors and theories and tantalizing glimpses and…

The argument over spoilers gets very heated in pretty much every fandom ever. I think most forums dedicated to a TV show, a character, a book series, an author, a movie franchise, or a comic series has a subforum dedicated to spoilers, and often that forum will have at least one thread dedicated simply to compiling spoilers into one place for easy reference. These same forums will also contain a subforum dedicated to the same discussions about future work, but where spoilers are simply not allowed. And furthermore, even in a spoiler subforum, you still have to provide huge warnings and find a way to hide the spoilers so that people who may want to be surprised don’t have to read those spoilers.

Now, this seems like a great compromise where everyone gets what they want, right? People who enjoy having spoilers get them, and people who hate spoilers are free to avoid them.

This seems perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?

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You’re Selfish!

In a desire to have a discussion that isn’t about infuriating current events, I decided to resurrect this post from my old blog. I hope you’ll join the discussion.

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I wanted to put it to all of you, awesome readers, to discuss.

Is “selfish” really an objective measure, or is it, as I believe, “in the eye of the beholder”?

Consider the following fictional scenario:

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Royal-Orlean’s Presence, Jason Peterson, is Losing His Battle with Cancer

This probably won’t mean much to many of you, as not everyone here is as obsessed with Led Zeppelin as I am…

My journey into Zepdom started with Planet Zeppelin, but it’s been Royal Orleans that’s really helped me dig deeper then I ever could have anywhere else.

The owner of the forum is Jason Peterson, known there as Presence.

He’s been battling Lymphona for a long time. He beat it once before, but now it’s back… and it’s winning. Unfortunately, the link to the update is set to members only, but the breakdown is that his lungs are badly injured and he can barely breathe. He’s in critical care on a bi-pap machine, but as his oxygen needs increase, this becomes less and less helpful.

There may be one option left, and that’s stem cell therapy. His family set up a Go Fund Me to ask for donations to help. It’s already past it’s goal, but it’s always good for them to get even more, because with more money they can do even more to fight back.

Royal Orleans is an amazing place for Led Zeppelin fans and collectors. Some would call the place elitist, but that reputation helps to maintain a site that is invaluable as a resource for Zeppelin’s unofficial music, stories from the road (roadies like to talk about their experiences with Led Zeppelin and the members solo tours on the road, there), and so on. For me, it’s like a little Led Zeppelin Garden of Eden.

I would really love if Jason survives, but if he doesn’t, it will be a sad day for Led Zeppelin fans around the world. Hopefully Royal Orleans will live on without him, but it certainly won’t be the same.

Jason, you’re in my thoughts. I only ever knew you as Presence, and you only ever knew me as that annoying jimmyRRpage, who was either all Gimme Gimme or threw threads about a live show wildly off topic. But you were there, at the forum, through the good times and the bad times, when Led Zeppelin reunited in 2007 and the levees broke…

Give that cancer shit no quarter, Jason. We’ll help where we can, and be here for you when you get back.

Wow…

Looking back at my blog recently, it is literally just me sharing stories of how terrible the current administration is, interspersed with Self Care posts.

I’m basically just posting angry, while attempting to lighten things up with nonsense. I haven’t really even provided ideas for resisting.

In my defense, everything is horrible, and everyone already knows how to resist. You all already have the tools, and know the protocols. Call, write, sign petitions, protest, vote… these are the vanguards of resistance. Worse, it so far looks like resistance isn’t fucking working…

And sadly, it’s not going to get better. Because I get a daily round-up of everything that happened that day in Agent Orange’s US-America (quick side-note: I first heard Agent Orange on TWiBPrime… I think Dara M Wilson was the one who I heard use it first; so it’s not mine), I blog about most of those. Every once in a rare while, there’s only one or two things, and they aren’t worth blogging about. But more often, the round-up is long, and there’s a lot I want to highlight.

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Uncomfortable Confession: I Am No Longer a Pacifist

For most of my life, I’ve been a radical pacifist. I believed that violence was literally the very last of last resorts… that violence should only ever be committed by you if, and only if, you are directly being attacked and are directly fighting for your life… and even then, you should commit the barest minimum amount of violence possible, working only to save yourself rather than hurt them.

But then we reached 2012, and Trayvon Martin was murdered by a man who was all but given a ticker tape parade for it, and was acquitted in 2013, sparking #BlackLivesMatter.

And then 2014 rolled around, and Michael Brown and Eric Garner were murdered by the police and there were no consequences.

And then there was 2015, and Baltimore, and I wrote the post White Supremacy and Violence (that’s the original link, not the most recent one with edits, which you can find here). That really should have been my first clue that my pacifism was being challenged, but it wasn’t.

The challenge wouldn’t play out publicly, or even consciously, until much more recently. No, not Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. It was when a preacher got wacked upside the head with an aluminum baseball bat. I found it impossible to feel bad for said preacher, and even wrote it about here on this blog. The reality is that I felt some level of schadenfreude for it, and didn’t, and still don’t, feel bad for that. I could only laugh at the preacher, having felt, and actually still feel, that, while he may not necessarily have deserved an aluminum bat to the head, he absolutely deserved something more than a tongue-lashing.

I went back to being quiet about it, not really thinking about the fact that, after that post, I couldn’t really justify calling myself a pacifist.

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Quick Update and a Couple Links

As of right now, I have a few days off now (assuming I don’t get called in), so I’ll be working on a couple posts: one with lots and lots of links talking mostly about the police (in the context of the report that came out about just how bigoted and violent the Baltimore PD really is, and why it’s true of way more PDs than just Baltimore), and another light-hearted one about tea.

To get you started on the police thing, though, here’s a couple links to posts written by Caine I really need you to read:

1. Lethal Incompetence
2. Cop Who Killed 73 year old: record of excessive force

Also, tomorrow (Monday, August 15th), at noon, another Great Guitar Solos post featuring Kaki King will go up.

So that’s three posts you have to look forward to over the next couple days. One to really piss you off, and two to make you happy… if guitar and tea are things that make you happy, anyways…

Raising the Skeptic Signal! What Do You Think of These Videos?

This Youtube video features what are supposed to be “real” videos of “actual” ghosts. I’m curious what you skeptics think. Fakes? Misinterpretations?

I feel like there’s always a natural explanation, and often it’s just that people are so easily taken in by practical jokes that they refuse to see it as a practical joke.

But anyways… what’s your opinion? Quick warning, though… I wouldn’t watch this at night. The music and background images used are a bit creepy, and if you’re easily creeped out, this will creep you out…

Also, sorry for the lack of a transcript. It’s kind of hard to transcribe this one, I think, though someone’s certainly welcome to try! And I apologize if the video autoplays. I have a Chrome extension that keeps videos from doing that, so I don’t know whether or not this will autoplay if you don’t have that extension…

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How Would You React to the Emergence of Superheroes?

I actually posed this question on Facebook before Batman v Superman was released. It didn’t get as long of a discussion as I’d hoped, but it did get some fascinating comments. I thought I’d bring it here, too, if people are interested in talking about it.

For the record, I saw Batman v Superman again on April 19th. Dad wanted to see it, and I went along with him. I liked it a bit better the second time around. I still have most of my complaints, but in general I’m not as bitter about it as I was after my first viewing, and I did see a few more things I enjoyed, plus the ending hit me a hell of a lot harder the second time around, too.

But that’s not what this is about, really…

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