LEGOs: Legitimate Excuse to Get Offspring

Lego SerenityI hadn’t thought of it when I first approached my wife with that certain twinkle in my eye, but in a world where couples have children for the tax write-off, why the hell not bring a child into the world for the sake of sharing one of life’s greatest pleasures? I’m talking of course about Legos.

At the age of eighteen, I boxed up the last of my childhood treasures and stowed them in the 180-degree attic space of my parents’ Texas home. With those treasures went a mighty cardboard box of Legos. At the time, I thought I would never again experience the insight and satisfaction those plastic bricks brought me for so many years.

More than just a vehicle for fine motor skills, those bricks produced endless plans for disposable automobiles and rotating hallways and underground bunkers on the moon. Legos unlocked my geeky architect and creative hubris.

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Firefly: a New Conspiracy Theory

[This week I’m reviving a classic post from two years ago. Gosh darnit, it’s just so timely.] In case you are unaware, the best show on T.V. to never finish a single season is incontestably and unarguably Firefly. It aired and was cancelled in 2002. Many diehard, Firefly freekies will tell you the show was cancelled … Read more Firefly: a New Conspiracy Theory

The Gospel According to Mal

Malcolm ReynoldsMalcolm Reynolds may very well be the most good-natured, and pure-hearted antihero ever to be imagined. He joins such bad boy favorites as Han Solo and the Duke boys on the pedestal of our hearts. (Mal owe much to the forerunner of the genre, Northwest Smith. But that’s for another post.)

Unlike Bo and Luke Duke, Malcolm Reynolds is driven to dark places of rumination through trauma, failure and vast disappointment. With the help of those few who Mal trusts, he emerges an immovable man built on a bedrock of beliefs. Those beliefs form his worldview. That worldview is the focus of this post.

I invite all those who sympathize with the cause of the Independents to read, ponder and debate.

Introducing Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Raised on a ranch on a world called Shadow by a mother figure and a few dozen ranch hands, little is known about Malcolm before his stint in the resistance. After unification, his ready association with the defeated Browncoats pushes Mal to the fringe of the civilized universe, otherwise known as the core planets. There he purchases a Firefly class space ship which he names Serenity. And the stage is set.

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