All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.
Theodore Roosevelt
According to Grok the vernal equinox occurred on Friday, March 20, 2026, at 10:46 a.m. EDT. At that time Camera Girl and I were probably in Walmart buying eggs, coffee and chop meat. When we got to the register the cashier was this friendly talkative old lady who wanted to tell us that if we took out one of our eggs, we could balance it on its end. She explained that it was because of “the e-quick.” Well, she was a very nice lady so I smiled and said, “That’s great.”
The reason I was along on this expedition was because Camera Girl’s twenty-year-old ride (Nelly) was in the shop and the surgeon wasn’t too sanguine on Nelly’s future. The brake lines were leaking but when Dr. Steve put her up on the lift, he found metastatic rust throughout the length and breadth of poor Nelly. Camera Girl was devastated and so was my bank account. The surgeon asked if a mercy-killing wasn’t the best option but as a devout “right to lifer” I said, “No!!!!” So, Dr. Steve left me with the sad news and said it would take a few days to get the parts and finish the work.
But when we got home slightly after the equinox, there was a message from Dr. Steve saying we could bring the patient home. We rushed to find Nelly looking alive and well. Dr. Steve said it was “a miracle.” Nelly wasn’t as far gone as he had initially thought. And equally importantly it hadn’t cost as much as I had feared. So, Camera Girl and Nelly were reunited. They drove home together and later on I celebrated this Equinox Miracle with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
But the larger lesson I’ve learned is that nothing lasts forever. Not even blue Toyota Corollas. The power of New England winter road salt is existential. The body of a car may look pristine with a bright paint job and a functional cd player in the dash board. But the mortality that follows from chloride corrosion cracking is as final and fatal as death itself. Nelly has served us faithfully and well. And generations of our dogs have had their own blankets on the back seats that they relax on during trips to the vet’s office and the nail clipping place. And decades of grandkids have sat in the back seat elbowing each other and complaining about how cramped they are. But very soon all this will be disrupted. They will notice that Camera Girl’s old car is no more. And she is very sad about the whole thing. I am too! I have to buy another car.
Well, never look a gift horse in the mouth. We’ve been given a reprieve and I’ll start figuring out what Nelly II will be. And it turned out to be a nice day walking between stores and parking lots and I even had a nice review for my book on Amazon and some more sales. So, all in all it wasn’t a bad e-quick as e-quicks go.
The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic — the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.
Theodore Roosevelt
This movie is an alien invasion/time travel movie. Wow, that’s complicated.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
This movie is a highly confusing science fiction story. Chris Pratt plays Dan Forester a retired special forces soldier from Iraq who now works as a high school science teacher. He has a wife Emmy and a young daughter Muri. So far so good. One day while watching soccer’s world cup game on tv they witness the beginning of the future war. In the middle of the field a “wormhole” opens up and a bunch of humans dressed in military attire carrying weapons appear.
They explain that they are from the year 2051 and their world is fighting a war against aliens called the “whitespikes.” They are about 8-10 feet long, have four running legs two grasping legs and two tentacles that can grab but also shoot “spikes.” And they are always ravenously hungry for human flesh. The aliens appeared in arctic Russia and quickly spread across the world and now the human population has been decimated (total world population down to 500,000) and they are begging people from 2021 to come through a portal and help fight the aliens.
Earth agrees to send its armies into the future but barely twenty percent return alive. After that a draft is employed and all adults (men and women) are eligible. Eventually Dan is drafted and is sent. Enlistment involves surviving one week of combat after which the soldier is automatically returned to the present wherever he is.
Dan goes to the future and is immediately swept up in the “run for your life” action of fighting the whitespikes. Eventually he meets his commanding officer Colonel Muri Forester (played by Yvonne Strahovski), in other words, his daughter now grown up and become a biologist working on a toxin to kill the whitespikes before they finish off what is left of humanity. And with Dan’s help she captures a female whitespike and they synthesize a toxin that will kill all whitepikes injected with it.
But it’s too late. The last human outpost where Muri and Dan are located is overwhelmed by a horde of whitespikes and Dan time jumps with the toxin just as Muri falls to her death in the grips of a whitespike. Dan reaches home and is overwhelmed with grief and anger. Grown-up Muri had told him that back in the “present” when Dan had returned from his seven-day assignment he abandoned his wife and daughter and eventually was killed a few years later in an auto accident.
Determined to get the toxin mass produced and sent back to the future Dan reaches out to the government but finds out that the portal is gone. The whitespikes have finished off humanity in the future. There is no place to send the toxin.
But Emmy reasons that it makes more sense to find the whitespikes before they conquered the world and destroy them at the beginning. With a clue from volcanic ash present on a whitespike artifact they figure out that the whitespikes must have been frozen under the ice cap in northern Russia and thawed because of “global warming” in 2051 or shortly before. Because of global instability caused by the knowledge that the world would be coming to an end, the US refuses to help Dan go to Russia to find the whitespikes. So, Dan goes to his Vietnam War vet estranged father (played by J. K. Simmons) who happens to have access to a large cargo plane and they mount a small expedition.
They find the alien ship by its magnetic field and use thermite to reach it through the ice. Then they find out that the whitespikes are not the astronauts but rather a bioweapon cargo on a ship that crashed into earth long ago. They use the toxin to kill about half the whitespikes on the ship but another five or six escape. Two of the humans use a C4 explosive to kill the whitespikes in a suicide maneuver. But one female escapes and after an extended chase and fight scene Dan and his father kill the monster. The movie ends with Dan reuniting with Emmy and introducing young Muir to her grandfather. Wow, what a mess!
Okay, what the hell do I say about this crazy mixed up movie? From a science fiction plot perspective, this thing is a turkey. There is no indication of how the 2051 humans in the middle of their existential alien crisis were able to create time travel. And the workings of this time travel also seem goofy. The 2051 people can only go back and forth thirty years. So, they can’t go back five years and search for the whitespikes before they became overwhelmingly numerous and unstoppable. Also, grown-up Muri tells Dan about what he was like after he came back from the future but then Dan followed a completely different course of action when he returned. How? Alright the plot is as full of holes as Swiss cheese. But is the movie any good? Well, yeah. Chris Pratt portrays a likeable character and so does Yvonne Strahovski. There is a good family chemistry there and the action sequences although quite a mess aren’t boring. And it isn’t woke. Chris Pratt is allowed to be a white man and the hero of the movie. That’s something to be amazed at in a movie made in 2021. It’s a silly sci-fi action movie. But I kind of liked it. You have to decide if it’s something you want to waste a couple of hours on.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
Theodore Roosevelt
Today I sold my 150th copy of “The Sniper” on Amazon and I’m looking to get more reviews and ratings. So to increase the availability of the book I’m looking to send complimentary (free) e-book copies to folks here on the website who want one.
Just e-mail me here and I’ll send one back to that e-mail address. Feel free to be honest with your review. It’s better to get honest criticism than fake praise.
No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.
Theodore Roosevelt
