Ray's X-Blog

(C) 2014  Ray X "Did you see Star Trek last night?  Spock was horny!" Standing in line, waiting for lunch outside the junior high school cafeteria, when I hear one of my adolescent "peers" give his erudite review of the episode, "Amok Time," from the original ST TV series. For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek in any of its incarnations Spock is the half-earthling/half-alien science officer aboard the starship Enterprise in the 23rd Century (Earth time).  He struggles with his human side which at times is in conflict with his logical Vulcan upbringing.  Vulcans value unemotional rational thought above all else. But as the episode "Amok Time" reveals even Vulcans deal with irrational and violent impulses when it comes to mating time - pon farr.  Every seven years Vulcans have to knock boots or eventually die like a female ferret with intact virginity at mating season's end. I knew one woman who liked the character of Spock...

(C) 2014  Ray X And another paper zinester drops the dead tree format. In the case of Dale Speirs and his zine, Opuntia , it was the jump with postage rates, in his case Canada.  I was surprised when his final print edition appeared in my snail mail box with its announcement that future issues would only be available through www.eFanzines.com . Opuntia has always been an interesting read, a mix of SF book reviews, short examinations of scientific articles, personal stories, whatever interests Dale.  Unlike me Dale would always create a packed edition each month, 16 pages of material. I understand why Dale has decided to abandon paper for photons, especially with the drastic increase with Canadian postage.  With my very short list of paperzine traders - no subscribers - my expenses with postage and printing aren't that onerous.  Also, there's not that many pages with each edition. Some papernetters are loathe to abandon snail mail distribution: they ...

IMAGE: http://www.wallpapercasa.com/yellow_biohazard_radiation_symbol-612311.html   (C) 2014 Ray X Over at an independent Montana news site, Last Best News [1] , a reader suggests a novel defense for a politician who was arrested for his alleged irrational and violent behavior. Shades of the Twinkie defense! November 1978: A former San Francisco city supervisor, Dan White, kills the mayor and another supervisor.  When the case goes to trial White's lawyers use diminished capacity as a defense, i.e., White's bad diet of junk food and sugary drinks were symptomatic of a physical problem, ergo, his actions were not premeditated. While Twinkies were not mentioned during the trial a reporter used the term "Twinkie defense," a term that soon caught on.  White's lawyers said that they did not claim their client's bad diet was a cause, only one symptom of White's depression. "Twinkie defense" became synonymous with any dubious legal defe...

I’ve been lax with listening in on the Liberty Net crew at www.3950.net .  The last time I noted anything worth noting was a discussion about Bitcoin, the digital currency/peer-to-peer payment system. Part of the discussion was how the National Security Agency was spying on everyone online, an actual conspiracy, unlike some of the Illuminati stories they repeat. One Libnetter was advocating Bitcoin as an alternative to paper money, a way of working around the control of the Mega-Conspiracy.  But another participant said that maybe Bitcoin was really part of the Mega-Con, maybe a front for the NSA to keep track of you. So the first speaker went from advocating Bitcoin to wondering if it was indeed an Illuminati honeytrap. Life is damn rough when everything is a conspiracy… 

I just returned from a brisk nighttime walk to the post office to drop off the latest edition of my paper zine, Ray X X-Rayer #100 .  My walk was brisk not because of excessive energy on my part: quick movement was required because it's freakin' 10 degrees F/-12 degrees C outside. Back in February 1994 – I don’t remember the eXact date – I launched my zine.  (I pick Groundhog Day as an arbitrary date for the first issue.)  Twenty years and 100 issues later and I’m wondering how I managed to keep it going for so long. Over time my writing shifted from zining to blogging this stuff first, then slapping together some posts into a paper format.  I’ve almost given up along the way – that’s why my output isn’t prolific.  I think what helped me was not deciding to published on a definite schedule; I decided to write when inspiration struck me.  Ergo the long gaps between zine editions and posts. The fun of zining – and even blogging – has faded.  Ma...