Skunks and Asteroids part II - April 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; the initial dead striped skunk was removed from the spot where it’d died on the road, but now there’s a second one, maybe a cub of the first deceased one – I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care, but what affects me is the fact that no one cares to do anything about the dead animals; the remains of the first skunk are still lying close to the curb, and the second skunk is lying not far away from the first – but since it is a public road, they’ll probably lie there until they break down completely – and can you imagine the smell? No, you probably cannot. Where are we?

Well, I’ll be absent from my blog for the next two or three weeks, maybe even more; the skunks will probably be still lying there when – and if – me and mine will get back home; and the PJ Masks?

Again, yes, obviously that the genre of the PJ Masks’ show is such that who cares about realism there – ‘the asteroid of badness’, or whatever it is called, is a plot device almost completely… to do what?

Again. The cartoon aspect of the ‘PJ Masks’ franchise was almost purely fable, with little personal development on the characters’ side, and almost equally little amount of interconnected continuity. The bad guys appeared to be incapable of learning anything from their misadventures and the good guys… would learn from their episode of the week/day/whatever… and that was it, they never implemented that knowledge in the future episodes… especially in the earlier seasons; later on, there would be some references to previous episodes in the more up-to-date ones, but not too much. And now?

And now, again, ‘PJ Masks’ seem to be stuck between genres; aware or not, but they’re moving away from their fable origins into a more generic superhero show; there are already clips showing all of the show’s villains getting new looks, and the heroes probably won’t be too far behind. Ergo?

Ergo, it is a soft reboot, not unlike the ones AoS went through in the latter seasons, (around their S4 and S5). On one hand, the old cast is present, on the other, this does not mean anything, as there is no character development, again. We have talked about how Luna Girl (and Mothsuki) had been all over the place, alignment-wise, but the same now can be said about other characters, such as the Ninjalinos, Pirate Robot and his mate Sally, and the Speedy twins. They used to be allies of the PJ Masks, but now they are back to being villains with nary a regret – but it is not their fault, it is the asteroid’s fault. Right. I did not do it, the robber sock did it. That sort of thing. The ‘PJ Masks’ is aimed – supposedly – at educating children (and their parents?), how to be good and proper, but…

…But the show itself is caught on a cultural crossroads that is affecting the entire USA, (and maybe the rest of the Western world) – whether they will stay monotheistic, (officially – Christian), or polytheistic, (aka pagan, by the modern terminology). The ‘PJ Masks’ cartoon is trying to teach its’ audience ‘the good old-fashioned Christian values’ (or whatever they’re called), but-

…But any ideology is costly, and the current American culture hates paying, as simple as that. Earlier in spring 2023, the team behind the Budweiser beer got an LGBTQ+ spokesperson to represent them. Immediately, some straight celebrities went hostile and proclaimed that they will never have to do anything with Budweiser again. Now what?

Now everything comes down to money, whether or not it is better financially to associate with the sexual minorities or not. I am certainly not saying that faith and religion are good, they are not – they are as flawed as the rest of humanity’s inventions, money included, but without them, there is no ideology, no actual reason to decide anything, and nothing that you do matters. In RF, the local cultural elite – some of them – tried to defy Putin’s government in relation to ‘the special military operation’ on the Ukrainian soil. Because the West did not support them, this defiance came to nothing. Go West!

Getting back to mass media, does anyone here remember ‘The 10 Commandments’ film, since Easter-2023 has been only recently as of this moment. No, not the sanitized Disney-tired ‘Prince of Egypt’ film, which wisely stopped just after the Hebrews finally came from of the Egyptian yoke – the much older version, with live actors? There, the final act went down as follows: Moses goes up the mountain and receives the titular commandments from the Lord. Meanwhile, some of the film’s last villains stage a coup and create ‘a Golden Calf’ complete with a good old-fashioned pagan cult, complete with free booze and free sex. When Moses comes back, he goes berserk, smashing the tablets with the commandments on the ground and sending the last of the movie’s villains into – a fiery pit. Impressive, but in the actual Bible Moses rather summoned the Levite tribe, the tribe of which he was a member, (the Bible presumes so), and they slaughter the opposition, several hundred people – and then Moses keeps the Hebrew people isolated in a desert for several decades, for the rest of his life, to keep them isolated from the temptations of the decadent pagans. It… works, sort of, for even now, centuries, (if not more), after those events the Jewish faith has kept its’ identity and allowed the Jewish people to endure centuries of prosecution, including the atrocities of WWII. That said, that faith and those people turned out quite different from how Moses intended them to be, so Moses’ way is not a panacea either, no matter how much Putin seems to be trying to imitate him those days. Back to the West?

Now, ‘PJ Masks’ do have a pharaoh-style villain among their number, true, but the monotheistic world isn’t Jewish, rather it is Protestant Christian, meaning that the ‘Moses incident’ doesn’t apply. See, whereas in Judaism it is admitted that ‘you can’t serve both God and Mammon’, (aka greed and money and the Golden Calf from the previous paragraph), Protestantism increasingly tried to do both; especially once the Europeans arrived in North America and began to colonize it. Unlike other versions of Monotheism, Protestantism is much more individualistic and de-centralized… not unlike the country of the U.S. itself. The result?

Well, take a look at ‘PJ Masks’, for example – their morals/lessons are rather Christian in outlook, (rather than of any other faith), but because a good deal of their franchise comes down to them all being sellable, the impact of those morals/lessons is diminished and what the audience gets is a series of toy commercials, where the (pre-teen) heroes and villains battle it out episode after episode, going nowhere… at all. Just as the dead skunks on the road are here to stay, until they decompose completely, that is. But then again, all things, including TV shows, have to end some time or another.

…This is it for now. See you all soon.

Skunks and asteroids - April 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks – just ask the poor striped skunk that ended up as roadkill not too far from our home building. …Mind you, the skunk in question was a wild animal, not an escaped pet, so the rest of us are not much better off – we may be alive, but we now get to smell the smell of both decomposing carrion and the smell of the remnants of a skunk’s trademark stench, you know? This is one bouquet of aromas that we all can live without – but because the dead skunk is lying in the middle of the city’s roads, aka public property, no one is doing anything about it, just because… Where were we?

Well, better off than the actual road devil that had ran over the skunk in question – they’d received the most of the skunk’s final blast and now have to clean it off their car one way or another, and that just isn’t fun; not to mention it might not be legal. See, the government of the GTA may not want its’ citizens to become too friendly and familiar with the urban wildlife – raccoons, coyotes, red foxes, etc. – but it doesn’t mean that they want to run them over with cars either. Especially the proverbial skunk, whose means of self-defence are well known, especially in North America.

…Incidentally, did you know that there are species of skunk in South America as well? Genetics aside, they look largely like the northern striped skunk, and probably smell just as bad. In Africa, there are local weasels that look like variant skunks, and they self-defend like variant skunks, but the honey badger is in a league of its’ own and doesn’t like to make a literal smell.

All mustelids, up to the wolverine, the biggest member of this group on land can make a bad smell, but the skunks are mustelid cousins instead, a closely related, but separate group; their only relatives are the so-called stink-badgers of the Asian tropics, but this is neither here nor there – let’s go into space instead.

Why go there? Because of PJ Masks, as a matter of fact. In their upcoming season premiere, the titular characters, and their arch-enemies, are going into space, each group with their respective allies, because of an asteroid that can turn heroes into villains, (and maybe vice versa? Who knows? Who cares)? Fair enough, but I would rather talk about celestial bodies instead.

What is an asteroid? It is a space rock, or, if you want to get professional, a minor planet. That said, they vary in size from a 1-m rock to a dwarf planet almost 1000 m in diameter, so space rocks they are.

Within the Solar System, most of asteroids are found within the so-called asteroid belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter; there are various origin theories about it and the asteroids, but they’re not important here – the point is that most of asteroids stay within it and don’t crash into Earth.

Then what does crash into Earth? This is where terminology gets tricky, especially if we do not get all scientific. First, we get the shooting/falling stars that do not fall onto Earth, but get burned-up in the atmosphere – they are called meteors. If they do not get burned-up and do crash into Earth, they are called meteorites instead. Both are space rocks, (also called meteoroids), again, just as the asteroids are, but asteroids do not smash into Earth. Conversely, though, we also have comets, that are more like giant ice balls that contain pieces of other substances/materials within their icy bulks, and when they fly close to the Sun, (or any other stars, actually), the ice begins to melt and the other substances burst out, forming the comet’s tail. Meteorites, meteors and most other meteoroids don’t do that… consequently, what is the point?

I honestly have no idea, I confess. The ‘PJ Masks’ are a mess – they started as successful fables, tried to mutate into a variant superhero cartoon and now they seem to be trying to have it all at once – there are villains in the show, true, but apparently most of the episodes will have the heroes solve their own problems rather battling their foes. From what I have heard about the promos for the episodes this is not going to happen, this is standard heroes vs. villains’ scenario instead. Well, more power to them. Maybe the ‘PJ Masks’ will succeed. I am not holding my breath though. Oh, wait; there is still the dead skunk. I guess that I am. We are still better off than it is, though.

For the moment though, this is it. See you all soon!