Doug's Darkworld

Friday morning I woke up sick again. Seems like the same sickness I had a few weeks back. An encore performance? Can germs do that? I managed to get Friday’s blog up, but then pretty much lost it afterwards. So my plans for Monday’s blog dissolved like so many overused tissues. Instead, random ramblings. It’s Sunday now and I feel a bit better today. It could pass though, isn’t that a famous tombstone epitaph? “But I was feeling better today!” On the plus side, no one I know has died in nearly a week.

Tesla announced a new cybertruck with less than stellar success. While demonstrating its ‘bulletproof’ windows … the windows broke. Oops. One would think that it would have been a simple matter for the staff to get that right, how hard could it be to test the vehicle’s windows repeatedly beforehand? It’s stuff like this that makes me chuckle when people believe that thousands of people could secretly work together for decades to do things like say, flawlessly hoax the Moon landings. The cybertruck also got a lot of criticism for its styling, which is unconventional at best. Not surprising, America is one of the most conformist societies on Earth, and American car styles generally reflect that. Hell, even our car colours are insanely conformist. I kinda like the cybertruck though, and if advance orders are any indication, plenty of other people do too. Order one here.

A Korean pop star, Goo Hara, has been found dead in her home, 28 years old. RIP. Suicide, drugs, likely a little of both. One certainly hears a lot of stories like this, I’m about as far from plugged into popular culture as it gets, and I can think of a number of stars who died before their time. Before going into a rant, I thought, better see how real this is. Do stars often die young?

Yes. Pop stars are twice as likely to die young, especially in the years following fame. Not too surprising, instant fame and fortune must be mind-numbingly stressful. Just for starters, one can’t go out in public anymore. And virtually everyone one meets will have expectations, not to mention there are a whole coterie of people expert at taking advantage of the newly rich and famous. Add to that the insane amount of cyber stalking and harassment one would get, one couldn’t even be on Facebook. It would be tough for most people I expect.

The rant is actually pretty short. More of an observation. If becoming rich and famous dramatically increases one’s chances of dying young … maybe we as a people are doing something wrong? It certainly doesn’t seem like a sign of a healthy culture. Or this that I just stumbled upon, about a fifth of Americans over 65 live in poverty. A rate that compares very unfavorably with the rest of the developed world. It’s somewhere between embarrassing and shameful, since the USA is the richest damn country the world has ever seen. It’s a safe bet that most of those people worked their entire lives, yet somehow the rich have all the money? I know, I know, I’m not supposed to complain if I don’t have a solution. That’s called deflection, one of the many tactics the rich use to avoid even discussing the problem. That’s the whole point of pointing out and acknowledging a problem, to come up with better ways of doing things. Not pretend it will go away or simply defending the status quo.

Another day though. I will be spending three days a week writing from now on. ‘Content is King’ as a friend recently said. We’ll end today with a depressing ‘on this date’ story. 25 November, 1941. The HMS Barham, a World War One era British battleship was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Egypt. I believe it was the only battleship sunk in the open sea by a submarine during World War Two. Basically the U-boat got lucky as an escort destroyer misread a sonar contact, and it was able to fire four torpedoes at point blank range. Three of them struck amidships, the Barham was mortally damaged, rolled over on her side, and four minutes later a magazine exploded and she sank. Amazingly enough, a cameraman on a nearby ship was able to capture it on film. More than 800 people died, one can see many of them in the footage. God rest their souls. Watch at one’s own recognizance.

I think that’s the first time I ever used the word recognizance in a sentence. Have a great week everyone.

Copyright © 2019 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: The new Tesla cybertruck. Credit: Tesla, used without permission. However since it’s a publicity shot and I’m plugging their vehicle, I hope I can be forgiven)