Ozma Links

It's Crazy Dictator Month At Ozma Links!

Who's your favorite crazy dictator?

I know I said it was Star Trek month. And it's still Star Trek month. It's just that it's also Crazy Dictator Month.

There are some good crazy dictators in Star Trek, actually. I'll get to that next week.

The crazy dictator of the day is none other than 'Turkmenbashi' AKA Saparmurat Niyazov.

Turkmenbashi is one of those dictator's dictators, a dictator so crazy that he almost seems fictional.

Among his dictatorial accomplishments:

(1) Author of his own national Bible called the 'Ruhnama' or 'Book of the Soul.'

(2) Builder of the enormous Saparmurat Hajji Mosque, which Turkmen were encouraged to visit once a year on religious pilgrimages.

The Mosque is sort of pretty and can hold 20,000.

(3)  Erected many golden statues in his likeness. (This goes without saying. Statues of one's likeness are de rigueur for dictators.)

(4) Inventor of a special melon, named after himself. Also, 'melon day' on which all Turkmen were required to celebrate the melon.

(5) Renamed all the months.  First month of the year: Turkmenbashi! Rest of the year: Named after things Turkmenbashi liked.

(6) Banned lip syncing. Frowned on recorded music as bad for the development of Turkmen music skills.

Some of the standard, typical dictator things:

(1) Bad Childhood: Grew up in an orphanage.

(2) Kind of obsessed with motherhood and mothers.

(3) Modest!  "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets," he once said, "but it's what the people want."

(4) Multi-talented: Landscape artist (planted tens of thousands of trees, which later died), writer (the Bible thing),horticulturalist.

(5) Super billionaire (thanks to multi-national oil corporations), kills all his enemies and anyone else he feels like that day, etc. Also, merciful--occasionally pardoning 8,000 people at a time.

(6) Bad complexion. None too attractive. This is just a strange thing about dictators. Something about teenage acne leads to dictator-like tendencies? Do they start out as dictators at first just to get chicks? You tell me.

(7) Died, of course. They all die. Never soon enough.

So, comments are open. Send me your suggestions. I think Turkmenbashi is hard to top but if you know of any dictators real or imagined with mad dictator skillz of this caliber, let it rip.

I Love Lions, Tigers, Jaguars, Jagarundis

Not, you know, in close proximity or anything.

And it always makes me sad to see them in zoos. Well, maybe not the lions. They seem to like lying around like lazy slobs.

But the tigers look so trapped. You can almost hear them thinking "I want to sneak up on that little kid holding the balloon. Not just run at them and eat them. If they would just let me drop from a tree now and again on some of these creatures..."

Tigers are badasses.

I have a long, long story to explain how I came to dislike housecats. I had to live with crazy people all the time and they always had cats. And their cats were similarly crazy. And now I live with someone nice who has a nice cat. And yet...that cat looks exactly like evil crazy roommate's cat that used to cough up hairballs on my pillow.

I know the cure for this is simply to raise some little feral kitty. Caring for a thing is always a way to love it. So I'll do that eventually.

Not because I feel any special need to love cats but just that I am extremely afraid of cat lovers and what they might do to me when they find out I don't love cats. It just seems...safer.

I'm telling you people: It's weird. I used to love cats. The housemate, she was evil.  You had to be there. I don't know why my dislike of her transferred to her cat. Perhaps because she was so identified with the cat.

Great 'evolution of the housecat' article in Scientific American

Fred Rogers Tribute

Once there was a girl in my neighborhood, an abusive girl because she'd been abused. Her name was Pam. She was much older than me but somehow we developed this friendship.

On occasion, she would physically torment me in various horrible sadistic ways.

I can't explain it but this makes my heart ache for her.

There was one thing about her, she loved Mr. Rogers. I didn't get it at the time. Mr. Rogers was not my cup of tea, even though I was the right age for Mr. Rogers and she wasn't. I liked the little kingdom part but the rest of it seemed to go too slowly. I found the whole put the shoes on/put the shoes off thing comforting. I liked his sweater.

But Pam really loved Mr. Rogers. Now I think I know why. There weren't any adults who thought she was special. Mr. Rogers thought she was special.

It must just be my mood but I can't stop reading this Mr. Rogers tribute.  And getting all choked up about it.

This story makes no sense to me but it is the one that got me all sobby.

I think it's irony and making fun of Mr. Rogers but anyway. Apparently that's impossible.

I'm 40 years old and I finally get Mr. Rogers.

Meet Dr. Ecstacy

Wow, this guy invented 2000 psychedelic compounds. Including MDMA (ecstacy).

The head of the DEA was actually married in his backyard. But they eventually fell out with him after he published a book explaining how to re-create some of these compounds.

TWO. THOUSAND.

It probably says something about me that, when I think about retirement, I am thinking...

Travel: You know, go to India or whatever.

Take psychedelics. I need to keep a file on those I would like to take, eventually.

You know, I'm responsible. I'll put my kids through college first before I start consuming ayahuasca in the Peruvian amazon or whatever. 

It's true that my brain is probably like Swiss cheese now, from those few years in college where I did experiment a bit with psychedelics.  It will probably make me more doddering as an elderly person. If not outright vegetable-like.

But hey, what's life all about anyway?

And you might not believe me, but my interest is scientific, in a sense. Come on! I want to write a book.  What can I say? I'm curious. Time sped up? Time slowed down? Doesn't that sound kind of fun?

I'm planning on keeping it to primarily natural compounds, ones taken by the locals in steamy jungles without apparently permanent long term harm. I'll find one of those old peyote guys and see if he still remembers where his house is. If he does then what the hell.

I don't really want to take the one that he describes as giving him ‘’one of the most delicious blends of inflation, paranoia and selfishness that I have ever experienced.'’

OK, I know you probably can't relate.

Every once in a while my husband and I have one of those starry eyed 'you are so perfect for me' moments. Like when we talked about our childhood obsession with the old Star Trek. Or when we both realize how much we liked LSD in our youth. (We were out of that phase before our early twenties, when we met.)

He'd totally go for it. And it's not even in our wedding vows or anything.

Star Trek: Week, Month, Whatever: Until I Get Sick of Star Trek

This is the best old Star Trek parody ever:

John Belushi as Captain Kirk

Chevy Chase makes a pretty good  Spock. Not as good as that guy playing young Spock in the new movie who I love in a scary way (as Spock, anyway).

Star Trek got in my head.

The original Star Trek, that is. I was eleven or something when we first got a color TV.  And Star Trek was the first show I watched on that TV. So please, you'll  have to excuse this current fervor.

They even have the sound effects. Damn, I love those sound effects.

How Did I Never See This?

Barbie Theater!!!

Double Indemnity--with Ken (sort of) and a fetching but dishelved Barbie

Radiohead Denies Influencing Local Band

Although they admit the Dayton-area group may have taken its name from a line in "Karma Police," the members of Radiohead held a press conference in Ohio Monday to dismiss allegations that they played any role in helping to form the musical style of local band Hitler Hairdo.

Just because you use a vocoder doesn't make you Radiohead.

It's Star Trek Week Here at Ozma Links

No, it's Star Trek MONTH!!!

I Need This Information

This goes on my 'to-do' list.

How do you disappear at the drop of a hat? How does one flee and erase one's traces?

Couple flees after bank mistakenly deposits 10 million into their account.

I'll bet there's a book on this somewhere. But will it be accurate? 

OK, this book has the most stars on Amazon. 

I mean, isn't this kind of like stocking up on canned food?  I'm not going to disappear necessarily. Just seek an extra identity just in case. Now finding one for my child might be a bit trickier. That may take some time. She likes to go by different names so I'm sure she'd be down with the idea.  

Japanese Gangster Vans!

These are not your typical vans, in any way shape or form.