Ask Luke’s Mother-in-Law: My Little Ponies for ISIS

In which ex-cop/crazy cat lady/mom-in-law Martha Boyd answers your questions from the coziness of the Joshua Tree desert. All questions and answers are real.

Happy Thursday, all

Well, it was a busy week last week with LYT and Julia being out for visit/work. We did a podcast and a Geek Fuel box review for you all; hope you have listened. We had a great Star Wars guest on the podcast and you all got to see a change of location – my house is a bit neater LOL. Maybe sometime we can do a tour of the desert robot hideout. Julia even caught Mr. Frizzy drinking hot water out of the kitchen sink. I was trying to do dishes and he hopped up on the sink and started lapping the water from the tap and I had the hot on. Anyway she posted it to her Instagram and last I heard we were getting lots of likes.

My moms cat Frizzy like to drink water big time. #catsofinstagram #water #cats #drinking

A video posted by Julia Boyd (@juliaannboyd) on May 5, 2015 at 8:15pm PDT

We have been having 50+ mph winds the last few days. My roof is not looking good, but I have a good handyman who can stick it back down again. Also the latch on my front door got stuck, but I fixed it myself. I am really appreciating the basic home repair skills that John taught me. Ladies, tools can be your friends. Learn how to use them – I probably saved a couple of hundred dollars on this issue alone. Remember Duck Tape and WD-40 are your friends.

Hopefully you all remembered Mother’s Day. I got a nice plant from the 2-legged kids. For the fuzzy ones, it was just a normal day of mom being home – we had lots of brushing. They love to be brushed, especially Mr. Frizzy.

Still no word on when we are having the citizen patrol academy. I can do everything except patrol at this point, and last month I volunteered 12 hours. I love working in administration, so not being able to go out on patrol is not that much of a big deal to me. Right now I am in a nice air-conditioned office; as we approach summer patrol looks less appealing – they many times stand around in the hot desert sun at the farmers market or at a traffic accident.

GallenDugall this week wins the contest (there is no prize) for the most questions (4) and they were good long ones that took a lot of though. I feel the questions are probably better than the answers in some cases. There were some real challenges. So let’s get started with the madness.

clashctyrkr:

hi hi mamasan,
i remember my first solo flight. i was 4. the plane had propellers. dc6 i think. do you prefer organic or geometric patterns for canvas type shoes?

I prefer my canvas shoes to be a plain color, so then I can wear them with more colorful tops and bottoms.

doctor_mindbender:

Hi Martha:
Is Colossus: The Forbin Project a great movie or the greatest movie?

Oooooh. That was a good movie from the 1970s. Loved the way the computers took over like Hal in 2001. I would not be surprised if there isn’t something similar to the 2 computers going on already. I would not put it past some governments that I know to be doing this.

dnjscott:

I had a friend who really strongly believed the desert by 29 Palms was haunted. Ever seen any ghosts out there?

I have seen a lot of very interesting things out here in the desert. For example, we have a couple of vortexes in Joshua Tree and the Landers area. George Van Tassel was very big in the area many years ago. In Joshua Tree I have been on a spot were we get very drastic temperature drops and there have been sightings of glowing shapes just when the temp drops.

Out east of 29 Palms there are many old gold mines, and I have heard lots of stories from old miners (my husband included) of haunted mines and what has happed to those who try to take gold from the mines. I think we may have more UFOs than ghosts. We have on many nights seen strange lights both near the ground and in the sky going between the Marine base and the National Park. At my house, as we have dark skies, you can on a clear night see things all the way to Arizona and the Colorado River. Lots of times we have the telescopes set up just so we can catch anything going on.

GallenDugall:

QUESTION! The Enterprise D was equipped with good old fashioned Photon Torpedoes, but the Enterprise E was equipped to use new fangled Quantum Torpedoes – why?

On a related note in the “real world” (if you can call it that) when one side develops a really good weapon it’s not long before everyone is using it or a home grown variant, yet somehow in Star Trek every culture uses ethnically distinctive weapons, and thoughts on why this might be beyond dumbing things down for the viewers?

I understand that the Quantum torpedoes are a bit faster (flying) and can get through down shields faster, but give me a good old fashion Photon any day. It is like any new car model with the latest wiz bangs – they work great for a while and then you wish for the days when you have the reliable crank windows in the car. Kind of the same on a starship.

As for the different cultures, probably if you strip off the ethnic parts you have pretty much the same weapon. After all, we are copy cats and there’s no reason why out in space we still would not copy especially if someone comes up with a good idea, But we would change it a bit to make it look like we had an original thought. Also Star Trek has better writers than the real world.

GallenDugall:

QUESTION! How much longer will the madness of My Little Pony continue to consume the sanity of the world? Have we hit “Peak Pony”? Will the gradual abandonment of the show by its original staff eventually inflict ruin upon it? Are we doomed to leave a world of ever increasing pony puns and pastels to the next generation?

I remember My Little Pony when Julia was little, about 20 yrs ago. It was a nice, safe cartoon for kids to watch and it still is. I think a lot of the Bronies are now grown men, but probably watched Pony with their little sisters at some point. It too will probably run its course and then come back in another 20 yrs when these guys have grandkids. The basic cartoons do have great messages and god only knows that this world needs more positives, Ponies are sort of like Care Bears and there is nothing wrong with more love and sparkles. Maybe we should ship a big crate of them to ISIS.

GallenDugall:

QUESTION! I’m looking forward to see Ant-Man. I’ve got a gift card to see movies with this year and that’s one. Haven’t bothered to see the new Avengers yet. I keep finding other things to do instead… like darn socks. I don’t know why but maybe you can explain why I don’t care about Avengers 2? Is it a side effect of the mind control satellites? If so why does the government want me to darn my socks?

They want you to darn socks so you will be prepared. Can’t have holes in our socks. Besides, knowing how to sew can be very handy. I haven’t seen Avengers 2 either and I understand I have not missed much. I would much rather do the sewing that Julia left with me this last weekend. Sewing is a dying art; what are people going to do when we need to mend things after the world goes into a full tizzy? Ant-Man, I agree, looks a bit more interesting.

GallenDugall:

QUESTION! (with a lot of preamble) The old “bullseye” targets were replaced by silhouette targets during WWI when it was discovered that ordinary people pressed into service had a hard time shooting at fellow human beings, and in one incident an entire USAlund battalion surrendered rather than kill anyone. A study was done to determine why this had happened and how to counter this from happening again. Ultimately the silhouette target was introduced to desensitize soldiers and depersonalize the task of killing, make people think in terms of a mechanical operation placing rounds center mass rather than killing someone.

Fast forward a few decades and similar reluctance to fire incidents during the Vietnam War leading to another study and this one uncovered the WWI study… along with studies from WWII, Spanish American War, Civil War, Revolutionary War, Napoleonic War and on and on. It seems that as far back as the records go there have been problems getting people to kill other people in wartime. The studies were never widely distributed, in part due to the stigma of “cowardice” they were never widely discussed, they came up with wildly differing answers, and were not always very scientific. For example the Revolutionary War’s answer was to hire German drill instructors. Modern desensitizing initiatives include war games in the tranquil domestic setting of USAlund suburbia.

So the QUESTION – is this proof that people are hardwired to be good? Is it proof of how unnatural an experience war is? Is there any truth about ourselves we can take away from this?

Yep, I think we as humans generally have a really hard time killing another human. On the range we use both the silhouette targets and targets that look like good and bad people when we do “shoot/don’t shoot” training. In the real world, especially in war, many times it is very hard to tell the good guy from the bad guy and it is getting harder and harder to do this. It really gets bad when even little kids can kill you.

I have always thought that a conflict between nations, tribes, etc should be setting with a good game of cards or baseball – something like that. I have never understood why man feels such a need at times to destroy for some belief. I mean, look at the beautiful and historic cities in the Middle East that are just being turned into rubble – it is such a shame and there is really no point to all of the madness.

So that is it for this week for your questions; please keep them heading my way. I really love the mind teasers you all keep sending.

I was going to start share pics of Pioneertown this week but that will have to wait for next week as I got some other things to share. Got a couple of good sunrise pics from the front of my house with a storm in the background.

Went to a great dinner/movie night on Saturday with the JT Film Fest. The dinner was prepared by our film maker AG Vasquez. We saw 2 of his documentaries: “Living on the Dime,” which is about the construction of the I-10 Freeway thru the inland empire and what it did to cities like Redlands and how it split cities and populations.

The other was “Kokopelli Defenders.” This was on the ancient glyphs out by Blythe, CA, that are being threaten by the BLM allowing solar development. I have flown over the Blythe glyphs and they are spectacular. Google Blythe Kokopelli and you can see the air view of this ancient wonder. By the way, the large up and down cut on Kokopelli was caused when a motorcycle race was allowed to go over the site. I have attached a pic of the Kokopelli for you – but really Google it; the site is wonderful and needs protection. Check out Mr. Vasquez’s documentary, as it is well worth about 10 minutes of your time.

The dinner/movie was a fund raiser for the September 2015 film fest. You can go on Indiegogo for more of the fund-raising efforts. Screening locations will be in Joshua Tree. Posted the link for you.

Well guys that’s about all for this week. As always be good to each other this next week. As always, Huggs.

Got questions? Martha answers all, from the earth-shattering to the trivial and even the weird. Post yours in the comments below.