Amber's Weird Library

BRAINSTORMING The return of Lore? Dahj was a daughter of Picard and the Borg Queen? Dahj was the daughter of Seven of Nine and Chakotay and was being hunted? Was Lore the one trying to end all biological life at the end of the first season? The Romulans accidentally created the Borg? Picard Season 2 is about World War III and saving Colonel Philip Green? Colonel Philip Green was manipulated by the Romulans? Picard has to save Sisko in the past?  I recently went back through my blog and podcast and was reminded of all of the fun theories fans had about the show Star Trek Picard. The theories ended up being more fun than what we got from the actual show. Picard ended up being about old age and dying and also ripping off Mass Effect. They through in some statements about Brexit and the refugee crisis that seemed to not go anywhere. Are the Romulans innocent refugees or still powerful enough to start a battle over a synth planet. They ended up being right about destroying the synth pla...

 I haven't posted in a while because I just went through a huge move. I moved from the US to Europe and spent the summer settling in and traveling around. Now I am back to finish the project I started, to become a professional poscaster. I have a long way to go but this experience so far has been very educational. I have learned a lot about editing, performing, and entertaining and I am excited about learning more. I am still exploring topics and hope to one day have co-hosts and guests.  Some pics from my summer: This sculpture is from a cathedral in Regensburg, Germany.  This is what I saw when I got off of the train in Salzburg, Austria.  Lake Garda, Italy was a pleasant surprise. This is where I had the best gelato.  A wall in Verona, Italy.

Warning: Spoilers       After seeing where the writers wanted to go with Picard's character, I thought, why didn't they go back in time to Picard's childhood instead of 2024? We could have explored that mysterious time period between The Original Series and The Next Generation. We could have learned more about the anti-tech beliefs of Picard's father. Maybe some kind of neurotech messed up Picard's mother's mind.      We could have seen Picard try to save his mother's life. This somehow creates the evil timeline. Maybe the Borg are discovered early and this makes humans afraid of what is out there and makes them want to destroy new life rather than learn from it.      I did some reading about Picard's story and discovered a Comic Book that was written about by John de Lancie called "The Gift". This comic book was released in 1990, before the episode "Family" and "Tapestry".  Because of this, the names of Picard's family ...

I was researching the history of the peoples of the Amur River and found out about an interesting battle between the tribes of Siberia who rode on the backs of reindeer and the Manchurian army. In my reading, I discovered a connection to one of my favorite movies of my childhood. 

  The movies of that year form a bridge between the late 80's action sci-fi and the 90's. Practical effects were still being used, though CGI began to be introduced.  The movies still are very sweaty, gory, and violent with giant muscles and big, huge guns! Instead of franchises, movies were marketed using stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger who starred in two of the highest grossing movies that year. These action films were not shallow, and some dealt with heavy themes of reality, the media and censorship.  

       I was excited to go back into the 1900's mainly for one great early director of science fiction films, Georges  Méliès ! If you take a film class, his film, "A Trip to the Moon" is usually the first one you will see.      Georges  Méliès  is very important in not just science fiction film history but in film history in general because he one of the first to experiment with special effects like substitution splices, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and multiple exposures, things we take for granted today.       Though the technology was primitive, he still made beautiful films that hold up well to this day. Watching his movies is like watching a dream. A Trip to the Moon is based very loosely on a book by Jules Verne. The movie is more fantastical than Verne's original story with the astronomers in the movie fighting a moon army and saving the moon people from an oppressive moon king.      ...

            I was 10 years old when Robocop came out. My brother was 8 and was invited to watch it with our aunt and our cousin, who was also 8. Since he already saw it anyway, I was allowed to watch Robocop when it came out on cable. Even at 10, I covered my eyes in horror when the new police robot ED-209 shot an innocent man into pieces in the boardroom scene at the beginning of the movie. I wanted to cry when Murphy got shot into bits, but learned about bullet proof vests. You see, the gang killed Murphy by shooting him around the bullet proof vest. I thought I was a smart kid because I noticed that. Then, finally, there was the toxic waste guy scene. Those are all of the scenes I remembered from those decades ago.         Though I was allowed to watch Robocop, my parents were normally strict about not letting us watch violent movies. I never watched The Terminator, Aliens, or Predator as a kid. We had to watch Rambo and Com...