Germany, China, Cheers, Superman and yet another swipe at Conservatives

Germany and China will eventually undergo a serious population problem in that they will have too few youngsters and too many oldsters. Germany has a lifetime birth rate of only 1.3 children per woman. China regulates children per family and has 1.6 kids per woman. Italy and Japan also have population trouble like that. I don’t know how they project populations based on how many children will result from parents that haven’t been born yet, but they do.
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The week “Cheers” debuted, it ranked dead last in the network ratings. It’s a miracle why it wasn’t cancelled right away. I’d like to imagine an alternative universe where it was cancelled. Having no acting career, George Wendt started a foundation to feed all of Africa. The tragedy of Iraq was circumvented and cancer was cured. “Cheers” was a curse in the disguise of a blessing. Damn you, Sam Malone!
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I’m getting sick of these politicians who took credit when things went well, and then insist that the free market must correct itself when things go badly.

The Republicans took credit when the percentage of Americans who are home owners were at historic highs; and now say two years later how wrong it was for the banks to have lent mortgage money to high-risk people.

Are those who do not remember history doomed to repeat it? And those that do not study claptrap pedestrian proverbs may miss out on the fact that they are occasionally true - including the one you get saying “Help! I’m a prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!” That one always had such deep meaning for me. Because, aren’t we all really just prisoners in this great, big fortune cookie factory on Earth? Have I digressed again?
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I watched the animated movie Superman Requiem and Resurrection. It was ok, but I thought it would be bigger budget than it was. The art looked rather cartoony, Louis Lane in particular. Superman himself had some weird facial lines – old age? Louis looked about 23 and constantly wore skirts so short and tight that Allie McBeal would blush. There was a lot of death and even a little vomit. The action was pretty good, but I would have liked the plot to have been a little deeper than this unkillable ogre shows up and Superman is called in to fight. I wish there could have been some kind of reprise in the fighting, like the Doomsday guy would have to break off the attack to go grab a cow to eat for lunch. Then there could be some kind of “what’s its weakness?” discussion. I’m all for action, but a slugfest without meaning leaves an audience uncaring about who wins.

But the reason I brought up Superman was that yet again the evildoer, Lex Luthor, killed his #2. She didn’t even deserve it. She did exactly what he asked. He eliminated her to cover his trail that one extra step. Clearly, LexCorp is not winning awards on “Best Places to work in Metropolis”.

I won’t give away too much, but as the title “Requiem and Resurrection” implies, he’s killed then reborn. The rebirth is quasi-preposterous, but really, no more so than the entire Superman opus.

Superman is all for the betterment of mankind and all of that. He’s shown as trying to find cures for cancer in his spare time. But he’s got a sentient robot as his sidekick. Don’t you think that if you allowed sentient robots to be mass-marketed, that the economic boost would keep people from having to engage in criminal behavior?

I never liked Superman. He was strong, sure. Great force for good, yeah, yeah. Where’s the dilemma? What kind of bravery does it take to stare down the barrel of a gun knowing full well that bullets are less of a nuisance than a water droplet? Look at Spiderman, who tries to live a normal personal life against the demands of being a superhero. Look at Batman and his tortured soul and circumspect treatment of criminals. The Green Arrow was a cad, even that’s more interesting than Superman’s monogamous lily white wedding. The courtship of Louis Lane took 60 years, and she couldn’t even recognize him with a pair of glasses on. There is never, ever a moment when the reader says “Oh crap! What’s he going to do now?”

Well, that is, until he got killed.

But, on the other hand, he was resurrected, too.

The coolest thing about the Requiem and Resurrection? The image of the iconic red cape, torn and charred hanging flag-like from a piece of wreckage, then swept away with the wind. When this story was presented on paper, that issue was presented with 5 or 6 different varieties of cover art. The one with the cape outsold the others by a huge margin. If only Star Trek’s perennially doomed Ensign Leibowitz got that kind of eulogy. A torn and charred red shirt hanging from a twisted piece of metal with sad music would be appropriate. Instead he gets a brief diagnosis: “He’s dead, Jim.”