Trek vs Wars: final round

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We're a month away from Eurovision 2017. If you don't know what it is, I'll try to summarize it for you in a sentence:Every year, each nation in Europe picks a musical artist+song for a pan-continental contest called Eurovision, the finals of which comprise a night of live performances that are, in a word, incredible.I lack the patience/wherewithal to watch the finals live, but someone always puts together an extremely useful YouTube playlist almost immediately afterward, which is just as good. Eurovision is amazing, everyone. There's always at least 1-4 genuine bangers of various varieties mixed in with assorted sappy ballads, peppy rock numbers, and bonkers techno jams, but what you really want to watch it for is the sheer pageantry of the stage performances. Eurovision is the only place you can watch a Russian defy the laws of physics, a literal Romanian vampire sing an entire song in operatic falsetto, or a French band do whatever this is.In episode 12 of the podcast, I proposed an American version geared toward having all 50 states each submit a song and choose the winner in similar fashion (the Eurovision rules prevent a country from voting for their own song, which is a nice touch). Sadly, some research I did years prior pointed to the idea having been optioned a while back, but nobody ever did anything with it. That doesn't change the fact that I still want to see it, though. What would each state's submission look like? Do we just get a flood of country from the Midwest? Does Georgia give us a Dirty South rap anthem? How many beards appear in the Oregonian band? More than the one from Maine? What the hell does New York's entry look like? Somebody pick this one up; now more than ever, a celebration of national creativity seems like something we could all rally around. Or at least some of us. I'm just talkin' here. What kind of act do you think your state of choice would submit? 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.

• How do you release information to the science press about attaching cameras to whales with suction cups but then fail to include any of the goddamn footage, as if that's not 100% what we want to see? Does it contain proprietary whale secrets?? What do they not want us to know?!

• The Handmaid’s Tale Is a Warning to Conservative Women is a good read in and of itself, but honestly I just want you to see it for the art at the top, which is [100 emoji].

• Of all the geoengineering ideas floating around out there, I bet you won't find one with a more cheerful name than "cloud brightening."

• This Star Wars resort idea is fine. It's fine. I just want someone to build a Star Trek one not because of any perceived rivalry between the two houses (see below for more on that, btw), but for the simple fact that more of Star Trek takes place on actual starships than Star Wars, which has always seemed mostly planet-based to me.

• A clothes dryer that uses ultrasound? It's quicker? There's no heat? There's even video of the proof-of-concept you can watch, which just highlights to me how oddly wrong it seems, even though it's also extremely cool? Can you tell I'm conflicted about this for what seems like no reason? Did they test this technology with a dog in the room?

Looky Here

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway37 - Oh, It's THAT Guy"Jon (@ferociousj), Kate (@keightdee), and special guest Dana (@atomeve) muse on the grab bag of convention personalities, the appeal of Portland, and various juggalo-related marketing opportunities."This one also contains another food truck idea; I keep having those for some reason.You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/God Doesn't Actually Hate JediNow that Star Wars Celebration has happened, this seems like as good a time as any to bump a piece I'd been meaning to write forever that finally went up in the closing days of 2016, which explains a picture of me that's gone mildly viral on a few occasions since it was taken:God Doesn't Actually Hate Jedi 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumWhat About Monday, A Long Hard Sniff With Your Eyes Closed 

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.