What do pudus and Star Trek have in common?

I have mentioned Bob Harris’ blog on a couple of occasions. Another person with a blog, whom I haven’t mentioned though have been meaning to, is Wil Wheaton. Wil’s name ought to be familiar to anyone who, like me, spent his adolescence watching Star Trek: The Next Generation as he played the role of Wesley Crusher, the somewhat annoying wonderboy that all of the trekkie nerd boys were supposed to identify with. I know I did! Well, I am not mentioning Wil here because of past television glory, such as it was, but because he has grown up to be an insightful writer with a gentle sardonic sense of humour that suits me and, strangely enough, the times we are living in. As such, Wil’s blog shares some of the best characteristics of Bob Harris’ blog (the address is temporary while he straightens out data base issues with his regular blog address). The one thing that Bob’s blog has that Wil’s is missing is pictures of cute miniature deer called pudus. That and lots of references to cricket.

A couple of years ago now Wil wrote a great post in which he talked about how he’d become full of himself and unbearable while playing Crusher and was then brought back from the brink of self-absorption by a painfully honest letter from a girl who decided that she didn’t want to spend time with him anymore. As he put it, if it weren’t for that letter and the fact that he was willing to own up to its implications he might be ‘dead or drug-addicted or in trouble with the law’. He compared himself to America and expressed an earnest desire that some friend of the USA would write such a painfully honest letter and that the States would actually have the courage to face their own demons. As I mentioned earlier, his archives are offline so the URL is not likely to work, but the post very much captured the powerlessness, anger and concern I felt seeing a country that had once offered hope to others become a tragic caricature of itself. Unfortunately, what is difficult for people seems impossible for societies – America seems destined to reach bottom before it may start to come back up again. What is even worse, however, is that a country that size creates a vortex as it goes down and much of the world is likely to get dragged down into it as well. Of course, it does seem that Shrub is finally compromised politically but we should not think this the beginning of the end. At this point Dubya is more dangerous than ever as he is more likely to act even more irresponsibly and, even once he is safely out of the White House, the illness that has gripped the States will remain, as will the damage his administration has done to the democratic fibre of the nation and of the world.

In the meanwhile, I am adding Bob’s and Wil’s blogs to my list of links.