Neural Folia Bloom at Movie

Here's something I bet you didn't know! Most people think consciousness is a continuous process. That's wrong! Scientists now know that human consciousness, like yours, results from the sporadic "flipping" of neural folia in the brain. In normal people, this "flipping" occurs roughly as often as movie frames. This is why humans like movies. Deep down we recognize ourselves in them.

So when I saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) movie, my first reaction was to greet it. My second reaction was to look for other things that the H2G2 movie and I shared, aside from discontinuity. Hobbies? Signs?

Before going there I'll review the movie really fast.

Douglas Adams mostly wrote it. Douglas Adams mostly wrote H2G2's other incarnations. So objections that it differs from the book are irrelevant. Leave it. Anyway, it's more faithful to the book than you'd expect, given that Adams would hardly have wanted to merely repeat himself. Some jokes are missing, but new ones replace them. You want the old jokes? Read the book again. My main complaint about the movie is that the costume designers who created Marvin took the "brain the size of a planet" line far too literally. Also a movie should be over when the credits roll. No fair inserting content two minutes after the end, so impatient Americans like me never get to see it. Also, Questular Rontok's relationship to Zaphod Beeblebrox sorely needed fleshing out, as they say.

SPOILER ALERT: I will soon give away portions of plot.

What I really want to talk about is how, gosh, did any of you ever notice how Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is all about issues we constantly harp on here at Real Change? In case you haven't noticed this, I will list just some of the ways.

1) We at Real Change constantly bitch and moan about homelessness. Likewise, Arthur Dent, the central character of H2G2, perpetually bitches and moans about planetlessness.

2) We complain about bureaucrats and their callous disregard for human needs. The H2G2 movie makes the Vogons primary antagonists. The Vogons are an entire alien species with callous disregard for human needs. Or even Vogonic needs, really. Arthur Dent can prevail against the Vogons largely because, being British, he knows how to queue. Likewise, having been homeless, I know how to wait at a DSHS office.

3) Vogons detest hitchhiking, a practice that involves getting an unauthorized ride. Many Earthlings detest panhandling. At Real Change we provide an authorized alternative, work.

4) In one scene Arthur Dent and company are trying to rescue Trillian (another human) and every time any one of them gets any idea he is whacked in the face by presumptuous entities to whom they had not been previously introduced. Likewise whenever homeless people get ideas for solving their own problems, it turns out that presumptuous politicians, NIMBYs, and radicals who are more-radical-than-thou (but not themselves actually helping in any way) whack them. Figuratively.

5) To the Vogons, who have no imaginations, Trillian can't establish her identity unless she can legitimately claim a currently existing home planet. To the US Postal Service in Seattle it is unimaginable that Seattle residents who don't have street addresses might require a post office box in the same vicinity as the social services they need. No, none of us has a space ship that can get us to a suburban branch office that provides PO boxes to homeless people and back downtown in time to line up for food and shelter. Yes we all need to get mail. It is no longer a luxury. The 18^th century is over.

6) In the movie, the bowl of petunias thinks "Oh no, not again," just before colliding with a medium-sized planet at several hundred kilometers per hour. Here at Real Change, that's our reaction to most every state budget announcement, and every election. "Oh no, not again." Splat.