The Thomas Chronicles

I’d rather not see the latest in the Batman movies. I’ve been a fan of the Batman movies ever since the first Tim Burton movie back in 1989. I’ve even checked into the comicbooks from time to time despite (or because of) Frank Miller’s psychotic rendition.

But this is one Batman movie is not what I had in mind as a good time for one overwhelming reason. The death of Heath Ledger.

I believe this role ultimately killed him and I don’t see how anyone can rationalize it. He said the role got under his skin. The sociopathic madman in the Joker got inside him when he played that role, haunted him, refused to let him sleep, as though the evil he portrayed latched onto him.

Heath Ledger described his sleepless nights and mental exhaustion as he wrestled with his role as the “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic” Joker in the new Batman film.

He died overdosing on sleeping pills.

I know there are some who say they’re going to see this movie in honor of Ledger, but I think it’s darn close to morbid.

… to be entertained by the movie that killed Heath Ledger— kind of like laughing over a man’s grave, there’s just something not right about it…

While writing my previous post, two related news items came in.

1. Iran has formally threatened the Strait of Hormuz to hurt Western economies should either America or Israel attacks.

Iranian Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari said, “Regarding the main route for exiting energy, Iran will definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”

It seems they’ve declared that closing or disrupting the Strait of Hormuz will be one of their opening moves in this potential war. 20 to 40 percent of the world’s energy passes through those narrow waters.

2. It was reported today in China View and other locations that Iran is digging 320,000 graves on their border provinces for our troops.

“We do not wish the families of enemy soldiers to experience what Americans had to go through in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,” said Baqerzadeh, who is also head of Iran’s search committee for missing soldiers.

The preemptive measures would decrease the time during which slain soldiers would be buried, the Iranian military official said, adding “the burial of slain soldiers will be carried out decently and in little time.”

I would say this is more than the usual rhetoric, wouldn’t you?

Update 7/1/08:

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, in a energy starved world, closing or disrupting this supply would lead to at least a Great Depression. If you think it’s just about oil, you are absolutely correct.

I try to explain to people (if they are willing to listen) that petroleum doesn’t just go into your cars. It makes all your plastics, all the fertilizers for our food– in a word, it is what drives out entire world. We are practically bubblewrapped in petroleum products.

So, when people chant, “No blood for oil!” think about this. Without oil, millions will die from starvation, poverty, and eventually, disease (no plastic syringes and no plastics in machinery to create the vaccines). There will be plenty of blood flowing without oil, more than we can imagine.

We know what life without oil is like— it’s the kind of life during the Civil War on back where people were white-haired, toothless and dying by 40 years old.