Year Of The Sea-Monkey!

I for one miss the delightful whimsy of the Sea-Monkeys. I'm sure most folks who hover around this site have chanced across these vintage ads featuring the bizarre sub-sea nuclear family with their beaming smiles and impossibly humanoid appearances. That warm familial illustration was the work of talented comics professional Joe Orlando.

The promise of the Sea-Monkeys was the chance to play Frankenstein on the tiniest of scales, to give life and control that life in the comfort of your home. The little critters were as the ad suggests a "bowl full of happiness".  "So eager to please" it was suggested. It was all the most entertaining and  blatant of total hokum.

The light-hearted scam which was and is the Sea-Monkey tells me something about the fundamental nature of us all, or at least the folks I know. We crave connections, we hunger for some meager control over the lives which have been thrust upon us. By taking control of the lives of these pretend happy-go-lucky aquatic critters we feel that we will have something which is ours, completely and utterly.

At the same time, we know it's all a sham, a bogus joke which calls out our fundamental needs while weirdly giving balm to them at the same time. America and the world is all too ready to fall for nonsense from those who pretend to lead us to a better future, because we were trained from our earliest days to believe that life was ours to tamper with, life was ours to get hold of and make our pet. Like the insipid Sea-Monkeys, it's all rot, but we are programmed to want it nonetheless for the alternative is to see that we like the real Sea-Monkeys are just bits of flotsam that spark for a moment then disappear. We might as well smile.

Toward that end, expect perhaps a few changes here at the Dojo which enters its tenth year. I will no longer feel compelled to post each and every day. I've said that before I know, but this time I mean it. Actually over the course of the last year many re-posts filled in gaps where I had little to say or little inclination to say it. I go through periods where commenting seems a bit tiresome as I'm repeating myself for the umpteenth time. Also I notice that when I go to write a review of some movie, I realize I already did so many years before, so I just re-post the original. Usually my opinion has not shifted enough to warrant rewriting anything.

So don't imagine the worst if a few days pass and no new thing appears, I will eventually return with something to ramble on about I'm sure. I will notify one and all when such lapses present themselves because I well know that checking out blogs is a routine and I don't want to fall off the radar of those who check in here looking for some momentary diversion, I prize you one and all.

Let the Year of the Sea-Monkey commence!

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