More Vol ... Life in the Late Twentieth Century

I had some more thoughts on Vol, sorry I can't help myself.

The whole question of the origin of Vol has been thoroughly un-addressed. Like, how come nobody on the Enterprise even thinks to ask how this God-like planet controlling machine came into being. Did Vol create himself? Not likely, I would think ... but then that gets you into the tricky theological question of how God on planet Earth came into being, and I don't want to go there yet. (I know the answer but it will be revealed later. Stay tuned)

Or did some race of super beings plant Vol on the planet and then equip the machine with his own crew of humanoids? These humanoids only purpose in existence is to feed Vol, and worship him, too, I suppose. But this brings up two questions in my mind.

First of all: Why humanoids? If you were going to make creatures just to feed Vol, they sure don't need all that brain power to do the job. Something much simpler and dumber would foot the bill - monkeys, or wood chucks or koala bears. Humanoids can think of reasons not to obey and bring you your dinner every night.

Then: Is this the most effecient method for Vol to get energy? He has to wait for his subjects to bring him baskets and baskets of vegetables and fruits and throw them down his mouth. What about solar cells? How come Vol never thought of that? It would be much more effective and since he controlled the whole planet and could make the sun shine all the time it would work one hundred percent of the time. Or windmills. Same argument. He's Vol he can make the wind blow whenever he wants.

But you see, even if an episode of Star Trek was awful like that one was, you had no choice. There was no way you could say: 'This sucks' and use the remote controller to turn the channel, because there were no remotes and only two other channels and I guarantee you that whatever was on those two remaining channels sucked a lot worse than even the crappiest episode of Star Trek.

It gets worse for your Uncle Steve. You see, my Dad was a college professor which made him something of an intellectual who believed that TV would rot your brain and so, he refused to ever have a color television in the house. Now please explain this to me: how does a color TV make you dumber than a black and white? Eventually he relented, but it wasn't till I was in High School that I got to view color programs in my own house.

I watched MTV's The Seventies House not too long ago where they took modern teen-agers and stuck them into the seventies environment that I grew up in. It was so gratifying to see how much they hated it, but it also made me realize how barren and sterile it was back then. Pong was an absolute wonder back then, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest. Even now as I play my beautiful Playstation and think how the graphics here or there could be better I have to remember that all Pong was were crude white squares on a black background.

I just hope I live to be a hundred because I truly want to hear how this generation complains about how hard they had it when they were young.