Darth Vader has been called one of cinema’s greatest villains, usurped only by the sprawling housing complex in which he lives.The Death Star is the ultimate contractor’s dream - it’s a government building in constant need of major repair. The Empire builds it, the Rebellion blows it up, and the contractor re-builds it again. Can you imagine the costs of building a Death Star? The plumbing must have been a nightmare, the duct work a disaster, and everyone knows that the wiring was done on the cheap - why does it blow up so just easily?Then there are the insurance agents who want their cut and push on The Empire, “Rebel Alliance Explosion Prevention” policies, which are historically not an inexpensive premiums, either.BTW - The insurance agents on these are notoriously difficult to cover explosions; the Death Star and The Empire must prove that the explosion was indeed planted by the Rebel Alliance. And the Rebel Alliance is normally decent at not leaving finger prints, thus making coverage claims a hassle.
There are eight movies in the Star Wars franchise, and the Death Star has been the main villain in four of them. The rumor was the Death Star was not finished for “The Return of the Jedi” because three of the framing guys just quit, pipes broke, and the foreman was fired after he was caught having an affair with Bob Fett’s ex-wife (his real name is Robert; he changed it to Boba to sound more menacing - his agent said “Bob Fett The Bounty Hunter” did not sound as intimidating as “Boba Fett the Bounty Hunter”).The Death Star is once again back with Disney’s “Rogue One: More Money From Star Wars Because ESPN is Killing Mickey” that was released to both critical and nerd acclaim.SPOILER ALERT: George Lucas wins.As an out-of-the-closet junkie for this commercialism crap, Rogue One is indeed a worthy companion to the iconic film franchise that could fund multiple Russian/American voting hacking projects. This is not a typical Star Wars movie - it’s not as fluffy, some good guys go down, there is little humor.
The final one-third of the movie is tremendous and makes the two-hour movie worth it.Rogue One takes place between “Episode III: The One That Didn’t Suck as Bad as I & II” and “Episode IV: A New Hope.”The new installment features a finale that has Darth Vader on the first rebel ship doing Darth Vader things, and a young CGI’d version of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher from her affair days with Han Solo.)Rogue One is entirely about the rebel alliance’s effort to steal the plans to destroy The Death Star.As great as The Death Star is, surely an organization as vast and as powerful as The Death Star must have some other means of mass destruction. This reliance on one tool as a means of both housing and ruination demonstrates a lack of creative and forward thinking on the part of the Empire.The Empire clearly has some things figured out, but not everything. Case in point - the Stormtrooper, the worst soldier in the galaxy. The Stormtrooper has been around forever, and they never improve.
The existence of the Stormtrooper suggests the Empire should privatize its ground army.I smell a tremendous opportunity for an ambitious consulting firm to swoop in at $1,000 per hour to advise The Empire on a series potential options to the Death Star (which we know the First Order regime will likely ignore; after all, consultants exist to be paid, not to be heard). There will be countless meetings, artist renderings, and many two-hour lunches.When fully operational, the Death Star was great - a giant condo’ that features a jacuzzi, shuffle board and it can blow up a dumpy planet like Tatooine deserves proper recognition. Clearly, however, it’s a flawed venture project with an expiration date.The Rebels always figure out a way to blow it up. This screams of a government contractor - how is there a switch in every one to trigger an explosion of that scale?The Empire has been all about the past now it must embrace the future. Perhaps hire a social media coordinator, too. Maybe a Twitter account, or at a minimum a Snapchat page to show citizens some of the new ambitious programs from a sugar-free yogurt bar to allowing Stormtroopers to take dogs to work.“
Rogue One” is a winner, and like the rest of the world I am excited for next year’s release of “Episode VIII: Surpassing Apple” - but it’s time for The Empire to be done with The Death Star.You never can be too careful when buying things online, especially when people are going around stealing packages off doorsteps. Read about how we got our money back. Update #2: The post office guys are supposedly trying to locate the package, looking for it along its route. No one has brought the package back to the post office, though, and it hasn’t turned up as returned. We’ve let the seller know that we still don’t have the package, contacting him through eBay. However, he has yet to respond. We are going to give it a couple more days and then try to decide what to do. If the package isn’t returned by whoever it was mis-delivered to, we will likely file a police report, and do what is required to go through eBay channels to try and get our money back. Update #1: It appears that some of my faith in small town America might be restored — although any sort of faith in the USPS is slipping away.
After being told it was probably stolen, but they’d check into it, the post office guys discovered that the package was probably mis-delivered. Apparently their scanners for delivery confirmation provide insight into which route it was on. The package was not scanned to our route; it was scanned to the wrong route. Unfortunately, the carrier does not remember delivering the package (they’re assuming, though, that he scanned it as “delivered” en masse with a bunch of other packages at the beginning of his route, rather than scanning when the package was actually delivered). So, now we have to hope that whoever did receive the package will return it. But, if the recipients tore open the package without paying attention, I doubt they’re going to quibble with now owning a sweet toy. Normally, when we buy things online, through Amazon or eBay, they are relatively inexpensive. A box of pasta. Lord of the Rings action figures. We did spend $100 on my son’s Lego Hogwarts castle.
And, of course, my Kindle came through the mail. However, in the instance of these higher-priced items, signature confirmation of delivery was required. So, while we were a little nervous about spending $307 on a Lego Death Star we expect to give our son for Christmas (we do the holiday spending throughout the year to spread it out), the deal was great, and we’ve had such good experiences that we went for it. Unfortunately, it appears our package was stolen right off our doorstep. To be honest, I didn’t really think that it could happen to us. We live in a quiet subdivision in what is considered one of the safest metro areas in the country. However, we weren’t home on the day the package was delivered. The eBay seller that sent the package didn’t tell us when he was sending the package (often, sellers let you know when they send the package), nor did he provide a tracking number until after the package was marked as delivered by the post office. If we had know the package had been sent and was due to be delivered on Saturday, we would have made arrangements to be home.
Unfortunately, we had no idea. The seller didn’t even give us the tracking number until my husband sent a message asking whether or not the package had been sent — because we hadn’t seen it. The next step was to call the post office. “It looks like it was delivered,” was the response. “We didn’t get it. Could you talk to the carrier?” Technically, I guess we don’t know that the package was stolen. The Saturday carrier (who is different from our regular carrier every other day of the week and happened to be different in this case) has not responded to the message the guy at the post office said he left. So we’re basically helplessly twiddling our thumbs until the post office can contact the carrier and confirm that she really did leave the package on our doorstep, rather than just scanning all the packages in the truck on Saturday as “delivered” to save time (something I’m told happens by a former post office employee). The real question, though, is this: Can we get our money back?
Or at least some of it back? We’re looking into our options, just in case the package can’t be located. The post office employee said that once we receive confirmation that the carrier did, in fact, drop off the package, we can file a claim. We can contact the police, and then file paperwork with the USPS. Another possible avenue is to go through eBay. I hate to go this route, since I feel bad about the seller losing out. However, the seller didn’t buy insurance on this item, and didn’t request signature confirmation. According to eBay’s Buyer Protection, it looks like we have a case since the seller didn’t request signature confirmation, as required on items valued at more than $250. (This one more reason that you really should read all of the terms and conditions and fine print before you sign up to buy and/or sell anything online.) We’d really like to resolve this with the post office, though, and not get into with the seller. One of the issues, of course, is responsibility.