May The Fourth Be With You – And This Time I Mean It!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I remember on this day last year starting out with great intentions of doing a Star Wars based post in tribute the day that has become known to many as ‘Star Wars Day’ because of the pun on the memorable phrase coined in the movie series “May the force be with you”.

Unfortunately I failed miserably last year because the post ended up as one about a guy who had built himself a really cool looking laser gun based on the phasers from Star Trek, not Star Wars. (Here’s the link if you missed it –  click here)

So time to make amends.

Taken together the Star Wars series of movies has to be one of the most watched and highest grossing ever in the history of the cinema, if not THE greatest. The original 1977 movie itself has been estimated to have taken $2,710,800,000 in today’s inflation adjusted terms.

On top of that it has spawned a plethora of merchandising material from t-shirts to robots to gadgets to almost everything that could be seen in the movies themselves, and then some!

Top of everyone’s list has to be a lightsabre – I have never met anyone who has seen Star Wars who didn’t want to be the proud owner of a light sabre, including me.

From the first time you saw the flash of light and heard that ‘hummm’, way back in 1977, in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s bungalow, even though you didn’t really know what it was, you still knew you wanted one – needed one!

Well for a bit north of $100 now you can own one, the Star Wars Force FX Lightsaber! It has the light, it has the sound, and it looks the part – well almost.

From the sublime, however, we also have the ridiculous.

Somewhere out there is that great Universe you just know that at least one moron has subjected their poor dog to the indignity of a Star Wars suit. Poor mutt, even the look on its face says it all.

And there are lots of other stuff in between, including these

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Finally, an interesting little piece of trivia that would just as easily have taken its place in one of my ‘Did you know factoids’. 

Star Wars fans were not the first to introduce the line “May the fourth be with you”. When the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain’s first female Prime Minister on May 4, 1979, her party placed an advertisement in The London Evening News that said “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations.” This reading of the line has also been recorded in the UK Parliament’s Hansard.

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May the Fourth Be With You

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

I must confess to always having been more of a Trekkie than and Star wars enthusiast, although I have enjoyed both.

This blog post is actually based on Star Trek, not Star Wars, so apologies to the purists who were captured by the headline. I know it’s a bit of a cliché and a lot of other people may be doing it too, but it is May 4^th and I just couldn’t resist. I try to get it worked in somewhere every year!

And strangely enough this blog post is not about someone stupid either. A little eccentric perhaps, but I love people who are just that little bit off center. You could also call him a nerd or a geek. But whatever you call him, the guy is clever. He has just made himself something that has left me very envious, and that doesn’t happen too often.

You see, this guy has created a real-life, functional version of a Star Trek phaser.

Oh yes he has!

He has taken what looks like a ‘toy’ phaser casing and inside that fitted a laser unit, possibly one of those high powered laser pointers or maybe the laser from inside a Blu ray machine or something similar. However exactly he did it is less important at the moment than to view the result.

I won’t waffle on. Suffice to say is that I WANT ONE!

And there’s a good chance you might too once you see the video.

As ever, enjoy!