In the past 24 hours, I finished the book I've been reading at night, 60 Songs That Explain the '90s (a series of semi-autobiographical essays adapted from a podcast of the same name), the book I've been reading in the bathroom, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (a very in-depth history of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s), and the video game I've been playing in between, Deathloop (a stealth action sim set in a repeating time singularity).

I hadn't intended that those endings should so neatly coincide; it just sort of happened. I only comment on it because it is kind of unusual. For example, in the time it has taken me to get through Easy Riders, I also finished the books Three Rocks: The Story of Earnie Bushmiller the Man Who Created Nancy, The Quality [Comics] Companion, and Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane (as well as the video games Marvel's Midnight Suns, Psychonauts 2, and Portal 2).

And, of course, none of that counts the movies I've been watching and rewatching, including such classics as The Bad News Bears, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and The Thin Man.

What can I say? I like to stay entertained.

The big question now is what will I be reading next? I've had Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania on my bedside table for months now, but I think I'm going to start These Are the Voyages: TOS Season 1 instead because I always need more classic Star Trek. (Thanks, Cam!)

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My obsession with Captain Kirk's U.S.S. Enterprise continues unabated.

If you're a Star Trek fan who has a large monitor and a mouse with a scroll wheel (or keyboard with PgUp, PdgDn buttons), you might enjoy this page I made for my own amusement: wriphe.com/constitution-class/

And if you're not a Star Trek fan, what's wrong with you?

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This summer, I got a new, much bigger monitor. "Much bigger" means that my previous desktop background of several years wasn't going to cut it anymore. So I made myself this:

click to embiggen

By which I mean I made the blueprint, not the ship itself. And when I say I made the blueprint, I mean I re-edited a bunch of different images from the 1973 Star Trek Blueprints: the Complete Set of 12 Authentic Blueprints of the Fabulous Starship Enterprise drafted by Franz Joseph and published by Ballantine Books.

So, yeah, I went where someone else had gone before. Fabulously.

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via sweartrek.tumblr.com

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Believe it or not, I listened to the State of the Union speech live last night. Listened. Didn't watch. The difference is amazing.

Listening to him speak, I can understand how a significant portion of the country could believe the current White House occupant as he counted down the many, many ways that he, personally, all by himself, has made America the single greatest country in world history, a greatness that is as strong as he is yet fragile enough that it is in imminent danger of being destroyed by busloads of Mexicans. He genuinely sounded like he believed most of what he said, so why shouldn't we?

Answer: We shouldn't because most of it was made up lies. But if all you ever listened to was him or his echo chamber, you wouldn't know that.

Which reminds me of the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren," in which the starship Enterprise is being held hostage by an alien dictator who promises to make Dr. McCoy's dreams come true if he's willing to betray his crewmates. The dictator talks a good game, and McCoy is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good until Captain Kirk points out that the dictator is a vain lying liar. McCoy's mistake was in taking the dictator's own word for how awesome he was and what great plans he had for everyone, if only they could keep the rabble out.

We could all stand to pay a little more attention to Captain Kirk.

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Christmas is over. I have already bought myself the only present I needed.

Yes, this is a functioning bluetooth-enabled speakerphone.

And no, you'll never talk to me over a normal phone again.

#BeamMeUp

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I hate strongly dislike Diane Sawyer. She's smug and condescending as she delivers the bullet points that ABC News thinks will scare you the most.

Last night, she told me to be afraid of North Korea, rumored to be on the verge of testing another nuclear weapon delivery vehicle. Diane, I stopped worrying about the possibility of global thermonuclear war when Ronald Reagan's policies won the Cold War in 1989.

She followed her first scare with the news that dangerously cold temperatures were, like Sherman, marching south to the sea. Last week, the flu was the unstoppable killer, this week it's frostbite. I don't know about most people, Diane, but I can't worry about more than 1 impending environmental threat at a time, so just tell me if I should buy a flu shot or a blanket. I can't afford both.

Desperate, she sounded the alarm that there is a national shortage of chicken wings available for Super Bowl snacking this year. Diane, I may have been the only one, but I was paying attention last summer when you told me that a killer drought in America's Breadbasket was resulting in record low corn production and we should all expect to starve in coming months. Now you want me to worry about whether Pizza Hut® Wing Streets can stay in business?

I thought that Diane had thrown her worst at me and began to relax. Sensing my weakness, she pounced. In her most chipper voice, she delivered the "good" news: "It was announced today that the creator of Lost, J.J. Abrams, will direct the next Star Wars movie."

In case you didn't know, J.J. Abrams also is in charge of the Star Trek films that have reinvented a classic, beloved, thoughtful science-fiction franchise as a drunken action orgy fit for the idiocracy of the 21st century. I dislike J.J. Abrams more than I dislike Diane Sawyer, and that's saying something.

Congratulations, Diane! You win this round.

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According to an article at dailymail.co.uk, the online portal for London's Daily Mail newspaper, Haynes will be releasing a guide for the U.S.S. Enterprise. My Haynes mechanical manual failed miserably in helping me with the relatively simple wiring for the dashboard and brake lights a few years back (before it was "accidentally" caught in a week's worth of downpours as the Jeep sat open-topped at the mechanics). I advise that Scotty tread carefully around the warp core with Haynes manual in hand: poorly written instructions are far more dangerous than any Klingon.

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A follow-up to my last post:

In my last entry, I referenced vulcans. I've wondered since if the word should have been capitalized.

Mr. Spock, the logical first-officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise and inspiration for my comment, is the result of a mating between a humanoid of the planet Earth and a humanoid of the planet Vulcan. Mr. Spock is frequently referred to as a capital-"V" Vulcan by his colleagues. And here is where I made my erroneous assumption: the English name of his actual race is never clearly established.

Calling Mr. Spock a Vulcan is the same as calling Captain Kirk an Earthling, i.e. a resident of the planet Earth. As residents of a particular planet, Vulcans and Earthlings deserve their capitalization. However, Captain Kirk is as much an Earthling as a kangaroo rat, fruit bat, or camel spider. (Note the lack of capitalization of the common names of those species.) Captain Kirk, more specifically, would be described as a human. Based on the context of dialogue overheard exchanged between Mr. Spock and his ship's doctor, one Leonard "Bones" McKoy, I assumed that Mr. Spock must represent a race commonly called vulcan, hence my lack of capitalization. But this now appears to have been a mistake. Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor, not a linguist!

A little research reveals that Vulcans call themselves V'tosh or whl'q'n in their native tongue. Clearly, words that hard to pronounce would be bastardized or ignored by English speakers. In fact, the language, like the people, the planet, and practically everything else associated with them (including nerve pinches!), is simply called Vulcan by almost everyone the crew of the Enterprise ever encounters. Were I an apologist, I'd blame these quirks of language on the weak programming of the Universal Translator. (Clearly vocal recognition software is as crappy in the 24th Century as it is today. But any computer is only as good as its programmer, right, Dr. Daystrom? [See Star Trek episode 53, "The Ultimate Computer" for details.])

So, in hindsight, I should have capitalized the word Vulcan. On the up-side, I don't have to apologize to anyone, as being a logic-driven Vulcan means never having to say "I'm sorry."

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Supervillain henchmen are status symbols like trophy wives or pocketbook chihuahuas. Anonymous behind their theme masks, colorful matching costumes, and ridiculous pun-inspired monikers, henchmen stand around reinforcing their egomaniacal bosses' deranged leitmotifs for any uninitiated observers. ("Who's that?" "I don't know, but since he's surrounded by 3 guys wearing matching lederhosen, he must mean business!") All for the thrill of being involved in something bigger than themselves. In that way, they're not too far removed from subscribers to People magazine.

What does it take to make someone think that robbing a bank while dressed as a pumpkin-headed scarecrow or Grecian god alongside several other like-minded individuals is a good idea? It can't be the pay. (Crime doesn't pay, as comics always remind us.) It can't be the shortened life expectancy. (Has the Joker ever even had a henchman he didn't kill for kicks?) It must be the thrill of appearing in public in a garish costume. Just ask your average Star Trek convention attendee. (Yes, I have a Trek shirt hanging in my closet, but you don't see me wearing it out in public, do you? It might get dirty.)

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