Enterprise: Civilization

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It’s been a couple days since the most recent Enterprise episode, “Civilization“, and I hadn’t been able to come up with much to say about it. After working on it for a bit, I think it’s just because there really isn’t much to say — while it wasn’t a really bad episode, it certainly wasn’t really good, and was definitely nothing new. It basically felt like a retread of episodes that every Star Trek series have done at least once or twice at some point during their run, all around the same “Enterprise officers interacting with a primitive society, trying to hide, and failing miserably” theme. Decently done, but not exactly treading new ground.

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Please? Pretty please? With Muppets on top?

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If any of you kind souls out there who check this page (yes…all five of you) could find it within your heart to do so, I’ve found my perfect Christmas grovel.

The Best of the Muppets!!!

I know it’s a bit pricey. That’s why I’m grovelling. Really grovelling. I’m actually on my knees right now. It’s a little hard to type, but it’s worth it. As an added bonus, if I get this from someone, I’ll pay to have one of your shoes shipped down here and I’ll plant a big ol’ sloppy kiss on it — close as I can get to kissing your feet — then ship it back. Really.

Please?

Pro-America

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Pro-America does not mean pro-war. Or pro-Bush. Or anti-Afghanistan. Or pro-little-flags-on-SUV-antennas.

It means thinking independently and getting better informed and filtering your news very carefully and realizing that just because one version of the American aggro attitude is currently being ramrodded down society’s throat doesn’t mean you have to swallow.

— Mark Morford

Incidentally, this quote comes originally from this article at the SF Gate. It was then quoted at Killoggs, was then quoted at Underachievers, after which it was quoted by Wil Wheaton in his weblog, where I found it. And yes — the real Wil Wheaton. The Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation Wil Wheaton. Who just happens to be one of the coolest and funniest guys I’ve read stuff from in a long time. Set aside a few hours, and poke around his website — it’s well worth the time.

What’s with the black bars?

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While most of my friends have been around me long enough to understand my preference for watching films in widescreen or letterboxed format, occasionally I get questions about the ‘black bars’ at the top and bottom of the screen. While I think I usually do a pretty decent job of explaining why they’re there, one of the members of the Home Theater Forum put together a really nice Shockwave Flash animation demonstrating what’s going on. If anyone’s got any questions about widescreen presentations, this link should help get the idea across:

Original Aspect Ratio, or, Why Widescreen?

Just dropping in

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I’m sitting at the Kinko’s on Broadway checking up on some oddities with my bank account (I’m a lot lower than I think I should be, which concerns me, especially when I’ve been doing a pretty good job at tracking my money lately). I thought I’d put up one key bit of information, though — my monitors are here! It’s still going to be a few days before I’m online more regularly from the looks of it — I’m trying to get ahold of a modem until I know whether or not it’s worth signing up for DSL access — but at least they’re here. Hopefully, pretty soon things will be more or less back to normal as far as my ‘puter access goes…woohoo!

Religious musings

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Thanks to Casey for forwarding this my way…

Satan worship is the perfect religion. If you fuck up, you go to heaven.

— Andrew Vachss