![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
short takes
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
browngirl and several others).
On a lighter note, someone has finally given Jack Chick's
"Dark Dungeons" MST3K
treatment (link via autographedcat).
A
guide to those bizarre glyphs that have replaced actual
words on the lanudering instructions on some clothes
(link via bhakti). Most bizarre
entry, presumably included only for the sake of completeness:
"do not dry".
Ok, Enterprise gets points for not using the time-travel reset button I feared they might use after "Azati Prime", but... ugh. I don't like the direction some of our characters are moving in. Archer should not get off easy even if he does save the world.
Last Sunday on the way to the bunny melt we were held up by a large number of police cars that seemed to be in an awful hurry. I counted eleven, and I didn't start counting until I noticed that this was not your run-of-the-mill car or two. As they came through the intersection we were stopped at they peeled off in different directions, so we were guessing it was a containment effort, but we had no further information. It wasn't until I caught up on newspapers last week that I realized that we were right in the path of a chase involving kidnapping and ultimately murder. Ouch. (They chased the guy from somewhere in the west end, onto the parkway, off into my neighborhood, through another neighborhood or two, back onto the parkway, and then onto the turnpike, where he later made an illegal U-turn and finally crashed at an exit.)
Yesterday I cooked red snapper for the first time. I was unsure what other fish might be an adequate substitute if they didn't have any at the store, but I got lucky. (Having now worked with it, if I had to make a substitution I think I'd go for haddock or monkfish -- similar consistency and not strongly flavored. Other opinions welcome.) Here's what I did, which turned out well: brown onions and lots [1] of garlic in olive oil, then add chopped parsley, salt & pepper to taste, and some white wine. Cook down (reduce by half), then add diced tomatoes (I didn't drain the liquid from the can but probably should have). Simmer a few minutes. Then spread half of this in a greased casserole, put the fish on top (in a single layer), spread the rest of the sauce on top, and bake for about 40 minutes at 350. Yummy! (I was working from a recipe, but I tend to be pretty casual about measuring so you're not getting quantities unless you ask.) ([1] "Lots" refers to the conventional understanding of garlic quantity, not to this writer's personal preferences.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
(How much does a well-thumbed set of AD&D manuals and a banker's box full of Dragon back issues go for, these days?)
no subject
(How much does a well-thumbed set of AD&D manuals and a banker's box full of Dragon back issues go for, these days?)
Not much, so far as I know. I've got those boxes too. :-) (Actually, I like the magazines for the comics, even if all the articles have pretty much expired by now. But we really don't need three sets of AD&D manuals between us...)
no subject
no subject
no subject
Archer should not get off easy even if he does save the world.
Yeah, we were watching the episode and I was thinking throughout that Roddenberry must be turning in his grave. I'm actually enjoying the story more than I have any Trek in several years, but I smell consequences here. That said, I was glad that they were very clear that this *is* crossing the line, rather than simply glossing over the ethical issues in the Kirk tradition.
And yes, I was fearing the reset button as well, given that Enterprise is indulging in a lot of time-travel even by Trek standards. OTOH, the time plots lend a very interesting twist to this story as prequel, because it gives them slightly more latitude to muck with continuity than normal. Time travel isn't just a plot device in this series: it's an integral part of it from the very beginning, and there are no clear guarantees that the end result is going to precisely match the universe we're used to.
Of course, now I want some real Timefleet stories. But I've always been a bit of a sucker for time travel plots. (Well, good time travel plots, anyway...)
no subject
Yeah, tell me about it. I wish manufacturers weren't so freaking afraid of word on labels. If they want to include glyphs too that's fine, but if they're not stunningly obvious all they're doing is contributing to the IKEAfication of documentation, to everyone's detriment.
That said, I was glad that they were very clear that this *is* crossing the line, rather than simply glossing over the ethical issues in the Kirk tradition.
True. When the show started I assumed that this crew's adventures would lead to the development of Starfleet policies, including the Prime Directive but also others. I initially assumed that this crew would provide positive examples to be enshrined in the code, but if we get negative examples that lead to others developing a code so we "don't do that again", that's fine too.
I like time-travel stories too, and I think they've been doing reasonably well on that in this series. But time-travel is so convenient a reset button that I naturally feared they might use it to avoid damaging the ship so heavily (and killing something like 20% of their crew -- which actually seems low compared to the visuals in "Azati Prime", hut ok).
no subject
In fact, now that you put it that way, it makes lots of sense. In the real world, most rules are the results of negative examples -- consider the common truism that every rule in the SCA has a name attached to it, somewhere in the past. So it's actually pretty logical to suppose that most of the basic laws of Starfleet ought to be due to mistakes made in the early days.
I naturally feared they might use it to avoid damaging the ship so heavily
Yeah, my thought was much the same. But so long as the ship still flies, it's plausible that they can avoid the reset button. We'll see...