I was trying to think of a good introductory sentence for this post.

First it was “Gaeta’s uniform isn’t prim & proper!”

Then it was, “Gaeta smokes!”

Then how could I resist, “Gaeta has a tatoo!”

But then I was like, “Aw shit, Starbuck’s back in the cockpit!” (For those of you paying attention, Starbuck’s character, a fighter pilot, hasn’t been in a cockpit since the fourth episode of the 1st season — in other words, sixteen episodes ago).

And then, how could I resist, “Aw shit, we know another Cylon!”

Hell, she played everybody. Xena was always going to put out a fluff piece (regardless of how accurate) to engraciate herself to the Galactica’s crew. Gain their trust, become a regular pipeline of information to the Cylon command on Caprica. Surprising? Hey, I didn’t see it coming, so let that inform your judgement.

There’s a lot to like about this episode — it’s sort of like “a day in the life”. I particularly enjoyed seeing the operations of Tyrol’s crews aboard the flight deck. One thing I never liked about Star Trek Voyager was that no matter how many years it’d been since the ship had last seen a starbase’s “Merry Maid” detachment, the ship always looked brand new. Like, when you first see the Colonial Viper Mk II in the miniseries, they’ve got sparkling paint jobs and they’re gleaming in their white and red paint schemes. Here, several scenes focuses on Kat’s Viper, which is burned, blackened, the paint is peeling, it looks like me after six rounds with Mista’ T. I commented in another post that the Galactica’s hanger deck was similarly scarred. THAT’S AWESOME! It reinforces the illusion that the ship has been away from maintence for close to a year, and just those little details makes it all so much more real.

There’s not a whole lot else I can say about the episode. Captain Kelly makes a rare appearance — I guess he’s the “Boss” of the flight pattern. Looks like Lee’s back as CAG (not surprising), I’m a little curious about one thing – Hot Dog chases Kat into the pilot’s rack, and Lee chases him back out chiding him for coming into senior officers’ bunks. Maybe its just a misunderstanding, but Hot Dog and Kat were both enlisted from the fleet and trained together — shouldn’t they be the same rank? On the other hand, maybe Lee intended the chide for both of them. Whatever – you’d think as CAG, Lee would rate his own cabin.

Lee and Starbuck are the leaders of the flight squadron, and Starbuck demonstrates her leadership clearly in several instances — first, breaking up a fight between Kat and Tyrol, and then trying to assist a drug-addled Kat into a not-so-non-crashy landing. We haven’t seen a lot of Starbuck in her job on Galactica lately (obvious reasons why), and it’s great to see her getting into the swing of things.

The Corridor of Photos, last seen I think in the first season opener, is back. It’s particularly resonating what with the upcoming four-year anniversary of September 11th (from which the producers admit they got the idea), plus photos I saw briefly on CNN of a similar wall in New Orleans, with photos and notes of and to family and friends, from the victims of Katrina.

A big deal is made about the “Massacre at Gideon”, during which Galactica Marines, in an attempt to retrieve supplies neccessary for the ship, opened fire on a hostile mob and killed four. Lt. Palladino, a pilot who led the mission, apparently is a bit unhinged about the whole incident and finally snaps, ready to take out the man who ordered it – Tigh. “Snapping under stress” seems to be a recurring theme of the episode, but one I hope the show revisits. This brings up something else: Galactica has a rather large Marine detachment aboard, yet earlier in the season the point was made that there weren’t enough Marine NCOs to command the number of raiding parties Tigh ordered (this is why Palladino was in command on Gideon). Ok. So the Marines don’t have a lot of NCOs, and apparently, they don’t have any Marine officers, either? Something fishy, there …

What was wrong with Sharon? I mean, besides the blood on her hands.

One complaint — two episodes ago, everyone was at each other’s throats. Now they’re all buddy-buddy again. I would’ve liked to see some conflict between Starbuck and Tigh or something, y’know, something along the lines of, “Meh, I still don’t trust you.”

Did Billy even get a line this episode? I think he was in the background of the teaser. Oh, yes — this is also the first time I can remember seeing Colonial One this season.

Well, that’s it for me. Two weeks until the mid-season break, and then no more Galactica until January.

I found my memory card and USB card reader. They were under the monitor. They’re both in working order. Woot!

This is, I think, a defacto admission of the Bush administration that Michael Brown has no business being in charge of disaster relief. So what do they do? Pull him off New Orleans but leave him in charge of FEMA.

That’s great. Because here’s this natural disaster, long predicted as one of the top three disasters which could strike the US, and it caught FEMA unaware. Heck, even the day after the levees broke, Brown was all, “What, it’s all cool. Wait – they’re flooding? Dude. That sucks. What’cha lookin’ at me for?”

Recalling Brown to Washington is a good step. But it’s not good enough. This jackass is responsible for the Federal government’s emergency response and he’s not up to the job. He’s a political appointee who should’ve been appointed ambassador to Peru, not put in charge of an agency critical to this country’s recovery in the wake of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

If a nuke goes off in Baltimore’s port tomorrow, this is the same idiot who is going to bumble through rescues all over again. Certain jobs don’t have the luxury of allowing for a second chance, they really don’t. FEMA is one of them.

Michael Brown MUST BE FIRED. He’s an incompotent boob, and it’s about fucking time the fucking President acted like the fucking President and fired him. Pulling him back to Washington? Bush is hoping people’ll quiet down about Brown. Nope. Ain’t gonna happen. If Mr. Bush isn’t comfortable firing his friends, perhaps he should not give them jobs.

At least, not important jobs.

There’s an old expression no one ever seems to learn from: “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

If Bush leaves Michael Brown in charge of FEMA and there is either another natural disaster or a terrorist attack, it won’t be Michael Brown whose head people’ll be screaming for when the Feds botch the relief — it’ll be Bush. And as criminal as it was for New Orlean’s Mayor Nagil to fail to mobilize the city’s busses to evacuate those who couldn’t get out otherwise, it’ll be considerably more so on the part of George W. Bush, for leaving this douche in charge of a job he’s already proved he can’t do.

Article in last Wednesday’s Baltimore Sun (maybe the previous Wednesday, I had this on hold for awhile while I worked on it) on the response of delivery business’ reaction to increasing gasoline prices quotes Domino’s Corporate VP of Communications Tim McIntyre as saying, “Most people have decided that a half-hour of their life is worth a dollar for the service of having dinner delivered to their house.”

What about the effin’ tip, dumbass?

I work for a Domino’s franchise, thankfully, not a corporate store. Corporate stores have the delivery charge, while its optional for franchises. McIntyre is being completely misleading here. First of all, as mentioned, he’s talking about the delivery charge — thankfully, most people have already recognized that the convenience offered by food delivery is worth a few bucks atop the total, or no one would be doing this job. I find it hard to believe that the VP of a company which prides itself on being the leader of Pizza Home Delivery would essentially stab so many drivers in the back with such a misleading statement.

First off, almost every store that has a delivery charge makes money off of it in some way. For example, before Gary at the Indy instituted a delivery charge, he paid .50 a run to his employees out of the store’s coffers. Then he started charging customers $1.00 for delivery, and to his credit, that entire dollar goes to drivers — but he no longer kicks in the .50 cents from the store.

Talking to Greg at the Domino’s franchise last week, he inquired why I thought a delivery charge would mean more money for the drivers. He blithly went on to say that if he did institute a delivery charge of a dollar or more, some of that would go to the store to cover his own rising costs.

I was dumbfounded.

Greg — and to his credit, he recently re-raised mileage an additional .10 for everyone — currently pays between .80 and 1.20 in mileage to drivers, depending on length of employment and other circumstances (“You want me to come in on my day off? No. Well, maybe if you give me a mileage raise…”). I make $1.10 per delivery from the store in mileage & vehicle compensation. Greg’s implication is that instituting a delivery charge would drop the mileage rate to a dollar, from which the store would recieve a cut.

First off, I don’t believe the store should ever get a cut of the delivery charge, particularly when the delivery charge is replacing the mileage cost previously paid by the store. In effect, if Greg were to institute a delivery charge, the customer would pay $1 and Greg would *save* the $1.10 he’d otherwise pay me out of his store’s pocket, plus he’d also get X amount of the charge. So he’d be *making*, say, $1.35 for every delivery I took, while my mileage compensation would decrease .35 cents roughly, meaning I’d be paying out of my tip money to cover my gasoline costs (which I’m already doing, just not as much, thankfully).

My other problem is with the logic of using a percentage of the delivery charge to cover other store costs, like rising rent, utilities, or a higher invoice from the commissary’s bi-weekly delivery truck. The logic makes no sense — as pointed out above, the store operator is already saving money (a lot of it!) by not paying mileage out of the store’s coffers. Taking an additional cut of the mileage compensation is two things: one, it’s greedy, plain and simply. Two, it’s screwing over the drivers who quite often form the backbone of any delivery company.

I’ve been looking up prices for a new memory card & card reader. Ok, not so worried about replacing the card reader, fairly cheap, that, but gaaaaaah memory card prices are giving me a heart attack. I’m now sufficiently motivated to tear this room apart tomorrow looking for my lost digital camera accessories.

For reasons unbeknownst entirely to me, Tuesday ended with me coming home with a brand-new copy of the first season of Lost in my hands. Frustration with Netflix over having to wait an eternity on The Wire DVDs? The desire to watch an intriguing mystery/sci-fi show? Wanting to waste some cash on a completely useless purchase?

The latter, methinks.

Lost has twenty-four episodes, the last of which is double-length. They run into the mid-forty-minute range, so, you do the math when I say I came home with the box set Tuesday and finished it Thursday night.

I’d only seen a handful of episodes from the first run — Charlie breaks his heroin addiction with Locke’s help & Jack gets buried in a cave-in; Sayeed gets clobbered over the head trying to pinpoint the source of a French radio transmission; some dude named Ethan who wasn’t on the plane kidnaps Claire and leaves Charlie for dead; a raft is launched and there’s smoke on the horizon.

This is a really great show.

The show picks up immediately following the crash of half an airplane on a tropical island. It’s clear right off that there’s something, uh, “not right” going on. The characters scratch their heads: the tail section of the plane was ripped clean away, the cockpit section is nowhere to be found, but some forty-odd survivors are alive and well and as good as new … in one case, actually, “better than new.”

Plus, any tropical island with polar bears and an invisible-King Kong(?)-thing wandering around loose … yeah, well, Gilligan’s Island this ain’t. Each episode features flashbacks featuring our stranded survivors in the years, months, and hours preceeding the crash. There are connections between them (Hurley owns the company Locke works for), and even the sly reference to a cult BBC tv show — in “Homecoming” Lucy tells Charlie, “My dad’s off to Slough to buy a paper company.” I clapped. I did, I really did.

(I might have hooted, too.)

I also like how the writers deliberately show you only certain aspects of some of these characters. For example, Jin & Sun’s first flashbacks show them in love, with Jin promising to work for Sun’s pop for permission to marriage, then, after being married for an intederminate period of time, Jin comes home from work covered in blood. He’s standoffish and makes a comment to Sun along the lines of, “I do what your father tells me to do.” My thought was – hey, he’s a Korean Christopher Moltesante (and a jerk, to boot). A few episodes later, we learn that the reason he’s covered in blood is he beat the shit out of some health inspector — he did that to prevent the man’s murder. Another example: Sawyer. Starts out a real jerk, but he’s a stand-up guy (deep down) and even shows it, with his actions on the raft. Locke, who I started out liking, I have to admit it, halfway through the season … I really started disliking the guy. Whereas I once liked Kate, now I’m middle-of-the-road with her. Y’know, stuff like that. It all adds to the experience. Good show.

It’s a great mystery show, too. I don’t want to give too much away, especially for those who haven’t seen it, because it’s really really really good. I will say that I wish a few characters had been fleshed out more during the show — the introduction of Ethan and Arzt was very quick: “Oh, so this is Ethan. Huh, Ethan wasn’t on the plane? Too bad I don’t care too much, I only just met him.” Imagine, for a moment, if Sawyer was the guy who hadn’t been on the plane — with Ethan, there was really no connection to the character, no shock and betrayal, no sadness. Personally, when what happened to Arzt happened to Arzt I was all, “Cool!” If it had happened to Hurley or Kate or Locke or Jack, I woulda felt a connection, y’know?

Anyway: to sum up, it’s worth seeing. LOST, I mean. And you should hurry up about it — the second season premieres in two weeks.