Twelve weeks, three months, right? Just about, anyway.
Without the excesses of my bing-pig-fest last week, and also without the help of any exercise (I’m laaaazy), I have still managed to lose half a pound: two-hundred and twenty-five and a half pounds (down from two-hundred-forty-eight at the start of January).
Go me!
The New Guy quit.
Which means, at the Franchise, we are now down to four drivers. Paul quit two weeks ago, and Russell’s last day (although no one knew it at the time) was St. Patty’s Day.
This is one of those “good thing/bad thing” deals.
It’s bad for the store and the drivers because it’ll be a lot harder to staff shifts and meet everyone’s requests. It’s bad for Greg because his manager left at his other store so he’s going to have to work forty hours a week managing there, and then come up here to drive another fifteen or twenty to cover for absent drivers and shifts short on drivers.
It’s good for drivers, on the other hand, because it means we’ll be getting as many hours as we want, and with fewer drivers to work those hours, it means we’ll be taking more deliveries per hour, thusly earning more tips per hour. Plus, we’re heading into the busy time of the year (oddly, the franchise gets busier in the late spring and summer).
Here’s to green!
Residents of Jacksonville are suing Exxon-Mobil, the station’s franchised owners, and the contractors who caused the leak — $535 million!
They’re also preparing for the reality that this leak may be the turning point that moves Jacksonville, which has relied on well-water but might now have to pipe it in, from a largely-rural, upper middle class, two traffic light town into — ready for it? — Cockeysville. Run and hide, run and hide!
(Personally, Jacksonville is already fairly developed as much as it can be without some folks selling their farms, and as I understand it, various zoning laws forbid apartment complexes, and I don’t think the roads could be widened much beyond what they are — one lane each direction — so I don’t quite understand what the residents are worried about. Besides, someone in the article suggests that if the sewage lines don’t extend with the water lines, development would be impossible.)
PS – for you city and suburb folks who get your water from Baltimore City, consider — this gas leak occured just a few miles north of the Loch Raven, which is I believe the City’s largest reservoir — how much gas do you think is getting into your water supply?
Okay, I don’t know what I did, but my passenger side headlight is now aiming … up (and to the right). I pulled it all apart again tonight and I’m pretty sure I failed to put the retaining clip back in place properly, but when I attempted to look it up in my owner’s manual …
… I realized I’m missing my owner’s manual.
On the other hand — I’ve got headlights. Who cares if only one of them is actually illuminating the direction I’m going in?
Remember those pirates that attacked a cruise ship a few months ago?
This morning, US warships gave ‘em a little “how ya’ doin’?”
The early morning gunbattle ensued after sailors spotted 30-foot fishing boat towing smaller skiffs and prepared for a routine boarding, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
The Navy said the incident involving the USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez occurred at about 5:40 a.m. local time, approximately 25 nautical miles off the Somali coast in international waters.
After Supafine! and her boys came over this morning to pick up a bookshelf I had no room for, I drove down to Salvo’s in Timonium for a replacement headlight-bulb for my Celica.
They used to have this big directory the size of a phonebook that you could look up your car’s make and model and year and find out what type of bulb you needed. They replaced that sometime since the last time I bought a bulb myself (December ’04) and it is now a computerized directory — much easier to use, but I think it has flaws. I should have recognized that the bulb it told me to buy was the wrong type, but after over a year, who can remember, right?
The bulb I got had an “L” shaped assembly at the end of it. When I got into the Indy (early), I spent fifteen minutes disassembling the huge cumbersome piece of plastic that covers the engine under the hood (most of that time spent removing the retaining clips). Cute comment from passerby: “Looks like changing that headlight’s an all-day job!” (How little did I know). I unplugged the dead bulb from the electrical, then pulled the rubber stopper, and removed … a bulb without an “L” shaped assembly.
So what the hell did I buy?
I assumed I misread the item number of Salvo’s computer, and walked over to talk to Ken at Brooks-Huff Goodyear. He checked the computer and the verdict was the same as at Salvo’s — according to both, a 2000 Toyota Celica gets a lightbulb with an “L” shaped assembly. (Which, no, it doesn’t).
But the lightbulb I pulled out of my car had no “L” shaped assembly. It was just a regular lightbulb with a plug. It attaches into a socket-extender-retainer thing. It looks nothing like the asembly I bought, or the bulb Ken’s computer told him it should’ve been. I showed him the bulb I took from my car, but he was unable to find a match.
I hurried down to the Toyota dealership because I really really really wanted to have a working headlight. I explained the situation to the tech at the parts counter, and he pulled up the listing, said they had them in stock, then offered to grab it before I paid for it so we could make sure it was the same bulb. He returned with a box and as soon as I saw it I knew it was exactly what I needed. Good, right? Wrong. He wanted sixty-bucks for it. Woah. Nevermind. I told him I only had $15 on me (I’m such a liar, I had $13) and no credit-cards and I’d come back for it Monday. (As if).
I resolved to head back to Salvo’s later after work, but driving back from a delivery, I swung by Precision Tune. I was able to speak with a mechanic, who confirmed once again that the part listed in the computer was the same one with the “L” shaped assembly that will absolutely under no conditions fit in a 2000 Toyota Celica. He recognized the bulb that actually fit in the Celica …
GREAT!
… but had none in stock.
FUCK!
He suggested I run over to check Jiffy Lube. I figured, “What the hey?” and went over and inquired of the girl behind the counter if they carried the bulb. I explained to her that I just wanted to buy the bulb. I didn’t want someone to install it for me. I just wanted the bulb.
After talking with a tech, she told me to pull around back. “I just want to buy the bulb.”
“They’re kept around back.”
Also around back? That’s where you pull to put your car in queue to be serviced. Get where this is going?
So I pulled around back, and sure enough, some little tech comes running over asking what services I want. I explain that I want a bulb, and show him the burned out one that I’ve removed from my car. No, I explain to him, I don’t want to wait in the lobby while he changes it out. I just want the bulb.
He runs back into the shop, and emerges five minutes later. He hands me the box, I had him the cash. “Don’t know why you pulled around back,” he says. “This’d be easier if you’d been in the lobby.”
I resist urge to go back into the lobby and strangle the girl behind the counter.
(This post contains spoilers)
I woke up this morning to a commercial touting “The History of Violence” as one of the year’s best films, and on one-hundred and fifty top-ten lists, and all I could say to that was, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
This movie blew monkey chips!
This is what the movie has going for it: gratuitous violence and (partial) full-frontal nudity of the very smokalicious Maria Bello.
This is what the movie doesn’t have going for it: it sucks.
Tom Stall is a hard-working family man who runs a diner in the small town in the middle of Bumfuckingworth, Nowhere. Two serial killers need cash and stop in the diner for some quick bucks, and Tom’s all willing to go along with them, until one of ‘em tries to rape his waitress, at which point he goes all gung-ho, and blows ‘em both away with the lead-bad’s .45 Automatic.
Well, turns out some mafioso types out east see him on the news, recognize him as a Made Man gone astray, and come around looking for him. They make some threats, and in the end, oh! More violence. He admits to his wife that he is an ex-Mafioso named “Joey” who took off and changed his life without the benefit of a Federal protection program, she’s unhappy and angry, and he returns to his stomping grounds of Philly to settle the score with his older brother (read: he kills his bro’s bodyguards, then kills his bro).
In one scene, the gangsters are driving to the family home, and Tom thinks they’re going to kill his wife and kids, so he calls ahead and Maria Bello gets the shotgun and runs around the house with it. Then Tom gets home, hugs his wife, and their son is calmly eating breakfast in the kitchen asking, “Uh, what’s going on?” This is the point where should’ve Tom backhanded Maria and screams: “Why didn’t you tell him to run for his life?!”
I think there’s supposed to be some sort of moral about “when daddy uses violence, others will too” because his son beats the shit out of two bullies in high school then doesn’t understand why his pops ain’t cool with it. If that’s supposed to be what the movie is “about”, it fails.
Miserably.
On a delivery tonight, just past dusk on a side street off Carroll Manor Road, I slowed then slammed on my brakes and stopped as something which appeared to be a little boy ran out behind a parked car. In the brightness of my highbeams, I observed not a child but a huge owl, wings flapping — it had swooped down for an animal behind the car, and was now looking at me with its big round saucerplate eyes. It opened its talons, dropped its (unmoving) prey, and was gone into the air.
Owls are pretty fuckin’ cool, man.
They should be called “Acts of Traffic Negligence.”
When I first got my driver’s license, my parents enrolled me in a defensive driving course. It was held at a race-track in West Virginia and taught by professional drivers who trained bodyguards and Federal agents how to drive offensively (for example, backwards at seventy miles per hour while returning gun fire). For an entire afternoon, we spun out on wet pavement in old Crown Victorias, learning techniques for everything from recovering from a series of spins to maintaining control of the vehicle when run off the road. The “final” was a speedy-fast lap around the track, dodging both stationary and mobile obstructions while a retired cop in the passenger seat shouted insults and did everything in their power to distract us.
I am quite certain that the techniques I learned in this class — in addition to the “behind the wheel” there was quite a bit of “anticipation” drilled into thick-heads — provided the foundation that makes me an above average driver today. I would go so far as to say that I think defensive driving classes should be required for anyone who wishes to operate a motor vehicle.
There was a cool fact I read somewhere — that in Germany, automobile makers didn’t start putting radios and cupholders in cars until the sixties, because until that time, they couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do anything but keep both hands on the steering wheel. Anything distracting the operator from the important job of safely operating a car was a foreign idea.
Most accidents are preventable. You look down at your radio and don’t notice the car ahead of you slowing to make a turn. You reach for your cell phone and don’t notice that your car is swerving into the next lane. I work with guys who don’t take just a soda to drink on delivery — they take a whole sub, one hand on the wheel, another shifting and holding their food intermittently. I don’t speed in the rain, or snow, and even before I had a Toyota I made sure my headlights were on before dusk. When it rains, my wipers go on. I signal every turn I make, and do a “courtesy” tap on my brake pedal when I downshift. I check my gauges and mirrors — side and rear — several times a minute. I try to anticipate what other drivers are doing — warning signs include vehicles moving forward at a red light, vehicles over the painted “stop” lines at intersections, drivers looking one way for a clear in traffic but not the other.
Yesterday evening, a vehicle — a Jeep Wrangler — attempted to make a right hand turn onto Southern Ave. from Jarrettsville Pike. The Honda Civic behind the Jeep slowed. The Dodge Ram behind the Civic did not slow, impacted the Civic, and turned it into an accordian against the back of the Jeep.
I didn’t see this. Old Man Frank did and told me after returning from a delivery.
This wasn’t an “accident.” Traffic accidents — true, honest, actual accidents — are, I think, very rare (even rarer than me sharing my bed with a hot chick, so, roughly non-existant). No, this wasn’t an accident — both the Wrangler and the Civic behaved as best as anyone can tell, properly. And to tell the truth, it doesn’t matter if the Wrangler signaled its turn or not — once it began to brake, and the Civic began to brake, the operator of the Dodge Ram should’ve seen the brake lights and applied his.
There are, as I see it, one very good explanation for the “accident” … the operator of the Dodge Ram failed to leave sufficient space between his vehicle and that which he was following.
One of my cardinal rules of driving? Whenever possible (i.e., not stopped at a red light), I leave a minimum of two car-lengths between me and the vehicle I’m following. And when a vehicle follows me closer than that … well, that’s what down-shifting is for.
This “accident” never should have happened. The majority of accidents should never happen. Be careful. More importantly: be aware.
So this guy comes in yesterday.
“…Ask you a question?”
“Sure.” I’m assuming his question has to do with our menu. Or our delivery area. Payment methods, maybe.
“My dad wrote me this check, but when he was signing it, the pen ran out of ink, so he got another pen of the same color ink and signed over his first signature. Think the bank’ll take it, or give me trouble?”
Alarm howl.
Tippy decided to wake me up and so came into my room and started howling. I made “go away” motions at her, but she kept howling. I threw a book at her, but she dodged it and kept howling. Finally I dragged myself out of bed, and checked three things: the litter box (changed it yesterday, it’s fine), and the food bowls (all full).
I went back to bed.
Tippy followed my back into the room and started howling again.
So I did what any sleepy adult male would do.
I chased her under the couch, then went back to my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
So Tippy came up to the door and began scratching on it. And howling.
Scratching and howling.
This fucking creature doesn’t want me to get any sleep … so I gave up on trying.
Anyone want a howling calico?
Deep Space Nine is, without doubt, my favorite show within the “Star Trek” family. In terms of writing and character development — in my opinion, the two keymost factors to a show’s success — DS9 was anchored with excellent production with massive sets, amazing f/x, and with each episode the feel of a forty-six minute movie.
The premise:
Deep Space Nine is the only “Star Trek” series not to take place on a starship — there’s no “boldly going” here. After a sixty year occupation of the planet Bajor, during which time the planet was raped of its natural resources and its native population enslaved, raped, and murdered, the Cardassian Union has bowed to internal and external political pressures and withdrawn its forces. Acting on the request of the Bajoran provisional government, Starfleet sends a small team to help with Bajor’s reconstruction (and hopeful eventual admission into the United Federation of Planets). Deeming the surface to be to instable for a land presence, the Starfleet team — led by the embittered Ben Sisko — sets up shop in an old ore processing station in orbit — Terek Nor.
Terek Nor, which is now owned by Bajor, but operated by Starfleet, is designated Deep Space Nine, and it’s where Sisko must work with an integrated Starfleet/Bajoran crew (his first officer, Kira Nerys, is, depending on who you talk to, either an ex-freedom fighter or an ex-terrorist) to deter renewed Cardassian interest in the area after the accidental discovery of a stable wormhole — a “short cut”, taking decades off travel to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. This discovery turns Bajor from a desolate backwater planet in the far depths of barely explored space, to a major commercial and exploratory hub, as well as a strategic location for the local military powers. In addition, the discovery of the wormhole is proof for Sisko that Bajor’s religion — the worship of the Prophets of the Celestial Temple — is founded in fact. Indeed, as he is the one who locates the wormhole, Sisko finds himself inenviably made a religious icon — the “Emissary of the Prophets.”
The show boasts a large extended cast of regular and irregular characters — in addition to the station’s crew (which includes TNG’s former transporter guru, Miles O’Brien), there are a variety of criminally-minded folks led by the Ferengi barkeep Quark, Cardassian interests represented by the evil-yet-sympathetic Gul Dukat (a former overseer of the occupation, and past commander of Terek Nor), a variety of odd-ball residents of the station (including an exiled Cardassian spy), and a wide number of other foreign leaders, dignitaries, and military commanders.
As the seasons progress, the wormhole becomes more troublesome — at the other end, the menacing military might of the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion and its shock Jem-Hadar troopers set their eyes on the conquest of the Alpha Quadrant, while suspicions among alliances fracture the long-standing Federation/Klingon treaties.
Right About to Start …:
The Top 10 Episodes are presented in order of airdate, and I think I’d be hard pressed to number them beyond this. Enjoy!
1×19 – DUET
Kira is shocked when a Cardassian, Martiza, arrives on the station wanting to be diagnosed for a medical condition — kalinora syndrome — which affected the population of the slave camp Gallitep. While the Cardassian first claims to only have been a clerk at the camp, investigation reveals he’s none other than the camp’s overseer, Gul Darheel, and on Bajor’s Top Ten list of wanted war criminals. As much as Kira wants to nail this monster to the wall, Odo’s suspicions breach her thick hide — there’s no possible way this individual could have come aboard Deep Space Nine with the syndrome and not have expected to be caught and prosecuted. When she learns that Darheel died on Cardassia before the outbreak of kalinora syndrome, she confronts the imposter, who was indeed at Gallitep — a clerk who breaks down and confesses that he wept at night to the screams of the Bajoran slaves, and whose guilt at standing by and doing nothing drove him to impersonate Darheel in the hopes that his trial, and execution, would force Cardassia to admit its crimes.
This isn’t just a powerful episode of Star Trek, this is a powerful episode plain and simple. Harris Yulin portrays Maritza, a cowardly man who decides to make his life count for something. Right before he breaks down at the end, still “playing” Darheel, he insults the man he was — the weak, sniveling Maritza — a man viewed with contempt by his own people for his cowardice, and by the Bajorans for his race. Equally moving is Kira’s story. Remember, this is a character who for thirty-plus years was raised to hate and kill the Cardassian occupiers of her world. As first officer of Deep Space Nine, she’s been forced to work with Cardassians on occasion, but this is the first time she’s ever felt sympathy for one.
I can’t watch this episode without crying.
1×20 – IN THE HANDS OF THE PROPHETS
Prior to the Cardassian occupation, the Bajorans were a very spiritual people. Following the occupation, they’re a very split people — plagued by terrorists who now turn against the Provisional Government, a very hard-core right-wing religious political faction has emerged with an aim to take over the Vedek Assembly (Bajor’s version of the Vatican) and the Provisional Government. In the Hands of the Prophets was both the first season finale, and also served as the launching pad for the second season’s three-episode premiere story line.
Vedek Winn, head of a small but orthodox and vocal sect, travels to Deep Space Nine to protest the lesson plans of the Starfleet run children’s school. The lesson plan teaches about the wormhole as a scientific phenomenon, whereas from a religious perspective, the wormhole is the Celestial Temple, and teaching about it in any other way is sacriligious. Sisko — himself an object of Bajor’s religious interests — tries to mediate the conflict with particular attention to Starfleet’s mission in helping rebuild Bajor, a mission that becomes much harder when the school is bombed, and an assassination attempt is carried out on the moderate Vedek Bariel.
I always like DS9 the best when it focuses on the internal politics of Bajor, as well as the policies between Cardassia and Bajor. It also introduces two new regular characters — Louise Fletcher as the devious Vedek Winn, and Philip Anglim as her well-intentioned competitor, Vedek Bariel. For Sisko, this is the episode where he makes his connection with Bajor, and becomes “comfortable” with his role in the Bajoran religion, even if he doesn’t quite accept, or like, that role.
2×14 – WHISPERS
Chief O’Brian returns to the station after assisting an alien race with security procedures before negotiations begin to end their long civil war. It doesn’t take long before his suspicions are aroused by the unusual conduct of the station’s senior staff members, and soon he’s on the run — in a runabout — to prevent a Starfleet conspiracy to thwart the peace process. What O’Brian doesn’t know is that he’s the threat to the peace process.
Viewed through the eyes of O’Brien, it’s the station’s crew who appears slightly “off”, an illusion maintained well enough that the twist at the end is a surprise. In reality, it’s O’Brien who is “off”, a clone-assassin so well copied off the original that it flees the station to warn its target.
3×22 – EXPLORERS
Centuries ago, the ancient Bajorans took to space in vessels made of wood and steel and propelled by solar sails (legends say they even made it as far as Cardassia). Having found plans for one of these vessels, Sisko is intent on making and sailing one himself (even though O’Brien is convinced it won’t work), and is pleased when his son Jake wants to go with him on the vessel’s trial run. In fact, it works better than they could have ever dreamed when the ship is propelled into warp and finds itself confronted by three Cardassian warships … which, in a small act of reconcilliation for their neighbors, promptly launch fireworks to celebrate the inginuity of the ancient Bajorans.
This is just a great, light-hearted, character story, probably why it works so well.
4×2 – THE VISITOR
No plot synopsis can do this Hugo-Award nominated episode justice. Seventy years earlier, a young Jake Sisko watched his father phase out of time during scientific observation aboard the Defiant. As Jake aged, he would occasionally see and speak with his father again as the time-phasing fluctuated. An old man now (played by Tony Todd), Jake abandoned his family, and his career, to study the circumstances that occured to his father, earning degrees in advanced sciences in the process — and he finally learned how he could reverse the process, and prevent Ben’s initial time-phasing “…by severing the bond which connects us,” he explains to his father as he lies dying of the poison he injected himself with. Ben returns to the Defiant at the time of the accident, and is able to prevent it.
The plot synopsis doesn’t describe the intensity of the episode, and no words I can write could possibly come close to capturing the character drama and love that shines through the writing and acting. This is an incredible story, and any television show would be proud to be capable of this level of achievement.
4×18 – HARD TIME
On Deep Space Nine, Miles O’Brien is the “tortured” character. I don’t mean that he gets all the heart break … I mean that the writers set out each season to write an episode where the poor man gets literally tortured. Hard Time is easy to explain: on a mission to an alien world, O’Brien is accused and convicted of spying. He’s plugged into a computer and has the fictitious memories of a thirty-year prison sentence planted in this brain. In reality, he’s only been plugged in for an hour, but as a person, he’s experienced decades behind bars — including a memory that’s so real and painful to him, it is driving him to the point of suicide as he’s struggles to reintegrate himself aboard Deep Space Nine.
5×6 – TRIALS & TRIBBLEATIONS
Deep Space Nine‘s tribute to Classic Trek, the crew of the Defiant finds themselves transported back in time while on a mission to return one of the mystical Orbs of the Prophets to Bajor, a gesture of peace by the Cardassians who had looted it. What they don’t know is that one of their passengers is an elder Klingon agent who was discredited by Jim Kirk over a century ago and forced to live as a human. Finding an opportunity to right this past wrong, he’s returned to the scene of his dishonor – the space-station that was the setting for Star Trek’s “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode, on a mission to assassinate Kirk (via a bomb planted inside a tribble). Sisko and his crew must dress the part in an attempt to locate the culprit before he succeeds in his mission.
Look, what can I say? This was a great fun episode where everybody gets to dress up in those old bright pajamas and interact with the original cast in some pretty nifty CGI effects. Most fun is watching characters used to 24th century technology try to grasp the basics of the older equipment and wondering why the Klingons don’t have bumpy foreheads (“We don’t talk about it”, Worf says, a dissapointment since we don’t get to learn what happened, although we do learn that Klingons dislike tribbles so much that decades earlier they launched an epic crusade to commit tribble-genocide). This is a great take on a classic episode.
5×13 – FOR THE UNIFORM
A year earlier, Starfleet’s security representative on Ds9, Lt. Commander Michael Eddington, betrayed his oath and stole industrial replicators to help the cause of the terrorist Maquis. Sisko’s gung-ho on tracking him down when the Defiant is sabotauged and another officer placed in charge of bringing Eddington to justice. When Eddington strikes again, Sisko takes the barely-functioning Defiant on a rather personal mission of vengeance.
Sisko’s sort of a cross between Kirk and Picard. When he’s not all riled up, he can be very Picard-like in his negotiation skills. But when he’s crossed, he becomes a very dangerous man willing to cross any line to accomplish what needs to be done, in this episode, battering a punching bag, he lays it out to Dax: “This is personal! He is my responsibility!” Eddington also sees this as a very personal fight, comparing himself and Sisko to the lead characters from Les Miserables. Cool sequences involve flying the Defiant manually.
5×26 – A CALL TO ARMS
Sisko’s plan to end Dominion reinforcements through the wormhole is approved by Starfleet when it becomes clear their enemies are preparing to move on Deep Space Nine: line the wormhole entrance with self-replicating mines. It’s an action that is, for all intents and purposes, a declaration of a war that has been brewing for quite some time. And with this decision, and the knowledge that Starfleet can’t defend the station, Sisko has to prepare for his retreat. But as Dukat later explains to Weyoun in Sisko’s office, examining Sisko’s prized baseball left as a message: “He’ll be back.” Indeed, the final shot of the episode is a huge fleet of Starfleet and Klingon warships moving ominously across a starfield.
As a stand-alone episode, it’s an odd choice: it isn’t very good as a stand-alone episode. But what it is good at is establishing a dire feeling of doom to end the fifth season with. At the end of the episode, our major and minor characters are spread across the quadrant: Kira and Odo remain on the station, forced by Bajor’s peace treaty to work with Dukat and the Dominion representatives; Sisko, O’Brien, Bashir and Dax aboard the Defiant; Worf serving with the Klingons; and Jake secretly remaining behind on the station in some romantic ideal of the reporter he wants to be. Deep Space Nine is once again being called Terek Nor, and the future looks very bleak indeed.
6×19 – IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT
As the Federation and Klingons take increasing losses in the war, Sisko believes a new ally is needed to help turn the tide against the Dominion. With Garak’s help, he manufacturers a faked tape containing evidence of a planned Dominion first-strike against the Romulan Star Empire. Unfortunatly for Sisko, the high-ranking Romulan senator who arrives secretly aboard the station to examine the record recognizes it as a fake — and proclaims that Sisko’s trickery will result in a Romulan declaration of war against the Federation. With no other choice, Sisko arranges the man’s assassination — tragic, but believing the Dominion to be involved, the Romulans go to war, and Sisko’s efforts have not been in vain. “And all it cost was my soul,” Sisko reflects.
This is, among other things, a great showcase of Ben Sisko and Garak, the Cardassian spy turned tailor. It’s Garak who plants the bomb that blows up the Romulan senator, and after being confronted by Sisko, he points out that Sisko knew damn well Garak’s past, and how determined Garak is to free Cardassian from the Dominion’s clutches, and most importantly: what Garak is capable of doing. Sisko knows Garak is telling the truth, and his haunting confession to a recorded log entry (through which the story is framed) shows a man willing to explore his deepest, darkest, evilist depths to achieve the greater good (a theme touched on again in a later episode where he all but orders the assassination of the corrupt Klingon Chancellor).
**
Hope this post inspired some of you folks to stick DS9 on your Netflix queue and see what all the fuss is about — this is the show even non-Trek fans can get into. For those of you who watched the show when it was on, I hope this’ll inspire you to return to that ghetto-esque space station to rewatch those fantastic tales.
I overheard someone remark the other day that they were a “workaholic.”
I’m pretty sure this individual doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.
Workaholics work more than thirty-five hours a week. Workaholics need to work as much as possible and hate excessive days off (defined as, I dunno, more than one a month). Workaholics don’t bitch about how much work they have to do. For that matter, workaholics don’t use “have to do” as a description of their duties.
Workaholic my not-so-fat ass!
No, not the soda, rather, a series of documentary films following the growth of fourteen British children, starting at the age of seven, with follow-up films every seven years.
“Give me a boy when he is seven, and I will show you the man” is my poorly-paraphrased version of the quote the series seems based upon. Filmed on the thought that this is a glimpse of the leaders and workers of Britain of the not-so-distant future (the first film was made in 1964), the films examine a cross-section of race and social-class and how these and other factors affect the decisions the children make as they grow up.
I just finished the third film, 21 Up, and what struck me most was how well planned some of these childrens’ lives were, notably the upper-class children who attended private schools. At age seven, they could list the various boarding and prep schools they would be expected to attend, all the way through university. And by the third film, most of them (with few exception) followed the path so early laid out for them.
I have to give a special “thank you” to Broadsheet who told me about these films (Michael Apted — “The World Is Not Enough” — directed every film after the first, and served as a researcher on that) at our sushi dinner six weeks ago. I immediately put them on Netflix and then let them linger atop my DVD player as other concerns came to the forefront of my attention.
I’ve got three more films in the series to watch. I was about to write “Presumeably because those left of the original fourteen grew disinterested with continuing the project, there never was a 49-Up“, however according to Wikipedia, “Michael Apted was 22 at the time of Seven Up!, and has plans to create a 56 Up.” Plus, according to Wikipedia, there WAS a 49-Up! (Damn, it’s not listed on Netflix, but it just came out last year).
The entire Wikipedia selection on the film series can be found here. It’s available also through Amazon, and for rental on Netflix.