After watching last night’s LOST, I came to one conclusion: Frank Lapidus, introduced at the start of the show’s 4th season, really looks weird without his beard.

ROL Cats: providing English translation of Eastern-Bloc LOL cats.

It’s true: yes, FlipFlops, I did delete you from my favorites.

Actually, the truth is, you were never there. Simply put, it’s been a very long time since I’ve actually bookmarked a website. It’s been far longer since I’ve maintained my blogroll here. I’ve been utilizing a number of aggregators, DC Blogs, Blogtimore, etc., but I’m far too stuck in the habit of actually going over to the Google search bar and typing in “Andrew Sullivan” to find his blog, or www.dcblogs.com to keep up with the day’s postings.

So, last night, I finally got off my proverbial lazy fat ass (in reality, I remained on my fat ass) and explored Google’s Reader. I then began hunting down my favorite blogs and subscribing to them. In about an hour, most of my daily, and infrequent reads, were subscribed to and available for convenient reading.

I love Reader. It makes blog surfing so well managed. While I have certain grumpy attitudes towards individuals who do not make their full feed available for publication — (I-66, I’m talking to you, here) — I love the interface and easy-to-figure-out design.

The best part is that I can keep up with my blog readings on the down-low from “teh evil overlords” of the Office. After all, Google and GMail are tools of my trade — they can’t block them. Well, they could, but my department would have a whiny hiss fit.

Google Reader. It’s better than Facebook!

Before they got ripped off for a horrible 80s cartoon and movie series, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were some bad ass ninjas who went around slicing and dicing their opponents in Eastman’s and Laird’s original comic series.

So I nearly wet myself when I saw NECA’s new line of action figures based on the original comic:

Okay, “wet myself” might be an exaggeration. Still, these are really cool.

Talking with coworkers about GM’s attempt to kill or sell the Hummer brand, the guy who sits next to me voiced the opinion that he hated Hummers. I agree, in that I hate the Hummer vehicles, but I stated, “I love Hummers!”

His response? “Huh?”

I think I’d be a lot more excited about hump day if I could actually hump something.

In any case, working a part-time job, my “hump” is reached when I leave work Tuesday afternoon.

CNN:

A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.

But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off a cliff, Chinese media reported.

… it’s that you should give your spurned mistress the bad news after she’s parked the car and given you the keys back. Also, is it wrong that when I read this to the Office, everyone laughed? We’re all bad, evil people.

On the DC job market:

John Thorpe, a 2008 college graduate, spent the summer and fall as an intern in the [McCain] campaign’s war department. Now’s he looking for a job—any job. “I think I might take a job at a bookstore or something for now, because I need to make money,” he says.

Good luck finding a job at a bookstore — from my job hunting over the last couple of weeks, I’ve found that they aren’t hiring. In the case of the Bookstore I currently work at, corporate cutbacks in payroll means everyone’s hours have been slashed: when people quit, their hours are given on a first-priority basis to full-time employees, with us part-timers picking up the scraps.

So, good luck. I mean, finding that ‘bookstore or something’ job. Sounds like you’re one of those assholes who’ll quit without notice as soon as you find something better.

Never try to save money by buying cheap disposable razors, when you rely on four- and five- blade razors to keep your head nice and bald. So, now, I’ve got some nice bloody scabs forming on the side of my head.

You know what this means, don’t you? I’ll be spending $20 on razor blade cartridges the next time I go to Target.

Obviously, this post contains spoilers for last night’s episode: you have been warned.

Here’s a recap: In the wake of the attempted (and failed) coup, Tyrol and Adama tour the Galactica, and Tyrol points out various stress fractures: the big old ship is falling apart, and Tyrol wants permission to use a Cylon resin to shore up the frame. Meanwhile, Anders, who was shot in the head in the previous episode, is being prepped for surgery when he recalls how the Final Five Cylons came from Earth to the Colonies. In the meantime, in flashbacks over the course of the last eighteen months (since Col. Tigh poisoned his wife), we see Ellen Tigh being reborn in an isolated chamber on Cavil’s basestar. What follows is certainly an interesting conversation, but both the Ellen and the Anders plot points can be summed up as a whole shit ton of exposition, which, thankfully, answers a lot of questions.

And it answers those questions pertaining to the Final Five: how did they get from Earth to the Colonies? What is their relationship with the Cylons? How did they come to all find themselves on the Galactica or within the Rag Tag Fleet (in the cases of Ellen and Tory) with no memory of who and what they were?

I suppose it was all very necessary. Yet, when the water-cooler talk at the Office comes around to something like this (er, which it never does, because I’m the only BSG fan there), or to LOST, people always bitch about how the audience never gets any answers, only more questions, and I think of something Captain Picard said in an episode of TNG — “We seek not only answers to our questions, but more questions!” I’m paraphrasing, by the way.

But I’ve never necessarily been big on having all the answers. Galactica is a show that isn’t about questions, or answers: it’s about a bunch of people who survived the holocaust of their race and are fleeing across the galaxy for their lives. Questions? Answers? What fascinates me about BSG is seeing folks with nothing to live for, beaten down, in the mud, refusing to realize they’ve been defeated — I just like seeing the people overcome all the difficulties they’ve got. A good show, a great show, isn’t about questions and answers, it’s about people that the audience can relate to making tough decisions and big mistakes.

Battlestar Galactica is about people being rough and tough in space, not about them waxing poetic on some philosophical concept. Last night’s episode wasn’t much on the earlier, but heavy on the latter.

After the pace of the last few episodes, I have to admit, it was sort of like running down the street and straight into a glass wall. I did that once, well, except I was walking and it was a glass door. I was sore for a week.

Meanwhile, I was disappointed by the lack of follow up on the mutiny. I realize that with only a few episodes left, the story-telling time available is limited, and thus, characters might fall through the plot holes. But I do still want to know what happened to Nowart, the Marine who Adama told to flee; Racetrack and Skulls and Narcho; Captain Kelly, who redeemed himself.

Instead, we focus on the mysterious cracks that are showing up on Galactica. Did Tyrol’s forceful shut down of the FTL engines cause the ship’s weaknesses to manifest themselves more rapidly than they might have otherwise? “They cut corners?” Adama seethes at one point, but Tyrol’s admission that they likely did didn’t surprise me very much: as I recall, the ship was built at the start of the first Cylon war, and the Colonial shipyards were probably rushing all twelve of the first batch of Battlestars into service.

The pace starts picking up towards the end, when Sharon One (aka Boomer), who was the only one of the Number Eight models to side with Cavil early in season four, and who has been taken into his confidence, decides to spring Ellen from what is essentially a captivity, and just before Cavil subjects her to a painful medical procedure designed to literally pick her brain.

Not only is this exciting because, well, it’s the only action in the episode aside from Anders going having a seizure, but the geek in me sees Boomer rejoining the Rag Tag Fleet, which is exciting because, hey, we were all — at least, I was — rooting for Boomer to overcome the programming she wasn’t aware of during the first season. It was sleeper agent Boomer who blew up the ship’s water supply, who almost sabotaged Galactica’s search for more water, for Trillium, and who, of course, shot Commander Adama twice. Boomer was killed, downloaded, and reborn, and when we see her — and we do — she’s come to be very anti-human.

So, for me, the highlight of this episode wasn’t the answers we found — rather, it was Model Number Eight, one time Cylon sleeper agent, Raptor pilot, Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, making a decision to side, at least for now, hopefully, long term, with her former compatriots on the Rag Tag Fleet.

UPDATE:

I love Television Without Pity, which sums up Cavil’s puppet-playing as:

Destroyed utterly the life and civilizations on twelve planets, burnt the knowledge of their creators out of his brothers and sisters, killed Daniel and boxed Three, wiped and boxed the Final Five just to make sure they ended up in the holocaust, had a day-long conversation with Chief about how he wasn’t a Cylon even though he totally was, tried his best to kill off the idea of God(s) Himself(s), plucked out his father’s eyeball, and fucked his own mother while she was in mortal mode on New Caprica. Moral of story? You Never Fuck With Pinocchio. Welcome to the last act of the last season of the very best TV show of all time, and here’s your Dramamine.

Clearly, whichever graphics designer at Google designed the holiday image for the search engine, does not appear to enjoy Valentine’s Day. The image certainly appears inspired by some weird slasher flick.

HT: Claude.

The other day, I caught a ride home from the Office job with a coworker who’d recently discovered Lost. “It’s totally not the kind of show I thought I’d like, but I love JJ Abrams now!” he said, and when I followed up with, “Do you plan on seeing the new Star Trek?” his brow furrowed for a second before he admitted, “Yes! Fuck yes!” and then remarked how absolutely surprised he was that he’d ever possibly want to see anything relating to Star Trek.

It occurred to me that the new Star Trek movie has a lot of appeal far beyond the typical, dedicated Trekker or the casual Trekkie. Since Star Trek “lore” has been passed on through pop culture, I wondered what some of those interested in the movie knew about the original show. So I e-mailed some blogger acquaintances and asked if they’d be willing to take a short quiz on Trek (and, then, if they’d be okay with my mocking them on my blog).

Our participants … Arjewtino, Was It For This, Flip Flops in the Rain, Katherine of Who Invented Roses, Plight of the Pumpernickel, and Herb of DC. To help curve the exam, dorks Urban Bohemian and Pithy Comments agreed to participate as well.

1. In one sentence (honestly, you can do it one word), describe the focus of Klingon culture.

Arjewtino comes in strong with his response: “I believe they are an alien race focused on killing humanity, kind of like the Cylons in “Battlestar Galactica”. Klingons and Cylons might even be related, I believe.”

Plight of the Pumpernickel made me chuckle: “Uhh…peace and harmony? Or are they evil? In which case, death and destruction.”

Katherine, however, wins for her answer: “Death, mayhem and the eating of small snot-nosed children. Also, I know from season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that they developed their own written language.”

2. Spock is a member of what race?

FlipFlopsintheRain has a mostly accurate, yet sadly far too vague answer: “Alien?”

Arjewtino: “Oh, I know this! The Elfins, right? Wait, that might be Lord of the Rings, the Orlando Bloom dude. All I know is he does that thing with his fingers to form a “V”, which I didn’t know how to do until I was 21. True story. I was an embarrassment to my family.”

Katherine, alas, obviously cribbed her answer from Arjewtino: “Spock is an elf, as demonstrated by his pointy ears and lack of emotion. His fore bearers are the elves from Lord of the Rings. After they sailed away in those big boats, the elves developed Awesome Technology and got all chummy with the people of um, Deep Space 9, and shared their hypergalatic flying spaceboats….”

3. Chekov and Sulu both sit at the front of the ship: which is the navigator, and which is the pilot?

There are no runners up on this one. WasItForThis, (regardless of her admission to me that she “often get[s] Star Trek confused with Star Wars” — clearly, we were never meant to be) wins this one hands down: “I would say that Chekov’s affinity for stream-of-consciousness writing would, um, lend itself to an understanding of cartography, so clearly, Sulu is the helmsman.”

4. Fill in the blanks: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a ____ not a ____!”

PithyComments is a doctor, not a magician; WasItForThis is a man, not a piece of meat; FlipFlops in the Rain is a Klingon, not a robot; Pumpernickel is a doctor, not a miracle man nor a mindreader; Arjewtino is a mechanist, not a florist.

I think, however, this one goes to Urban Bohemian, the uberdork: “(tricky, since I’m not sure he actually said “Damnit, Jim”) Doctor/Bricklayer, Doctor/Engineer, Doctor/Mechanic, Doctor/Coal Miner and Doctor/Escalator are all I can remember (lots of geek pub trivia in my past).” Uh-huh. Excuses, excuses.

Truthfully — as long as it was “I’m a doctor”, you got full points … “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a porn star!” would’ve been perfectly acceptable.

5. What is the significance behind the term “red shirt”?

I’m going to start with WasItForThis: “College sports teams use the “red shirt” process to lengthen the the period an athlete is eligible to participate in collegiate-level sports.” Oh, that is so … FAIL!

FlipFlops: “The Klingon’s wear them on laundry day.” Also incorrect, but she’s trying.

Pumpernickel: “Communists in space?” Indeed, one could make the argument that the Federation is communist, since they don’t have that pesky money stuff anymore.

For pure funny, Katherine: “I’m sure it’s not indicative of menstruation, because that would be sexist, and the Federation is not sexist. So I’m going with a fashion statement… “Red, it’s The New Black” and the shirt is the new pencil skirt?” Nope!

Nailing it on the head, Arjewtino: “I totally know this for real! But not because of ‘Star Trek’, it’s because of ‘Family Guy’. The red shirts are the ones who always go down to some planet with the main characters and get killed. This is why I always wear blue.”

However, for total summing up, PithyComments: “You iz gonna be killd ded.”

6. What is the duration of the Enterprise’s mission?

PithyComments is right, yet, totally wrong: “1 hr give or take for commercials.”

WasItForThis is getting her 60s TV shows confused: “3 hour tour.” Katherine, too: “To infinity and beyond. Dunno. Didn’t they get lost in space or something? I just know there were a lot of Captain’s Logs.”

Back to Urban Bohemian for the WIN!: “5 Years.”

7. Scotty is in charge of what department on the Enterprise?

With the exception of Urban Bohemian, um, and Katherine, and, er, Herb of DC (who was wrong with his guess of “security”), everyone answered the same — and everyone was wrong. I’m going to lead with Footstep’s answer: “Beaming! (That was an easy one.)”

Pumpernickel also went with beaming, but added: “And speaking in a stereotypical Scottish accent.”

Katherine was right on the dot: “The Department For The Futherance Of Warp Speed and Beaming People Up, duh!” Scotty, of course, was the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer, and made the ship go voom-voom. He also sometimes went to the transporter room, and complained about his bairns. No, I don’t know what bairns are either.

8. The Enterprise travels by ____ propulsion.

Pithy: “Laser?” WasItForThis: “Jet, duh. Or possibly some liberal, left-wingnut “clean” energy source. Damn commies.” FlipFlops: “space?” Arjewtino: “Jet propulsion would probably be too primitive a technology for the Enterprise, so I’m going to say matzo ball propulsion. That’s how I travel.”

UrbanBohemian covers all the bases: “Impulse, or warp for FTL.” (Of course, there’s an argument that warp isn’t really FTL, that it moves space, not the ship. In any case …)

9. Name two characteristics of a Tribble.

Katherine thinks they “come in peace and are furry.” She adds that they’re
[s]imilar to a Furby, but they bite.” What’s a Furby? I don’t know, but this is why they invented Google.

Arjewtino thinks this is a trick question — clearly, “it’s the name of a Teletubby.”

Herb of DC, on the other hand, believes Tribbles to possess “tiny Munchkin-like hands.” He also thinks they “look like Munchkins.”

It’s Pithy for the WIN!: “They multiply rapidly and they’re small, furry creatures.” Also acceptable: they’re born pregnant, and they’re allergic to Klingons.

10. What does it mean to “beam” somewhere?

Herb’s got a strong answer right out of the box on this one: “You get in these tubey things and dissolve and are transported to some planet where everyone is blonde and hot (see: Navigator) and then when all the hot people die you are beamed back to the tubes on the ship.” (Apparently, Herb thinks Chekov is ‘teh hot’).

WasItForThis, clearly, spends too much pushing papers: “You say ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ and Scotty tears himself away from the payroll receipts, presses a button, and you appear on whatever planet you wanted to go to.” Well, except, ‘beam up’ would be the command to return to the ship … see?

Pumpernickel: “You’re transported from one place to another in a beam of light. It’s my preferred mode of transportation.” And having read this nightmare post about a taxi ride, who can blame her?

Despite her claim that she knows “NOTHING about Star Trek”, Katherine nailed this one, too, so I’m thinking she spends her evenings watching 1960s TV shows and drooling over Avery Brooks as her ideal boyfriend (hey, if I liked men, he’d be mine!): “Tele-port them, but you gotta do it right or they loose important bits. Like fingers and belt buckles and hair (which is why Captain Picard is bald — tragic beaming accident).”

Up Next: the FINAL Question!!!!!

When is Star Trek set? It’s okay to guesstimate by centuries.

Herb: “2050.” Pithy Comments: “5000.” WasItForThis: “1984.” FlipFlops: “In the future. The far, far future.” Pumpernickel: “Um … it’s not in the distant past, is it? Like a thousand years in the future maybe?” Katherine: “Which one? There were lots. So is this a trick question? If not, I’m going with start date 3110.”

Oddly, of the “know nothing about Trek crowd”, it’s Arjewtino who comes closest: “The 23rd century? I’ll say 2212 to be exact.” Indeed, Star Trek — Classic Star Trek — was set in the second-half of the 23rd Century.

Here’s how everyone did:

Herb of DC: 3!
Pithy Comments: 8 (although two of those were 1/2 points …)
Urban Bohemian: 100%, A++, Full Marks!*
WasItForThis: Although Klingons are good, no doubt, at “babymaking”, alas — 2.5.
Footsteps — 3!
Plight of the Pumpernickel: 5.5
Katherine “I know NOTHING about Star Trek”: 3.5
Arjewtino: 5.5

*Dork!

Thanks for playing! Now, go visit their blogs and mock their inability to carry on a drunken conversation in Klingon. This smokin’ chick can!

But, of course, you already knew that.

I hope Congress grills these bank CEOs at least as intensely as Calvin’s mom would’ve.

Pumping and stimulation services? Is BJ Services’ marketing manager a 12-year old? And was whoever named this company an idiot? (Personally, I think he was brilliant!)