True: for some reason, I always call The Deadliest Catch, The World’s Most Dangerous Catch. Don’t ask me why. But this post really has nothing to do with that show, which, if you haven’t seen it, is fantastic. It’s all about fishermen crabbing on Alaska’s Bering Sea for gigantic disgusting looking crabs that look like spiders with armor plating. One word: Yuck.

Friday night, I happened across a marathon of Animal Planet’s similar series, Whale Wars. Honestly, the only similarity is that they feature people doing a job in a boat on the water. Where The Deadliest Catch follows a fleet of crabbing ships, Whale Wars follows the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society on their ship, the Steve Irwin, as its captain and crew try to disrupt Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

My original post, which I did not publish, was originally much more scathing, not towards the Japanese whalers, but to this group of Sea Shepherds.

The first episode I saw had me hooked. Their ship is being shadowed by another vessel, and the crew thinks it is radioing their position to the whaling fleet, thereby preventing them from harassing the Japanese whalers. So when the ship passes a giant iceberg, they leave a small motorboat and their helicopter behind, and surprise the unidentified vessel and cause it to retreat. Later, when the ship encounters them for a second time, the Steve Irwin heads into an ice float to confuse the other ship’s radar. A member of the crew, Tod Emko, remarks: “This is so cool, we’re evading them the same way the Millennium Falcon escaped the Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back!” (Okay, that’s paraphrased).

And right here, I don’t know if I want to hug the guy, or smack him. Because, seriously?

Here’s how the Japanese whaling fleet operates: there are several whaling boats, and one large processing ship. The Sea Shepherd’s founder, Paul Watson, called the processing ship “the whale Death Star.” (I’m pretty sure it was Watson, it might’ve* been Emko again). Eventually, the Steve Irwin actually makes contact with the processing ship, and proceed to attack the ship with acid-in-glass-bottles (that supposedly A. stinks a lot and B. fouls the whale meat so it can’t be sold) and “flour bombs”, essentially a bag of flour which explodes on contact and makes the other ship’s deck very slippery.

The processing ship warns the Steve Irwin that if the boat makes a second pass, the Japanese will retaliate with flash-bangs, and tear-gas. Immediately, I just wanted to smack every member of the crew who was showcased in response to this, because the reactions tended to be something like: “Oh my god, they’re going to attack us with weapons! They must be really insecure and have really small dicks!”

Except, okay, first of all, maybe they’re just tired of glass bottles exploding on their ship? And maybe they’re tired of slipping and sliding on all the flour? Oh, and maybe they just want to make some money so they can support their families?

Because, man, I’m really fucking conflicted here — on one hand, I think our environment should be conserved. And I think that whales should be left the fuck alone. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia, and according to the numbers of whales the Japanese are allowed to kill in a season, it’s not like whaling (the way it is now) is particularly detrimental to the species’ survival. And, on the other hand? The crew of the Steve Irwin sometimes seems more gung-ho then, y’know, intelligent.

And here I’m not talking about the individual crew, a lot of whom take off time from their full-time jobs to crew the ship for a month here or there. I’m talking about the first mate, Peter Brown. Confronting the Japanese ships, the captains of-whom broadcast over their speakers a fairly professional sounding bit along the lines of, “We’re complying with international regulations, blah-blah, you are operating your vessel too closely to us, blah-blah” and so forth. And, y’know, my sympathies are against the whaling fleet, but I just got to the point where I was smacking my forehead into my palm every time Peter Brown would reply, “No you’re not! Go home! Leave the whales alone!” All that was missing was a Lewbowski-ish “Leave the whales alone, maaaan!” at the end.

But the big thing? Was this. The marathon was a run-up to the first episode of the second season, which ends with the Steve Irwin negotiating an ice-field to harass a whaling ship. At the end of the episode, Peter Brown is at the helm, and helping him negotiate the field are other crew, with binoculars, including a former US Navy officer. So they’re calling out headings to him, and he’s all, “No, no, give me directions!” North, south, east, etcetra, and he’s spinning the wheel like crazy, and he’s pretty agitated (and everyone else on the bridge is getting agitated), and they’re running into big chunks of ice, and as the engineering guy says — over, and over, and over again, in case we forgot — “This is a non-ice reinforced hull”, the preview for the next episode shows the interior of the engineering room as the hull buckles inwards.

I mean, for goodness sake, wouldn’t knowing how to navigate a boat be considered an essential skill for the second in command? Aren’t there regulations about this kind of stuff?

And, look — the whole point of going through the ice field is because they miss the entrance to an open field of sea in the middle of an ice flow, so instead of taking a few hours, turning around, and going back safely, they just throw caution to the wind and charge through the ice in, in case you forgot, a “non-ice reinforced hull.”

I mean, Jesus Christ, you’ve got 30+ people aboard, and how many whales exactly are you going to save if you sink the boat and get everyone killed? I’ll admit that for an episode or two, I thought, “Man, I wonder if I could take time off work, buy a ticket, fly down, and crew on this ship for a couple months, they’d be fun!” Except, it really does kind of seem like the senior people on the boat are perfectly willing to put everyone’s lives at danger just to show how serious they are.

There’s a whole speech the First Mate gives after they take on a new bunch of crewpeople, where’s he like, “Look, we’re not a protest group, we’re going to put ourselves in harm’s way.” Yada-yada-yada. And I think everyone probably got on board with the knowledge that sea travel is, in general, very dangerous, and sea travel in the Antarctic is very much really especially dangerous, and that confronting Japanese whalers might be dangerous, too, but they’re probably not thinking that the head honcho is insane enough to pilot the ship through an ice field to either save a few hours, or get everybody killed.

My head is swimming with this concept: what if the Sea Shepherds go north to the Bering Sea to preserve the assorted crabs from the Dutch Harbor crab fleet? I mean, I’m picturing these big-rough Alaskan crabbers not being quite so patient as their Japanese brethren with the Sea Shepherds. In one episode, members of the Steve Irwin crew actually board one of the Japanese ships, and I’m picturing Sig Hansen leading a rather hostile boarding party onto the Sea Shepherd ship to retaliate for a lost catch.

So, I hate Whale Wars. And the reason I hate Whale Wars is because it’s making me feel sympathetic towards whalers. Not cool, Animal Planet. Not cool at all.

To keep whatever ecology cred I might have, here’s a nice article from CNN about Ted Danson saving the world’s oceans.

*Probably.

There are rarely times when, as a DC resident, I miss my car. And, as it happens, as a cat owner, these times usually coincide with when I open the linen closet and notice that I’m on my last bucket of cat-litter.

My cats are somewhat particular about their litter — I’ve been buying the same brand for them since I lived in Towson, and that was nine or so years ago (holy OMG I’m old). So, I mean, they know what to expect, and when, on occasion, the litter in the box is not what they’re expecting, they tend to get a little frumpy. The point I’m making, is that when it comes to litter, ExquisiCat Scoop, in the 28-lbs bucket from Petsmart is the only way I go (and at $10, and it lasts two weeks, it’s a good bang for my buck).

Of course, getting it is actually a total and complete pain in the ass. The nearest Petsmart is in Bethesda, and lugging even one of those buckets on the Metro, and then home from the Metro, is by no means my idea of “fun.” Fortunately, I am often able to talk my parents into bringing some down for me when they visit — and indeed, four buckets of the stuff are currently stacked in my foyer from last night — but I was happy to find yesterday, while Googling, that Petsmart has the stuff available for shipping.

Happy, that is, right up until I saw the shipping cost:

Gaaaaahzooks!

So it used to be that DC or Marvel or whoever owned the rights to produce Star Trek comics would do a “tie-in” whenever a new movie came out — essentially, telling the movie in the comic book. Yes, I agree, I’d rather see the movie, too. In any case, for whatever reason (probably because the license was between owners at the time) an adaption of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was never produced.

So, in proving the adage that it is indeed never too late to close the barn door, even after the horse has escaped, found bliss, gotten its groove on with a nice lady horse and been long since turned to glue, IDW is “fixing an oversight from 1982*” and producing a three-issue adaption of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I’m sure there are a lot of non-Trek fans who want to see the eleventh Star Trek film (y’know, the “sexy” one). Give Star Trek II a chance. It’s, okay, early eighties, and the special effects aren’t up-to-par with Abram’s vision, but it’s a solid story, not overly preachy, and there’s a lot of action. Also, Star Trek XI borrowed heavily from Star Trek II — the Kobyashi Maru, the no-win scenario, the slimey things crawling into people’s orifices.

Anyway, here’s a preview of the comic:

*For those of you not too good with the “maths” that was twenty-seven years ago.

Is dead.

Forget Kill Bill, I knew David Carradine from Kung Fu: the Legend Continues, which used to air just before Star Trek: The Next Generation when that show was still in first-run syndication. He was probably the last person in Hollywood I’d've expected to kill himself. Best wishes to his family.

“When I was a little boy everything was black and white, good and evil, you see. Then I grew up and discovered there was only gray.” –Nicolae Breslaw, Highlander: The Series, The Valkyrie

George Tiller, who provided late-term abortions in the mid-west, was shot dead Sunday morning, by a 51-year old abortion opponent named Scott Roeder. There’s been a lot about this murder on the blogosphere, and the inherent hypocricy displayed by Mr. Roeder — after all, how can you claim to be pro-life when you, in fact, take a life?

Is Roeder’s conduct terrorism? I have to say, I’d love to hear an argument that it isn’t. Although “terrorism” is sometimes — quite often — misapplied, I think a very basic definition would have to follow something like this: “Terrorism is an act or threat of violence against a group of people – usually civilians – in order to achieve or avoid a legal or political consequence.” I think quite possibly the text-book definition of domestic terrorism (other than Oklahoma City, ), would be the Dawson murders in Baltimore.

With that definition (and I’m on the money, according to dictionary.com), I’m right on the money.

This established, however, it’s important to remember that one person does not act for a group. The terrorists on September 11th were not representative of all Muslims, and Scott Roeder is not representative of all abortion foes. It’s easy to vilify “the other.” It’s easy, I’m sure, for either side to vilify either George Tiller, or Scott Roeder, but in that vilification there reaches a point where those of us not so fortunate to be bat-shit-insane think to themselves, “Well, if he’s so evil, why not do something about him?”

And so Scott Roeder did.

Is he a hypocrite? I had a harder time coming up with an answer for this, largely because, let’s face it: we’re all fucking hypocrites about something, so tarring someone in that way just seems stupid. On the face of it, killing someone when you proclaim yourself to be pro-life is an act extremely at odds with one’s professed belief. On the other hand, if you believe that one murder will prevent XX abortions, and if you believe that abortion is murder, aren’t you justified? I mean, in your own head — there’s no justification for Roeder’s actions.

Rod Dreher expands:

“The consequences for introducing lawless violence into a society, even in a righteous cause, are unpredictable, and stands to bring about a worse evil than the evil the violence is designed to fight.

Think of the anti-slavery radical John Brown. He grew weary of the peaceful tactics of abolitionists, and engaged in revolutionary violence. His cause, obviously, was just. But he helped lead the country to civil war, and mass slaughter. Is that what pro-lifers want, or want to risk?”

Violence begets violence.

Finally: I’m pro-choice.

Why am I pro-choice? It’s not because I think abortion is all that and a jar of jelly. It’s because I don’t feel that I or anyone else has a right to tell someone else how to live their lives. It’s very easy to mark all those who seek abortions as “easy” or “slutty”, or as individuals who prefer to have a night of fun and not have to deal with the consequences. Andrew Sullivan’s blog the last few days has been chock-full of stories of people — individuals and couples — who found themselves having to make a very difficult and traumatic decision regarding abortion. Abortion is not a black-or-white issue, as some would like to suggest, rather, it’s entirely composed of shades of gray.

The wikipedia page is here, but I just want to direct ya’ll to Andrew Sullivan’s blog for this:

The plaintiff, Pappas, was fired by the NYPD when it was discovered that Pappas had regularly (but anonymously and on his own private time) distributed racist and anti-semitic pamphlets of the David Duke variety. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals voted to affirm the NYPD’s actions but Justice Sotomayor dissented on the grounds that Pappas’s first amendment rights were not vitiated merely because he had unpopular views.

…[H]ere we have a judge, accused of entho-centric racism, dissenting on behalf of a white male police officer accused of distributing racist pamphlets. This is outside the Limbaugh/Rove/Hannity nattering nabob narrative and so has to be ignored by much of the MSM.

The more I learn about Judge Sotomayor, the more I like.