Author: Toren

Today is my grandfather’s 87th birthday. Happy Birthday Gramps!

To celebrate my grandpa’s birthday (and the new season of TV shows, of which I actually watch very few) I would like to take a nerdy moment and look at past Enterprise episodes. (Blame Kathryn for this)

PART ONE

Broken Bow
001 The Enterprise crew sets on a maiden voyage with a mission to return a wounded Klingon to his people.

Yays: The suliban and their tech is cool. Dr. Phlox is great. Using the grappler in combat was inspired. Thank gawd there’s no spandex. Boos: What is with the Vulcan’s being so emotional? What is with T’Pol’s “action wear”? Traditional robes aren’t good enough? Also, gratuitous hard-nippled seminaked rubdowns is laughable. They show Klingon blood as being dark red, it’s been previously shown that it should be pink.

Fight or Flight
003 The crew comes across an abandoned ship of dead aliens.

Yays: Corpses on hooks. Universal translators that don’t work. Alien ships drilling into the hull not with a laser, but with a big fuckin’ drill.

Strange New World
004 Crew members go on a survey mission to a seemingly uninhabited Earth-like planet where a mysterious alien presence sends them into a state of paranoid overdrive.

Yays: Alien mind-affecting spores.

Unexpected
005 After discovering the presence of a damaged alien vessel, Archer dispatches Tucker to its aid, but the engineer’s encounter with a Xyrillian female has an unexpected side effect.

Having to go through hours of environmental acclimatization before going onto an alien ship is something we should see more of. I’m tired of everything between alien species being compatible. “I can see my house from here” – Klingon captain.

Terra Nova
006 Archer and the Enterprise crew set out to learn what happened to the lost human colony of Terra Nova, and discover a tribe of human-hating cave dwellers.

Boo! This episode is lame.

The Andorian Incident
007 When Archer and his crew pay a friendly visit to an ancient Vulcan monastery, they stumble into an interstellar conflict between the Vulcans and their militaristic rivals, the Andorians.

Fantastic episode – this is the kind of stuff I hoped for when I heard about Enterprise. Jeffrey Combs as the head Andorian, nothin’ to complain about there!

Breaking the Ice
008 While the Enterprise crew researches a newly discovered comet, Archer tries to deal diplomatically with a Vulcan ship that is suspiciously watching them.

Well done episode but kind of dull. I liked the way Vulcans were portrayed, except that at the end of a meal one of them was visibly upset. Vulcans certainly seem to be letting their disciplines drop in this series.

Civilization
009 The Enterprise crew encounters a pre-industrial society that is afflicted with a plague caused by exploitative secret visitors.

This is one of those lame typical Star Trek episodes where the humans go undercover as another species. I think we can all agree that we’ve had enough of these.

Fortunate Son
010 Enterprise must intervene when the leader of a human freighter crew sets out for revenge against alien pirates.

Yay! Space pirates preying on cargo ships – this is what space is all about! It was great to see Nausicans again.

Cold Front
011 While Enterprise joins an alien pilgrimage to witness a religious stellar occurrence, Archer finds himself again faced against the Suliban warrior Silik.

Pretty good episode.

…more to come….

Mwoohahaha – I have a cunning plan: a plan so cunning you could brush your teeth with it.
Phase 1: If you live in Canada, email me with your mailing address.
Phase 2: You’ll see.

GO NOW!!

Two of my three closest friends I have known less than nine months and five months, respectively. Please God don’t take them away from me in some cruel ironic manner.

Here’s a trailer for a French animated film called Les Triplettes de Belleville. It starts of interesting and then…it gets more interesting. I’d like to see it.

If the twits in Washington renamed French fries “Freedom Fries”, does that mean they’ve renamed France “Freeland”?

I’m listening to the Weakerthans. Ang Hold made me a mixed CD. I’m enjoying it (even though the singer sounds like Robin (Kermit’s nephew) in a song or two). Likely I’ll see them this Thursday at the Commodore. This may mean that I have to blow off Mutants and Masterminds (again) – Theo will be so mad. But I’ll make it up to him…somehow.

I came up with two more possible band names: Metazoic. Kinda dull but I like it; *ahem* is the other one. That’s right, *ahem*. I posted the band name question to the many fine cultists at hillsidethickets@yahoogroups, and got some interesting suggestions:

My Other Band (these 8 from “Latex”)
Pantiless Cartwheels
Projectile Dysfunction
N’SUCK
Spongy Cavernous Tissue
Tossed Salad
Yenta
Yet Another Boy Band
Penfold’s Glasses (Jason Averill)
Metaphysical Abuse? (Scott Wells)
The MacBin Project?
Dog Almighty
The Arcatuthus Sound?
the hopping fishfrogs (or just fishfrog) (Craig)
Globster!
The Abdul Alhazred Project
Ash to Ashes
Ogopogo
Mega Danger Mouth (William R Porter)
Wendi-a-go-go
Not your average Cult Band
Hastur Sewing Circle of Death
Transcription Error (Tim Emrick)
Band in a Jar
Metempsychosis
Plutonian Speech Machine
Off the Top of My Head (or “OTTOMH”)
Satan Ghost (Daniel Chaves)
Colussus of Toads (Joseph)
Papal Bull
Cthatholic Dance Party
Furry Elise
Perl Necklace
MC Ultra and His Majestic 12 (Atruwe)

Czar of Scrabble

The goddamn swimming pool was closed! Closed for renovations or some such tomfoolery. So instead of swimming, Ang Hold, Ian and I went to 7-11 and I got a bag of penny candy (what they call five cent candy these days). My favourites are the marshmallow bananas and the licorice babies. Then we came back to Ang Hold’s where she did my hair up blue-green, and we played Scrabble. I came in 2nd. I used a Z and a C in the same word, on a double word score. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Oh yeah – Chris Woods and I (in the form of one of Chris’ paintings) are on the cover of Common Ground this week (month? – I have no idea how often it comes out).

I don’t like the way Blogger has taken to asking me my username and pw each time I want to post. It didn’t use to do that. I’ll be in the anger dome if you need me.

Be that as it may, I’m done my drawing for the night, and it’s only 12:41 am. I feel the sleep bees creeping up on me with their stingers of drowse, but not yet my pets…no, not yet. There’s nothing to do on the internet, so I thought I’d write some, even though practically nothing happened to me today. I had no interesting thoughts, I did no interesting activities. I made hummous. Boring. Oh, I know – I’ll tell you about my dream:

I came out of a building (a movie theater) and I looked to the sky. There was no sun. There were no clouds and no blue openness. All of that was blocked out by a vast dull grey metal ceiling, with various flat mechanical bits & bolts shewing that it was obviously constructed. There was a highway that led off into the distance (and possibly a car) so I left the person I was with to try to discern how far the dome went. Not long, I arrived (possibly by car) to the edge of the dome, and there was a door. I opened the door, and there was a room with two workmen going about their business. I asked what was going on with the dome. They told me that the sun had gotten too bright, and that if they hadn’t put the dome up, everyone would be blinded. They gave me these protective goggles, like welder’s goggles, and let me go out another door that led to the outside world. I put them on and went out. It was really bright. I explored what seemed to be a tenuously deserted world, climbing up to a wall of abandoned machines and vehicles, large tires perhaps.

Hearing about other people’s dreams is usually pretty boring, I find. I was telling Ang Hold about this dream (and another one) this morning, while they were fresh in my mind – she asked me if I thought they had any symbolic meaning to me. I don’t really put much stock in the symbolic meaning of dreams, apart from the fact that I am afraid of bears and my penis means a lot to me. I mean, your brain has nothing to think about while you’re sleeping, so it makes its own reality up to play around in. And sure, it has basis in your subconscious –absolutely — but spending time trying to figure out why my mind works the way it does when I’m asleep is like trying to figure out why my mind works the way it does when I’m awake, only harder. In theory it’s an intriguing notion, but have you ever tried to take apart a car while you’re driving it?

I recommend the pina colada flavour. You’ll be surprised by the authentic taste.

Oog. Ang Hold came over, we watched some Eddie Izzard, and I ate way too much crap food. Crap food is even worse than junk food. Oh well – in the next 3 days, swimming is in the stars. That’s kind of a double entendre, but not really.

Slater-boy’s blog brought me back to a classic Strongbad email about coming up with band names. And I mean classic in the classic use of the word. Not the new cheesy use of classic as in “I just found a quarter on the ground, that’s totally classic!” No, no no.

Speaking of emails, I got this one out of the proverbial blue yesterday:

hello um i see that you can draw very good well can you draw umm lets see elfs/elvs and orcs in a war if you can can you please do so becouse i like elfs/elvs and orcs ^_^; and um my emil adress is thundereagle33@aol.com or and my um yahoo E-mail adress is night_elf_boy k oh yah and one more thang can you draw a night elf you no i want him werring black with red eyes with two swords that would be cool and great e_e hehe thanks! please email me back when you can talling me if you can draw them or not!
kool orcs!

Damn Nation is another good band name. I hope it’s not taken.

We got a big box in the mail yesterday. Turns out my roommate’s mom shipped two sacks of potatoes from Prince Edward Island to him to give to his friend’s father.

I think that’s weird.

New Cartoons

It’s September, and that means new cartoons! I just watched the season premiere of Justice League, the series premiere of Teen Titans, and the series premiere of the new Spider-Man cartoon. Also, new Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls episodes are among us.

Justice League second season is supposed to be better than the first. The first one was not bad, they had a lot of good stories. The stuff that bugged me was the writers kept changing the heroes’ power limitations to suit the stories. That’s bad writing.

The new Teen Titans cartoon, based on the first and only episode I’ve seen, has potential. The style is kind of neat, though they are borrowing too much from anime for my tastes. The story was pretty basic, it was 20 minutes of fighting.

The new Spider-Man cartoon, which is computer animated right here in Vancouver by Mainframe (they brought us Reboot and Shadow Raiders) is going to take some getting used to. It’s one of those shows that are CGI but made to look like traditional flat animation. If you watch Futurama, you know what I mean – they computer animate a lot of the tech stuff like the Planet Express ship flying around. I don’t mind this kind of animation but I have the same problem with Spidey that I had with earlier episodes of Reboot – everything seems disconnected from everything else – there are no shadows. It’s hard to describe, it just looks kind of weird. Anyway, apart from the animation, the story really kind of…well, sucked. The series is supposed to take up from where the first movie left off, except Peter Parker and MJ are still kissing (despite the resolution that PP makes at the ending of the film) and everyone is in university. In this particular episode students are protesting the condemnation of an apartment building, and they are going way overboard. One tenant of this supposedly lower class area had built a super-rocket suit that makes him fly really fast and can levitate huge amounts of weight, goes on a crime spree and the protesters make him out to be a hero while at the same time sleighting Spidey. It’s dumb. I am optimistic that future episodes will be better though – I hope they do good things with some of my favourite Spidey villains like Mysterio, Sandman and The Scorpion. I wonder if they’ll include Dr. Octopus, seeing as he is in the upcoming movie sequel (and played by one of my favourite actors, Alfred Molina).