Unemployed Slacker

Firstly, apologies to my readers for being so neglectful of their needs. I have indeed been rather busy this week. I'm still spending a fair amount of time at the Bat Cave - they liked my strawberry nut bread enough to let me continue stealing high-speed internet access from their super important processes. And I have indeed been doing that. There are still a few Star Trek episodes I want to see ;-)

Also on Tuesday I spent the day canning - pickled beets and pickled red cabbage. These are things, I realize, that are likely to only appeal to southerners, so it's okay with the author if you read this while making faces and going, "Eeeeew! Gross!" That will just leave more for the rest of us.


I also had writing group last night - the toughest editor in the group says my whaling novel is coming along swimmingly. Ha! Such a witty group. Later in the evening I was discussing the writing group with my Mad Scientist friend and explaining the other pieces reviewed. I said one of them was a memoir (about the writer's experiences as an alien abductee aboard a Vulcan space ship that got sucked into some time distortion and ended up in the mid-20th century), and explained the difference between a memoir and an autobiography. My friend suggested that I should write a memoir about my sister - something that, I must admit, had never occurred to me before.

However, it would be a fitting thing; after all, my love of letters, literature and writing have very much to do with her introducing me to books that held my interest and left me wanting more. The difficulty, of course, is writing about something so close to the heart - finding words to describe the decades of non-verbal communication that passed between us, for example, or even the simple task of trying to fully grasp the imprint one's sibling has left on one's life. A daunting task, a challenge to be sure, but I think I will take this one up.

Now, what would make such an endeavor perfect is if I can set it on an island populated by dinosaurs from a prehistoric theme park gone wrong....

TOS

Here in the Bat Cave I get excellent internet access - faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Ooops, I'm mixing up my superheroes here. At any rate, one of the things I've been doing is knitting to Star Trek The Original Series. CBS has some episodes on their site from the first season HDTV remasters; I don't know that, for most folks, these HDTV episodes are that big of an improvement over the remasters of just a couple of years ago, but since I don't have any of these on dvd at home, I'm enjoying the access I'm getting in the Bat Cave.

Now I cannot honestly claim that Star Trek was the best thing to ever happen to television (Hello - The Simspons? Blackadder? I, Claudius?), but through constant association with die hard fans over the years, I've developed a comfortable relationship with the series. And it's not just the pleasure of listening to Shatner sing "Mr Tamborine Man" or Nimoy sing "Proud Mary" (although these are indeed highlights of late 20th cent. culture, don't get me wrong.).

For example, my sister collected all the pocket paperbacks with stories based on episodes, and in junior high school I read them through at least once. Some of them were very well written, and more than one story had an ending much more interesting than what was shown on tv. The episode where they visit the planet of the Greek gods, and the female crewmember was raped by Zeus, for example, has the young woman pregnant at the end of the printed version; but of course the tv show couldn't have someone getting pregnant by a deity, not in 1960-whatever.

However, my greatest pleasure are the episodes of the first season. The show had a real budget, and it was used to great effect. Nice sets, lots of colored gels on the lights, carefully posed shots, interesting camera angles - if you ignore those instances of overacting by Shatner and Kelley, the first season is complete eye candy. And the music was really nicely done, too - again, it's obvious that great care was taken to make it work, and work well. And don't get me started on the sound effects - wonderful things done by talented musicians and effects artists simply by using tape, reel-to-reel tape. I totally love the sound effects (and I've tormented more than one person with that love).




So for any of you who have a great connexion, I recommend going to the CBS site and looking for the HD Star Trek episodes, Season One. Watch "The Conscience of the King" with Kodos the Executioner (not to be confused with Kodos from the Simpsons); and don't worry about the plot and dialog. Look at how carefully the show was filmed, listen to how nice the music cues are - such visual imagination deserves to be noticed.

Please don't confuse me with Kodos the Executioner!

To The Bat Cave, Boy Wonder!

I reported yesterday that my Mad Scientist friend would be traveling about, conducting his deranged works wherever needed; however, before he departed he performed a deed of great kindness, arranging for me to hide out in the Bat Cave, since temperatures are in excess of 30 degrees C (don't know what that means in Fahrenheit? Shame on you!) today, and it's expected to be the same tomorrow.

I must say, the Bat Cave is much, um, differently appointed than one is led to believe from all the films and comix. First of all, it's located off a grotto - it ain't just some hole-in-the-ground:


Very nice indeed! But the actual work area is, well, unique in the annals of office decor, if you ask me:

I suppose it is what should be expected of a man who runs around in a rubber and vinyl suit and beats people up after dark - I'm surprised I haven't run into him on Capitol Hill on a weekend evening - but I'm being treated very well, plenty of food, no one is bothering me, and it's delightfully cool in here. Sooooooo nice and cool.

I hope all my readers (all four of you!) are staying out of the heat this weekend - ciao!