For anybody who doesn't know (i.e. who hasn't seen me in the last month and has not given me a chance to mention it randomly) Shawn and I are going to ALASKA this weekend for a seven-day cruise capped off with two days in Vancouver.
I can not wait!!
I plan to spend the next three full work days reading about Alaska, looking at pictures of the various port towns we will visit, and planning "excursions!"
Pictures and full reports to follow.
My people, Star Trek fans, will never give up. This article explores fan-made episodes that have sprung up since the end of Trek on television.
The truth is, these fan made projects have been around for awhile, ever since the disastorous Enterprise started airing and Trek fans realized that the people in charge of the franchise did not have the best interest of the fans in mind. It was sorta like a presidental election. The producers were going for those quirky "swing-voters" while leaving their "base" behind.
The one thing that I take issue with is the reference of modern science fiction being too "dark." I disagree. If anything, Star Trek was too "light." Battlestar Galactica is brilliant, powerful, deeply human stuff. (Just like Trek's goth sister, DS9.)
As for my own perspective of the lack of Trek on TV, it doesn't really bother me. If I had faith in Paramount to produce good Trek, I would be the first one watching it and writing about it in this here blog, but I don't. After years of sub-par episodes (first Voyager and then Enterprise), Star Trek needs a long long break. This new film that they're making (yet another prequel!) is a bad bad idea and will further alienate the true Trek fans from the owners of the franchise.
My advice to the people in charge: Let it rest. Let the fans have their fun. Please.
Awesome article in NYTimes today about Radiohead's show last night at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Radiohead fans are so prevalent in culture today, there was no expository remarks like, "Radiohead, a five-member rock band from Oxford," no, instead, this article focused exclusively on new songs.
By all accounts the next Radiohead album (due sometime early 2007) will be the best thing since sliced bread (or, OK Computer). I watched a quiet, hazy, perfomance of "Appregi" on youtube and was wowed to silence. And if this article is to believed, songs like "Bangers and Mash" and "Videotape" are even better.
And I am offically high off that reference to "Nude", i.e. "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)" one of the best best best unreleased tracks in Radiohead history means it might actually get (finally!!!) released. That's huge, yo. Huge.
..And, thanks to National Geographic, I can find out.
I was just browsing through NG's wonderful website and found this: The Genographic Project. You can order a kit (for the steep but worth-it price of about $100), use a "cheek scraping" thingee, and send back a DNA sample to see which ancestral group you are descended from and track where your ancestors moved during that those first migatory tens of thousands of years.
This goes way beyond family history. I know what countries my grandparents came from, but before that, my history is blank. I can't imagine what it would be like to go back to ten thousand years! As the website says, this isn't a genealogy test. It's a way of tracing back the lines of your DNA code to match up with ancient history. I am, offfically, fascinated.
