WE SEEK PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE

I warned ya. Though the official anniversary isn't until September, officially. Yet, since I do indeed have nothing else & I'd much rather talk Trek than the toxic strains of both news feedery & personalized jibber-jabberwocky interesting to no one, I present the wonder years & her slow creep of understanding: the world is a beautiful box sadly overstuffed with fuckers hemorrhaging cataracts of yellow & black bile, so let us hike away to the pleasant melodies of tunes, teevee, & trashing troglodytes. Some old geeks swear by TOS; a worthy choice, but for us not-entirely-greys, it was Gene's second (third, if we're counting the aborted Phase II) stab at interstellar futurama that fit the playbill.

To counter every

Space Irish

Space Beethoven

or The Worst™ introduction of an alien race in the history of science fiction either televised or in print go on find something more wretched I challenge thee [ed. note: you'll notice that I left out Flying Troi and The Where Are Yous, you're welcome], dig this baker's dozen plus one. A few favorites, yes. The best, perhaps, perhaps not. Hate them? You've got a blog, use it.

The Measure of a Man. Is Data one of us or no? This could have been so fucking heavy handed. It wasn't, & wouldn't work with Kirk who'd take a swing at Maddox, missing due to an uncomfortably crooked girdle, unable to do anything but watch helplessly as Starfleet trekked the android away to disassembly.

Accept the superiority of The Picard & move on.

The Best of Both Worlds, parts I & II. Once upon a time, I was a geek with skill. Now I'm just a geek with slack. Anyway, during the summer twixt junior & senior year of high schoolin', I was enrolled in a three-week computer class at Ohio State (stick your The, as tired as this guy using SOMETHING IST KRIEG) where, when not getting figuratively slaughtered by kind Middle Eastern kids at footie [ed. note: a clever ploy at imposing Sharia law I'm onto you] & hanging out for hours inside Magnolia Thunderpussy dissecting the merits of A Farewell to Kings & Show No Mercy, we butchered at birth bits of Fortran.

That Cramps poster was spooky, but their tunes sure as hell weren't.

Whilst my roomie was off somewhere making out with the RA assigned to the chick half of our gang, us less handsome devils, including Pink Floyd (no one, no one, boomer or otherwise, was as obsessed with that band as much as this guy) & Lou Reed (cool dude, especially since he, unknowingly, introduced me to the vast overrated-nesse of his last great American whale. Belated thanks) & some of the young ladies who weren't totally repulsed by us, gathered in our RA's room to watch the season three cliffhanger. The return of the Borg, manly man Riker poker faced by a woman, & Locutus? Game, set, & match.

After coming down from a rousing chorus of holy fuck what the fuck just happened, we preceded to watch Major League & drink beer.

Sins of the Father. I never kill anyone at the supper table, either, Kurn. Season one Worf was merely a vehicle designed to alternate growls & overreactions. Now he's the coolest mofo around.

Sarek. The title character cried during a performance of Brahms' sextet in B-flat. So did I, but then I'm not a Vulcan. Nyah nyah nyah. Good on Angry Wesley's dig at Angry Geordi being the most hapless guy around the ladies this side of M-33.

Family. As everyone knows, Patrick Stewart owns. When he's paired with a supporting actor who can match his intensity, that's happy fun Halloween candy.


 

Redemption, parts I & II. A situation that required a more Klingon response. Not entirely sold on Sela's backstory, but fisticuffs, Romulan intrigue, righteous Klingon rage, the return of Gowron & Kurn, Data putting the command smackdown on a punkass Timothy Carhart? Let the good times roll.


 

A Matter of Honor. Speaking of Klingons, let's practice our growling. Saved Riker's bacon, & it'll save yours during that next staff meeting.

 

All Good Things... If Not Fade Away is the greatest series send-off ever, & it is, this is a close second (probably along with this I don't care about Newhart or The Wire, thus). Oodles of all-over-the-map, Q, & though emotion-chipped Data grates, this is how you do a finale.

Yesterday's Enterprise. Yeah, it's on every goddamn list, & for good reason. Time travel is incredibly easy to monkey wrench, but when you don't, & toss a hefty dollop of emotional sprinkles on top, delicious & nutritious.

 

Conspiracy. More X-Files than Kolchak ever was, just as ridiculous as the latter, though stumbling across the Horatio's remains so soon was pretty unsettling. Dig those alien FX, a Satanic, melted Fraggle goof-thing but lordy, that hideous death yelp. But [SPOILER ALERT] what a missed opportunity in never following up.

 

The Offspring. Data builds kid, The Man wants kid ['cause Data ain't human, pay attention], kid dies. Maudlin? Try moving, you heartless sack of rocks. Fuck off.

Chain of Command, parts I & II. I'm not gonna do the THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS schtick. Shit. Still, Ronny Cox does dueling superiority/inferiority complexes with gusto, & David Warner's suavely sadistic.

Q Who. Once upon a time, there was no spandexed Jeri Ryan, no B-movie Borg Queen, only the bleakness of technosingularity robotnik circuiterianism.
  

Elementary, Dear Data. Yeah, yeah, easy to potshot the very notion of the holodeck, but I like Data, I like Sherlock Holmes, & this is a fun 45 minutes. Plus, Pulaski's a curmudgeon & that always gets bonus points with yours truly.

Live long & prosper far off my lawn.

No accounting for taste

Serving finger food would swell library coffers.

Needless to say, I was a little despondent about the melt down, but then, in the midst of my preparations for hari kiri, it came to me. It is possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix.

Sorry. Hangover.

Spiderman earns shekels for shutterbugging, Turkish Superman pines for bisection, Wonder Woman alternates between nurse, intelligence operative, & sultry vamp (young Randal's Lynda Carter fantasy certainly counts). Even the radioactive, the interstellar, the televised have to eat & pay the Skinemax bill, which is why I don't comprehend the irrational, near-universal hate (I've got piles of anecdotes) for one of season six's -- cheesy third leg MOTW FX aside -- most chortle-inducing episodes, Buffy's own Office Space or Spinal Tap, forty minutes that's only increased its yay! rating in light of recent Towering Slab fuckery.

Let's recap: Giles' big check is only going to go so far eliminating rancid health care debt, & if the Watchers' Council paid anything like the library -- anyway, so what's a college dropout to do? Collect ass slaps (the tips) waiting tables or sling burgers with OCD management types that find clarity in the dumb. Gee, sounds just like the library, except we serve scowls books:

MANNY: Watch these two.
BUFFY: Are they gonna do something?
MANNY: They're solid. Follow their example and you won't go wrong. They're lifers.
BUFFY: Lifers?
MANNY: In it for life. Like me. You wanna get something out of this, Buffy? You'll do the same. You put the work in, and ten years from now, you'll be where I am.
BUFFY: Wow. They're all so -- identical.
MANNY: Yeah. They all start to look the same to me too.
BUFFY: Oh, no, not the employees, the, the chicken slices. 

'tis verily a truth that because the Peonage are not OCD management types, all the employees do not look the same, provided we discount OCD management types who do. Plus, unlike the Duchess & the Earl, they wouldn't look swell in a catsuit & a bowler, respectively. [ed. note: are we still The Avengers, or a de-gender hegemonizing* Harold & Kumar, minus the wheelbarrows full of weed?]

*curse ye, Iron Lady

Inside joke numéro un (deux, en fait), Pilgrim's Progress how do you know what that's about:

MANNY: Drive-through station's over there. High pressure job, you won't need to go in there. Over there's the grills, the fryers, the walk-in freezer. You don't need to go in there either!

Inside joke numéro deux (ménage à trois), comradeship leads to bunga-bunga, dogs & cats living together, mass hysteria, & a drag after all three:

BUFFY: Fill this? I didn't know there was gonna be drug testing on this job.
GARY: You're funny. You better stop that.
BUFFY: Why?
GARY: Productivity. One of Manny's watch-words. 'Levity is the time-thief that picks the pocket of the company.'

Oh, gentle reader, but we do sell a product, we sell the joy of learning just enough to successfully regurgitate what the hermetically-sealed symposia peg wants to hear in order to spackle over cracked self-esteem. Those of you teachers who strut with a righteous swank, & you know who you are, are of course exempt from these poison darts.

Zombificaiton Ritual, or, everything I learned about librarianship I learned via a series of cliche-infested success journals barfed out by plastic, pill-popping MBA hacks:

BUFFY: So, what's the secret ingredient?
PHILIP: It's a meat process.
BUFFY: Well, what does that mean?
PHILIP: It's a process, they do it to the meat.
BUFFY: But, what is it?
PHILIP: It's just the name of the process.
BUFFY: Oh. Yeah. 

One could say that, as a high-powered heroine, Buffy could simply purloin victuals from the local branch of the multinational food processing concern, but in addition to forsaking her sacred duty, such shrinkage would only lead to laying off those who could ill afford it by the bottom line- & ivory backscratcher-obsessed, & as honorable a task as dismantling global capitalism would be, bloodsucking vampires. Wait, I might need to rethink this.

In conclusion, it's only appropriate that [spoiler alert] the cherry-pie chomping wig lady's supervillainy was a paralyzing toxin, a stark reminder of the monotony inherent in a post-industrial workplace, insert additional ivory tower gobbledygook here if you want I don't care because my expectations for a fair deal have been dulled after years spent at this soul-crushing, above-minimum-wage-but-not-that-much-above hellhole.

The Fuckeye State

Once again, I must apologize for the stupidity that seems, despite our best efforts, to nest within my home state. Oh, how they make me so cross.

Xander: Spike.
Giles: What are you doing here?
Spike: Me? I'm not the one out of place here.
Xander: For your information, smarty, we've got a rogue Slayer on our hands. Real psycho-killer, too.
Spike: Sounds serious.
Giles: It is. What do you know?
Spike: What do you need?
Xander: Her. Dark hair, yea tall. Name of Faith. Criminally insane.
Giles: Have you seen her?
Spike: Is this bird after you?
Xander: In a bad way. Yeah.
Spike: Tell you what I'll do then. Head out, find this girl, tell her exactly where all of you are, and then watch as she kills you.

Can anyone of your damn little Scooby club at least try to remember that I hate you all? Just because I can't do the damage myself doesn't stop me from aiming a loose cannon your way. And here I thought the evening'd be dull.
Xander: Go ahead! You wouldn't even recognize her!
Spike: Dark hair, this tall, name of Faith. Criminally insane. I like this girl already.











Xander: We're dumb.

The report confirms that Freshwater burned crosses onto students’ arms, using an electrostatic device, in December. Freshwater told investigators the marks were Xs, not crosses. But all of the students interviewed in the investigation reported being branded with crosses. The investigation report includes a photo of one student’s arm with a long vertical line and a short horizontal line running through it.

Embarrassing, no? Though some aren't all hot and bothered.

Neither Freshwater nor his attorney, Roger Weaver, could be reached for comment last night. Freshwater’s friend, Dave Daubenmire, defended him.

“With the exception of the cross-burning episode … I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district,’’ he said.

Other than burning a cross into the flesh of small children -- and who hasn't thought about doing that, the little shits -- I'm sure he is a swell guy.

I have some horrible, bone-chilling news!

"No reunion for you!"

Unsurprising, but horrible and bone-chilling nonetheless.

The horror! The horror!

The great Joss Whedon talks about the Buffyverse living (dying? muahahaha!) on in comic form and also about his upcoming eBay charity auction for Equality Now. After failing miserably to come up with any elegant and witty prose to add to these newsy bites, I figured that paying homage to the great Buffy tradition was the way to go. And so I offer to you a presentation of such manifest horror, an unspeakable thing that goes far beyond the prosaic chilling of the blood, an evil that freezes the very soul itself, leaving you hapless and the easiest of prey for this avatar of cosmic terror, the Biggest Bad of them all.






























I've always wondered if that characteristic scowl of his comes from the bone fragments of the children he devours alive sticking out from between his teeth and into his gums. That can't be too comfortable.