(no subject)

I watched "Trekkies 2", and once again was reminded what a disservice I've done myself by giving into the stigma in college, keeping tight reins on my fandom exposure. That would have been the perfect time to learn Klingon. You know when you're 18 and you tell people that if you turn out a certain way, they have permission to shoot you in the head? My brother has that permission if I ever become fluent in Klingon. I better call my lawyer.

(no subject)

Trekkies 2 showed this fan video being produced in Germany, where they built a replica of the TNG bridge, and played their favorite characters from the original series, movies, and TNG too.

I noticed two things.

First, their movie-era Spock was a dead ringer. They could not have found a more perfect look-alike.

Second, their original-series Kirk totally didn't look American. He looked really really Eastern European. I didn't think that was possible, especially in comparison to some white Canadian actor's portrayal of a starship captain from Iowa. But, yet, he had a face that just made me think "Finnish C64 demoscener?"

It reminded me of how, when they made "Hunt for Red October", they staffed the Red October with a bunch of Russian immigrants they found in Los Angeles, and the director kept trying to keep the ones with the least-American faces in the shot. It makes me wonder whether it's really possible to tell someone's ancestry by their facial features. Then, next time I'm in France, I can spot the German guy right away and ask for directions in German right off and he'll think I'm psychic. Then I can tell him he's in terrible danger, and if he gives me $1000 I'll remove the curse.

No, then he'll just ask me if I'm psychic then how come I couldn't find the Rue des Peches station on my own?

(no subject)

Oh, and there's a Last Comic Standing marathon on that Fox Reality channel. It's one of the few reality shows I actually followed closely.

Every episode seems to have about 15 extra minutes, in which the cast members give commentary and retrospectives on the episode. It's where they finally get to tell us about the dicketry that involved the producers and other off-camera crew.

Sample Esperanto sentences

I put these up on the THEM wiki under "Esperanto language."

• Mia teraplano plenas je angiloj. / My hovercraft is full of eels.
  
• Kie estas la librejo? / ¿Dónde está la biblioteca?
  
• Pri mi, estos angilo. / 僕は鰻だ。
  
• Post la ludo estas antaŭ la ludo. / Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel.
  
• Bonan matenon, princino! / Buongiorno, principessa!
  
• Tiu kaŭĉuka pugno estas tro malgranda. / That rubber fist is too small.

BBS Documentary: NO CARRIER

The documentary episode that chronicles the end of the BBS tells us about the BBSes that are still up and running, some on phone lines, and others hacked together to run on the Internet.

There's a RetroBBS mailing list to which I'm subscribed, but don't participate, because mailing lists are hard to participate in for me.... too much wading through quoted text, etc. That's the one thing I miss about BBSes: no quoted test. You'd just hit 'P' and the previous message would appear if you got confused.

I also remembered, for some reason, the most fun I ever had on a nearly-empty BBS.

It was called Catalyst, and ran on TBBS, a program designed for multi-line BBSes. But the only active participants included me, author Diane Duane, and a 15-year-old probably named Scott who had a zit so big he named it. We all called at least once every two days. I had my computer rigged to read the output aloud with a program called SAM, but I not only forget how, I also forget whether I did it on an Atari or a Commodore 64.

Diane Duane wrote "Spock's World", in which we learn that the Enterprise has a BBS that the crew uses.