When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery.  After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery.  But oh look!  Hippo Mouth has a resident!

 

 

 

Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by.  But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:

 

and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....

Hope to have some personal content up later today, but in case I don't, here's Bad Reporter making fun of the GOP, people who text, and the media's coverage of Obama. Not as LOL as the last one, but okay.

Bad Reporter 11/6

And life in a comic strip can be dangerous, as we learn from our little ghoulish pal

Lio

Boy, for a couple of teetotaling vegetarians, CarrieNation and Dabysan throw one hell of a party.  I mean, I knew it was going to be a good time, but yesterday went above and beyond my highest expectations.  I'm so unbelievably happy for the both of them, and even though it's been said plenty, I'd like to offer them my public congratulations one last time.  I am deeply honored that two people I care about so much asked me to be a part of their special day.  I'm just thankful that I only flubbed my toast in small ways that nobody seemed to notice.  I was so sure I was going to screw it up.

Yep..it's another perfect day.
And what am I going to do about it?
I am going to wash a few windows, change a few critter cages and go for a Bike Ride!! I can't wait on the bike ride...but I'll wait until this afternoon when the temps get out of the 40s!
Have a good one, y'all!

A mass of conflicting impulses.   - Spock and V'ger Nomad

The Great Star Trek Project of 08-09 has been slowly drawing to a close.  While Mr. Val and I finished Enterprise last month and will soon tackle the pre-boot on blu-ray we've been busy with fan films and parodies for a while.  My intention was to blog my progress throughout the project but that was overly ambitious.  I think I am at the point, though, where I can step back and make some pretty good observations about the project as a whole.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Oh joy, what fun.  There are few shows that can be so genuinely wonderful but still have enough cheese that they don't even warrant parody. TOS does enough to parody itself, so much so that, at times, it's painful.  Let us all recall Spock's Brain.  Ok, let's not.  Instead, let's let some genius with a YouTube account condense it into 4 minutes that are far more enjoyable than being subjected to the entire episode.

This clip is also sure to highlight one of my favorite lines from all of Trek: Brain and brain, what is brain!?!

Clearly the original series stood for a lot of good in addition to the cheese.  Yay brother.  The show was one of the first to spotlight minority actors and actresses and show them working alongside white people as if it was no big deal.  And despite some seemingly sexist overtones, I feel like Gene Roddenberry saw much of the sexiness of the women on the show as an expression of female empowerment.  Let's face it, throughout all of the different series it's clear that women can do anything, however, the amount of quality face time by powerful women in Star Trek pales in comparison to that of the men.  To me, that shows that we have a longer way to go in current society.

One of the primary missions of Captain Kirk was to destroy every Eden he could lay his hands on.  Apparently space is populated by peaceful and beautiful worlds that all hold a different, dirty little secret. Each has its own version of the snake.  While I kept a list of characters who said, "I'm a doctor, not a ______", I should've also kept a list of Edens destroyed by the glorious Captain Kirk, a man with no need of a Prime Directive.  Every time it happened, I know I turned to Mr. Val with my best Kirk imitation and spat, "so this...is...your...Eden".

For the best of the original series we turn to the first, and shockingly, the third season. 

Easily one of the most famous episodes of TOS is The City on the Edge of Forever.  I dare you to watch it and not shed a tear.  According to the Wiki page, writer Harlan Ellison recently settled with Paramount over royalty issues despite at one time disowning the script.  Ha!  Sounds like Ellison.  But he certainly deserves credit for this, even if the final version is someone dissimilar to his original script.

Another outstanding episode in the catalog was penultimate episode of the entire show's run.  They should've ended the series with All Our Yesterdays since the final episode, Turnabout Intruder was a poorly executed look at what the glass ceiling in Star Fleet can do to a poor girl.  Anyway, back to the good one, here's All Our Yesterdays, featuring one of my favorite Ladies of Star Trek.

Now for the fun part.  Let's turn to YouTube for some hilarious splices and clips.

First, there's the ever-famous video featuring all of the variations on: "he's dead, Jim".

I love this next one.  The person who uploaded it simply calls it, "Shatner at his finest":

It would be impossible not to include, I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!!
As I mentioned in an early review (part of that misguided ambition), Captain Kirk once imparted some good advice to that little d-bag Charlie, "there's no right way to hit a woman".  I beg to differ.
I'm probably sending some mixed signals here on my feelings about feminism, but bitch had it comin'.

All in all, the Original Series is a wonderful show, I can't wait to get the remastered versions on blu-ray with the beefed up effects.  I'm always happy to revisit this universe.

Coming tomorrow (if I feel like it): a look at the Original Series Films

English title: The Rules of the Game, though a literal translation would be The rule of the game

I love this movie so much I don't even know how to begin to talk about it. is it a comedy? yep. a drama? indeed. a 'dramedy'? thankfully not. a comedy of manners? absolutely. an allegory, an analysis, a critique? yes. yes. yes.

a perfect snapshot of a moment in time? very much so. set between the wars at a time when an aristocracy on its way down was meeting a bourgeoisie on it way up; when the servant class was morphing into the working class.

that we even have La règle du jeu to watch is little short of a miracle. its remarkable story, lifted straight from imdb:

"

Despite now being considered one of the best films made by many historians, the picture almost became a lost art. Claiming that it was bad for the morale of the country (due to impending war), the French government banned the film about a month after its original release. When Germany took over France the following year, it was banned by the Nazi party as well, who also burnt many of the prints. Allied planes then accidentally destroyed the original negatives. It was thought to be a lost picture. In 1956, some followers of director Jean Renoir found enough pieces of the film scattered throughout France to reconstitute it with Renoir's help. Renoir claimed only one minor scene was missing from the original cut.

Another Apple II.  This time an enhanced Apple IIe. Would that be then an enhanced apple II enhanced?  The Apple IIe came out in 1983 and the enhanced version came out in 1987.  Basically the IIe was cheaper to build, had 64K built in, 80 column support and support for an external numeric keypad as opposed to the II+.  The enhanced version of the IIe had a built-in numeric keypad and used a 65C02 processor.

This example was purchased from the University of Kentucky in a surplus auction.  I think I paid either $1 or $5 for it.  It was when they closed the old library and opened the new one. I like the fact that someone has colored in around the apple logo.

The big debate in teaching primates, among other animals, is that while some say they are learning language, others insist it is merely communication, generally for a reward like food, that the primate has learned. In other words, simply a learned response, no different from a dog learning to sit or roll over for a treat. Are primates just a more trainable subjects?

There's a specific notation that I can't copy the first article I want to point out, so here is the link. It is an opinion piece on an online freelance site. I do not know anything about the author so I can't tell you what her background is.

The next article is long and I don't want to clog up anyone's Neighbourhood view, so here is a link from the New York Times, June 6, 1995 edition. The article is titled "Chimp Talk Debate: Is It Really Language?"

Additional interesting link:

Nova audiovisual slideshow.

Here's the first video of the kitties investigating the passion fruit and passion fruit rinds. It's shakier and not as well-lit, but the cats are cute.

I have to leave soon to bring my ailing Ruby to Ben's to see if he can't figure out what is wrong with her. But before I go, I had to wish a heartfelt congratulations to Dabysan and CarrieNation, who are getting married today.