Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, it’s a commercial advertising Star Trek Enterprise. I never saw it.
This commercial is from 2000 or 2001. Why does it look like it’s from the 80s?
Look at me. Ending my streak of posts after an entire year, and the very next day posting every day for a week. Will it last? (No.)
I recently rediscovered the BBC show, Connections, hosted by James Burke. I used to watch this with my dad when I was a kid. This is a show about the marvels of science and engineering throughout history and, more to the point, their connections to one another. That is, a technology over here gets merged with a technology over there, and voila! A new invention.
It’s enough to drive you mad.
I apparently remember it extremely well, because I find myself saying the host’s lines before he says them. Nevertheless, I’m relearning a lot of material. I recently learned about, and wrote a post on, the Cistercian numerals. To my recollection, I never heard of the Cistercian monks before learning about their numbers, yet they were mentioned in the one of the first few episodes, so my memory is exceptional, but not perfect. (My short term memory is failing, which is very unsettling.)
Another thing threw me off a bit. In the first episode – which is a bit scary, by the way – the host describes the New York City blackout of 1977, which left several planes circling overhead with nowhere to land. The flight he expressly mentioned was flight 911. A spooky an odd . . . connection.
Whether your academic or professional background is in science (like me) or history, this is still a fascinating and relevant show.
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I share a tweet that reminded me of something else. (Image of the tweet appears at the end in case it’s ever deleted. ) To my knowledge, this tweet had nothing to do with RPGs. It was just a ridiculous design made for the sake of ridiculousness.
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, in the final stages of the death of my year-long streak of daily posts, I return to Star Trek. (Star Trek Sunday? Is that a thing?)
Not everything seen as certain death is necessarily the end. There’s often a way out.
Okay, I admit this turns out to be a bad example for inspiring hope in the face of likely death. Plus, perhaps the wrong [guy] died.
Remember, no one’s really dying. It’s just the end of a streak.
I got up at 5:30 am this morning to see the second season finale of Picard and the series premiere of Strange New Worlds. As to the latter, I haven’t been this excited for a Star Trek series since Next Generation was announced. First, it’s purported to be a return to the episodic format that I prefer (though I hear there will be an larger, overlayed story, which is fine). Second — I never thought I’d say this — Anson Mount’s Captain Pike has overtaken William Shatner’s Captain Kirk as my favorite Captain.
No cheese zone.
This still looks like a large, ensemble cast, so it won’t likely take over as my favorite series, but you never know. It certainly started off great. TOS is back, but without all the cheesy, 60s-era TV technology that the young-uns can’t seem to get past. Also, season2 of Picard ended today, and I was pretty happy with that as well. Here’s a spoiler for the last episode.
This isn’t a traditional review that implicitly claims that a show is good or bad based on some make-believe objective standard. I hate that pretentious nonsense. Whether or not you like a movie, song, TV show, or food is purely subjective. Instead, my approach to reviews is to explain why I like what I like and hate what I hate. If what makes me like/hate it applies to you, then maybe you’ll like/hate it too. I say, “maybe,” because there are other factors beyond what I can possibly express, but at least you have a better chance of predicting your reaction.
So, here is the context to understand the place from which my feelings arise:
I grew up reading about dinosaurs and mythology, so anything involving either one of them has an advantage in gaining me as an audience, but are still not all winners.
I’m not a fan of the comic book genre. However, when I was in elementary school, I’d sometimes hang out with my cousin. When it was too hot or cold to play outside, we’d read his comics. I remember them oddly well, but there were very few that grabbed me.
So, what do I think of Moon Knight? I love it. Considering the context given above, I don’t think I need to say much beyond that, as the explanation has already been given. However, I don’t want any of you asking for your money back, so here’s a little more. As with Shang-Chi before it, Moon Knight is opening the door to folklore, legends, and myths of a culture rarely addressed in western media. I’m sure most (non-bot) readers of this blog get that, but for our society as a whole, these other cultures are untapped resources. Disney is just scratching the surface with Egyptian and Chinese cultures. Give me Quetzalcoatl! Give me Shango! Give me Raijin! But please keep Chris Hemsworth as Thor. 😊
I suspect the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder is going to have me lose my shit for the same reason.
With this post, I’ve posted every day for an entire year. That’s right. The last day that I didn’t post was May 1, 2021. Before that, I was last discussing Key Lime Kit Kat bars.
No wonder I stopped.
This blows away my current record streak.
Since and including April 8, I've missed only June 16, so 105 posts in 106 days with the next 7 already queued up to go and one more I'll be writing tonight. But the current streak is 36, and my current record is … 69. 😉 #bloggingmania
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) July 22, 2020
Nice.
But wait a second. Is this even real? Can the post announcing that I’ve posted every day for a year be the anniversary post itself?
I say yes, and if you disagree, just keep in mind that I posted a bonus post on April 9, April 13, April 19, and April 25, so there have already been over 365 posts in this time without this one. There may have even been a couple more bonus posts, but I’m too lazy to look.
On another note, today is the first day of May. May is hockey playoffs, college lacrosse playoffs, preparations for the summer, and — most importantly — the month when all the cool people are born. Plus, I was born in May.
So, in 11 days, the streak will die. I want to focus on other things, and consistency hasn’t led to a large number of non-spam followers. Rarely does anyone retweet the tweets linking to these posts (likes merely gauge your footprint, not increase it), and almost all comments occur on other social media platforms, so my streak hasn’t done anything to improve my online footprint (except for a brief moment). Besides, many of my recent posts have been rather lame. If I didn’t have something to say, I’d write anyway, and it shows. I have a few more posts scheduled for this week, some others in my head that will come soon, and a handful scheduled to publish as far out as December. However, going forward, if I don’t have something to say, I won’t say anything. I’ll never feel rushed, and anything goofy will have to be funny enough to be worth sharing.
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, keeping with my acting/theater/movie run of posts over the past couple of days, it’s a montage of Warldorf and Statler insults.
I’ve spent a lot of time sitting at my computer working on 1st Edition AD&D stuff, and when I do so, I stream Hulu (or whatever) in the background. Lately, I’ve seen a bunch of Seinfeld episodes. When it was originally airing, I loved it just as much as anyone, but you know what? Seinfeld doesn’t hold up at all. The show isn’t really about nothing; it’s about whining like a baby. Both the main characters and the secondary ones are constantly complaining about things that aren’t that big a deal. I was always aware of this weakness of the writing, but the comedy drowned out those issues. However, 24 years later, the annoying parts drown out the comedy.
I think the explanation is that I’ve already heard all the jokes and can anticipate them, so their impact is diminished. However, some of the jokes themselves even fail. I don’t think you can say that it’s a function of my loss of a sense of humor. There are plenty of comedies that I still love to this day, and I’ve sometimes ranted here as to how comedy is dying because it’s catering to a younger crowd that fears the good stuff. The comedies that I still like probably have some jokes that no longer work on me, but it’s their lack of a foundation of annoying characters that keep those comedies relevant.
Well, this is awkward.
By the way, while I was searching for an image to attach to this post, I read that Estelle Harris had just died. I feel bad because she was one of the annoying ones.
I’m getting old, but for once, that’s not the cause.