ugly bag of mostly water

don’t keep sweatin’ what I do 'cause I’m gonna be just fine

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 19th, 2023

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  • TNG and DS9 are pretty much tied for my all-time favorite. I think both did a great job writing believable characters and conflicts, with compelling standalone episodes and arcs (although to be honest I really hate the pah-waith bits in Seasons 6 & 7 of DS9). For the most part, I both liked and cared about all of the main characters and thought they faced interesting and complex problems that didn’t always have perfect solutions.

    VOY and TOS are fun in their own ways but more like comfort food than a whole meal, if that makes sense. As a woman I certainly wouldn’t want to be a crew member on the Enterprise during TOS, and as a viewer I have to work really hard to ignore the rampant sexism, but can still appreciate it for what it is. VOY is mostly fluff but it does give us interesting stories like Year of Hell. I don’t think I’d be friends with many of the crew and sometimes the writing of these characters is frustratingly uneven (especially B’Elanna, which is a shame because she’s my favorite of the bunch). I do think VOY suffers from showing a pristine ship for most of its run (which is one reason Year of Hell stood out so much for me). And I hate the stupid catsuit, heels, and makeup on Seven. She’s a former Borg drone, none of that is functional or pragmatic. (Obligatory ‘Fuck You, Rick Berman’.)

    I’ve watched ENT twice but wasn’t crazy about it (my favorite characters were Porthos and Shran). SNW is alright, not great but engaging enough for me to stick with it. I particularly like Number One, M’Benga, and Chapel (and Hemmer, RIP). I don’t like Kirk - he’s horribly miscast. Funny enough, Anson Mount has enough of Shatner’s mannerisms that with different hair, he could’ve been cast as a modern Kirk instead of Pike. But he’s doing a great job with Pike. The writers need to stop messing with Spock being “human” so much. And why are he and T’Pring having sex without pon farr???

    DIS is a raging tire fire, I don’t know what they were thinking with that show. The writing was abysmal, the plot holes were humongous, the science was ridiculous (seriously, what on earth was the spore drive? And a sad kid caused the Burn? Give me a break!), the tech was completely discordant with what we know about the 23rd century, the characters were written like awkward and/or angsty teenagers, everyone was constantly sharing their feelings and traumas in the middle of a time-sensitive emergency, death was cheated so many times that the emotional stakes around mortality never felt that real (e.g., Culber’s resurrection via mushrooms, and sUrPriSe Burnham’s mom isn’t really dead, and also when Saru miraculously survived his Vahar’ai), Burnham was practically Space Jesus in that she was always the only one who could save the galaxy, continuity with the rest of Trek was broken left right and center, the Klingon redesign made no sense, and I hated how they wasted the Tal symbiont by making Adira just a painfully awkward teenager instead of someone with 5 prior lifetimes of experience to ground them (not counting Gray who was removed from the symbiont and was a kid anyway)… I could go on but you get the idea. I just finished hate-watching all five seasons and will never watch it again. To say something nice about DIS, I was grateful that none of the female main cast wore catsuits, and I loved the Stamets/Culber relationship - it felt real and lived-in.

    I only saw the first season of PIC and that was a hot mess too, I really want to finish it so I can say I’ve watched all of Trek, but I need a palate cleasner first after forcing my way through DIS. Haven’t watched LD but people seem to love it so I’ll probably give it a shot, though I’m not nuts about cartoons. No interest in PRO since it’s for kids, and no real interest in TAS. I might give SA a shot but if it’s like DIS I’ll be bailing.

    Welp you didn’t ask for a novel but my power’s out this morning and I’m bored, so there you go!


  • Unrelated: I used to go to tech meetups in my city fairly often. There was one guy who always seemed to be there just for the food. I only knew him by his username (‘Lex R’ - a programming pun) and never talked to him. Tall skinny dude; if I had to guess, I’d say he was around 50ish.

    Every meetup without fail, this guy ate so much pizza. One time I counted 11 slices. He also drank at least a 2L of soda - didn’t matter if it was diet or regular, he drank it. About 10 minutes before the meetup ended, he’d put a bunch of leftover slices in a pizza box to take with him. And he had a bottle of some kind in his bag that he’d pour the dregs of all the soda bottles into, and would take that with him too. It was weird because it was a tech meetup, presumably most people were making at least 6 figures.

    Until today I had never considered that this might be his only source of food.








  • Aw I love lilacs too :) I planted lilac bushes along the side of my last house. We moved away this past fall and I really miss those bushes because they’d be blooming right about now. I hope the new owners are enjoying them!

    My favorite smells are warm sleeping dog (kind of a cozy smell, hard to describe but if you know you know) and garage that is used to store cars (kind of a mechanical smell, not sure if it’s from gasoline or motor oil or what but I love it). And also I love the smell of strong tea :)