Fascination (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 10) Comic crush after crush; that’s about it.

Rewatching ST:DS9 A character-driven farce, in which most of the major cast and several recurring characters get massive crushes and/or are comically crushed upon. Jake is sullen because his now-former girlfriend Mardah has left for school, but reluctantly agrees to attend the Bajoran Gratitude Festival with his Space Dad. O’Brien is jittery because Keiko and Molly are visiting from Bajor. Misanthropic Odo accepts Kira’s warm invitation to participate in the festivities, and Kira doesn’t notice how disappointed Odo is to learn Bareil will be visiting. Little Molly greets her daddy by puking on him, and Lwaxana enters with, “I should…

Perspective | Could ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ really be done? We found out.

The three of us approach them in our very obvious costumes and ask if I can hop on their float. Not only do they agree, but they tell us they were looking for a Ferris! Everything is going our way — just like in the movie. I jump aboard, and they cue up the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.” It’s thrilling and a bit unnerving standing on the float (try twisting and shouting on a moving vehicle), but now I’m fully in character. I hear cries of “Save Ferris!” from parade watchers and apartment windows as we glide down Lincoln Avenue.…

The Miller of the Dee; by James Baldwin; read by Dennis Jerz

I showed up at the recording studio for about two hours over the summer; the creative team had three or four different scripts for me to record. We had a grand time knocking them out, one after the other. But this particular script included the stage direction “he sings.” There were lyrics, but no score. Not that seeing written notes would have helped me much… I’ve been fortunate to be coached by and work alongside many talented artists, in school, as a church cantor, and in local theater; and the only thing I can say I’ve really learned is how…

Photo of peeled banana on yellow plate and background.
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I’d like to speak to the manager. Yes, I’ll wait right here.

The manager is of course somewhere else in the store, presumably managing, so it takes a while for her to come to the front desk. She has her game face on. The young employee who paged her for me looks on. “Maybe this is a dumb thing, and if so I apologize for calling you away from your work,” I say. “But in the produce section… the arrangement of bananas is just delightful.” Neatly stacked, with the yellow bunches that they’ll want to sell today or tomorrow at eye level, and the green bunches less prominent. In between the bunches…

The Maquis, Part 1 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 20) Dukat pressures Sisko to deal with armed Federation colonists in the Cardassisan demilitarized zone

Rewatching ST:DS9 A man in a gold Starfleet uniform tampers with the hatch of a Cardassian ship. Dax and Kira are sparring in a sisterly way about their tastes in men when that same ship goes boom. The investigation implicates Federation technology. Sisko’s old friend Lt. Cmdr Hudson visits from the demilitarized zone, reporting tensions from Federation colonists who found themselves on the Cardassisan side of recently redrawn borders. On the promenade, the Vulcan Sakonna meets discreetly with the saboteur we saw earlier, then seeks out Quark to do business — though he seems mostly interested in pleasure. Intrigue mounts…

Blood Oath (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 19) Glory to Dax and her three aging Klingon chums

Rewatching ST:DS9 A rowdy Klingon customer overstays his welcome reliving a battle in Quark’s holosuite, and ends up drunk in a cell, where a second Klingon leaves him with contempt. Realizing that she’s stumbled across some of Curzon’s old friends, Dax (re)introduces herself. Kor is willing to go with the flow, but stickler Koloth believes Kang “must not have known” about Dax’s new host, and considers it a “mistake” to include her now. Kang says he has found “the albino,” but formally releases Jadzia Dax from the blood oath that Curzon swore. Trek nerds will of course recognize each of…

Playing God (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 17) Dax mentors a too-eager-to-please Trill initiate

Rewatching ST:DS9 In a nice long tracking shot showing off the set, Bashir strolls through an airlock talking with Arjin, a mild-mannered Trill, who is nervous to meet his mentor Dax, who has a reputation of being hard on candidates for the symbiotic joining process. Of course that was Curzon Dax; the next few scenes are designed to highlight Arjin’s surprise to see Jadzia Dax gaming late at night with Ferengi, chatting with visitors in the morning wearing just a towel, and gleefully phasering vermin. In a runabout, Jadzia is mildly annoyed that Arjin is working so hard to impress…

Carolyn performed as Ariel yesterday in the New Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Carolyn performed as Ariel yesterday in the New Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.   The performers use an “unrehearsed” technique, where they are reading from scrolls that contain their lines and the cues they have to listen for. She’s put together scrolls for several different tracks (each track typically consisting of a main role and, when that main character is off stage, several random servant / supporting characters).   She doesn’t find out until the day of a show which track she’s doing that day.   Each run will probably feature a different configuration of cast members,…

Rivals (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 11) A charming entrepreneur opens a casino to rival Quark’s

Rewatching ST:DS9 A man in a fancy suit charms a wealthy widow at Quark’s, as she reveals her secret investment plans. Just when Martus asks about a partnership, Odo apprehends him for a previous con. O’Brien, in schlubby workout clothes, trundles into an angular, futuristic racquetball court and is crestfallen to find Bashir already there, doing fancy warmup exercises in a spiffy outfit. The good doctor cheerfully brags about being captain of his team in med school. In a jail cell with Martus is an ill-looking humanoid with a blinking sphere that he plays with (it keeps making an alien…

Ambiguous language in journalism: Monkey Pox and Camel Privates

Amazing lead: A veterinarian prescribed antibiotics Monday for a camel that lives behind an Iberville Parish truck stop after a Florida woman told law officers she bit the 600-pound animal’s genitalia after it sat on her when she and her husband entered its enclosure to retrieve their deaf dog. —Yousssef Rddad, The Advocate Note that this lead emphasizes the news — the most recent detail is the fact that the biting victim has received treatment for an incident that occurred earlier. Because journalism emphasizes recent events, this lead properly emphasizes the treatment that followed the incident, but in this long…

The karyotype of Pimelodella cristata (Siluriformes: Heptapteridae) from Central Amazon basin: with a discussion of the chromosome variability in Pimelodella I, as the Editor (i.e. no as the Author of the Article) can confirm that it is OK to proceed; you have, however, to get also the reply from the Author; thank you. Nevertheless, Figures 1-3 should be somehow inserted within the main text of the paper. And I do not know why my reply is automatically directed to Frank Franco…?

Some scholarly journals have a more rigorous peer review process than others. Source: The karyotype of Pimelodella cristata (Siluriformes: Heptapteridae) from Central Amazon basin: with a discussion of the chromosome variability in Pimelodella I, as the Editor (i.e. no as the Author of the Article) can confirm that it is OK to proceed; you have, however, to get also the reply from the Author; thank you. Nevertheless, Figures 1-3 should be somehow inserted within the main text of the paper. And I do not know why my reply is automatically directed to Frank Franco…? Update: The page has been edited.…

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Eye of the Beholder (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 18) Troi probes a crewman’s suicide, finds a ghostly love triangle tragedy

Rewatching ST:TNG An agitated engineer is poised to leap inside a warp nacelle’s plasma stream. He tells Riker “they laughed at me,” and jumps. Picard wants to know what happened so he can break the news to Lt. Kwan’s parents. Data tells LaForge he had great difficulties after he initially became sentient, and considered resetting his neural network, essentially killing himself and starting over, but decided against it. (LaForge approves.) Troi and Worf visit Kwan’s quarters, which are orderly. They check his personal log, which reveals him as dedicated and optimistic. His girlfriend Ensign Calloway mentions some tension with his…

Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations of Jesus Christ

“Not what I expected. They say his area of specialty is carpentry, but we never built anything.” “Kind of absent-minded. My name’s Simon, and he’s called me ‘Peter’ for the entire semester.” “I wanted to like this class, but on the first day, he submerged us in a river instead of going over the syllabus, and that was kind of a lot.” […] “I asked him to sign my accommodations form from the Disability Services Office, and he spit on the ground and rubbed the dirt in my eyes. I can see now, but it was still rude.” —McSweeney’s