Have I mentioned this week sucks... hey, it's over the hump day... happy happy, joy joy... NOT!!!

Why don't we visit Cat while this week sucks...

CatSchwartz.com

Spater
Phoenix

- posted by Bruce @ 1:02 AM

 
This week sucks... Middle states the term synominous with Dislike... besides that other people are missing so this week just sucks... and when I get like this, I just have to speak ballads awhile...

Sie wissen, ich vermissen sie, obwohl sie nicht einen Fluch über mich geben könnte. Ich vermisse sie Augen, ihre Lippen, ihr Haar... Ich vermisse sie.Ich wünsche gerade, daß sie mich, Verlust Marie Tereasa vermißte. Ein Tag erhalte ich den Mut, zu erklären ihr, daß gerade wieviel ich sie mag, lieben Sie sie vielleicht. Bis dann ist sie immer meine... KMTE hübsche Dame

Ich vermissen sie

maybe I should speak it in a language she has not so fond memories of...

Sanno, io li mancano, anche se loro non un curse sopra me dare potrebbe. Lo manco occhi, i relativi labbri, i loro capelli... Lo manco. Desidero diritto che lo ha mancato, perdita Marie Tereasa. Un giorno riceve la I il coraggio spiegarlo quello diritto quanto gradisco il suo amore voi esso forse.Fino ad allora è sempre mio... Signora graziosa di KMTE

Anyways... have a good day, no matter how much it sucks...

Spater
Phoenix
- posted by Bruce @ 7:51 AM

 
So, I ordered a new mixer board for my chruch at this site

Musicfriends.com - music, MP3, Guitar,

and they gave me a great deal on that board as well as other stuff. So much so, that I am actually thinking of ordering a new set of Mackie speakers for my home stereo... 13 lb bass drivers... Nice.

Friday was cool, after a day that just sucked, I decided to go up to Erie and see Kelly, my friend from SC who just moved a month ago to Erie at Barcardi Joe's. Well when she called she didn't know if she was going to go or not... weather was snowing too bad for her.(and she moved to Erie snow capital of PA). So instead of going, I went to BLT's in Franklin with Kathy who was bored at her appartment as well. We wound up drinking with the camp chief and several others from high up at VQ. What really made the evening was the chief making every chance he could to dance with Kathy... that girl rocks, apparently everyone's world. But if you want the details, you'll have to ask her...

Enough for now, need to get over to the chruch... later
- posted by Bruce @ 11:20 AM

 
Ok, how the hell does Morgan Webb, score as sexiest techie... I mean please she is hot, but sexiest, when Cat was there and Sarah Lane. It just doesn't make sense. Now I would like to see her nude, who wouldn't but come on I would rather see Sarah Lane nude, although her boytoy Kevin would probably have a problem with it. Just wondering. Want to find out more... click here

playboy.com / features / Tech TV

On to other news, slow night this Saturday night. Although much better than last Saturday night, when I was recovering from Stomach Flu. I guess it ain't all bad. Went out last night, to Clarion to talk with my group from school about our project due at the end of the semester. We met at the Captain Loomis, then moved to Coconut Grove when Amanda needed to see her friend to get her project folder. After that I came back to BLT's in Franklin, thinking maybe since it was so warm, everyone would be out... My mistake, only old people were out. So I surprised my friend Kathy and stopped by her appartment. Caught her folding clothes just coming from the laundry mat. She wasn't feeling good and was just chillin' so we chilled together. I saw a picture of her when she was a blonde, and damn she was fine... not that she isn't now, just got two more adjustments that's all. Well my friend, that's all that's new. Any comments post them below...

Spater
Phoenix
- posted by Bruce @ 10:30 PM

 
Finally an episode worthy of blogging about... Azati Prime... here is what I think about it...

This is the most Star Wars-heavy episode Star Trek has ever done, both the old franchise and the new, which has good points and bad points. In a nutshell, the rebels find the Death Star being built in an underwater city on Naboo, discover that a perfectly aimed shot will create a chain reaction that can destroy the station, and conclude it won't be much harder to bullseye than womp-rats back home. The senior good guy decides to sacrifice himself for the good of the others, the villainous dark lord won't even listen to his own council, the hero has a hard-to-believe vision of a guy who's supposed to be dead...just about the only thing missing is the Force. And there's something comforting in the familiar, especially in a storyline as dark as that of "Azati Prime", in which the galaxy's biggest weapon of mass destruction prepares for deployment while the two senior Enterprise crewmembers seem to have gone nuts.

I'll start with the good and work my way to the bad. From a special effects standpoint, "Azati Prime" is hard to top: it has spectacular visuals including surface and underwater sequences, breathtaking space shots and a climactic battle that wreaks havoc on Enterprise inside and out. There's first-rate camera work even on the familiar sets, giving us angles on the ready room and engineering that I can't recall ever having seen before. And the use of sound is superb as well - the music, the dialogue, the effects - ranging from Insectoid language to bridge explosions to a Reptilian thug making contact with human flesh. This is an episode that should be considered for technical Emmy awards.

Moreover, the storyline and pacing make the episode quite engrossing to watch. It's very satisfying to see this season's various plot threads finally coming together: the conflicts among different Xindi species, Degra's second thoughts about creating a weapon to destroy an entire planet, the spheres, the nature of the Expanse, Archer's unhappiness with the blood on his hands. And then Daniels shows up, tying the Xindi arc into the broader dramatic sweep of the series and of the franchise, mentioning the time-travel concerns we've seen since the pilot episode and the urgent need for the Federation to turn back this new threat. (There are continuity issues with this version of Federation history compared with what we know from other series, but in a galaxy where time-travel is routine, it's easy to see how the timeline as we know it could have become unrecognizable.)

Where "Azati Prime" falls apart for me is in its wonky characterization of the two most important characters. It's very obvious to me that T'Pol is not a Vulcan as we know Vulcans: I'm not sure whether the excuse for her behavior is going to be that mind-meld disease she has or Romulan blood or pon farr that was never resolved or what, but as of this week, we are officially past the point when we should have been given some clue. Tucker actually stares at her and asks what the hell is wrong with her at one point; it's a reflection of how much damage has been done to her character that I cheered him rather than being really annoyed that he would speak to her like that at a moment when it is most important that he reach her sympathetically. I've no idea what's up with T'Pol's character arc but it's long past the point at which the writers should have begun to show their hand. When Phlox envisioned her as an incompetent, sniveling bimbo, I could write it off as an amusing hallucination; when she acts that way in a for-real story, even one likely to be afflicted by a reset button, it's a real characterization problem.

And then there's Archer, who decides to die because he doesn't want anyone else to die under his command. He's feeling terrible about the innocent Xindi on the outpost he destroys, and about having created Sim specifically so Sim could die saving Tucker...and that bothered me a lot too when he did it, and I'm really glad he's having second thoughts about this and his questionable use of the airlock and all the other horrible moral choices he's had to make as captain. But despite my passionate disagreement with some of those choices, it's his job. This is what it means to be a captain in wartime. He won't always have the luxury that his great-grandfather had, negotiating for a cease-fire to save the children, as he revealed while defending the Xindi hatchery. That does not, however, mean that he should lay down his life in penance, when as Mayweather points out, he is the least expendable person on the ship ...or possibly in the galaxy, if Daniels is telling the truth.

Archer's no Picard insisting under torture on the number of lights; he is, quite simply, brash and unimpressive, so when Degra decides against all reason to give credence to his story about time-travel, it makes Degra look stupid rather than making Archer look good even though we've seen that Archer is, in fact, telling the truth. Can you imagine if Saddam Hussein had greeted his American captors with a story about how he was visited by a guy from the future who gave him an American medal and told him that he alone could save the United States from Osama Bin Laden and his terrorists who were planning to destroy not just the US but the galaxy? That's how Archer must have looked to the Xindi, and with good reason. If Archer had made painful, cool, yet rational decisions like Picard or thrown the weight of his passion behind the idea of cooperation and peace in a speech like Kirk, it might be possible to swallow Degra choosing to believe him over a thuggish Reptilian, but even if he knew the Reptilian to be his political nemesis, it doesn't make sense that Degra's doubt of him would make Archer's story plausible; they caught him flying a shuttle on a suicide mission, after all.

One of the dangerous things about doing an episode like last week's "Hatchery" is that, once you've shown your audience how your character acts when crazy, your audience will notice if the character ever does similar outrageous things. And as absurd as I found Archer's behavior defending the Xindi eggs, I found it just as absurd putting himself at the helm of a suicide mission; I was wondering why in hell Phlox wasn't demanding a physical exam, again, and where were the MACOs keeping the crew in line this time. We get to see a lot of frazzled nerves - Tucker opining that he doesn't want to fly a shuttle "ass-first", Sato snapping about how to say "Have A Nice Day" in Insectoid - but this is way beyond mission stress and well into real lunacy. In fact the only advantage I can see to Archer's suicidal plans is that T'Pol doesn't look quite so terrible when she, too, announces her plan to put herself in the enemy's hands.

Apparently Archer is going to try to talk his way out of this mess, to address the Council and tell the Xindi what he has learned. All I can say is that I hope he gets some good coaching in jail. Think his Klingon advocate could be found and brought into the Expanse? Or maybe Yoda?

So what do you think... let me know... If anyone still reads this...
- posted by Bruce @ 6:25 AM