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Coffee, crosswalks, and a ballot box

I did my civic duty today and made the trek up the hill to the local polling station. On the way there, I was nearly struck by a car that didn’t see me in the crosswalk. I carried some (miserably awful) coffee, too, which I expertly spilled on myself. Incidentally, black coffee is good for spills — it doesn’t leave a fetid stain that smells like rancid cream for weeks. At worst, it merely looks like you wet yourself.

As I crossed the sidestreet in front of the polling station, I had to dodge another car. Seriously, by this time, I was wondering if it was some kind of plot against me. I wonder if they knew which way I intended to vote?

I wasn’t intimidated, though. I entered the polling station, made my mark, and dropped it in the box without further incident. In fact, I left there fairly glowing with satisfaction at having fullfilled my role in the democratic process. Aside from almost being run down twice, it was a remarkably positive experience. And the lizard in charge of the polling booth was kinda cute too.

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Motu Motu Mountain

On the rare occasions that Second Life goes down, I usually spend hours moping around the house, or shivering in the corner, pale and withdrawn. I’m an SL addict. Sometimes, when I need a fix, and SL isn’t around, I’ll sign up for yet another There free trial.

I’ve tried There a few times now, and concluded that it’s a poor substitute for SL and lacks substance. It lacks, for example, the ability to create things with very few limitations. There seems to be mainly for chat. Oh and for spending money. Holy cow, things cost a lot, compared to the virtually free access to SL.

In There‘s favour, the avatar movements are very smooth, if you can get past the sickly-sweet Disney cartoon style, and the vehicles aren’t encumbered by the need to stream an entire world of content on the fly.

Anyway, besides skulking around Zephyr to steal as many dune buggies as I can (yes, I know it’s pointless), my favourite pastime in There is to throw my avatar off the tallest mountain I can find. In this case, it’s a place called Motu Motu. As an aside, don’t they get tired of the ubiquitous tiki theme?

However, you can only watch your avatar slide down a cliffside so many times before you yearn for something a little more fulfilling. I’m so very glad SL is back online. I was able to complete the new multi-destination teleporter. You can pick one up for free at my shop.

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These were the voyages of several starships, Enterprise

So that’s it then. The last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise came and went, and the shows that I practically grew up on are all over. Oddly, I didn’t really care much.

I felt compelled to watch the last episode, of course, but couldn’t help rolling my eyes at the lame Troi/Riker frame story that was pasted onto an even lamer plot. It seems to me that in a final episode of the final series of Star Trek, they could have done something more interesting than sending them off to do a little favour for the Andorians. After it ended, I felt more than a little let down. After all, I wanted to see something significant, that acknowledged the end of a show that I’d watched faithfully, and at times, obsessively.

There is so much opportunity for a truly interesting storyline, especially with a timeline as well-defined as Star Trek‘s. They could have created a “historical documentary” that covered the time between Captain Tucker and Captain Kirk. When Babylon 5 wound down it’s fourth season, it had episodes that explored the future and the impact that the characters had on history. It provided closure to an immense four-year-long story arc. And Enterprise? Enterprise had Riker chopping vegetables on the holodeck.

Ow. My eyes just reflexively rolled almost backwards in reaction to the hopelessly stupid writing, worse directing, and actors who probably shouldn’t be on TV anymore (or in the first place).

The same thing happened at the end of Star Trek: Voyager. After several years of struggling to make it back to Earth alive, the final episode finally has Voyager emerge from a Borg subspace conduit almost in Earth’s orbit. And the triumphant return lasted about 15 seconds before they rolled the credits. That’s it. The reward for watching years of Voyager’s pathetically weak stories was 15 seconds of “Yay, we’re home!”

So now it’s all over for good. In the end, I don’t think fans care enough about Star Trek: Enterprise enough for the show to return in any form. Over the last years, it was sometimes interesting with rare bits that made people sit up and go “ooh” and maybe spill a bit of their beer at the same time. It failed, however, to reach out and firmly grasp the audience by the wobbly bits the way the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation occasionally did. Figuratively speaking.

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Pesto, and my lesson for the day

Craving a dollop of pesto sauce for my pasta, I threw on my least-smelly t-shirt, hopped into my car, and made for the nearest Safeway. No, the big-chain super market doesn’t carry the really good pesto, but for my pesto fix, I wasn’t being picky. The jarred variety was fine by me.

The parkade under the Safeway was full, but I scooted past a vacant spot to try for one next to the door — I needed my pesto fix in short order. Naturally, I was immediately blocked by a line of immobile SUVs waiting for a Hummer to back into a spot marked “SMALL CAR” several times over. So much for saving time.

Fifteen minutes later, I found my jar of pesto, and hunted for the shortest line at the checkouts. Fortune smiled upon me, as a checkout girl removed the “NEXT CASHIER PLEASE” sign just as I approached. Maybe it was my friendly smile. Or maybe my Drakkar Noir. That stuff is amazing with the chicks, and it’s good as lighter fluid in a pinch.

I leapt at the checkout counter, shoving aside other customers to triumphantly place my jar of pesto in the spot of victory! Then fickle fate turned up her nose. The receipt printer jammed!

I tapped my foot for another ten minutes as a small crowd of white-and-red-uniformed employees fought with the printer. Other customers queued at other checkouts and slipped through effortlessly, while I was left frozen at this defective, receiptless counter. I shook my fist to the heavens that my struggle to hasten my shopping experience had been thwarted by a mere machine.

Eventually, they moved me to another till, checked me through, and I found myself, at last, heading home with my jar of pesto. If there’s one thing I can learn from this experience, it’s that I should avoid pesto at all cost.

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We’re being wacky, right?

If you’ve seen the new movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I empathize. If you haven’t seen it, please do yourself a favour and rent a video instead. I was in pain throughout the movie. It is, in the very best sense of the word, crap.

It baffles me how a producer can take a hilarious script/novel with a proven track record, and then mangle it so badly that there’s nothing actually funny in it anymore. After they gutted it, twisted it, deleted all the quirky humour, what was left was almost but not quite entirely unlike a story by Douglas Adams.

Every scene should have been subtitled “Hey, look! We’re being wacky now, aren’t we? Yes! So wacky!” It’s just so… depressing.