So hubby and I were watching the original Star Trek series, first season, and there was an episode where Kirk and Sulu got captured by an alien being who manifested as a pompous braggart in a rococo lair.
The annoying douchecanoe alien was lecherous toward female crew who beamed down and got into silly pissing matches with the men, then bullied and threatened them when thwarted. At the end, his parents, who appeared as light beams, came to collect him.
It turned out the douchey alien was just a capricious child engaged in elaborate cosplay. The alien parents apologized to the Enterprise crew for their trouble while sonny boy whined about being removed from the sandbox.
No such deus ex machina will save us.
How’s your Tuesday going? I was out of town for a few days, so I’m beat from traveling. Just chilling out with the dogs, who are always clingy when I return from a trip. You?
Open thread!
SiubhanDuinne
Metaphors, gotta love ’em!
JPL
No such deus ex machina will save us.
yup
amk
ain’t twitler’s parents late?
debit
I was actually thinking about Trump as this character the other day then decided that no, Trump was Baron Harkonnen without any of his smarts or impulse control.
Citizen Alan
For all his current power and for all he is willing to abuse it for his degenerate pleasures, Donald Trump is not an omnipotent God child. If nothing else the problem of a 70 year old obese dictator is self-correcting.
amk
so the scum lies about obama, the msm makes some noise for a day and then promptly forgets about it?
Baud
@amk: I don’t mind the media talking about the health care bill. That’s more important.
amk
aussie angry summer. what climate change?
Mobile RoonieRoo
Best freaking night in a long time. Grumpy and I got to spend a good time talking to Tom Nichols. Super small group at our alma mater so it was personal. Beyond the best evening for us.
Spanky
A road trip! Did you rescue Cole? Or is that better left to his “lady friend”.
My Tuesday is ending, so I can get up at my usual 4:30 on Wednesday.
Betty Cracker
@amk: I don’t know what media you’re watching, but MSNBC, CNN and a slew of reporters at Spam Spice’s daily briefing were all over it today.
sigaba
Legend has it Gene Roddenberry invented John de Lancie’s “Q” in Next Generation as a callback to Trelane.
dmsilev
…but enough about Captain Kirk.
satby
Oh man, got home an hour ago from work, let the dogs all out, had a glass of wine with the burger I cooked for dinner and now I’m too tired to move. But I have to, this crowd is sitting giving me the stank-eye because they want their dinner.
Thank FSM the cats all got fed before work.
Spanky
@Spanky: I see by his twitstream that Cole broke down in Lewisburg. Coulda been worse. He might have made it to Williamsport before the car crapped out. At least he’s at Bucknell.
amk
@Baud: yeah. offensive lies and destructive actions a day. the new normal.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Ha, true.
rikyrah
The Search for the Soul Ben Carson Once Possessed
http://verysmartbrothas.com/the-search-for-the-soul-ben-carson-used-to-possess/
amk
@Spanky: cole should start his own on the road threads.
mdblanche
“All this time we thought he was a powerful super-being, yet he was just a child…”
“He’s not a child. He’s 34!”
Mnemosyne
I love my coworkers. I really do. But one of them just managed to accidentally erase a bunch of notes out of a PDF file I was working on. ?
Luckily, I was able to reconstruct it using my previous notes and a copy that another co-worker was copyediting, but, come on, how frickin’ long have you been using computers that you forgot that we can’t both have the same file open at the same time!
Cain
I have an interview tomorrow with the chief marketing officer of a startup whose CEO who have been accused of creating some of teh shit that started the whole 2008 clusterfuck.. Do I really want to work with bankers and the finance sector? On the other hand, as a lefty my job would be to hire.. I could always hire more lefties. :-)
Cain
@mdblanche: am alt-fact for sure.
Miss Bianca
@Mobile RoonieRoo: he seems an interesting fellow – was this talk related to his new book? Adam mentioned it here and I thought it looked like a good read!
Sab
Haven’t read the comments so I assume I am off topic. PBS American Experience featured Miranda’s Hamilton, based on Ron Chernows book. I am tax accountant and loved the book, but how the fuck could anyone write a hip hop musical about it. If any of you can access this somehow you shouldo. It’s amazing.
Alex Hamilton was an unacknowledged national treasure.
schrodingers_cat
@Cain: What product specifically? CDS or CDO?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Cain: Good luck!
Tazj
@amk: Of course it’s forgotten. It seems like every other day I’m reminded of some awful, crazy, stupid or just plain mean thing he has said in the past. Then, I think to myself, “I completely forgot that he said that, I can’t believe he got elected.”
It’s been years since I’ve thought about that episode of Star Trek, very apropos, unfortunately.
Mobile RoonieRoo
@Miss Bianca: Yes the talk was about how we got to the point we’re at in relation to his book. Then they had a reception after and it was very small group there so we had some really great group time with about 5 or 6 people just chatting with him.
Mnemosyne
@Sab:
I’m still trying to puzzle this comment out. You must be new around here. ?
amk
congrats, teanuts. you got what you always wanted.
keep voting the way you are doing now.
zhena gogolia
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, he has no idea what box he’s opening.
But even I’ve seen that documentary too many times. Couldn’t turn it on tonight. Maybe because Paul Ryan appears in it.
Mike in NC
That’s William Campbell, whose wife allegedly had a fling with JFK.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Ha!
MomSense
@zhena gogolia:
He’s known as “fuck you Paul Ryan” in my house.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
@MomSense:
I think the can may have a few worms in it, is all I’m saying.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev: oh, well-played, sir. Rim-shot!
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@MomSense: Hey MomSense – are your hats back in stock? I have a buyer for 4 but I need the link again.
zhena gogolia
Sorry, Betty, the guy is handsome, his outfit is fab, and his decor looks 1000X more tasteful than Trump Tower.
RPh
@Citizen Alan: **Robert Mugabe laughs**
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Thank you. I enjoy seeing articles like that, from a background so different than mine. She’s using a specific speech pattern that she clearly chose because it has a history and meaning to African-Americans, like there’s a specific speech pattern to European fairy tales or to Southern folk tales. Can you tell me what it is, and what it’s meant to evoke? To the whitest of white-bread white men, it feels like a grandmotherly lecture or a pulpit speech.
Major Major Major Major
There’s a Futurama episode where the floating heads of the original Star Trek cast members (voiced by them too, except Doohan) get kidnapped by an alien who forces them to attend a Star Trek convention that’s run by and for him. In the end he turns out to be an unemployed thirtysomething energy creature living in his mom’s basement.
Citizen_X
@zhena gogolia: I figured he was the original iteration of Q, but looking at his picture, I’m thinking that he was also the inspiration for Adam Ant.
Mike J
@Citizen_X: Subtle innuendos follow.
debit
@Mike J: There must be something inside.
Shana
@Sab: You new here?
hovercraft
@RPh:
Mugabe is evil and old, but he is no man child, he is a highly intelligent evil man who has destroyed a once beautiful nation. Mugabe does not throw tantrums, his evil is well thought out and cunning, this moron has no plan and he lashes out out of pique, Mugabe lashes out as a means of demonstrating how powerless the people are. Mugabe knows that the key to his maintaining power for the last 37 years is his brutality, much like Putin, his enemies end up dead, not in a twitirade.
Oatler.
I don’t know anything about Star Trek-parents rescuing us, but someone, or something,has a vested interest in keeping us pitted against each other
“They wanted eternal life; he gave them perpetual motion. It amounts to the same thing, for such a race.”
sigaba
@Mike in NC: Bill Campbell also played the Klingon captain in “The Trouble with Tribbles.” He reprised the character for Deep Space Nine.
gene108
@Sab:
He is on the $10 bill…that’s not exactly being overlooked…
amk
@hovercraft:
thank fsm for small mercies?
khead
So, which mirror needs to be shot in the White House to stop this shit?
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Dear god! Don’t go down that road!
SFAW
@Oatler.:
“We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we did.”
hovercraft
@amk:
Absolutely, he can’t start actually killing us, but his behavior and the that of the white supremacists are getting people killed, and he has the power to get many people killed with his reckless behavior, inadvertently or in a fit of pique.
rikyrah
@Cain:
Good luck ?
Tripod
@Major Major Major Major:
WELSHIE!!
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
At first, I thought that it was just the usual tongue lashing, like Luvvie did yesterday, and what Sam Jackson did on Twitter.
But then, she went quite deep. She cut several layers off the bark of Dr. Carson.
I don’t think that White people understand the high esteem that Carson was held in within the Black community. Without a ball in his hands, or an invitation to see him perform on stage, Dr. Carson had risen to the top of his field. He was a genuine Black hero. When she speaks of the community LOVING Dr. Carson, it’s true. That is why his fall into utter coondom cuts us to the core.It hurts. And, we do wonder Why?
This isn’t a Clarence Thomas situation, of him NEVER having respect from the community. We loved Carson, but he decided that to tapdancer for Mr. Charlie was more important than Black self respect.
Argon
For years I thought the actor in that episode was Liberace. It was a reasonably good approximation.
mason
@sigaba Peter David made the explicit connection between Trelane and Q in the novel Q Squared. Check it out. My favorite Star Trek book. Peter David is an excellent author and he crafts a great tale that connects TOS and TNG. [/nerd]
https://www.amazon.com/Q-Squared-Star-Trek-Next-Generation/dp/0671891510
Hungry Joe
John de Lancie (“Star Trek’s” Q) is a pretty cool dude. He’s openly secular, and in 2016 he received an award from the American Humanist Ass’n. Quote: “I was thrown out of Sunday school for being disruptive, because I was telling the teacher and the other students that this stuff didn’t make any sense.”
SFBayAreaGal
@mason: One of the funniest Star Trek books I read.
SFBayAreaGal
The Star Trek episode mentioned in this post is called “Squire of Gothos”
RPh
@hovercraft: I agree with you assessment of Mugabe completely. My comment was about the obese 70 year old dictator being self correcting.
Lillian Barron
I have used the premise of this episode for years.. I say, “God seems like a 5 year-old child, and we’re his erector set!”. Very much like Zeus in Clash of the Titans.
bluefoot
@dmsilev: I literally LOL’ed at your comment. I was just thinking last night that the current administration is looking like the Mirror Enterprise – advancement through assassination (character assassination and/or actual assassination), constant infighting with factions in constant flux, “enhanced interrogation”, imperialism as driving force, etc.