Pun Salad

Enterprise goes away after tonight, and I'm going to miss it. A lot of people have been kicking the show as it departs, which strikes me as so many cheap shots. Yes, it's failed the marketplace test, but good shows do that all the time. Yes, I will admit it wasn't always good; but, dude, even the revered TNG had its dreadful episodes.

Fun moments: when the crew caught their first glimpse of a Klingon battle cruiser. Jeffrey Coombs as the cranky Andorian Shran. Brent Spiner showing up as Noonian Soong's ancestor. The Enterprise in going up against alien-armed German fighters above 1940's Manhattan.

I even liked the whole Xindi thing. Shoot me.

Douglas Kern has my attitude: Star Trek may have been not so good, but it's been part of my life for (umm … whoa) nearly 40 years.

And I wasn't hardcore. I found it easy to stop watching Deep Space 9 and Voyager. And I only had to read a few Star Trek paperbacks to realize they were a cold-eyed manufactured product churned out by inferior writers for maximum profit. (There may have been exceptions, but I'm not digging through the muck to find them, sorry.)

Want me to second-guess what the show should have done? Pretty simple: it could have used some humor. Reed, Hoshi, and Mayweather never got off the ground, character-wise. (That's easy for you to say. Why yes it is.)

Live long and prosper, fellow geeks.

Update: I forgot to mention another problem: the lame theme song.

Sorry for the lack of posting over the past couple days. I've been both sick and busy. Feeling fine now.

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• Lileks has the Minneapolis librarians after him. I think they're way in over their heads, but you will want to judge for yourself.
• Via Reason, a news flash: New Hampshire high school functionaries can be stupidly inflexible. In fact sometimes it seems they're in some sort of competition for the top spot in the category. Isabel Gottlieb of Bow High School, Bow, NH, has discovered that, alas, the principal is not her pal, as he's decided to not let her graduate because she chose to continue in her AP Biology course instead of take Phys Ed.
• Constrained Katie has mixed feelings about the road song list at the website of the Federal Highway Administration. Forget about the waste of taxpayer money; "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat, and Tears is noway, nohow a road song. Ride a painted pony, man; what do you think that's about? (Coincidentally—I swear!—I have written to President Bush and urged him to veto this year's Highway Bill.) If you want a good playlist for a road trip, use the non-taxpayer-subsidized one from IowaHawk.
• I'm a huge geek, but I'm too damn cheap for this. Cool to look at though. (Via Galley Slaves)
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