Alden Bates' Weblog

Modern Drunkard Magazine presents this item on alcohol in Star Trek, particularly the original series, but also TNG...

Wesley: So you mean I'm drunk! I feel strange, but also good.
Picard: (huffily putting aside his knitting) Because you have lost the capacity for self-judgment. Alcohol does this, Wesley!

Kirk would have challenged the upstart whelp to a Romulan Ale drinking contest, then hooked him up with an Orion slave girl.

I've been working my way through the DVDs of the original series of Star Trek. The problem with this is after watching several episodes in a row, I read web pages and they sound like William Shatner in my head. This makes the process of reading them slower because he kepts pausing all the damn time. Maybe if I concentrate I can get Leonard Nimoy reading them instead.

I have the same problem when I watch too much Farscape, only then it's usually Ben Browder. Or when I listen to Doctor Who audios and everyone on IRC starts sounding like Paul McGann. It's distracting!

Actress Nancy Kovak models the Muppet-skin bra. Available in bright orange, bright red, bright blue, and bright yellow, the Muppet-skin bra is snug and warm in winter. It can also be worn as outer-wear! The only drawback is that it makes it look like you have Elmo clinging to your chest.

I've been watching a lot of Star Trek (the original series) recently. Once you know James Doohan is intentionally keeping his right hand out of shot so you can't see (or rather fail to see) his missing finger, it becomes intensely distracting. My eyes are drawn to following his right wrist around just trying to catch a glimpse of his hand.

Or maybe I'm just weird.

I'm currently partway through season 2. Great series, but then I haven't yet watched such clankers as Spock's Brain or And the Children Shall Lead yet...

I went to see The Incredibles yesterday. Pixar's story of a family of superheros forced into living "normal" lives by the government is (typically for Pixar) full of quirky humour and should be appreciated by young and old.

The showing I went to was more or less full, most of the audience being children. The small child on a tricycle who pops up a few times during the movie proved popular with them...

I realised today that I'd completely forgotten to watch the Firefly premiere last Tuesday. Having enjoyed Buffy and Angel, I was interested to see what Joss Weadon would do for a space series. Fortunately my dad, who also likes Science Fiction, still had it on tape.

In case you didn't get the parallels, all the incidental music appears to have been ripped from a Western, as well as the clothing and the look of much of the worlds they land on. Would probably appeal to fans of Cowboy Beebop. It also reminded me a lot of the group from Alien: Resurrection, which Joss wrote... I took an instant liking to most of the characters, and it's good to see Gina Torres in something again. :)

Shame we're getting to see it two years late, but better late than never...

Somehow a while ago I ended up signing up for a mailing list for promoting the upcoming Spielburg version of War of the Worlds. At the start of this month they launched the web site. Well, a holding page for the web site anyway. There's currently a graphic there showing a three fingered hand wrapped in red weed, clutching the Earth. This leads me to make the following observations:

1. The Martians in Wells' novel had tentacles, whereas this looks more like the hands sported by the aliens in the '53 film.
2. The red weed is, of course, from the novel and doesn't appear in the '53 film.

I'm still interested to know if they're going to use the Jeff Wayne soundtrack, as apparently he owns the film/TV rights...

Just finished watching the last episode of Farscape season 4. You could probably hear the cry of anguish as it finished. Now I just have to wait until the subsequent mini-series either screens here or comes out on DVD...

NZ government seems to be very close to voting the civil union bill into law. This will allow same-sex couples to enter into a marriage-like civil union. It's about time.

It's becoming obvious that at some point I'm going to need to upgrade to Window XP... I attempted to use Yahoo! Chat today in FireFox. This required downloading Java support, which I started doing, until the Java installer announced it was only suitable for newer versions of Windows, and then stalled. So I guess I'll be using IE to access Java stuff...

I got hold of the Farscape box set finally yesterday and, bam, I've watched five episode already. I've got to slow down and ration them, because after this there's nothing until either the mini-series (or whatever it was they made) plays on TV here, or comes out on DVD.

But Jeff keeps sending me Star Trek and Stingray DVDs to watch, plus both seasons of I'm Alan Partridge, and Kylie's lent me the first season of Dark Angel, not to mention a pile of videotapes which Meg sent me a while back, so it's not like I have nothing to space the episodes out with...

Farscape season 4 comes out on DVD here today. Seasons 2-4 of that series haven't screened here other than on pay TV, so I have been waiting (im)paitently for the release of the fourth season so that I could watch it finally. I was going to buy it at lunchtime, however (having gone to the trouble of printing out their $20 coupon) Whitcoulls didn't have it on the shelf.

It turned out that they were sent the wrong items by the distributor. Hopefully they'll get it in before the coupon expires on Sunday...

I started today by pulling my PC apart and giving it a good dusting in order to try to get rid of the resetting problem. This segued into a general tidy which reduced the amount of clutter.

Then I watched Heaven's Gate because I'd never seen it before. Long long loooooong movie, with lots of nice scenery. It really needed a counter at the corner keeping track of the money spent. :)

Meanwhile in America, Left versus Right continues.

My brother bought a bunch of Hayao Miyazaki movies recently. He's responsible for the award winning anime Spirited Away, which I enjoyed a great deal. I've already watched:

Princess Mononoke: This one seemed confusing, mainly for the reason that the main character Ashitaka seemed to swap allegiences at the drop of a hat. I guess what he was really rooting for was peace, but I didn't think that came across well.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky: Steampunk is cool. This has Anna Paquin and Mark Hamill providing voices for the English dub. I highly recommend this one.

And tonight I have Kiki's Delivery Service to watch...

I discovered today Yahoo! Movies. It appears to use the old E! Online database as a base, as the entry for "Wombling Free" incorrectly lists its date was 1984 instead of 1977.

I clicked on the Message Board link and, on being told I could "Be the first to post a message!", I had a go. Unfortunately when I hit "post", I got a blank page with the Yahoo! Movies banner at the top of it. The message doesn't seem to have appeared, so I guess it didn't work, hmmm? Could do with a bit more work there...

Frustratingly, the only way to submit updates appears to be a generic Feedback form.

One of the best things about DVD is they can include many different languages without too much trouble. This gives me endless amusement switching between them to see what various characters sound like.

Voyager has three alternate languages - German, Italian and Spanish. Spanish Tuvok sounds way too smooth and sexy for a Vulcan. Neelix... well, no one could match the original. German Janeway... Cor blimey guvna!

Ahem, anyway... :)

I was reminded after writing my previous entry that there's an episode of the cult British comedy The Goodies in which R2D2 not only appeared, but did an impression of a Dalek. Unfortunately the Interweb completely failed to cough up any pictures of the event. Bah!