Real Men Take Care of Their Children

08:57 am - Off-LiveJournal Blogroll and News Links

This will be growing by about two or three links per day as I get my bookmark data gradually transcribed here.


Most Recent Edit: Moon's Day, the 2nd of Ninthmonth ("November"), 2009 C.E., 8:19 a.m., C.S.T.


Amygdala; Animation World Magazine; Apostropher; Ariel Gore

Bad Astronomy; Bear's Battlestar Galactica Blog; Bob Mitchell in the 21st Century; Brendan Calling; By Ken Levine

Chaos Manor Musings; Chaos Manor Reviews; Classically Liberal; Consumerist; Crooks And Liars; The Crotchety Old Fan; Cult News from Rick Ross

The Daily Dish; The Daily Superman; The Daily WTF; Dandelion Salad; Darth Mojo; Disloyal Opposition

Eschaton; Exposing LJ Abuse

Fafblog; Felicia Day; File 770; For What It's Worth

Generation Y; Goodbye, Microsoft; Grits for Breakfast

Hero Complex; The Hill; Hullabaloo

Ideas; iFeminists.net; Instapinch; Is That Legal?

J. Neil Schulman @ RationalReview.com; Johnny Dollar's Place; JustOneMinute

L. Neil Smith At Random; Lance Mannion

Mightygodking; Mises.org Weblog

Neal Rubin's Blog; Neptunus Lex; News From Me; Notes from a Final Frontiersman; notmymayor

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart; The One Ring; Operation Yellow Elephant; Orcinus

Pangloss; Papers, Please!; PeterDavid.Net; Physorg.com; Pro Libertate

Real Live Preacher

Schneier On Security; SciFi Wire, SFScope; The Sideshow; Skippy's List; Slacktivist; Soul of Star Trek; The Space Review, Space Solar Power; Spider Robinson; Starship Dimensions; Startrekdom; Sunni and the Conspirators; Susie Bright's Journal; Swingers' Chatter

Tailspin's Tales; This Modern World; Thomas Jefferson Center; Threat Level; Tom Wilson USA...Large Man, Good Blog; Toonopedia; Topless Robot; Trek Movie Report; Trek Today

An Unfortunate Set of Events

View from Above; Views from the Cyberhenge

Waiter Rant; We'll Know When We Get There; Wendy McElroy.com; The Wild Hunt; Wren's Nest News; WWdN: in Exile

Zoe Paleologa

Current Mood: working

11:41 am - No Monday Morning Video Today

I'm not feeling well, so I'm not up to searching for a cool video this morning. I'll have a new one next week, unless I decide to do one tomorrow instead.

[organ music plays]

Announcer:

"Will he have a new video? Stay tuned tomorrow and next week for our possible thrilling answer! And in the meantime, be sure to stock up on our sponsor, Little Chocolate Donuts, John Belushi's Breakfast of Champions!

This has been Don Pardo speaking.

Current Mood: tired

12:06 pm - Monday Morning Video #23: Patrick Stewart in Jeffery

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-third in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Remembering the late William Rotsler's rules for convention masquerade costume presentations ("Short is good, funny is better. Short and funny is best."), here is Patrick Stewart in three quick scenes from Jeffrey.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea7bj5MsyAU

05:05 pm - Mom

My mother died four years ago today.

Today hasn't been as bad as earlier anniversaries of her death. I've been merely melancholy rather than crying outright as I usually do on this date. On the other hand, I've had bouts of tears almost daily for most of the last fortnight, so maybe I'm just cried out for a while.

I know I will never get over this, that I will feel the hole in my heart of her absence (and that of my father, too) every day for the rest of my life.

"Mourning never ends." -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

Current Mood: sad

01:33 pm - Writer's Block: "Seeing Stars"

retro_rider55

Current Mood: nostalgic

01:29 pm - Monday Morning Video #22: "Sweeney Floyd: The Dim-Wit Barber of Mayberry"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-second in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

It was difficult to find something Halloweenish which wasn't too gross and/or scary for my own tender sensibilities, yet fit the Holiday theme and still was funny, so it was either this or fifteen minutes (not funny but nonetheless magnificent minutes) of Vincent Price performing a one-man show of "The Cask of Amontillado", which I will save perhaps for Poe's birthday next October. In the meantime...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4i7OKWSJw

By the way, with regard to the title and some of the verses, while Floyd was always intended to be a little slow on the pickup (although not to the level of the Pyle brothers), actor Howard McNear did actually have a stroke during the course of the series, which affected his speech, slowed his ability to react to other actors, and required him to spend most of his time in a chair. In a remarkable act of decency, Andy Griffith and Executive Producer Sheldon Leonard kept him working on the show, enabling him to keep his dignity. He never was a dimwit, and I think the video maker put that in just to keep the title rhythmically similar to the original, as Floyd was certainly never hard-hearted or ill-tempered in any way that even satirically he could be called a "demon barber".

Current Mood: mischievous

11:25 am - Monday Morning Video #21: "Internet Killed the Video Star"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-first in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Being from 2000, this is already dated in a few ways (most obviously the failure to predict flatscreen monitors becoming common) but it still holds up in most others.

Note that two of the boxes of discards in the closet are labled "Commodore Amiga" and "Apple IIgs", two innovative personal computer technologies which didn't survive the Attack of the Marketing Departments. To this day, bit for bit, the most fun sustained computing experiences I've ever had were with my Apple IIgs. I guess as with your first Doctor or your first starship command, as it were, your first computer remains the one you love best.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg

Current Mood: geeky

11:03 am - Monday Morning Video #20: Why There Will Never Be a Universal Translator

This is the Monday Morning Video, twentieth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

This is why Star Trek's Universal Translator for non-Human languages will never happen...

...because this can occur with a language we already understand.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_mlwnAmr0

Current Mood: misunderstood

12:38 pm - Love Begets Love

Love repaid with love, thirty years later.

Current Mood: impressed

07:00 am - Monday Morning Video #19: (reprise) "Surprise!"

This is the Monday Morning Video, nineteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Actually, this is a re-run of a video I used during SpaceWeek, back on Wednesday, July 15th, the reason being that yesterday was the 52nd Anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Race.

"Surprise!", lyrics and music by Leslie Fish



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk

Current Mood: sleepy

03:52 pm - Monday Morning Video #18: Engage, You're Adorable

This is the Monday Morning Video, eighteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

I'm late today because Kevin is home with influenza. His pediatrician is swamped -- maybe I can get him in to see her tomorrow if I call when they open at 8 a.m., but no Tamiflu prescription without an office visit. In the meantime he's getting acetaminophen, loratadine-d, and vitamin C (we're out of zinc until Wednesday night) and being urged to drink as much water as he can.

Anyway, this was probably the only Starfleet bridge set ever built which was large enough to dance upon.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjNKyoRudOQ

Current Mood: busy

04:58 am - On the Topic of Early Rising

There's a story in The Making of STAR TREK of how, during a difficult time during the first season, two key production people arrived at work early in an attempt to catch up on the work at which they were so desperately behind, at 4 a.m., to find that Bob Justman had arrived at work at 3 a.m. and left memos for both of them:

Gentlemen:

I intend to be very mean today.

Regards,
Bob

Current Mood: grumpy

06:01 am - Monday Morning Video #17: Space: 2261

This is the Monday Morning Video, seventeenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

You may remember a couple of weeks ago I showed you the opening title sequence for Star Trek: Deep Space Five. In a similar vein, here is the opening title sequence for an episode of Space: 2261.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sut9OJwWr-Y

Current Mood: geeky

04:51 pm - More about Larry Gelbart

Last week I mentioned the death of Larry Gelbart, an event which saddened me greatly. I have my own personal story to tell about him which I'd almost forgotten.

When I was seventeen, I had notions of someday becoming a writer for television, and I liked this new show, M*A*S*H, so I sent a letter to the studio, 20th Century-Fox, asking if there were a Writer's Guide, knowing there had been one for the show which first gave me the notion that I'd like to try writing for t.v., Star Trek.

I received a personal letter from Larry Gelbart, saying no, there was no Writer's Guide, but enclosed was a copy of the script for the pilot episode of M*A*S*H, and he looked forward to seeing any submission I wanted to send.

My attempts at story outlines were so miserable that I never tried to subject an agent to the torture of reading them, much less Mr. Gelbart. Then while I was away on a trip, my grandmother threw out the script and my story attempts during housecleaning.

I had almost forgotten the whole incident, not thinking about it in literally decades, until Ken Levine mentioned how Mr. Gelbart never let a call or letter go unanswered and reminded me. I can testify to the truth of it.

Writer after writer and actor after actor have all talked about how encouraging, enthusiastic, and just plain decent Larry Gelbart was, and he really was, even to an unknown kid from St. Louis.

Current Mood: contemplative