Yesterday, I discovered that it can be dangerous to shop at Target.

…wearing a red shirt.

I was walking along, minding my own business. I had been re-listening to season 1 of Gregg Taylor’s character Martin Bracknell’s radio play Black Jack Justice (one of my favorite latter-day online radio series). I had paused my smartphone’s podcast player and removed my earbuds, and was poking through my email, when a guy walked up to me.

What Else When the Power Goes Out?

I suspect that there may be an unusual number of new birthdays between Halloween and Thanksgiving this year.

(Too subtle? Remember that the power went out for a half-hour during the Superbowl? Now try counting the number of months from the Superbowl—the beginning of February—until the beginning of November.)

Unfortunately, You Have to Be a Computer Geek to Get This Joke

Told my doctor I was idempotent.

Warp 21—35—17, Hut!

This is too cool.

The other day I was gushing to my kids that by the 24th century, life will probably be just like it is in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not the warp drive, because that’s just a plot device they have to include to make a space opera work. But a lot of the other stuff, like ordering dinner from a talking computer and just having it zap! appear there before your eyes.

As it turns out, though, I was wrong. Warp drive may actually be possible.

I don’t know what I’d do without Google. What did people do before Google? How did they do research? They actually went to a library and looked up stuff and copied it into thick binders full of paper.

That was less than 20 years ago, and I remember a bit from those times. But I was never very good at the research thing, not until Google showed up on the scene. My kids, they’ve never known a world without the Internet and without Google and without every bit of information they could ever want at their fingertips. To them, the library is the place you go to get a community Wifi connection.

And how many years will it be before Wifi hotspots are a thing of the past? We’ll all be on, all the time, connected to unlimited, low-cost, high-speed broadband from our wireless devices. That day may not be too far off.

I’m talking, of course, about the day when Star Trek becomes reality.

But I’m going to try it again. Try, try again. Try a new motivation. Try a new tactic. Try something different. Keep trying, either until I get it right or until I die trying. (Or dye trying.)

(On the bright side, I do have a number of posts I’m working on for next week. And I’m excited about them.)

In the meantime, I thought I might share with you the contents of my Netflix Instant Watching Activity log. (Which you might consider part of the reason why I don’t have a real post to share today. And you might be right.) Most of these titles are TV series or mini-series. I love TV, because I can consume massive amounts of content that I enjoy, in bite-sized pieces.

Beginning at the most recent:

It's All in the Emphasis

My Daughter: No way am I gonna name my son “Jonathan.” Every Jonathan I know is a total asshole, except my dad.

Me: What about Jonathan [so-and-so]? He’s not a total asshole– uh, I mean, he’s not a total asshole…

At Least There Were No Glittery Vampires

We were watching the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Royale." This is the episode in which the Enterprise discovers debris from a mid-21st-century NASA spacecraft— Yeah, as if NASA will still be around 40 years from now! Then they scan the planet below and find a bubble of breathable air. Of course, Riker, Worf, and Data beam down to investigate, after which they find themselves cut off from the Enterprise, in a Las-Vegas-style hotel and casino, playing out the plot of an awful novel entitled The Hotel Royale.

(I think I’m becoming more cynical and sardonic. Sorry about that. Might be time to read more Dave Barry.)

Spider Robots Take Over the Earth

Someone must’ve sent me this link, to a piece about a rideable spider-robot, named Stompy, being designed and built locally.

I couldn’t resist clicking on the link. But imagine how let-down I felt when the article revealed that the robot is, in fact, only a hexapod (like an insect). A spider robot has 8 legs, not 6. Talk about bait-and-switch, eh?

War, Peace, and Paradise

Last month, my friend and fellow artist Lawrence Strauss posted a succinct post on his blog pointing out how important it is to wrestle with one’s world-view. (Includes a Star Trek reference to Gene Roddenberry’s vision.)

Links and things that I’ve run across recently.

Return to Triskelion

To ordinary people with dictionaries, a triskelion is an artistic motif consisting of three interlocked spirals. Star Trek fans, however, will recognize “Triskelion” as the planet where the “Providers” (these ultra-powerful, disembodied, colored, light-up brain guys) betted on how fights would turn out between captured alien slaves from around the galaxy. (The ring in which these battles occurred was a triskelion, hence the name of the planet.) The Providers had been capturing and abusing slaves in this way since time immemorial, until they made the mistake of kidnapping James T. Kirk, who beat them at their own game. Unfortunately, as gamblers, they don’t always pay their debts, because they’ve apparently turned back on their words and are now gaming again, with a whole new generation of slaves.

I think my theme for this week is: life is getting better.

If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, you might remember the episode after Rory and Dean had their affair, the one in which Dean’s wife Lindsay discovers Rory’s “heinous letter in Dean’s jacket.” Oy f***in’ vey! See, this is what happens when children grow up only on the outside.

And Rory and Lorelai, walking through the town common, almost run into Lindsay and her mother (whose name apparently is Theresa). At which point Theresa begins tearing into Rory, ignoring Lorelai’s urges to calm down, escalating her tone to the point of “You little monster!”

You MUST Have an Opinion

I love Weird Al, but I’ll fight to the death your right not to care one way or the other!

The Onion told a heartbreaking story a whole month ago about one peaceable gentleman who was intimidated by his so-called friends into actually having an opinion on Weird Al.

Shocking! That this could happen in America!

Of course, if the story wasn’t about Weird Al, I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, seeing as how big of a groupie I am.

The Higgs Boson Explained in Comic