Last night I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Captain's Holiday", an episode that generally annoys me, but the amusing futuristic! vacation wear consisting of bathing suits and ugly translucent keikogis takes some of the edge off.
There are at least eight million ways Picard is out of character in this episode, from naively trusting the Vorgons from the future, to James Bondishly patronising Vash, to the sadly racist denouncements of "typical Ferengi" logic, behaviour, talk, etc. True, this was pretty standard for Star Trek at the time, but it's still disappointing. But, you may say, if all Ferengi the captain's encountered behave based on the same ethical guidelines, isn't it a fair generalisation? Maybe if Picard were a blue collar freighter captain or something, but he's supposed to be the cerebral captain of the Federation's flag ship, supposedly one of the most enlightened cultures in the galaxy. The simple solution would be to come up with a name for the philosophy most Ferengi subscribe to, maybe tying it into The Rules of Acquisition. "Typical Zingzifon logic," named, of course, for a famous Ferengi philosopher. There you go.
Last night's tweets;
To-day's drinks were wine, water and green tea.
Obviously I ought to have had gin.
Four years one box of staples lasted me.
Had to do odd things to laugh with Ed Wynn.
I forgot to mention yesterday listening to more of the Mary Poppins commentary and hearing Dick Van Dyke and Karen Dotrice (Jane Banks) describe having to put their bare asses in moulds to make the harnesses used to make them appear as though they're levitating in the "I Love to Laugh" scene. Dotrice sounded a bit uncomfortable relating this information, saying this was done before they'd even started principal photography, recalling her thoughts at the time as being, "This is going to be a strange film. What has mummy signed me up for?" She added, "I'm very glad I was very young because it didn't hurt when they took it off, if you know what I mean." Er, wow.
Dick Van Dyke talked about the experience, too, and Julie Andrews clearly had no idea what he was talking about. She sounded a little shocked.
I followed a link on Ana Marie Cox's twitter to this article about how the hot young daughter of the McCains is the new face of the Republican party, apparently by misappropriating the term "Progressive Republican" to justify behaving like her friends while nominally clinging to Republican philosophy. It all seems part of a new sheepish hypocrisy spearheaded by Sarah Palin bragging about how her daughter had the right to choose not to have an abortion while seeking to eliminate a woman's right to choose, or the recent Ms. USA pageant contestant who thought it was great to live in a country where people could choose between same sex and "opposite" marriage even though she firmly believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.
The weird thing is, I actually sort of think this is the best shot for healing in this country. On the day that their mentality catches up with their biology, to co-opt a Morrissey quote, maybe Republicans will find out that refraining from harassing women seeking an abortion and gays not only feels right, but is right. I'm blowing on the dice in the crap game of human stupidity.
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