Je désire: Carina Bengs' "Ingatorp" dining table she crafted for
IKEA. Oh, for $350! It would be a real decorating coup in my current (
or future) living situation's dining room.
***
J'adore:
KFC's Nashville Hot anything. So fucked up, so rica, so spicy! I actually poured the excess sauce onto my tenders and ate it the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks up... Can't really consume their horrid fare more than once a year, but dang, that may change with this new flavor...
(Especially since, with my receipt, I can do their little song-and-dance online, write down the promo code, and, AT THE SAME STORE, be guaranteed a free To-Go cup full of wedges and popcorn chicken or somesuch - AS LONG AS I PURCHASE A DRINK.)
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It seems like just yesterday I was barely educating myself on the super-serious topic of the
Sites Reservoir project. Sorry, Muirians, I'm terrible, and terribly in favor of perhaps a low-budget version of it. And as far as I know, they're still in the feasability-study stage of the project. My question: the August 14th deadline to apply for the bond money has come and gone -- is everything still on track? Finding news online isn't easy...
***
Wow, has it been a weird Summer or what? Indian and Bear valleys in particular still want to be everyone in Oakley's best kept secret, but in this day of the Internet, and DEA and cartel employees ridesharing on single-prop planes to the Willows airport, right over my little, stoned noggin? Doubtful!
For me, the strangest has been how busy air traffic has been. Yes, the aforementioned flights reminiscent of BLOW, and passenger jets at 30,000 (not to mention well-wished dust-offs out of Beale or Vandenberg, as well as Mr. Tall Blond Hot Stuff with the right stuff airman who flies the sky wagon for Enloewww.enloe.org/ - god bless our first responders indeed!) But I've especially noticed TONS of drones: private playthings, Google Earth and Street-view cheaters, VR mappers, special needs telepresence, local law enforcement surveillance, and other such Unidentifiable Flying You-Know-Whats...
And all that congestion in the skies has seemed to have had a damping effect on tourist traffic to
East Park Reservoir, if I may be so bold, or seemingly unkind or unthoughtful or ungrateful - really cramping partygoers' style.
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Much thanks to a (the?) "Star Trek: Original Series" group on Facebook for accepting my application to join. I was on tenterhooks for a bit there, not knowing what admins would think of my citing my favorite episode as "The Trouble with Tribbles." Of the two titles I remembered on the spot (God, now I know what if feels like to interview for a co-op in Hell's Kitchen!), it was the less lame: Damn you Edith Keeler, for making a laughing stock of James T. Kirk! But I digress...
It all comes down to the Enterprise's failing to deploy Yeoman Janice Rand in time to deal with Harry Mudd - she alone I know would have stopped Mudd's nonsense right quick; leave the Klingon menace to the rest of the crew! But she melodramatically was insulated from the Mudd problem - such a quintessential ST episode!
And as we all know, Janice went on to her post as a transporter room operator... Until that horrifying, fateful malfunction prior to the V'jer mission - a malfunction resulting in screaming, half-materialized goo on the platform who in turn Rand screaming to drink her life away in the Spacedock bar.
(Which, by the way - truthesque factoid and canonical - is why Federation scientists invented synthohol - Rand was constantly pestering Starfleet medical for liver regeneration.)
Worst job one could ever have in the 23rd century, it turns out, is to be a transporter room operator or transporter chief.
***
Oh, Frank Miller, you kidder, on Artemisia (gamely played by unflappable - seriously, UNFLAPPABLE - Eva Green), the antihistorical, fancy, Greek-born slavegirl who, chinchilla-like, rose through the ranks of the great hen house known as the Persian navy...
"Wisdom, Artemisia!" Golly, your majesty, you might have started by trying to counsel the damn dame to prudence... Just a thought.
***
And screw SOUTH PACIFIC: I'm never gonna wash THAT man (Mikey!) right outta MY hair!
***
Speaking of veterans, I must end this column on a somber note: some ugly statistics are coming out of the VA (and I consider them in light of the recent incident at San Francisco's Crown Hotel, where 55 units are reserved for homeless veterans - an incident which thank the gods ended without a loss of life), and they include the following: women veterans commit suicide at a rate of 250% that of their counterparts among the men.
Truly sobering, truly harrowing.
