Sunday, December 27, 2009

Sign the petition to include gay characters in nuTrek

Social Equality Effort (SEE) has a petition to "request that the director, producers and writers of the new Star Trek films include a romantic relationship between main characters of the same sex in the execution of Star Trek sequels ... as was intended for the original Star Trek productions." I signed with the below comment:

It was clearly Gene Roddenberry's intention to challenge social prejudices. The original series would have been cancelled but for a fan petition, and it went on to become a franchise that has made you good money for over 40 years. Star Trek has examined race, gender equality, politics, religion. Sexual orientation is conspicuous in its absence and it's hurting the brand. Trust the fans again on this, and your franchise will be profitable for another 40 years.

My other comment would have been that if a tv production team from over 40 years ago was creative and clever enough to hide a close relationship between Spock and Kirk out in the open, then surely a badass modern film creative team can push the envelope the same way and remain acceptable to the majority of their audience.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Epic. Just. Epic.

You: Well in that case carry on Mr. Spock
Stranger: You do not mind my green... sexual organ?
You: Nope
Stranger: Well, in that case.
Stranger: *do do do do do*
You: *fade to black*
Stranger: ...Honestly...I .. I don't even know what just happened.
Stranger: But thank you for being such a good sport. XD
You: No problem bb
Stranger: AHHH WE JUST K/S CYBERED ON OMEGLE.
Stranger: Does this make us gods?
You: ABSO FREAKING LUTELY
Stranger: Sweet effing deal.
Stranger: LL&P BB.
You: I have been and shall always be your GQMF
You have disconnected.
ONTD_Startrek Omegle party posts FTW

I'm doing homework and playing with dolls and reading ONTC_Startrek yeah I feel 14

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Grief

Oh man I just glanced at a pic of young TOS Spock above my monitor, and then my Spock Prime 12in doll, and a wave of grief washed over me for all he had lost.
Partners are privileged to spend their lives together, whether their time is long or short. And then usually one has to go on without the other, incomplete. And here is Spock Prime. living out the remainder of his life with the cherished memory of his love. (The score for Kirk's Death by Dennis McCarthy is quite moving: I never knew because Generations doesn't exist for me.)
Suddenly Spock is thrown back in time, only everything is slightly off, and his Jim is not really his Jim. His Jim, and his youth, are gone forever. *sob* I had to hug the doll :(

Female desire

I might even say observers try to intellectualise it so they don't have to deal with female desire.
sentstuff05

I still haven't figured out "the" answer for why women like slash. Maybe that's because the question itself needs to be examined, as this commenter on that Newsweek article does so aptly. How often are men asked to explain why they find f/f hot? And when they say "just because" it's not accepted like that can't be it, there must be more to it.

This comment got me to thinking about how dangerous female desire is to the dominant paradigm. It really truly has a different shape and is alien to the male-dominated society that is threatened by it.
(I need to add here that this is not an endorsement of turning everything on its head and taking power away from men. I am firmly convinced that a female-dominated or even equal society would be different, but would not offer more advantages in general. I've known enough violent and abusive women in my life not to believe all that "the women are more peaceful" shit. Ahem. Pardon. Upshot: we're all just people.)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

What's awesome about the new fanfic

One of the phenomena attached to the Star Trek reboot that I've been most curious about is how non-Trekkies approach it and see it. This ranges from delight at watching a brand new fan watch TOS season by season and hearing them express all those lovely nuances of character we've known forever. New eyes are seeing the exact same things we saw! We did not talk ourselves gradually into a mass hallucination. A new fan can describe the characters and their relationships in the same way we have.
The fanfiction created by writers coming from other fandoms has been a joy to discover as well. I am not really into other fandoms. I just don't have time to get involved in watching tv and actually following story arcs and whatnot. Someday when I'm in the nursing home I'll get some old Battlestar Galactica and Lost DVDs or whatever. So I had no idea what a vast pool of talent is out there, and I'm humbly grateful that they have found Star Trek interesting enough to write in it. This new generation of writers may or may not know that their whole genre began with Kirk and Spock and that there is a whole tradition built up by their foremothers. But I do know that this time around writers are not spending elebenty years circling around the concept of m/m and gayness and are K and S only gay for each other and what special circumstances would have to come together before they would own up to their feelings for each other. That process is forgotten and unnecessary,and how awesome is that.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Scotty's Grapefruit Example

Of course!!! I am so DENSE! It kept bothering me why Scotty took a grapefruit for an example. It just hit me.
So wow... have the STXI creators been reading ASCEM or Farfalla's site? Fascinating.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Paradise Lost

Unwinding after a long week with The Final Frontier. Just right about 14 minutes in there is a view of the Paradise city gate on Nimbus. Graffiti artists have added "Lost" after the name, dripping down the post in whitewash. Haha cool!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Still digesting

I loved the new movie for its energy but I'm not going to post in detail about it just yet. I'm still letting it all sink in. Meanwhile I'm paper-blogging my impressions and their corollaries.
Update | 31 May: If I had to be honest with myself, I'd admit that part of my reluctance to blog at this point is that I am sick and tired of the internet and computers right now and I just don't want to touch them more than I have to.

Friday, May 8, 2009

It's his husband, Yahoo

George Takei and his husband
Yahoo Photo Gallery
I'm still pissed that Yahoo chose to caption this and George Takei "and guest."

Thursday, May 7, 2009

STXI Review One

My small-town theater was packed and apparently spontaneously added a second showing to take care of the overflow. I think this movie is going to some pretty respectable box office. And I think non-trekfans who just want to see a good science fiction movie will enjoy this.
But.
There is no but! I enjoyed it too! It's got laughs, it's got action, a tearjerker beginning...
The good guys are refreshingly heroic. A number of characters do selfless, extraordinary things, and Starfleet's "corporate" culture is one of service, altruism, and excellence. I love that. I never expected to find that again. Maybe "hope and change" is making optimism acceptable again.
Granted the villain is not all that compelling. The character is serviceable to move the plot forward and pleasing to look at. I loved the bridge of his nose. The bridge of his ship looked a bit like the Torchwood set.
The Cloverfield monster on the ice planet is a cool creature. I liked the combination spider and dog and flesh-eating plant, though I couldn't understand why it kept stopping to monologue instead of just eating Kirk. Especially since it had proven itself perfectly capable of doing just that already. It had me convinced (wrongly) that it was trying to communicate or something. So why was it even there, really?
And what the hell is red matter? Some sort of Applied Phlebotinum...
One thing that is very true to Jim Kirk is how he never shies away from a beating. He is still perfectly willing to endure discomfort and danger to further his goals. This is definitely the man who loans his body out to disembodied aliens because what the hell.
Spock is a little harder to figure out. Let me just first say I think I'm beginning to hate Quinto's upper lip. And why are his hair and eyebrows so stiff and unnatural?
I don't know if I can get used to this Spock. I think his relationship with Uhura is kind of cute and it "humanized" him. Only at the end does it begin to look like Jim could also "humanize" him (for want of a better word), and it's quite poignant that Spock Prime -- the one we know who is with the Jim we know in the timeline we know -- seeks to convince the new Spock to stay with the new Jim if he knows what's good for him. That still says everything about the original relationship. The new relationship could be anything, since everything has changed and nothing is inevitable.
Oh yeah and since everything has changed, Paramount, now is the time to be responsible and altruistic and finally get some realistic and positive gay characters in the Star Trek universe. In the Original Series, the choice of characters would have been obvious, but the real life culture was wrong for it. Now, the real life culture is more than ready for it, but I'm not so sure if there is an obvious character choice now.
I'm wait and see. This franchise is obviously good for a number of sequels.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Own the story

Even though characters and series often fall in and out of slash's favor, mirroring the fickle tastes of popular culture, K/S has been thriving consistently for almost 40 years.

Newsweek

This Newsweek article informs us that an anonymous fan wrote a Don Quixote fic in 1614. I have always seen it as going back to Homeric times and even earlier. Say Homer came through your town and told absolutely awesome stories of a war and of a guy on a long trek. In a week or a month, Homer moves on, but you and your friends and family want to hear more stories. So you start telling your own. And your friend corrects you, saying Patroclus wouldn't act that way, or there is no evidence that Charybdis can swim per se, and Homer would never have told it that way. There you have fanfic, as romantic or dramatic as you like it thankyouverymuch, and you can spend all night around the fire debating the finer points of sea monster locomotion and the age of Achilles.
If you tell these stories enough in your locale, they may turn into your local mythology. I really think Star Trek has that kind of power, as long as people keep telling the stories they want to hear.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Raising anchor

"Kirk sat back, just enough so that he could watch Spock's face, flushed with a small beads of sweat on his upper lip."
This is a line from Hafital's "Burnt Sugar," and until now I would have disagreed with it. I would have said, when Spock sweats, it shows first on his chin. Anyone can see it in the original 79 episodes.
But.
That's how Leonard Nimoy sweats. How does Zach Quinto sweat? Do either of these actors' pores have anything to do with how Spock sweats? After all, these actors were hired to portray, to represent something that is outside of them. To cast shadows on a wall... We may know Nimoy or Quinto, but it's not exactly the same as knowing Spock.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tonight's the night

It's the midpoint between the birthdays of Kirk and Spock. Talking about it that way almost makes it sound like an equinox. The midpoint where Oak King and Holly King meet as equals. When the stars turn in their appointed rounds and face each other across the firmament, and stargazers rejoice in their combined splendor.
It just started storming like hell outside. No chance of seeing the stars twinkle tonight!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Physics and Logic, according to Spock


Happy Birthday to William Shatner!!1!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

5pack yo

Some young people, asked why they risked their lives this way, said it was because of “tufush,” a colloquial Arabic word for boredom whose meaning is said by some to derive from the gestures made by a drowning man. Drifting, which tends to attract poorer, more marginal men, has also been an unlikely nexus between homosexuality, crime and jihadism since it emerged 30 years ago. Homoerotic desire is a constant theme in Saudi songs and poems about drifting, and accomplished drifters are said to have their pick of the prettiest boys among the spectators. Drugs sometimes also play a role. But a number of drifters have also become Islamic militants, including Youssef al-Ayyeri, the founder of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who fought in Afghanistan and was killed by security forces in Saudi Arabia in 2003. | NYT

Drifting is 30 years old. hmpf. And I thought it was something new.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Meet Amanda Aurelan Kirk



Conceived with the aid of 23rd century biosciences and the Volkswagen Routan Babymaker

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

TOS Haiku

Amok Time
Live long and prosper?
I have killed my captain, thus
I shall do neither

The Apple
"Husbandry would be
Quite efficacious." Kirk smiles.
"You sure about that?"

Where No Man Has Gone Before
Mitchell bursts into
The lift with disdainful looks.
Spock blocks, and: Checkmate.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Desert Roses

Vulcan's dry air cannot carry scent molecules very far, and nothing that evolved on that planet relies on scent for finding food or mates. This is why Amanda had planted such a profusion of Terran roses in her small garden in Shi Kahr. No one thought these bushy, ruffle-petaled white roses would survive in the red soil, but Amanda knew each plant intimately, knew which had tough stems and which needed support, which could go 25 hours without water and which could only last 22 hours, dabbled endlessly with piles of stone and small thermoplast windbreaks to create microclimates, trained them up walls until the entire garden wanted nothing more than to give up its luscious fragrance for her. The roses were intimately known and loved. Sarek learned about human love through the penetrating logic of their exceptionally sweet scent, Amanda's best argument in favor of pleasure.
Many nights Spock would see his father standing in the rose garden, on a little spot of glittering red soil not covered by moisture matting, surrounded by the alien white blooms glowing in T'Khut's gentle light. It was too dark to tell if his father's eyes were wide in wonder or slitted in ecstasy, and Spock was deeply ashamed for imagining his father in those unseemly states. But the little boy only knew that when he visited the garden, he felt overwhelmed at the existence of these roses.
Sarek usually did not accompany mother and son on their visits to relatives on Earth, and so Spock would be free to gaze at its gardens, forests, riverbanks, plummeting rain that freely filled the cup and quenched the thirst of its guest, at Earth's tumbling oceans, the tumultuous emotions of its humans, the mad diversity of its life forms, so many kinds of flowers scenting that humid cool air, ridiculously lush, the grasslands lying upon the planet like great pools of blood, the intimate folds of forested valleys sliding silkily beneath their runabout.
Later, when he had conquered these unseemly thoughts and emotions, Spock would take a break from Starfleet training to tour botanical gardens and memorize plant names. He met Leila while studying plant biology, and she taught him that he was not completely duty-bound to T'Pring. Still, his heart was not the soil Leila needed to flourish; if only she would have realized that.
But right now he is standing on a far-flung starbase and they have Terran roses, of all things. Beautiful, heavy-headed, lusciously-scented roses blooming in apricot and blush and deepest voluptuous red. And they are rare out here, the vendor wants actual money for them, and Spock fights the illogic of purchasing something that uses so many resources and will die within a week, but his hope that Jim will see, really see, is stronger and he find one perfect red rose, and he transports up with it in an opaque cylinder filled with preservative gas and waits for a moment alone with Jim.
He wants to tell him everything, about Amanda's love for the roses and how she knew each one, stem and petal and root. And that he knows all about Tarsus, and about the command decisions Jim never wanted to make, and the guilt that waits to gnaw his insides out like a worm, and the central core of duranium whose deadness scares him even as he relies on it constantly. Spock has glimpsed it all in the melds; he wasn't supposed to look but it always lingered around their joined consciousnesses, and the thing is he loves Jim all the more for it, every bit of it.
And then Jim is sweeping through the door with his smile and his irresistible sway that makes Spock thirst, and he is looking at the rose, biosphere Terra kingdom Plantae division Magnoliophyta, and he is taking it from Spock, class Magnoliopsida order Rosales family Rosaceae, and their fingers touch, subfamily Rosoideae genus Rosa, and it's enough to transmit just a fleeting image of Amanda's garden bursting into life, so that Jim understands the penetrating logic of Spock's love.

subtext in Baby Face








Chico (Theresa Harris) and Lily (Barbara Stanwyck) in Baby Face make a cute couple. Lily works with Chico in her father's sordid speakeasy amidst the factories of Erie. Her father has been pimping her out to the beery customers since she was 14. Her only friend is an old man who gives her Nietzsche books of all things! Lily keeps Chico from getting fired by facing down her angry father. When she won't sleep with the guy under whose protection the father runs the speakeasy, her father threatens to kill her. Chico appears to set fire to the man's still and comes in to tell him about it, so that he runs out and is killed when it explodes. Chico says to Lily, "can I do something for you honey?"

They hop a boxcar to New York and Lily sleeps with the railroad goon so he'll let Chico go, and in New York Lily gets into the banking business by sleeping her way in and up; she uses men according to the garbled movie-version of Nietzsche put forth by the old man. All along, Chico is by her side, and if any man suggests getting rid of her, Lily rears up in angry protectiveness.

The way Chico calls Lily "Honey," the way they banter and walk in tandem, their easy familiarity together despite Chico having to play the role of maid (yes, it's the 1930s after all; on Christmas day when the maid outfit comes off, they speak to each other as equals and old friends), the way Lily is protective of Chico: it's a nice addition to an already compelling story.

Quickie

When Spock remained in the sped-up timeframe of the Scalosians, he would have had all sorts of time to perpetrate mischief upon the person of his captain. Perhaps as Kirk sat on the bridge he felt the flutter of many many kisses.
Could Spock mind-meld at that speed? The speed of thought is pretty infinite... I suppose the speed of thought is determined by the speed at which neurons operate, which is the speed of electrical-chemical-molecular reactions.
What would Spock choose to do, given all the time he wanted, and Jim seemingly unable to move from the spot?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Kin-kur heh Pla-kur: a haiku in Vulcan

Kart'lan kin-kur bi
Zerkha bi rihag bau-tor
Bolau tash nash-ve

My golden captain
My emotions are difficult to ignore
I need to control myself

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sashay away, doll!


YAY!!! Akashia's gone!
I can stroll out my door and see women yelling at their kids that are just like her: basically still in high school, doodling her makeup in her little notebook and in lieu of showing real leadership, being haughty and bossy. Lip synching was her main skill (well perhaps the $20 blowjob was a specialty too) and she used her labial skills to get out of a bind until it got pretty damn old. Then RuPaul told her to sashay away, yay!
I couldn't believe Shannel was the other one who had to lip sync. I guess I don't have a problem with... whatever it was RuPaul was talking about... being too invulnerable, too perfect. I did not see that as a drawback in Shannel.
Akashia's little biff on the runway proved to be foreshadowing in an interesting way. Shannel came out in this Vegas showgirl Medusa getup wearing nothing but snakes on her giant bare bazongas. Pretty amazing. So then she gets told she's too perfect and just says "ok" like "I have no idea what you're talking about but I'll go along to be a good sport." And then when she and Akashia are lip syncing, for some reason Shannel decides to do this little hop, and loses her headdress and her boobs! Talk about vulnerable!
And she just braved her way on through, and that is what put the beat-down on Akashia, cause Akashia wouldn't have heart like that.

When Bebe Zahara (not related to Brangie) came out, I nearly ran to my kitchen to throw all the meat away, because it looked like the bitch would sniff out blood and hunt it down! I'm scared of her.
She was just illustrating the real meaning of fierce.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

“Okay, Let me put on my Judge Judy robe,” RuPaul says. “People really
need to get a life. And quit taking every opportunity to be offended by
the world. Years ago, political correctness made it unbearable for
anyone to have a laugh or be free. You can’t make the whole world ‘baby
safe.’ That’s really the uneducated approach to dealing with issues.

cool -- video production (how the sausage is made)


eee! Isn't this cool? It's like watching the sausage being made. (Only without the gristle n cowlips.)

Monday, January 26, 2009

dangled over the edge of a dying romance

I don't wanna fall
I don't wanna fly
I don't wanna be dangled over the edge of a dying romance


Matt Alber


Take a song such as “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”, and
it’s achingly romantic lyrics:



You’d be so nice to come home to.

You’d be so nice by the fire.

While the breeze on high sang a lullaby

You’d be all that I could desire.

Under stars chilled by the winter,

Under an August moon burning above,

You’d be so nice, you’d be paradise

To come home to and love.


It became an anthem for World War II soldiers about their
girls back home, but how many of them would feel the same if they knew that
Cole Porter’s inspiration for the lyrics came from his relationship with
choreographer Nelson Barclift?

Saturday, January 24, 2009

This is one of our most beautiful and important legends.

"Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there lived two great heroes named Kirk and Spock. They traveled all over the galaxy in the starship Enterprise. Kirk was her captain and Spock was always at his side."

apparently women can't tell you what they want

All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than during all the human scenes except the footage of the ambling, strapping man — as they watched the apes. And with the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren’t in much accord. During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.

Geez, even chimpsecks is arousing to women. A fact which we hide from ourselves.
NY Times

Finally saw the trailer on the big screen

I wasn't going to be excited, I really wasn't. But when the first note sounded I caught my breath, and when the Iowa landscape appeared on this HUGE screen, with all the surround-sound goodness, well it had me!
This is like foreplay... I know the progression, I know it is being done deliberately, and I know the "seducer's" (entertainment industry) goals. It's up to me to decide if the pleasure will be worth surrendering myself to it.