One nerd's humble opinion

Let me just say it: I love Star Trek. I could talk forever about my favorite episodes and how clever it was that they designed Spock's ship in the latest movie to look like a Vulcan symbol. However, I do not claim to know everything about it. In fact, I don't even like everything about the entire franchise. However, I do like enough to make this assertion: Deep Space Nine was the best series of all. It has been overshadowed by the glory of The Original Series and The Next Generation, as well as the fail that was Voyager and Enterprise. Despite this, it is the best.

Before I delve into the reasons, let me explain why I don't like the other series as much. First off, although The Original Series (TOS) is enjoyable at points, it still follows the action series cliches of the era it was made in. It is mostly a template where the Enterprise goes to Planet X, meets new alien species Y, fights Z, and then flies off for a new adventure next week. Although I want to be a Trek purist, I just find it hard to watch the same episode over and over with only the names changed. Plus, the overall feeling is campy and macho, with Kirk being a somewhat cocky leader toting his interests in the name of Starfleet. However, I do have a few favorite episodes. I love "Amok Time" because it talks about Vulcan reproduction and "Space Seed" because it gave birth to The Wrath of Khan, which I will never stop loving.

The Next Generation (TNG) for a long time was my favorite. Because Picard isn't the macho eye-candy that Kirk was, the plot doesn't depend on fighting to get the action through. Instead, it works more with the diplomacy and inner conflict of the characters. Plus, it felt like a logical continuation of the Star Trek legacy as Starfleet moved further into the future and met different species.Therefore, there were new conflicts and we got to see the results of the actions taken with the previous series. It was here that the Trill were introduced and the whole Data/Dr. Soong ark which I loved because Data was my favorite character (don't ask why). However, I hated the Borg. Every time there was a Borg episode, I felt like the enjoyability of the series went away and it was returning to the brute force of TOS. It was fascinating that Picard was captured and assimilated, but after a while it felt like "The Borg are here. What do we do?" "I don't know, they're unstoppable." "Well, we better go try and stop them, then!". Give me a break.

Gah! Begone, hell beast!!

*sigh*. And now Voyager. Regarded across the board as one of the worst series, and I agree. It was as if the writers wanted to make everything up and keep away from the already established Trek universe, so they just threw the crew of Voyager across the galaxy and said "There, now we don't have to worry about continuity!" Indeed, all of the focus was on the situation and everything the crew did was gauged as either keeping them from getting home or assisting them. There was little to no investment in the characters so the whole affect was a ship full of cardboard cutouts. Also, there were the worst characters: Neelix and Tuvok. Tuvok's only major issue in the entire series was that he went through Pon Farr and didn't have his wife there to help out. That's it: major Vulcan horniness. Sure he might have died and it is a relevant issue for a Vulcan 70 years away from home, but still. And then there's Neelix. He was just annoying. The worst was when he and Tuvok were fused together to make Tuvix. It was a new low for Star Trek. Also, there was the clear fan service of Seven of Nine. It's as if they knew the story was failing so they decided to put a lady with huge tits in a skin-tight catsuit and have her say sciency things. Oh yeah, and she was Borg. The Borg just won't go away!

Every one of these people is 100% bangable.

And then there was Enterprise. It was based on the promising idea of seeing Starfleet in it's infancy, however failed by the fact that apparently Starfleet's original mission was to send supermodels into space. Seriously, every one of the cast members was gorgeous, perhaps with the exception of Dr. Phlox. A good deal of the plot was about Starfleet acting like a teenager under the aid of the Vulcan officers helping out with the programs. Although it was interesting to meet the Andorians for the first time and the Xindi were in my opinion one of the coolest species to come out of the Trek universe, the whole thing bombed with the season 3 finale, which sent Captain Archer into the past where aliens were assisting the Nazi's invade North America. I almost threw my computer against a wall when I saw a time-traveling alien in an SS uniform.

Obviously, there is potential for fail in the Star Trek franchise, so why does DS9 stand above the rest? Well, first of all it is basically a sequel series to TNG, directly following the events established by it's sister series and even following some of the characters as they moved off of the Enterprise and onto the space station, Deep Space Nine. However, since the station was in a different location and was near the wormhole to the Delta Quadrant, there was potential to introduce new species and conflicts into the story.

There were also clear themes in DS9 that related to issues in the real world. The first episode, Emissary, deals with the DS9's commander, Sisko, coming to terms with the fact that he is basically a messiah in the Bajoran religion and this comes with a whole new bundle of responsibilities on top of the ones related to running a space station. DS9 primarily deals with the question of "what if religion is real and higher beings do exist?" and it mixes spirituality with science fiction quite well. The series also deals with the issue of imperialism and if  powerful governments should interfere with the issues of less powerful ones. Most Bajorans don't want a Starfleet presence on their planet because they fear that they will loose their independence, and yet are reluctant to make them move out because Starfleet is the only thing holding back the Cardassians from invading again. In a post-Cold War world, the issue of protection and invasion is obviously relevant and is echoed quite well within the series.

And now there is my favorite part of DS9: Gul Dukat. He is just one of the villains in the series, and what makes him so amazing is that he is so complex. He starts out as the commander of DS9 during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, is then banished from the Cardassian command, becomes a renegade, allies himself with Sisko, then goes back to the Cardassians, goes insane, and then ultimately goes rogue again and embroils himself in the feud he has with Bajor. He even stoops so low as to disguise himself as a Bajoran and sleeps with their spiritual leader. Dude, that's cold.

Dukat, the ultimate badass.

The best part is that you can see this all happen. You can never really trust him, so you never know if he's sincere when he helps the DS9 crew and therefore you aren't surprised when he rejoins the ranks of the Cardassian command, and yet you don't know if he's just playing them too. Plus, when he goes insane it's a completely new side for him and then makes his character even better.

Another great character I just have to mention is Jadzia Dax, a Trill whose conflicts I find thoroughly fascinating. As a Trill, she is implanted with a symbiont being who houses the memories of its previous hosts, so in fact she is many characters in one. She holds so much knowledge and history and is in a way without gender because the symbiont's previous host was male, which leads to a steamy lesbian-esque episode. However, the most intriguing aspect is when Jadzia dies and the Dax symbiont is implanted in another Trill, Ezri. Even though she is a new character, she still has Jadzia's memories and therefore it is hard to tell if she is really gone.

Now don't get me wrong, DS9 isn't without its flaws. The most obvious one for me is that I am not particularly fond of the commander, Benjamin Sisko. This might be just the actor and not the actual character, but his dialogue is extremely flat and is expression emotionless. This was probably an attempt to represent the figurative mask Sisko had to wear when he was remaining calm even though a whole bunch of bad things were happening around him, but even the emotional scenes seemed forced. Also the whole Dominion aspect of the series was a little complicated. The Dominion was basically the Borg of the series, although not as annoying. Plus there were the orbs that the crew had to find which made episodes more of a quest-based story rather than a science-fiction one, but I am willing to forgive all of that for the sheer greatness overall of the series. They addressed many relevant issues throughout the story and wove it well into the plot, instead of just episodes like "this one is about homosexuality but not really" like in TNG. I felt extremely invested in the struggles the characters had and genuinely cried during "The Seige of AR-558" and "Sacrifice of Angels". Sure, bits of the series got very silly, but because overall the series was good it didn't annoy me as much as when similar things happened in the other series.

So why is DS9 overlooked? I have no idea. Probably because it wasn't as bombastic as TOS and TNG, or as much of a failure as Voyager or Enterprise. There were no DS9 movies, only a nod to the series in First Contact and Insurrection. To me, it will always be the gem of the entire franchise and I will continue to locate a Bajoran earring and recite the Rules of Acquisition to show my allegiance to the characters.

Long live Bajor and Deep Space Nine!

(images from here, here, and here)

Truer words were never spoken

So far, my summer has taken on a theme of British humor. I've been devouring Douglas Adams' books, insisting my sister read A Room with a View, and watching shows like The IT Crowd and QI. It was while watching an episode of QI that I heard the quote from Ambrose Bierce "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography". I laughed at how true it is.

Sorry, Teddy. I'm sure you did good.

Every time America is involved in a war, it is immediately fused into our culture. The details may be a little fuzzy, but at least we remember who we were fighting. With the Revolutionary War, it was England. The Civil War, the South (or the north, depending on where you live). Then there was Germany and Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and now the "War on Terror" which although isn't against a specific country it's geographic location has become familiar to society at large. I know, there were some other wars in there, but I doubt anyone remembers the Spanish-American or Mexican-American wars.

What I'm getting at is that our wars are somewhat classified and categorized geographically. Instead of calling our latest war "The War against Taliban", for a while it was mostly being called "The war in Iraq". I doubt anyone knew where Vietnam was on a map before we got involved there, let alone Cambodia or Laos. However, since that was where the action was and many families had people who fought over there, the region of Southeast Asia became more known to us. Coincidentally, I don't think people took Holland very seriously until we  were trying to get the Nazis out.

To put a modern spin on this, what if Osama Bin Laden had been hiding in Kosovo instead of Pakistan? Instead of talking about Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan we would have the names Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina on our lips and in our news. We could look on a map and the names would hold more meaning than they do now. For instance, when I here the name "Vietnam", I don't think of Saigon or Nem nướng, but rather of the late 60's, protests, and Lieutenant Dan. The only way Vietnam holds any relevance in our culture is in the context of war.

I might be related to Victoria herself as well as her nursemaid.

Are other countries like this? I'm sure they are, but I think I know why America's trouble with geography and world knowledge is so apparent. Compared to the rest of the world, the United States is a relatively young country. Just over two hundred years compared to England or France who had established monarchies way back around the year 600 or so. They've had more time to get into skirmishes and have that knowledge become part of the relative culture. Even outside of the context of war, European countries have had more time to interact and learn about each other while America was toddling along and trying to acquire enough territories to look like a threat to anyone who stepped foot there again. Queen Victoria became the common denominator whenever European royalty was concerned, and the Hapsburgs and Bourbons did there fair share of cultural spread too. As marriages and alliances were made (more often at the same time than not), a little bit of other countries leaked to their neighbors. Another little tidbit I got from the same episode of QI was that the national anthem of the Netherlands still swears some allegiance to the King of Spain from when the Netherlands were under Spanish control.

America is still young and learning about the world. We Americans are still learning, however we go about it like a 20 year old man who is just a bit too cocky: by getting in fights. We only recognize the people we have fought, are currently fighting, or who helped us fight someone else. The rest are just bystanders, so it would seem. I'm not suggesting that the US should fight every country in the world in order for its population to pass 7th grade Geography tests. I just wanted to remark at how little we Americans know about our world. Every day it seems like there are wars and battles fought around the world that we know little to nothing about merely because they don't affect us directly. I am amazed when I watch British TV shows and realize they know so much more about Europe than I do.

If you like British humor or love trivia shows, definitely check out QI. For now, I will leave you with this little taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsHg3wsqTzI

(images from here and here)

Women's problems

Why is it that women in general hate getting their period? I know I certainly don't like it. It might be due to the fact that my back hurts, my stomach hurts, I'm tired, my head aches, I'm irritable, and there's blood leaking out of an orifice of my body. Other than that, the whole experience is rather swell.

Or it could be the fact that we aren't given a reason to like having our period. There are no great ceremonies or rituals involved, no reward for reaching womanhood, and absolutely no hanging out eating cake like in Anita Diamont's The Red Tent. In fact, Western culture is rather dismissive of "woman's issues". Hippocrates said that hysteria (from hystera) was due to the fact that the uterus would wander around the body and interfere with basic functions instead of the fact that ancient Greek women had to worry about cooking, cleaning, children, keeping everyone's tunic clean, and the lack of Always pads in the 4th century BC. Menstruation quickly became the symbol of a girl's fertility, which then got linked to marriage, which then got linked to marrying the girl off to the most advantageous man available so that she can get right on that whole "making babies" thing as quickly as possible.  In more recent centuries, as women have entered the modern work environment they've found that it's even less conducive to menstruation. There simply aren't enough bathroom breaks allowed during the day to make sure that you are "covered", as it were, so most of the day you are wondering whether or not your pants will be clean by the time you get home.

Plus, there's the whole attitude that men have been portrayed as developing in the media. If a woman is angry or irritable, usually a comment like "Take a Midol" or "she's PMS-ing" is quick to follow. I think men comment more often on PMS because it is what they have more contact with. They receive most of the snippy comments and short temper, and so they perceive that as the worst part of the menstrual process because it's the worst for them. Excuse me, but the inner lining of my reproductive organs is leaching into my underpants, so I think I have a right to be irritable. How would men like it if the lining of their ears decided once a month to evacuate itself to an extent that they would have to strap wads of cotton to their heads and change them every few hours. I bet they wouldn't like it when ear time came around.

Now apart from the negative aspects of menstruation, there are some hidden benefits. Although there isn't an instant camaraderie of women who share in the joy of being linked with nature, there is the unwritten rule that no woman must deny another any menstrual products. That would be cruel. You may only have pads when your friend needs a tampon, but at least you offered. Plus, every middle school girl knows to answer honestly when another asks "is there anything on the back of my pants?".

The strangest positive aspect of getting my period, at least for me, was the fact that it was the one thing in my life I absolutely had to take care of. I was solely responsible for making sure that I had enough pads for the next month, making sure that I was wearing the right one before I went to sleep, and gauging how long I could go before I had to stop by the bathroom. As I entered what was traditionally considered adulthood, at least by my body, I had this one little slice of responsibility to take care of.


However, now that I have school, a summer job, and a whole slew of more grown-upy things to worry about, I hate to add my period to the list. My period has gone from an early state of reverence to an annoyance, albeit a rather minor one. It's just one more thing I have to think about during the day, and that's why I don't enjoy it. Maybe if life was a little slower I could find myself attuning with nature and enjoying the cycle of my fertility, but for now all I want to attune with is the nearest source of chocolate.

(images from here and here)

Enough is too much

I recently finished Better Off, by Eric Brende and I've started to think about all the so-called "helpful" devices we use on a daily basis. I've really started to notice it at work, where I'm a cashier.

Our system is very outdated. It's actually a DOS system, so we're about 20 years behind some other companies out there. A bunch of the people complain about how clunky it is, which is partly justified because it is very slow, and they pray for the giant overhaul that's due in the next couple of years. In all likelihood, our computers will be replaced with touchscreens and a whole new system to learn. Therefore, each employee will have to be trained all over again, which will take time and money. So much for time-saving operating systems!

Adjoined to the computers is the credit signature pad. Everyone hates these, whether they are employee or customer. The customers complain about that the screens are scratched, their signature doesn't look neat, the glare of the sun, the screen is dirty, the buttons aren't clearly labeled, it's at an awkward label, and that they "weren't made for left-handed people". Plus, our particular machines have trouble with certain cards and a good amount of the time the cards don't work on the pads. The employees the pads because there are too many prompts that the customers sometimes miss, and when you are trying to finish a transaction quickly during a busy day, waiting for the customer to hit a button can be a little frustrating (especially when they don't hit the button hard enough)

With so many glitches that could happen and errors, be they cashier or customer, it's no wonder that the self-checkout machine was created. This is the worst error in retail history. The machines, at least the ones where I work, are very picky. They know the exact weight of each item, so if you so much as set your wallet in the bagging area the system will alert and call for an employee override. Or you could chose to skip the bagging process if you have a lot of items or awkward boxes. However, if you skip bagging for an item over a certain amount, you need an override. Same if you take an item out of the bagging area, the scale doesn't get the weight, or any number of little mess ups. To give all of these overrides, they have a cashier stand in the area to wait for such instances.

Why do we need to pay someone to work the self-checkout registers? Frankly, I don't know why we even have them in our store. There are too many items without barcodes, but luckily so far none of them have come through that area when I was there. We also have a lot of items with those magnetic inventory tags that need to be deactivated, and most of them are in items that you wouldn't expect them to be in (like air-conditioner filters and bottles of Round-Up). Some people come up with pieces of lumber which do have barcode tags, but they spend a good amount of the time trying to maneuver the wood so that the code will scan. Although you only need to pay one person to look over four machines, the finickyness of the machines and the nature of the merchandise we sell makes the whole self-checkout area a bad idea.

There are some parts of our register system that are necessary. For instance, the fact that the whole thing is a glorified adding machine is a good base. I like that you can immediately see what items are scanned and the price, and you can also go back and change any mistakes easily (for the most part). We can also look up items without them being physically there if they are too big or bulky to go through the checkout lines. The big bonus is that it adds everything for you. There have been times when I was stuck figuring out change in my head and it's taken far longer than if the machine did it. I'm not saying that the whole machine could and should replace mental math. I think the reason I had trouble with it was because I haven't had a lot of practice doing mental math. For most of my life, there was always a machine to do it for me.

Although the machines do create a lot of problems, they also solve them. If we were to get rid of the signature pads, we would have to go back to signing for credit cards on the receipt, and then we would have to think about making sure the whole store was stocked with pens. A small necessity, but pens are misplaced, go dry, or just plain get stolen on a daily basis. Plus, debit cards couldn't be used without the ability to punch in a PIN. If we got rid of the computers all together and just went with a calculator or adding machine, we couldn't look up orders or go back and change mistakes easily.

I'm torn. I realize that the computers at work make as many problems as they solve, however I also appreciate the fact that everything is all in one place (for the most part). Doing away with the entire system would mean dismantling credit, debit, and gift cards. Maybe these machines are just the result of a greater problem. People want things faster now, so the ideal system would know exactly what you were buying so when you walked out the door all you had to do was touch your card to a receiver, a receipt would print, and you would be on your way without dealing with any complicated machinery. But then of course, if that system went down, it would be complete chaos. Until the rate at people want things and the rate at which they get them is synchronized, people will be frustrated by machines that are too sensitive or not sensitive enough because they get bogged down with problems. What are we to do?

When did "size 12" become a curse word?

Why in the world does society favor slimmer shapes? I know, there are a lot of other people complaining all over the place about how Western culture favors a body type that only a small percentage of women have, but I wonder why that is.

Maybe it's purely media-related. Before the 1960's, curvier women were prized over thinner ones. Once Twiggy hit it big, however, it seemed that the slimmer you were the more desirable you were. Or maybe it's all part of the irony of our Western eating habits. We continue to value a small shape while the "obesity epidemic" continues to ravage our homes. We continue to prize smaller figures as they become more and more rare.

Okay, is big-boned. Whale bone, that is!

Still, I am confused. Throughout the majority of our history, plumper women were seen as fertile, and therefore desirable. Renaissance art depicts women with rolls over their tummies; women from the 15th century until the late 19th century wore bum rolls, farthingales, and paniers to make their hips look wider, and the 18th century favored thick legs. What it all comes down to is that during the Colonial era, I would have had a hot body.

I'll say it: I'm a size 12. Why has that become such a bad thing to say now days? I admit, I have had weight issues all throughout my life and a few times I climbed up to a size 16, but I realize that I will never be a size 6. I am just not built that way. I think at my smallest I would be able to fit into a size 10, although I don't remember ever being that size. Even then, by modern standards that would be on the plump side.

Weight loss commercials are making us believe that under all those layers of fat there is a size 4 waiting to emerge like a well-toned butterfly. When I see the before and after pictures I think "Was all that girth in her hips really just fat? Where were her hip bones all that time?". It would be nice if I could smooth out some of the rolls that I have in front, but I don't expect to be model-thin after the whole process.

Another strike against me on society's tally board is my weight. I am elated to be 203 pounds. Want to know why? Because this time last year I was hovering between 215 and 225. I know, that's a big margin to hover in but that's how it was. I obviously lost a couple of inches in the process making the size 12 jeans that were a little snug on me become more comfortable and even get a little loose with wear, even though I still have another pair of new jeans that are pretty tight when I first put them on. The point I am trying to make is that I've accepted that this is the bracket of weight and size that I am in.

The thing is, I don't feel like I look 200 pounds. In fact, there was a point in time when I weighed more than my mother yet somehow looked a little thinner. This was all due to body shape. I hate to use the old "I have big bones" argument, but let me put it this way: the shape of my bones gives me a wider shape. Feeble, I know, but I just want to make the case that different body types are not just fat-layer deep.

I try to be optimistic, but there was one time in the past year when my confidence took a serious blow. I went to my college's health services to check out a bug I caught, so the did the old height and weight measurements just like every time I go to the doctor's office. Then, I was 206 pounds. The doctor said "I noticed you're a little overweight" and offered to refer me to a nutritionist. Obviously, she didn't see my look of happiness when I saw that I had lost nine pounds since my last weigh-in. Plus, whatever I had been doing before I got to the office was obviously working to help me lose weight. I know next to nothing about the BMI system and perhaps I am trying to make myself an exception, but was I indeed fat by modern standards?

The Graces once encompassed all that was ideally feminine

In any case, I expect to lose a good amount of weight come next semester. This will probably be because I won't be able to eat any junk food and will instead be eating apples and actual vegetables on nights other than weekends. Also, I think part of my success is the fact that I wasn't trying to lose weight, but rather I was trying to keep weight off. When I am trying to lose weight actively, I become stressed and even more intrigued by "forbidden fruit" foods. Instead of making myself swear that I would never eat another brownie, I would compromise and say that I could have dessert today, but I couldn't make a habit of it. I gradually stepped down from eating constantly and negotiated with myself. Plus, I took the stairs. Living on the eighth floor never felt like a blessing until my pants fit better.


(images from here and here)