9.22.24
I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek recently.
Might be because of the Bell Riots taking place this month.
Might be me getting into it a tad more than I usually am deliberately, to hype myself up to get the Star Trek Adventures 1e bundle on HumbleBundle (especially because I feel guilty spending money on anything except gaza funds.*)
Maybe it’s because the optimistic future grounds me and provides some perspective and sanity in the present-day political climate, all whacked-out and spooky. (The official timeline suggests the Second American Civil War happening soon, and World War III, so I try not to think about that aspect, although I have come up with a very cool concept for a Star Trek prequel show that takes place in the very very very near future (replacing my answer of what show I would produce were I greenlit for a Star Trek show of my own, over Dan Well's STAR TREK: MERIDIAN (if I were greenlit for a Star Wars movie of my own, it would be about two sisters who work at their uncle’s moisture-farm-type-place and rebuild a speeder piece-by-piece getting into the nitty-gritty of the hover-technology engineering, while gradually being radicalized into joining the rebellion/resistance.)))
It’s definitely not because Star Trek Day happens to be in September; I was well into this latest kick/fixation/hyperfixation by the time it turned out that was coming up, and even then I didn’t tune into the celebration or anything because I read on Tumblr precisely once that Paramount had issued some sort of mealy-mouthed “We Stand with Israel” message, which would only go along with Star Fleet principles because Star Fleet is hypocritical sometimes– we don’t believe what corporations say anyway, as exhibited this year rather chillingly by the backtracking on corporate Pride during Pride Month, so I’m not that uncomfortable with continuing my Paramount+ subscription– it’s more problematic that it’s a Paramount+ as-a-Prime-Video-channel subscription, when Amazon’s web service provides Cloud technology for Israeli government and military. As does Google. And I’m typing this in Docs.**
Speaking of Tumblr, I knuckled down and just (meaning merely, but yeah less than an hour ago, during the time of writing this entry) reset my password so that I can access it on desktop- now that that shakeup’s been accomplished, I can might-as-well start a second tumblr blog, for Prince Pretzels, so that I can reblog the awesome furry art that comes across my dash without it being off-brand for my writing blog. Then I can add my tumblr to the endscreen of the video, and hopefully I can start work on the video some more. —I canceled my Speechify Studio this month, a couple days before the deadline, I don’t know how I’m gonna do the bits that are better off reworded but at least I can say with my whole chest that the video was made without AI assistance of any form.†
And speaking of resetting passwords- I’m trying to log into my byui account,†† so that I have access to my transcripts, so that I can do crunchy number stuff and tell for sure that my GPA would be high enough (need a 3.0 for admission consideration, which is laughably above what my score actually be, but there’s an application appeals process to waive the requirement) without my performing so low in the actual art-class parts of my arts degree, and meanwhile also have my actual transcript so that I have it to apply in the first place– but I can’t do it, I can’t get in, I think I must have changed my password at some point after graduation for some reason?, because the password I’ve always had isn’t working (maybe it has something to do with my Adobe account, which had been linked to my school e-mail?) and going into the password reset process it’s asking me a security question I’ve got not the foggiest notion toward the answer regarding. It’s painful.
9.23 And the Irish Reunification of 2024, of course, but that could be a any-month-this-year thing. I watched that episode today and was reminded of that only coincidentally, watching the episode rather to see them talk about the dimension-shifting science of the Elway Theorem (I also watched the episode where they talk about Fermat’s Last Theorem today only coincidentally, wanting to see the episode where they talk about pre-warp 21st-century space travel, as the Charybdis factors somewhat into my idea for the show I would produce.)
Anyway– the RTF‡ people finally got back to me this morning about my prospective UTexas application, which I sent on the first of the month (the date when applications opened up)- I opened the email but clicked out of it, chickening out of what they had to say with only a great deal of bravery allowing me to click into it in the first place; checking my other email account and seeing there was a Facebook update from H Ross Workman: it was from his family, announcing his passing.‡‡ That’s what I really wanted to talk about today. And then, I figured, if I could read that, I might as well have the guts to read the email from the University academic program coordinator, and clicked back to that- it’s mostly links, at least one of which I’ve already checked out, but there is admissions process info that I have now that I didn’t have previously, so that’s good.
But President Workman. It’s not his voice, his words of counsel that I hear when I think of him; I think of Brother (Huntsman?) saying “don’t graduate,” when I came to him about the idea that I didn’t seem to be doing well in my chosen degree emphasis. Don’t Graduate. How warm yet firm and breathtakingly headslappingly obvious, coming to me then in some kind of natural association when I try to pull up memories of President Workman instead. Don’t Graduate. Though it was too late by that point to try to pull any such stunt. This was, six years ago. Ten years ago, though, the exit interview with President Workman, his counsel to me- take as much college as I can, get as high a degree as I can; it’s going to take years but those years are going to fly by. He said to get a job to put myself through college, and, well, a lot of my life right now is banking on the idea that I won’t be able to find one of those when I am at college (I couldn’t find one during my Associates or Bachelors’ degrees so I don’t trust my prospects for Master’s or Doctorate) and trying to save up while I can, though that’s not going the best either, with the, only working one day a week generally (though I did help do vet checks this morning, put in a few solid hours’ worth of work.) But let’s assume I’ll be able to do that, fine, don’t sweat it.
Ross Workman. I never really had trouble seeing him as both a great man and a human. He screwed up what city in Nevada I’m from, during the exit interview, and I didn’t bother to correct him, because (because?) it happened to be a city I was eyeballing for college; that’s a subject we can’t seem to escape when talking about him. Like Riker Data and Worf trying to exit through the revolving doors of the Royale, finding themselves dumped back where they started.
The funeral’s on Saturday, in Utah. I missed Gayle’s funeral.§
9.29 Guess I might as well give a quick rundown of the other TV I’ve been watching lately, for biographical purposes: late last month, after starting up the first of the Star Trek kick as of late, I started watching Leverage: Redemption again, making it all the way through the end of the current season. I was watching it together with Hannah and Kaellen but never got around to the end of the first season and then Hannah-and-Kaellen was no longer a thing and it felt like starting back up again and finishing watching on my own would need to be more momentous, but it didn’t of course and I guess we make momentous moments ourselves.
And I finished and so replacing it in my rotation is Elementary, which I watched on Hulu back in the day and never quite finished season 1 of, but now have, after fiddling around a bit and watching a couple episodes I’d already seen to find my place where I’d left off- the episode where Detective Bell gets shot at, I remember not making it very far after that, it struck me as kind of copagandistic how Sherlock praised the cop for making enemies but rewatching it it’s not nearly as bad as I remember. (Robert Hewitt Wolfe of DS9 doesn’t join the crew of the show till season 2 and I’d wanted to get back into Elementary anyway but I can’t say that the Star Trek connection has nothing to do with my decision to start the show back up again; I’m on a longer arc of murder-mystery kick already as it is, getting super into Columbo back in June. (Jonathan Frakes being a somewhat regular director on Leverage likewise not having much bearing on getting back into Redemption, but I can’t say it’s entirely out-of-mind.)) The first new episode for me, then, being the one where New York City is on lockdown due to the nor’easter blowing in, felt somewhat surreal to watch, on the same day that Hurricane Helene wracked the east coast, leaving entire towns basically wiped off the face of the map– with the discretionary funds I can already afford all going to other charities already, one can only hope one’s tithing is going to disaster relief instead of tax-free stocks and bonds trading.
Other shows I’m making my way through: Community (we got Peacock to watch the Olympics) and Person of Interest (I’d already watched the pilot a couple of times, once when it premiered and once a couple of years ago (January 8th 2022) when I was going through a simultaneous Brian D’Arcy James kick at the same time I was starting up watching The Player, which is a show with a vaguely similar premise that only lasted for half a season though was at least showrun by John Rogers (Leverage full circle I guess.)) This time took, and I’m three seasons in already; tomorrow I plan to watch S4E1 of both it and Community.
9.30 And maybe, as one probable reason I’m getting so heavily into Star Trek again now, it’s all the Moby Dick references in First Contact. That was my, book in the book club last month. It’s weird that I’m only getting around to mentioning it as a potential reason here at the end.
*https://gazafunds.com/ is a great resource but it's only a start in combatting the Israeli government's unfortunately hypocritical war against the largely civilian Palestinian population-- when so much of their military is directly armed with weapons paid for by our very own U.S. tax dollars, appropriate petitioning of our own representatives also becomes important. https://www.senate.gov/
**and now, posting it on blogger
† this sentence is a reference to this idea I had to use Speechify's tools to clone my voice, rather than need to rerecord the sections of my video to which I've made script alterations after recording those parts-- only, the Speechify Studio tier that has that tool costs $99 a month for one month access (!), and I unfortunately paid for the tier below it which wasn't much cheaper. The payment autorenews too. That's what this sentence is about: cancelling the subscription before it did that.
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