Star Trek - The Best and Worst

Best Episode
Conventional wisdom has "The City on the Edge of Forever" as the classic Star Trek episode, but I disagree. Yes, it is the best made perhaps, and certainly the most dramatically mature..but it is not representative of "Trek" as a whole.

Here I name "Mirror Mirror" as the best, and it highlights Star Trek at its second season sparkly best.


Worst Episode
Again, conventional wisdom names "Spock's Brain" here. It is very bad, with gapping holes in logic, but it's fun and memorable if only for "Brain, we know nothing of brain"...

No, here I award this honour to "Turnabout Intruder", also the very last episode ever. Queen Bitch Kirk stomps, kicks, screams and does his nails. Yes, more than usual.

The episode does provide Star Trek's fitting closing words: "If only..if only"


Best Alien
Too easy, the Klingons, even as underdeveloped as they are. Part Russians, part Huns, they are not to be trusted and totally evil. "Day of the Dove" however does provide the slightest of character nuance.


Biggest spaceship
"The Corbomite Maneuver" Holy Christ that's big. It must be a mile in diameter. The Doomsday Machine might be bigger but doesn't look it.


Best composed shot
"The Paradise Syndrome" Spock ponders the tones.


Best SFX
"The Tholian Web" As the show deteriorated, its special effect actually improved, as the openings of "Spock's Brain" and "Specter of the Gun" illustrate.


Worst SFX
"Catspaw". The death of Korob and Syliva. Shellfish, fur and black thread. Awfully fishy. The shadowy influence of Sonny and Cher on their appearance is noted.


Best bridge shake
"The Immunity Syndrome" Over the railing no less. Kirk's hair remains in place.


Attack that really gets Spock's attention
"The Changeling". First shot from Nomad, the equivalent of 90 photo torpedos. Surprise!


Best Kirk/McCoy scene
"The Ultimate Computer" And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. Wonderfully economic and to the point.


Best Spock/McCoy argument
"The Trouble with Tribbles" Wonderfully bitchy exchange. Includes one of Spock's best comebacks: "So would an ermine violin doctor, but I see no advantage in owning one". Snnapp!


Best comeback to Spock
"The Squire of Gothos" Trelane's response to Spock: "You do have one saving grace after all. You're ill mannered". Snnapp snnapp!!


Coolest McCoy Moment
"Space Seed" McCoy disarms Khan. "I was just trying to avoid an argument." That McCoy, straight to the jugular.


Best angry McCoy moment
"Friday's Child" Leonard bitch slaps a princess. She gets real quiet after that. She names her child after him as well.


Best angry Spock moment
"The Naked Time" Spock bitch slaps a princess. He gets real weepy after that and exposes a nasty machine fetish.


Best bitchy Spock moment
"Plato's Stepchilidren" Spock lets the 3000 year old princess know she may need some work.


Best Uhura moment
"Mirror Mirror". Forget the interracial kiss, this is Star Trek's most progressive shot, motherfucker.


Best babe
"The Cloud Minders" Droxine. Yes Virginia, there were navels in Star Trek. She had a brain too, but didn't eat very much!


Most frightening babe
"That Which Survives" Lieutenant Rhada. Even Spock doesn't like her. She does have the honour though of announcing the top speed the Enterprise ever went: warp 14.1


Campiest babe
"The Gamesters of Triskelion" Shahna. She even manages to outdo Kirk. Impressive. Brain power, less so.

Her career when sideways from here.


Scariest alien babe
"The Gamesters of Triskelion" Chekov's Drill Throl Tamoon. To this day I'm not sure if that is a man or a woman. Best not to.


Cutest guy
"Shore Leave" Kirk's old nemesis Finnegan. "Lay one on me Kirk, just like you always wanted to do".


Not so cutest guy
Mr Farrell. Omg man, smile.


Scariest alien stud
"Elaan of Tryoius" Engelberg Humperdinck (aka Kryton) gets up to no good.


Career destroying appearance on Star Trek that didn't destroy a career
"The Way to Eden" Adam. Charles Napier when on to better things. Yea Brother.


Worst case of Star Trek's love of Nazi themed imagery
"Patterns of Force" Kirk looks all together too comfortable.


Coldest murder
"Whom Gods Destroy" Garth ends Marta's suffering. Nasty.


Coldest aliens
"By Any Other Name" Rojan makes an example of Yeoman Thompson. They give him a planet later on by the way.


Creepiest aliens
"The Apple" Akuta and the Feeders of Val. Clueless white Tahitians.


Bitchiest alien
"Elaan of Troyius" The Elaan herself. Classic.


Most mysterious aliens
"Arena" We are the Metrons. I never have thought his legs and body match up.


Gayest Alien
"Elaan of Troyius" Ambassador Petri. Nothing can begin to explain how wrong this shot is.


Best dinner scene
"Space Seed" Khan gets his ass handed to him. Excellent, excellent.


Best minor alien character
"Journey to Babel" Ambassador Shras explains the motivations for murder. Even dressed in cotton candy, he's chilling.


Best robot
"I Mudd" Stella Mudd. She would also fit under "Most Evil Robot", even edging out "The Doomsday Machine"


Worst Chekov
"Catspaw" Davy Jones defected to the U.S.S.R. and returned with less acting skill and worse hair. Damn Commies.


Worst Teeth
"Let that be your Last Battlefield" Scotty. Yes blow up the ship, please.


Worst SciFi Moment
"The Changeling" We can reeducate her! In a week! Really! Fooo-eeee!.


Worst intentional malfunction
"Let that be your Last Battlefield" The doors don't quite close so Spock can listen in.


Most Misogynistic moment
"The Changeling" again. Women are "a mass of conflicting impulses". This coming from a not too bright hybrid.


Best innuendo
"Conscience of the King" "All this power, surging and throbbing, yet under control. Are you like that captain?"


Best implied sex scene
"Wink of an Eye" Kirk and Deela have a quick one. Let's hope it lasted a bit longer than a wink.


Best pant ripping scene
"The Savage Curtain" Oppsy!


Best shot of Kirk holding as stone penis
"What are Little Girls Made of?" Watch out Ruk, Kirk looks like he means business.


Best stunt
"Who Mourns for Adonis?" Scotty gets zapped and lands hard.


Worst Kirk stunt double
"Space Seed" Khan fights Kir...what a minute? Who is that guy?


Worst song
"Charlie X" Perhaps being atonal and lyrically inept will be the musical forms of the future.


Best shot of Kirk escaping from already open handcuffs
"Patterns of Force" Um Kirk, your left cuff is already undone..oh never mind.


Best ad libbed shot
"Spock's Brain" Kirk attempts to shut Spock up with his remote control during the final fade out.

I hate you Jim Carrey

Not Gay and Not Gayer

Yet another in a tiring line of films with straight actors in gayface, this time "I Love You Phillip Morris"

The minstrel show's in town!

In the '20's we had black men played by Jews, in the '40's Chinese men played by Norwegians, now we have gay men played by idiots...

I always knew Jim Carrey was an idiot, but you too Ewen?

Please God Ewen, don't flash your dick in this film!

The Shame, the shame..

Divers find Caesar bust that may date to 46 B.C.

Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France's Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known.

The life-sized bust showing the Roman ruler with wrinkles and hollows in his face is tentatively dated to 46 B.C. Divers uncovered the Caesar bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles — founded by Caesar.

Read more here.

Bush around the world

Great collection of international ads using that old war criminal himself Bush Jr.

Read more here.

Les peaux de lièvres

via urbanphoto.net

Ugly condos

Is there another kind?

Look at this extremely ugly condo, placed into a Montreal neighbourhood on Pins Avenue. Obviously the developers had not considered the surround buildings (or just doesn't care. Clearly they used a design program limited only to cubes).

A commenter on the original story hits it on the head...

"This condo design goes completely counter to the architecture of the neighbourhood, where front gardens and staircases help create a street life that is people friendly. These new condos, and there are so many like them, are all interior-focussed. It’s all about self-referential design, display furniture, and underground parking. Part of me wonders what is drawing people with that kind of mind-set to the Plateau anyways. Wouldn’t they be happier in Brossard or Baie d’Urfe?"

Brossard or Baie d’Urfe are becoming too expensive. Anyway, who need 'em now we have an entire city to fuck over in our suburban image.

With the coming of Griffintown, Montreal ain't seen nothing yet.

Strange clouds over Japan

Clue unearthed Fossil shatters previous theories about human migration to Europe

Hidden underneath layers of sediment in a cave in northern Spain was an unassuming but breakthrough scientific find: the jawbone of the oldest-known human ancestor in Europe.

The fossil, dated at approximately 1.2 million years old, shatters scientists' previous theories about human migration to Europe, said University of Michigan researcher Josep Pares, who was a member of the team that found the jawbone last summer.

Read more here.

Germany's animus toward Jews was no concern of Canada

Story of a 1936 visit of a German ship to Canada...

"Out of a grey morning mist, the Reich cruiser Emden - first German warship to dock here in 22 years - came into the port of Montreal yesterday."

- Gazette, Wednesday, May 13, 1936

It was a stirring sight, though the emotions stirred up by the arrival of the German cruiser Emden were by no means the same for everyone.

Read more here.

Sue Simmons wtf?

Sue from News 4 Cursing

Star Trek Renewal Remixed

Someone has taken Star Trek Renewal and mixed it with new music.

It's a strange experience but not unwelcome.

The Pentagon's "military analyst program"

The Pentagon has posted to its website the roughly 8,000 pages and audio tapes it was forced to provide to the New York Times regarding its "military analyst" program. Anyone who reads through them, as I've now done, can only be left with one conclusion (other than being extremely impressed with David Barstow's work in putting together this story): if this wasn't an example of an illegal, systematic "domestic propaganda campaign" by the Pentagon, then nothing is.

Read more here.

Commander tried to suppress film of naked shooting

Lars-Olof Corneliusson, the former commander of a Swedish amphibious military unit based near Stockholm, is accused of trying to cover up an incident in which new conscripts fired shoulder mounted artillery cannons while in the nude.

The leader of the exercise, which took place in 2004 and involved soldiers from the Amf 1 amphibious unit based in Vaxholm outside of Stockholm, was told by Corneliusson to destroy a film of the shooting, according to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

When the film was shown by Svergies Television’s investigative news program Uppdrag Granskning in May of 2006, it generated a great deal of controversy.

The film shows a group of conscripts from Amf 1 shooting a shoulder-fired mortar wearing only helmets, and generated concern about a lack of security within the unit.

Read more here.

Xena

Charlie The Unicorn

Ok, so only 22 million saw it before me...

If I were a terrorist

Hillary in the Bunker

Outrageously over the top.

And probably accurate.

The Face of Idiocy

The BBC is to broadcast an apology after admitting a subsidiary company kept £106,000 from premium-rate phone- ins that should have gone to charity.

A further £6,000 will be donated after viewers were accidentally told to ring in to vote in last year's UK Eurovision final when lines were closed.

Read more here.

The Face of Evil

Burma impounds UN aid deliveries

The World Food Programme has halted aid shipments to Burma after the contents of its first delivery were impounded on arrival in the military-ruled country.

The UN body says the Burmese government seized aid material flown in to help victims of the cyclone, which has killed tens of thousands.

The WFP said it had no choice but to halt aid until the matter was resolved.

Burma's ruling generals have faced mounting criticism over their handling of the crisis.

The UN fears more than 1.5 million people have been affected by the cyclone, with tens of thousands made homeless and vulnerable to disease.

8th grader puts adult in her place

Slam dunk.

Monica Conyers lol, when adults loose an argument, they resort to the response she gives.

Monica Conyers 0, 8th graders 1

Nude Soccer players

London Wasps soccer players are posing to raise money and awareness of male cancer issues.

And as "Nude Soccer players" is one of the top search items to this blog thanks to that idiot David Nugent...

Fuck art, let's dance...

It's about Time

This writer is hoping a single candidate will emerge to finally challenge the Republicans and push them back under the tortured rock from whence they came.

Shattered

The Rolling Stones. Martin Scorsese.

Il fait beau dans l'métro

Makes you want to walk, doesn't it?

Jagger sought Clockwork Orange role

They make this sound like this is news, where this story has been around for decades...although the Beatles twist is disturbing.

Somewhere in heaven there's a cinema playing movies that never were, films that existed solely in a producer's, an actor's, a screenwriter's imagination.

And when one day we make it through the pearly gates, past the pearly ticket booth and the pearly popcorn machine, one of the first films we'll watch is the other Clockwork Orange. The one that starred, and was soundtracked by, some of the 60s' biggest stars.

In a letter uncovered this week, we learn of the Clockwork Orange conceived back before Stanley Kubrick came on board and made his film with Malcolm McDowell. It reveals that Mick Jagger wanted to play the psychotic thug Alex, while the Beatles were interested in providing the soundtrack.

Read more here.

NBC shows up on Zune

Hahahahahahaha

Is NBC determined that no one will watch them?

After a pricing dispute with Apple led NBC to pull its video content from iTunes, the broadcaster has struck a deal with Microsoft's Zune online store.

On Tuesday, as part of an announcement about new Zune features, Microsoft planned to say that it will start selling television programs at the Zune store for viewing on its portable music player. NBC is among the broadcasters supplying videos for the service.

Read more here.

Papyri

Scraps of writings from a garbage dump in ancient Egypt reveal what life was like 2,000 years ago.

See more here.

Bush to Myanmar: 'Let us help'

For once Bush is right.

President Bush joined a chorus of international leaders urging Myanmar's reclusive military government to allow the flow of aid after a disastrous weekend cyclone killed tens of thousands of people.

"Let the United States come and help you," Bush exhorted the junta on Tuesday.

The death toll has risen to more than 22,000, Myanmar state radio and opposition sources said Tuesday, and has left much of the country without electricity, communications and transportation.

The cyclone is the deadliest natural disaster to hit Myanmar -- also known as Burma -- in recorded history, according to a U.N.-funded disaster database that includes figures from the past century.

"The situation is very bad and not getting better," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told CNN Tuesday.

Many in the international community want to help but are still waiting for the Myanmar government to grant their relief teams entry into the country, Villarosa said.

Read more here.

It's all in the database

You have nowhere to hide.

NIN The Slip

The mad genius behind Nine Inch Nails has unleashed a not insignificant release called "The Slip"...

..for free.

Makes you want to throw money at him, doesn't it? Snap out of it Trent!

It's not bad, btw.

Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong

"In fact, not only were all of these companies [eBay and Google] born in an era with no mandated net neutrality, it's utterly unclear that a lack of neutrality would've impeded them in any way whatsoever."

Yup, that's the kind of thinking we're up against...middlemen

Read more here.

The Clown of Turkmenistan

How does any country anywhere let bozos like this amass this much power?

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is this important.

A 246-foot tall, rocket ship-like monument to the late ruler of Turkmenistan, topped with a golden statue of himself that rotates to always face the sun, will be removed from the center of the Turkmen capital, state news media there have reported.

A decision by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to move the monument was his latest step in dismantling the personality cult of Saparmurat Niyazov, whose often bizarre decrees turned the isolated, energy-rich country into the punch line of a bad international joke.

Read more here.

Obama

They're not going to let him win, are they?

Amnesty UK and China

Nuclear threat sparked tea worry

Cold war *thinkers* were a fucked up lot, as this story illustrates:

The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal.

Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.

"It would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured," they stated.

Read more here.

The parish gossip and the fascist vicar

In the summer of 1940, the sleepy parish of Teigh, barely a smudge on the map of Leicestershire, denounced their vicar as a traitor and a fascist.

The Reverend Henry Stanley Tibbs, who had ministered to his 72-strong flock for 15 years, was sent to prison accused of being a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semite who promoted Hitler from the Harvest Festival pulpit.

Their vicar, parishioners said, was a member of the British Union of Fascists, harboured German spies, denounced Churchill and pledged allegiance to the Fuhrer.

The case against Mr Tibbs, just revealed in newly declassified National Archive files, did not look good.

But there was also another side to the story - a tale of small-town grudges, back-biting gossip and anti-fascist fervour.

Read more here.

Neanderthals were separate species

A new, simplified family tree of humanity, published on Sunday, has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published by the journal Nature declares.

Read more here.

Principal Beasley

Seems that mountain of blind stupidity (or willful malice) Principal Beasley, has made it all the way to ABC News...

A Memphis high school principal, fed up with public displays of affection in the hallways, allegedly displayed a list of couples — including some who are gay — in the school, publicly outing the boys and violating their privacy, according to one of the students involved.

Another is a series of cowardly acts by people who target those who have no direct legal right to challenge them. If she pulled this kind of stunt with her fellow adults, she's be sued from now to eternity.

Direct right that is. I hope the ACLU nails her to the wall...and calls her parents to tell them so.

Read more here.

The Empire Strikes Barack

Hitler plot survivor dies aged 90

The man deserves a statue.

The last known survivor of a group of German army officers who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 has died aged 90, his family says.

Philipp von Boeselager provided the explosives used to pack a briefcase planted under a table in the Nazi leader's East Prussia headquarters.

But the briefcase was moved behind one of the oak table's wooden legs, and Hitler escaped with only slight wounds.
Most of the plotters were executed, but Mr Von Boeselager escaped detection.

Among those executed - just hours after the assassination attempt - was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who planted the briefcase and after whom the plot was named.

Johnny Seven

They just don't make toys like this anymore.

Stunning Roman finds on archaeological dig

A ROMAN cemetery containing items of national importance has been uncovered in Herefordshire.

One of the biggest historical finds in the Marches has been made at Stretton Grandison. A complete wooden coffin – only the third to be found in the UK – was one of the items uncovered by Leominster-based Border Archaeology (BA).

A kiln, various urns and a working brooch were also unearthed, along with the remains of up to 19 bodies.

Read more here.

Billy Connolly - The Cardinal's Visit

Hillary Clinton: "Rich people, God bless us".

Ok, now I really don't like her.

On today’s “state of the race” conference call, a reporter asked about an exchange between Hillary Clinton and Bill O’Reilly on yesterday’s show in which Clinton uttered the words, “Rich people—God bless us.”

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson denied that’s what she said: “She said ‘God blessed us.’ B-L-E-S-S-E-D.”

Umm no.

Electronics' 'missing link' found

Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists.

The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as "memristors".

Read more here.

D.C. Madam apparently commits suicide

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as the "D.C. Madam," hanged herself in a storage shed attached to her mother's Tarpon Springs home, police said Thursday.

Tarpon Springs detectives said handwritten notes were found that describe the victim's intention to take her life, and foul play does not appear to be involved.

And pigs can fly.

Why Do People Laugh at Creationists?