Hot or Not: Jadzia Dax

Yeah, I think “Star Trek Orgasms“is hilarious. Have a click, it’s not inappropriate for the modern office environment.

The funniest part, to me, is the positively asexual nature of the Star Trek aesthetic in the first place. I say this a big Next Generation fan back in elementary/middle school. (I’m excluding the original 60s series from my generalizations, because that show had its own period-specific issues with women). Of course, Star Trek babes are constant in each series. But the appeal stems largely from the understandable and non-threatening way the “sexy” women figures act (e.g. Deanna Troi or Jadzia Dax.) I really thought Dax was pretty. Plus, there was something enticing about the fact that she was once in a male body, and her somewhat charged relationship with Benjamin Sisko was based on a male-male friendship. It sounds somewhat twisted and kinky to describe Dax like that — it sounds like something that would, in fact, be truly hot. Yet there’s no frisson at all when I catch Deep Space Nine reruns on SpikeTV before work. Dax is too safe and noble to be really alluring.

Sterile: In Star Trek, the aesthetic of sterility is dominant. Which, if you think about it, would appeal to horny 13 year olds somewhat traumatized by the idea of sex — it’s, you know, dirty. But sterile is not really sexy in retrospect, is it?

I would assume that Star Trek must be basis of someone’s fetish. Right? Googling “star trek porn” turns up 344,000 hits, but no actual Star Trek porn in the first 20 results! This proves my point: looking back, Star Trek is just not very sexual at all.

How I Felt

I just acquired an HDTV, and I do look forward to watching the messianically revered “Planet Earth” series in all its 1080p 1080i 780p splendor, even though televised nature stuff has never been my favorite. Mark my words, I will not be lulled into watching that bland natural-vistas HD channel that people new to HDTV seem to favor. Always looked vaguely New Agey to me, like footage from an Enya commercial.

During my just-concluded low-definition life, as people would universally rave about “Planet Earth,” this is basically how I felt:

(via)

The Euphoria Engine

Re that new Star Wars videogame.

It looks really, really great.

Drugs

I like the new video from MGMT. (via)

Voice of the Devil

If you didn’t see this already, be sure to check out David Lee Roth’s vocal track from “Running With the Devil.” This is a crazy demented sound, much weirder than I anticipated. LINK

Mario Music

Welcome to Friday. This is from Destructoid:

When the “Egyptian” theme starts, about midway through, I became happy.

For another musical wonder from YouTue — and from roughly the same era, no less — head over to McFly’s place.

Read My Speech

Better voice-recognition software isn’t really something I’ve longed for. And yet, I’m unreasonably excited about the arrival of MacSpeech Dictate. There’s no honest way to gauge my real preference between typing and talking: speech has never been a real option. Who knows? Even if typing wins out for work writing, maybe speaking is to be preferred for the casual email or web post.

According to the NYT:

MacSpeech Dictate is fast and accurate, pouring correctly transcribed text into any program where you ordinarily type, as fast as you can speak. When I read a 1,000-word book excerpt, the program transcribed only nine words incorrectly — 99.1 percent accuracy. (I had read the four-minute training script and fed the program a folder full of documents I’d written, which is how you introduce special terminology and names to the program’s dictionary.)

You get a giddy feeling the first time you see Dictate in action; you can’t help contemplating how much more e-mail you’ll be able to plow through in a day, or how your aching hands will no longer have to keep up with your brain when you’re writing.

Dictate can also operate your computer. You can say “Open iMovie” or “Open Calculator,” for example. You can also speak menu commands and button names, and you can select text that you’ve already dictated earlier (“Select ‘five score and six years ago’ ”). At that point, you can delete it, format it or replace the highlighted phrase. You can also run AppleScript programs or open Web sites by voice.

All you see of the program when you’re using it are two small translucent floating windows (both of which you can hide, if you like). One contains the microphone on/off button. The other, called Available Commands, shows you what commands are available at the moment. Here’s where you discover, for example, the delightful “scratch that” command that deletes your last utterance and the “cap” command that capitalizes the next word you speak.

(Image Source)

Joseph Campbell Is a Douche

Amen.

In other news, I’m very pleased with i09 thus far — although, like all Gawker properties (and many other group blogs), I find the 30+ posts/day output to border on exploitative. Stop the madness, bloggers.

TV Tyrant: ‘Killer of Sheep’ on TCM

Killer of Sheep
Turner Classic Movies
Monday, Jan. 21 @ 8pm EST

Look, people. This is a remarkable television opportunity. Killer of Sheep is a certified masterpiece that went more or less unseen for three decades, and it’s now being beamed directly into your homes on Monday evening. Plus, we’ll also get a crack at four other Charles Burnett films that, as far as I know, remain all but impossible to see. Of the five films presented by Turner Classic Movies, three are very short — so no need to feel overwhelmed.

At a minimum, I implore you: DVR the crap out of Killer of Sheep. Take a chance on the other Burnett films, too. If they’re anything like Sheep, at worst you’ll be getting a slice of Americana from the lost world of 1970s black L.A.

• Read a bit more about my insomniac love for TCM, as well as some of the backstory about Sheep and My Brother’s Wedding, the other feature on the Burnett bill.

The Writers Strike Giveth?

As I’ve discussed previously, it seems increasingly possible that the protracted labor dispute in Hollywoodland is going to scuttle the second half of Battlestar Galactica‘s fourth and final season. But via i09, there’s a new strike-related BSG twist: A rumored prequel series dubbed Caprica, which emerged as a tantalizing possibility when the series was riding high, is now back in the works. Well, not necessarily as a series — that would take, you know, a team of writers — but as a two-hour Razor-style miniseries. As i09 explains:

The pilot script for Caprica was handed in long ago, meaning it could be put into production while the writers strike, although they wouldn’t be able to take it to series until something happens on that front. With television shows vanishing left and right, the Sci Fi Channel and other networks are opening up the filing cabinets and reconsidering options like this that they’d shelved before. NBC/Universal recently put in a call to Mark Stern, the VP at Sci Fi, and told him they want them to revisit the project, so you might get a pilot episode out of the mix, if nothing else.

We’ll see how energized the BSG fanbase gets over a two-hour prequel if Sci Fi network continues to back away from finishing the series.