Do I Need a Star Trek Fan Character?

As a Trekkie, I feel a little sad that I don't have a fan-made ship or whatever like a lot of the Trekkies do. I had invented one, years ago, but unsurprisingly it was very self-referential and I was the captain of it. And it was some kind of exploratory special forces so of course I'd be an even better captain than any other captain and they'd see me as their equal and invite me to parties. Forget that noise! I want a fan character base of operations I can be proud of, and I bet the new Star Trek online game doesn't even offer it as an option, instead saddling you with a ship and a crew so you can be a captain among a million captains.

No, if I had it all to do again - and I do, every day! - I'd choose a stationary locale as my base of operations, either a Deep Space station or a planetary research station. I probably wouldn't choose to be Starfleet, either, which speaks more to my own personal development as someone whose style stands on its own. In fact I have trouble seeing myself as anything other than myself - black and yellow accented coat with wild hair and beard. I love who I am nowadays. My wife loves who I am nowadays. I'm beginning to think that fan characters are an escapist habit of people who can't tolerate their own reflections - or are afraid to forge their reflection into what they want it to look like.

FINAL VERDICT: No. I do not need a Star Trek fan character. Long story short, I'm happy enough watching the exploits of the Star Trek universe from a viewer's perspective. I can go to conventions in my regular outfit, which is so unique that people stare at me all the day long. This was a completely pointless blog post; I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which was VERY LITTLE INDEED.

Back to school, back to school.

I start school again on Monday with a mixture of resignation and an adjective a tier lower than "excitement". I can't really say I'm excited about it. All things considered, I'd rather not go. But I do derive a lot of satisfaction from going to classes with Christina, because as long as she's around it's a pretty good time, I have a good chance of learning something, and it's basically guaranteed that my own apathy towards the educational system won't get me dropped out or failed.

This will be our last semester at Northeast State, after which we will have drafting certificates that in theory will open doors for us into the world of AutoCAD engineering. At that point, we can't sign up for a job at the same time, share the same cubicle. Nobody's going to hire us as a package deal if they hire us at all. So not only do I have the weight of the job market sitting on my shoulders, I also get to know that if I get hired, I have to solo it. That'll be me, in a position that somebody else probably deserves more, not really knowing what the hell I'm doing and possibly holding up the entire project's show because of it. Meanwhile, thanks to 21st century values, if Christina does get hired at the same place it will be to shuffle papers around, not to actually work on the computer - despite the fact that she has more natural aptitude for it than I do.

No, right now she's getting paid plenty at her job at Stellar Studios. She'll actually be getting less hours so that she can go to school to get a certificate for a job that won't give her the same opportunities she has at her current job.

What do I want? The only thing I've ever wanted. To draw pictures when it pleases me to do so, and to find entertainment for the rest of the time that it doesn't.

Some days I'm ready to throw in the towel.

It's gotten bad these days, people.

If you understand basic arithmetic, you're a NERD. If you can spell at a fifth-grade level, you're a GRAMER FAG. At some point, it became all right for people to not only become appallingly under-educated morons, but proud ones at that. For the most part, they seem to demand the right to ignorance. God help you if you show the slightest hint of adequacy, because these tuber-creatures from the anus of humanity will give you an earful over it.

I don't want to send my kids to school with these dumpster babies. I don't even know what to think about the horrifying idea of them running the world when my generation is too enfeebled to do so. I tell myself that maybe every generation is like this. Maybe every generation thinks the next one down is so stupid that it will leave the world a shambles.

What kills me is their sense of entitlement. OH, YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SMART BECAUSE YOU UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEIR, THEY'RE AND THERE? No, dipshit, I think that that is something a child should understand. Maybe if you didn't stub up and act like I just called you a racial slur because I implied that you should be as smart as the janitors were in my high school - maybe if you took five goddamn seconds to commit to memory how to spell words, and why they should be spelled that way - but no. You've got some kind of right to acting like...

You know what, I think I'm just going to walk away from this article before it ends with gunfire

Spur of the Moment Responsibility

Responsibility makes me crumple like a cat with a sock draped across its back. But if the same task I am asked or expected to do is thought of on the spur of the moment, I can jump right out the door and get to it - because I love the idea of surprising people. But there are no surprises with routine expectations. I wish I could find a way of doing things that people want me to do, in a way that made me felt like I was being a sly little so-and-so by doing them.

What I'd like to do, but lack the resources

I worked up a little three-panel comic today, that I ended up being discontent with because I couldn't make it look just how I wanted.

PANEL 1 (Brainfreeze sits at a bar, depressed): So I robbed the 7-11 earlier.
PANEL 2 (Brainfreeze extends hand menacingly): As I was leaving, I pointed at the girl behind the counter and said "Have an ice day."
PANEL 2 (Bartender, off-panel): Didn't Schwarzenegger say that in Batman and Robin?
PANEL 3 (Brainfreeze even more depressed): That's what she asked.

ALT TEXT: For a supervillain, this is basically like contracting cancer.

The more I hammered at it, the more I thought: Damn, this would be so much easier to do - and so much better to look at - if instead of drawings, I just used photographs. Had people dress up as supervillains and do a photo comic strip about the trivialities of their lives.

It would be easy to do, it would be fun to do, it would be fun to read. The setup is the only hard part. The costuming and the hiring of people to play the part. But that "only hard part" is sufficiently hard that the project will never get off the ground. GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE...

After doing some rudimentary math, I have determined that it would cost less to buy a passport and drive to Canada for health care than it would be to get a full workup at my local hospital. I've been having a lot of chest and arm pain recently, and have been thinking an EKG might be a good idea. I am just imagining them telling me that it is a miracle that I am alive and that a quintuple bypass will be required for my continued survival. If surgery were needed, I would beg them to also liposuction out as much fat as they feel comfortable taking. Lord, I can only imagine what it would feel like to suddenly be a hundred or more pounds lighter. Heavenly, I'm sure.

One quick note

Is anyone else as pissed off as I am at the extremely shitty way DVDs are packaged these days? The stupid-ass security tape on the top of the DVD either leaves gluey residue, tears off the top of the paper insert, or both. If that wasn't bad enough, they seem to (apparently) glue the cellophane that wraps the entire thing to the spine of the DVD. Infuriating. You can never get it all off. It is getting to the point where I need to just buy a clean, empty DVD case every time I buy a DVD, to transfer the salvageable parts of the new DVD into.