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Another story is gathering in my head. It's another one-off, separate from the main series I've been writing. It's intense. (SHUT. UP.) So much so that my main problem is working up the courage to start writing it. I think it's gonna hurt, frankly.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'd like to present to you a book I've had for many years, one that is little known, but revolutionary in its impact. It's a small book, and it's fundamentally a work of translation. It's called Prayers of the Cosmos, and it's by Neil Douglas-Klotz, who writes about religion and psychology and is also a poet and artist.

The book is very simple. It takes the two best known Christian prayer-passages (the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes), gives you the original Aramaic (with the King James version on the facing page), then a phonetic breakdown. After that, the book takes each line separately and gives you first the Aramaic, then the English, then a list of possible translations (more on that below), and then a little essay on that line and its components, the syllables and sounds in the words and their meanings. Then as a nice addition, there is an exercise in breathing and tuning you can do to use the line as a meditation point or mantra.

I tell you, the book is a revelation. I had no idea of the scope of the divide separating us from the original words of this man. It's unbelievable. Here's just one example:

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( 1. Our Birth in Unity )

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So, as you guys have probably already surmised, I'm an Star Trek: Original Series girl. Nothing beats the cool logic of Mr. Spock, the crusty quips of Dr. McCoy ("I'm a doctor, not a scriptwriter!"), the hot legs of Lieutenant Uhura, or the rampant Casanova complex of Captain Kirk. (Although those occasional love handles can put a damper on things.) Certainly Star Trek: The Next Generation, with its cardboard characters and rather grimly humorless PC stance (you can thank Gene Roddenberry's rather unrealistic vision of the future for that aspect of it), bores the pants off me most of the time. Just about the only episodes I ever liked were the ones that either linked back or were obvious rewrites of TOS episodes. I think the only NG episode that didn't hark back in one way or another that I really approved of was Family, in which Picard, Wesley, and Worf all had to deal with their families and the ramifications of time and choice. That had substance that wasn't either forced or self-consciously "tolerant"; its depth came from who the characters were at heart (imagine my surprise that they actually had them), not from what "ingenious" situations they were pushed into. (The quote marks come from the fact that there was very little ingeniousness in the series - the writers ans producers just thought they were being so. Big difference.)

But whether you liked the series as a whole or not, one thing that just about everybody agreed on was the character of Ensign Wesley Crusher. In a word, he was an annoying little dweeb. (Okay, that's three words, but you get the point.) This came mostly from the writers, who thought it would be cute to make one of the major characters a kid, and then didn't know what the hell to do with him. After all, you take an adolescent know-it-all, stick him in the middle of the workings of a military starship, and how's he gonna be anything but annoying? It took quite a while before they put any real effort into developing the guy out of his brattiness and dumb-ass mistakes; meanwhile, the audience had great fun throwing tomatoes at him.

The other problem was Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley. Not that he was a bad actor at all; Stand By Me proved he could be really wonderful and touching. But he didn't seem quite sure what to do with the guy, given that his lines were so dreadful and the character himself was such a giant hardoff. And he had a callow prettiness that worked against him, I always thought. I kept wondering why the hell he wasn't off chasing girls instead of whining at his mom or bugging Picard. (For those of you who don't know or don't care to remember, the Enterprise Mach MMXVIII supposedly had whole families on board, a fact that freaked Picard out in the first episode and then seemed to disappear from sight. Great, guys - what was the point of THAT?) It took Wheaton quite a while to find his balance in the role as well, and by then it was pretty much too late. Everyone had grown to love hating Wesley, so his efforts were kind of a moot point.

Anyway, for those of you given to a bit of day-before-yesterday nostalgia, I thought I'd point you to something pretty damn cool: Wil Wheaton's ST:NG review blog over at TV Squad. Every now and then, when he has the time and the inclination, he posts a detailed review of an episode. He started with the very first episode, and he's picking his way through the series chronologically, choosing episodes that he feels he has something to say about.

And what reviews they are! Wheaton's a very good blogger, as anyone who's read his personal blog knows. He's sharp, funny, and tempers his snarkiness with an accomplished story sense. Plus there's all that personal experience to draw on, as he includes in each review a section dedicated to his memories of filming the particular episode in question, so you get not only opinion, but information as well. This is the sort of thing that review columns should be about, and so seldom are - the complete experience of a piece of entertainment, not just an excuse for the critic to show off how speshul his views are.


This way to the Briefing Room!


If you take my advice, you'll start at the beginning and work your way up the list - there's a particular flavor to reading Wheaton's analysis of the show's development as a whole, as well as his thoughts on each individual episode. But any way you read it, it's a damn hoot.

ETA: Okay, looking back at the blog, I see that it's not exactly in chronological order, but the issue of series development still holds. As there seems to be no "previous page" button over there, I shall now give you a list of links to the blog entries as they were posted. Yes, I have no life. Wanna make something of it?

( List over here )

As I have no ST icon, instead I give you the next best thing - Lt. Tawny Madison's boobies!

BIG TIME REC...

If you haven't ever seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, you must rent it immediately. I Command It. It is Art of the Highest Order.

I'm just nine minutes into this thing and already we've had chicks in pink gogo boots, 60's proto-goth acidhead rock, an insanely goofy dialogue poem on the pros and cons of L.A. ("Cold and cruel" "Swimming pool" "Phony City" "It's so pretty!"), a tsking old-lady schoolteacher, guys in paisley vests, naked boobies...this is just, just

The. Best. Movie. EVER.

*sigh*

Oh, well.

Lots of fun/sexy giggles to be had via this great new vid by andraste_oz. DO NOT MISS!!

Elijah in Tubthumping

And speaking of the Little Sex Bomb, I had a thoroughly hot-but-frustrating wet dream about him the other night. I don't remember a whole lot about it, except that I kept getting pulled away and interrupted every time we were getting down to the nitty-gritty. There was, however, ( one incredibly sizzling moment that I recall with photographic clarity... )