Monday, February 07, 2005

postal scrotum(s) ...scrota?

The Infidel writes, apropos of Star Trek:

Did you hear ST: Enterprise has been cancelled for good this time? ST may finally pass into the historical record now that Enterprise's executive producers and Paramount couldn't make ST bearable for a smarter generation.

I never got into that show. Saw maybe one episode, plus a few glimpses of others. The one episode I saw had to do with two members of the bridge crew (the captain and, uh, that other dude) apparently trapped in some sort of living Elmer's Glue. As they hung suspended in a mass of white stickiness (had they wandered into some gigantic alien's porn studio?), they realized they were beginning to read each other's thoughts. The Elmer's Glue creature (or hive mind of creatures, or whatever it was) seemed malevolent, but turned out to be largely harmless once properly understood. I'll let the astute political/cultural bloggers tease out the implications of that one.

I'm a fan of Scott Bakula, but I agree with the beer-drinking crowd that Bakula's Captain Archer doesn't hold a candle to Shatner's Kirk. Bakula was dubbed "the first female captain of the Enterprise" when the new series came out.

Like everyone else, however, I am endlessly fascinated by Vulcan Chick and her uniform. Obviously, this was a concession to the male teen crowd, who previously rejoiced in the Borg Babe's bodily proportions and uniform on Voyager.

And in a different email, the Maven writes to scold and to comfort:

As a gal of partial (1/4) "closeted Italian extraction" I'll give you a tip: NO OIL TO PASTA WATER, that is, unless the objective is to have no sauce stick to your pasta. To keep it from clumping, have the water heavily salted and rolling boil before the pasta is added, and just keep stirring. Since fresh pasta takes less time to cook than dry, it's only about what? Four minutes, five, tops, before the pasta is ready. Time well spent. And believe it or not, the variety/shape you made is actually very homey. It's called "ragatelle" which literally means, "rags". Totally legit!

Yes, it's true-- salt water has been my mother's standard operating procedure since the dawn of history. I used to do the salt water thing, but I like the flavor that a blob of olive oil can impart. You're right, though: salt water's probably best, so I'll go back to that. I'm going to be making (and, I hope, photographing) the pasta again this evening. Nothing beats practice.

In other news: a fantastic parody of the Star Wars fan/spoiler site SuperShadow.com can be found here:

SuperStupid.


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