"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all."

You present a compelling argument, Spicoli. I am willing to concede that it's possible. Lefler, is, after all, also a dork, in spite of her hotness. One never knows.

You're in a bad place in your life when you start to truly identify with ANY Mountain Goats record. For the last year of my marriage I played "Talahassee" obsessively. Good times.

Getting married changed him as a character. He noticeably softened when he was with Dax. Dorn did a good job with it. Star Trek romance is usually pretty dire, and I wasn't a fan of those two at first. But it was done well.

We talked about this last week, and apparently 2001 used a real grandmaster game, as well. Somebody linked to a really interesting article about it, discussing how it "proved" that HAL played chess like a human rather than a machine.

Astonishingly, the Hold Steady came to my town. I didn't see that coming. But we've got lots of blue-collar Catholics, myself included, and plenty of Billy Joel and Meatloaf in the air, so it was a good fit. They still played to only a couple hundred people, but it was pretty terrific.

Agreed, Apollo. There aren't too many truly satisfying Geordi moments, and that's one of them. Too bad it's an entirely forgettable episode.

Yeah, Worf and Troi only hook-up in alternate timelines — "Parallels," "All Good Things." They did at least date in "real" life, but we don't see it go anywhere.

Yeah, fuck "Meridian." That is all.

Favorite Lines?
"And a white bird broke the dark Korean sky / As the rest of my life went by…" (Dissolves me every time.)

Best Ever Death Metal Band, Old College Try, Home Again Garden Grove (the hardest-rocking solo-acoustic song ever!), and the killer album-opening one-two punch of The Recognition Scene and Downtown Seoul.

I didn't get that either. But it was explained pretty quickly, so it didn't bother me. I like Zack's subtle little intertextual nods, even when they're lost on me.

I'd never thought about Ro dying, before. Don't worry, Greenspan, as the above commenters noted, it's never directly stated. It is possible. I believe in DS9 spinoff novels she ISN'T dead, and plays an important role. I'm not sure why I know that. I'm not a NERD, or anything…

And she's required to be a bitch so that she can be the red herring in the murder mystery plot. Which is reasonably okay, if by-the-numbers. Haven't seen that one in a long time, but I remember it as resoundingly adequate. It was cool that it opened with Bev totally fired. She never got a lot to work with, story-wise.…

Of course we talked about the chess thing last week, because we can't delay gratification, but it seems to me that Data must've just let her win. He wants nothing more than to fit in, and he'd learned by this point that completely mopping the floor with everyone he played a friendly game with wasn't earning him any…

I've said it before and I'll say it again — there is just no WAY Ensign Dorkpants hit that. He got his kiss, and we'll leave it at that. He went from virgin to Starchild without passing Go.

Yeah it was a refreshingly realistic treatment of sex for a Trek show. No romance to speak of. No soft-focus-and-foot-massages, as in your typical Troi hook-up scene. And not a lot of hand-wringing about it. And of COURSE they never speak of it again.

And said scientist does have a bit of an anger problem, if I recall correctly.

Nice meta-post. If you're the real Riddle, this shows a refreshing bit of humor after last week's…unpleasantness. And hey! I totally agree with your sentiments.

Also, Lovecraft, I should say that I've crossed paths with you here for a year or so, and nodded quietly at your screen name every time. But here we finally are, talking about the REAL stuff, rather than Star Trek, or whatever. (Though that's pretty fun.) So anyway, cheers, brother. Or sister, as the case may be.