My Cats Are More Musically Inclined than Your Kid.

Hey, It's That Guy!

24, Day 7, 8:00am-9:00am edition

Ok, so while watching the season premiere of 24, I experienced the biggest case of "Hey, it's that guy" syndrome I had since watching The Storyteller. You know, where you seem to recognize all the actors, even though you can't name any of them.

Of course "Hey, it's that guy"-ness is very subjective, so my accounts of near-recognition of actors may differ from yours, but following is a synopsis of the season premiere of 24.

***

We open with Dr. Phlox from Star Trek Enterprise driving his daughter to school. This is 24, so by contractual requirement, he is ABDUCTED BY TERRORISTS.

Meanwhile, Jack Bauer, the MOST BADASS MAN ALIVE, is sitting before the Senate Committee for Wasting Taxpayer Dollars, and being questioned by the dad from That 70's Show, who you may also remember is the President of the Federation. Jack Bauer argues that THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS, and that he can do what he wants because he is so badass (which he is, as are all heroes named "Jack").

The committee is interrupted by an FBI agent who arrives with a subpoena to bring in Jack. This is on Fox, so by contractual requirement, she is hot. Also, her first credited role was a bit part on Enterprise. Jack is taken without a reason given, but the senator/dad/president/guy who messes up the timeline tells Jack that he must be back by tomorrow morning, just 24 hours later. Jack quips "haha, the season will be over by then" before leaving.

Meanwhile, at the FBI office, a woman who road a motorcycle off a space-station into a Tyrannosaur-infested volcano (and is also a decent bowler) explains, for the benefit of the audience, that, in what must be the MOST IDIOTIC I.T. DECISION EVER, Dr. Phlox wrote the firewall used for every government network in existence. All computer geeks watching the show simultaneously suffer PLOT-STUPIDITY-INDUCED BRAIN ANEURYSMS.

Cut to the bad guys, who have a severly-beaten Dr. Phlox. He has, in the FIFTEEN MINUTES SINCE THEY ABDUCTED HIM, managed to construct a device that will DISRUPT ANY GOVERNMENT COMPUTER IN EXISTENCE. We see that the head henchman is the guy who captured Vin Diesel and took him to that awesome planet.

Back at the FBI, the hot FBI agent explains to Jack that Tony Almeida is STILL ALIVE, and that while Jack is dying, Tony will be STILL ALIVE, and that when Jack is dead, he will be STILL ALIVE. Jack does not believe it, mostly because as a badass named "Jack", he cannot be killed.

Cut back to the bad guys, and we see that Tony is, in fact, STILL ALIVE. He threatens Dr. Phlox when the disgronificator does not work properly.

Now, we meet the President of the US who, as it turns out, is Matt Damon's con-artist mother. She also got to investigate Crop Circles with Mel Gibson, and run a Village with William Hurt. She is considering the potentially unpopular action of sending troops in to the fictional AFRICAN COUNTRY OF FICTIONALISTAN, which is being terrorized by a warlord who threatened San Francisco with VX nerve gas, only to be thwarted by Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage (although he has done many, many other things including leading a feared race of Jaffa, saving Alyx Vance, been Worf's younger brother, turned Voyager's holodeck into a hunting game, and killed himself as an old man, so his father, Benjamin Sisko, would return to the time he was zapped by the warp core (that last one is obscure; don't even pretend you get it)). Since she is a woman, probably a Hillary allegory, the producers are allowed to portray a potentially unpopular conflict without a sneer at PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH. Her husband is the Lord Marshal of the Necromonger armies, who was also the president of the colonies before they were wiped out by the Cylons.

Back to the Bad Guys, Dr. Phlox fixes his doohickey and Tony, who is doing science and STILL ALIVE, uses it to take control of the FAA systems and GIVE BAD DIRECTIONS TO PILOTS. We see the reaction from the FAA, which is run by Tim Allen's brother.

Back to the president, she is informed by SSgt. William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, who you may also remember as the ex-husband of Sharona Fleming, Mr. Monk's former assistant, what is going on at the FAA. She ponders if it may be related to her forthcoming decision to wage war on a Klingon-Jaffa who took over Alcatraz.

Meanwhile Jack Bauer, who is a badass because his name is "Jack", is helping the FBI by looking through files, and notices the name of a contact of his and Tony's. He convinces the hot agent to go with him to check out the lead, who is CONVENIENTLY IN WASHINGTON DC, within 5 minutes of the FBI, during rushhour traffic. They arrive at the contact's apartment. It turnes out that the contact is none other than Cicero, General Maximus' servant, whose plight of having his bride abducted on their wedding night, you may remember, inspired Mel Gibson to declare war on the King of England.

Jack and Hot Agent talk with Cicero. Jack is able to restrain himself for THIRTY WHOLE SECONDS before resorting to violence. Cicero is about to talk when he is shot by a sniper. Tony calls Cicero's phone, Jack answers, and hear's Tony's voice on the other end, saying that he's STILL ALIVE, STILL ALIVE, STILL—ok, I'm done with that joke.

At this point the author STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION, and FORGOT WHY HE PERIODICALLY TYPES ENTIRE PHRASES IN CAPITAL LETTERS, but NOW SEEMS LIKE A GOOD TIME TO DO IT, ANYWAYS.

Change We Can All Believe In.

That is, so long as you agree with the use of taxpayer money to fund foriegn abortions. What a brilliant, wonderful use of public funds during a recession.

As this commentor from John C. Wright's blog mentions, "I like to point out that now, you will get thrown in jail if you don't want to pay money to kill foreign children."

Let it be known that now and forever more, the argument of the pro-choice crowd that pro-lifers try to force their beliefs on others while they, taking the moral high ground, do no such thing, is now nothing but a bald-faced lie. You are now required to pay to abort children, even if you find the procedure a gross violation of your morals and ethics.

Also, this video was brilliant.

I'd like to share this picture of the Great Pyramid that my co-worker, Devin, took on her honeymoon to Italiagreekturkegypt.

Look familiar?

She denies any involvement with a secret government organization that explores other worlds by using a device called a "stargate" that creates a stable wormhole suitable for interstellar travel. But I know better. The honeymoon was just a ruse. She spent the three weeks on P3X-495.

Homework, week 1.

So, I decided to ignore all of your advice and went with a sligthly modified version of paragraph #1. Screw you people.

Here's what I finally submitted.

“Hold course. Steady as she goes,” the captain barked. He looked intently through the view port of his fluyt. To avoid attention from the authorities, they were staying away from the main shipping lanes, but that meant during this leg of their journey they'd be traveling particularly close to a region of the asteroid belt notorious for pirate activity. This was going to be his least favorite part of the cargo run.

It was generally well received by the class, even though no one knew what a "fluyt" was. I had to explain that it was 16th century Dutch cargo vessel, and I was trying to evoke the feeling of the age of sail in space, so I used ship classifications from the 16th through 18th centuries. The instructor said that it was fine if I used obscure terms from time to time, and that I should keep it to add flavor.

In addition to that, we had to list the name, age, two positive and two negative traits, and three or four quirks of our focal character. The instructor explained that "traits" are those behaviors that we can't see, but quirks are what we can. Here's what I submitted:

Jack Flint, age 30

Traits:

-Chivalrous
-Perseverance
-Pessimist/Realist
-Contradictory sense of morality

Quirks:

-Strokes his goatee when thinking
-Says “me” instead of “my”, “be” instead of “is”, and other pirate-isms
-Insists he's a privateer, not a pirate

Lastly, we had to bring a picture of our focal character. The instructor indicated that we should look through magazines and such, but I brought a picture I had made about a year ago using UGO's Hero Machine. The instructor thought it was terrific.

Maybe later I'll post the picture I made of Regina.

Since everyone seemed to like the fourth option so much (the first paragraph of Episode II), I'll go ahead and post the rest of that section, from the first chapter. I think Dave will get a kick out of it. (Keep in mind, this is rough-draft and has not yet been edited.)

The Marine on duty lazily flipped the coin and watched as it bounced off the ceiling of the guard shack and gently floated back down, pulled by the weak Rhean gravity. He caught it in one hand and slapped it onto the sleeve of his extra-vehicular suit. He looked down at the engraved image of President Ronald Reagan staring back up at him. That was the tenth heads in a row, and brought the total to three hundred fourteen heads and two hundred seventy-one tails. It was a slow day. 

He briefly looked up. Saturn loomed large in the pre-dawn sky. It hung there in the same spot, day in and day out. Currently, it was about half-full, being last quarter, and would be "new"—a thin, bright crescent—sometime late the next night. Well, night universal time. It would be just after noon, local time, in Rhea's four-and-a-half day rotation. 

Thinking about it made the Marine's head spin. It was one more thing he hated about this God-forsaken moon. Rhea was about as boring as a ball of ice and rock could be. Most of the interesting places in the Saturnian system were either farther out, such as on Titan—home to some of the largest cities off of Earth, and where the vast majority of the solar system's hydrocarbon mining took place—or farther in, on Mimas or Enceladus, which housed the hydrogen refineries where the skimmer ships would take their gaseous cargo after skimming it off the upper-most layers of Saturn's atmosphere. Rhea, by comparison, was the middle of nowhere, which was exactly why he was there. There wasn't much point to building a super top-secret and high-security special weapons laboratory on one of the busiest moons in the solar system. And as long as the US government needed super top-secret and high-security weapons labs, they needed Marines to guard them. 

"Heads up," the Marine heard through his two-way. He looked up at his partner, standing just outside the guard shack. He was pointing towards a small, open-top vehicle approaching from the direction of the spaceport. The Marine stepped out of the guard shack and held up his hand, signaling the vehicle to stop. The vehicle slowly decelerated and came to a halt just in front of the gate. There were three people in it. The driver looked to be about thirty years old and had black hair and a devilish looking goatee. Seated to his right in the front passenger's seat was a very tall dark-skinned man with a thin face. Behind the two of them, in the back seat, was a very young looking man with messy, sandy blond hair. 

"Name and purpose of visit," the Marine demanded into his two-way on a commonly-used communications frequency. 

The Marine could tell by looking through the visors of the EV suits of the vehicle's passengers that the driver was the one responding. "I'm escorting Doctor Gordon Frohman, here on business to see Doctor Kleiner."

 

"Can I see a government-issued photo ID, Doctor Freeman?" the Marine asked. 

"Frohman," the young man in the back seat corrected as he produced an ID card, which he handed to the Marine. The Marine took it and inspected it. He returned to the guard shack and checked the schedules. There was an entry that a Doctor G. Freeman would be coming to see Doctor Kleiner, but no mention of a Doctor Frohman. It was probably just a typo on the schedule, but the Marine still felt it necessary to call it in. 

He touched a control on his suit that set his two-way to use the base's secure frequency. "This is Corporal Calhoun, at the main gate. I need to speak with Doctor Kleiner." 

"One moment," came the reply from the base communications officer. 

The Marine waited for about fifteen more seconds before another voice came over his two-way. "Doctor Kleiner here." 

"Hello, Doctor Kleiner, this is Corporal Calhoun at the main gate. I have a Doctor Gordon Frohman here to see you. Are you expecting someone by that name?" 

"Yes, absolutely. He should be on the schedule. I made sure to let base security know he was coming." 

"Thank you, Doctor. The schedule lists a Doctor Freeman. I figured it was an error but wanted to confirm with you first." 

"That's not right," said the voice at the other end, sounding very annoyed. "I don't know any Doctor Freeman. Why would I have said a Doctor Freeman was coming when I don't know one?"

 

"Sorry to disturb you, Doctor. I'll send him right in." 

"Thank you, Corporal. It will be exciting to see Doctor Frohman again. It's been twenty years since I last saw him, at graduate school." 

The Marine had already been moving to press the end transmission switch, and his mind was further slowed by the sheer boredom of the day and the fact that so many of his brain cells had already been lost to counting coin flips, so that he had already ended the call to the doctor before he had fully comprehended his last sentence. Twenty years? He looked down at the ID card, still in his hands. It listed a birth date of March 14th, 2157. Twenty years, indeed. He didn't think too many universities were in the business of conferring doctorates on toddlers. He began to reach for his assault rifle when he felt a sharp prick in his arm, followed by a sudden and overwhelming feeling of drowsiness. He tried to fight it, at least long enough to lie down on the floor, but gave way very quickly to the desire to take a nap right then and there.

Last one, I promise.

But let's end on a positive note.

God Bless George W. Bush

It is fitting that he, whose first act in office was to block federal funding to foreign groups promoting abortion, left us with this as one of his last.  As Joe mentioned elsewhere, it will certainly be the last one for a while.

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My Administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing Federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence, and funding crisis pregnancy programs. In 2002, I was honored to sign into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which extends legal protection to children who survive an abortion attempt. I signed legislation in 2003 to ban the cruel practice of partial-birth abortion, and that law represents our commitment to building a culture of life in America. Also, I was proud to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which allows authorities to charge a person who causes death or injury to a child in the womb with a separate offense in addition to any charges relating to the mother.

America is a caring Nation, and our values should guide us as we harness the gifts of science. In our zeal for new treatments and cures, we must never abandon our fundamental morals. We can achieve the great breakthroughs we all seek with reverence for the gift of life.

The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2009, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

GEORGE W. BUSH

More info about this tradition instituted by President Ronald Reagan can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sanctity_of_Human_Life_Day.  Rapidly deleted from the White House website after President Obama took office, it can now be found here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85644.

Brilliant!

Who knew that our new president is a closet pro-lifer?

Quoted. For. Truth.

<<

When ordinary rationalization fails, people revert to other modes of suppression. We often see this when an unmarried young woman becomes pregnant. Suddenly her conscience discovers itself; though she was not ashamed to lift her skirts, she is suddenly ashamed to show her swelling belly. What can she do? Well, she can have an abortion; she can revert to the mode of suppression called "getting rid of the evidence." Once again conscience multiplies transgressions. But she finds that the new transgression is no solution to the old one; in fact now she has something even more difficult to rationalize.

Think what is necessary to justify abortion. Because we can’t not know that it is wrong to deliberately kill human beings, there are only four options. We must deny that the act is deliberate, deny that it kills, deny that its victims are human, or deny that wrong must not be done. The last option is literally nonsense. That something must not be done is what it means for it to be wrong; to deny that wrong may not be done is merely to say "wrong is not wrong," or "what must not be done may be done." The first option is hardly promising either. Abortion does not just happen; it must be performed. Its proponents not only admit there is a "choice," they boast of it. As to the second option, if it was ever promising, it is no longer. Millions of women have viewed sonograms of their babies kicking, sucking their thumbs, and turning somersaults; whatever these little ones are, they are busily alive. Even most feminists have given up calling the baby a "blood clot" or describing abortion as the "extraction of menses."

The only option even barely left is number three: to deny the humanity of the victims. It is at this point that the machinery slips out of control. For the only way to make option three work is to ignore biological nature, which tells us that from conception onward the child is as human as you or me (does anyone imagine that a dog is growing in there?)—and invent another criterion of humanity, one that makes it a matter of degree. Some of us must turn out more human, others less. This is a dicey business even for abortionists. It hardly needs to be said that no one has been able to come up with a criterion that makes babies in the womb less human but leaves everyone else as he was; the teeth of the moral gears are too finely set for that.

Consider, for instance, the criteria of "personhood" and "deliberative rationality." According to the former, one is more or less human according to whether he is more or less a person; according to the latter, he is more or less a person according to whether he is more or less able to act with mature and thoughtful purpose. Unborn babies turn out to be killable because they cannot act maturely; they are less than fully persons, and so less than fully human. In fact, they must be killed when the interests of those who are more fully human require it. Therefore, not only may their mothers abort, but it would be wrong to stop the mothers from doing so. But look where else this drives us. Doesn’t maturity also fall short among children, teenagers, and many adults? Then aren’t they also less than fully persons—and if less than fully persons, then less than fully humans? Clearly so, hence they too must yield to the interests of the more fully human; all that remains is to sort us all out. No, the progression is too extreme! People are not that logical! Ah, but they are more logical than they know; they are only logical slowly. The implication they do not grasp today they may grasp in thirty years; if they do not grasp it even then, their children will. It is happening already. Look around.

So conscience has its revenge. We can’t not know the preciousness of human life—therefore, if we tell ourselves that humanity is a matter of degree, we can’t help holding those who are more human more precious than those who are less. The urge to justify abortion drives us inexorably to a system of moral castes more pitiless than anything the East has devised. Of course we can fiddle with the grading criteria: consciousness, self-awareness, and contribution to society have been proposed; racial purity has been tried. No such tinkering avails to change the character of our deeds. If we will a caste system, then we shall have one; if we will that some shall have their way, then in time there shall be a nobility of Those Who Have Their Way. All that our fiddling with the criteria achieves is a rearrangement of the castes.

Need we wonder why, then, having started on our babies, we now want to kill our grandparents? Sin ramifies. It is fertile, fissiparous, and parasitic, always in search of new kingdoms to corrupt. It breeds. But just as a virus cannot reproduce except by commandeering the machinery of a cell, sin cannot reproduce except by taking over the machinery of conscience. Not a gear, not a wheel is destroyed, but they are all set turning in different directions than their wont. Evil must rationalize, and that is its weakness. But it can, and that is its strength.

>>

From "The Revenge of Conscience", J. Budziszewski, First Things, June/July 1998.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the day the Supreme Court of the United States of America decreed that my child has no inherent rights.

It is interesting how becoming a father has influenced my view on abortion. Prior to last November, it was such an abstract thing. We were always talking about other people's children, some other child, outside my monkeysphere. I knew through reason that we were talking about some one that I should protect, but it's hard to muster feelings for an abstract concept. Even my own nieces and nephew, I did not begin to feel a bond with until after they had been born, after I had held them in my arms. My choler over the issue was driven more by the ignorance and lack of reason on the part of those who sought to promote it, rather than over the loss of any life.

But now, I have a hard time maintaining a stoic, rational distance from the issue. Now, it's personal.

On November 1st, my purpose in life—the very point of my existence—changed. A change of such magnitude had only occurred once prior, on January 10th, 2004. Before January 10th, the meaning of my life was simply "to know, love, and serve God in this life so I can share ever-lasting happiness with him in the next." On the tenth of January, 2004, a new reason was added: to Love my wife, as Christ Loves his church. And finally, on November 1st, a third reason was added: to protect and nurture our children so that they, too, may one day share in God's love.

When I die, and am judged before God in all his majesty and glory, he will ask me two questions, in particular. He will ask me: "Did you love your wife as I have loved you?" and "Have you raised your children to know me, and strived with all your might to keep them from all harm?" If I cannot answer both those questions with a powerful, resounding, unreserved, unhesitating "yes" then I will be in serious, serious trouble.

And that is why my fury is beyond anything that this world could cause when there are those who would deny my solemn responsibility to protect my child.

Perhaps the most common justification for abortion is that it is not really killing an inoccent human life. It is merely a "removal of the mother's tissue". Abortion is sometimes referred to as "the extraction of menses", or as I heard one pseudo-feminist refer to it, "just like getting your tonsils removed, only safer," an assertion so ludicrous (read from point 22 at the bottom of page 24 (30 by the pdf's numbering) to point 100) that it would be funny, if it did not involve the wounding of millions of women and the deaths of millions of children.

These people do not really anger me so much. Instead, I look at them with confusion and pity. Their claim that my child is not really a child, but instead just a part of my wife, is so out-of-touch with reality that I can only shake my head in wonder at the monumental ignorance and denunciaton of what is manifestly true. I have seen pictures of my baby. I have seen him bouncing and dancing in the womb, as alive as you or I. I have seen and heard her tiny heart, beating furiously, pumping her own blood through her own veins. For someone to come up to me and assert "that is not a child" or "that is not really alive" or "that is a lump of undeveloped tissue" is beyond reason and reality. It is as if some one came up to me and said, "your car is such a very fiery shade of red." I can only wonder if this person really occupies the same reality as I. Do I really need to argue such a thing? Is the truth not self-evident for anyone with eyes to see?

No, these people do not anger me; they merely arouse my pity.

The second group of people are those who recognize the humanity of the unborn, but are too cowardly, or too uncaring to do anything about it. These are the John Kerrys of the world; the "I personally believe abortion is wrong, but I'll be damned if I'm going to do anything about it." (And it is likely they will be.)

These people I look upon with disgust. While they claim to be on my side, functionally they are opposing me. Not only do they refuse to offer help, but they actively prevent my ability to safeguard my wife and child. They refuse to give me recourse to the law to be able to bring to justice those who would prey on the most innocent. These are the ones that, If they really do believe that abortion is wrong, then they are willingly and blithely condoning the largest holocaust the world has ever seen. It is cowardess of the highest and most ignominious kind. It is shameful and disgraceful. It is as if, when the Soviets come door to door looking for Gypsies, Catholics, Poles, Ukranians, or other Undesireables, I simply stood by and watched as they dragged my neighbor away. "I feel for you man," I might say to the poor, condemned neighbor, in an attempt to make him feel better, "but who am I to tell Comrade Stalin what he should do with his own body?"

Then there is the third group.

These are those who do not merely deny my resposibility to protect my wife and child; they do not merely fail to help me guard them from the butchers who would take the innocent life and, in the process, grievously wound my wife. No, the third group are those who openly champion the cause of the butcher. They are the ones who stand up and applaude those evil men who would slice my child into pieces and suck him out of my wife's body; or poison him with salt; or pull her feet-first out of my wife and then, when she is mere inches from birth, slice open the back of her sweet, precious little head and suction out her brains; or use any one of the cruel and barbaric practices that have been designed to destroy those who are most innocent and most needing of our protection. They are the Gloria Steinems and the President Barack Obamas.

If I lived in a less civilized time, or if I did not have the benefit of a faith informed by reason, these people would drive me to take up arms, and give me cause for violent revolution to defend the rights of those I love.

And they ought to thank God that I am Christian, for in my righteous fury, one of the only things holding me back is the hand of Christ on my shoulder, and his voice in my ear, whispering "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and forgive them for they know not what they do."

Update on the Little One.

Mad-Libs style.

Adjective:_______

Part of body:_______

Verb ending in -ing:_______

Woman in room:_______

Number:_______

Plural unit of measurement:_______

From Babycenter.com (highlight to read):

How your baby's growing:

Fingerprints have formed on your baby's (adjective)_______ fingertips, her veins and (part of body)_______ are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is (verb ending in -ing)_______ to catch up with her head — which makes up just a third of her body size now. If you're having a (woman in room)_______, she now has more than (number)_______ eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 (plural unit of measurement)_______ long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.

So I finally bit the bullet, took the advice of Mom and Dad, and enrolled in a UCI Extension course: Intermediate Novel Writing. (Now that I've already written one, I'll learn how to do it right.) I may from time to time post the homework, when it doesn't have extreme spoilers, and if there are any who are interested.

Part of our homework assignment for the first work week is "write an opening paragraph for a novel incorporating a dramatic "hook". (Maximum 100 words)

In the interest of laziness, I don't plan to actually write anything new for this, but instead will just recycle stuff I've already written. And in the interest of extreme laziness, I don't even plan on choosing the pre-written material myself. Instead, I'll just put it up to a vote for my flock of loyal fan (hi, Mom!).

So, which of the following opening paragraphs do you think is best written and has the best dramatic hook. In essence, which one of these paragraphs most makes you want to know what the next paragraph says?:

1. “Hold course. Steady as she goes,” the first mate barked. The captain kept a close watch through the viewport of his fluyt. This was going to be his least favorite part of the cargo run. To avoid attention, they were staying off the main shipping lanes and in this leg of their journey they were traveling through an uninhabited stretch of the asteroid belt.
   
   
2. Captain Jack Flint floated through the docking hatch of his corvette Redemptrix, and into the spacious cargo hold of the fluyt. After that debacle of a boarding attempt, he was amazed that he and his crew had made it inside. The attack and disable operation had gone flawlessly; just about the best he'd ever seen. But of course, the whole job couldn't go that smoothly. No, that would have been too easy.
   
   
3. "Miss Burke, take us up." As if eager for the Captain's command, Regina gently yet firmly eased the throttle forward. The Redemptrix gracefully lifted out of bay three-two-seven of Arcas spaceport and began her skyward ascent. The hot helium gas streaming from the four thrust nozzles left a yellow trail keelward and behind the ship.
   
   
4. The Marine on duty lazily flipped the coin and watched as it bounced off the ceiling of the guard shack and gently floated back down, pulled by the weak Rhean gravity. He caught it in one hand and slapped it onto the sleeve of his extra-vehicular suit. He looked down at the engraved image of President Ronald Reagan staring back up at him. That was the tenth heads in a row, and brought the total to three hundred fourteen heads and two hundred seventy-one tails. It was a slow day.
   
   
5. Ensign Thomas Beckett had practically been raised on Star Trek. As a kid, he would religiously watch the weekly adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew, making sure to catch them as soon as they were broadcast. Later on, he followed Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew in their battles for the good of the Federation. By the time Voyager aired, he did not have much time to watch it—but did so whenever he could—because he was attending Star Fleet Academy.

(In case you hadn't caught it, that last one isn't from SPM3DoF: The Novel, but from a short story.)

What We're Playing.

Volume 1

From What We're Playing

I meant to post this earlier, but for all of you poor saps who we deemed unworthy of receiving this on a physical medium, you too can bask in the greatness of Belland piano playing. Happy (belated) Christmahanukwanzakapiphone.

Linky.

Let me add that "Dawn", as performed by Mrs. Pickles is my new favorite piece, and that Dave should legally change his middle name to "Vladimir Horowitz".

For Those Who Need a Good MST3K Fix.

Consider Unskippable, over at The Escapist, where they do the same thing for video game cutscenes.

Here's their first entry.

It starts slow, but I lost it shortly after the six-minute mark.

Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test...

(Me)

The Lord

You scored 24% Cardinal, 54% Monk, 38% Lady,  and 59% Knight!

    

You are of the intellectual breed and yet you are also very interested in war. You are of the aristocracy and head the cavalry a safe distance from the carnage of the front lines. You believe in defeating your enemy with not only might, but also wit. 

You scored high as both the Monk and the Knight. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the Knight, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

(The Resident Murloc)

The Harlequin

You scored 50% Cardinal, 28% Monk, 50% Lady, and 46% Knight!

You are a mystery, a jack-of-all-trades. You have the king's ear, but also listen to murmurings of the common folk. You believe in the value of force and also literature. Truly you are the puzzlement of the age.

Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at HelloQuizzy

First Pictures of the Little One.

And thus begins the transition from this blog being a place to post pictures of my cats to a place to post baby pictures.

---Update: Comments by The Murloc---

The baby's only about 4.31 cm, which is roughly 1.7 inches. Not very big, but VERY active. It was dancing a jig while we were taking a peek... I think the baby was showing off. =p

You could even just barely make out the tiny toes and fingers.

We got to see the little heart beating strongly at 160 beats per minute, and then later got to hear it. Very faint thumps, but distinct.

So, while I may not be showing and not have any pregnancy symptoms, the ultrasound confirms there's a little life form growing in me. =)

---End transmission---