Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

For Jade: Ken Cancelosi speculates on how William Shatner has survived the redshirt-level carnage associated with starring in a Trek series.

You can still hear the shout heard ’round the Alpha Quadrant at www.khaaan.com.

And the survey says…

I am: James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) In the 1970s she was perhaps the most memorable, and one of the most popular, short story writers.  Her real life was as fantastic as her fiction.

Yes, Krako, the Federation is just a protection racket.

Here’s an unrelated but classic episode lolcat…

[Update:] Here’s another funny Trek Day article: A Conservative Trek. The dialogue is great:

LOLthulhu combines cat macros and Cthulhu into, as the master would put it, “the slippery blasphemies that wriggled out of rifts in ocean’s floor.” I love the subtitle: CTHULHU FHTAGN CHEEZBURGER.

Avast me hearties! ‘Tis International Talk Like A Pirate Day once again. If ye need help, here’s a handy English-to-Pirate translator that e’en does web pages (includin’ this entry).

Cthulhu of the day: My Little Cthulhu, with victims! There’s also an angry version.

Switchback suggests that someone has put a hex on the T, based on a bunch of late-August squishings and September getting off to a good start with two accidents on the Green line and one bus crash.

I’d say the squishings are typical for the season—this is your last chance to get out there and walk on the tracks in shirtsleeves (bonus points if there’s a third rail), and Massholes of both the pedestrian and vehicular persuasion are always getting in the way of the trolley. Eventually the survivors learn to keep off the tracks.

Think of the T as a Darwinian counterbalance to mandatory health insurance in Massachusetts.

I’ve been watching Atlantis, but writing SG-1. Here’s the latest:

A Rolling Stone, a second sequel to “A White Dove,” suggested by Neith.

Little Problems, a drabble coda to the Stargate season 7 premiere, “Fallen.”

See the SG-1 fic page for the prequel, without which you may be confused, and for a zillion other drabbles if you like this one.

Another steamy August, another sales tax holiday weekend in Massachusetts. Shop early, shop often, but beware the fine print:

The following do not qualify for the sales tax holiday exemption and remain subject to tax: all motor vehicles, motorboats, meals, telecommunications services, gas, steam, electricity, tobacco products and any single item whose price is in excess of $2,500. The Act charges the Commissioner of Revenue with issuing instructions or forms and rules and regulations necessary to carry out the purposes of the Act.
The exemption applies to sales of tangible personal property bought for personal use only. Purchases by corporations or other businesses and purchases by individuals for business use remain taxable. Purchases exempt from the sales tax under G. L. c. 64H are also exempt from use tax under G.L. c. 64I. Therefore, eligible items of tangible personal property purchased on the Massachusetts sales tax holiday from out-of-state retailers for use in Massachusetts are exempt from the Massachusetts use tax.

The next time you’re in Park Street station, check out the new electronic signs. The one near the (former) tollbooth is bright, shiny, and correct, despite the weird font. But this morning around 10am, the one further down the inbound Green Line platform was out of sorts. In fact, it was channelling Yoda:

FOR RIDING
THANK YOU

MBTA
THE

INFORMATION
FOR SCHEDULE

WWW.MBTA.COM
VISIT

It went on in that vein, two lines at a time. I have to wonder, does the software have a Yoda mode, and if not, how did it manage to do this?

In other Green Line news, I made the mistake of trying to take the D Line this weekend. If you just casually read the MBTA’s Disaster on the D Line Advisory, you might not suspect that the D Line has been closed every weekend since construction began, with shuttle bus replacement service. If you live near the D Line and see the buses going by and no trains going by every weekend, then you know.

So I should have known better, but somehow I ended up at the Brookline Village stop on Sunday afternoon, waiting for a train that was never going to come. Fortunately there was a T worker standing around telling people where to go to get the shuttle bus. I asked her if the bus stopped at Beaconsfield. She said yes. I told her I heard the bus didn’t stop at Beaconsfield, and the sign over there announcing next week’s Disaster on the D Line service changes also said the bus wasn’t going to stop at Beaconsfield for the next month.

But no, she insisted, somehow this Sunday was different and the bus was going to stop at Beaconsfield. So I waited (and waited, and waited some more) for the shuttle bus. Eventually two came at once (simulating a two-car train, one supposes, if one is feeling especially charitable). The first stop was somewhere around Cypress and Boylston, which the driver dubbed “Brookline Hills.” “Beaconsfield” being next up, I watched as we passed the many likely turns we could have taken to get us to Beaconsfield Road, if the driver had had any intention of stopping there. Then we passed the Brookline Reservoir and turned onto Chestnut Hill Avenue, and all hope was lost.

Yet the driver did have the gall to stop at Chestnut Hill Ave and Dean Road and call that “Beaconsfield.” Fortunately, I know the area so I was able to find my way home without chewing off any limbs to survive or being attacked by stray moose. But for the 90% of Bostonians who would be utterly lost if a bus dropped them off at Chestnut Hill Ave and Dean Road, here’s a google map of the half-mile walk out of the suburban depths of Brookline back to Beaconsfield Road. The most important thing to remember is to go east on Dean Road towards Boston. If you go west, you won’t see another human being until you stumble into The Mall at Chestnut Hill three days later begging for Perrier.

The best course of action, of course, is to ignore any T employee who claims the shuttle bus is going to stop at Beaconsfield, because the E Line is going to stop at Arborway before the shuttle bus stops at Beaconsfield. (For those of you from out of town, the Arborway stop has been “temporarily” closed since 1987 1985.) Instead, take the advice offered on those D Line Disaster Preparedness signs that popped up at the aboveground stops this weekend: kiss the Beaconsfield stop goodbye and take the C Line instead.