Why Kirk is Better than Picard - Boldly Go

I know at least one of you ladies is as big a Star Trek fan as I am, so for you:

Twenty-Five Reasons I like Kirk over Picard.

 1. When Picard senses that Wesley is having emotional problems he sits down and talks with him about it. When Kirk sensed that Charlie X was having emotional problems, he took him to the gym and threw him around on the mats until Charlie got over it.

2. Picard's Enterprise was destroyed by a couple of Klingon women while he was stranded on a desert planet. Kirk's Enterprise was destroyed when he blew up a crew of Klingons, stole their ship, and resurrected Spock from the dead.

3. Kirk does not play the flute.

4. When Kirk blew up the Enterprise, Starfleet built him another one and had it ready by the time he got home.

5. Kirk collects antique guns. Picard collects antique matryoshka nesting dolls.

6. Kirk chastises omni-powerful super beings for not being polite to women.

7. Kirk once ordered Scotty to fire a photon torpedo on his position and then he dodged out of the way so it hit the alien he was fighting.

8. When it's time for shore leave Kirk goes rock climbing and drinks whiskey. Picard wears Speedos and reads by the pool.

9. Kirk jumps horses in his spare time. Picard owns a fish.

10. Picard's engineer wears goofy wrap-around sunglasses. Kirk's engineer wears a kilt and can drink you under the table.

 11. Kirk drinks Saurian brandy straight from the bottle.  Picard drinks tea.

12. Kirk can beat a Vulcan at chess.

13. Everyone knows the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty!" The phrase, "Energize whenever you are ready, Mr. La Forge," doesn't exactly have the same notoriety.

14. Kirk once yelled, "No blah-blah-blah! No blah-blah-blah!" and made it sound important.

15. Kirk's hand phaser is sleek and sexy. Picard's hand phaser looks like a Hoover Dirt Devil.

16. Kirk fought the Greek god Apollo. And won.

17. When Kirk gets punched in the face he just wipes the blood off his lip and looks at it with a smirk.

18. Kirk chops his own firewood.

19. The main computer on Kirk's Enterprise once hit on him.

20 When Kirk disguised himself as a Romulan, he stole a cloaking device and used it to escape to Federation space. When Picard disguised himself as a Romulan he ate some soup and then got captured.

21. Even though they haven't existed for hundreds of years, Kirk can still drive a stick shift.

22. Kirk never dressed in green tights and pretended to be Robin Hood, and if he had, someone would have paid for it.

23. Kirk blatantly disobeys one out of every five Starfleet orders just to remind them who's really minding the store.

24. Kirk once kicked a Klingon into the molten core of an exploding planet.

25. Style: Kirk did it first, he did it better and he did it wearing gold velour and Beatle-boots with a space girl on each arm.

A Tutorial on Animals you May Encounter

 

The Little Puddle of Dog Drool was a Giveaway

 

Yellow Labs - K9 Fail

 Since I have colleagues and friends in law enforcement this just totally cracked me up.  

Nom Nom Biscuits

Nobody could really do the "full-scale tongue attack"" like Abby Lab - especially when biscuits were involved.

The best part of Red Lobster - my late Dad's favorite restaurant was the cheddar biscuits.  So why not make your own!

Preheat oven to 500 F. Measure 1 and 1/2 cups White Lily Self Rising Flour  Cut in 3 Tbs. Lard or Crisco with a fork or knife and fork until the mixture is crumbly. 

Add 2/3 cup MINUS 2 Tablespoons milk and barely mix. 

Stir in 3/4 cup shredded cheddar until the dough sticks together, adding more milk if needed and mixing only as much as is needed so there are no dry spots of flour.

Drop from a large spoon on a non-stick spray-coated cookie sheet to make six biscuits.

Bake for 8-11 minutes and top with 1/4 cup butter melted to which you add 1/4 tsp garlic powder and 1/4 tsp parsley. (make a garlic free one for the dog as garlic is NOT good for them)

Thursday Smiles

My husband and I both have COVID, he picked it up at a business meeting, then brought it home to share.  My second time with it so my symptoms were milder than his but I'm still tired.  So for today, just some smiles.

Saturday A.M. - The Birdbath is Open for Business

Click on each picture to enlarge it.

5/
 

The Evolution of Life

The Darwin Awards.  We've all heard about them - an award given for someone who perished doing something incurably stupid.  My favorite perhaps was the person that decided to ride a jet ski over Niagara Falls with a rocket and a parachute, not realizing until rewind was no longer an option that neither rocket nor parachute worked when soaking wet.

On a day-to-day basis I deal with those to meet their end through various means, some things often beyond their control and others where I can only go "what were you thinking?"  Of course, for those, I always hear someone say "It was his time".  I have as much faith as the next person as to my God's will for how my life ends but I'm also a firm believer in the outcomes of free will, and sometimes our choices are such that I'm not sure any power could save us.

I've made some pretty stupid decisions in the past, most thankfully left only the scars that are internal, buried deep where only I can see them.  My other scars?  I've only got a few, one high up on the forehead where I lost a wrestling contest with an engine cover with bungee cords on a Sabreliner, one on my thumb where I lost a wrestling contest over a pen with my Honor's math nemesis Craig (who almost fainted when the little jagged piece of the pocket clip drew blood).  Single moments that stand out isolated from their surroundings of the mundane that long since faded from my mind. 

A lot of the stupid adventures we have are usually an outcome of youth, that feeling that one is invincible. It is the privilege and sometimes the abrupt end of youth that results in living in advance of its days in the alluring constancy of hope that knows no hesitation or hindsight.

Add in alcohol and you have the perfect recipe for a bad day.   I recall recently a young couple who fell 800 feet to their deaths taking a selfie at the edge of a park's high precipice after posting numerous social media posts about other such personal adventures, even posting about the dangers of this regular activity of theirs stating "Is our life worth one photo?" When the remains were recovered under an aloof and indifferent sky, the autopsies completed, they were found to have been quite intoxicated at the time of their fall.

You can learn from your own mistakes, be it altitude, airspeed, or heaven forbid, internet dating.  I learned if I wanted to survive whole I had to sometimes fell the past, and move on to safer ground.  Still, you lose something in that casting aside of reckless youth even as you realize it’s necessary. I recall how the Romans would grieve when feeling a stand of ancient timber, to thin, or build, or to simply let the light in.  If the stand was one of great significance they would make an expiatory offering and pray but they never truly forgot.

The evening was spent out on the covered front porch, enjoying the cooler temperatures. There’s a forest preserve nearby with fox and hawks and other predators creatures that hunt for food, just as some hunt for the pleasure of killing.  The latter, when combined with higher intelligence are the ones I fear the most, the scariest threats the ones that blend in so well, so even on a quiet night, my guard is up. But I enjoy this quiet time outside all alone. All around me I could hear the din of the cicadas.  Such a unique species, they live underground as nymphs for years only to emerge by nature's summoning for what is usually a very short time, their predators being numerous. Emerging to molt and mate most don't get much further than that before a meeting with death, buried years traded for a few shining days.

So many things accumulated during our buried years, the taste of the air in high places, the sound of a name on our tongue as we ascend higher, a flame of a moment that threads through our own flame, making it burn all the brighter.  

I wonder if the cicadas had the capability of thought what would be those thoughts be, there in the ground, not knowing that this is the last safe time they will experience? Would the cicadas stay in their somnolent limbo if they knew their future fate? Would they stay in the ground until they die of natural causes and decay like apples in an abandoned orchard?  Or would they answer that siren call of the light? Somehow I think I know the answer to that - the urge to live fully often outshines all of the thoughts of mortality.

I’m probably not the only one that has pondered such things, as their noise fills the twilight's air.  The living world we inhabit is full of mysteries and miracles, many of which sparked something in our intelligence and memory that can make the world appear in an enchanted state.  But one only has to look at the husks of the cicadas whose song has stilled to know, that the end will always be a question mark, a million ways to say goodbye.

I, for one, have toned down my escapades.  I wear my seatbelt, I drive sensibly (we will forget that time I got irritated with the slower driver and gave the “You’re number 1 finger” (but not the appropriate one) to a car full of nuns (there are NOT enough expiatory offerings and prayers to take THAT one away).  I take my vitamins, don't drink alcohol, get to sleep early, and actually (please don’t tell anyone) “READ the DIRECTIONS”.  But there is still with me a burning fire in both hearth and breast. I'm not quite ready to take to an easy chair, people and places from the past carefully arranged in my mind just so, frozen in amber, a day of a life wasted in remorse.

Tomorrow, Lord willing, is another day, another chance to experience life and breathe even if without a sports car or sweptwing jet to tempt fate in.  Another day to let the past go so that those vain imaginings common to us all don’t fill up the soul with either sadness or regret, those tears only small drops in a vast ocean. As I sit in the warmth of the summer sun, the sound of two little kids running amok in the backyard, rescue dog barking, I'll just smile as I get up and grab the fully loaded “Super Soaker” and as they always say. . .

 “Here, hold my beer. . . .”

Wisdom from a Dog - Angel Abby with her stuffie

A dog is a soul who is just as happy with one toy as a dozen. Humans could learn something from that.