The Old Heroes

 Another takeaway from Picard 3: 

For those who actually have an interest in watching it, I'll try to keep it vague enough not to cause spoilers. 

The whole intent of this Season was nostalgia. They brought back the original TNG cast, threw in some DS9 villains, and featured a couple of Voyager characters. 

*Sniff* It was perfect. 

Enough time has passed that our TNG peeps are parents, like LaForge and Riker. This brought a new dimension, seeing them as family folk, no longer willing to risk their lives every Tuesday for the heck of it. 

Yet they are also, quite clearly . . . old. The youngest actor is Levar, at 66—everyone else is close to or above 70.

Yet it is because of their age and experience that they end up saving the galaxy. 

There was this tweet a few years back by Kathryn Ivey: 

Why is "the chosen one" always a teenager? We're really gonna put the fate of the universe on someone with an undeveloped prefrontal cortex? Give me a story with a chosen one who is a 42 year old mom that has already seen some s**t and is totally out of f**ks to give

She has a point. The "chosen one" is usually a clueless child that has this insane burden thrust upon him. He doesn't need life experience, because he was selected to be an unwitting tool for forces beyond his ken. With regard to general fictional teenage heroes—adults are the clueless ones who need saving. 

It sort of reinforces the trope that adults "don't get it," and yes, while that may be true for some people who were stupid their whole lives, most adults, due to their age alone, are "it-getters" (credit to Jon Stewart). 

So while it may be that I am watching the last vestiges of my youth trickle through my fingers, it is also with the dawning horror that the kids today will find me irrelevant for my inability to take a decent selfie. 

But there is more to life than technological savvy. 

There was a scene in Picard where Jean-Luc is dining in a bar near the Academy, and he is besieged by starry-eyed cadets begging him for background details of his exploits. Jean-Luc has become an icon, a once hero. But he's not a relic of the past. He's not done yet. It's his experience that keeps him from becoming obsolete.

Ma would get so frustrated when she told us to do something a certain way and we wouldn't listen. She wanted to save us the trouble, that she had learned the right way to go about it, so couldn't we just listen?! She was usually right.

Moshe Rabbeinu is the closest we have to a "chosen one," and he didn't start leading until he was 80. He had life experience first as a prince, shepherd, husband, father. Because we don't believe that being chosen means you magically get there with no effort. The chosen people were chosen to bring our excellence, and we failed to such an extent that we were persecuted and murdered for 3,000 years. 

Moshiach is gonna be old.

Vic Fontaine

I have a confession. 

While this blog is vaguely Star Wars-themed, the truth is . . . I'm a Trekkie. 

Luke raised me on The Next Generation, and watching the Picard, Season 3, reboot, I nearly cried seeing the beloved characters of my childhood. Especially Worf. He's my favorite. 

Yet Luke was not so passionate about the other iterations, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, so I never watched those through properly. I've been rectifying that error now, finally getting through the last few episodes of Season 7 of DS9. 

I've been pleasantly surprised at how excellent this series is. The first few seasons could be eye-rollingly cheesy, but then it morphed into an absolutely brilliant show, complete with episodes that had me sniffling. They pushed the TNG envelope, and pulled it off. 

There was a line from one episode that I thought about. 

A character in the show is injured in combat. He's young, an ensign, and this experience rattles him. There is a program in the holosuite which has a self-aware holographic character, Vic Fontaine, and he ends up becoming a central player in a number of episodes. Vic owns a casino in Vegas in 1962.

So the ensign loses himself in this program, refusing to leave, enjoying the safety of the fantasy. Vic even enjoys the company, but at some point realizes that this isn't healthy, and tells the ensign he has to leave. 

The ensign explains that he's not ready to face reality again. Vic tells him: 

Look, kid, I don't know what's going to happen to you out there. All I can tell you is that... you've got to play the cards life deals you. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But at least you're in the game.

It made me think of how our religion says that being living is the ideal, that we can do, that life is always the best option. Life may be disappointing at times, or worse, but at least we're in the game. 

Down with the Borg

Generalizations complicate matters. They encourage conspiracy theories and dwindling faith in humanity. In single women's case, in mankind. 

Take the potentially broiling topic: women and careers. In my case, I have received many a puzzled look as to why I do not have a career ("What a waste!"), along with the ubiquitous "Well, boys nowadays want ______." 

A few girls I know, following some such comments, reluctantly went back to school; they didn't pursue those higher degrees because they felt a burning desire to experiment in other employment. They ended up marrying men who didn't care either way.

Yet, I have come across quite a number of articles opining how "all men want" a trophy wife who'll stay home with the kids, and also won't have an opinion. 

There you go, folks: All men want a women with a career. All men want brainless bimbos. 

That's quite a trick. 

I don't appreciate it that as a female, there will be guys out there complaining, "Well, girls nowadays want ______." I'm me. An individual. The men I've gone out with were individuals too, with their own versions of what they seek in a life partner.

We aren't the Borg ("Self-determination is irrelevant"; "You will become one with the Borg"), who have a warped concept of perfection (which is, if clarification is needed, that "perfection" is no identity, no individuals). There is no right. There is no wrong. There is no good. There is no bad. There is no "all they want." 

There is "What works for me." Which won't be the same as "What works for you." And that's fine. 

TGIF

Deanna the Condescending Twerp

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Loss" 

Deanna Troi is half-Betazoid, a telepathic species; that manifests in her as empathic ability, knowing what others are feeling (as opposed to specific thoughts). She utilizes this "super-power" as Counselor, the ship's psychologist; because she knows what others are feeling, it always gives her a one-up in any situation. 

In this episode, some odd space patterns generated by a two-dimensional species robs Deanna of her empathic abilities. The constantly smooth, calm, wise Counselor goes absolutely to pot. She screams, she rages, she sobs at the loss. 

Commander Riker, her on-again-off-again boyfriend who is usually a reliable source of manly understanding, is oddly unmoved.

Troi: I look around me and all I see are surfaces without depth. Colorless and hollow. Nothing seems real. 

Riker: I'm real.

Troi: No, you're not! You're a projection. With no more substance than a character on the Holodeck.

Riker: I don't believe that. 

Troi: You have no idea how frightening it is for me to just be here without sensing you, without sharing your feelings . . . 

Riker: That's it, isn't it? We're on equal footing now.

Troi: What do you mean?

Riker: You've always had an advantage, a little bit of control over every situation. It must have been a very safe position to be in. To be honest, I always thought there was something a little too aristocratic about your Betazoid heritage. It's as if the human aside wasn't quite good enough for you.

Troi: That isn't true.

Riker: Isn't it?

I was taken by this episode. The considerate Deanna Troi, unmasked as a condescending know-it-all who believes herself surrounded by sub-species! Physician, heal thyself. 

Deanna Troi, the counselor for those who have experienced loss, can't help herself. If anything, her true, petty self emerges. 

It is very easy, from a distance, to say what yenem should do. And perhaps, when we are unhinged by sorrow, we require the assistance of someone emotionally unattached. 

But wouldn't we want someone to truly understand? For that's what we seek: empathy, not sympathy.

TGIF

1)

2) As well as this version. The paiyos could have looked a wee bit more authentic . . .

3) And "The Shidduch Crisis Blame Game" by (Rabbi) Josh Yuter.

Best. Captain. EVA.

Ah, nothing like the claustrophobia of a subway car resembling a sardine can. 

The woman squashed next to me was working on a crossword puzzle on her phone. I idly read the clues over her shoulder, then my head snapped up when I saw: "Captain Jean-_____ Picard, Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise." She had flicked past to the next clue, apparently ignorant of the answer.

"It's 'Luc'!" I exclaimed. 

"L-U-C?" she casually replied. 

"Yes! Yes!" 

She languidly typed it in. 

Good deed for the day? Done.  

In His Shoes

The Big Bang Theory, "Itchy Brain Stimulation": 

Leonard discovers in the junk box a DVD he was supposed to return for Sheldon seven years ago. Knowing Sheldon's OCD tendancies all too well, he begs him not to freak, claiming he will take care of it.

Uncharacteristically, Sheldon calmly acquiesces, much to Leonard's shock. Suspiciously, he keeps asking if Sheldon will actually not flip out, as he has previously woken him up in the night and interrupted his bathroom time, demanding the conclusion of an unresolved task. 

Sheldon: You completely disregard how uncomfortable unresolved issues are for me. It's like an itch in my brain I can't scratch. 

Leonard laughs off that comparison. 

Sheldon: You wouldn't make jokes if you could feel the way I feel. 

Leonard: Well, I don't know how to do that. 

Sheldon thinks a moment, then suggests that Leonard don the hideous, super-itchy sweater from his aunt recently discovered in the junk box, wearing it next to his skin, until this issue is resolved. Leonard accepts the challenge.

The store was closed (obviously), so Leonard searched for the owner, who was dead. While he scrabbles out the sweater in relief, displaying angry red patches of skin, Wolowitz suggests finding the heirs. Weeping, he climbs back into it, and spends the afternoon in the Armenian church where the funeral was held, but there had been no attendees. Sheldon casually mentions searching Armenia for anymore relatives, at which point Leonard is mindless in itchy agony. 

It turned out that Sheldon had been contacted by the video store seven years ago that his DVD was overdue, and he had paid for it (ergo his serenity), but decided to sit on that knowledge since he figured it could turn into a teachable moment.

While I am (hopefully) not as obsessive as Sheldon, I loathe limbo. Not the game, although I am not a fan since I am the first one out, but rather that state of nisht a heir nisht a heen.

I feel oppressed when I have to return a $12 purchase to Old Navy—an unfinished task. I suffer greater agonies when I hear no news regarding what I thought was a good date for days, despite the logical conclusion that he doesn't dig me. 

I also can't stay up late, can't really eat late, don't know how to sleep in, no matter how I try. I really like parsnips. Really.

There are few who are tolerant of my kind. 

But I try to force the sneer mechanism into submission when someone idly moseys over to a store to return an item past the ninety-day limit. When someone can cheerfully bounce around by a wedding when I am struggling to stay awake, gasping at the time ("It's 10:55 already?") When someone gleefully snatches up what I consider to be an unappetizing cookie. 

If I want consideration, I have to dish it out, too. But if I don't get it in return . . . 

     

See ya. 

Nerd Love Song and Shanghai Shidduchim

When I saw this when the episode aired, I got teary-eyed. I initially planned to find a way to link it to a post, but decided I couldn't wait. 

Yes, even though my idea of hell is to be serenaded in public, nothing gets me quite like Klingon.

Ah, parmaq.

Below is courtesy of Mrs. A. Thanks again, Mrs. A.!