It appears to be some sort of illusion, Captain.

So we're watching a new favorite show of ours, Psych! (Fridays right after Monk on USA. We TiVo, (and I Xerox on Canon machines all the time; I know about trademarks, but TiVo is much easier to say than Personal Video Recorder(1), so just chill) so we just watched it last night. Last night's show took place around a comic-book/sf con, and had George Takei, playing "George Takei".

The character name is in quotes for a reason. George Takei is a sweetheart. I'm a Trekkie and I've met him. Chris is a bigger Trekkie than I am - those who know me well are convinced this is impossible until they meet her. She's met George Takei more than I have. So we both know that the "George" they had on Psych was not the real nice guy who has been at so many real conventions. This "George Takei" was a psych-out. A joke. Chris thought he was doing his Shatner impression. We had a ball.

I know that right now there are angry letters and e-mails on the way to USA Networks and the producers of Psych, railing at them for impugning George Takei. This post isn't one of them. We get the joke. George gets hired for a gig, flown to Vancouver - that's right, kids, Vancouver - and does a day or two shooting. He gets paid; he goes home. He's a pro; the part reads like a bad prima donna, so that's how he plays it.

But seriously guys. We get the joke.


(1) And do NOT get me going about acetylsalicylic acid, which we all know by its former trademark...

If you like good television...

May I recommend the upcoming Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip?

Mondays starting Sept. 18 on NBC; if you have Netflix, you can get the pilot now on DVD, as we did.

The show is from the original West Wing team of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme. Here's the setup: A writing/directing team (Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry) are brought back to save a Saturday-Night-Live-like show - four years after they were fired from that same show. The chairman of the network, who fired them before, still hates them, but he's setting up the new head of programming to fail. It's much better than I describe it here, including Judd Hirsch in a meltdown right out of Network, and a nice cameo by Ed Asner.

One minor difficulty with the DVD: Chris and I are both somewhat dependent on closed-captioning, and this preview DVD isn't captioned.

Humans Outclassed Again

Whoever determined the side effects for the antibiotic Clavamox missed a major one: insanity.

Not from the stuff itself – I’d take it if it were prescribed for me. No, I refer to exhibit A:



This is Hermione, our youngest cat. We named her after the scary genius Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter novels, and she lives up to all of the expectations associated with such a name.

Hermione is the patient in question. Last week, while out performing Important Cat Business, she had some sort of accident and came home bloody. We took her to the vet and got her patched up, but somewhere in there she got a touch of pneumonia. That was another couple of days at the vets. She’s over it now, but is on antibiotics for the next week or so, and she doesn’t like them at all. Thus the insanity.

Hermione’s little – a bit over seven pounds. She’s a very smart cat. We humans in the house add up to over a quarter ton and have several college degrees and decades of working experience between us. We are so outclassed. Just tonight it took bribery, stealth and two people to give little miss H. her 1 cc of liquid antibiotic.

We have another week of this – maybe more; we’re supposed to use up all of the Clavamox. One cc at a time. Twice a day. Insanity, insanity, insanity.

Zero-G and I feel fine

Well, not me personally, but when a friend gets to fly in zero-g it's cool. I pulled negative G's in a Cessna once - the flight instructor was showng off a bit during a lesson - and it might have been fun if I'd had more than a couple seconds' warning. Ah, well...