Daily Archives: 2007/09/10

As we get closer to the release of HALO 3, I am reminded of many things… I just cannot recall what they are at the moment, or why they were important when I first thought of them.

With the release of H3, I stop to consider two very important matters that border on the life altering and awe-inspiring.  First, how to plan the two vacation days I plan of taking in a semi vegetative state in my office at home playing this game, and two, why the hell am I, a nearly forty year old man, spending $125+ dollars on a game?

Again… these are both important questions, and have deep moral meanings, but greater yet are the smaller ones… like how will I fit the port-o-pottie into my office, and what will I eat for the two days I plan on staying in my office after I finally get the game?  How will I prevent my wife from walking into my office and interrupting me at some crucial moment in game play without doing something that might envolve police and small arms fire?  How do they get those little malt canisters into the cans of Boddington’s ale?

All Very important questions, and ones that I will delve into more deeply as the release date approaches.

I do wonder, however…  I put my name on the list and paid my deposit when GameStop first started taking names and deposits for the game, so I am curious as to how far down their list my name is, and how long I will have to wait.

In closing, I will alter a great quote by a great man.

If Winston Churchell were awaiting the release of H3, this is what he might have said:

“Never has a game meant so much, to so many and cost so much!”

Yes yes… we have all heard it. The words of William Shatner are permanently ingrained on the world.

“Get a life”

I do enjoy Star Trek… It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite story lines. But there are limits to everything and I have to agree with Shatner when he made the comment .

There are people that take the series entirely too seriously, and delve a little too deeply into the fantasy. While this article is about them, it is not meant to hurt or make fun of them… at least not too much.

I consider myself a “Trekkie”. This is, for all of you out there that may not be familiar with the term, the Old School trek fan. I was not around when the series first aired, but I was a child of the syndication era of Star Trek. This was fine with me, because I got to experience all sorts of rich and entertaining 70′s Sci-fi in addition to Star Trek.

My TV watching of the 70′s included such shows as Space:1999, Buck Rogers in the 25th century, and Quark, among many other gems of television watching. So I was not without fuel for my imagination.

But I digress… Back to Trek…

I have been to a couple Sci-fi conventions, and one thing that amazes me is how much people devote of their lives to the fantasy of Trek, as well as the myriad other Sci-Fi fodder that there is out there, but for the sake of this argument, Trek.

I can understand the people that sit and have heated discussions about the physics of Star Trek, because in that, they are talking about something that actually has something to verify. Phasers work because of established (if not a little vague at the time) laws of physics. Warp engines are based on the theory of warping space/time… etc. Going to a show dressed like a Klingon, Romulan or any other of the vast universe of Star Trek charactors, serves no purpose… at least to me.

I do notice several things, though. Why is it that people insist on going to these things dressed up as people that they could not possibly be? I remember seeing a woman dressed like Seven-of-Nine, and she would probably have been very convincing… had Seven-of-Nine come from a collective of borg cubes somewhere in the backwater of an Oklahoma trailer park and had given birth to several Mini-Borgs, and looked like a little of each of them stayed with her.

Or the folks that wear, and anyone who has been to a CON has seen them, an uniform that is obviously for a person a few sizes larger, and the resulting effect is that this is a person whom suffered a strange and little publicized result of losing a few too many molecules in the transporter, or perhaps a Star Trek era Jenny Craig program gone horribly wrong.

Then there was the guy I saw that was dressed like Scotty. Except he was balding, black, missing the entire right side of his lower dental work, and would make the real Scotty (in the last two of the movies he was in) look like Mr. Universe.

Conversely, there are the ones that show up to these dressed in such a manner that they should almost be banned to an adult’s only section. Women dressed like Seven-of-Nine that would make Jeri Ryan run screaming at them with visions of a cat fight in mind. Women made up to be Orion slave girls that even I would consider putting some money down for (If my wife is reading this, it was a JOKE!!!) And a host of other people that really look quite good in their dress. My favorite was the woman who must have gotten the wrong memo, and came to the Trek Con as Leah in the Jabba scene from ROTJ, complete with shackles and bikini. As I recall.. she was the only person there from Star Wars…

I may sound like I am being and ass… but I am not. I enjoy these shows very much but I can just not understand why people spend so much time making the outfits, dressing up and going to these shows when it is really just as rewarding to go as yourself, and play… god forbid… yourself!

I am not a Kirk, Spock, Checkov, and certainly not Sulu (haven’t we learned some interesting things about him, in recent years.) I am myself… an avid Trekkie who loves the shows, read many of the books, is intensely interested in the science, but understands that I am still here, in this universe, and will probably never be anything more than just a fan.

There is nothing wrong with that. I am content to live me life as such, and to go to the shows and watch all the other people who do dress up. I will not call them names, as I have heard others do, because they are still people. Some are smart, some are challenged when they encounter a doorknob. Some have vibrant and active lives, others have had no more rewarding relationship than that of a person they met online but have never had the nerve to meet in person.

They cover all walks of life… and I am sure they are all good people. But still I am miffed, and I suppose I always will be.

If you are reading this, and taking offense, don’t. None is intended. In fact, I have a friend, whom I am pretty sure never reads my work anyway, who has himself a suit of Star Wars StormTrooper armor… but I would never do it. But yah know… if it makes you happy, and does not hurt anyone, then why not?