The Butcher Shop

Tasha Yar's death in "Skin of Evil"--episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation I love Netflix. I can access episodes faster than if I had the DVD boxset. So I am re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation from beginning to end. In the first season, I get to "Skin of Evil" again. Watched it years ago, maybe twice, remembering that it is not a very good episode overall. I wanted to see it again after all this time, especially to consider again when watching those ones later where Tasha's Romulan daughter attacks. This is the episode with the death of Tasha Yar. This is a main character, credit during the opening and everything, something very prestigious in Star Trek overall. What, did she last 23 episodes? And, she gets her name still on the credits for at least the next episode after her death, where she is not seen or mentioned. Anyway, just pretty cool to kill a main character instead of a redshirt, albeit in a silly, stupid way. Good episode. Fighti...

Doctor Who: Deep Time quick review Deep Time is well worth throwing yourself into the deep end over. The plot is adequate—a mission to explore a wormhole financed by a wealthy man. The Doctor and Clara get involved as part of the crew. A crash landing happens and the Doctor must solve the mystery about…but that’s a little too much. Suffice to say, the dangerous mystery happens and the Doctor must figure it all out as only he can. The best part of this novel is the fleshed-out characters. There is really a feel that these characters pop off the page, much like viewing an actual Doctor Who episode. All in all, this is one of the best Doctor Who novels I have read. It has an ingenious plot and mystery as well as the Doctor Who flair of characters. I got this novel for review from bloggingforbooks.com.

Finally got around to watching Pacific Rim. Really enjoyed it overall. Hey, kaiju Godzilla-like monsters and Robotech-Voltron-Battletech giant robots fighting...what could be better? Was this part three and I don't know about the previous movies? The extremely lengthy introduction, clocked at over 17 minutes before they ever put the words Pacific Rim on the screen, held an entire movie's worth of story. Honestly, that introduction seemed more emotional and dramatic. That was a clear story of the rise of the robot. That seemed like it could have been developed into something greater. A second movie could have concentrated more on the Hannibal Chow and drifting with the alien kaiju. They could have gotten their asses kicked a la Empire Strikes Back. A real downer that could only lead to the triumphant final act of this movie that I am watching now. Did they try for a big trilogy and didn't get it? Therefore, they had to squeeze it all into one? Is this a case of movie ...

Doctor Who: The Blood Cell By James Goss As an English teacher, I read a lot of fiction. As a Doctor Who fan, I have read quite a few of the books. The Blood Cell by James Goss is one of the best that I have come across. This book has something different from most Who books--it is told as a first person narrative from the “Governor” of the prison asteroid. I find this to be a great plot device, especially with hardly knowing the Twelfth Doctor very well yet. It seems to me that books like this sort of disguise which Doctor it is written for because it doesn’t really matter. Telling this one in first person hides that fact very neatly. Also, the reader does not really have to know Doctor Who at all in order to enjoy it. This could be one of those books you give your non-Doctor friends in order to have a go and see if they’ll join you for more. It reads like a screenplay. I’d be willing to wager that some of these books were just not optioned for a tel...

Bend Your Brain: 151 Puzzles, Tips, and Tricks To blow (and grow) Your Mind.. created by: the Minds Behind Marbles: The Brain Store With five key categories like Memory, Coordination, Critical Thinking, Word Skills, and Visual Perception, Bend Your Brain does exactly what it says it will do--it will blow your mind. With most puzzle books, you get the same boring puzzles over and over. Not here. There are new puzzles that have astonished me and some that have flat out frustrated me. But this frustration can be good when the object is to make you smarter. Other puzzle books, like those monthly magazines, don’t really have that. Sure, the puzzles keep you entertained, but most of them, especially if you do them all the time, get to be so repetitive that you aren’t learning anything anymore. It’s sort of like bench-pressing only using the bar--you’ll get the reps but you’ll never increase strength without adding more weight. Bend Your Brain adds some serious ...

The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health By John Durant My wife has recently discovered a new inner light into her own personal fitness. She’s eating right and working out like crazy. She took me to one of her leg-day workouts and almost made me start crying. One of the reasons of her success she attributes to some of the little recipes for the Paleo Diet. When I asked what that meant, she started giving me tidbits about the lifestyle, in part to what she has learned on author John Durant’s website, HunterGatherer.com. So I was very interested in finding out a bit more information just to see what was making my wife so fit and healthy. I could go no further than his book The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health . However, this book is almost too heavy for just a layperson wanting more information. The word Manifesto is absolutely correct: It is almost everything you would ever in a million years want to know about this t...

The Harlem Hellfighters By Max Brooks and Caanan White “A fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment in World War I” is a fascinating foray into comic books for the zombie writer himself, Max Brooks. Now he plies his trade into a moving account of some real heroes of World War I that should never have been forgotten. Brooks weaves a tale of fighting in the trenches in Europe while struggling with racial tensions still at home in America. If anything, Brooks does an amazing job of showing the infinite diversity among all cultures, black or white. The heroism of these men against these insane circumstances is a testimony to all men, and all will learn an important bit of history along the way. White does an amazing job with black and white illustrations and every panel is worth lingering over. Personally, I like the choice of black and white to highlight the war atmosphere, but I feel that color would widen this book’s audience. I may...

Overall, this movie proves that you have to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy a quality flick. One must simply ignore any kind of time travel discrepancies in order to make it work. And it does work. But you have to ignore things like: 1. If these guys in the future could send these men to the past to be executed with absolute precision as to where and when, why don't they send them straight back into the furnace? No middle man skilled, which is the crux of the whole problem. 2. Why would they send the future self to be killed by the younger self. That just sets up its own problems...you have to think this is going to be a problem at least once and here it's as problem twice...that we know of. There are hints to other problems with it. 3. Do they say ever why they can't just kill the young guy then? The younger self would have no idea...the lder self would disappear (which the internal logic of the movie indicates). The thirty years is their payoff for doing this...

How to Survive a Sharknado and other Unnatural Disasters By Andrew Shaffer, SyFy, and Three Rivers Press What is this exactly? A mashing of monsters and natural disasters, like the somehow-popular Sharknado as seen on SyFy Channel, this book is a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to survive these cheesy movie cataclysms. This is a humorous spin on the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks from Chronicle Books a few years ago. An Indiana Jones-inspired title in this same vein came out a few years ago, pitting yourself against the same dangers that the intrepid archaeologist faced. At least all of those were based on real dangers. How to Survive a Sharknado is a humorous spin of merging a menacing creature and a natural disaster. Sharknado. Bataclysm. Dinoshark. Some are even simplistic myths like Saber-Toothed Tiger and Manticore. However it is squashed together, they are only trying to have a little fun. And it is funny at times. If you ge...