Stop calling Star Trek a Franchise!

Star Trek is probably responsible for the career I chose for myself. It inspired my imagination probably more than anything else I ever watched, read or listened to. Maybe that’s why I don’t get why the reviewers of the new movie insist on calling it a “franchise” and keep using that term over and over. I think it cheapens what movies and TV are supposed to be for.

Yes, legally it is a franchise. A franchise is a set of trademarks, designs, intellectual material that you get the right to use. In the case of McDonalds, it’s the McDonalds name and its the McDonalds food. In the case of Star Trek or Terminator or Star Wars or Aliens or even Arrested Development, it’s the right to base your stories and characters on what has come before. That by itself is not bad. When you see something you like, you really do want more of it sometimes.

So why does this irritate me so much? I think if film critics allow us to have the mentality that this is a product or a service, the owners of “the franchise” can easily take this too far and the art will lose its soul as “the franchise” soon gets milked to death. I think this is what happened to Star Trek in 2001 or so, when we had the series called  Enterprise where they just began inserting the same old storylines that were popular in the past. And frankly it seems like this is what’s happening with Terminator today, where a backstory that made a couple of compelling action movies is now being squeezed out and cheapening those very originals. And this is because a “franchise” is a “guaranteed” moneymaker just like opening a McDonalds can be. If you already have a so-called sure thing, why make anything new or original? Just open up a new franchise!

Yes that’s what Star Trek is, and I’m happy with what the new filmmakers doing with it. I just wish everyone would stop using that word, or it’s eventually going to smell like cliche again and people are truly going to be sick of it again.

oh! the foodmanity!

When you have a job that requires you to sit in front of a computer, get up and go sit in front of someone else’s computer, get inside computers, stand behind someone and show them how to work their computer, and overall just be absolutely in love with computers, you are going to have a need, in your free time, to get as far from a computer as possible now and then. This could be to either unwind after a long day, or just to continue to pursue a “balanced life”.

I feed this hunger often, mostly in the hours just after work when I am a little hungry and there is little else I can think of except eating some food that does not–I repeat–does not taste like blocks of generic flim flam with salt dumped on it.

It started sometime in mid-September, when I made a new friend or two that also enjoy good food. I already enjoyed making a couple things really well, but I wanted to explore possibilities that went beyond pizza or tacos or spaghetti. At some point, a switched turned on that said “I really like this and I want to learn to make it myself!”

Over time simple recipes came out. Publix comes up with these recipes based on ingredients you can find in the store and for which only need a can opener, a good knife and a nice large pan. My favorite is the beef chili. I’ve made that three times with my friends, eventually shunning the mild chiles in a can for the habaneros in a can. The result is splendiferous.

At other times I would grab some ingredient at the store that looked appealing to me, put it in my cart, take it home and then say “What can I do with this?”. The first was the hot ground sausage, which I didn’t just want to flatten into patties and fry or sneak into tacos. And that’s where I found the soup that tastes so much better than it sounds.

1 lb. ground Italian sausage
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
3 leaves fresh basil
1 can 15 oz. butter beans
1 can 15 oz. black beans
(beans may be substituted with beans of your choice)
1 can 15 oz. diced tomatoes
2 cups beef broth
grated Romano or Parmesan cheeseCook sausage until brown, add garlic and basil. Sauté 4 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients: beans, tomato, broth.

Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes, then remove from heat.

Serve in soup bowl; sprinkle with cheese and serve with Italian bread, garlic bread or panini bread.

This soup adventure inspired Soup Day, where we made the best spicy soup known to man, Posole Rojo. A soup so good that you can reach in beforehand and take out some taco filling beef to go with it.

Nerdy Christmas Cookies

Baking set in later. It wasn’t just cakes or brownies or cookies that I wanted to try, but some strange things you usually only get at the mall or in a freezer, such as homemade pretzels.

And then there were the cookies, inspired by a picture I saw online somewhere. Something I had to do and had a friend who is a baker help me out with. Nom nom nom.

Tonight is going to be both baking and cooking. Trying some Indian cooking with a side of Naan bread. It’s the ultimate use of a day off, not just an evening, doing some cooking to unwind and take a break from loving computers and tech so much.

As I wrap up this entry, I do want to make a special mention of a couple of wonderful food blogs that a couple friends started. First we have Sarah B, whose aptly named “Paws are For Cookin’” blog which has some eats that I consider unconventional and I’m sure very splendid. Then there is Audrey, who has been feeding my love for food way too much, who also started a recipe blog called Audrey’s Cooking Creations with things I need to try soon as well.

TTFN

The Noise

I think there is much to be said about finding that quiet place. Our lives are too noisy. We have the TV, the music, the phone, the chattering, and yet no time for our minds to be still and able to work things out.

I’ve been letting life be a bit too noisy, but I think it was all for a good cause, for a purpose that is bigger than all of us combined.

So I’m finally going to do more regular updates, and get some better purposes to the blog in general, and hopefully be something that we all can be proud of.

mountains schmountains

This is the fifth installment of my adventures and such in 2008. Hope you can climb it ok.

The family hasn’t gone to the mountains for vacation before. Naturally when I heard they were going, I was fascinated, and definitely wanted to go with them. It was only two nights and one day after the plane touched down from Phoenix, the memories from The Dark Knight and the horrid fate of the Maggie Gcharacter still vivid in my mind. Jet lag plus Batman plus just being very tired. I think I slept in the car.

Clayton County apparently is famous. It’s where a lot of the movie Deliverance was filmed. But instead of banjos and danger, we experienced new energy and peace.

While the ocean is about escape, mountains are about retreat. You go to the mountains to get away, but just for a while. You have the experience, and you come back down from the mountain.

I went absolutely crazy with the picture taking. As mentioned previously, I kept finding two categories of things I like best…exotic flowers to get closeups of and random wildlife. One of my favorite were these large, huggable geese that roamed around the lake and posed for me before they decided to swim away.

This was worth the drive

Clayton lacks a downtown with much of anything in it. Thank goodness I didn’t go there to go shopping. We found, however, that only 45 minutes away was another town I was told of, called Highlands, just across the border into NC. We took off to go see it and find out what we could see. There were many possibilities, but the one trail we went on brought us to the most spectacular overlook yet.

Months later a funny thought occurred to me, about how in Florida, if you were hopelessly lost in the dark in the woods, the biggest danger is stepping into some kind of lake and getting your feet wet. Around Highlands in the dark, you’re likely to end up tumbling over a waterfall to your rocky doom.

Highlands has a lovely little town, and a cute little grocery store with no recognizable brand name. And unlike Clayton, everything is open during the week. I can imagine going back there someday, bringing some other special people with me. Then again I could imagine going back to Clayton too, and staying in that house.

I see animals. Everywhere I go.

This is the fourth installment of my adventures and such in 2008. Hope you find it absolutely fuzzy.

hoot

My mom is creating a painting for me. It’s of a barred owl watching from a tree, very much like the one that was looking at me one morning.

I’d like to think they’re looking out for me, but it’s more of a sense that someone is. That’s the whole idea behind the owls, and this is the first year I’ve heard them and seen them, and been fascinated by them.

Whether they have anything to do with me and my life or not, and sure that is debatable, I love seeing animals.  At first it was the domesticated ones–someone’s dog or someone’s cat. It’s an obsession that very few people in my life have understood and even fewer share.

You're a kitty! o/

There was something even better about seeing wild animals right there in front of me, whether outside my house or out–in the wild where they belong and I’m just visiting. They’re like little workers in their little uniforms performing the task that is laid out before them. Usually this task is carried out by eating, scratching, burrowing, or building.

I’m obsessed with animals — that’s what some people tell me. Some people have laughed at me for paying more attention to animals, sometimes, than people. Fact is, I love people too, actually, but that’s another subject altogether.

I hope one day to have animals of my own in the house I live in, either a cat or a dog, or both. As a fan of photography, I love taking animal pictures, because animals are rarely self conscious or uncomfortable around a camera. Some animals are even a little too camera friendly. I have many pictures of closeups of animal noses taken when an eager dog or cat has given my camera a good sniff.

In 2008 I saw a lot of animals, from the owl that looked at me in February to the random raccoon, snake, gators, bats on campus in the fall–and in between the bunnies in the desert. I remember a Sunday morning at Starbucks when a gorgeous white dove just sat there patiently while I took a phone picture of it.

And I rode my bike today and heard an owl in the distance. He said my name. Too bad he thinks my name is “Hoot hoot hoot hoot”.