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Ah, the autumn. I love this time of year like no other. The winds, the cold, the smells of burning wood and leaves (though we get little of that here, I admit).

This is the season when my favorite clothes come out of storage -- the wool coats, the sweaters, the heavy flannels and dark clothing, the boots (when I'm thin enough to wear them).

It is at this time of year that I most want to play at being Kindred. I feel more feral, more alive, than any other time of year.

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Check out this offering from the Gallery of Unfortunate Cards.

While you're at it, check out one of my all time favorite websites, The Gallery of Regrettable Food.

The GoRF is part of the Institute of Official Cheer, the motto of which is "We bring pop culture history back to life -- so we can beat it to death again."

I LOVE that site.

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From James Lilek's new book, Interior Desecrators (the sequel to the now-published Gallery of Regrettable Food):

Kids today think the 70s were fun. They think the 70s were cool. They think that 70s stuff looks hip. Let me put this as delicately as possible: kids today are idiots. The 70s were HELL, and this site sets out to prove it.

"Honor" -- what does that mean to you?

A lot of SCA types like to talk about "Honor" and how they prize it above all else. Most of them, in my personal opinion, have all the honor of a rock.

Most people, I think, get their sense of honor from their families or, failing that, the classical meanings of their culture. My (adoptive) parents, however, were honorless bastards.

As to culture, well, that's a mug's game, really. Samurai honor was not the same as Medieval Knighthood's honor. And neither bears much resemblance to American honor.

I got my sense of honor and my definition from my reading -- from Tolkien's work, from Dune and the honor of the Fedaykin, hell, from the Rihanssu concept of mnei'sahe, which is a confusing and difficult concept to describe, so I won't try.

My honor has led me to step away from those I felt I was hurting, and also led me to hurt others. It can be overly formal, or astonishingly informal, depending on situation. And sometimes, it demands I do what others would call dishonorable, because it is best. It's confusing and annoying even to me.

I do not believe in "Thou shalt not lie", I believe "Thou shalt not lie without good reason", and "good reason" means if truth would hurt another, among other things. I do not tell secrets I have been trusted with; I will not kill without reason, I will not betray a friend.

What is honor to you, and where did you get that concept?

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Warning:

If you've decided to go to Silwest, be sure to send in your questionairre and money by the end of this month. The longer you wait, the greater the chances of getting a minor and very dull character.

Note that all characters have a plot and the game can be enjoyedno matter what you are, but the truly cool characters get cast earliest. You don't want to end up as someone's valet, do you?

At any rate, Aaron and I are sending ours out within days. Yay us.

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( Good news for 7th Sea fans regarding both the original game and the horrible D20 version )

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Canada: They have free health care and almost no crime? Now, why exactly do we always make fun of them, again?

That sound you heard Wednesday night was the Mahdi screaming.

And that night came, when the Mahdi's voice did ring out, and he cried with great lamentations "YATI! YATI!" And there was much gnashing of teeth in the land.

YATI, for those of you unitiated into the higher mysteries of Fandom, is an acronym meaning Yet Another Trek Inconsistency. In other words, the people who run Star Trek make so many continuity errors that we had reason to make this acronym.

"Mine Field" was so bad in terms of continuity I don't know where to begin. Oh, wait, yes I do.

The title is bearable, but only because it so clearly has three meanings, the mine field in question being not only the physical mine field they run into in space, but the metaphorical mine fields of interpersonal relations -- in this case, Archer and Reed -- and interspecies first contact situations.

The events of the episode itself are just mindnumbingly problematic. Here's why:

* When Kirk and crew first saw the Romulan cloaking device in action way back in "Balance of Terror", they were utterly and terribly surprised; they'd never seen anything like it before, not even in the long war they fought with them. It was brand new. Starfleet was so impressed by this new technology they sent Kirk's crew in to steal the thing not long after. Yet here, the Romulans have it -- 150 years before they ought to. The only way I can see to fix this is with some kind of Temporal slight-of-hand, erasing either Archer & crew's memories, the existence of the cloak, or the NX-1701's very existence (which would cause all SORTS of problems, so we'll likely have to live with this). *sigh* At least they didn't see the Romulans' faces; that would have been unforgivable.

* "Romulans". Dammit. Ok, I've always known and accepted that The Powers That Be weren't going to use Diane Duane's excellent and (if you'll understand my meaning) believable portrayal of the Romulans, whom she wrote as referring to themselves as "Rihanssu". So I've always swallowed my annoyance with the "Romans in Space" portrayal of the Romulans and just tried to enjoy the episode on its own merits. I always assumed the Romulans, like the Vulcans, just didn't use their own name for themselves when dealing with humans. But here, they actually called themselves "Romulans" in this episode without ever having the humans say it first. GAH! I mean, sure, I guess I can suppose that they just happened to have a name for themselves that sounded similar to our own "Romulus", but to suppose further that they call their homeworld "Romulus" is too much, and that's the next logical step.

Overall, though, the episode worked -- but only because of the B story, with Archer and Reed's conversation on the hull.
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Oh gods. This Twilight Zone episode is utter crap. Rod Serling is spinning so fast you could harness the energy and power New York City. Until 2070.