Monthly Archives: December 2012

Star Trek, one of the true loves of my life

I love Star Trek so much. I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without writing about Star Trek already. I’ve written about comics, multiple times. I’ve written about time travel and parallel universes. You might think that that’s it, that that’s all I’ve got going on inside. But that’s not it. I’ve got Star Trek. I love Star Trek to an extent where, if I ever really feel like I’ve exhausted everything that I have to say, I’m just going to turn this blog into a Star Trek blog and I’ll be able to write something about Star Trek every day for the rest of my life.

The Next Generation, or simply TNG to those in the know, aired when I was a little kid, like three or four years old. And I know this sounds like total bullshit, but I actually have a memory, a really vivid memory, of being three years old and watching a certain episode as it broadcasted on TV for the first time. The episode is called “Conspiracy” and it’s all about a race of alien insects that burrow into the back of people’s necks and hijack their bodies.

The episode culminates with Captain Picard and Commander Riker firing on the leader of the alien conspiracy, in the process blowing up his head to reveal a giant parasite that’s taken over his whole body. I remember my mom or somebody in the room flinching, because it was all a little graphic, even for an adult, definitely way too much for a three year old, but that scene was at the very final minutes of the episode, and so the damage was already done. And from that moment on, I was a committed Trekkie, for life.

Star Trek was great because it was a show that didn’t depend on a viewer committing to watching every single episode. I think that TV as a medium, before DVRs, before the Internet, its existence hinged on the fact that episodes were going to only air only once, at a very certain time during the week, and if you missed it, well, then hopefully you’d see it when they played reruns during the offseason, but if not, then that was it, that episode was lost. Sure, a continuous Star Trek show based on today’s serialized episode-to-episode TV standards would probably be something cool. But it wouldn’t be TNG.

Star Trek taught me everything about being the person that I am today. It provided me with my current worldview, spoke to me in a way that nothing else ever matched. Religion, school, education, my background in any of these subjects only serve to help me understand on a deeper level what’s really going on in Star Trek, what it’s trying to tell me, and what I can take away and apply to my life and the real world.

I’m not alone in this. I’ve been in various high school and college classes, usually science or philosophy, where, to illustrate a point, the professor would say something like, “You know, like in that episode of Star Trek, the one where …” and everybody would pretend to look all confused, like Star Trek isn’t cool. I had one professor that cut right to the chase and said, “All right, I know nobody’s going to admit it, but everybody knows what I’m talking about with this Star Trek reference.” And it’s true. Star Trek is universal.

I’m not exaggerating. Take any problem or real life conflict going on right now or at any point in human history and I can name an episode of Star Trek that not only addresses the issue, but comes up with the most practical way of imagining a solution. There are episodes that deal with politics, with religion, with society, with technology, all in a way that breaks everything down to its basic human experience.

I watched TNG as it aired, I watched reruns again in syndication while I was in high school. As a senior in college, my roommates and I would spend hours each day watching the SciFi network, because that’s all it really does is rerun Star Trek episodes. And finally, I brought the entire series down to Ecuador with me while my wife and I served in the Peace Corps. We watched every episode from start to finish.

I hate to think that TNG is getting dated, as the real world advances at a clip that’s already starting to make the technological wonders of the 24th century seem a little dated. It’s one of the reasons why I could never take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as seriously as I did TNG. And I hate to think that someday the real next generation might not be able to connect as I did with Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D. Still, the lessons and the stories, I think, I hope, they’re timeless. It’s like Shakespeare, but in space, and in the future, and made for broadcast television during the late 1980s – 1990s.

Random story: My wife loves Star Trek too, even though it’s just because by living with me she’s been absorbed into the Star Trek universe by osmosis. She started watching it, begrudgingly, and then she got into it. She’ll never admit that to anybody, ever. But one time at her old job as at this law firm, she was taking a call from some client in Germany named Mr. Borg. She put down the phone and giggled to one of the lawyers, “Haha, Borg.” The lawyer said, “What? What’s so funny?” My wife said, “You know, Borg? Like the Borg from Star Trek?” And the lawyer responded back, dead serious, “No. You watch Star Trek?” My wife was humiliated, caught in a random Star Trek reference that her boss would not reciprocate. And I’m calling bullshit on her boss. That guy must have been lying through his teeth. Everybody knows about the Borg. “Resistance is futile,” “Best of Both Worlds” Parts I and II. Come on. That’s just classic TV.

Scared of bugs, and cicadas, especially cicadas

I used to be really scared of bugs. One time when I was a little kid a black spider crawled across back. My brother made me aware of it and I started freaking out, like really going nuts, one of those freak outs where every muscle in your body contracts at the same time and you start hitting yourself, knowing that if you have to make hand contact with this bug, to get it off of you, it had better be hard enough to kill it. I remember freaking out too much, to the extent that I didn’t get to see where the spider went, if it went anywhere at all. Maybe it ran for cover, or maybe it found a nice little fold in my t-shirt to camp out in, to sleep and plot and lay thousands of tiny eggs.

One day that same summer I was riding my bike around town when all of the sudden the wind whipped my shirt against my skin in such a way that I could feel that there was something latched onto the back. It was a cicada. I think they’re all over the place, but there are a ton of them every summer on Long Island. They crawl out of the ground by the thousands starting some time in July. They leave behind these thick, deep holes, like the size of a quarter, and the holes are everywhere, each one a reminder that something big and giant and disgusting had emerged from the depths of the earth.

Most everyone pronounces it “si-CAY-duh” (you like that bullshit pronunciation guide?) but for whatever reason, my maternal grandfather always called them “si-CAH-duhs,” and so that always kind of stuck with me, not that this really has anything to do with the story, this story that’s been sidetracked for the better part of a paragraph now by pronunciation. But getting back to it, there was a cicada stuck to my back.

After they crawl out of the ground, the cicadas then go through a transformation. I’ve read online that they live something like sixteen years underground before they make the journey to the surface. OK, I never looked that up online, but growing up on Long Island, that’s what various people have told me. They come up looking like these bloated coffee colored beetles. They can’t fly, they can only crawl, really slowly. But then they have this metamorphosis. They break out of their chocolate shells, leaving them behind for everybody to step on. For every crunch that you hear under your feet, you know that there have to be hundreds of these bugs in every tree, just completely dominating the environment.

These bugs are the worst. They’re even bigger out of the shell than they were inside, something that doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s true. They’re loud. They make this sound, like one of those backyard sprinklers that goes around in a circle and then “ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch” doubles back to start the circle all over again. And since they all come out at once, it’s like one day it’s a regular summer day, and then the next day you walk outside and the noise is deafening, a wall of sound, and you can see these giant bugs flying around everywhere.

I’m not exaggerating; they are giant. Seriously, they’re like three inches long. They have black backs covered by translucent, segmented wings. Their bellies are white and they still have the remnants of those little legs from their previous incarnations. At that top of their heads they have two useless eyes. I say useless because they’re actually all blind.

They’re blind but they’re constantly flying around. So it’s not uncommon to be walking along when out of nowhere you’ll get smacked in the face by one of these giant dumb bugs. They don’t bite or anything, but like I said, they’re loud, really loud, and if they get caught up with you they’re too stupid to figure out how to get away from you. So it might fly into you, get scared, start making all of that noise, and then keep flying into you over and over again, because it can’t see and it doesn’t even have a purpose on the surface world anyway.

They really have no purpose. I guess birds eat them, but can’t birds just eat bird seed? They come up, transform into these giant flying nuisances, and then they die like three days later. By mid-July, the streets will be littered with these things. But the worst part it, you won’t even know which ones are dead and which ones are alive. Because they’re so mindless, they’re just hanging out in the middle of the street, waiting for you to walk over it, or maybe just unknowingly step on one of the wings, and they’ll start freaking out making that loud crazy noise.

So back to me on the bike. Once I noticed it was there, I started freaking out too, almost as dumb as the cicada. My hands went in the air, I flailed around, lost control of the bike, fell over, cut my hands falling, and somehow during the struggle, the cicada got caught underneath my shirt. And now we were both really freaking out. I think I tore the shirt off of my body and left it in the street. It was really traumatic.

Every summer my phobia grew worse and worse, spiders and cicadas turned into ants, roaches, earwigs, I was scared of everything. I couldn’t leave the house. I’d see a bug in the bathroom and I’d refuse to go in there for months. Finally, my parents, seeing how this was crippling my development as a person, they brought me to a hypnotist to get this all sorted out.

“I want you to relax and take a deep breath,” was the last thing that I remember the hypnotist saying to me. The next thing I knew, I was outside, the anxiety was gone. I heard the cicadas and remembered that I should feel afraid of them, but I wasn’t. I saw a cicada on the ground. I picked it up by wings and gave it a big hug. I couldn’t believe I was cured.

How did that hypnotist do it? And that’s when I started freaking out. Because seriously, how could he do it? What other kind of mental powers did he possess? What else did he do to me while I was in my hypnotic trance? And that’s when I developed a new phobia, a phobia probably equal to my old bug phobia, but this time I was afraid of hypnotists. I think it’s called hypnophobia, although Microsoft Word seems to think that, with its red squiggly underlining, that hypnophobia isn’t a real word. But it is real. Because I’m very afraid of hypnotists. Sometimes I’ll think about what they could do if they all joined forces. I can’t even leave the house.

My parents, realizing that this phobia would be just as damaging as my old bug phobia, they tried to find some help, but all of the doctors and professionals kept saying the same thing, “Take him to a hypnotist. Hypnotize him until he’s not scared.” But how can a hypnotist cure hypnophobia? It’s not possible. Even if I could stop peeing my pants long enough to step foot into his office, he’d start off telling me, “OK Rob, I want you to relax, take a deep breath …” and I wouldn’t be able to, my hands would be in the air, flailing around, and before I could realize what’s happening, I’d be rolling around on the floor and maybe the hypnotist would get trapped under my shirt and I’d have to start punching my chest and ripping my shirt off and running away. And I’d still probably have to pay for the appointment, so at this point I’m starting to think that maybe this hypnophobia is incurable, like I’ve run out of options here, like I’m just going to have to learn to live with all of this crippling fear and anxiety.

Complaining about the weather

Nothing brings out the complaining in me more than the change of seasons. By the end of one season, I’m always so ready for the next, and when it finally comes, it’s such a relief, there’s such a joy in waking up and every day feeling great to be in this new climate, a brand new environment. But it’s only a matter of time before the feeling of novelty fades to the ordinary and all of the sudden I notice my mind preoccupied with complaints. And the complaints themselves are novel, because they’re all about this new weather. And I’m like, really? I’m already uncomfortable? I’m already complaining? Am I capable of being happy about anything?

I was so ready for the summer to be over. By the end of August I’m just constantly sweating to the point where it almost doesn’t even seem worth it to take a shower in the morning. I’ll retreat to my house as soon as I’m done with whatever it is I have to do that day, and I’ll spend the rest of my time sitting in front of the AC, wishing that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing, making me feel comfortable, all while trying not to think about this giant appliance sucking up energy, racking up kilowatt hours, making such a loud noise, loud enough to the point where I have to crank up the volume on my computer, on my TV. And I can’t really cook because it’s so hot. And I’m just so sick of complaining and being uncomfortable.

And then it’s fall. And it’s great. I’m very comfortable now. I’m wearing a sweatshirt. I’m wearing long pants. And even though this fall wasn’t really much of a fall, it was definitely some relief from the pure oppression that characterized the heat of summer 2012. And I’m having a great time. I’m riding my bike without sweating so much. I’m wearing my leather jacket, which I can only really use for a couple of weeks during the fall. All is well.

But then I’m at work one day and my lips are killing me. What the hell is going on? Why won’t they stay wet? And I’m licking my lips like every ten seconds to keep them from completely drying out, to the point where I won’t be talking for a minute or two, and then when I go to say something or eat something or take a drink, I open my mouth and realize that my lips have cemented in place, so when I do open them, they crack open, the super sensitive lip skin just tearing apart. And that’s because fall is over. And it’s winter. And I didn’t even realize it.

And winter is great also. I love roasting stuff in the oven. Hot coffee becomes something soothing again, something comforting, not just a means for injecting caffeine into my system. I can really ride my bike to work as fast and as hard as I can and I won’t be sweating at all. But I feel like I only got to enjoy winter for one week this year before my body started to physically protest the change in weather. This wasn’t like me being bored and complaining because I’m a huge whiner. This was my body complaining, saying stuff like, it’s so dry than my lips won’t function anymore.

I don’t understand the extreme reaction that most buildings and workplaces employ as a response to a little drop in temperature. They blast this dry furnace heat nonstop, making it so it’s warmer inside than it is during the fall, during the summer even. It’s just, yeah, it’s cold outside, and maybe this blast of heat feels great for a second, when you’re just coming inside, but once you acclimate, it’s too much, it’s too hot.

Whatever, I bought some Chapstick and kept it in my pocket and that seemed to be doing the trick for a little bit. But then the rest of my body followed suit, like my lips were just a precursor to the dryness and itch that were to engulf the rest of my being. So I’m constantly itchy because it’s so dry everywhere, including my own house. But what are you going to do? I just lie in my bed at night and sleep for twenty minute intervals until some itchy spot on my back forces me awake.

And then Thanksgiving is over and then Christmas and New Years pass and you’re like, OK, that was fun, another great round of holidays. What’s next? On to the next season, please. But it’s still only January. And then you have February. And then even though March is always associated with spring and warm and nice outside, March is never nice, never warm enough. And you might get one nice spring day in April, like a really great day where you can go to the park and you don’t have to wear a jacket, but then the next day is freezing again. But you’re defiant, you’re like, screw that, it’s spring, I refuse to put back on my winter coat. I don’t care if it’s thirty degrees out. But you put it on eventually because it’s freezing out. And then it starts raining, because April is all about rain. And then it’s May and you’re like, what the hell, why can’t it just be nice out already?

You know, I think it’s me, constantly complaining. I think it’s human nature. You’ll always want what you don’t currently have. And so, when I’m at my itchiest in the winter or my sweatiest in the summer, I guess I can always take comfort in the fact that I’ll never find lasting physical comfort in anything, that moving to California won’t solve my problems, that buying a new air conditioner won’t stop the summer from being any less oppressive than it was the year before, because comfort is fleeting, a brief pause in the squirming around that is life, a pause that only makes the longer periods of discomfort more pronounced.

No, after you

Every once in a while I’ll be walking in or out of a building somewhere and I’ll see someone else behind me, so I’ll stand there and hold the door open to let that person pass. It’s a courtesy, right? Why do we do these things? Is it really saving the person behind me anything at all? Any time? Any energy? Am I really doing you a favor by holding the door open? Or am I just forcing a weird little social ritual upon you? And now here we are, two strangers, I did something for you, unasked for, and now you’re supposed to engage in the fakest of fake pleasantries, with me, a complete stranger, “Thank you,” “You’re welcome.”

It’s crazy, and yet I’m very conscious of it every time I’m going through some sort of public door. Why? Because I don’t want anybody behind me to think that I’m inconsiderate. Even though I really think the whole holding the door thing is a little too much. Worse still, I actually feel a reaction inside when I hold the door for somebody and I get no response. I’ll hold the door, and then nothing. I always get angry. I think to myself, listen, I didn’t want to hold the door for you in the first place. I don’t know who came up with this hold-open, thank you nonsense. It wasn’t me. But I’m still doing it, so the least you could do is your part, because I already did my part.

Sometimes that’ll happen, where I hold the door and get no acknowledgment, and I’ll let out a big fake, “You’re welcome,” after the person doesn’t respond. Look, if the person is that oblivious to me in the first place, is that completely unaware that I was even standing there holding the door open, they’re unlikely to flinch at me saying, “You’re welcome,” in a sarcastic voice. But still, I feel like I have to say it. Because the alternative is me standing there, having done a fake little door opening, something I really don’t get the point of, something that even though I don’t agree with, I still did it, and if I get nothing back, then I feel stupid, like the other person basically agrees with me, that it’s stupid, but I was the one who, even though I don’t like it, I still did it, whereas this person doesn’t like it, and doesn’t pretend to like it by giving me the usual, “Thanks a lot.”

So it’s really me then, I’m a part of the problem. I’m the one initiating and, if you think about it, upholding these strange practices, relics of a bygone era. What’s the point of holding the door really? It’s worse when you consider gender roles and dynamics. Technically, if a man is walking in somewhere and so is a women, the proper thing to do is for the guy to hold open the door and let the lady pass first, right? This is the worst because there are just way too many things going on, in the moment, in history, the familiar and the unknowable, and it’s all converging on this one singular action, a random guy going out of his way for a random lady, and all over nothing in particular, it’s over a meaningless act, it’s over a door.

I get it. There are certain times in life, in society, where people should stand side by side, where maybe even somebody should stand up for somebody else. If I see somebody getting harassed on the street, do I intervene? Should I? I would want to say that, yes, I should. But for a door? Is it really worth establishing a micro relationship with another person over holding a door open? I don’t know. There’s just too much that can go wrong.

It all gets way too political, it brings out the weird dynamics of any group. Say you and a bunch of your friends are going out to a restaurant and you’re all walking in at the same time. I might go to the door first and open it to let everyone else in. But what am I really doing? Is this like a power grab? I’m in charge so I hold the door? What if somebody else was going to go for the door? What if you have a friend in the group that always goes for the door, every single time? What if, one time, you somehow manage to beat him to the door, and you let the whole group to go through, only to have that friend, at the very end of the line, come up to you last and say to you while gesturing towards the inside, “No, after you,” do you have to stand your ground? Do you say to your friend, “No, I insist?” How do you get out of something like this?

Why can’t we all just open the doors for ourselves on a case by case basis? If there’s a massive group of people in a highly trafficked doorway, obviously the door will just kind of prop itself open as everyone passes by in a tightly knit line. And please don’t get me going on elevator etiquette. I’m never sure on the details of, for example, if I let everybody else go in the elevator first, and I enter last, I’ll then be the closest to the door. So when the elevator gets to where we’re all going, do I selfishly exit first? Or do I selflessly yet awkwardly shove my body to the side, maybe in the process getting a little too close in the personal space of somebody next to me, just so others can leave ahead of myself? Stuff like this makes me want to stay inside, permanently, I’ll just order all of my groceries and anything else I might need to be delivered from the Internet, and I’ll never leave the house.