Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

At first I thought this was some kind of programming joke, but it’s even funnier than that: Python Trek.

Thanks to Universal Hub for covering the squishing beat so I don’t have to. They inform me that today’s squishing was brought to you by the Needham line. Two pedestrians were walking on the tracks and one only is escaped alone to tell us what the frak they were doing walking on train tracks.

Lest anyone forget, in the eternal battle of man against train, the train wins.

Rare is the Green Line collision in which I am not somehow involved, but I managed to miss the fatal rear-ending on the D line today. There’s not much left of those trains, and considering how they just roasted a B train two weeks ago, it looks like the MBTA is going to have to send away to Breda for more rolling stock soon.

[Update:] The visiting Feds Eye Possible Cell Phone Use In MBTA Crash. They’re also eyeing some Smoking Cell Phones. Cell phone use was my favorite theory, though I also considered the rumors of recent signal problems on the D line. As I noted back when I got rear-ended on the Green line, rear-ending is always the rear-ender’s fault, even underground in the dark, never mind aboveground in broad daylight on a half-mile of straightaway while allegedly using a cell phone.

Also, Switchback has before-and-after pictures of car 3667, which looks like a Kinki Sharyo (Type 7). (CharlieBlog confirms that 3667 was a Type 7 I, and that the rear-ended car, 3703, was a newer Type 7 II, also totalled–with pictures.) I’m impressed that NETransit already lists both cars as wrecked.

Imagine if any of the cars had been a cheap, more squishable, more derailable Breda…

I figured I’d be like the Boston media and report the flaming B train as late as possible. The train jumped the tracks and knocked down some power lines on the last outbound run Tuesday night (technically, very early Wednesday morning).

Service on my lines was unaffected, but rumor has it that the E-line was disrupted, probably because there was no way to get trains from the trainyards around Cleveland Circle onto the B-line, and whatever trains were running from downtown to Washington Street Wednesday morning had to have come from somewhere.

In other late-breaking news, the Giant G3 Cube on Boylston opened tonight. I was thinking of going, but I chose dinner instead.

I’m not at all convinced that River’s more unusual speech patterns are a likely consequence of her illness. She seems to be channelling Spock as often as she’s spouting nursery rhymes; for example, in her reaction to Simon’s birthday (105 “Out of Gas”):

“Day” is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles. It’s not applicable.

I didn’t get you anything.

Nevertheless it works for her, and I was particularly struck by the poetry of her apple bits speech. So here’s the whole scene (109 “War Stories”):

INT. SERENITY - SIMON’S ROOM - CONTINUOUS

The door slides open and Simon enters, seeing River sitting on a bunk.

SIMON
Whoa! [Mei-mei… - “little sister”…]

SIMON covers a shivering RIVER with a blanket.

SIMON
How you doing?

RIVER
I threw up.

SIMON
I’m sorry. It’s a side effect. We
just have to find the right treatment
for you. How do you feel now?

RIVER
Going… Going back like… apple bits,
coming back up. Chaos.

SIMON
But you felt okay this morning?

RIVER
Played with Kaylee.
(smiles)
Sun came out, and I walked on my feet
and heard with my ears. I ate the bits,
the bits stayed down, and I work. I
function like I’m a girl.
(upset)
I hate it because I know it’ll go away.
The sun goes dark and chaos has come
again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?!

SIMON
(hugs her)
You are my beautiful sister.

RIVER
(sniffling)
I threw up on your bed.

SIMON
(fuckity)
Yep. Definitely my sister.

The Urban Dictionary does not really clarify “fuckity” as a stage direction…

I spotted this feel-good non-squishing T story at Universal Hub: an MBTA employee saved a man from the all-squishing Red Line by stopping the trains and helping to retrieve him from the tracks. According to a BostonNOW blogger, one of the rescuers barely missed the third rail.

Sometime last week I added four more episode additions to the Firefly page. (Apparently you can watch Firefly free now on Hulu.)

If you’d like a little more existential angst and ennui than my fic can provide, try garfield minus garfield.

There are now four Firefly flash fics to be found on the Firefly page. They’re not quite drabbles this fandom, but still short. Occasionally bitter, but personally, I blame Joss.

In betaing one of my forthcoming Firefly ficlets, Jade felt that it was too true to the show—the depressing, hopeless show. She didn’t mean that in a weeping-because-it’s-off-the-air way, but in a Buffy’s Law way. Buffy’s Law, if you don’t want to follow the link, was If anything can happen to make Buffy more miserable, it will.

I was going to post a whole entry on your-bitter-is-my-poignant, but then I actually watched “Heart of Gold.” Now I’m somewhat in the Jade camp. Back on Buffy, it was easier to dismiss the self-destructive behavior of the characters as general teen stupidity (or alternately, soulless fiend stupidity). That doesn’t really fly with Firefly, except possibly for Simon and Kaylee.

I find Inara in particular a very difficult character to understand (and therefore to write). She reminds me of Sam, whose feelings were also inscrutable, although from a technical perspective she’s probably closer to T’Pol in her inscrutable superiority. I had indifferent luck fanfixing Sam into a coherent character, and I’m not sure I can do any better with Inara.

On the bright side, the Sci-Fi channel is having an 11-hour Firefly marathon on Sunday. I thought that meant they’d skip the unaired episodes, but they’re skipping some from the middle of the series (such as it was, in the DVD order) instead. So if you, too, want to be depressed, you can see “Heart of Gold” at 5pm Eastern time.

Well, I’m thinking of calling it that, anyway. You can find the new page of cunning hat caps (pardon the pun) here.

Also the tab navigation has been rearranged to get all the Trek together under one tab (from the cryptically trekky MIS, TOS, and VOY), making room for the exciting Firefly tab.

After all that, I didn’t have the energy to put up my Firefly fic. (Yes, I wrote some Firefly fic. It’s all Jade’s fault.) I think that will require a little more CSS. Let me know if something breaks in your browser—it all looks peachy to me.