Walt's Corner

Know what I can’t stand? Corned beef. You know, the Go-Fucking-To lucky meal of the holiday. Besides haggis. Tried it once. Corned beef, not haggis. You’ll never get me to try haggis. I sometimes like to say, “I’ll try anything once!” But no. As my wife is fond of saying, “That’s the exception that proves the rule.” And if you know my wife, she never says that. In fact, she hates when I say it.

For those that know me and my taste for food, I divide what I eat into 3 categories. But the more I think about it, let’s make that 4. Sorry Bill. I have fed you a lie for far too long.
• I love it (holy shit that’s good! I could eat this every day! I’m looking at you, pizza and tacos!)
• That didn’t make me gag (as it implies, I didn’t gag. I wouldn’t say I dislike it. I can eat it, but I won’t go out of my way to have it again.)
• That made me gag (yeah – no. I hate gagging. I will not be trying this again unless I may have had a bad batch in which case I’ll try another brand or another restaurant’s version just to be sure. As I learned with Menudo after trying 5 different restaurants – not for me. I gagged 5 times in sequentially more violent ways. After 5 times I threw up in my mouth a little and it tasted the same.)
• I’ll never try that shit. (Nope. Not while I’m alive and have free will.)

I’m known for making food dishes and bringing them to work. My most requested food is my chili. So much so that my colleagues chipped in and bought me a bigger crock pot just so I didn’t have a reason to bring in no less than 4 quarts of the stuff. Which brings me to subject story.

One day, Debbie, along with several of her workers, beg me to make some corned beef for our office’s St. Paddy’s Day celebration. After much arguing, I reluctantly agreed. I did my research. I put together a big corned beef meal. Set it up in the crock pot for overnight slow cooking. I woke up many times during the night wondering what the fuck that urine smell was permeating my house. I gagged a few times just from the smell. I made a solemn vow to myself that I would never make that again. My house stunk for a couple days.

They all loved it, so I guess it was a hit. But no. I will never make that shit again. After 3 years they gave up on ever asking me to make corned beef.

Have we learned nothing from Jurassic Park? Scientists who are Fucking around are getting ever so closer to the Find Out. They genetically modified mice with qualities of the extinct woolly mammoth in hopes of doing the same with some Asian elephants to eventually be release into the arctic.

Just look at those things! Appears one already has chunks bitten out of its ear for fuck’s sake. In the words of Dr. Malcolm, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Personally, I’d rather focus on the saber tooth koala. We’d at least have a better chance at outrunning those things once they got out of hand and broke free of their cages.

This can’t end well. But they do like kind of cute.

The latest news in microplastics found in the body have weighed in at a “spoon’s worth of plastic.” Because, anything but the metric system, right? Personally, I’m waiting for the the Banana’s worth of plastic. This current observation is twice as much as what was reported in 2016.

I’m not even sure what that means. The weight the article refers to is in micrograms. As I understand, when looking at a mere gram of brain matter, .48% (that is point four eight) of it is plastic. Now I’m not sure how that equates to a spoon’s worth of plastic. What type of spoon? Plastic I assume? I’ve always been told that a paper clip weighs about a gram but I have never ventured to find out for myself. So let’s do that real quick. This standard office paper clip weighs less than a gram. Now let’s weigh this standard plastic spoon – 4 grams. Then I throw the paper clip on the scale with the spoon and it still weighs in at 4 grams. Of course my scale is by no means a calibrated scientific instrument. But you get the point.

What happens when we get too much plastic in our system? What is too much plastic? Is there a point where we become recyclable as a plastic? Oh wait. That wasn’t all it was hyped up to be. Better yet, like Spiderman gained his powers from a spider bite, perhaps if I get enough plastic in me, I can become the origin story of Mister Fantastic.

Few authors hold enough power over me to get me to stop reading a book, especially at 90% finished, just to start another book. Jeff Strand is one of them authors. Bloodsucker County was released earlier this week, forcing me to slap a bookmark in Interview with the Devil: Epoch for the time being. Sadly, I finished Bloodsucker County within a few days. I’m sad because I was hoping to spend at least a couple weeks within the apocryphal world of Strand’s latest book.

This is not your typical vampire novel. In fact, one could argue these monsters only share fleeting glimpse of one of the world’s oldest monster legends. Society as we know it has fallen in the wake of these vile monsters that have severely reduced the human population. There is one county that has managed to survive by laying low and keeping out of the way. That is until a stranger shows up one day and becomes the subject of one’s just come-of-age teen’s empathy. Bill arrives in the county barely alive, and Lance, our protagonist, takes him in to the ever-fading safety and security of their small community. As the family takes in this wounded man, thus begins the roller coaster journey of survival filled with horror, gore and the edgy Strandian humor we all crave.

What is different about this particular novel for me is that my name gets to be a character in the book, thanks to my joining Jeff’s Patreon page. Jeff warned us who qualified that our plight would not be great. In fact, he seemed to take pleasure in telling us that we would probably die. Horribly.

My character is described as being “emaciated and covered with sores and bruises. His greasy hair hung to his knees, and his beard was so long that it almost reached his exposed…” You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out exactly what was exposed. Lance didn’t want to “fight back against a man in such poor physical shape.”

By the way, if you are a big Strand fan, and would like more of him, be sure to check out his Patreon page. He provides us with daily insights and short stories you just won’t get elsewhere including a story that gets a chapter released every Wednesday called Catch and Release. This is a new story about George and Lou from his Wolf Hunt trilogy.

Have to say that I was appropriately entertained by the latest movie in the Star Trek Universe, Section 31. It was not the dark drama sci-fi thriller I was hoping it would be – but entertaining. It held our attention until the end. In my opinion, Section 31 is to Star Trek what Skeleton Crew is to Star Wars. Not really the same thing, but enjoyable in its own right.

If you don’t want any spoilers, I suggest you stop reading now. You have been warned.

It had a little bit of everything built into it. If you have enjoyed the recent additions in the vein of Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Picard, you probably liked this one too.

Jeff Russo’s score brought the ominous sounds reminiscent of Picard, Discovery, and Legion while seemingly borrowing from Goldsmith’s First Contact. I give it a 5/5.

Starship battles rate a bit lower though. 1/5. There was a small one at the end. There wasn’t an inkling of our traditional Starfleet vessels. One could argue that since the action occurred outside of Federation space, we shouldn’t expect any of the traditional ships we are accustomed to.

Fights/action sequences were pretty good. 4/5. Plenty of fighting from beginning to end but inconsistent. Having a device that puts the wearer of said device out of phase with everyone else was pretty cool. This way others couldn’t land a punch, kick, or phaser blast on target because target was out of phase. But how did Georgiou manage to dodge said attacks effortlessly and with the ability to walk through walls with same agility not manage to fall through the floor? When she dropped the Godsend weapon (which was wearing its own out-of-phase device) why did it not fall through the floor but it could get kicked into the next room and pass through those walls without any issues?

Section 31 features a young LT Garrett who will eventually become Captain of the Enterprise C, plus a nod to the original series inhabitants of the planet Cheron.

There was no real Section 31 darkness going on, but there was the origin story of Georgiou that was revealed where she ended up poisoning her family as teen in a final test to become emperor. You also see her betray her teen main crush at the time who will later be revealed as her nemesis for the movie. Very dark, so I give it a 3/4 for darkness.

As I stated earlier, I enjoyed it. Not what I thought it would be, but enjoyable nonetheless. The ending, while giving us closure, provided an opening to a continuing saga of Section 31’s origin story. I look forward to see what comes next out of this.