theredroom

lol Let it be known I have nothing against Majel Barrett. I immensely appreciate the endless work she put into keeping Trek going over the years, I love that her computer voice is omnipresent, I dig her as Nurse Chapel, and I think she would've been great as #1 on TOS, had she continued the role. Personally, I just think the writers pushed the earlier Lwaxana character too far into purposefully annoying territory, and without enough redeeming qualities to balance it out. She embodied some highly dislikable characteristics – a narcissistic sense of entitlement, being rudely dismissive, ignoring boundaries and being seemingly oblivious to others' feelings – which never made sense to me, her being a telepath. Either she's a Betazoid lacking in telepathy, or she's well aware her impositions and advances are unwanted and make people uncomfortable, but doesn't care and proceeds anyway. But any blame, I put solely on the writers, not Majel. And I definitely softened to her when they started giving her some character development, later in TNG and esp in DS9 with the Odo plotline. The elevator scene completely won me over.

Unfortunately, not in the "nonexistent" category.

Now I'm imagining the TOS version where 3/4 of the pie chart is "gets some tail", and 1/4 is "thinly veiled cold war allegories" about a society in decline that's lost all individuality and forgot how to function, as it's being run by a computer. (Although most of those involve getting some tail, too.)

I'd never had any sort of breathing issues in my life - no inkling of allergies, asthma, etc... until I got covid in Feb. Ever since, I get some weird shortness of breath & chest tightness. 5 months, still lingering. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, it's been feeling worse lately. A couple days last week were pretty bad, but it's improved since then.

I knew a guy who claimed to be the inspiration for the song. Of course, his story's to be taken with, not just a grain, but a salt shaker worth of salt. There was a bar in Chicago called Reservation Blues, run by blues guitarist, Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater. They had another old blues guy working the door named Leroy Brown (which he would gladly prove with id, upon request). He said he knew Jim Croce way back and he was the guy. He matched a few of the trappings... tall, from the south side, etc. Leroy was a master story teller, with a hundred wild tales to tell. You couldn't care less if they were all true, exaggerated, or whatever - everyone loved shooting the shit with him. I bartended across the street, so I saw him a lot and liked having an after hours drink with him, until they closed a couple years later.

Yes please. I want to see the busses chomp down on the little cars. And with each successive car pellet munched, the bus increases in size and speed. Eventually, it's a quintuple-decker block-long behemoth, that sprouts wings, and can get you from Howard to 95th in 10 mins.