Steve Tyrell

Artist currently on my playlist

Colorful Metaphors

Star trek never had this same appeal to me like star wars did, though both film franchise are hollywood science fiction space movies with aliens, spaceships, warp drives and big cult followings in real life, but I think its because I watched star trek IV first and it was a very bad start if you were to introduce yourself to the star trek universe.

The story goes something like this:

Humpback whales were hunted to extinction during the 20th century but unknown to humans, whale songs humpbacks whine while underwater was actually some sort of an alien language they use to communicate with some aliens a couple of million light years away. After all the humpbacks went extinct, the aliens were wondering why they haven’t heard from their whale friends so they sent some spaceship to earth to check on them, since they were millions of light years away, it took them til the 23rd century to get to the future earth. They weren’t the creative kind of aliens because their ship just looked like a lead cylinder with a little light on the tip, but the problem was it gave off some kind of electromagnetic pulse that disrupts anything mechanical thus leaving the space ships around earth like flying scraps and it went on thrashing the earth’s ocean looking for its whales.

This is where the star trek heroes come in, their plan was to go back in time to the 1980s and get some humpback whales and bring them to the future to make those aliens happy. Their iconic saucer-looking uss enterprise was blown to bits at the start that they had to use a klingon warbird ship to get back in time, since it was my first star trek movie, I thought that the warbird was their star trek flagship, and I didn't even know spock was an alien, I thought he had that beatle hairstyle because it was probably back in fashion in the 23rd century. Most of the movie was focused on the star trek crew running and figuring things around in our time period, it was the typical case of future people going back in time and getting lost in the culture but seriously the script was great, I liked the humor but then it seemed more of a comedy movie rather than science fiction to me because I found myself laughing most of the time.

I was just reminded of some lines in the movie because I was writing a month ago about the word hell being in my vocabulary all the time, and I think kirk has a good explanation to it.

(kirk and spock are the two lead star trek characters)
Spock: Admiral, your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, shall I say, more colorful metaphors "double dumb-ass on you" and so forth.
Kirk: You mean the profanity?
Spock: Yes.
Kirk: That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.

(kirk and spock learning to talk with colorful metaphors)
Dr. gillian taylor: You're not one of those guys from the military trying to teach whales to retrieve torpedoes, or some deep shit like that?
Kirk: No ma'am, no deep shit.

Spock: They like you very much, but they're not the hell your whales.
Dr. gillian taylor: I suppose they told you that?
Spock: The hell they did.

(kirk looks at spock)
Spock: Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor?

(kirk and spock on their way out of the 20th century with whales and full of colorful metaphors)
Kirk: Spock, where the hell is that power you promised me?
Spock: One damn minute admiral!

60

It was my old man’s birthday last saturday and it was supposed to be grand because its his 60th birthday and its something like a milestone for most people still being alive, but my old man didn’t like the idea, he just wanted a simple dinner with our extended family.

I picked up my parents at the airport friday and they chewed out on me at the airport because I screwed up their flight back to manila sunday, my old man was indecisive on what flight to take yesterday that he had me book a lot of seats on different sunday planes and the one he decided to take was of all the ones that I forgot to book. They went home for his birthday dinner though I had this feeling they wanted to stay in manila for this petula clark concert, they didn’t say a word about it but even when I was still a kid, they’d always sing her song you and I from that old movie goodbye mr chips.

Anyway when I got to the restaurant for his dinner that night, it was full because there was also some sort of convention there for whatever brotherhood it was, they had their guests coming in white tuxes and bow ties that if the restaurant wasn’t chinese, you could mistake them as waiters. There was one guy there who I think didn’t have a lot of friends, because he had a band of bodyguards following him with a lot of guns sticking out from their pants so that no one would probably start a fight with him. One of them was even sporting this ammunition belt of bullets from his shoulders, I’m not quite familiar with guns but I think those bullets on his shoulder were too big for any of the guns he carried, they looked like they should be used in M60s in helicopters, it’ll probably scare you to know that he maybe fires them through his teeth, it’s like chewbacca who always carries this bandolier by his shoulder but you never saw him reload bullets from there, it must be his clothes or something since he’s not wearing anything at all. Nobody tried to kill whoever that guy was anyway, you’d get lost in finding him because they all look the same in their white tuxes.

The waiters also forgot to fix the walls where our tables were at, there was this banner from a forum earlier that says b.o.m.b which meant something like budget operations and management in barangays or something like that, though b.o.m.b. made no sense to what their topic was, its just other people’s habit of making stupid a.c.r.o.n.y.m.s. to phrases and titles, though bomb came in handy, I just had to tell my cousins to look for the bomb in the restaurant before they get lost in a sea of men in white tuxedoes.

We had shark’s fin soup for starters but they were probably grated chicken cartilage, and I felt better eating it that way for the love of greenpeace and the thought of how angry a shark can get in that jaws movie. The rest of the food was great though and the best one was this steel keg of beck’s beer under my seat.

4 Years Later

I still remember asking myself ‘how long will this –diary writing- last?’ last year this well. Its been one full year and I’m still keeping this and evaluating the benefits I’ve gain, they’re simply valuable. I know I would regret very much now if I did not keep this, I’ve learn many things, but the most important of them all is that, there’s so much I don’t know, so much I haven’t experience, so many things I don’t understand yet, I don’t even feel like celebrating it even to myself, I didn’t buy me sweets. Also I realize how many things I don’t dare do, inhibited from doing, things that are really plain and nothing but I unconsciously considered morbid. I’ve been living in a closed world, a prison cell and isolation from people and relationship with girls.

weatherman1
september 14, 1970

I might have said the same thing like my old man after a year of keeping a journal for myself, and its been four years this september since I got my journal over this blog and I have to admit, there’s still a hell lot of things to learn for myself.