greygirlbeast | "Not in front of the Klingons..."

It's very warm here in Atlanta, highs in the eighties yesterday and again today. I'm loving this early taste of summer. A sunny day out there, so I'm determined not to waste all of it in here at this dratted desk.

I thought that it might be interesting to do something I've not done before (at least, I don't think that I have) and show one of Vince's early working sketches for a Sirenia Digest story. The following was his first go at "To One Who Has Lost Herself," the result of e-mail exchanges between us shortly after I finished the story last week:

Copyright © 2006 by Vince Locke

There's really not much to be said about yesterday. I think the highpoint was when I walked down the back steps and almost stepped on a Dekay's Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi dekayi) that had just molted and was sunning itself. It was a beautiful little beast, about twelve inches long. We moved it from the driveway to a safe patch of yard. I've now seen two species of snake in our neighborhood, the Dekay's and a ringneck (Diadophis punctatus ssp). There ought to be green snakes, as well, and garter snakes, and maybe a few other species. And anoles. I've yet to see a lizard in Atlanta. I think I'm beginning to miss reptiles. I kept snakes when I was a child, and then, while I was in college, I had a fondness for lizards and turtles. At one point, about 1988, my bedroom housed a Tokay gecko, a smooth softshell turtle, a Barbour's map turtle (now endangered and protected), a common snapping turtle, and a yellow-bellied slider. Perhaps my office would benefit from a snake...

Later, we continued our Star Trek movie binge with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Mostly, I've been surprised that the Star Trek movies are a little better than I remember them being, even IV, despite it's atrocious score, the insufferable Catherine Hicks, the particularly wonky science, and all the chintz that comes with 1986. However, ST:V is every bit as gawdawful as I remember it being. Indeed, it's so bad one wonders that there was ever another Star Trek movie after it. Most of the SFX would have looked cheap and dated at the time (1989), production values seemed to hover near zero, Shatner's direction is the very definition of "hamfisted," and the climax...never mind the climax. This one should come with a warning label.

My thanks to

headhouse for directing me to this truly wonderful site, Paleogeography and Geologic Evolution of North America. It has some of the best paleogeographic maps I've ever seen, and you can track the evolution of the continent from the late PreCambrian (550 mypb) all the way to the present. My favourite's, of course, are the three Late Cretaceous maps (100-75 mybp). Check it out, kiddos.

There's news of a ground sloth skeleton unearthed in the Florida everglades (not surprising), and, naturally, I'm very excited about the data and photos streaming back to Earth from the ESA's Venus Express. None of these things make it easy to think about the work I need to be doing, though. Indeed, I'm afraid that I'd much rather be looking at maps of North America during the Mesozoic or these magnificent images of the Venusian south pole than writing anything I need to be writing at the moment. Sometimes, all my life seems a binary opposition between writing and those things which kindly distract me from writing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You poor child. In my case, I was just starting my joke of a writing career by writing movie reviews for New Pathways at that time, and not only did my editor hold off on publication of the summer issue solely so that review of Star Trek V was able to run in that issue, but he actually called me at work the night the film premiered to tell me how great he thought it was. On cold nights, I still have nightmares involving him arguing with me about how Shatner's fees took so much of the budget that the production had to recycle motion control footage from the previous films, and his whining "They wouldn't do that!"

arguing with me about how Shatner's fees took so much of the budget that the production had to recycle motion control footage from the previous films,

I very much suspected as much...

At the time, Cinefantastique related that between Shatner's, Leonard Nimoy's, and DeForrest Kelly's $6 million fees, there was precious little for anything approximating special effects or anything else. A very telling point was that Shatner was offered either a straight $1 million directorial fee (along with the promise that he was able to direct the next two films, solely so he could direct one more than Nimoy had) or a percentage of the profits, and he ran like hell. When I finally saw it, I wasn't surprised in the slightest: I've seen student films that weren't that murky, so I suspect that Paramount was even cutting costs on film stock.

(A funny little aside on that: 1989 was also the summer that Paramount management attempted to beat down the dollar cinema market and lost, and Star Trek V was at the center of it. At the time, licensing payments to studios from dollar cinemas usually ran about 60 cents on the dollar per ticket, and Paramount announced that it expected 95 cents per ticket. Since that wiped out any available profit, especially for some of the dogs Paramount was trying to sell that summer, the big chains such as Cinemark announced that they simply weren't going to run Paramount movies until such a time as the licensing rate went down. Paramount management threw a snit and promptly rereleased Star Trek V and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a double feature, and watched them both tank in rerelease. Very quietly, Paramount changed its stance, and there was joy in Mudville when the studio made back some of the money it had pissed down the rathole for "Bill and Harve's Bogus Journey".)

Elvis help me, that brought back some nasty flashbacks from that time. I've tried my best to burn out all of that unnecessary trivia, I really have, but I guess the wood burning kit just wasn't enough...

Corn snakes are total sweethearts, and should be native, too. They also don't get really huge (under 6').

i had to track down a copy of star trek v a good five years ago to watch it. at the time i had wondered how i had missed it. after watching it i wished that i had missed it totally. it's a horribly hokey bad film.

thanks for all the links they'll keep me busy in between my reading sessions today. i'm off and don't have to work yaaay!!!! it's overcast and 64df here. not yaaay!

I really like that sketch.

Perhaps my office would benefit from a snake...

It couldn't hurt.

I really like that sketch.

Me, too. Unfortunately, the girl should have been about 25, and she looks maybe 15 here. She's being aged for the final version.

I still like how much of the store's nature you can tell even from the sketch—the fossils, the lettering, the bones. I look forward to the final result.

To me, it seems so weird to hear of you coming across a snake while you were out walking. There aren't many snakes in the wild here (I think except adders). I've started to wonder if I'll ever come across any wildlife at all. I don't know what it is, the things that I used to see (frogs, hedgehogs, foxes) just aren't around anymore.

Your in England, right? In all of Britian, there's only three native species of snakes. Just three, which seems very weird to me. Here is Georgia, we have a minimum of 40!

I've started to wonder if I'll ever come across any wildlife at all. I don't know what it is, the things that I used to see (frogs, hedgehogs, foxes) just aren't around anymore.

I fear this is a situation common to many parts of the world.

Actually, it's not all that weird: the UK's reasonably free of snakes because the Ice Age was too tough for most indigenous reptiles, and the English Channel is too cold to allow too much immigration from the mainland. The survivors are ones with special capacity to tolerate cold: for instance, the adder has been documented as leaving hibernation as its burrow was still surrounded by snow. (Roughly the same situation happened with New Zealand during the Pleistocene glaciation: turtles and crocodilians didn't survive the glaciation of South Island and the drastically cooler temperatures of North Island, and snakes may not have ever reached Aotearoa before the islands separated from Australia. Out of the indigenous skinks and geckos, most have adapted to ovovivipary, which is a standard tactic for reptiles faced with cooler conditions, and the tuatara thrives on cooler temperatures than any other reptile. In fact, tuatara die when exposed to what would be optimal temps for most other reptiles.)

Actually, it's not all that weird: the UK's reasonably free of snakes because the Ice Age was too tough for most indigenous reptiles, and the English Channel is too cold to allow too much immigration from the mainland.

Right. But what I meant when I said it would be "weird," was that it would seem odd to me, being in a place where reptiles are so scarce, when I grew up in a place where reptile diversity and numbers numbers are quite high. :-)

I understand: I have Australian friends who laugh at rattlesnakes and water moccasins. When you live in a locale where three-quarters of the snakes are venomous and most are lethally so, it's hard to take our pit vipers seriously.

I fear this is a situation common to many parts of the world.

It's the fact that within 15 years there's been such a dramatic change that bothers me, and that my own children (if I had any) would probably think a hedgehog was a mythical creature.

"Not in front of the Klingons..."

That's what my old roommate would say when my cat would look embarrassed when she would catch us being cuddly. *g*

They more than made up for V with VI.

"Not in front of the Klingons..."

<i>Star Trek V</i>

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