THE FROG OF FORTOSIA!

Kirk: Captain’s Log Stardate: Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We were continuing our five year mission to seek out new life and discover new civilizations today and we came across a planet. It could easily have life or civilization on it, so we’re going to check it out.

Kirk: Spock’s readings state that the planet is composed almost entirely of cardboard and styrofoam, meaning it is the same as every other planet we have discovered to date. I have decided to beam down an away team made up only of main characters, to avoid the death of random crew members.

And so, on the planet’s surface…

Kirk: Well, here we are, men. Let’s seek out that stuff we seek out.

Spock: It would seem we have all neglected to bring our tricorders. We will have to search the planet manually.

Bones: Your stupid Vulcan logic again, eh Spock?

Chekov: I am scared of the sky here.

Kirk: We’ll split up. If anyone finds new life, or maybe a civilization, let the others know.

And so the team split up and investigate.

Bones: Sure, split up. I’m stuck looking at this boring cavern while that dirty Vulcan gets to look at interesting stuff. I hate Vulcans. I wish I could just enslave them all. Yeah, that’d be nice. I could have a Vulcan mopping my floors and making my supper. That’d be…

Meanwhile, Captain Kirk finds something…

Kirk: Now what’s this? It looks like a frog. (into communicator) Hey guys, I found something.

Frogodes: I’m no mere frog! I am Frogodes! I am the omnipotent ruler of this world!

Frogodes: Now that you’re here, I think I’ll torture you with my vast powers for my own entertainment. Yeah. Maybe I’ll make you and one of your friends fight to the death. Or I could make one of you stand on another one’s face.

Chekov: Captain! What did you–?

Chekov: Ahhh! What’s that? I’ll shoot it!

Frogodes: I think you’ll find that your weapons are useless against me, fool.

Chekov: You’re right… But it still makes me feel like a real man to have it.

Kirk: Frogodes, you mustn’t do this. We are… explorers. We seek only to make peace with you.

Frogodes: Too bad! I’m omnipotent!

Frogodes: Watch as I pick a random low-ranking crewman from your ship and bring him here, dead!

Kirk: What?

Bones: It’s true, Jim. Dead.

Kirk: Dammit!

Bones: Consarn these omnipotent aliens! Just once I wish one of them would join the Federation! That’d make things easier for us. But no! They all have worse attitudes than a Gargiruian Catfish!

Meanwhile, back on the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701 of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet.

Uhura: I just received a report from Deck Seven. One of the low-ranking crewmen just vanished.

Uhura: It’s almost like he was teleported away.

Sulu: Hey, wanna see me take off my shirt and do some sword-fighting?

Uhura: Not now.

Scotty: We’ll have time for that later, Sulu. Uhra call the Captain and tell him what happened.

Uhura: My name is “Uhura”, Mr. Scott.

Scotty: What? For real? What kind of name is that?

Uhura: What kind of name is Uhra?

Scotty: Geez, all these years I’ve known you and I didn’t even know your name. I feel like a bastard. I’ll be getting drunk because of that, I tell ya. Now, just call the captain.

Uhura: There’s some strange interference now, but I’ll work on it.

Scott: Well, work quick. We need the away team back here so Chekov can take out the garbage.

Back on the planet…

Frogodes: And so you see, you are helpless before me! I am your ruler!

Kirk: No… Not our ruler. Because of Free Will we will never be helpless against… tyrants like you. It is our job… our mission… to oppose the likes of you.

Frogodes: You said your mission was to seek out life and civilization.

Kirk: While opposing you on the side, yes.

Scotty (over communicator): Captain, we’ve got a situation up here.

Scotty: The garbage is piling up and I’m embarrassing myself in front of the bridge crew. Also, some guy disappeared. You should hurry up so I can get back down to engineering.

Kirk: Hang in there, Scotty. We’ve got problems too. You’ll have to give us twenty minutes or so.

Scotty: I’m not sure we can hold together that long, Sir.

Kirk: You’ll have to! Kirk out.

Chekov: But Captain, what can we do against such a supremely powerful being?

Q: Did someone say “Supremely Powerful Being?”

Chekov: What the Hell?

Frogodes: Q? What are you doing here?

Q: I’m all the omnipotent alien that this universe needs, Froggy. That’s why…

Q: You’re dead!

Kirk: Thank you for the help, stranger. If–

Q: Right, whatever. I just wanted the Frog’s treasure. Goodbye.

And so the away team returns to the ship.

Scotty: It sure took you guys a long time to get back. I feel like I’ve aged by decades from the stress of running this ship.

Chekov: What the hell is that? I’ll shoot it!

Patrick D Ryall, the D is for Research
Originally posted on Contains2 on Sunday January 30, 2005

I’ve discussed all of my classes except the last one: Astronomy. And I can discuss it now because it turns out that my exam in that class is today! I thought it was next week, but it is actually today. Am I worried because I have a week less study time than I thought? Nope. Why? Because this exam, unlike certain others, is open book. I had planned on rewatching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos this weekend to freshen my mind, but even without that I think I’ll do alright.

In spite of my hatred of doing mathematics, I took the Astronomy class because I know I need a science class for my degree. I have since realized that my History class would probably have counted toward that, but whatever, I didn’t have people talking me through it when I chose my classes, though I clearly should have. Anyway, I don’t regret taking the class. The math involved is pretty basic and only comes up occasionally. Test questions are mostly multiple choice, the professor is quite good, I have a genuine interest in the material. All in all, I’d see myself going into a second year Astronomy class before I continued with History. (Though, in fact, I’ll probably do neither)

We’ve had two tests in class, closed book, and I’ve averaged about 75% on those, I think. Take home assignments, more math heavy, but open book, I’ve had an average of around 90%. This exam is apparently a combination of the two styles, so I’m pretty confident going into this that I’ll do fine.

Post Exam Update: Okay, that was more like it. I feel reasonably confident that I’m in the 75 to 85% on that exam. It was largely multiple choice questions and I used my book to look up even those I thought I knew already. While I probably did still get a few wrong, I suspect I did well. There was also the mathematical question that I wrestled with for almost an hour. I probably messed that one up, but I’m bound to get a few points for trying. And anyway, while the troublesome question on yesterday’s exam was worth half the grade, this troublesome question was equal to all the other thirty questions. I don’t feel like it was too bad.

One peril of open book tests I noticed, though, was that I occasionally became distracted when I found something interesting in the book that was unrelated to the exam. Of all the textbooks I had to buy for this schoolin’, the Astronomy one is the easiest to enjoy flipping through, I think.

Tonight I will be writing my history exam. I suspect that this will be the hardest thing I’ve had to do for school this year.

My history class is already the class I have the most difficulty with. I don’t like writing the essays in any class, but here my apathy is at its strongest. I am interested in the material, but more in the sense of “I like to hear about history” than “I like to do research about history and then write about it”. Going to the lectures in this class is like watching a documentary, and that’s cool. If documentaries started asking me to participate, I would not watch them.

And to make matters worse, this is a closed book exam. I’m supposed to just remember everything we’ve learned in the last few months. That is, of course, ridiculous. I don’t plan to be a historian, but if I did what kind of training would this be? Surely it would be frowned upon for anyone who wrote academic papers without checking up on the facts as they did so, so why are we training future historians to do anything but diligently keep checking? If we reward the students who go off their memory, we’re just going to get people who think they know enough that they needn’t look things up. This should be the opposite of what we want. But more importantly, it is hard for me.

Ugh. Anyway, I like the class. I feel like I’m learning. And I’ve done alright on everything else so far. But this exam is tonight and it is worth 40% of my mark for the term and I don’t like it.

Post Exam Update: Okay, so I’ve just written it and it went about how I expected. There were two parts to the thing, each worth 50% of the mark. First we had a list of terms and we had to pick thirty of them and define them. I had no problem with this. I’ll be conservative and say I got about 40% on this section, right?

Secondly there was the essay part of the exam. The other 50% of my mark all rests on one essay. That’s twenty percent of my whole mark for the term in this class. Well, I wrote an essay. Even though I am, as I said above, against doing this sort of thing from memory, and even though I have taken another class that exists solely to remind us things like “handing in a first draft of an essay is a bad idea”, I wrote an essay. It was not a good essay. I’d go so far as to say it was a bad essay. Heck, I’d even go so far as to say it wasn’t so much an exam as it was a list of things I know that are somewhat related to the topic put into paragraph form. It wasn’t good. Here’s what I figure, though: Even this sorry excuse of an essay probably won’t get ZERO points, so, as long as someone is generous enough to give it a few points, I could get over the 50% mark on this exam after all.

Anyway, I know I’m doing alright on all the non-exam parts of this class. On everything else, the 60% of the term mark, I’d say I’m close to 50%. A few more points from the exam is fine by me.