I’m gonna do it again! I’m gonna watch a science fiction show I dimly remember from my youth again!

Last time, I did Earth 2, a show I remembered fondly. This time, I’m doing a show I definitely watched, but I don’t remember as well. Space: Above and Beyond. It aired around the same era as Earth 2, and the basic premise was that aliens were coming and space fighter pilots had to fight them off. I feel like it was a more militaristic sci-fi than is usually my scene, but it was still science fiction on television while I was a teenager, so I had to watch it.

Oddly, the one solid thing I remember is that the aliens were somewhat insectoid, so when the humans came up with the derogatory term for them, they went with “Chiggers”. Yes, that’s right, much like how Earth 2 had humans use “Diggers” to refer to some of that show’s aliens, this one also chooses to dance around the N-Word to make a point. Anyway, I’m hoping that the aliens on Space: Above and Beyond at least look cool. Anyway, let’s fine out.

Hey, remember Earth 2? It was a sci-fi show that aired… (PDR goes to check Wikipedia)… in 1994 and 1995. I don’t remember a lot about it, but I do know that thirteen-year-old PDR liked it.

My memories are that it’s about a ship full of colonists who go to another world to start a new society. While there, they have a bunch of troubles, not least of which is some kind of native life form that I think was trying to contact them in their dreams. I feel like there may have been a months-long break in the airing of the show. I have no idea what parts of what I just said are correct, but that’s how it is in my memory.

I refuse to read past the date on that Wikipedia page, because PDR is going to rewatch Earth 2 and write about it here on this website that he likes to write it on. I expect to do more than one post a week until I get through, so for the next month or two I’m going to be steeped in Earth 2-ness.

As a booster of beekeepers, and by extension bees, I feel like I should have a strong opinion on hornets one way or the other. I don’t really. I figure they’re out there doing work the same as anyone else. But when one gets into my apartment, I want it out of there.

This is why, mere moments ago, when I found a hornet in my living room I tried to gently usher it out by capturing it under a glass and doing the thing where you slip a paper under the glass and all that. You know what I mean. I’ve done this successfully before with hornets and other insects. But this time, either because I was tired or because it was jumpy and moved too quickly, instead of being trapped in the glass, it was crushed under the edge of the glass and cut nearly in half. I’d wanted be merciful, but fate wouldn’t have it. So I took the remains and placed them in the soil of my potted plant Borson, and I am making a post here on my website to honour a little insect that fell through no fault of its own.

(Also, it’s entirely possible it was a wasp. I genuinely can’t tell.)

I am reminded about how when I was a child I tried to make a deal with God that I would never unknowingly crush an insect under my feet while walking. I don’t know what I was offering God in return. I figured, if I see an insect as I stride along, I can handle the pressure of correcting course to make sure everyone is happy with the outcome. But if I don’t know its there, what can I do? I don’t want to step on anyone.

I guess I was a little wiener kid and now I’m a big wiener kid. I just don’t want to step on anyone. Or bisect them with glass. Can’t always get what you want, though, PDR.

fish got fins
they use them to swim
they live under water
and get eaten by otters
fish don’t have hair
they don’t live in the air

(This has been a poem I found in the notebook I used in art class in grades eight and nine.)

Since this site is meant to be a full chronicle of my life and times, even though I fail most of the time, it should be noted that on February 20th my father died suddenly. The following weeks has been a bit stressful and felt very long. And it was bookended by some hilariously-timed car troubles and apartment issues that just compounded things. I’m told that my father had expressed wishes that if he had to die, it would be sudden. He got that wish, though I’m sure he would have preferred it happen a decade or two down the line.

I have never liked the idea of sudden deaths. I mean, I’m not fond of death as a concept at all, but sudden death has always bugged me the most. It’s something I think about when I hear about car crashes or house fires or, in this case, unexpected cardiac arrest. I always think that the deceased had plans that they expected to get around to. And the more mundane the plans, the more it gets to me. The person in the car crash probably had a movie they were looking forward to seeing when it came out, for example. In the case of my father, he and my step-mother were planning a trip, which I’m sure would have been great, but what really got me was when I was at his place and I saw a book he’d taken out, presumably to read, and he never got the chance. I hate that kind of thing. I’ve seen people who argue that death gives life meaning, but I don’t agree. I’d be perfectly happy if we all got to live eternally and it was our own damn responsibility to inject meaning without external forces that ruin it for us and tell us that that makes it better.

Haiku!

This dumb universe.
It could be so much better.
Entropy is bad.

I feel like I much have mentioned this somewhere else on this site, but I went through my existential crisis of pondering my mortality at a very young age. I remember the changeover from nine-year-old PDR to ten-year-old PDR being particularly rough. I became aware that once I was out of single digit age, there would be no going back. I could tell then that I was just marching inexorably toward the grave and nothing could stop it. I lost a lot of sleep over it. I have distinct memories of lying awake in bed, picturing time as a flowing river and just trying to stop or slow the water. It never worked, and it never has since.

Time as a kid went by relatively slowly, but it was too fast for me. And now I’m at an age where every week flies by as if it were a day. I don’t lose as much sleep over it as I did, but it still bugs me.

It sure would be nice if there’s an afterlife where time doesn’t matter anymore, wouldn’t it? We could all read all the books we want.