1 April 1998: Phoenix Rising

Wednesday, 1 March 1998:

Phoenix Rising

Gee, it's a bit of a blow to spend a whole paycheck on nothing but credit cards and rent. But I guess that's what happens when you buy a new laptop computer, like I did last month. That's what savings are for, I guess.

Yesterday I took my car into the shop. It wasn't particularly sick, but I had a few concerns. I got the oil changed, and the windshield fluid pumps fixed. I had them look at the brakes, thinking I needed new pads, but they said they looked okay but could use some cleaning, so they did that. And I have been concerned about my radiator for a while, but they said it looks fine, but that maybe the thermometer in the tank was going bad, so they replaced it and it seems to be reading more like I expect now.

It's nice to have a car which is in better shape than I think it is! All praise to the Honda motor company. My car is now 11 years old and still going strong, despite creeping body rust.

Baseball season has started in fairly typical fashion: The Brewers lost, the Cubs lost (I can't believe some people are predicting a division title for the Cubbies; WHY?), Mark McGwire hit a grand slam, Ken Griffey Jr. homered and then the Mariners bullpen blew a 4-run lead for a 10-9 loss. The Red Sox are playing right now, and last I checked were scoreless in the second against Oakland.

I'm still working on our fantasy league software - it's going slowly but surely. I keep learning (or remembering) little perl tricks which I want to incorporate into my code. I'm such a perfectionist! And I've done some reading and watched the new Babylon 5 episode.

I'm not quite as down on the show this season as some people are, but it's clearly dragging in the wake of its major plot threads having been resolved. Tonight's episode, "Phoenix Rising", was a pretty good one, as it resolved much of the current telepath story, although it's hard to believe that much progress will be made on the overall issue before the series ends. The episode was most moving at the end, when we see how low Garibaldi has been driven by Bester. There's gonna be some blood there before it's over, I suspect.

The most recent re-run was the two-part "War Without End", which I think marked the beginning of the show's decline from it's greatest heights. It didn't really offer a satisfying resolution to the whole Babylon 4 story, especially inasfar as Sinclair was built up for a whole season - both on-screen and in Straczynski's on-line comments - as the protagonist of the series. It seemed messy. The remainder of the third season would remain pretty good, but the fourth season quickly became muddled, with a number of good bits, but no really strong, stand-out episodes. (Plus, the whole rationale for the Shadow War seemed rather ridiculous. When I watched "Z'ha'dum" my reaction was, "Naw, that can't be the real reason. No one would believe that! They've got something else behind it all." But, of course, they didn't. That was it. But I digress.) The fifth season is more focused, but has more modest goals.

B5 certainly marks a new high for science fiction television as far as storytelling goes, but it's been a lot less than it could have been, I think.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)