The season premier is about to start! I, um, might have something to say about this in a little while.
...
OK, now its later. Spoilers in the rest of the record.

Well, there were still some things which were unexplained and left hanging in tonight's episode, but overall, I liked it.

Not showing too much in the tornado was good. It left a lot to the imagination. It would seem, though, that Lana is the one who has figured out that Clark is not what he seems. And Clark seems to be starting to develop his flying ability.

Not enough was said about the space ship. Clearly it will be found by someone. I think I saw that the little hexagonal chip that somehow seems to control the ship fell off and has been lost again.

The relationship between the Luthors is as unstable as ever. With Lionel blinded, does that make him more dependant upon Lex or angry at him and even more alienated? With current technology they are starting to develop chip implants to give limited vision to people who have been blinded by damage to their eyes. It is not clear to me if Lionel is blind because of eye damage or brain damage, but this could be a running plot thread. Perhaps he will take an extended break while his scientists turn him into a cyborg during which time Lex gains greater control. Lex did not completely sell his soul by allowing his father to die, but he has deliberately killed someone. Granted, it was done in order to save another person, but Lex is now blooded.

Jonathon Kent saying that not killing Nixon was the hardest thing he'd ever done seemed like a stupid line. It certainly looked as though he were trying to kill him.

Too bad about Chloe pushing Clark away, but she's only a bit player in the Superman story. It's not like they can have Clark and Chloe fall in love and get married or anything.

So little Pete this episode it was disappointing. I was really looking forward to Pete figuring out Clark's secret and having a bigger part in the series. Oh well.

Lots of plot threads going in multiple directions. At least Whitney is out of the picture. Can hardly wait for future episodes.

This is actually not a quick and dirty review. Rather, it is a review of Quick by Eddie From Ohio (EFO). EFO is an eclectic group that writes songs covering an amazingly diverse range of topics.

My favorite song on the CD is Hey Little Man. This is an acapella harmony arrangement of a lovely song that seems to be sung to a son going to sleep. The singer provides images of what the child might dream about with hope for love, friendship, exploring ideas, and family. Beautiful. It has been running around in my head for weeks.

There are tongue-in-cheek songs about Einstein's theory of relativity, the mesolithic era, envy felt by a single person of the happiness of couples, and other things. There are also songs about monotony, regrets, and the death of innocent bystanders during fighting.

While the subject matter is diverse, the songs all feature clever word play using rhymes (not always perfect) and rapid-fire delivery to keep the listener engaged. It closes with another acapella song of praise to God for the Great Day which God has given. Very nice.

While I enjoyed this recording tremendously, a few of the songs don't hold up as well under repeated listenings. The derogatory remarks about Tommy the Canexican (Mexican/Canadian) wear a little thin after awhile. This list of cutesy names which the loving couple calls each other in The Best of Me is a bit too long. The regrets the singer feels as compared to Abraham are too unclear to draw the listener into understanding of his situation. Even so, this recording has a lot of entertaining and surprising songs.

I've been aware of the excitement many fans feel for EFO, and with this recording I can see why.

I like to read the comics. If I fall behind in reading the newspaper, I'll work on catching up on the comics, but I won't usually try to catch up on a backlog of news articles. I have been thrilled to find that I can get to so many strips via the internet that are not carried by my local paper.

I've included links here to you can see the comics that I read on a regular basis. (Also so that when I travel I have a concise list of the comics I'm following if I can get to an Internet link.)

Adam at Home

Arlo and Janis

Betty

Calvin and Hobbes

BC

The Fusco Brothers

Grand Avenue

Jane's World

Kevin and Kell

Nonsequitur

Pibgorn

Pickles

User Friendly

The Houston Chronicle has a great selection of today's strips available online for free. You can even build a list of strips which it will display for you, up to 8 strips per screen.

This next link is the comics I look at each day there.

Houston Chronicle selection

This next link is to the comics I read in the AJC in case I want to continue to follow them while on the road (at least, most of the comics I read (not all are my favorites), those I was able to get from the Chronicle).

Atlanta Journal-Constitution selection

My son stuck in a tape and recorded the second season opening episode of Enterprise for me while I was at choir, so I got to see it on the same day that it was originally broadcast. Overall I enjoyed it. (possible spoilers in the remainder of this entry)

I thought that the fact that the Suliban could not contact their future-time conspirator made a lot of sense. If Archer's departure from the current time (at least current for them, trying to talk about time-travel issues concerning shows which are set in the future can make for complicated verb conjugations) prevented the eventual formation of the Federation, then their temporal enemy would no longer have an incentive to be probing the past looking for allies to help thwart the beginnings of the Federation. Also, the desperation shown by Silik at having been abandoned helped to demonstrate just how dependent the Suliban are on their collaborators/facilitators from the future.

After the crew had made a big deal about how crowded the passageways were so that Hoshi was the only one who could crawl through them, I thought they did a lousy job of showing any part of the passageway that would have been impassable for anyone else. I am also a bit annoyed at the gratuitous titilation shown by having Hoshi's shirt ripped off instead of just having the cloth tear or not even get snagged. I do have to say that I am surprised that most of the postings I've seen in different places speculating about T'Pol's potential for a relationship with Tripper seem to focus on T'Pol as the primary sexual interest for viewers. Personally I find Hoshi more interesting and attractive than T'Pol. Not that I have any purient interest in either of them as I am, of course, happily married.

I think that the ease with which the Suliban overtook and overpowered the Enterprise demonstrated the serious plot hole in the first Enterprise episode where they managed to get the Klingon out of the hands of the Suliban and then had no more trouble from them. Why hadn't they been pursued and overpowered then? This is is the kind of "we're out of time so we'll just end the episode and let people imagine how they got out of it" plotting that I have found annoying on the show. This episode handled it better by having a hostage which would allow them to negotiate their way to freedom since they could not win free by force. Unfortunately, it exposed the plot hole of the original episode all the more.

I liked the somewhat ambiguous way they handled Archer's rescue. Had their plan been to let Daniels' future device fall into the hands of the Suliban in hopes that the Suliban would activate it? That seems unlikely, but why else would this critical aspect of their mission, sneaking this device out, have been left unmonitored by the other active crew members? I guess they were just busy with their staging of the apparent core breach. I do think that the Suliban's willingness to simply ignore Daniels' quarters instead of breaking into it was absurd, especially since T'Pol had told them Archer's suspicions about Daniels being from the future. Even supposing they didn't want to break in through the security on the door for fear of damaging the equipment inside, why did they wait until after it had been relocked to catch him with the temporal equipment? Even if they had only just closed in on him after he had finished re-locking the door, why didn't they work on forcing him to re-open it instead of again ignoring that room? Major plot hole.

I like some of the hints about the importance the Enterprise and its mission will play in the eventual establishment of the Federation. This should help to make the show quite significant in the lore of Star Trek.

Some speculation about the future of the show. The buzz I've heard is that the Temporal Cold-War will continue to be a major plot line this season. I hope it doesn't drag on throughout the entire series as there should be plenty of material for episodes without requiring the intervention of people from the far future mucking in the past. Time travel gets very convoluted and it is very difficult to handle it cleanly without lots of ambiguous or clearly contradictory plot elements.

However, given that they seem to be going in that direction, what part will Daniels play in the series? Was he lost in the future where Archer left him? That future should not now develop. So where is he? Would he be back in his own time with no memory of the events in the Shockwave episodes? We have already seen him killed once. What does that mean? Did we see his actual death but the "later" visits by Daniels were perhaps done by a younger Daniels before his death? Perhaps that death had only been faked. Will there be a new visitor from that future time?

I saw some speculation on Wil Wheaton's website that the "mysterious" benefactor of the Suliban from the future might be revealed as the Vulcan Ambassador. That would certainly go a long way to explain the Vulcans' strange actions (their clandestine spy operation running under their religious retreat for example) and the particular hostility of the Vulcan Ambassador to the mission of the Enterprise.

In any event, I'm enjoying the show and look forward to seeing what happens next.