You know how you never see a toilet on the Starship Enterprise, or any other Starfleet vessel? Many possible answers have been posited for this, but I have always figured that they don’t need toilets because they have a system where bodily wastes are just teleported right out of your body.

I call it the Tele-port-a-potty.

And from there, it is just turned back into warp energy just like their dirty plates or other garbage. (This is TNG-era or later, obviously. Dunno where Kirk poops ended up. )

And I picture this as something that happens all the time, so nobody ever even feels the urge to go. The masses involved are so low that there is not even any noise or light from the constant teleportation.

So in a sense, everyone on a Starfleet vessel is going to the bathroom…. all the time.

Of course, this does not explain why, on extended away missions, they don’t all start cramping up. And then it would take them a while to remember what that means, and then going to the bathroom the normal way (for us) would seem incredibly disgusting and degrading.

Imagine how a modern person feels about using an outhouse, times a million.

Of course, some of them would be turned on by that…. hmmmm….

Anyhow, hi folks. Just another day of exposing all you people to my brain drippings. Thought today I would keep it loose and just lay down whatever I have around.

I am kind of curious about this notion that keeping a particular plant with two unpleasant names in your bedroom window would improve air quality.

The plant is either called a snake plant (yikes) or Mother In Law’s Tongue (YIKES), and its salient properties are that it absorbs a number of the airborne toxins that are the inevitable byproduct of our modern way of life, and it apparently gives off oxygen at night rather than taking it in.

Here is the rundown from the article :

Meattle says Mother-in-Law’s Tongue is known as “the bedroom plant.” While most plants take away oxygen at night, this one gives off oxygen at night. The plant also filters formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, and benzene from the air. Meattle recommends 6-8 waist-high plants per person for optimal output from this oxygen factory.

(Yes, the expert in the aritcle’s name is Meattle. No doubt she pronounces it to rhyme with ‘beetle’ but in my mind, it rhymes with “Seattle”)

I am always looking for things that make things fresher and nicer, so I am intrigued by this idea. Plus, I like plants. I like green things. They make a place cheerier.

But a plant would have to be pretty low maintenance to survive my absentmindedness, and so I have never gotten any for my living spaces. I figure I should not subject an innocent living creature to my inevitable accidental negligence.

Plus, I am not quite sure that we all could do with extra oxygen, let alone how much a plant produces. It sounds like the sort of thing that would work mostly by the placebo effect.

I could be wrong.

I am going to be going to my GP tomorrow, after my therapist. I am going primarily because I am out of insulin, and so I figure this is the time I am supposed to come back and check in with him about how that whole insulin thing is going.

And how is it going? Slowly. My average daily fasting (ish) blood sugar does go down as the amount of insulin I am taking goes up, but in a frustratingly slow way.

I really figured that I would never reach 40 units, but I have. I am beginning to think one shot a day is not enough, and that like others I know, I will end up having to test and inject after every meal.

Which is not that big a deal. It is a lot more hassle, and I will need to keep a lot more insulin. When I got my initial five tubes, that seemed like so much. But then, I started off at only ten units a day. I am on four times that now.

I am not too worried about missing one day’s worth of insulin. To my shame, it has happened before, by accident (just plum forgot to take it) and nothing catastrophic seemed to happen.

It will be weird to have nothing to do come 11:30 though. How quickly new things become old habits! Maybe I will inject myself with saline just to keep the habit up.

Just kidding folks… relax.

Lastly, the peerless Felicity has introduced me to the works of Jon and Al Kaplan, who have way too much fun producing musical summaries of famous movies.

To give you a taste, here is their version of John Carpenter’s The Thing (fave horror movie EVER).

It is from the point of view of the titular character. (Hee hee… titular.)

You get the idea. They are highly creative and clearly know their way around musicals as a genre. And of course, they are quite funny.

And they love, love, love Arnie. Witness Conan : The Musical…

And my current fave, Batman and Robin : The Musical, based on the excremental Joel Schumacher film.

That is a chorus that just sticks with you. “Bayitmayan.. you son of a biyich!”. Just you wait, you will be singing that in the shower soon.

I am incredibly impressed that whichever one of them does Arnie can sing on key in that accent. Especially the inarticulate Arnie noises.

I will not even think about trying to construct an onomatopoeia for those. I know when I’m licked.

Anything else? Hmmm. Guess I felt all right today. No big depression and I slept a normal amount. I am thinking maybe I should just plain eliminate caffeine from my life and see what happens.

I sm sure going to miss that sweet, sweet cola though.

See, when you start to crave something, that’s when you know it is time to stop because you are becoming addicted. And I have craved cola lately.

I suppose the other solution would be to drink cola all the time.

That strikes me as inferior, though.