To boldly go....

photo by Paul Fuhrman

My older brother asked me to type a paper for him in high school which was about Star Trek, his favorite show.  I wasn't particularly interested in either the paper he wrote or the opening quote by Ray Bradbury which he reverently read back to me after I typed it because he could see I wasn't impressed and thought if he read it slowly I would understand the importance.  The quote is a voice-over in the beginning of the show right before the space ship Enterprise blasts off to make friends with peoples whose heads and faces looked scarred over from industrial accidents and who lived on planets whose power source was drying up.  When I watch re-runs of the original Star Trek, I am gobsmacked at the amateurish special effects, the acting which at best you can call mannered, and the reliable plot.  But still.  They had all these cool...devices.  The beam up machine, sure: who wouldn't?  But they also had this wand thingey which the doctor, Bones--I mean, right?--would scan over a person's body and the computer would tell him what was wrong and where and what planet they had to travel to for the elixir that fixed everything.  My opinion? That device doesn't get enough press.  Paul and I went to the cathedral of devices, Best Buy, to get the photo gallery on our Samsung tablet explained...again...and while waiting for the child to help us noticed watches that tell you when one of your other devices--phone, computer--wants you.  No kidding.  I joked with our technician--an underage healthy-looking specimen who was moving to Denver to bike, hike, and jump out of airplanes--that the only thing Best Buy didn't sell was that diagnostic wand "but you don't need it." "I do, though," he said.  He pulled up his shirt, unnecessarily, and showed us a lump of fat that was traveling around his torso willy nilly causing him sleepless nights of worry and "my back...I have this rash." He turned around for inspection.  I shut my eyes. "I could really use that wand.  Where can I get one?"  Beam me up.