Apartment 13 Vs. the Squirrel

You might think I'm about to do a Fiction Friday post a day early with a title like that, but the story you're about to read is all true. Although I really should do a Fiction Friday post at some point. Anyway. Last Wednesday my girlfriend, Marisa, and I had dinner with her brother for Restaurant Week at Empire Steakhouse in Manhattan (quick review: nice atmosphere, annoyingly over-attentive staff, great wine selection, mind-blowing fried calamari, good chocolate cake, and a "well done" hamburger that was so rare it could have jumped off the plate and done the Macarena). We got home at about 10:45pm, I stop by the door to take my boots off, and she goes into the kitchen to put her doggie bag in the fridge.

And then I hear her scream.

Marisa comes running out of the kitchen, telling me there's a squirrel in the kitchen. She damn near runs past me and out the door as she tells me I need to do something about it, but she warns me the squirrel is "the size of a cat."

I figure she's exaggerating because she's scared, and I have no idea what she wants me to do. I'm a city boy; the only creatures that have ever been in any of my houses are either invited guests or mice, who run away the minute I breathe. By the time I get into the kitchen with a bucket I'm thinking I can use to trap the little guy and escort him to the door, he's taken his egress through a hole around the pipe under the kitchen sink, a hole that was made because of some prior plumber work that never got patched up. So now we can hear him in the walls. Marisa is freaking out and is calling everyone from the super to a random friend to her parents, none of whom can do anything because it's almost 11. I barricade the cabinet doors under the sink so if and when our furry friend comes back, he can't get out the doors and into the apartment and we do the only thing we can do: go to bed.

The next morning Marisa sets off for work and let's me know when she hears from the landlord that they're trying to get animal control to come, and then she's going to get one of the other tenants in the complex, Gary, who works with walls and whatnot to come over and patch the hole. of course, it snowed like the damn dickens on Thursday and animal control takes the day off. While I'm waiting for them, all morning I can here the little bastard coming and going through the wall, into the cabinet, banging our pots and pans and shit around. Every now and then I bang on something and send him away. Eventually Gary walks over from his apartment next door and throws some sheet rock over most of the hole and spackles over what's left. I'm looking at this, thinking a squirrel can chew through that, but Gary assures me that it'll take him a day or two to do so, and by then animal control will have come to get rid of him.

Y'know, if he doesn't die in the walls and stink the joint up first. But it's okay, my concern was misplaced.

Just to backtrack a bit, all day as I'm listening to this thing bang around, I'm contemplating the absurd amount of noise it's making and starting to doubt Marisa a little, because I'm thinking there's no way a little squirrel can be making THAT much noise. And my fears felt confirmed when it took that son of a bitch less than four hours to chew through the sheet rock and get back into the cabinet. Luckily, I had barricaded it back up in time to keep him in there. I call Marisa at work as it's about 5pm now, she calls the landlord, who's big idea is to send Gary back over. Because this worked so well the first time. Meanwhile, just to be on the safe side, I close the bedroom and bathroom doors, so in case the squirrel gets out of the cabinet he doesn't have free reign of the house. When Gary, who really is a very nice older guy, shows back up I tell him what's going on, and he wants to take a look. I warn him the squirrel, if that's what it really is, is right there. He slowly cracks one of the cabinet doors open barely an inch before the door gets banged open from the inside and a blur shoots out the door, out of the kitchen, does a lap around the living room, runs back into the kitchen, jumps on top of one of the laundry baskets I had used as a barricade, stands up on its hind legs, and just looks at us. Sort of like this:

So it IS a squirrel. But not a tree squirrel. No, it's a ground squirrel. Which is basically a bigger, longer, fatter tree squirrel. This one was so big that, after it looked at us and we looked at it in one of the weirdest Mexican standoffs ever, it hopped off the laundry basket and went over to one of our recycling bins and looked inside it, still on it's hind legs. That's how tall this thing was.  So I tell Gary not to startle it as I run to the front door, open it up, and then open the screen door. Then I tell Gary to scare it, so he tries to kick it, something I never would have done considering it wasn't at all showing the appropriate level of fear and I half-thought it was going to attack us. The squirrel jumps around him and saunters... yes, the motherfucker literally sauntered... out the front door and into the snow without so much as a "by your leave" or a "so long and thanks for all the fish."

We look into the cabinet, after I locked the door back up like I half-expected the squirrel to stroll back through the door and dropkick his jacket Mr. Belvedere-style and set up residence, and see that he was chewing and scratching through our paper towels and plastic bags, basically nesting. Gary says he doesn't have anything that can plug the hole up anymore securely than sheet rock would at the moment and leaves, promising to come back in the morning. Meanwhile, I empty the cabinet of everything, in case the squirrel finds its way back in, so it'll have nothing to play with and hopefully move along. He never did come back, and in the morning Gary came back with not one but two lays of steel wire mesh and two cement boards, plugging the hole up but good. It's been a week since, and no sign of our friend since.

I did Google him after I saw him, which is how I found out it was a ground squirrel. Interesting fact about ground squirrels. When they feel threatened, they start screeching loudly to warn other ground squirrels nearby. Which, since he never uttered a sound, comfortingly means he was a lone wolf. Or, less comfortingly, means he knew he could take us.

Either way, if he had screeched at us in our kitchen, I swear I would have grabbed my things and let him keep the apartment.

I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...

...but I need more time!

Here's a post I've promised for a week now: the one that rants about how there just aren't enough hours in the day anymore for me to do all the things I want to do. There are about six blog posts I've been meaning to write that are just too time-consuming at the moment. Seriously, there's one about TV shows that has grown to include eight different topics... at this point I think I might just wait until it hits ten and make it into a nice, neat list. I'm still hoping to hit a hundred posts in a year for the second time in my blogging career, but I just don't know anymore. And clearly there's no fiction-writing getting done at all.

There are also a stack of comics on my computer going back over a month now that I haven't been able to read. You know, I used to lament the change in writing style that took comics from something that used to take at least ten minutes an issue to read to something that can be breezed through in half the time in a lot of cases, or I'd never get anywhere. And in the same vein, books! I'm trying to keep up with my challenge to read at least fifty again this year, and so far I'm on track. Barely.

As for visual entertainment? I'm watching TV shows days after they air, trying to avoid spoilers and failing miserably. It's a good thing most shows are wrapping up for the season now or I just wouldn't be able to handle it. Of course new shows are starting soon too, so the cycle keeps going. And I'm so far behind on movies, there's just never any time for them!

Okay, full disclosure: that last one isn't true; I'm still seeing a movie a week or so in theaters and, before I started writing this blog on the work computer today I watched a movie on it, and will probably watch another or two before the day is over...

So what's to blame for all this falling by the wayside like this?

This job, for one thing. Ten-and-a-half-hour shifts, plus travel time each way, plus exhaustion and the need to sleep afterwards. It makes things impossible.

And then there's my girlfriend, who I have to spend the weekend with every weekend so none of these things get done. And as if that wasn't enough for her, I also have to take her out at least once during the week, too! Talk about time-consuming. Between her and work, there's just never any time anymore.

There's never any time!

In case you can't tell, this post is satirical in nature. While yes, it's true that I could use some more time to do some of the things I enjoy, there's no two ways around the fact that I love my life right now. I'm being paid extremely well to do...well, not a whole lot. Yes, the shifts are long right now, but this schedule gives me three-day weekends, and who doesn't love that? And I'm madly in love with my girlfriend and enjoy every moment we spend together and wouldn't trade them for anything. So yes, while there might not be enough time for everything I want to do (including blessed, miraculous sleep), I couldn't be happier.

Although I wouldn't mind getting through those comic books...

300th Post: A Tricentennial Retrospective

That's right, folks. Shootin' Straighter Than a Stormtrooper hits its three hundredth post today. I don't know about you, but that seems like kind of a big deal to me, even if it took forever; my first post dropped on April 16th, 2010, just over four years ago. I'm sure I could have reached this point much sooner, but as I mentioned yesterday, sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day (and yes, that blog is still coming, unless of course it isn't, because of, well, ibid, your honor...), but I digress. As a way to celebrate this milestone, I thought I'd take a look back at some of the highlights my blog has had over the years.

To start, we're going to briefly revisit my one hundredth blog post, where I analyzed my life and my goals a bit. I have no idea why I didn't to the same at two hundred, but whatever. Check that post out for a second, and then come back. I'll wait.

Ready? Okay. Find a job with decent pay and benefits? I think my job with Google, while just temp for now, covers it, as I get health and benefits through the agency and the job pays more than any I've ever had. As for number two, well, let's just say I love my girlfriend very much. She's an amazing woman. I haven't made much headway on the loans bit yet because the job is still new, and likewise on the moving out part, but the wheels are certainly in motion. As for dieting, well, I haven't been paying much attention to what I eat or anything lately but I'm still about forty pounds less than what my average was before 2012, so I'm calling it a win. Likewise a win is that I really have been writing more; not necessarily stuff evidenced by blog posts or lack of same, but, well, there are secrets. And attempted secrets that sometimes fail. But still. More writing! My life is a very good place right now. I haven't been this happy in, well, maybe ever. It's a nice feeling.

Next in this little look back, I thought I'd list the most popular entry in each of my blog categories (I'm leaving out The Week's Best because I can't remember the last time I touched that, and also Recommended Reading Challenge, because that's all part of Lit Bits anyway). So here's the list:

At the Movies: The Human Centipede 2 and a Halloween Marathon Update

Creativities: Your Online Dating Profile and What You're Doing Wrong: A Guide for Women

Fiction Fridays: Biggs and Wedge Occult Occurrences: Like a Whore in Church

Life Unexpected: The Job Search Tango

Lit Bits: Goodreads Book Review - Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good

Mets Monday: Opening Day 2014

Random Goodies: Choose the New Stormtrooper II

Retroblogs: The World Went Topsy-Turvy

Tales from the Tube: The 10 Best Geek TV Shows of 2012

The Joy of Comics: Morning Glories: The Best Comics You Really Should be Reading

So those are the most popular posts in each category, but what are the most popular ones of all? You can see those any time on the left-hand side of this page, so don't expect me to do all the work for you!

That's it for my little retrospective, because I'm tired and I have work tomorrow and a lot to do still tonight. So here's to another retrospective to come, and all the blog posts in between.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Star Wars Day!

Clearly, Star Wars is a big thing to me, right? So here we are, Star Wars Day 2014. I wanted to do a big write-up today but, well, I'm in New Jersey on my cell at the moment and there just aren't enough hours in the day anymore (a topic of another blog that is coming soon, I swear) so instead of a write-up, today we'll celebrate with the internet's favorite thing: memes!

For more, some really hysterical, check this page out. And until next time...

May the Fourth be with you!

The "Joys" of the Online Job Hunt

Like a large percentage of the world, I've been on the hunt for a job off and on (mostly on, sadly) over the last few years. Like a large percentage of the world, I've predominantly been doing my hunt online. While searching for a job online is definitely more convenient than the pavement-pounding approach of yesteryear, like any hunt it is not without its own particular pratfalls and traps. I've decided to take a break from the frustration of experiencing those little traps firsthand while I stretch my writerly muscles and share a few of them that I find the most annoying with you. And while I'm sure there are far more than the ones I'm about to present, here for your reading pleasure I give you six "joys" of the online job hunt.

And for the record, every single example or situation mentioned here is something I was lucky enough to experience firsthand...

1.) Nesting Doll Syndrome
Inevitably, your job hunt starts on one of those delightful websites dedicated to helping people find a job online. For the sake of the innocent, I won't name any names.  The first thing they have you do is enter your name and e-mail address and pick and password and all that good stuff, and then they ask you to upload the resume you'd like to use. Fine and dandy. Then, once that uploads, they take you through pages and pages of of forms where they ask you to enter your work experience and education... all the stuff you just uploaded on your resume. Okay, fine, roll with it, right? Now you're ready to start your job search. After you go through a few more of the joys I'll mention in a minute, you've found a job you want to apply for. Ideally, you can just click "apply" and the job site your on will send the resume you uploaded. Often, however, companies don't want that and you have to go to their website to apply. Once there, you have to enter your name and e-mail address and a password to join their site, and then you have to upload a resume that they give you the option to parse to fill out the forms they'll have you fill out; sadly though, because resumes are all different, it invariably parses incorrectly and you have to go through all those forms yourself anyway. Sound familiar? Now sometimes, a job posting isn't actually posted by the company hiring, it's posted by a third party company, so when you click "apply" and the job site your on doesn't automatically apply you, you're taken to that third party's site where you have to enter your name and e-mail and create a password and upload a resume just so you can be taken to the actual hiring company's website so you can wash, rinse, repeat, etc... There's nothing like spending over half an hour on just one job because you're trapped in a never-ending Russian nesting doll of resumes and forms.

Yes, I had to use a Star Wars example.

2.) Fun with Search Filters
Let's backtrack a little bit. After you've opened the first nesting doll and have entered all your info on the job site you're using, it's time to actually find jobs! So you click "search" and find yourself presented with all these helpful search filters. You can search for specific keywords, enter a specific city to search in, refine your results to within a certain distance from that city. It's all very helpful... in theory. Less so in practice when, for example, you search for customer service positions with a five-mile radius of New York City and are presented with a result like "Airport Vehicle Technician, Buffalo."

I mean, I don't want to be picky or anything, but that's a hell of a commute, not to mention a stretch of the idea of "customer service." So be aware, not everything in this job hunt is as it seems.

3.) Sleight of Hand Scam
Speaking of things not being what they seem, not every job listing you see is actually a job. Some of them are applications not for a job but for a job placement service or a temp agency. And that's fine, I don't at all mean to badmouth those entities. Temping has been very good to me over the last few years, especially Adecco, and I'm very grateful to them. But that's not the only type of post that isn't necessarily a job. You'll find some that say they want to hire you for a security guard job, for example, but what they really want is to help you get licensed to become a security guard by charging you more money than the licenses actually cost, followed up by the vague promise of helping you get placed once your licensed. They might also offer to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn, too.  Another little trick of misdirection that runs rampant are the job posts that promise "flexible hours, minimal supervision, competitive salary for employees willing to train for leadership and excel." You know what most of those are? Door-to-door office supplies sales scams that require ten hour days, five days a week with no overtime because there's no salary at all because it's all commission-based. Let me let that sink a minute. And yes, I know this to be true because I trained for a job like that for two days before they explained all the fine print details about pay, like how it takes at least a month after a sale for you to be paid for it and if the customer returns anything you lose that money so you never have any solid idea of when you're getting paid or how much. Thank you, no. Now obviously, not every post that uses the phrases I mentioned above is a scam. But be on the lookout. And if something sounds fishy, Google it; odds are someone else has experienced it and posted about it. Like me!

4.) The Entry-Level/Experience Equation
I had come up with a whole mathematical equation to illustrate what has become my biggest pet peeves about job posts lately, but as I suck at math and can't figure out how to make a "not-equal" sign appear, I'm going to let this handy picture take care of my next point for me:

Seems kind of self-explanatory, doesn't it? But if you go through enough posts on a job site, you'll see a disturbing number of them claim to be for entry-level positions while requiring two to three to as many as ten years of experience. I've actually seen that, ten years of experience for an entry-level position.

Clearly it's going to take someone smarter than me to explain that one.

5.) Waiting for Godot: The Career Edition!
So here you are; you've successfully navigated all the prior traps and pratfalls of online job-hunting and you've applied to dozens of jobs. Here's a cold fact you need to be prepared for:

You will never hear from 99% of those companies again.

I'm not just saying they aren't going to hire you. I'm saying you'll never get any other kind of correspondence from them again. Period. Because of the sheer number of applicants most posts receive, the majority of companies only contact the people they want to interview and don't bother with rejection notices or anything. So unless they're interested, you're just in limbo. Occasionally you'll get a rejection notice, where they patronizingly tell you they're keeping your resume on file in case a position opens up that you're a match for... the rejection letter equivalent of "it's not you, it's me." Which brings us to...

6.) Haven't I Seen You Here Before?
...in which you find out out it really wasn't them, it was you all along, because a week or two later that same company has posted about that same position again. Hurts, doesn't it? Don't worry, this is where you have to remember that online job-hunting is like online dating: they're both hard and full of scams, false advertisers,and things that are too good to be true, but with persistence and dedication, there's somebody... or in this case, something... for everybody!

Gwyneth Paltrow is the World's Most Beautiful Woman?

So People Magazine has named Gwyneth Paltrow...

...as the World's Most Beautiful Woman. Now, I'm not saying she isn't beautiful or anything, but...

...World's Most Beautiful? Really? Really? This is what I have to say to you, People Magazine:

Your Online Dating Profile and What You're Doing Wrong: A Guide for Women

Spoiler: This has nothing to do with any of the following, but I had to; new Doctor Who is just five days away!

I've been doing the whole online dating thing off and on for almost seven years now, pretty exclusively on OKCupid because it's free, with varying degrees of success (read: none). Over the course of those years, I've understandably come across some things in women's profiles that seem to me to be counterproductive at best and downright alienating and annoying at worst, and I've decided to share some of them with you here either so we can commiserate if you're a guy like me, or perhaps educate, if you're one of the annoying females in question. And yes, before someone says it, I realize guys might make the exact same mistakes... but as I'm a heterosexual male with no reason to ever look at another guy's profile, well, I have no idea.

The other complaint I foresee here is that some of this might sound a little, well, shallow. And it will. Anyone who has ever really talked to me will tell you that I am in no way all about appearances; the women I've been interested in have crossed all shapes and sizes, and I've had to defend a few of them against some pretty nasty remarks from other people. I was attracted to them for who they were, and in that regard the outside didn't matter all that much at all. That being said, everyone is at least a little shallow, and if my first thought whenever I look at you is, "What sin did you commit in a past life to be stuck with those genes?" it probably isn't going to work. Appearance isn't everything, but... I need to know what you look like.

That brings us to the first set of faux pas I see women commit, and these ones involve pictures. If all your pictures... or your only picture, for that matter... is either close-ups of your hand or whatever doing something artistic, or a faraway shot of you doing something adventurous, you're making a mistake. Yes, both artistic and adventurous are good qualities. Hell, artistic, for me, is a major turn-on. But in neither of those pictures can I see what you look like. I need to know what you look like.

This = fail. I like that you read. But who are you. Are you even a woman?

Also, ladies, I understand that you have friends and you love them and you take pictures of them. But if everyone one of your pictures is of four or five different women, and nowhere in any of them do you say which one is you? Well, let's look at the wrong way...

Me and my girls!

Uh-huh, you and your girls. And you're who, again?

And now the right way...

Me and my girls. I'm in the middle!

I see, you're the one in the middle! Much better!

And in this case, you're also Kaley Cuoco and you really should return my message.

That's all for pictures, but while we're on the subject of looks, let's tackle the profiles question where it asks what people first notice about you. I'm sure you have a wonderful personality and you're very witty and very giving, but unless you live in a colony of blind people, that is not what people first notice about you. It might be what people love most about you, but what people first notice is going to be a physical quality. No way around that, if we have eyes, we see, and in most cases we see before we hear or feel. So... try being honest and talking about your eyes. Or your hair. Or your unique fashion sense.

Or if you really want to be honest, your boobs and your butt.

Moving on, there's a section on the site where it asks about your favorite books, movies, television shows, and food, and I routinely see answers along the lines of, "I don't want to answer this because I want us to have something to talk about when we meet." Now, I understand wanting to make sure there are things to talk about when you first meet someone from the internet, because that can be awkward. However, how am I supposed to know if I want to meet you if I don't know about what you like and what we might have in common? Seriously, think about it. You're supposed to be using your profile to sell yourself, right? A mystery doesn't sell. You don't have to list every single thing you like, but I'm much more likely to want to talk to someone if I see we at least have SOME common interests.

And don't just fake it and say you like Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad. Put a little effort into it... if you can't put a little effort into something like that, how much effort should I expect out of you in other areas?

Lastly, and honestly this might be my biggest pet peeve when it comes to OKC profiles, when it asks you about the most private thing you're willing to admit? "That I'm on this site" is not an acceptable response. Not only is it a weak cop out, but I'm reading your profile! I already know you're on the damn site! I'm not saying you need to bare your friggin' soul and air out your childhood traumas, but put yourself out there a little!

There's a common theme here, you might have noticed. Hiding in pictures, vague, non-informative answers to the questions... see the problem? I said three paragraphs ago that you're supposed to be using your profile to sell yourself, to make me want to message you instead of the hundreds of other women out there. But if you're not selling, if you're not putting yourself out there, well, I have to figure there's a reason why, and if that's the case, then I'm not buying.

A Tumblring Stormtrooper

For some reason, I went and got myself a tumblr. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it or how I'm going to use it in conjunction with this blog and Twitter and every other kind of social media I'm already on, but I'm going to try to make it entertaining. So if you're interested, it can be found here: Straight Shootin' Stormtumblr.

A Good Book Should Smell

"Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly." - Rupert Giles

I've always been a big reader, and right now, even though I'm in the midst of my Recommended Reading Challenge which is slowing down, that hasn't changed. What has changed lately is that, instead of physical copies of the books people are recommending, I've been reading e-books on my computer.  In fact, 14 out of the 18 books I've read since I started the challenge have been e-books, but I want to make something perfectly clear about this right now:

I hate e-books.

I'm only reading them because I'm broke and don't feel like spending money on books that I might like. So unless they've been able to lend me the book, I've been all about the e-books. And I hate every minute of it.

An actual book in my hands feels so much better than staring at a screen. It's like the quote above says. Books have a smell. You all know what I'm talking about, especially an older book, the pages starting to get yellow... it smells musty and rich. It smells like knowledge. You don't get that with an e-book unless you've been up to some funky things with your reading device.

It's more than just smell, though. It's touch. On an e-reader. You press a button over and over again and the page scrolls down repeatedly, endlessly. What you physically feel doesn't change. With an actual book, you have the heft of it in your hand. You feel how much it weighs. As you turn page after page... a very physical act that pulls you along, drawing you in... you can slowly but surely feel the weight of the book change from "unread" to "read" as you go along. You can stop, look at the chunk of book you've read, and feel like you've made progress. With an e-reader, all you have is a percentage bar... and if you have anything like the mental ridiculousness I have, you can occasionally become more interested in how fast that percentage bar is moving than you are in the book, especially if the book sucks.

One last thing about touch? You can totally clobber someone over the head with a book without worrying about breaking it...

Now, I know the counter-arguments. E-books take up no space at all, you don't need bookshelves everywhere. They don't get damaged the way actual books to. E-books can be cheaper. My response? I don't care. Save your iPad for Star Wars Angry Birds and pick up a book and read it the old-fashioned way. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

And if you don't... well, you got bigger problems than anything I can help you with!

Battle for the Stars: Star Wars vs. Star Trek

Since today marks the 35th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope being released in theaters, I felt it would be just sinful of me not to post something about Star Wars today... especially since the name of my blog is derived from it and all. Of course, I could have said the same thing about May 4th, but I feel I don't need a specific Star Wars Day, as I love it so much that any day can be Star Wars Day for me. But I digress. For your entertainment today, I'll be answering the age-old question that plagues geeks everywhere: which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek? But first...

Happy Birthday, Star Wars!

For the record, I'm going to be ignoring the Expanded Universes of both franchises, so no novels or comics or any of that stuff; partly because there's too much of it all and my head would explode, and partly because I know too much about the Star Wars EU and nothing about the Star Trek EU, so it would be unfair. I'm also going to use the abbreviations SW and ST, because I'm already tired of typing it all out and switching back and forth into and out of italics.

Let's come out of the gate swinging with one of the big categories: villains! After all, everyone loves a bad guy, right? ST has a whole lot of villains, but the only one I'd consider a really great, recurring villain is their big bad, the Borg. They were in multiple episodes spread out over two shows and starred in one of the best ST movies. I know there were other villains like the Romulans and the Cardassians, but they never did anything for me. SW, on the other hand, only had one villain, really, the Sith. But whereas the Borg was just an alien, the Sith have the dramatic heft of being tied into the heroes in multiple ways, not the least of which being their greatest warrior was also the Jedi's greatest warrior... and is really the main character of the entire saga:

Of course he wins. I don't want to get Force-choked!

This one is sort of a no-brainer: SW 1, ST 0.

Let's flip the coin and look at heroes. SW has the original trilogy heroes: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2-D2, C-3P0, Yoda,and Lando. Luke is annoying for the first two movies and Leia is always annoying. R2 and 3P0 cancel each other out. Lando is only cool for one movie, and Yoda is only in about 45 minutes total. That leaves Han and Chewie. From the prequel trilogy, all we really get in terms of heroes is a real picture of just how awesome Obi-Wan Kenobi really is. So that gives us Han, Chewie, and Obi-Wan... against all of Star Fleet. Chewbacca might be a great first mate, but he's no Spock. And Han and Obi-Wan... well, they're just outclassed:

That's a whole lot of awesome right there.

SW 1, ST 1.

Here's a two-point category: technology and starships. SW has lightsabers, the Death Star, star destroyers, AT-ATs, AT-STs, droids, carbonite, cybernetic hands, and the always-awesome but habitually falling-apart Millenium Falcon. ST has transporters, holodecks, tricorders, communicators, phasers, warp cores, visors, androids, time travel, alternate dimensions, and, of course, all the various incarnations of the U.S.S. Enterprise:

It really would fly circles around anything in that galaxy far, far away...

And the Enterprise tips the balance in ST's favor. ST 3, SW 1.

Let's talk about sex appeal. ST has plenty of women who look damn good in those tight Starfleet uniforms, especially Jeri Ryan. They also have all the different hot alien chicks Kirk banged. But, SW has twi'leks. SW has Natalie Portman. And, most importantly, SW has:

Every man has this fantasy, and everyone knows it.

ST 3, SW 2.

The last category I had thought about was storyline, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized you can't really compare the two. SW really is one cohesive story, whereas ST is much more serialized. Neither has an advantage over the other, they're just vastly different animals. So it looks like ST wins!

But, wait... they never had to reboot SW with a completely new cast to make it cool again!

Sorry boys, you just got burned.

Star Wars wins!*




*Come on. The name of my blog is derived from Star Wars and I wrote a blog once about how Darth Vader is better than Jesus. Who did you think was going to win??

Use the Force... Jesus?

Yeah, that's right. It's a Star Wars post. Considering the big honkin' stormtrooper up there, you had to know one was coming sooner or later, although this probably won't be quite what anyone expected. See, in my boredom two weekends ago, I decided to watch the entirety of Star Wars from start to finish (and to head off the inevitable question, in this case that means Episode I to Episode VI), and I came upon a startling realization.

Darth Vader is a lot like Jesus.

Yes, that Jesus*.

How did I come to that conclusion? That's what I'm here to explain; and, as an extra bonus, we'll also see if Jesus is better than Darth Vader or not. Anyone reading this who knows me probably also knows I like Vader quite a bit more than I do Jesus, but I promise to do my best to be impartial.

The comparisons for these two begin before birth. Both of their comings were prophesied, Jesus' by a bunch of old Jewish men, and Vader's by, well, that part is never clarified. Considering "old Jewish men" is better than "unknown," but not by much, Jesus gets the point. While still on the pre-birth topic, both were conceived without an actual father; Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and Vader by the Force. I'm calling that a tie, so it's 2-1 in favor of JC.

In childhood, they both had fairly humble beginnings: young Anakin was a slave who fixed droids, and Jesus was a young carpenter who occasionally told off his religion teachers. That's not too impressive, I told off my religion teachers quite frequently, too. So, Darth ties it up here. Darth gets the next point, too; while Jesus began his life's work by being dunked into a lake by John the Baptist, Anakin was brought before the Jedi Council by Qui-Gon Jinn and trained by Obi-Wan. Jedi beats crazy old forest-wanderer who got beheaded. 3-2, Vader.

How about powers? Vader could force-choke, use telekinesis, and pretty much just feel stuff, which is all kinds of vague. Jesus healed, raised people from the dead, created food, and, most importantly, made sure there was always booze around at weddings; he wins for that last one alone, so we're all tied up again. What else do they have in common? For one thing, they both had followers. Jesus had his apostles, who, y'know, couldn't stay awake when he needed them to, and Vader had his stormtroopers, who couldn't hit anything with guns, TIE fighters, or AT-AT's. Both seem equally useless; however, when Jesus was gone, the apostles kept a church running, while after Vader, the stormtroopers lost an entire Intergalactic Empire. I guess Jesus was a better talent scout, so he goes ahead, 4-3. Speaking of followers, each were betrayed. Judas sold Jesus out, and Anakin Skywalker was betrayed by Obi-Wan Kenobi, except he wasn't, since he was the one who went evil, so really, he did the betraying, right? I guess Jesus gets this one too; except, well, if everything is according to God's plan, then so was Judas' betrayal, so if it was according to plan, it wasn't really a betrayal, was it? Screw it, I'm calling this one a wash, nobody gets a point.

Speaking of Anakin going all evil, they both dealt with temptation. Anakin lost his battle with it and fell to the Dark Side (although, he did it to save his piece o' ass, Natalie Portman, so you can't really blame him). Jesus was tempted by the Devil himself in the middle of a fast in the desert, and still said no. Pretty obvious who wins this one, huh? Jesus is ahead, 5-3.

Damn, Jesus is doing better than I expected. I don't like that. Impartiality sucks!

What else do they have in common? How about the big, dramatic 2-point story arc of death and resurrection? Jesus was killed by old Jewish men, went to Hell and redeemed man's sins, came back from the dead, appeared to his followers, and ascended to Heaven. Anakin Skywalker was hacked to pieces by Obi-Wan, descended into the hell that was life stuck in the Vader suit, redeemed his sin and balanced the Force when he killed the Emperor, was reborn as Anakin, and became one with the Force. Who gets the edge here? Vader. Why? C'mon, becoming Darth Vader is way more awesome than going to Hell! There's a point for Darth for that; he also gets a point for cooler "murderer" in Obi-Wan. So we're all tied up at 5. This calls for a tiebreaker!

And the tiebreaker category is... progeny! Jesus allegedly had none. Vader fathered the great hero Luke Skywalker, so he gets a point for that. Then again, he also fathered the annoying bitch-goddess that is Princess Leia (side-note: I saw a midnight show of Revenge of the Sith the day it came out; when Luke was born at the end, everyone cheered. When Leia was born, it was one big, universal boo.) , so he loses a point for that, and we're tied at 5 again.

New tiebreaker... lovelife! Jesus didn't have any progeny because he rolled with hookers who were willing to bathe his feet and whatnot, and he wasn't hittin' any of them. Anakin, on the other hand, was hilting his lightsaber in Natalie Portman, so he gets the point.

And with that, Darth Vader wins 6-5, and is better than Jesus.

See, I was totally impartial the entire time...



*That is, of course, if you believe any of that Jesus stuff happened. We here at Shootin' Straighter Than A Stormtrooper haven't come down one way or the other yet.