High

 Incredibly generic title, yes. I wish i could come up with something more interesting. Given the state i find myself in [again] you'd think i'd have an improved idea. And yet.

The travesty of my title leads into the subject i wish to discuss at this time anyway. I got high tonight just for fun, a twist from my usual [excuses/reasons] to alter my mind. Generally this follows bad news about Amanda's medical condition and/or treatment thereof. But tonight i said i've been meaning [wanting] to try getting high and writing something. See if i could use substance to extract some sort of creative spark from my ever-withering brain. 

And yet. Here i am. Writing a blog.

Time is not traveling for me.

All i can think to think about is that i can not think. I've been intoxicated for at least half an hour, perhaps an entire hour, and all i've done is scroll through Facebook for [28 or 56] minutes and update a few spreadsheets for [2 or 4]. And then i 

    -following a post i read on Glumshoe's tumblr this morning [what's the worst writing advice you've ever received? // "just start!"]

 thought i should just start, just put a blank document in front of myself and start typing. No preconceptions, no rules, no train of thought apparently. I just lost 20 minutes and i don't know where. Seems i am relating differently to the chronology then. I just got it. I just figured out why Dr. Dre called it the chronic.

Wow

Where

Were

my

t h o u g h t s

all right i am way higher than i was when i started typing this

than i was one minute ago

fuck

Okay here we go

Probably

I'm going to keep typing normal things until the rollercoaster descends. Like. I'm at the top of a roller coaster and i know the plunge is coming and then the rad stuff. But for now i hang in that moment, when things are still pretty normal, i'm just 

Things are pretty normal.

So anyway the spark i was chasing (this is me still typing normal things btw) the creativity, that spark. Fuck. No. I did already talk about this. About how i scrolled Facebook for an oddly specific number of minutes before i turned to the blank page.

And i started a new document on Google Drive, and then made a new folder on Google Drive (called High)(naturally), and thought to put all my stoned thoughts in that one folder, to keep them neat, keep them together, put dates on them. But then i was like, nah, just put it in your blog. And i went back and forth for a while in my head, choosing one or the other, then overanalyzing it, but in the end. Why not just put it in my blog? It's gonna end up there anyway.

Yeah i'm living alternate timelines again.

Not as extremely as i have in the past. Or at least not yet.

The editing on this movie is a little looser than i've ever noticed. Also, it's been thirty years, an actual three decades, and it took all that time plus a little hippie lettuce to finally notice. Federation President Red Foreman's office on Earth is just the Ten-Forward set from Next Generation with some curtains.

I don't know why i never noticed it before. I mean it's not a thing i'd have noticed the first 700 times i saw this movie as a kid, but i'm 10 years out of film school now and the way the dialog scenes are edited just seems like it has a strange flow. Maybe it's due to my perception of [linear time / time] being decelerated/altered/scrambled. But i'm not catching L or J cuts. And when it cuts to another character for their line, before they start talking, there's a second or two (!!!!) of them sitting there before they say the line. It's just...loose editing. Not bad, just strange. Also there are lots of close ups where the characters aaaaalmost break the fourth wall. Just staring out, barely off camera. Kirk and Martia's kiss is still gross.

God damn

The trouble with these shifting realities [timelines] is that when i'll be off living a different life in Inception-time to my left or my right, when i return to [this] the center timeline, the regular-speed one, i'll have not written anything down that happened there because i wasn't sure which reality my laptop was in. Like i swear to god. I just wrote a whole screenplay/directed a whole feature/actually completed a fucking [movie or creative project] and it all happened in the wrong realm. And now i can't remember it because it's been 20 years since i finished it. Time slows exponentially for each level you go down.

Okay it's been a while since my last paragraph and i've just been watching the movie and eating popcorn and this CERTAINLY is not what i had intended to write about when i started this but

but

there are a NUMBER of logical inconsistencies in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. My favorite of all Star Treks. For 30 years. I am just noticing many of these things for the first time.

Experiencing time in nonlinear fashion makes me focus in on the finer details of movies, i guess. I've definitely been noticing, actually, positively, proactively NOTICING the cinematography. Lot more point-of-view shots in this movie than i remember.

But really nobody's plan is going to work when Kirk and Spock try to ferret out the Among Us after the Rura Penthe Rescue. I was going to say "Valeris's plan" but then i realized that Kirk/Spock's plan also does not make sense, and for the same reason. Spock and Kirk's announcement summons the court reporter to sickbay immediately, to take statements from Burke and Samno. Their plan is apparently to panic the traitor into making a rash move. This plan would only work if it was anyone BUT VALERIS, as Valeris is a VULCAN and therefore GOVERNED BY LOGIC. She would not panic and run in guns blazing. But she does; she picks up her phaser and heads down to sickbay, weapon drawn, intent on killing her assassins before they can talk. But, logically, if the court reporter has been summoned to sickbay to take statements from these men, then they should be conscious and the medical staff should be there with them, waiting for the court reporter, who will also probably get there before she does. And likely, since these are violent people now under arrest, there should be a security detail there as well. Valeris would have NO CHANCE of reaching and killing those men without immediately exposing herself. Logically, she would have figured this out. In actuality, the sickbay is dark, with no one on duty or conscious in the room at all, and just two bodies covered in blankets lying on some beds. If Valeris were illogical enough to try this at all, if she opened the sickbay doors and saw a dark empty room, she should know instantly that it's a trap. There simply is not time for either of these plans to work.