As for the new Star Trek, Abrams basically remade Star Wars. It was ok but i'm not a fan of the man.

A sci-fi conversation without me?

The Star Wars movies blow, hard. Tried to get my roommate to watch one last night and she couldn't stay awake. I found it fairly boring as well, and wouldn't have watched it if it was not for her having never seen a single one.

The Star Wars games and cartoon, aces 10. Dialogue that makes sense helps a ton I think.

Star Trek is high brow Star Wars, much more tolerable writing. On the flip side their games and cartoons are fairly awful, and quite a few of the series blew as well; Voyager, Enterprise.

The new Trek movie is devoid of anything that was Star Trek. I enjoyed it, but it was enjoyable as a movie and not as Star Trek.

I find it funny that you can "donate" plasma for money. I give blood and have given plasma a few times but they only payment is some cookies, crackers, cheese, chocolate bar and a cuppa tea. I'm guessing the donation rate is so low that they need to entice people with money to sell their plasma.

When I got plasma done the nurse told me the exact same thing about the plasma being milky white after eating shite like KFC. That really turned me off that shit. She also said that alcohol gives you super powers so that is why I still drink.

I don't think you can in most places, now. The World Health Organization issued some report that more or less said that if you pay for blood, you get diseased and poor quality crap that causes more trouble than it is worth. I believe(after a quick google search) Australia now considers it the same as selling body parts, big time illegal.

Maybe 10 years ago you could, but it's gone now, or on it's way out the door.

Yeah, I'm sure it is, probably only in low risk population areas. In NYC, though, it's illegal. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I gave plasma once, after years of regular whole blood donation.

It was gross and populated by homeless people, and Jimmy had to remove his pants during his preliminary medical exam, something the rest of us who went did not have to do. The whole thing seemed shady, nevermind the blood machines being reused with no apparent internal cleaning between donations. I'm 100% positive it was all on the up and up, but my spoiled ass would prefer to see disposable equipment.

So I never donated again.

Also, the time it takes to donate, including waiting room time, you wind up making like $7 an hour.

Donating plasma is very regulated in Italy. We never got money out of it. Also, much less people can do it lately, since your health is severely checked out before every donation.

I used to be a frequent donor, not out of generesity, mostly because it helped me feel physiclly refreshed, i dont know if there is a scientific explanation for it.

Then i started drinking heavily and using drugs (legal and illegal) so i was put on a sort of blacklist. My father had the same problem, because of the drinking.

But no one ever got a dime out of it. And it's weird in a country where pèeople would sell their children's organs for a few bucks (actual news, no joke).

It's the same in Australia. You don't get paid for donating anything - sort of why it's a DONATION.

e.g. in the US you can get paid as a sperm donor and as a plasma donor. A friend of mine basically paid his rent at college donating plasma and sperm. In Australia you can't be paid for that stuff.

And even if you want to donate it there's a super enormous questionnaire to complete. Like obviously I don't know what the sperm questionnaire is like, but the plasma and blood one includes everything from have you taken any paracetamol in the last two weeks to when was the last time you ate semi-sundried tomatoes from a deli (not in a jar)

WHAT?!?!

The NEW ones suck balls. Majorly.

But the old ones are brilliant. Maybe I'm unduly sentimental because I grew up with them. But there was nothing like them and there's been nothing like them since in terms of story and cinematography and yada yada yada.

I think there's a special magic in the old ones just for the scale of them. With the new ones, all the crowds are CGI. All the landscapes are computer and it just doesn't feel real. Give me a tall dude in a furry suit any day rather than a character honed for years by computer engineers.

Are you sure that the special magic isnyt made up because you were young and gullible when you saw them?

Yes, they were nice and ahead of the times for the FX. But the whole thing is quite sad oif you watch them with a cool head.

"Empire..." is the only one of all six that really stands.

The first one is slow, badly put together and only Harrison Ford is a really cool character in it. Even Darth Vader is more cool in thory than in practice. He's a very generic sum of any bad guy from comic books but with a nice outfit.

The rest is basically a msh mash of different things: LOTR (the books), swordfighting movies, action stuff from the golden age, war movies from the 30's (Just put the nazis instead of the empire and you have it), a bit of new age philosophy and a loooooooooot of comic books.

It's pleasant stuff, but as movies (again, excluding Empire...) they're very mediocre. Mostly because Lucas is one of the most mediocre movie people on the planet.

The heroic quest long predates Tolkien. This isn't to discount your point, just to add that you can't even tie it back to LOTR -- even Tolkien was ripping off some major fictional tropes with his work.