Poem for Saturday

Sonnet XXII
By William Shakespeare

My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then, be elder than thou art?
O! therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
  Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again.

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Happy birthday, William Shakespeare. Would that I were in Stratford-upon-Avon for the birthday celebrations this weekend. (It is not, in fact, known for certain whether Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, but assumed based on the record of his baptism three days later; it is, however, known that he died on that date, aged 52. Imagine if he had lived and kept writing until he was 80.)

Here is my "In a Mirror, Darkly" review for TrekToday. I rather enjoyed it, though I didn't think it was a particularly good episode -- well-filmed and entertaining to watch, sure, with a lot of fun production details and some fun performances, but it seems pretty trivial to spend two of Star Trek: Enterprise's last episodes in the alternate universe which makes no contact with the familiar one. The good news is that I expect to receive far less hate mail about this week's review than I did last week. I decided to take the plunge and write a column about those letters, because I was so disturbed particularly by the virulently homophobic ones (I couldn't care about the ones calling me "feministic" and "lesbianic" though I do object to "frigid," heh). Now I am getting even more hate mail, though I am also getting some thank yous, so it will be interesting to see which wins out. I also finally got up the review round-up from "Bound" and was delighted at how many other reviewers thought the episode was terrible...some for reasons of sexism and heterosexism, others just because it was so stupid.

Had a relatively uneventful day, other than writing and reading rants...had lunch with and chatted about fannish diversions, had dinner with my parents and stayed at their house to review Enterprise which was pre-empted in DC for baseball (they can tune in UPN from Baltimore with their antenna), got my kids' report cards which are both improved from last quarter which pleases all of us, them more than me I think. Tomorrow there is no Hebrew school because of Passover, but my younger son has a soccer game, and then my in-laws are coming for dinner which we are all having at my parents' house along with several friends. There seems to be a small explosion of news that I need to try to cover as well. Oh, and I meant to mention, I finally updated my icons pages. I needed to take off some icons that weren't made by me and add a whole bunch that were. If you want any that I am not currently using here, feel free. Happy Passover!


In honor of Shakespeare's birthday...Henry VIII's, uh, assets, on display at the Mary Rose museum. (This is a replica, but I think it's still pretty impressive, heh.)