star trek 27 the search for acting lessons

Sulu: "Klingon warbirds decloaking off the larboard bow, Captain."

Kirk: "Larboard? You sure?"

Sulu: "They vary it sometimes."

Kirk: "Engineering! Scotty! Give me Warp Factor One. Now!"

Scotty: "I dinnae ken Cap'n?"

Kirk: Warp Factor One! I need it! Now Mister!"

Scotty: "You need Warp Factor One?"

Kirk: "Yes."

Scotty: "And what's that when it's at home?"

Kirk: (Patiently) "Make the ship go at light speed so we can escape the Klingons who are trying to kill us."

Scotty: "You want me to make the ship go at the speed of light?"

Kirk: "Yes, please."

Scotty: "No can do."

Kirk: (Hopefully) "You mean... She'll nae take it?"

Scotty: Don't be talking shite Cap'n.

Kitk: "I need answers man. Answers."

Scotty: (Patiently) "The ship is an object. To go at the speed of light our ship would have to be transformed into a wave form energy. Think beyond vapourisation. Think beyond atomisation. Think beyond those again. No star ship could survive being vapourised. Nor could the rest of us incidentally. Steering us and the ship supposing we had been transformed, at the speed of light would be analagous to trying to steer steam from a kettle."

Kirk: "Anal Gus? Who's he? Scotty, I don't know what's wrong with you but if you don't get us out of here at Warp Factor One, Light Speed, we're all going to die."

Scotty: "You're straying dangerously close to..."

Kirk: "The Orion nebula?"

Scotyy: "Nae laddie. Pure bollocksology. Listen to me. Light has no speed. It has no mass so it can have no speed."

Kirk: "Exqueeze me."

Scotty: "Light is three things at once. Firstly, Light is an emanating energy disruption.  Secondly, Light is the ripple effect of that disruption on a medium."

Kirk: "A medium? You mean the space time continuum?"

Scotty: "Aye. You might call it that but you'd be straying close to the Bollocks nebula again. Thirdly light is the experience of the first two elements through the medium of a human consciousness. If you remove any one of these three elements, what's there is not light. And an object or an organism cannot be light without being vapourised, atomised and a few things more besides which none of us in our right minds really want to happen to us. And even if we were actually transformed into a wave form emission, we would be only one element of three elements necessary for light, and in any case there could be no possible way to direct us from Point A to Point B. And no conceivable way of reconstructing us or the ship back from our scattered atoms. Do ye ken?"

Kirk: "Not really no."

Scotty: "Light speed is a contradiction in terms. There's no such thing Jimmy. Even for light itselves."

Kirk: "But we did light speed last week."

Scotty: "Nae laddie. It was just pretend."

Kirk: "Oh pooh. What speed can we go?"

Scotty: "About fifty miles an hour. But not till after my Irish Transport and General Workers Trade Union mandated tea break!"

Kirk: "Lieutenant Uhuru."

Uhuru: "Yes Captain."

Kirk: "Radio the Klingons. Tell them we surrender. And for crying out loud put on a trouser suit or something. The contemplation of your magnificent silken clad thighs is starting to distract me from more mundane things, like work."

when the revolution was expected in china

in the garden of my father
i first heard the gunshots from tiananmen square
i will never drink again this beauty
without hearing first the crying of the dying there

we will pray sometimes in the evenings
as the shadows lengthen into years
for there are prayers much softer than silence
and silences softer than tears