How To Know When You've Maybe Seen Too Much Star Trek

When people are talking about the latest developments in the Middle East and you think the solution is a Romulan warbird in orbit around the earth. Differences below might get settled very quickly.

When someone mentions seeing Charlie Rose interview American diplomat and Middle East expert Dennis Ross, and you remember him from his interview on the DVD of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

When you're at a Mozart 250th birthday commemoration concert, and the quartet they are playing sounds like the same one a delusional crewman thinks he's playing in the TNG episode, "Where No One Has Gone Before."

When you see the Montery Bay Acquarium on a PBS special and recognize it as the Cetacean Institute in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

When this all happens the same evening.

Yes. Way too much.

However:

Because you heard him on the Trek DVD, you listen to what Dennis Ross has to say about the Middle East on Charlie Rose.

Because the Traveler has such admiration for Mozart, you probably paid a little more attention to his music back when that show was first on the air, and maybe that's one reason you went to the 250th birthday concert, and had that joyous experience.

Because you recognize Montery Acquarium, you watch a few minutes of the PBS show and get interested, and watch the whole thing: it's fascinating. Did you know that great white sharks can sense the electrical impulses in your heart, if you happen to be in the water? Or that tuna swim amazingly fast, and migrate over thousands of miles of ocean, returning to precise locations, and scientists don't have a clue how they do it? That some jellyfish can be seven feet across, with tentacles a hundred feet long, and they may be direct descendants of the first ocean creatures? That certain plain old fish live to be a hundred years old? Or that great white sharks and tuna are endangered?

And you thought Star Trek aliens were alien? They're nowhere near as weird and wondrous as our fellow creatures on earth. Why---

There I go. Star Trek again.

Think I have a problem? Do you?