Saturday, March 10, 2007

Saturday Madness 3/10/07: Scotty's birthplace honored!



Sorry I'm a day late with my madness post, but I've been feeling rather sick of late. And furthermore, I've been having problems with blogger. About three days ago, my SiteMeter stopped working. I upgraded my blogger template, I put in all the correct code, and it still doesn't work. I don't need this right now.

Anyhoo, it seems the Scottish town of Linlithgow is building a memorial to Scotty from Star Trek (since that's where the fictional character was born). I kid you not.

A Scottish town is to set up a Star Trek memorial to celebrate its claim to the fictional birthplace of Scotty the engineer.

Ironically, the scheme - at Linlithgow - has been given the go-ahead by West Lothian's "enterprise committee".

Scotty, aka Montgomery Scott, played by Canadian-born actor James Doohan, is the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise.

The £10,000 tribute will feature Doohan's original Star Trek costume, personal items donated by his family and a scale model of the famous spaceship.

Committee convener, Coun Willie Dunn, said: "We have made contact with Dorothy C Fontana, who wrote many of the original Star Trek episodes.

"She has confirmed the reference in one of her books about Linlithgow being Montgomery Scott's birthplace.

"Following James Doohan's death, we contacted his family and they are supporting our plans for a Star Trek exhibition at Linlithgow.

"It will be staged in Annet House Museum, which highlights the history of Linlithgow. Now it will also look into the future with our Star Trek display area."


Madness indeed, but might there be sane rationale behind this madness? Perhaps the smell of money?

He added: "The loyalty and dedication of Star Trek fans is quite exceptional.

"We believe our Star Trek exhibition will attract more visitors to Linlithgow and West Lothian. Niche tourism is a major growth area."


I thought so.

UPDATE:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

It seems the Madness has spread to Finland.

A Finnish member of parliament is aiming for re-election by campaigning with a translation of his Web site into Klingon, used in the TV series Star Trek.

"Some have thought it is blasphemy to mix politics and Klingon," said Jyrki Kasvi, an ardent Trekkie. "Others say it is good if politicians can laugh at themselves."

He said his politics posed some translation difficulties, since Klingon does not have words for matters such as tolerance, or for many colours, including green -- the party under whose banner he is running in the national elections on March 18.

Non-warriors can also access the site, www.kasvi.org, in English, Swedish and Finnish.

No comments: