This is Scotty from the original series of "Star Trek". On the television show, he was played by James Doohan. Years later, in the movies, he was played by James Doohan, a mustache, and several hundred expensive dinners. It's not a very good picture, is it? The resolution is blurry and warped. There are plenty of Star Trek fan pages where you can find crystal clear pictures of Scotty throughout the year. I'm not a major Star Trek devotee. I dig Shatner as much as the next guy, and I'd toss back a few with DeForrest Kelley if given the chance, but I'm a little shaky on the rest ot it.


This picture is the oldest file I own. It was on my very first computer, a 386 that my uncle Jim set up on commission from my mother. It was a birthday gift, I think. It had some really great stuff like Joe Montana Football and this golf simulator with weird neurotic overtones; it also had some strip poker games where pictures of women who looked much like Scotty (in resolution and, oddly, in appearance) would take their clothes off if you beat them at cards. I had no idea how to play poker, so my only interest in the game was editing the file that contained the game's sexually suggestive dialogue ("I have got a pair of aces. And I am not talking about my cards!!") to things that it amused me to see crudely animated porn stars saying. (I spent a while trying to remember an example, but I couldn't. Probably something about pygmies. I was on a big pygmy trip as a pre-teen.)

The major items of the collection, though, were the GIFs and their attendant viewer, CSHOW. This was back in the day when nobody you'd ever met had a scanner; nearly every picture you'd find would have the credit at the bottom ("a BIGDAVE scan"). The GIFs on my new computer were like a series of lessons on how to be a man: there were pictures of sleek Italian cars and aggressive American ones, there were random selections of pop culture icons ranging from Bill the Cat to Batman, and, of course, there was a shitload of porn. The big ticket item was a black and white nude photo of Marilyn Monroe, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Undead armies of eyeliner awaited me at the click of the button, a full third named either "Kim" or "Kelly". What can I say? I didn't know what to do with all of it. I just wasn't much of a raging hormonal tempest. I sat there and stared, mildly embarassed because I knew I was supposed to be thinking something other than that they all looked like they needed a shower. I had never owned any porno mags. One of my most bewildering formative moments happened at seven years old when another kid showed me an issue of "Playboy" where a Chicago Cubs batgirl had posed nude among Cubs hats and jerseys. How the hell did that work? The Cubs? A naked woman? Did Ryne Sandberg know about this?

Still, I had some idea that it was entirely unmasculine behavior to delete your porn, so I left it there and let the pictures disappear one by one over the years whenever I needed the extra hard drive space. I grew up, I saw the world, I kissed pretty girls; in time, all of the pictures were gone. Scotty was the only one I kept, because his expression has always made perfect sense.

Actually, now that I think about it, there's an Ewok left too.


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