A Short Stop In Mundaneland

As I sit here, watching "Trekkies 2" for the umpteenth time, studiously avoiding the insane overhyping of the Obama coronation, I feel I would be amiss if I didn't offer up at least a few comments on this allegedly historic date.

Actually, that's a bit unfair. It is a historic event.

We have responded to an unfairly criticized administration by electing a man who isn't qualified to be dog catcher, all so we can pat ourselves on our collective backs for electing a black man to the highest office in the land.

Well, now that we've gotten that out of our systems, the day is now fast approaching where those same self-congratulatory cheers will turn into a collective groan of, "Oh my God, what have we done?" and Bush's Trumanesque rehabilitation will be upon us before we know it.

A part of me is going get a big kick when Obambi's incompetence becomes glaringly clear to everyone. Unfortunately, that will be tempered by outrage over the level of damage President Nitwit will be doing in his futile quest to be the next Lincoln. Or FDR. Or Kennedy. Or whatever quasi-messianic figure he's trying to channel that week.

I only hope the stupidity becomes glaringly clear within the next couple years. So that the GOP can get its act together and begin the process of dragging the country back from the edge of the cliff by retaking Congress.

Then in 2012, we can set another historic precedent by electing the first woman president.

You betcha.

The Mess Thus Far...

While I sit out my one day ban at TrekBBS (I could say something about trigger happy moderators handing out warnings while I'm editing the post in question, but I'll skip that), I figured it was time to update this puppy.

We know more now about JJ Abrams' alleged Star Trek flick.

Unfortunately.

If this is JJ's idea of "respecting and honoring canon", I'd hate to see what he'd churn out if he really hated Star Trek. Canon is not being honored or respected in this thing, it's being stripmined for a hamfisted reboot. Symbolic of this whole endeavor is the redesign of the Enterprise herself.

Somehow, we're supposed to buy that this...



Really looked like this...



And was actually a helluva lot bigger than we were led to believe...



But wait! There's more!

We're going to be presented with a plot that conveniently assembles all the familiar characters on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise (yes, maiden voyage!).

Anybody else see a problem with this? The scary thing is that a lot of professed fans don't.

We're just supposed to forget about the ship we've been watching for over forty years? That Kirk served on the Republic and the Farragut long before he assumed command of the Enterprise? That he didn't meet Pike until he took over command? That at the time the Enterprise launched, Chekov would've been about a year old?

Kevin Smith's initial instincts were correct, before he was shown a rough cut of this thing and seduced by the dark side. This isn't Star Trek, it's Muppet Babies in Space.

And, as mentioned above, far too many fans are not only happy, but eager, to lap up this slop and accept it.

Didn't we used to be a little more discerning? A little less tolerant of utter bilge being foisted on us under the Star Trek label? Or do I just run with a crowd with better taste?

I'll go into why this tack is such a bad idea later. For now, suffice it to say that we are in really deep trouble if this is the future of the franchise.

We're So Screwed...

Well, the Paramount publicity machine, on the behalf of the new Star Trek movie, is starting to sputter to life, starting off with a cover story in Entertainment Weekly.

Here's what one attentive poster on trekmovie.com has managed to piece together on the plot of this thing.

"After seeing the pictures and reading the EW article, I think I can glean a few things about the plot of the film.

1) James Kirk has been shamed somehow. He’s a lone wolf on the Enterprise, and he is not trusted. A black uniform is a (rather obvious) physical symbol of being a “black sheep.” We know Kirk is rebel of sorts as a basic character trait. We also see Spock attacking Kirk for some unknown reason. We ALSO have been led to believe (by the MTV blog and photo on the bridge) that Kirk and Sulu have gotten into a fight of some kind. Kirk is not the regular captain of the Enterprise. He has somehow taken command against the will of the crew or has been given command in a crisis. My best guess is that Kirk is on the Enterprise as either a prisoner or as a ward of the Enterprise. Kirk could have been kicked out of Starfleet for some indiscretion, but is being protected by the Enterprise because they believe his life is in danger (from Nero, obviously). Captain Pike’s injury takes place during the film, putting him out of action, giving Kirk a chance to step up and be in charge.

2) Kirk will be Captain Kirk in the gold tunic by the last shot of the film. Remember, this is an *origin* story. That means one of the grand climaxes to the film will be when all of our heroes are together, in the right places, ready to start their proper adventures. Casino Royale and Batman Begins are examples of this principle. It is not until the end of those 2 movies that we get all the dogmatic trappings of the characters that have been held back for the end. Bond finally gets his theme and says his catchphrase. Batman gets the Bat-Signal and a supervillain (The Joker’s card). The evasive, cryptic nature of Orci and Kurtzman’s responses on the topic bear out what the end result will be. By the film’s end, anything that isn’t in line with the basic mythos of Star Trek will be put into place. That includes Kirk in Command Gold, as Captain.

3) Nero’s time-travel scheme is definitely what we all expect: he seeks to kill James T. Kirk. I also assume there is something to the notion of Nero’s group being against Reunification. Damon makes it pretty clear in his interview that Nero’s aims are not “about money.” That means, it must be ideological. What else is there? Unless Jim Kirk stole his girlfriend in the 20 minutes he was in the 24th century, it must be ideological. It also makes more sense that they are rejecting traditional Romulan aesthetics."

Have these morons even seen Star Trek? Starfleet doesn't work like this, or any self-respecting military for that matter. If Kirk was that much of a pain in the ass, they wouldn't do some sort of frat house "shaming", they'd courtmartial his insubordinate ass and be done with him!

Add to this the nonsensical production design that has as much resemblance to anything in Star Trek as a day old bagel has to a Mongolian barbecue, and it's becoming painfully clear that these joker haven't got a fucking clue what they're doing. They're making Brannon Braga look like Gene Coon, fer chrissakes!

I'm beginning to wonder if I even want to bother with the upcoming season of "Lost".

Being Pushed From The AOL Nest

America Online has announced that they will be soon be pulling the plug on their free webpages, which kinda puts a major kink in my situation, since just about all of my online presence, outside of this blog and my regular irritation on a few message boards, is via those freebie webpages.

The result is that my poor, decrepid, and underpowered Dell laptop is forced to store up all the graphics of all the webpages I've put together until I can set up some new webpages (not to mention doing a lot of uploading to photobucket.com...which I should have been doing for a while now anyway, but that's another subject).

Why is my poor, underpowered Dell laptop forced to bear this burden? Well, because my main desktop computer fried, by backup was lost in the eviction back in January, and my second backup is even sorrier than this laptop.

Yes, life has been a little too interesting these past several months. And it doesn't seem to be getting any less so.

Oh, well. I've been needing to do more here anyway.

So, prepare for a lot more stuff to start showing up in the near future, simply because I have no place else to put it.

Light at the end of the tunnel...sunlight or oncoming train?

Things seem to be solidifying a tad regarding the premise of the upcoming film, apparently to be titled simply "Star Trek". This particular detail, along with the intent to have both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy intimately involved in the story, might beg the question of when is a reboot not a reboot, but that'll have to wait for another time. Or at least later in this entry.

For the moment, however, we'll have to content ourselves with the apparent knowledge that this willl not, I repeat, NOT be a Starfleet Academy story. What we don't know is if this was prompted by the not-so-veiled threat of a lawsuit by former Trek helmer Harve Bennett (whose own ill-advised Starfleet Academy proposal was purchased, then shelved, by Paramount lo, these many years ago), or someone finally pointed out that Spock is a couple of years older than Kirk, so that even though there's some overlap of their respective times at the Academy, their chances of interaction to any significant degree would be minimal at best, or even maybe the starndard response of serious disdain that this idea always produces. With a fanbase as fractured as this one is, that last thing they need to do is trot out an idea guaranteed to cheese off a sizable portion of that fanbase before the first frame of film is exposed.

No, this magum opus will apparently deal with Kirk and Spock's first adventure on the Enterprise, with Kirk assuming command from Captain Pike. Since it's already been well established that Spock had been on the ship eleven years before Kirk showed up, this is not a problem. Apparently, McCoy and Scotty will be along for the ride as well. It makes sense that Scott would've been there before Kirk as well as Spock, so again, no problem on that front. McCoy's presence will need some explanation, thanks to Dr. Piper's presence in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", but all that's needed on that front is for McCoy to go on an extended leave, maybe to deal with that nasty divorce that's supposed to have driven him in to Starfleet in the first place.

Which brings us to the casting rumors.

Kirk: Despite denials of varying degrees, the most frequent name is Matt Damon. The main ray of light on this front is Richard Arnold reporting that while Paramount is chasing a big name, Damon isn't it. As for who I'd like to see as Kirk, I'm at a loss.

Spock: Some delusional genius has inserted the name of Adrian Brody into the mix. Sorry, I like Brody, but he ain't Spock. Personally, I'd like to see Josh Hartnett get a crack at it. Maybe Tommy Lee Jones as Sarek (he's a hardcore Trekkie, he'd do good by the Ambassador).

McCoy: With the exception of the odd naysayer, just about everyone's shortlist consists of the name Gary Sinise. Some wags make a point of how Sinise is in his mid 50s, while DeForest Kelley was in his mid 40s at the time of the original series. So what? Sinise looks like he's in his late 30s, and he's a dead ringer for Kelley in his younger days, so the only issue is how well they can shoot around his CSI:NY schedule.

Scotty: Thankfully, James McAvoy has publicly stated that he is NOT up for this part. Great guy, fine actor, but about twenty years too young. There are a few Scottish actors who can do justice to our beloved miracle worker, so I'm not terribly worried. Personally, I'd like to see Craig Ferguson take a whack at it. He's a big fan, and I suspect he'd take it as a personal honor to redeem the Scottish people by playing Scotty as a Scotsman with a proper Scottish accent and not what Ferguson has described as a Pakistani accent (even though Billy Connelly has said that Jimmy Doohan's accent wasn't that bad).

Pike: Can't go wrong with Ray Liotta. And before anyone points out that Liotta's several years and more than a few pounds past the time when he looked a lot more like Jeffery Hunter than he does now, I'd like to remind folks that he wouldn't be playing the Chris Pike we saw in "The Cage", he'd be playing a Pike about ten years older and a lot more world weary. On that scale, Liotta would be perfect.

And, as always, we have the aspect of Shatner and Nimoy being a part of the proceedings, which kinda blunts the edge of the position that this is a reboot. The fact that they're trying to work around Kirk's death in Generations, i.e., effectively undo the most idiotic creative decision in the entire history of the franchise, that alone is reason for hope that maybe, just maybe, the folks in charge actually know what they're doing this time.

The Death of Kings and Starship Captains

It is now reported that as part of JJ Abrams misguided notion of actually following through with Harve Bennett's "Kirk and Spock at the Academy" idea, he's entertaining the idea of Matt Damon playing the young Jim Kirk. Supposedly, this idea has Shatner's blessing.

Somebody shoot me now.

And while they're at it, slap Harve Bennett for coming up with the idiotic Academy idea in the first frelling place.

Let's face reality, kids. A story about Kirk and Spock at the Academy is, at best, a story best left to the novels (where it's already been tackled numerous times; how well is up to the individual reader) and at worst, an idea best left to fanfic writers who can't properly read the Chronology (Spock was two to three years ahead of Kirk at the Academy, and not on the Command track, so in all likelihood would have next to no contact with the brash human; by the time Kirk was reprogramming the computer so he could win the Kobayashi Maru scenario, Spock was already assigned to the Enterprise).

Casting Matt Damon, an actor who, at 35, is waaaaaaaaaay too old to be playing an 18 year old Kirk (hell, he's a year older than Shatner was when he first played Kirk in Star Trek's second pilot), he bears no resemblence whatsofreakinever to Bill Shatner, which is kind of a prerequisite to being taken even halfway seriously as someone who can portray Kirk.

"But lots of folks have played James Bond, Batman, and Sherlock Holmes" comes the whine from certain corners.

The key difference is that characters of Bond, Batman, and Holmes did not originate with Sean Connery, Adam West, or Basil Rathbone, or any of the other actors who've played those respective characters. They all originated in other media, in these cases novels and comic books. The actors in these cases were putting their interpretation on an already existing character.

The character of James T. Kirk did not exist in the public consciousness until William Shatner appeared on our television screens in that velour shirt. Likewise with Leonard Nimoy and Spock. Shatner might be okay with Matt Damon playing Kirk, but do you honestly think Nimoy is gonna go along quietly with, say, Ben Affleck playing Spock? A lot of the behind the scenes action during Star Trek's third season consisted of Nimoy having a running battle with Fred Freiberger, et al, just to maintain a certain amount of integrity in the character of Spock, going so far in one instance to taking the writers and producers down to the set to demonstrate why their idea of Spock getting knocked out during a fight was stupid (the scene in question was in "Whom Gods Destroy", with the fight between Kirk and Garth posing as Kirk; Nimoy essentially rewrote that scene, or at least forced the rewriting of that scene, not only making Spock come off much more intelligently, but doing pretty well by Kirk as well).

It doesn't take a degree in marketing to find out that the reaction by the fanbase has been, to be generous, mixed. A small portion are genuinely excited by the idea (pretty much the same segment that woudl line up to see cast members sit on stage and read from the Santa Monica phone book), a somewhat larger portion that are actively hostile to the idea, with the vast majority not terribly enthusiastic one way or the other.

Shakespeare and Roddenberry could come back from the dead themsevles to write the thing and it'd still tank, simply because not enough of the target audience really gives a rip about the premise.

And if Trekkies are a mixed bag on this one, whaddya think the nonfan thinks?

Add it all up, with the addition of Matt Damon, an actor who is both loved and reviled by pretty much equal numbers of people, and we're looking at a flop that'll make Nemesis look like box office gold.

Abrams and his merry band of Alias veterans need to dump this Academy idea like a bad habit, because the path their taking leads to just one place: oblivion for the franchise.

Babylon Trek: The Next Incarnation?

Lately, a lot of angst is starting to build over the concept that the creator of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski, hereafter referred to as JMS, wants to take over the Star Trek franchise.

Fine so far. He's fairly fan-friendly and can spin a good yarn. The fact that he's a Star Trek fan himself only helps, right?

Not so fast.

The key to his plan is that he wants to do a complete reboot. Start over, back on the old Enterprise with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc., etc., except "updated" or "reimagined" for a whole new generation of newbies.

That means someone else playing the parts of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and so forth, and a "kewler" looking Enterprise, 'cause, y'know, that old 60's stuff was fine in its day, but it's just sooooooooooooo cheesy now, isn't it?

The short answer is to go back and take a look at the Enterprise offering "In a Mirror, Darkly" and notice how good those designs actually look.

The more thoughtful answer is that it's not worth worrying over because it ain't gonna happen.

And I'm not even gonna mention how the Roddenberry estate or Star Trek minority owner William Shatner would never allow it.

No, it has to do with the enlightened self interest of that studio we all love to hate, Paramount.

Y'see, not even Paramount, that stuck with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga as they personally drove the studio's golden goose franchise right into the dirt with great enthusiasm, would be stupid enough for the full reboot that JMS is proposing. They've got too much financial interest in maintaining the established continuity.

But it worked for Ron Moore and Battlestar Galactica, some folks counter.

The reason it worked for Galactica is that there was only one and a half or two seasons of, frankly, very forgettable crap. Everyone's got very fond, warm-fuzzy feelings for the old show, but it's really for the characters and the general concepts, and most of us who actually remember the show were kids at the time, so there's a whole lot of childhood nostalgia involved, but let's face it, the vast majority of the individual episodes were crap. Fairly well acted, but crap nonetheless, especially when you throw "Galactica 1980" into the mix (here's where that "one and a half" thing comes in; I don't recall if "1980" ran a full season or was cut off at 13 episodes). What'd they have, ONE good episode (the one with Starbuck), and even that came with a heavy layer of cheese.

Let's compare that record with Star Trek's and count up all of Star Trek's onscreen incarnations:

TOS (3 seasons)

TAS (technically 2 seasons, but only 22 episodes, so I'm counting it as one)

TNG, DS9, & Voyager (7 seasons each)

Enterprise (4 seasons)

That's 29 SEASONS TOTAL.

And tha's just the television product. Add in the ten movies and all the ancilliary material that's been based on all that background, and it starts to dawn on even the dimmest bulb that that's a lot of material, aka merchandising opportunities, to chuck overboards for the sake of "a fresh start".

If JMS is signed, and that's still a mighty big IF, seeing as they've already got a list of names that have already dealt with this beast and done okay, it'll be with the condition that he play in the official sandbox with the official toys, not build his own and call them "official".

Otherwise, they might as well bring over Babylon 5 and let him have fun with his own sandbox and his own toys. It'd be a lot cheaper to but out WB for the rights than take the hit when everything they've produced under the Star Trek name for the past 30+ years suddenly "doesn't count".

Yes, at long last, an update...

I know, I know, I've been neglecting my duties. So sue me, everyone else seems to be.

The following is the result of a bit of a dust-up I had with Shane Johnson, well regarded Star Trek fan artist and author of, among other works, "Mr. Scott's Guide To The Enterprise". He took a mild swipe at my attempts to lay out the internal arrangement of the original Enterprise after I questioned the veracity of the technical details of "The Making of Star Trek" and Franz Joseph's Constitution class blueprints.

The resulting rant was just too good not to share here...

* * * * *

At times like this, I hate AOL.

I had an absolutely beautiful mega-rant, reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw, just about ready to go when the thing crapped out, and lost the entire thing.

Oh well, I'll recap the basic gripes. I may not be as enraged as I was earlier, but I still need to vent a bit. Besides, there are some folks who still haven't gotten some key points.

Before anyone takes any swipes at certain aspects of these plans **coughcoughShaneJohnsoncoughcough**, I'd suggest taking a good long look the process that was gone through to get to that apparently screwy solution. How long did the bridge take? Two, three months? With all sides screaming and throwing things at each other until an overlooked bit of implied history proved useful and the sucker fell into place. It's not the solution I was looking for, but at least it's one case where clear creators' intent that the bridge faced straight forward, was adhereed to.

As far as creators' intent regarding the engine setup, the only thing that's clear is that there was no clear creators' intent for the most part, beyond the general details of the ship using warp drive to go from star to star, and that the system used matter/antimatter annihilation for power. Otherwise, the technical references wouldn't be all over the map. They got things nailed down well enough for what they needed, which was light years beyond what was done on other shows and their hero ships, and they set a level of development that set the standard for years to come, but let's not ascribe a level of development that wasn't there. They got things nailed down to the point that they could produce the stories and make it on air, and if some technical detail was essential to the plot resolution it got attention, but I guarantee you that if you were to chime in during a writer meeting during that period and ask where the main power was generated, you'd get three or four different opinions, a couple of arguments, then someone reminding everyone that they didn't have time for this nonssense and that the story wasn't about the engines anyway, it was about Kirk stopping the evil computer and freeing the planet's population so they could become a more normal society, and they needed to crank out a draft before Monday or they're all dead.

It's also worth noting that at no time did anyone appear to use "The Making of Star Trek" as a reference during the production, even during the third season when the book was actually available.

Remember, they weren't even all that certain what century the show was set in. Why? Same reason, it usually wasn't important to the story at hand. With the time and budget constraints the show was under from Day One, there simply wasn't time or inclination to putting together a detailed technical manual for the ship and equipment. Phasers were slightly cooler looking zap guns with a fairly established list of capabilities; nobody gave a rat's patootie how it worked, just accept that they work and move on to the next problem.

It wasn't important what Yarnek was doing to the Enterprise to put it in danger of blowing up, it was important that if Kirk didn't do as Yarnek said, the ship was gonna blow up. It wasn't important what Scotty and Spock cooked up to blow up the ship in the energy barrier, it was important that they'd cooked up something to blow up the ship and stop the Kelvans from taking the Enterprise back to Andromeda. The result is there isn't a lot of consistency in technical references. Some point to the most obvious aspect of the ship's power, the nacelles, some point in the general direction of the secondary hull, some don't point one way or the other.

Other, less frequent, times, there were other plot points that were decided to be more important than technical consistency with previous episodes. To service the plot of "Day of the Dove", it was deemed important that Kang and his forty fellow Klingons controlled Engineering, Kirk and the others held the bridge, and that the vast bulk of the Enterprise crew was locked away from the action, so that the forces would be equal. I doubt they even considered the likely location of Engineering based on previous episodes, the important thing was the episode they were doing right then and there. The fact that this situation cropped up pretty rarely is testament to the effort to at least try and stay fairly consistent from week to week.

Contrast that with the instances where the engine problems were critical to the resolution of the plot.

"That Which Survives" The Enterprise needs to get back to that artificial planet to retrieve the landing party, but it's got a problem. The engines have been sabotaged, resulting in the ship accelerating out of control. Clearly, the ship is on its own, Scotty can't just wave a magic wand and stop some outside force from causing the problems, he's gotta go in there and fix the problem himself, so it now becomes important just what it is he's doing, which means some details of how the ship works actually have to be settled; before you can concoct a realistic reason for why the ship is going nuts, you have to figure out how it works normally, so you can then decide which piece of the works to take a sledgehammer to and cause the problem. Here's where we get the "matter/antimatter reaction chamber." That's right, Rick Sternbach did not create the term for the TNG Tech Manual, it came from that creaky old TOS episode. A clear and unambigous reference to how the ship actually works, to wit: Matter and antimatter enter the chamber, go boom, and feed that energy to the warp engines, and in this case, the throttle has been jammed wide open. Now you go about devising what has to be done to fix the problem; in this case, shut down the runaway reaction, thus choking off the power flow to the warp engines and bringing the ship back under control.

"Elaan of Troyius" The Enterprise is being attacked by a Klingon ship, but can't respond properly because the warp drive has been sabotaged, and Scotty has to fix it. To do this right, you need to figure out just what was sabotaged, why it's important, and what's needed to fix the problem. It had already been determined waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in "Mudd's Women" that the ship's power goes through the (di)lithium crystals, and if that gets knocked out, the ship don't run so good. In order for Kryton to sabotage the things, they have to be accessible, and we have that big contraption in the middle of Engineering (someone better versed with the behind the scenes history needs to find out if it was decided that the big whatsit was the where the crystals were kept at the time the thing was put in at the beginning of the second season, or if it was just a big whatsit until a script required it to have an explicit purpose). And again, we get a reference to one single antimatter reactor. In order to restore full power, the burned out crystal needs to be replaced with a fresh one, which they don't have. Enter Elaan's necklace of crude dilithium crystals, which she describes as "common stones" (thus showing us why the ship was being attacked in the first place). Spock and Scotty carefully fit the rocks into the framework, amid concerns over what the shape of the crystals would do the energy flow, concerns which are confirmed when we see the lights on Scotty's bridge station waver very noticeably and Scotty complains about the shape of the crystals effecting the energy flow.

So, again, in very clear, definitive references (which, due to their specificity carry far more weight than vague references to "antimatter pods" and unidentified "reactors"), we get the flow of energy starting at a central reactor, running through the dilithium crystals, and feeding the warp engines.

Would these episodes have even been produced if it was the "clear creators' intent" that all the matter and antimatter was all up in the nacelles? The only way Scotty's feats work is if there is one central M/AM reactor feeding the engines, whereas all the other technobabble references that appear to (and to be honest, probably did) point to the nacelles can all be finessed to fit with what has become accepted as the standard warp drive setup, matter & antimatter in one reactor, plasma fed through dilithium crystals to nacelles.

So, as far as "creators' intent" goes, the only thing I can conclude is that, if it wasn't critical to the story, they weren't all that concerned, but when it was critical to the plot, things pointed towards one central reactor feeding the nacelles.

And not once have I invoked TMP, TNG, or ENT. Nor have I relied upon outside works to explain what was shown on screen or to provide background information.

So you tell me who's being revisionist.

Let's try this again....

Obviously, this blog has not been a hotbed of activity.

I had a feeling this sort of thing would happen, which is precisely why I held off for so long on even starting one. It turns out that despite my deep and abiding interest in political and cultural matters, it's another matter to work up the required passion to actually write up something that someone else would find worth reading. Besides, political blogs are a dime a dozen, and while I do think I can cook up some damn tasty political diatribes more often than not, in all likelihood I'd just be regurgitating whatever I'd just read from Ann Coulter or some other highly regarded pundit. Making the whole exercise rather pointless in the end.

So, what to do with this puppy then?

Well, when in doubt, go with your strengths.

In this case, that means being a curmudgeonly old Trekkie. Even with the demise of "Enterprise", there'll always be something to cheese off the fanboys, be it rumored movie plans, half-baked novels, or woefully inaccurate model kits.

And, of course, since we're not dealing with life and death issues, I'll be able to get far more shrill without resulting in either being called a Nazi, or my calling others Nazis. Can't say that about politics.

And so, this blog enters a new phase, and hopefully one in which I'll be more motivated to post something more frequently than every six weeks or so.

Thrusters ahead, helmsman....

And so it begins....

I suppose it was inevitable.

After all, I'd been shooting my virtual mouth off within the usually friendly confines of the AOL message boards for around ten years. It only makes sense that I'd have to branch out into blogging.

Of course, on the AOL boards, I usually didn't spout off on my own. Usually I was responding to some unsuspecting fool who'd stumbled into my crosshairs. It helps a lot when the usual suspects feed you such good material, like standard DNC talking points.

Now I have to come up with my own starting points.

Okay, then.

Here's a few tidbits to start things off.

Ward Churchill is an idiot, Robert Byrd went senile sometime in the mid 80's, and I strongly suspect that Michael Schiavo is using the Florida court system to cover up a botched murder attempt.

Discuss.