My favourite sign of the year so far:

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I can’t help but love William Shatner. This is the man that brought us Captain James T Kirk, T J Hooker and Denny Crane, not to mention numerous sci-fi novels. What a brilliant CV - and that’s only a small part of it. However, it will always be Captain Kirk that Shatner is most famous for.

Apropos Captain Kirk, we now have the dubious situation of yet another movie franchise reboot, with J J Abrams remaking Star Trek. This will be the eleventh Star Trek movie, but it’s not a continuation from number ten. It’s a reworking of the original concept. According to imdb.com:

Paramount synopsis: From director J.J. Abrams (”Mission: Impossible III,” “Lost” and “Alias”) and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci (”TRANSFORMERS,” “MI: III”) comes a new vision of the greatest space adventure of all time, “Star Trek,” featuring a young, new crew venturing boldly where no man has gone before.

Explores the early Starfleet careers of future Enterprise officers Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Amanda Grayson (Winona Ryder), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), McCoy (Karl Urban), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin). A Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana), and a much older Spock (Leonard Nimoy) are influences, as well as Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), the first captain of the USS Enterprise.

So I’m not sure how exactly they plan to fit it together with it supposedly following the early years of the most famous Starfleet crew, yet featuring “a much older Spock”. Regardless, Leonard Nimoy gets to reprise the one thing that people really remember him for and he must be very pleased. (And, on a slight tangent, Simon Pegg as Scotty makes the nerd in me do a very gawky dance of joy).

However, notice anything missing? Spock gets a reprise, yet no mention of Bill Shatner. No future flash forward? No cheeky cameo to titillate the Trekkies as a surprise somewhere in the movie? Well, frankly, no. And Mr Shatner himself has even addressed a little video letter directly to J J Abrams to let him know what he thinks of that:

And you know what amuses me most about this whole thing? J J Abrams obviously wanted nothing to do with Shatner yet tries to sound all noble and apologetic, pretending to have the utmost repect for the original Kirk. And the original Kirk himself is all sweetness and light, talking about what a great writer/director Abrams is, yet is obviously deeply pissed that he didn’t get offered a part. Will these two crazy kids kiss and make up if there’s ever an Abrams headed Star Trek XII? We’ll have to wait and see.

(Hat tip to SF Signal for finding the video).

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It’s been a while since I shared some non-sensical use of the English language here. My good pal Monika, currently resident of Brisbane, sent me this and I had to share it. Have a look:

Queensland Homicide Victims’ Support Group

Anything strike you as strange about that? It comes from the Brisbane “Inner and Southern Suburbs” Yellow Pages. And let’s be honest, how much support does a homicide victim really need? Talk about locking the barn after the horse has bolted. I bet they would have really liked some support right before they became a homicide victim. Some serious backup right about then would have been fantastic.

Obviously, they do a completely different service. According to their website:

24 hr emotional support, personal advocacy and information to all people affected by homicide throughout Queensland.

But that’s not what they actually say in their name now, is it.

And on the subject of erroneous use of the language, here are a couple of guys that deserve medals. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson couldn’t help themselves and had to correct the grammar on a sign at the Grand Canyon National Park. “Authorities” (and let’s use that word cautiously) said that Deck kept a diary and in it he had written that he and Herson used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with correction fluid and added a comma.

There was also a misspelled word (”emense”) that was not corrected by these linguistic vigilantes because, “I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further. … Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight.”

The sign that needed correction

These poor bastards pleaded guilty to conspiracy to vandalise government property and were sentenced to a year’s probation, during which they cannot enter any national park or modify any public signs. (I like the implication that they can modify public signs again once the year is up.) They were also ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the sign. Repair it? Three grand! For a sign that was hand written in the first place? They should have been paid three grand each for their vigilance.

Full story here.

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I know, I’m a bad man. I’ve just moved house and was determined to keep up to date on ‘Verse even if nothing much else happened online while we got settled. However, that hasn’t happened. I’m still trying to sort out an internet connection at our new house and am currently in a net cafe. Dire, I know.

So, things may still be disrupted for a little while yet, but I’ll make it up to you. Once I get the chance, I’ll post at least two episodes of VFoS to make up for missing this week.

In the meantime, here’s a funny cat.

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I know, it sounds truly ridiculous. And it is. But in a good way.

I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon. Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel were top-notch television and Firefly was a notch above them, and a series that should never have been cancelled. It got us Serenity, but that’s not enough. Anyway, suffice to say that Whedon is something of a genius when it comes to writing sci-fi and fantasy based scripts. He always has this comedic edge to his writing, yet manages to deliver horror and shock along the way.

During the writer’s strike in the US last year he decided to use his time to engage in a purely personal project and put together a short film using actors he had worked with before and even getting his brothers in on the crew. The film he made is Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

For a few short hours the film was streamed for free from the website in three fifteen minute acts. It’s now available to download from iTunes for the very modest price of US$4. There is also going to be a DVD released, which will supposedly contain all kinds of delicious extras.

The story is about Dr Horrible, played by “Doogie Houser” Neil Patrick Harris (will he ever get past that casting?), and his efforts to take over the world and win the heart of Penny, played by Felicia Day. He is, however, rather too embarrassed to talk to Penny and is also concentrating on getting into the Evil League of Evil, headed by the bad horse, Bad Horse. So along comes Captain Hammer, Nathan Fillion, to save the day and steal the girl. Oh yeah, they totally did it.

It’s a truly bizarre short film, not least because it’s a musical. Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will recall the episode from Season 6 called Once More, With Feeling, where a mysterious force made all the characters sing their dialogue. There is spoken dialogue as well as songs in Dr Horrible, but the Buffy episode was never far from my mind. Whedon is so good at putting together songs that are lyrically brilliant and utterly stupid at the same time. As I said before, he’s a genius.

Anyway, click on the banner above to have a look. You’ve missed the free stream now, but it’s certainly worth US$4 of your hard-earned to see this thing. And it’s a great experiment by Whedon and friends to use the power of the internet to pay his crew and have a successful film without producers and big company involvement. As an independent publisher I can certainly get with that program. There’s also a comic book of Captain Hammer that you can check out, written by Zack Whedon.

Hat-tip to Michael for putting me on to this.

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Word abuse that is. I was going to try to avoid posting anything about this mass gathering of Catholics (pun very much intended) but I can’t help it. Hundreds of thousands of “pilgrims” from all over the world coming to Sydney to block our roads and cost our small businesses at least a weeks takings. Not to mention the massive amount of our supposedly secular tax dollars that got donated into the event. An event held by the wealthiest religious institution in the world, incidentally.

But I’ll avoid all the obvious rantings that are so easy with something like this. Let’s keep the whole thing on topic for the blog. Well, as much on topic as this blog ever is.

You can always rely on religious institutions to have very little respect for words and their meanings. They’ll bleat on about the literal word of god or the sacred word of scripture and so on, and then they come out with a selection of words like World Youth Day. The only word among those three that is vaguely accurate is World. It is an event that is televised all over the world and people from all over the world descend upon it. But Youth? Day? The bloody thing went on for a week and had very little to do with youth.

Sure, old Pope Benedict the Ratzinger prattled on about how the young people should pay heed if they feel that their god is calling them into the service of the church. After all, most church leaders of all ranks are getting old or being hidden away in distant parishes to help them avoid accusations of child abuse and, no matter how much they big themselves up, the church is slowly dying. It’s one small mercy, I suppose. Calling the event World Catholic Indoctrination Week would have been far more accurate. But the church, any church, never has much of a track record when it comes to accuracy.

Pope Benedict the Creepily Smug Looking

Which brings us to another piece of word abuse associated with this event. Their slogan – The Time Of Your Eternal Life. Really? It says very little for heaven if a few days freezing your arse off camped at Randwick Racecourse is as good as it’s ever going to get. Who wants resurrection and eternal life if it’s not even as good as Sydney in the winter. Don’t get me wrong, I like Sydney (without the Catholics), but it’s not my idea of the pinnacle of human existence. At least, not in July.

And one final gem from Ratzinger himself. On Friday he gave an apology to the victims of clerical sexual abuse. He made no mention of what they were going to do to prevent it happening in the future, and even had the audacity to suggest that he felt their pain. But the apology was made, however insincerely. Then the very next day, during his mass, he spoke of the need to embrace the church to beware the dangers of a secular existence. Apparently the irony was utterly lost on him.

Ah well, at least it’s all over for now. I pity Madrid in three years time.

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Thanks to Michael over at a Nadder for putting me on to this little beauty. According to The Carpetbagger Report (commentary and analysis on politics in America), there are a number of far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press news feed but use an auto-correct feature to change certain words that they deem too left leaning. For example, they might auto-correct Democratic Party to Democrat Party. Idiots. And you thought everything on the interenet was pure and unblemished.

Anyway, what would often seem to be some fairly harmless editing and censoring can have repercussions that you might not expect. You might think it’s pretty irrelevant. After all, if you read websites that lean so far right as to edit words to suit their agenda then you get everything you deserve. So I suppose you’d be right in your assumption that it’s irrelevant. But nothing is irrelevant when it’s funny.

According to the Carpet Baggers, American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website replaces the word “gay” in AP articles with the word “homosexual.” Pretty pointless. I guess they don’t want to imply that people that are same sex attracted might be happy. Anyway, when you automate these things, hilarity can ensue. Like when a guy called Tyson Gay wins a 100m race. You’ve already guessed exactly where this is going, so let’s just reproduce the copy:

Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]

Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

Brilliant. Idiots always manage to out themselves in the end. And the blogosphere is only too happy to make sure everyone knows about it. The site has since corrected its copy, but Right Wing Watch blog got the screen grab. Well done, guys.

Just another reason to cross check all your news. Trust no one. Except me, of course. You can trust me, cos I’m a speculative fiction author.

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I’m a fan of a blog called Passive Aggressive Notes. The title is pretty self explanatory, but just to clarify: painfully polite and hilariously hostile writings from shared spaces the world over.

A recent post there combines some of the best examples of poor quotation marks usage, illogical reasoning, incredible grammar and brilliant turns of phrase along with the expected passive aggressiveness. I had to share.

Bathroom emergencies, Pot Luck and Big Jobs.

Inspired.

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This is a bit of a stretch for inclusion here at The Word but I can’t help it. It’s a clever use of words, so I’m calling it valid. If anyone knows where this originated, please let me know - I got it in an email from a friend and it really made me laugh. It’s one of those nerdy, clever things that’s surprisingly entertaining.

Graphical Representations of Popular Songs

To be fair, not all of these songs are that popular. They just lend themselves well to the concept. Like this one for example:

Whatever happened to Right Said Fred anyway?

I don’t really care where Rick Astley went. I’m just glad he’s gone.

Love is a feature of the large majority of songs, naturally. Here are two very important concepts:

And talking of love, here’s something a little more controversial:

I can’t explain why exactly, but for some reason these last two are by far my favourites:

So there you go. Sorry about that, I just felt the need to share.

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One that definitely sits in the “Truth is stranger than fiction” file is this story from the Sydney Morning Herald website today.

Apparently a man has got away with a suspended jail sentence after he posed as Darth Vader and attacked a Jedi Church. Yes, there is so much wrong with the preceding sentence that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Apparently, Arwel Wynne Hughes wore a garbage bag as a cape to round out his Vader disguise (in fact, as his entire disguise) and attacked Barney Jones and his cousin, Michael Jones. Barney, aka Master Jonba Hehol (seriously, I’m not making this up) is the founder of the Anglesey branch of the Church of Jediism in Wales, UK. The church apparently has 30-odd members. Presumably this is a small slice of the 390,000 people that claimed the Jedi religion as their faith in the 2001 UK census.

Interestingly, Hughes’ weapon of choice was not a light sabre but a metal crutch. Not very becoming for a Sith Lord, really. He did have a strong defence however. When asked why he had done it, he claimed to have drunk “the best part” of a ten litre box of wine and had no recollection of the incident.

Now, I know this may just be my own English sense of the absurd showing through, but the funniest part of all this in my mind is that this whole incident would have occurred with Welsh accents. And best of all, I’ve found the video.

The guys that were attacked were filming themselves performing a “light sabre” battle when the Sith Lord attacked, so the whole thing was caught on tape. By far the funniest part of all this is the Jedi Knight at the end saying, “Aaah, really quite painful.”

Classic.

Here’s the Sydney Morning Herald report that I originally read. (Thanks for the heads up, Pete!)

And here’s the video footage on the BBC website.

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