There is absolutely no reason for people to speak with accents that make words unintelligible.

Seriously, we're ten years into the 21st century, and I got bitched out at my dad's workplace because a fat stupid redneck rent-a-cop managed to say "Wait here a minute" in a way that made it sound like "Go on ahead". I can't even FATHOM what kind of accent that is that changes the entire meanings of words. The simple answer is he's a lying piece of shit who should've been an abortion, but I can only work with the facts as I know them.

With the amount of television we have, and the amount that radio is gentrified so that all DJs sound like they just did a line of coke during the last commercial, I can't imagine how people can swallow words and sound like Larry the Cable Guy. Certainly there's a remaining minority of people who claim that's "heritage", "culture", and "not raping your ears", but one would think they would at least accidentally speak like a human once in a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-accent. I love accents, they're fascinating. But ones that make people unintelligible such as "Southern idiot" and "Wannabe southern idiot" and "general idiot" should have died out by now. So I challenge my readers (all eight of you) to do humanity a favour: If you know someone who sounds like an idiot when they speak, kill them in their sleep. You might find that you've been paying an enormous psychic price for their existence, and the only way to prove this is to chart your increased health upon their deaths.

Or maybe ... nah, I'm pretty sure killing the stupid isn't a bad idea.

This Star Trek will go on forever

It's official: There is a new Star Trek movie out that lives up to the hype.

Well, perhaps I should clarify: I don't remember any hype from any Star Trek movie. I remember being excited for Star Trek Generations in 1994, but in my own defence I was 9 and obsessed with Next Generation. I quickly dropped that particular obsession in time to barely notice First Contact and Insurrection. I worked in a cinema (two, actually) the year Nemesis came out, and so it became the second Trek film I saw at cinemas. I still don't know if it would have been better if I'd not been spoiled by a friend at school, but as it is, it was "okay" overall.

About two years ago I heard they were making Star Trek XI. As a subscriber to the theory that all odd-numbered Trek films are crap, I thought "ugh". When I saw the first teaser trailer, the one with the welder on the hull of the Enterprise, I thought "hmm, I might have to give this one a chance." Once I saw casting reports, I was definitely interested and all but guaranteed to see the film. Then I saw the theatrical trailers.

Holy assballs, batman, were those trailers awesome! My only concern was "Where the fuck does Baby!Kirk get a '66 Corvette?" and "Why are they skydiving?" These concerns evaporated a half-second later when the next shot was totally awesome. Then they showed the scene where Uhura is stripping out of her cadet uniform. Upon subsequent rewatchings of this trailer I noticed something I couldn't believe I'd missed before: These people are ridiculously hot.

Okay, sure, there were some pretty people on the original series, and seriously good-looking people on Next Gen, but nobody was NEARLY as hot as New Kirk (Chris Pine), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the film's baddie Romulan-from-the-future Nero (Eric Bana). The closest the original series ever got to these never-unphotogenic people was when they used soft lighting on the Lieutenant that Ricardo Montalban's Khan Noonien Singh ended up taking with him and marrying in Space Seed, and that was mostly SOFT LIGHTING.

Moving on from my desire to sex every single person in the film, I have to say the film itself was immensely ballsy. It changes so many details about the Trek universe, something that Trekkies might not like if it weren't for the fact that this film is completely awesome. Kirk is not the same character (although generally the same person) that he is in the original line, or shall we say Prime Universe (as Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha has taken to calling it). Spock is mostly the same albeit with several backstories changed. And I must allow myself one minor spoiler: Spock and Uhura are totally doin' it. Yes, I said it. Granted, we only see them making out followed by a terrible line delivered by Uhura (who finally has a first name!), but you KNOW there's some hot Pon'farr action going on ... every seven years.

As for how they get away with the changes, JJ Abrams and the writers make use of one of the oldest Trek plot devices: Time travel. Certainly the science is shaky, the continuity is wrong even accounting for the time-travelly alternate-universey wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey (read up on Star Dates. On second thought, ignore Star Dates completely. The writers always have) but don't let that stop you from enjoying an action-packed summer blockbuster about the importance of interpersonal relationships, especially that of children with their parents. I have seen it twice, and the second time was with my parents on Mother's Day. I think we all took something away from it, and that is the ultimate success of Gene Roddenberry's vision.