While many of you have no doubt been recently going about your daily lives and epic battle scenes, footloose and fancy free as a metric ton of kittens in a skating rink, I, as always, have been scouring the net for threats to humanity.  Normally, this is awesome, but unfortunately, the other day I finally found one.  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and unlike that guy from REM who looks like Captain Picard’s little brother, I don’t feel fine.  What fresh horror has been unleashed upon the world, and from whence doth it come, you may well ask?  Well, not surprisingly, it comes from Hollywood, and as to its actual horribulosity, I think it’s best if I begin at the beginning.  So, if you want to have a few last moments of happiness delighting in the joys of this world before I taint them all forevermore with the knowledge of a truth to hideous to comprehend, why not take a moment and go do that?  And then get good and drunk and come back here.

            Okay, said all your goodbyes to the idea that mankind is anything other than doomed?  Okely-dokely.  Well, you may know that the idea is presently being kicked around Hollywood to make a new Star Trek movie, which would be, under most circumstances, uber peachy keen.  This movie, however, is meant to take place back in the day, when Kirk and Spock were still at the academy, doing intergalactic panty raids and putting a Rigelian Beefalo in Dean Fugleman’s office, after which hilarity will inevitably ensue.  And were this the end of the story, all would be beer and skittles indeed; but alas, I have learned from sources too dark and wlatsome to mention here, whom they intend to cast as Young Captain Kirk.  Perhaps if John Belushi were still alive, it would have been different, but the fact is that the role appears destined to go to – it’s still not too late to avert your eyes – Ben Affleck.  Now, I have already made it abundantly clear how much I hate Ben Affleck in all his vile incarnations in this space before, but having him play Shatner is the ultimate atrocity against coolness.  Indeed, it is as if all the very universe itself was suddenly bestirred to give forth a mighty narf, which shook the very foundations of the Earth with its absolute retardedness.  Why did they do this?  Even the very wisest cannot say, but really, by this point we’re well beyond asking about the whytos and the wherefores and must rather work on a solution.  Seriously, this is like having Hitler play the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank, except for the fact that that would actually be hilarious, so let me try a different way to convey my deep and abiding loathing for Ben Affleck.  You know how everyone hates Osama bin Laden?  Well imagine that way back in the day, before he ever became famous, your parents named you something like Osama bin Laden Davidson.  Not only would you hate Osama for all the stuff he ever did, like the time he dipped your sister’s ponytail in the inkwell at school, or the time he rolled your grandmother’s yurt, but the very fact that he had sullied your fair name would make you hate him all the more.  That’s how I feel about Ben Affleck.

            Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave, which technically speaking, is in space; he did not fly a bomber against the Nazis just so that future generations of Americans could throw his hard won victory away by having Ben Affleck play Captain Kirk.  And need I even mention that if Ben Affleck gets this role, then we can be all but certain that Spock is going to be played by Matt Damon.  I cannot emphasize enough how bad this could be for future interplanetary relations.  I mean, the Vulcan’s are going to contact our planet in the year 2063, if they see that we’ve decided to portray one of their greatest people as Matt Damon, then in spite of their logical nature, they’ll be madder than Mohammed at a political cartoon convention, and zark out.  Now, it may be the case that zarking out may lead to the eventual destruction of Hollywood, which would be kind of nice, but still, the line must be drawn here.

            Fortunately, a solution has presented itself to me.  What we must do is convince William Shatner and the rest of the original cast of Star Trek to form a fellowship dedicated to the destruction of Ben Affleck.  They must lead him deep into the Mines od Moria, where he will reveal himself to be the ancient creature of fire and shadow we suspected he was all along.  Then, Shatner will do battle with him on the Bridge of Khazadum, before they both fall into a totally deep hole and Shatner eventually slays Ben Affleck and smites his ruin upon the mountain side.  A nice added benefit of this will be that Shatner will now become Shatner the White, and when he meets Chekov, Sulu, and Treebeard later on in Fangorn Forest, everything will be awesome again.