Nerdgasm!

I speak to you today as a humbled man. A man who had experienced a crippling addiction and thought he'd beaten it. A man who took an unwarranted pride in his triumph over compulsion – a pride that, as pride so often does, came before a fall. I have had a relapse, and now I find myself questioning everything I thought I knew about my character. Yes, it's true – I spent the entire weekend watching old episodes of Star Trek.


Above: Who I thought I was


Above: Who I actually am

One caveat before I continue: Despite my shame over my crippling Star Trek addiction, I believe William Shatner to be the pinnacle of human evolution, and I make no apologies for that. When humanity, after untold millennia of striving, finally attains perfection, humanity will look something like this:


Above: Awesomeness

So all you Shatner haters out there can just step off. The Shat is the shit, and I will injure anyone who says otherwise. The dude is hysterically funny and deeply poignant in his current starring role on Boston Legal, and he has a great sense of humor about his own image. And of course, he gave one towering performance in which he perfectly summed up the hopeless, existential angst that is the lot of all mankind:



So hands off Shatner, bitches.

Still, I find my sudden relapse into Trekkiedom very troubling. It all started with my discovery of Fancast, a Web site that allows you to watch full television episodes on your computer. I was browsing their selection and seriously considering getting reacquainted with the excellent 80s private-eye series Spenser: For Hire when my eyes wandered on down the list and … what? All 79 episodes? In any order I want to watch them?!? Damn you, alphabet, for placing Spenser and Star Trek on the same list! Suddenly I found myself longing for the whimsy of "The Trouble With Tribbles". The heart-wrenching selflessness of Kirk's sacrifice in "City on the Edge of Forever". The thinly veiled homoeroticism of his struggle with the Gorn in "Arena".


Above: "I love you!" "It'll never work!"

I don't know what was more disturbing to me: The fact that I could remember, by looking at an episode title, the plot of said episode; or that I still knew what a Gorn was. Either way, I was fucked.


Above: This guy only appeared
in two episodes, and I still
know who he is! I suck!

The proper thing to do at this juncture would have been to turn off my laptop, close it, take it down to the beach, and throw it into the sea to avoid temptation. Instead, I scrolled down to the pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" … and hit play. Ten hours later, I remembered to eat something.


Above: "He's a douche, Jim."

I spent Sunday in pretty much the same way, and I'll probably do the same tonight. My friends are considering an intervention, but I think, with enough willpower and humility, I can beat this on my own. I've done it before, and as God is my witness, I'll do it again.

Of course, the new movie comes out next year.

Shit.