The Onion indirectly did the Trek franchise justice with this mock entertainment review of the new film:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

Exactly. As much as that video attempts to be a jab at Trekkies regarding the potentially hard-to-love nature of one of the longest-running and most in-depth sci-fi franchises in all of television and film history, what it really does is underline how the new film is a pasteurized tribute to Die Hard that can be easily ingested by the masses regardless of their intellectual capacity. It’s not only a poor reflection on director Abram’s abilities to spin a good yarn that will challenge your perceptions, it’s an insult on series founder Gene Roddeberry’s knack for creating decent socio-political commentary, and the latter TNG’s tendency to create technically-proficient sci-fi. The new Star Trek‘s attempt even at character development stinks of Lucas’ success at creating a Darth Vader we all came to despise not because he was a cold, mechanical, sadistic, murderous villain, but because he was a insufferable, snotnosed, irritating brat in the vein of Mozart. A Mozart who couldn’t act. And now we have a new Trek to thank for making the bold and clever Captain Kirk a pernicious upstart who functions less as a devious thinker and more as a careless reactionary with little regard for the crew under his command. Just what we look for in a leader…

I shouldn’t really even have to elaborate on how ridiculous this whole idea is. First, stop trying to impede the evolution of the English language with your petty political correctness, censorship, and failed attempts at morality. You’re turning the whole damn language gay. And I mean that exactly in the derogatory sense intended. Why? Because our language is evolving, kiddies – adapting to the frivolous social inequities you yourselves have created.

Remember when “lame” meant some kind of crippling physical impairment? Well, probably one day some manager was listening to their employee’s excuse for being late to work and decided that, while this employee wasn’t lame and therefore had no excuse for being late, the excuse itself resembled having a physical impairment, if only metaphorically, and thus was born the “lame excuse” and the entrance of “lame” into the modern day parlance, now pretty much being used only the way with which we all grew up. That’s just a theory but based on personal experience it seems likely…

“Retarded” follows the same suit, really. To put it into the simplest and most mechanical definition, ‘mentally retarded’ individuals lack functionality. Like your desktop PC with Windows Vista and only 1GB of RAM. And it highly resembles the definition of “lame”, only swap “physical” impairment with “mental” impairment. So it’s quite usable in most of the same cases. A “lame excuse” can easily become a “retarded excuse”. Of course, whereas a lame excuse seems pretty tame in weight, a retarded excuse is probably a bit heavier. Moving on…

Are you offended because you happen to personally be lame (physically impaired) or retarded (mentally repaired, in which case, no, you are not offended, you’re just happy licking your pet brick right now)? Well, too bad. These words weren’t adapted to their conventional uses to disparage you, personally, they were created to label and describe states of being, circumstances, etc., in as objective a manner as possible. If you’re going to get offended because I describe my vehicle as “lame”, you’re an idiot. It doesn’t even drive straight. It clearly is (it’s not me, I swear). If I’m watching the news and there’s a story (yet another) about our leaders not being able to balance the budget, and I react with “That’s retarded”, I am well within my linguistic rights to use that word. Can your mentally retarded kid balance the budget? Can he or she balance on one foot? Likely not. Therefore the expression is valid. Get over it.

Read the blog title. That’s George Carlin right there. He said, “There are no bad words, only bad thoughts.” Without evoking the frickin thought police out there on this one, in the video are the two young women being deliberately offensive? Are they using their words with intent to directly cause emotional distress on another human being? Really doesn’t seem like it. And personally I know that’s not the case for myself for at least 15 or 16 of the two dozen or more times a day I refer to something as “gay”.

Well, I propose that an emotional distress has, in fact, already been inflicted by the referenced parties: Gays. That’s right. If you’re gay, let’s face it: your whole existence is pretty much derogatory and it impinges on the comfort of the mainstream. Conversely, that lifestyle is also so laughable it has inexorably become the perfect label to surpass lame and retarded as a new pinnacle to describe things being totally not right. We didn’t do it. You did. Enjoy your gay.

Click through to see the full-sized version.

Commence image-dump (click the images to see the full-sized versions; opens in new tab)…

If anyone happens to have the Family Circus one with the mother and son melding their tentacled faces together and the kid saying something like “I can see into forever”, throw me a friggin bone. That one was awesome.

UPDATE // 04.06.09: I found it! Thanks to KnowYourMeme.com, which also had a great Charlie Brown comic infected with the Nezperdian Hive-mind of Chaos… *saved*.

Also, it’s probably worth mentioning that I got a pingback from Zalgo Approaches, a new website (just registered 03.30.2009) that I hope will become a repository of what is quickly becoming my new favourite meme. Oops, it’s not a meme. Right.

UPDATE // 05.04.09: Added a ninth Garfield Zalgo I just found. And there’s a brief Zalgo analysis taking place at kbps.

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