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Well, I finally got off my broke ass and scooted over to the nearest IMAX theatre to catch the much-anticipated Star Trek reboot, and boy has my tolerance for film that doesn’t even try worn thin. I’m not going to snow anyone; I’m a Trekkie. Been since I was a kid. I was raised on the franchise by my nerd father, and properly instructed in the grand and secretive ways of Star Trek Nerd-dom. I’ve seen all the movies in the theatre save for the first ‘Motion Picture’ — I think; I was 4 at the time, maybe I just don’t remember — watched all the spin-off series and their accompanying films. Never attended any conventions, and I don’t currently own or collect any Trek paraphenalia, so maybe I’m a half-assed Trekkie but I keep up on the history and the mythology — unlike the new Star Trek film, which like every other TV-franchise-to-film reboot to come out in recent years seems to begin with the idea that, Hey, it sucked the first time around, we can do it better now. No, no you can’t. Turning something into an action-soaked milquetoast blockbuster with $50M worth of special effects and CGI and $20M worth of headline talent does not make it better. George Lucas proved this when his most hardcore fans put a fatwa out on him for turning an adult space opera into a Disney-esque fantasy romp.

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’

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As an update to my prior post about the ISS Node 3 Naming Contest and Stephen Colbert’s victory, NASA has, quite unsurprisingly, bitched out and opted instead to forego naming the new ISS module either Colbert or Serenity. Instead, NASA has wisely chosen to bestow upon Node 3 the equally unrelated and inappropriate monicker of Tranquility. Supposedly this was done as some kind of homage to the Apollo 11 lunar mission, the 40th anniversary of which will be this July (16th for the launch, 20th for the actual landing), which landed in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility). And the soon-to-be-attached Giant Recycle Bin relates to that mission how? Exactly. Just NASA abusing naming conventions once again…

And as a further insult, announced by tonight’s Colbert Report guest, astronaut/NASA bitch proxy Sunita Williams, Stephen Colbert will still gain infamy in space as a piece of orbital exercise equipment. That’s right, folks: the name Colbert will be immortalized as a treadmill, the retardedly-dubbed Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill — the COLBERT. Here’s a clip of the segment from the show:

So as a reward for Stephen Colbert doing his part in what has been announced to be the “International Years of Astronomy” to get the mob interested in space ventures, NASA decided it would be more prudent to flip Colbert’s own mockeries on him and grant visitors to the ISS the dubious pleasure of quipping things like, “Well, I got to go hop on the COLBERT for 20 minutes!” This is really just another in a slew of NASA PR and strategic disasters to which I’ll have to dedicate an entire separate rant, and that have ultimately decided for me to place both my faith and support in both Russia’s and China’s space programs, as both those nations seem signficantly more intent on making actual progress than the USA in space matters. NASA has placed itself in the position of being the cousin-with-Down’s-Syndrome of the federal budget for years and when one of their half-baked publicity stunts backfires, instead of actually taking the path of least resistance, they balked and spurned everyone who actually made an effort to support one of their nation’s causes. Way to show the love, douchebags.

I hope the Russians or Chinese invent a reusable transatmospheric/transorbital spacecraft that surpasses NASA’s dilapidated space shuttles in every way, and they name the first one Enterprise. Seriously, eat a dick, NASA. All you’re good at is blowing up space shuttles, neglecting the technologies that inspire people, like the Hubble Space Telescope, and blaspheming the democratic process. Time for someone who knows what they’re doing to take over.

So, if you haven’t heard already or don’t care, in which case you’re a complete mongloid because everyone and their mother (who’s a whore) have been reporting or blogging about it, American comedian/writer Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, is leading the voter write-in nominations of possible names for the new ISS module, tentatively referred to as “Node 3″. NASA started the contest one month ago, opening with their own selection of possible names for the module for which users could vote, as well as offering the possibility for voters to suggest their own ideal name. In answer to this challenge, Stephen Colbert, who had already jumped on the space bandwagon late last year by having his DNA digitized and sent into space to be stored on the ISS as part of game developer Richard Garriot’s ridiculous media-whoring stunt, Operation Immortality, encouraged his numerous viewers to nominate his own name as an option, the votes for which then proceeded to skyrocket, demolishing all competition. Watch the drama unfold for yourself:

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