“Mr. Bales, the phones are working.”

That’s what I said to my pop earlier after our old phone numbers finally ported to our new cell phones. My Jurassic Park quoting flew right over his head, however, and he just made a funny face and said, “Cool.”

Our Verizon phones came yesterday, so I’m finally done with T-Mobile. Seems like we’ve been with them forever. Now that I think about it, we have. We first signed up with GTE Wireless some seven years ago. They were bought out by Voicestream, who in turn were bought out by T-Mobile. In fact, my old phones still said “Voicestream” whenever I would turn them on.

It’s not that T-Mobile is awful or anything. They have cheap plans and nice phones, but my beef with them involves their coverage area; Specifically, it’s shitty. If I stand in the family room of my house, I get a signal. Then I move into the living room, and BAM! No more signal. Same with other people’s house. I’ll get a signal at Sarah’s, but not at Nate or Jason’s. And then I see my stupid friends who are Verizon customers get a signal everywhere they go. Fuck, I bet Sarah could descend to the torturous lava pits of Hell and still get a decent signal*, while I’m standing in a T-Mobile store getting the shaft.

But that’s all behind me. Now I’ve got a cool phone that apparently does everything except the dishes, and a coverage area that isn’t just some mythical concept.

Time to end this. Sarah just called and informed me that she’s coming to pick me up. So until next time….

JAB

* This is probably because Verizon has a lot of towers down there. After all, Hell is the fastest growing market.

Looks like Star Trek is pulling a Spock and bringing itself back to life. But it’s not the Genesis planet doing the resurrecting* — it’s J.J. Abrams, creator of “Lost” and “Alias.”

More than three years after the last “Star Trek” movie crashed at the box office, the venerable sci-fi franchise is being revived by the director of the upcoming “Mission: Impossible” sequel, Daily Variety reported in its Friday edition.

[...]

The project will be directed by J.J. Abrams, whose Tom Cruise vehicle “Mission: Impossible III” will be released by Paramount on May 5. Abrams, famed for producing the TV shows “Alias” and “Lost,” will also help write and produce.

Daily Variety said the action would center on the early days of “Star Trek” characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer-space mission.

I actually first read about this on Cinescape Friday morning, but they’re hardly America’s Trusted Source of news, let alone mine. But since CNN is now reporting on it, I suppose there is some veracity to the story.

I’m not too sure how I feel about this little endeavor. Abrams is pretty solid when it comes to his TV shows, and we can more accurately judge his ability to handle a feature after M:I 3 comes out. But it’s when we get to the story and characters that the ground becomes unsteady.

The most recent Star Trek show, “Enterprise,” performed dismally in the ratings. Many fans and critics didn’t like it. I wasn’t one of these people. I thought it was nearly as strong as “TNG,” perhaps even moreso. The storylines were epic, Scott Bakula made a kickass captain, and there was an extremely hot Vulcan. The only area the show was lacking, I think, was with the supporting cast. Aside from Archer (Bakula) and T’Pol the Vulcan, the only other interesting character was the Chief Engineer, Trip. But my point, despite how long it took to arrive to it, is that “Enterprise” was a prequel show that did badly even though and it was good. But its characters were previously unestablished. No one had ever heard of these people before. Some of the storylines, especially those in Season Four, were referenced in a couple of the original series, but basically it was all new.

Which leads me to Star Trek 11.

It, too, is a prequel , but it features characters that have been in the country’s, no, the world’s collective consciousness for nearly fifty years. Captain Kirk and Mister Spock are household names. Everyone knows who they are, whether or not they’re sci-fi aficionados. Now can you imagine actors portraying these guys other than William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy? Even much younger actors? I certainly can’t picture anyone convincingly utter Kirk’s lines in Shatner’s halting, over-the-top delivery.

So . . . we’ve got a prequel premise, which has tanked before, and we’ve got iconic characters being played by actors other than the ones who made them famous? Not to be a naysayer, but the whole project just seems doomed to critical and box office mediocrity. I think I’ll enjoy the film, especially with J.J. Abrams directing and cowriting, but frankly I doubt it will reinvigorate the Star Trek franchise like Paramount is clearly hoping it will. But I could be wrong. Star Trek 11 may come out and be a commercial and critical success, thus marking the beginning of an unheralded new, golden era for all things Star Trek. . . .

But I doubt it.

JAB

* I’m such a fucking nerd.

Curses! John Scalzi, who wrote the awesome sci-fi novel Old Man’s War, was in Greenville for some “author’s night” thing last Friday, and I didn’t find out about it till today. I would have really liked to meet the man and get a book signed. That’s right: I’m a big geek, and I’m fucking proud about it.

Scalzi also runs a badass blog, the Whatever, and writes in it quite a bit. An unholy amount, actually. And yet he still has found the time to publish two books in 2006, and, like, eighteen next year. And they’re good too. Anyway, if you enjoy science fiction of any sort, I highly recommend Old Man’s War. Hell, even if the closest you’ve gotten to anything even resembling science fiction is Star Wars, you should read OMW. I mean, really — what else do you have to do with your free time? Loser.

I missed Scalzi, yes, but I do have a chance to see another author I like. Bob Mayer (pseudonymously known as Robert Doherty, author of the Area 51 series of books) is going to be at Books and Co. this Tuesday with Jennifer Crusie, his collaborator on their most recent book, Don’t Look Down. Crusie writes funny romance books (so I’ve heard, at least; I don’t read that yechy crap) and Mayer writes military thriller/sci-fi, so DLD is being described as a romantic adventure with a lot of humor. Haven’t had a chance to buy it yet, but it’s supposed to be quite good. They, too, have a blog, which is pretty entertaining: He Wrote, She Wrote. I’d like to meet Mayer and get some swag signed; however, I don’t want to be a big crazy loser and go by myself, so I’ll probably pass. ‘Twould be neat, though.

JAB

This post is mostly for my fellow Wal-Mart peons, but anyone who’s ever worked in retail will probably get a kick out of it. Actually, even if you’ve never worked in retail, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Click on the comic for the rest, or visit CTRL+ALT+DEL. CAD is consistently one of the funniest web comics out there. I highly recommend it.

At Wal-Mart we do match prices, and it’s not really a big deal ’cause there’s usually only a one to twenty dollar difference in price. And Wal-Mart policy is to match the price to earn that customer’s business, which I don’t usually have a problem with. Sometimes, though, I don’t give a shit about “having a customer’s business” — especially when we’re losing a buttload of money on a sale. Or he or she is a dick about it. If it’s the latter I just usually tell ‘em to sod off and then go about my business.

Customers. I fuckin’ hate them.

JAB

I was just finishing preparing a cover letter for the resume I’m sending to a certain company, when I noticed something that made me say “Goddamnit” and raise my fists in anger at the cruel godlings above.

I was pretty much copying and pasting an older cover letter to a new one, and changing some of the stuff around so that it made sense and was, well, relevant. All was going well until I discovered in the older cover letter — the one that’s already been sent out, the one that I can’t change at all — that instead of writing the word “much,” I used “muck.” Okay, not too huge of a deal. Sure, I feel like a complete retard, but that’s mostly because I’m a perfectionist and stupid errors like that piss me off to no end. With most jobs one applies for, the HR person might frown when they see that little gem, but she wouldn’t necessarily exclude me as a candidate solely based on my undiscerning eye.

But the kicker is this: the job I applied for is a copy editor position with Cox Publishing. If I were the HR person and I saw a typo in the fucking cover letter, I’d toss that resume in the trash and move on to the next.

So again, goddamnit.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

JAB