Recently, Pat Robertson claimed that if gay marriage is legalized, it won’t be long until we legalize sex with ducks. We all rolled our eyes, maybe got a couple laughs out of it, and then went on with our lives.

Then this happened:

This video’s been making the rounds for the last week, so there’s not much I can add in the way of commentary. Nonetheless, I have two thoughts on the matter.

One: I’m incredibly happy that all the funny people are in favor of gay marriage. To be fair, it’s entirely possible that someone’s trying to make an anti-gay marriage comedy video right now, but I’m having a hard time caring. I can’t even muster the energy to Google it.

Two: I am conflicted. I agree with this song’s message. I support legalizing gay marriage, and I definitely support using satire against idiots like Pat Robertson. And yet, I could easily throw away all my progressive credibility by writing a single sentence.

Specifically, “This video makes me wish I was a duck.”

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for a movie that came out over a week ago, and that you’ve probably already seen, or at least read about by now. If you haven’t, but wish to remain unspoiled, read something else.

After putting it off for far too long, I finally saw the new Star Trek. My reaction to the movie itself — the plot, the performances, the ways it diverged from the original series — is about the same as what you’ve read everywhere else, and you don’t need to hear another nerd waxing nostalgic over DeForest Kelley. Just trust me when I say that, if you’re a Star Trek fan, or a science fiction fan, or just an average schmuck who likes big summer movies, this is a pretty safe bet.

Before it even came out, I spent a lot of time hoping it succeeded, partly because I’m a (relatively casual) Star Trek fan, but mostly because I’d be willing to attend a convention if it meant an opportunity to hang out with Simon Pegg. After seeing it, though, I’m not sure he, or anyone from the new cast, will be doing conventions. Indeed, I’ve begun to wonder if conventions will even be necessary after this. Star Trek fandom, despite the enthusiastic community that has sprung up over the years, has often been a lonely pursuit. Fans gather at conventions, and are amazed at how many fellow fans they meet, but during the rest of the year, they often have no one to talk to about their obsession.

Now, Star Trek has found a level of mass appeal that had previously eluded it. Some of the infamous Trek sermonizing was lost in the process, but the franchise’s fondness for exploring morality still comes through. The new film gives us a story about the futility of revenge, the acceptance of one’s limitations, and the ethics of dicking around with time travel — all themes that would feel perfectly at home among the redshirts and papier-mâché rocks of the original series.

Comparisons to Star Wars, that other venerable sci-fi franchise, are inevitable, and for good reason. This new Star Trek gives us fast-paced space battles, spectacular effects, a villain capable of destroying entire planets, and a team of inexperienced young heroes tasked with stopping him. And now it has a Star Wars-sized audience to match, and that audience is experiencing a renewed interest in the classic series.

If — and this is a big “If” — the movie’s popularity endures, if its new continuity is accepted by longtime fans, and if the inevitable sequels are worth a damn, we could see a permanent shift in the way Star Trek fandom works. Fans will be freer to talk about their fondness for the franchise, and will encounter far more people who share their interest. In short, we could be headed towards a pop-culture landscape in which Star Trek is not arbitrarily considered less acceptable than Star Wars.

That this could happen, and that the peaceful, progressive values of the Federation could be treated with the same relative respect shown to the (frankly medieval) Jedi code, is nothing short of a miracle for my fellow geeks. We’ve spent the last few decades — and the last eight years in particular — banging our heads against the wall in frustration, shocked and frightened by humankind’s apparent inability to overcome our urge to destroy ourselves.

Star Trek made an impact during the Cold War by depicting a future where humans had not only survived, but had become model citizens of a galactic civilization, and leading voices in a Federation devoted to peace, exploration, and diversity. For years, its fans have held it up as an example for our present-day society to follow, and have been largely ignored. We were told they were too idealistic, or simply too hard to take seriously when they wore fake Vulcan ears. Plus, “Voyager” kind of bogged down after a couple seasons, and nobody liked “Enterprise” that much.

Now, though, an explosion-filled summer blockbuster has provided them with their long-awaited opening, and a decent sequel or two will be more than enough to make the public wonder why they weren’t on board with Gene Roddenberry’s ideas in the first place. It won’t result in a radical overhaul of society, and it won’t compel us to model our world after the Federation, but it could very well get people thinking some of Star Trek’s lofty ideals.

As a nerd, that’s really all I’ve ever asked for.

Last weekend may have been Wolverine’s big solo blockbuster debut, but today he’s getting hassled by last year’s biggest Marvel moneymaker, Iron Man. It seems that while good old Logan was in the middle of doing his dayjob as a pitchman for some ringtone company, Iron Man saw it necessary to butt in and blow his cover, dancing “the Iron Man Dance,” forcing Wolvie’s mask onto his head and shouting, “be the Wolverine!”

Alright, I’m obviously fucking with you. While neither Varius nor myself have anything to do with the following video, “Iron Man” is played by my good friend and former roommate Greg, and he’s quite amusing. So, to all of our long-time readers who only follow this site because you went to college with us, well, you know the dude in the Iron Man mask, and that’s what that guy’s been up to. And to all the rest of you, well, the first 55 seconds of this video are pretty hilarious.

“Iron Man Dance… Iron Man Dance…”

In November, I had the distinct pleasure of staggering into the emergency room, half-blind from the worst pain I had ever experienced. The doctor took one look at me and knew what was wrong: a dental abscess. She examined me to make sure, but I didn’t need any tests or surgery. I walked out an hour later with a prescription for antibiotics, another for painkillers, and the phone number of a dentist’s office. My face was swollen and scary for another day or so, but all in all the ordeal ended quickly and happily.

And relatively cheaply, as it turns out. For my hour in the hospital, and my ten minutes spent with a doctor, I was charged a measly little $664, presumably because I hadn’t asked for any luxuries like tests or medicine. I didn’t learn that until January; apparently, the hospital likes to wait a couple months before sending the bill.

Nevertheless, the relatively small price tag made me happy. I’d dealt with this hospital once before, with a much more substantial sum of money involved, and although everything got taken care of, that resolution only came after six months of paperwork, phone calls, and general bullshit to which all uninsured people are subjected. This time, it would be easy. I could pay $664.

I just couldn’t pay it right that second. So I called the hospital and set up a payment plan: $55.33 a month for 12 months, with no interest if I paid on time. They were extremely gracious about it. I put my feet up and awaited my first bill.

Two days later, I got an angry call from a collection agency. I explained that I had just set up a payment plan, and they decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, but threatened to call back if it didn’t show up in their records. They didn’t call back.

And my first bill didn’t come. I made sure to check the mail several times a day, but no bill. Perhaps the billing cycle started later than I thought it did? Perhaps it was one of those ridiculous “no payments for three months” situations, because they went to some seminar that told them treating health care like a used car made patients happy? After the second month without a bill arriving, I decided to call them. They scolded me — quite angrily — for calling the wrong number, and directed me to the billing department. The billing department wouldn’t let me do anything without entering my 13-digit account number, which could be found on my bill. I did not have a bill. The automated answering service was not interested.

Last week, I finally received my first bill — for the first three months of payments. I also received a call from my bank, telling me there was some kind of problem with the magnetic strip on my card, so they’d be sending me a new one which I would have to call and activate, and could I please try to avoid using either card until that happened? Fine. I’d pay the bill after I got the new card.

This morning, I got a very stern call from a collection agency. I owed them the full balance of $664. “This seems sudden,” I said, “considering I just got the bill last week.” I was informed that, no, I had owed them money since November. I extracted myself from the situation as delicately as possible (which is to say, not delicately at all), and called the hospital again, this time armed with my 13-digit account number.

The hospital was just as friendly as the collection agency. I was once again scolded, this time for an even more outrageous crime: I had failed to take my original balance, divide it by 12, and send a check for the resulting amount to the hospital despite having never actually received a bill. I was not simply expected to pay my bills, but to write them and send them to myself as well. They assured me they had sent the first two bills, and if I didn’t get them, that wasn’t anyone’s fault — technically true, but dickish.

Frankly, I’m not sure they did send them. In my life, I have seen a lot of bills with several months’ worth of charges on them, and none of them have looked like this. Nothing was itemized. There was no menacingly bolded PAST DUE BALANCE printed above my total balance. There was a single, tidy charge for $165.99 — three months’ payments, conveniently added together — listed by itself.

Luckily, a solution presented itself: I put the whole goddamn $664 balance on my credit card, and will make monthly payments there instead. I could have done that in the first place, but it seemed like a fucking terrible idea at the time, what with the interest, and the threat of insurmountable debt, and the generally evil practices of banks. But now that I’ve seen how the hospital does business, an unethical interest rate seems a small price to pay in exchange for a bill that arrives every month, an operator that is happy to take my call and my money, and the knowledge that my billing cycle lasts a whole month, just like clockwork, and that collection agents won’t threaten me until I’ve done something to deserve it.

Thank you, hospital. You taught me to trust the banks again.

This morning before work I switched on the TV to learn the latest pirate news. And while I was eventually gratified, I had to spend a tedious five minutes sitting through a report, the thesis of which was essentially, “Holy shit, an ugly person can sing!” Over eight million hits on YouTube as of this evening confirm that, yes, people really are stupid enough to be surprised by this fairly simple and straightforward situation.

Here’s what happened: a woman named Susan Boyle showed up to sing on a UK television show called Britain’s Got Talent, which is apparently their equivalent of American Idol. I’ve never actually watched an episode of either show, but both involve unknowns performing and being either praised or ridiculed by an audience and a panel of judges, including someone named Simon Cowell. The fact that Simon Cowell has been name-dropped all over the place for years and I still don’t know who the hell he is leads me to believe that he should be the subject of a future installment of Codger Corner.

Anyway, up comes this woman (I’d embed the video here, but YouTube has disabled embedding on this particular clip for some reason), looking exactly like the sort of women who attend Protestant churches: ugly, frumpy, mid-forties, bad hair, bad floral dress and a pleasant, disarming smile. You probably wouldn’t spend any time checking out her ass, but you would expect her to have some of the best double-chocolate caramel yum bars at the Bible Study picnic. And she walks out on stage, subjecting herself to a huge crowd of vapid twits, most of whom have very pretty faces and very dull personalities. They all smirk at the ugly woman and Simon Cowell regards her with what can only be described as a shit-eating eyebrow lift. Then the woman starts to sing, and it turns out that she has a fantastic (and well-trained) voice.

And that’s the entire story. Oh, except for the fact that everyone is very fucking surprised. Why, exactly? I hate to sound like Tipper Gore, but is this somehow MTV’s fault?

OK, follow me on this one. Once upon a time, musical talent was judged by talent. Then the music video was invented, and along came MTV. MTV quickly realized that when you’re looking at the musicians on television, often over and over again on a loop, viewership was influenced not just by how much they liked listening to the musician’s music, but also by how much they liked looking at the musician. Result: three decades of progressively sexier performers. Is it too far a logic leap to suggest that modern viewers of shows like American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent have actually been brainwashed into believing that good music can only be made by pretty people?

Yeah, I know, that sounds incredibly fucking stupid. But it’s also stupid that Simon Cowell was actually shocked at Susan Boyle’s talent. You be the judge.

Well, it’s Easter. The day Jesus Christ rose from the dead and absolved us of all our sins, but not really. Technically, the absolving-of-sins happened when he died a couple days before Easter; the resurrection was more like the religious equivalent of a showboating touchdown dance. Issues of good sportsmanship aside, though, this day is all about forgiveness, assuming you follow a certain major religion.

That’s right! According to the Christians, Jesus sacrificed himself around 2000 years ago, washing away the sins of mankind in the process. Anyone born since that time can have their own sins washed away, simply by believing that this was indeed the reason behind Jesus’ death. Pretty sweet deal, right?

I’d like to pause here to relate a story.

A few years ago, I was waiting for a bus when a profoundly creepy gentleman approached me and introduced himself as “Shablinky”. Before I could say a word, he began ranting at me, telling me that Jimi Hendrix was a hack who had stolen all of his ideas, demanding I maintain eye contact with him, and just generally making me feel like I was about to get stabbed. After a few minutes of shouting, and several unsuccessful attempts to bum a cigarette, he stepped back, waved his hands arhythmically, and insisted I now owed him a dollar as payment for this “dance.” I didn’t want to get stabbed, but I didn’t want to give him a dollar either, so I stupidly tried to reason.

“How can I owe you a dollar?” I asked. “I didn’t ask you to dance. You just did that out of nowhere and started asking for money.”

He repeated: “You owe me a dollar.”

“I don’t think I do. That’d be like giving someone a gift, and then giving them the bill for it. I mean, it’s technically allowed, but it’s kinda sleazy.”

“You owe me a dollar, fucker.”

“Look, the dance wasn’t even that great,” I said, then trailed off, filled with a renewed fear of stabbing. Could I have been in the presence of a very creative but incompetent mugger? Was he really crazy enough to attack me in broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses? Should I just give him the goddamn dollar?

All my questions were rendered irrelevant just a few moments later. Shablinky spotted a man crossing the street and chased after him, hurling accusations of interracial sodomy at his presumably baffled new victim. When I related the story to my friends later that evening, many of them replied with stories of their own — they too had encountered this man, and been charged a dollar for his unsolicited (and very lame) dance moves.

The Easter season always makes me think of Shablinky. Except instead of getting stabbed, you go to Hell. Happy Fucking Easter, everybody!