As this analysis of classic “Star Trek” proves, if you’re part of the engineering crew, you very much want Kirk to hook up with alien women. Your survival may be at stake.

Renegotiate.

In this case, I just got off the phone with Pitney Blowes, whose monthly fee to me for my postal meter had crept upward from someplace in the twenties to $32.46, and who now sent me a polite letter informing me that they were automatically signing me up for a $15.99 annual fee for the Postal Education Program.

The latter was the final straw. Automatically enrolling customers in programs they don’t ask for (let alone don’t need) is insulting. So, filled with brio and outrage, I called to cancel the entire program, knowing full well what they would do: seek to keep me by renegotiating.

So here was their offer:

1. They would cancel the offending program and remove the charge.
2. They would lower my monthly bill to $19.99.
3. They would waive the last month’s bill.

Tally the results for one year and you’ve got $198 plus change. For a 19 minute call.

Lessons in this:

1. Seemingly little charges and incremental increases add up.
2. Yes, it’s worth the phone call to protest.

Fishin’ for old comics, that is, as my comrades and I troop down to the San Diego Comic Con for five (!) glorious days. For the first time in, probably, 10 years, I’m not taking a laptop and not checking email, so what happens at Comic Con truly stays at Comic Con.

In the meantime, here’s a heads-up: For the first time in its history, Comic Con is sold out. (For Saturday, at least.) No four-day passes, no on-site registration. If you’re not preregistered, you can probably drop in on Thursday (if you don’t mind braving the line), and maybe Friday (we’ll see). Sunday? Probably not so much. And again, in the infamous words of my son, “You mean there are going to be more people there this year?” Yep — 150,000 or so.

If you can’t make it to Comic Con, then may I heartily recommend this show? I’ve seen 5 or 6 installments now and it is a hoot and a holler. Seriously, I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a live show this bulletproof — it is consistently entertaining. The guests change every week, and lately there have been rotating hostesses. But the show is always a bucket full of fun (and my guests have agreed). These guys have a lot of talent and, I guess, good karma. (And I got to meet Peter Falk, however fleetingly.)

I’ll check back in here next Monday.

DC Comics is launching Zuda, an outlet for fan-created web-based comic strips. A peer judging process results in a one-year contract.

They’ll also be promoting the heck out of it at this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

Terence, are you listening?

(And maybe you could please school my Uncle Rich. Forty years later, this is his big opportunity.)

When I was last in the market for a new convertible, why didn’t I lease a Sebring? Because the Mustang had more horsepower and the Sebring drove like a boat.

But if it had actually been a boat, I might have plowed ahead.

According to this article on ForbesAutos.com, the vehicle pictured here, an amphibious Aquada, will be docking on these shores in 2009.

Oh that I had had this car circa 1980, rather than my Renault Le Car. That was the car that I accidentally almost piloted into the bay in West Atlantic City, New Jersey. What had looked like a large puddle turned out to be high tide in storm season. Never will I forget the gentle lapping of waves against my doors and the lulling motion of my car moving out to sea, me in it, before finally I regained traction and inched back onto solid ground. Within months, everything metallic rusted and everything electrical shorted. So you can see my interest in the Aquada.

In fact, maybe I would just drive the car — via waterways — to my old hometown. It would have to be more convenient than flying, because I wouldn’t have to deal with lost luggage (as previously reported).

It’s a column about the demise of the comma, and whom to blame. (Evidently, the comma is following “whom” right into the dustbin of history. Just like the word “dustbin.”)

The columnist, who looks to be of a certain age, naturally blames technology and those damn kids who use it. (And please note my judicious use of commas to separate an exclusionary clause.) Some others among us might point out that the English language has been on the slide since Chaucer, was rudely fiddled with by Mr. Shakespeare among others, and has never had more vibrancy that it has today. If we need the comma, it will survive. If we don’t, it won’t.

One person the columnist doesn’t blame: Cormac McCarthy, who elides commas the way most of us reject anchovies. But I guess blaming literature isn’t as attractive as blaming kids and the overall culture.

…because as this story makes clear, they’re sold out!

My son’s immediate reaction:  “You mean it’s going to be more crowded?!?!?”

If you aren’t already alarmed by the monarchical overreach of the Bush/Cheney White House, visit this site and watch the video. It’s from Friday night’s episode of “Bill Moyers’ Journal” and features a conservative Republican and a liberal (and Democrat, I guess) jointly making a very strong case for impeaching Bush and Cheney. Their main thrust is not the malfeasance of the Bush Administration — evidence of which seems, well, unimpeachable. No, their main thrust is that we need to pursue impeachment now before this Pandora’s Box of limitless presidential power is passed on to someone else on January 20, 2009 and the idea of the unfettered executive becomes forever inculcated in our fragile democracy.

Watergate? The Gulf of Tonkin resolution? Errant fellatio and subsequent perjury? These were mere warmup acts. Watch the video and see if you don’t think the nation is threatened as never before.

And who, surprisingly, is newly culpable? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has said impeachment is “off the table.” As one of the guests says, Nancy Pelosi is wrong and doesn’t understand her job.

We need to start by agitating her into action. Today.

As related here, I’ve been having a delightful time recently with oral surgery. But just now I had two new frights at the surgeon’s office.

1. I just ran into Phil Spector there. When I signed in, I saw that the name ahead of mine on the sign-in sheet was “Phil Spector” in childlike blocky letters. Assuming it was a joke, I turned around and was about to say something along the lines of, “Which one of you has the gun?” But because my usual fun-loving character evaporates upon exposure to the oral surgeon’s office, I decided something along the lines of “fuck it” and glumly sat down with my magazine. (Appropriately, The New Yorker, with more dire reportage on Iraq and presidential malfeasance. In other words, mood lifters.) Then when one of the assistants announced that “he” was ready and up jumped the 40-something tired-looking blonde in garb designed for a culture 20 years younger than she (plush sweatsuit with jacket, oversized baseball cap, flashing Bluetooth accoutrement in ear, chunky white sneakers — think, “costume by Sean John, worn by Carmela Soprano”), I noticed that her jacket was emblazoned with “Team Spector” on the back and the ass of her garb with the mere “Spector.” (I can think of worse things at the moment to have to do to draw a paycheck, but when it comes to wearing clothes at this particular point in time that say “Spector” on the ass, it takes a lot of thinking. And being part of “the team” must be even worse.) Then a Very Large Black Man in another sweatsuit got up; in L.A. iconography, this would be “the bodyguard.” So now I was sure that Phil was in the building and, that if someone present felt instantaneously suicidal (as has been said to happen in his presence at least once), trouble would ensue. I got the restroom key and went to splash cold water on my face, arriving in the hallway just in time to see said music legend — who has filled my ears with so much joy over the years and, the accusation is, has filled someone else with holes — exit via the private doorway into the elevator area. He look dazed and wan, clutching a cold pack to his jaw line, and for a moment, given my recent travails, I truly understood how it feels to be Phil Spector.
2. As scary as that was, here’s a line I will never forget, uttered by my oral surgeon (a professional I share with Mr. Spector) after he examined my ongoing misery:  “Hm. I see what’s bothering you. It’s that bit of bone sticking up through the gum. I’m just going to make an incision and flick it out of there.” And yes, “flick” was the precise word he chose. Never in my life have I anticipated either having a bone protrude out of its natural location or having someone offer to “flick” it out of there. He made it sound so carefree:  “I’ll flick it out of there.” Of course. Like a ladybug from one’s shoulder. He offered to do it on the spot and assured me that it would hurt for only a little while. Given past history and my newfound lack of trust, I told  him no, I would have to schedule that for later. Which, given that there is indeed a bone sticking up in my mouth, I believe I will have to do.

The head of Homeland Security was quoted yesterday as saying that he had “a gut feeling” that we were about to be attacked by terrorists. And for all we know, he may wind up being right. But his comment in no way makes me feel better:

• If he’s the secretary for Homeland Security, shouldn’t he have more than “a gut feeling”? Shouldn’t he have, y’know, research intelligence?
• One of his co-workers is famous for having had “gut feelings” in the past — that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction hidden away in a country that hadn’t attacked us and that were now aimed at us and our allies; that we would be greeted as heroes in that country; that a certain hurricane was going to blow over and nothing needed to be done in preparation or response; and even that God had placed him in this special position to advance His will — and so far, none of that has panned out. (Unless God was trying to hasten the Apocalypse.)

So after all our expenditures on Homeland Security, and all the civil liberties we’ve lost, and the deep damage to habeas corpus and due process and our international reputation, this is what we’ve got? A gut feeling? My gut tells me this is not enough.