I thought it was all over.

Everything had been made plain and clear. There was no more subterfuge. It was a scam. It was a hoax. And it was over.

But then it got worse.

Every day we had to have an update (even though it was over and there was nothing left to talk about). Every day her picture was the top of Yahoo! News (which, when I type it out, is making more sense...news for yahoos). With some stupid thing about trying to figure out a mystery in a story where there is no mystery. No secrets left to be uncovered.

But, like heroin addicts, we couldn't get off the stuff.

And, at about the same time, Netflix finally put "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" up on their streaming. For months, I was perplexed as to why this one series of the Trek pantheon was kept off the site, since all the others were available. And this was the one I wanted to watch. The only one I watched completely and in real time (although I have, over my life, seen all the original and Next Gen episodes). Did Netflix have something against me? Was DSN more expensive? Did they not like Avery Brooks?

But finally, it was available. And so I watched the pilot, and unexpected humor erupted almost immediately.

You see, the bad guys in Deep Space Nine are called Cardassians.

The space station (where the show was set) was built by Cardassians. They had occupied and terrorized the Bajorans, who lived on the nearby planet. Bajorans are pretty much humans, but with cute crinkles on their noses. Cardassians, however, are lizards...that walk upright like all the other characters in the Star Trek universe (there was an episode in Next Gen that explained this--more than just the logical production costs of a weekly series).

The Cardassians are talked of with bile and hate. Their stink and nature and everything about them was spewed (especially, and with cause, by the Bajorans). But the implication was that they are enemies of us all. A scourge that should be kept as far away from the rest of the universe as much as possible.

But we cannot get away. We somehow think this dim bulb lights a portal into the dark recesses of the human soul. Y'know, more than just some crap about conspicuous consumption and the fickle nature of fame.

In time, her name will bring up the same eruption of laughter that the first utterance of Cardassian on DSN gave me when I rewatched the pilot recently.

Someday we will be over this horrible chapter in our still early 21st century pop culture landscape.

But, even today when I went online to check my email, she is big news. For something much like taking that early morning dump.

For heaven's sake, do not click on that link! It feeds the beast. And the beast is ever hungry.

Matt Worley cannot abide this nonsense for one more second.