WTF, CNN, WTF

So I'm browsing CNN's website this morning,

• wishing among other things that Jeremiah Wright would stay out of the limelight for about three minutes
• musing about how relatively easy the Presidential campaign has been thus far for John McCain
• remembering a most apt (and out-of-context) quote by my new favorite author, Christopher Moore, whose book Fluke: Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings contains a chapter titled Heinous Fuckery Most Foul. Indeed. There is no bottom to how low humanity may sink.

And then I notice something strange by the top headlines of CNN's homepage.

See those teeny t-shirt icons next to some of the headlines? Apparently it is a new feature of CNN.com to make certain headlines available in commemorative T-shirt form.

Whiskey.
Tango.
Foxtrot.

Why is that at all a useful feature of anything resembling anything? Granted, at least someone at CNN appears to control what headlines may be displayed across Jen Q. Public's prodigious boobies (I would hate to see what sick fucks would order "Austrian incest suspect confesses") but come on. They're unattractive t-shirts bearing headlines with (thus far) little to no entertainment value.

I may not love the specific and taken-out-of-context sentiment of Jeremiah Wright, "God Damn America" but I sure could get down with the Good Lord giving a swift kick in the kitten to news-for-maximum-profit-and-nominal-information. I think even John McCain could give me hallelujah on that one.

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Musings from the Pacific Northwest

So I'm out in the Seattle area for work this week. I knew ahead of time that this wouldn't be an especially fun trip, as I'm here to do a knowledge transfer from a person in an office that's being closed down. I can sympathize since I just came out of this situation myself months ago. To make things even better, the office network went down again (it's been doing this periodically for a couple of weeks now) which means I'm in the hotel working via VPN. Which I could have been doing back home and get to hug my kitties at night. Sigh.

Today I made the trip at least partly worth it by heading out to Fran's Chocolates. I saw these on the Food Network and I remembered them when I got the call to come out here. The item I saw on tv that really piqued my interest were the sea salt caramels. Caramels covered in dark chocolate and sprinkled with grey sea salt, or milk chocolate with smoked salt. The kind ladies at Fran's gave me two free milk chocolate ones to try since I'd bought so much chocolate. OMFG. Creamy chewy caramel (not hard chewy the way other caramel can be) and the salt is an amazing mix with the sweet chocolate and caramel. To my credit, the large box and one of the small boxes I bought are for my officemates, but I set myself up very nicely with the dark chocolate variety. YUM.

Sunday afternoon before I left for this trip, I was moving some stuff around in my home office and noticed my mini totes umbrella. All I thought was "huh, there's my mini totes." Not "Huh, I'm headed to the Seattle area, which has garnered past distinction for being an area of high precipitation of the wet and rainy kind." So that umbrella is still at home and I hoofed my way back from the mall last night in the rain. I never said I was a smart person.

I saw the movie Juno on the plane out here. I still don't understand why the commercials made it seem like the movie is only about Juno and her baby daddy played by Michael Cera. The guy is seriously in the movie for about 15 minutes. Other than that, I thought the movie was fairly cute - I had a faint feeling a couple of times that it was trying a bit hard to be cool and edgy but I didn't find it as irritating as say, Garden State.

In other travel tidbits, Alaska Air serves Jones Soda on their flights. As I was battling a slight case of McDonald's-induced sour tummy, I elected to get normal ginger ale for my beverage, but it was nice to see the Jones. The meathead sitting next to me complained and asked why they didn't have normal Coke products. Whatever. I also found an excellent pineapple soda in the lobby of the office building that uses cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Really yummy.

It's only Tuesday night. That fact kind of makes me want to cry. I refuse to drown my sorrows in salted caramels though. Luckily I already told one of the girls I work with about bringing these back next week. So either I leave them untouched or I have to go fight the parking nightmare in that area of town to get more. Which is sounding less and less heinous the more I remember that it's only Tuesday night. Sigh. Later, gators.

Scathing Movie Review or Jena Malone's Come Down in the World

So Laura and John likely won't clap and yell GOODY when I choose to return from the blogosphere dead with a scathing review of The Ruins, because they both thought this movie was ok/entertaining. I on the other hand, left the theater determined to protect people I like from this movie. (Our differences in movie tolerance lead me to believe that, if Laura viscerally believes that Battlefield Earth is one of the worst things ever to happen to film, then watching Battlefield Earth myself will likely physically kill me dead.)

The Ruins is based on the book of the same name by Scott Smith. Much to my surprise when I looked up the book on amazon after the movie, I found out that Smith also wrote A Simple Plan, which also went to the big screen. That movie was quite good, in my opinion, if jacked up and depressing at the same time. In comparison to that movie (and in general), The Ruins was a flop.

The basic premise is that 4 pretty Americans (including Jena Malone, who has done much better work than this) go on vacation to Mexico. They run into some German guy and are convinced to go along with him to find his brother at some archaeological dig where he has chased the latest Sweet Poontang of his life. They get to the dig and madcap gory high jinks rule the day.

I should note that I expected this movie to be bad. I was hoping it would be so bad it would swing back around to good. It never built up enough momentum to do that. It didn't build up much of anything, except an easy segue into The Ruins 2: Freaks vs. Greeks. The funniest moment of the movie may be a tie between:

• A somewhat pompous dick of a young medical student declaring to his terrified friends that "Americans do not just disappear in foreign countries while on vacation!!!" Think Natalee Holloway would beg to differ with you, Mr. "America, FUCK YEAH!!!!".
• The discovery that the same character hailed from Winnetka, IL. This joke is most understandable to people from the Chicagoland area. The rest of you can just take our word that finding out a white pompous dick med student comes from Winnetka is just about as surprising as learning that Karl Rove was sent back from 2037 by Cyberdyne Industries to ruin America.
  

All in all my reactions to this movie fluctuated between "WHY?" and "SICK." and "This will never end." Not to mention a certain flower scene melded with the scene from Carrie where she starts killing everyone's ass at the prom and that was stuck in my brain for about 2 solid days after. There was very little purpose for the things that happened, other than to shock and awe the audience with blood. Which is really a shame because even with the somewhat lame setup it could have been a real mindfuck of interpersonal dynamics and what people will think and then do in order to survive. I wonder if the book does a better job of this - Stephen King seemed to think so anyway.

(JEBUS HAROLD I just figured out why Stephen King loves this book so much - the premise (and possibly the execution, I don't know) is basically his short story The Raft but on land with plants instead of water. I wonder if that guy jacks off to his own stories.)

There are worse movies. Turistas was worse. Hitcher 2 was worse. Seeing it free on cable probably wouldn't damage your soul the way Jeepers Creepers damaged mine. But don't spend the full price of admission on it. Unless maybe it's Winnetka Pride Week.

This Blog Has Nine Lives

No I have not been here for many months. Life has drained most of the life out of me for months now. A brief recap of what's been happening:

• I had surgery in September (which you all know if you read previous entries)
• I got notice at the beginning of October that I would be laid off Jan 1.
• Immediately after receiving this news, I have to spend half the next month in New Jersey to work on finishing up a project. In general, I do not enjoy New Jersey, and in particular I do not enjoy Newark Airport
• Holidays
• My unemployment begins. Job hunt is freaking me out. My overactive imagination projects me into the future where I am homeless and living in a box.
• Beginning of February, I start a new job and new job pressured high jinks ensue

My life is just now really stabilizing again. So I feel I can return to the blogosphere with a couple of posts full of my usual mocking and bitching. I promise my 3 readers that they will wonder why they asked me to update this thing.