...And Then Mary Poppins Pulled Out A Shank

So I saw The Golden Compass a few weeks back, opening weekend, with the usual crew of miscreants and otherwise awesome characters. And of course, I come expecting a kid-oriented Lord of the Rings style movie, and I'm there for the fighting polar bears, hoping Daniel Craig will make it interesting.

Well, little did I know that Daniel Craig would barely make more than a few brief appearances, leaving the main characterly duties to some little girl I've never heard of before who is followed by an increasingly annoying shape shifting weasel with an inability to shut the hell up - think Navi from the Ocarina of Time, but slightly bigger. But at least I find that I was right about the child-orientation. It's very much a children's film, because no sane adult could possibly write this without a kid in mind. They hardly reveal any plot at all, they gather allies like they were a dime a dozen, and somehow this little girl is the only one who can figure out the relation of a series of three symbols on the stupid golden compass among a group of elders and leaders.

I digress. There is indeed a polar bear. He wears armor. He fights. He is Ian McKellan. WHAT?! How the hell did he not even get mentioned in the commercials? He was GANDALF. He's a big name in the fantasy/super hero deals. And he plays a much bigger part than Danial Craig, even without an actual appearance. Okay, so I've been entirely deceived by the cast. At least Nicole Kidman is really in it. That's the only thing they've been up front about. And Christopher Lee popped up, too, to further surprise me.

Anyways, back to the polar bear. He fights another polar bear, in a thoroughly satisfying yet oddly Simba v. Scar-esque fight scene. And then it happens. The atom-bomb of target audience eliminations. Gandalf the bear punches the other bear's JAW OFF. Clean off. And proceeds to bite him in the throat and smash him on the ground until dead. So much for a flippin' kid's movie.

But then we plunge right back into the mostly childish stuff, and close with a large, kind of ridiculous battle with flying archers and machine-gun toting Russians with wolves.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've seen this kind of thing recently, nor will it be the last, I'm sure. Ghost Rider, of course, could have been fantastic if they could have simply accepted that the comic itself had very dark themes that they'd need to keep consistently. Of course, some genius decided it was a comic book movie so they had to keep things a bit more family oriented. Awesome. Let Nick Cage fight the devil's son, but let's not be too scary. Yeah. Great idea.

700% Off

I was led to wonder recently, as I wandered through a department store with a few friends of mine, just what goes through a man's head when he writes "LOW LOW PRICE" on a sticker in hopes of making extra sales. I never trust a man who repeats something like that. That's too much of a good thing.

What about just the low price? If your LOW LOW PRICE is the price of the holiday season, then what were your other prices? Just normal low? I'd imagine, though, that they'd be higher than the LOW LOW PRICE. And if your low price is higher than the current one, that makes it your high price. Which means I've been getting screwed on high-priced crap the rest of the year. (Or I would be if I actually bought any of the garbage) And if that's your high price, what about the stuff that's not on sale? It's priced higher than the high price stuff! Maybe they should call those the HIGH HIGH PRICES, and advertise them as a challenge for those who can afford it. "Only a real man will pay these prices." And just show the Marlboro Man having sex with a supermodel while flying a jet and holding the product in one hand.

Hell, maybe I should go into the business of advertising.

I <3 Alien Invasions

Pathetic humans,
Clinging to mere hopes and dreams.
INCINERATE THEM.

Farmers aren't the only ones with hoes

Just a quick one before I head to work:

I was driving past my place of employment the other day in an intellectual fog, and skewed as my perspectives on everything were at the moment, I got to thinking (a dangerous habit, I know): I'm being rented.

(For those of you who don't know me, and that's likely all of you, I work at my local county library as a "Student Shelver") I'm paid by the hour. There is no commission for shelving books, and I am not rated on how well I do my job - simply that at some point, I do it. I am literally renting myself out to the county.

...Which leads me to wonder: how does a prostitute determine the going rate? I suppose we have to account for the presence of competition in the area, whether she works for a pimp or freelance, and based on skill. But, the question is: would the charge be incurred for each service rendered, or since we know time is money, by the amount of time it takes? Is someone actually paying for the sex, or the time it takes from her busy schedule?
I assume it must be some combination.
But if a pimp is involved, from what I've gathered from movies (a surprisingly reliable source if you're willing to filter certain theatric elements ), he collects much of the revenue for himself. In which case, does he pay his ho by the hour, or does she earn commission?

First P0st!!!1!

Hmm... The first entry, eh? Where to begin? This is always the most daunting part of a blog for me - I never have any idea what the devil I want to say to you people. I only know that it's either this or about twenty pages of reports and speeches for school, and I think we all know the choice is obvious.

Well, hell, let's be unorthodox. What's the best place to start? The beginning?
Fuck that.
Let's open things up and break the ice with a bit about the end.

Show of hands, who thinks when the world is getting ready to end, the son of the head honcho of the universe is gonna show up and make all the good boys and girls who got presents at Christmas and said their prayers at night go *poof* and leave the poor sods who believed in different deities to fight it out on a suddenly crusader-less world with the Antichrist?

...No one? At all? I wonder why.

How about fire and brimstone? Nuclear fallout? Black holes and aliens? Arnold Schwarzenegger?
What will bring about the end of the world? Will mankind be lost to the void in one fell swoop? Should we even bother getting wrapped up in this season of Grey's Anatomy, or will we not last long enough to watch all the episodes waiting in our TiVos?

Personally, I'm not very religious. However, I tend to side with the polytheistics, the agnostics, and the vikings. Yes, you read it correctly. The vikings. You know, horned helmets, huge metal weapons, heavy furs and cold weather. Leif Erikson Day.

For such a bloodthirsty people of warriors, they certainly had a pleasant view of the world. True, towards the end all the creatures of darkness swarm cross the planet and do battle with the gods and deceased warriors from Valhalla in the battle of Ragnarök, which results in the deaths of nearly all the gods. But a select few rise from the ashes to usher in a new era of mankind, and they form a peaceful society which has learned from the many past mistakes of their culture(s).

I think that suits me pretty well. When the final nuclear holocaust comes, and humans have to deal with their own demons, someone should be able to outlast the fallout, stand up and say "Well that sucked," and do it right the second time around.

Or not. Who knows? The survivors could be American. In which case they'd likely discover a tarnished set of McDonald's golden arches, assume they were left by the gods, and start a religion based on 'em.

And we'd deserve it.